We Can Remember It for You Wholesale and Other Classic Stories by Philip K. Dick.
Title: We Can Remember It for You Wholesale and Other Classic Stories.
Author: Philip K. Dick.
Genre: Fiction, literature, short stories, science fiction, alien fiction, politics, futuristic lit, political dissent.
Country: U.K.
Language: English.
Publication Date: 1953, 1954, 1955, (this collection 1987).
Summary: A collection of 27 stories. In The Cookie Lady (1953), a young boy named Bubber visits an elderly lady for her delicious cookies, but while the visits leave her invigorated and feeling younger, Bubber grows gradually weaker. In Beyond the Door (1954), a husband buys his wife a cuckoo clock that she makes great friends with, but when the family splits up and the husband is left with the clock he despises, their "not getting along" comes to a surprising and dark end. In Prominent Author (1954), when an office worker encounters tiny and mysterious people coming through a tear in the dimensional tunnel of a teleporter he's testing and begins to communicate with them, he has no idea that the different dimension that establishes him as a god is a lot closer than he could have ever imagined. In We Can Remember It for You Wholesale (1966), when menial office worker Douglas Quail, haunted by dreams of Mars, decides to have a false memory of a vacation there implanted into his brain, it turns out his memory has been augmented before, and his restless dreams may not be dreams after all. In Jon's World (1954), when a couple of researchers travel back in time to acquire a scientist's papers in order to restore a war-devastated Earth, they accidentally change the past and their own reality. In The Cosmic Poachers (1953), a patrol ship overtakes an alien ship and confiscates its illegal hoard of precious jewels, without a clear understanding as to what the jewels actually are. In Progeny (1954), a man who brings his wife to Earth from Proxima to deliver his son is shocked when he learns of Earth's practice of taking children away from their parents at birth to be reared without bias by robots to fulfill their ultimate potentials. Some Kinds of Life (1953) tells of humanity's strive to sustain their ever-more technologically-advanced existence by getting involved in more and more intergalactic wars, with dark consequences. In Martians Come in Clouds (1954), in a world plagued by Martians- dried-up, whispy creatures that float down from the sky in clouds - a young boy shows what is considered a great show of bravery by helping get rid of one, even though he is able to hear the alien's message inside his mind. In the The Commuter (1953), when a man tries to purchase a train ticket to a town that doesn't exist, it is discovered that a time-frame has been altered, sending echoing waves through reality. In The World She Wanted (1953), a man encounters a woman in a bar who is convinced they are in her own personal world, where everything exists especially for her, and where he is meant to be her special someone. In A Surface Raid (1955), a party of a superior species living in an advanced industrial society underground, conducts a raiding party in a human settlement on the surface living among nuclear devastation. In Project: Earth (1953), a young boy meets an odd man who is writing a report on the planet earth, and has a box full of tiny humanoid beings he claims are the next "project" after humans. In The Trouble with Bubbles (1953), a man living in a society obsessed with creating miniature worlds and civilizations from mere atoms and then destroying them, tries to get them banned for moral reasons. In Breakfast at Twilight (1954), a family awakens to find themselves catapulted forward in time into a world devastated by war and destruction, and must decide what they're willing to risk to get back. In A Present for Pat (1954), a man brings a deity from Ganymede as a present for his wife, with disastrous consequences. In The Hood Maker (1955), in a society that uses a group of psychics to scan everyone's brain for loyalty and intentions, a group of resisters decide to take a stand by designing metal hoods that prevent the scans. In Of Withered Apples (1954), a young woman has a mysterious and menacing relationship with the only apple tree to survive on a neighbouring abandoned orchard. Human Is (1955) posits the question of what makes one human, when a woman's neglectful, abusive husband comes back from a business trip on a dying planet a completely changed man, and suspicions arise that his consciousness may have been swapped with one of the planet's inhabitants. In Adjustment Team (1954), a man accidentally peeks behind the curtain of his existence, realizing to his horror that his whole world is manipulated and "adjusted" from behind the scenes. In The Impossible Planet (1953), a mysterious old woman offers an obscene amount of money to a ship crew to deliver her to a planet considered a myth - Earth. Impostor (1953) challenges the concept of identity and consciousness when a man is suddenly accused of having his body infiltrated by a spy from a warring galaxy, without his own knowledge. In James P. Crow (1954), on an Earth where robots rule and humans are their servants, and robots are believed to have evolved before humans, one man challenges his society, and the history of humanity and robotics as they know it. In Planet for Transients (1953) is the story is set in a future where humans of the original variety wear lead-lined spacesuits and take extreme precautions against the lethal levels of surface radiation on Earth, but clash with other varieties of humans that have evolved to cope with the radiation levels. Small Town (1954) is a story about a man with god-like power over two towns. In Souvenir (1954), Rogers from the Galactic Relay Center is delighted to have discovered the precise location of “Williamson’s World,” the legendary first Earth colony established outside the solar system, but things turn quickly complicated as he realizes that the denizens of this world have no interest in the highly technological Galactic culture. Survey Team (1954) tells of a designated four man group of space travelers chosen to find another planet on which humankind can survive, since the Earth has been rendered uninhabitable by nuclear war.
My rating: 7.5/10.
My review:
♥ Why had she done it? She did not know. She had been alone so long that she found herself saying strange things and doing strange things.
♥ Her aged heart thumped. Ah, to be young again. Youth was so much. It was everything. What did the world mean to the old? When all the world is old, lad....
~~The Cookie Lady.
♥ His head ached and he felt sick. But at least he had evaded death; they had come very close to shooting him on the spot, back in his own conapt.
And they probably will again, he decided. When they find me. And with this transmitter inside me, that won't take too long.
Ironically, he had gotten exactly what he had asked Rekal, Incorporated for. Adventure, peril, Interplan police at work, a secret and dangerous trip to Mars in which his life was at stake - everything he had wanted as a false memory.
The advantages of it being a memory-and nothing more-could now be appreciated.
~~We Can Remember It for You Wholesale.
♥ So it was visions the boy saw. Visions of ultimate reality. Like the Middle Ages. His own son. There was a grim irony in it. Just when it seemed they had finally licked that proclivity in man, his eternal inability to face reality. His eternal dreaming. Would science never be able to realize its ideal? Would man always go on preferring illusion to reality?
His own son. Retrogression. A thousand years lost. Ghosts and gods and devils and the secret inner world. The world of ultimate reality. All the fables and fictions and metaphysics that man had used for centuries to compensate for his fear, his terror of the world. All the dreams he had made up to hide the truth, the harsh world of reality. Myths, religions, fairy tales. A better land, beyond and above. Paradise. All coming back, reappearing again, and in his own son.
♥ He released the controls. The ship shuddered as it polarized into position, easing into the time flow. The vanes and knobs changed their settings, adjusting themselves to the stress. Relays closed, braking the ship against the current sweeping around them.
"Like the ocean," Ryan murmured. "The most potent energy in the universe. The great dynamic behind all motion. The Prime Mover."
"Maybe this is what they used to mean by God."
♥ All at once the scene beyond the port winked out. There was nothing there. Nothing beyond them.
..Kastner glanced up at the hull of the time ship, vibrating and rattling from stress. "What would happen if this ship should break open?"
"We'd be atomized. Dissolved into the stream around us." Ryan lit a cigarette. "We'd become a part of the time flow. We'd move back and forth endlessly, from one end of the universe to the other."
"End?"
"The time ends. Time flows both ways. Right now we're moving back. But energy must move both ways to keep a balance. Otherwise time ergs in vast amounts would collect at one particular continuum and the result would be catastrophic."
"Do you suppose there's some purpose behind all of this? I wonder how the time flow ever got started."
"Your question is meaningless. Questions of purpose have no objective validity. They can't be subjected to any form of empirical investigation."
♥ "I'm beginning to understand about Jon," Kastner murmured. "He must have had some kind of parallel time sense. Awareness of other possible futures. As work progressed on the time ship his visions increased, didn't they? Every day his visions become more real. Every day the time ship became more actual. ..This opens up whole new lines of speculation. The mystical visions of medieval saints. Perhaps they were of other futures, other time flows. Visions of hell would be worse time flows. Visions of heaven would be better time flows. Ours must stand some place in the middle. And the vision of the eternal unchanging world. Perhaps that's an awareness of non-time. Not another world but this world, seen outside of time. We'll have to think more about that, too."
~~Jon's World.
♥ He was dazed. He had known, of course. It was there in the back of his mind. The new developments in child care. But it had been abstract, general. Nothing to do with him. With his child.
He calmed himself, as he walked along. He was getting all upset about nothing. Janet was right, of course. It was for Peter's good. Peter didn't exist for them, like a dog or cat. A pet to have around the house. He was a human being, with his own life. The training was for him, not for them. It was to develop him, his abilities, his powers. He was to be molded, realized, brought out.
Naturally, robots could do the best job. Robots could train him scientifically, according to a rational technique. Not according to emotional whim. Robots didn't get angry. Robots didn't nag and whine. They didn't spank a child or yell at him. They didn't give conflicting orders. They didn't quarrel among themselves or use the child for their own ends. And there could be no Oedipus Complex, with only robots around.
No complexes at all. It had been discovered long ago that neurosis could be traced to childhood training. To the way parents brought up the child. The inhibitions he was taught, the manners, the lessons, the punishments, the rewards. Neuroses, complexes, warped development, all stemmed from the subjective relationship existing between the child and the parent. If perhaps the parent could be eliminated as a factor. ...
Parents could never become objective about their children. It was always a biased, emotional projection the parent held toward the child. Inevitably, the parent's view was distorted. No parent could be a fit instructor for his child.
Robots could study the child, analyze his needs, his wants, test his abilities and interests. Robots would not try to force the child to fit a certain mold. The child would be trained along his own lines; wherever scientific study indicated his interest and need lay.
..It was for Peter's own good. Robots could train him right. Later on, when he was out of growth stage, when he was not so pliant, so responsive- "It's better for him," Ed murmured. He said it again, half aloud. Some people glanced at him and he colored. Of course it was better for him. No doubt about it.
Eighteen. He couldn't be with his son until he was eighteen. Practically grown up.
~~Progeny.
♥ "Why do we have to fight the Martians?" Joan asked suddenly. "Tell me, Bob. Tell me why."
Bob lit a cigarette. He let the gray smoke drift around the cabin of the car. "Why? You know as well as I do." He reached out a big hand and thumped the handsome control board of the car. "Because of this. ..The control mechanism needs rexeroid. And the only rexeroid deposits in the whole system are on Mars. If we lose Mars we lose this." He ran his hand over the gleaming control board. "And if we lose this how are we going to get around? Answer me that."
"Can't we go back to manual steering?"
"We could ten years ago. But ten years ago we were driving less than a hundred miles per hour. No human being could steer at the speeds these days. We couldn't go back to manual steering without slowing down our pace. ..it's ninety miles from here to town. You really think I could keep my job if I had to drive the whole way at thirty-five miles an hour? I'd be on the road all my life. ..You see, we must have the dark stuff-the rexeroid. It makes our control equipment possible. We depend on it. We need it. We must keep mining operations going on Mars. We can't afford to let the Martians get the rexeroid deposits away from us. See?"
"I see. And last year it was kryon from Venus. We had to have that. So you went and fought on Venus."
"Darling, the walls of our houses wouldn't maintain an even temperature without kryon. Kryon is the only non-living substance in the system that adjusts itself to temperature changes. Why, we'd-we'd all have to go back to floor furnaces again. Like my grandfather had."
"And the year before it was lonolite from Pluto."
"Lonolite is the only substance known that can be used in constructing the memory banks of the calculators. It's the only metal with true retentive ability. Without lonolite we'd lose all our big computing machines. And you know how far we'd get without them. ..Sweetheart, you know I don't want to go. But I have to. We all have to."
.."I guess you've been seeing the gleco-war on the vidscreen. I guess you know all about that. ..We get all our gleco from Callisto. It's made from the hides of some kind of animal. Well, there's been a little trouble with the natives. They claim-"
"What is a gleco?" Joan said tightly.
"That's the stuff that makes your front door open for you only. It's sensitive to your pressure pattern. Gleco is made from these animals."
There was silence, the kind you can cut with a knife.
.."Well, some new developments in the iderium-war."
"Where is that?"
"Neptune. We get our iderium, from Neptune."
"What is iderium used for?" Joan's voice was thin and remote as if she were a long way off. Her face had a pinched look, a kind of strained whiteness. As if a mask had settled into place and remained, a mask through which she looked from a great distance.
"All the newspaper machines require iderium," Erickson explained. "Iderium lining makes it possible for them to detect events as they occur and flash them over the vidsreen. Without iderium we'd have to go back to reporting news and writing it up by hand. That would introduce the personal bias. Slanted news. The iderium news machines are impartial. ..They say some trouble might be going to break out on Mercury."
"What do we get from Mercury?"
"That's where our ambroline comes from. We use ambroline in all kinds of selector units. In your kitchen-the selector you have in there. The meal selector that sets up the food combinations. That's an ambroline unit."
Joan gazed vacantly into her coffee cup. "The natives on Mercury-they're attacking us?"
"There's been some riots, agitation, that sort of thing. Some Sector Units have been called out already. The Paris unit and the Moscow unit. Big units, I believe. ..Well, it means women are going to be admitted into Sector Units in the-in the absence of male members of the family. ..I guess I'll have to run along now. I wanted to bring this over and show it to you. They're handing them out all along the line." He stuck the paper away in his coat again. He looked very tired.
"It doesn't leave very many people, does it?"
"How do you mean?"
"Men first. Then children. Now women. It seems to take in everybody, just about."
"Kind of does, I guess. Well, there must be a reason. We have to hold these fronts. The stuff must be kept coming in. We've got to have it."
.."Anything else we could give up. But not nymphite."
"What is nymphite used for?"
"All aptitude testing equipment. Without nymphite we wouldn't be able to tell who was fit for what occupation, including President of the World Council. .."With nymphite testers we can determine what each person is good for and what kind of work he should be doing. Nymphite is the basic tool of modern society. With it we classify and grade ourselves. If anything should happen to the supply..."
"And it comes from Saturn?"
"I'm afraid so. Now the natives are rioting, trying to take over the nymphite mines. It's going to be a tough struggle. They're big. The government is having to call up everyone it can get."
~~Some Kinds of Life.
♥ "It's very simple. I saw you sitting here and I knew you were the one. In spite of the messy table." She wrinkled her nose at the litter of bottles and match-folders. "Why don't you have them clear it off?"
"Because I enjoy it. You knew I was the one? Which one?" Larry was getting interested. "Go on."
"Larry, this is a very important moment in my life." Allison gazed around her. "Who would think I'd find you in a place like this? But that's the way it's always been for me. This is only one link of a great chain going back-well, as far back as I can remember. ..Poor Larry. You don't understand." She leaned toward him, her lovely eyes dancing. "You see, Larry, I know something no one else knows-no one else in this world. Something I learned when I was a little girl. Something-"
"Wait a minute. What do you mean by 'this world'? You mean there are nicer worlds than this? Better worlds? Like in Plato? This world is only a-"
"Certainly not!" Allison frowned. "This is the best world, Larry. The best of all possible worlds."
"Oh. Herbert Spencer."
"The best of all possible worlds-for me." She smiled at him, a cold, secret smile. .."Because," she said calmly, "this is my world. ..My world; it belongs to me. Everything and everybody. All mine." She moved her chair around until she was close by him. He could smell her perfume, warm and sweet and tantalizing. "Don't you understand? This is mine. All these things-they're here for me; for my happiness. ..You see, Larry, there are many worlds. All kinds of worlds. Millions and millions. As many worlds as there are people. Each person has his own world, Larry, his own private world. A world that exists for him, for his happiness." She lowered her gaze modestly. "This happens to be my world. ..You exist for my happiness, of course; that's what I'm talking about." The pressure of her small hand increased. "As soon as I saw you, I knew you were the one. I've been thinking about this for several days now. It's time he came along. The man for me. The man intended for me to marry-so my happiness can be complete."
.."What about me?" Larry demanded. "That's not fair! Doesn't my happiness count?"
"Yes... but not here, not in this world." She gestured vaguely. "You have a world someplace else, a world of your own; in this world you're merely a part of my life. You're not completely real. I'm the only one in this world who's completely real. All the rest of you are here for me. You're just-just partly real. ..I worked it out myself," she said. "I studied logic and philosophy, and history-and there was always something that puzzled me. Why were there so many vital changes in the fortunes of people and nations that seemed to come about providentially, just at the right moment? Why did it really seem as if my world had to be just the way it was, so that all through history, strange things happened which make it work out that way.
"I'd heard the 'This Is the Best of All Possible Worlds' theory, but it didn't make sense the way I read about it. I studied the religions of mankind, and scientific speculations of the existence of a Creator-but something was lacking, something which either couldn't be accounted for, or was just overlooked."
Larry nodded. "Well, sure. It's easy; if this is the best of all possible worlds, then why is there so much suffering-unnecessary suffering-in it, if there's a benevolent and all-powerful Creator, as so many millions have believed, do believe, and will believe in the future, no doubt, then how do you account for the existence of evil?" He grinned at her. "And you worked out the answer to all that, eh-just tossed it off like a martini?"
.."It's simple, like the egg-trick, once you know the angle. The reason why both the benevolent Creator and the 'Best of All Possible Worlds' theory seem to bog down is because we start out with an unjustified assumption-that this is the only world. But suppose we try a different approach: assume a Creator of infinite power; surely, such a being would be capable of creating infinite worlds... or at least, so large a number of them to seem infinite to us.
"If you assume that, then everything else makes sense. The Creator set forces into motion; He created separate worlds for every single human being in existence; each one exists for that human being alone. He's an artist, but He uses an economy of means, so that there's much duplication of themes and events and motives throughout the worlds."
"Oh," Larry replied softly, "now I begin to see what you're driving at. In some worlds, Napoleon won the battle of Waterloo-although only in his own world did everything work out just right for him; in this one he had to lose..."
"I'm not sure Napoleon ever existed in my world," Allison said thoughtfully. "I think he's just a name in the records, although some such person did exist in other worlds. In my world, Hitler was defeated; Roosevelt died-I'd be sorry about that, only I didn't know him, and he wasn't very real, anyway; they were both just images carried over from other people's worlds... ..I've had some hurts and frustrations, but nothing really... well, really crippling. And every one has been important toward getting something I really wanted, or getting to understand something important. You see, Larry, the logic is perfect; I deduced it all from the evidence. There's no other answer that will stand up."
~~The World She Wanted.
♥ "At one time there was only the one species-the saps. Their full name is homo sapiens. We grew out of them, developed from them. We're biogenetic mutants. The change occurred during the third World War, two and a half centuries ago. Up to that time there had never been any technos."
"Technos?"
Fashold smiled. "That's what they called us at first. When they thought of us only as a separate class, and not as a distinct race. Technos. That was their name for us. That was how they always referred to us."
"But why? Its a strange name. Why technos, Fashold?"
"Because the first mutants appeared among the technocratic classes and gradually spread throughout all other educated classes. They appeared among scientists, scholars, field workers, trained groups, all the various specialized classes."
"And the saps didn't realize-"
"They thought of us only as a class, as I've just told you. That was during the Third World War and after. It was during the Final War that we fully emerged as recognizably and profoundly different. It became evident that we weren't just another specialized offshoot of homo sapiens. Not just another class of men more educated than the rest, with higher intellectual capacities."
Fashold gazed off into the distance. "During the Final War we emerged and showed ourselves for what we really were-a superior species supplanting homo sapiens in the same way that homo sapiens had supplanted Neanderthal man."
Harl considered what Fashold had said. "I didn't realize we were so closely related to them. I had no idea we had emerged so lately."
Fashold nodded. "It was only two centuries ago, during the war that ravaged the surface of the planet. Most of us were working down in the big underground laboratories and factories under the different mountain ranges-the Urals, the Alps, and the Rockies. We were down underground, under miles of rock and dirt and clay. And on the surafce homo sapiens slugged it out with the weapons we designed."
"I'm beginning to understand. We designed the weapons for them to fight the war. They used our weapons without realizing-"
"We designed them, and the saps used them to destroy themselves," Fashold interjected. "It was Nature's crucible, the elimination of one species and the emergence of another. We gave them the weapons and they destroyed themselves. When the war ended the surface was fused, and nothing but ash and hydroglass and radioactive clouds remained.
"We sent our scouting parties from our underground labs and found nothing but a silent, barren waste. It had been accomplished. They were gone, wiped out. And we had come to take their place."
"Not all of them could have been wiped out," Harl pointed out. "There are still a lot of them up there on the surface."
"True," Fashold admitted. "Some survived. Scattered remnants here and there. Gradually, as the surface cooled, they began to reform again, getting together and building little villages and huts. Yes, and even clearing some of the land-planting and growing things. But they're still remnants of a dying race now almost extinct, as the Neanderthal is extinct."
"So nothing exists now but males and females without homes."
"There are a few villages here and there-wherever they've managed to clear the surface. But they've descended to utter savagery, and live like animals, wearing skins and hunting with rocks and spears. They've become almost bestial remnants who offer no organized resistance when we go up to raid a few of their villages for our favorites."
.."What was it?" Julie murmured. "What was it?" She shuddered. "It was-horrible. It revolted me, made me ill, just to look at it."
"What did it look like?" Ken demanded.
"It was-it was like a man. But it couldn't have been a man. It was metallic all over, from head to foot, and it had huge hands and feet. Its face was all pasty white like-the meal. It was-sickly. Hideously sickly. White and metallic, and sickly. Like some kind of root dug up out of the soil."
Ken turned to the old man sitting behind him, who was listening intently. "What was it?" he demanded. "Whats was it, Mr. Stebbins? You know about such things. What did she see?"
Mr. Stebbins got slowly to his feet. "You say it had white skin? Pasty? Like dough? And huge hands and feet?"
Julie nodded. "And-something else."
"What?"
"It was blind. It had something instead of eyes. Two black spaces. Darkness." She shuddered and stared toward the stream.
Suddenly Mr. Stebbins tensed his jaw hardening. He nodded. "I know," he said. "I know what it was."
"What was it?"
Mr. Stebbins muttered to himself, frowning. "It's not possible. But your description-" He stared off in the distance, his brow wrinkled. "They live underground," he said finally, "under the surface. They emerge from the mountains. They live in the earth, in great tunnels and chambers they have hewn out for themselves. They are not men. They look like men, but they are not. They live under the ground and dig the metal from the earth. They dig and horde the metal. They seldom come up to the surface. They cannot look at the sun."
"What are they called?" Julie asked.
Mr. Stebbins searched his mind, thinking back through the years. Back to the olds books and legends he had heard. Things that lived under the ground... Like men but not men... Things that dug tunnels, that mined metals... Things that were blind and had great hands and feet and pasty white skin.
"Goblins," Mr. Stebbins stated. "What you saw was a goblin."
~~A Surface Raid.
♥ They were gone. Project C was already over. It had gone like the others. The same way. Rebellion and independence. Out of supervision. Beyond control. Project A and influenced Project B-and now, in the same way, the contamination had spread to C.
Billings sat down heavily at his desk. For a long time he sat immobile, silent and thoughtful, gradual comprehension coming to him. It was not his fault. It had happened before-twice before. And it would happen again. Each Project would carry the discontent to the next. It would never end, no matter how many Projects were conceived and put into operation. The rebellion and escape. The evasion of the plan.
After a time, Billings reached out and pulled his big report book to him. Slowly he opened it to the place he had left off. From the report he removed the entire last section. The summary. There was no use scrapping the current Project. One Project was as good as any other. They would all be equal-equal failures.
He had known as soon as he saw them. As soon as he had raised the lid. They had clothes on. Little suits of clothing. Like the others, a long time before.
~~Project: Earth.
♥ "It began," he stated, "when we failed to find life on any of the other planets. When our exploring parties came back empty-handed. Eight dead orbs-lifeless. Good for nothing. Not even lichen. Rock and sand. Endless deserts. One after the other, all the way out to Pluto."
"It was a hard realization," Bart said. "Of course, that was before our time."
"Not much before. Packman remembers it. A century ago. We waited a long time for rocket travel, flight to other planets. And then to find nothing..."
"Like Columbus finding the world really was flat," Julia said. "With an edge and a void."
"Worse. Columbus was looking for a short route to China. They could have continued the long way. But when we explored the system and found nothing we were in for trouble. People had counted on new worlds, new lands in the sky. Colonization. Contact with a variety of races. Trade. Minerals and cultural products to exchange. But most of all the thrill of landing on planets with amazing life-forms."
"And instead of that..."
"Nothing but dead rock and waste. Nothing that could support life-our own or any other kind. A vast disappointment set in on all levels of society."
"And then Packman brought out the Worldcraft bubble," Bart murmured. "'Own Your Own World.' There was no place to go, outside of Terra. No other worlds to visit. You couldn't leave here and go to another world. So instead, you-"
"Instead you stayed home and put together your own world," Hull smiled wryly. "You know, he has a child's version out, now. A sort of preparation kit. So the child can cover the basic problems of world building before he even has a bubble."
"But look, Nat," Bart said. "The bubbles seemed like a good idea, at first. We couldn't leave Terra so we built out own worlds right here. Sub-atomic worlds, in controlled containers. We start life going on a sub-atomic world, feed it problems to make it evolve, try to raise it higher and higher. In theory there's nothing wrong with the idea. It's certainly a creative pastime. Not a merely passive viewing like television. In fact, world-building is the ultimate art form. It takes the place of all entertainments, all the passive sports as well as music and painting-"
"But something went wrong."
"Not at first," Bart objected. "At first it was creative. Everybody bought a Worldcraft bubble and built his own world. Evolved life farther and farther. Molded life. Controlled it. Competed with others to see who could achieve the most advanced world."
"And it solved another problem," Julia added. "The problem of leisure. With robots to work for us and robots to serve us and take care of our needs-"
"Yes, that was a problem," Hull admitted. "Too much leisure. Nothing to do. That, and the disappointment of finding our planet the only habitable planet in the system.
"Packman's bubbles seemed to solve both problems. But something went wrong. A change came. I noticed it right away." Hull stubbed out his cigarette and lit another. "The change began ten years ago-and it's been growing worse."
"But why?" Julie demanded. "Explain to me why everyone stopped building their worlds creatively and began to destroy."
"Ever seen a child pull wings off a fly?"
"Certainly. But-"
"The same thing. Sadism? No, not exactly. More a sort of curiosity. Power. Why does a child break things? Power, again. We must never forget something. These world bubbles and substitutes. They take the place of something else, of finding genuine life on our own planets. And they're just too damn small to do that.
"These worlds are like toy boats in a bath tub. Or model rocketships you see kids playing with. They're surrogates, not the actual thing. These people who operate them-why do they want them? Because tyhey can't explore real planets, big planets. They have a lot of energy dammed up inside them. Energy they can't express.
"And bottled-up energy sours. It becomes aggressive. People work with their little worlds for a time, building them up. But finally they reach a point where their latent hostility, their sense of being deprived, their-"
"It can be explained more easily," Bart said calmly. "Your theory is too elaborate."
"How do you explain it?"
"Man's innate destructive tendencies. His natural desire to kill and spread ruin."
"There's no such thing," Hull said flatly. "Man ain't an ant. He has no fixed direction to his drives. He has no instinctive 'desire to destroy' any more than he has an instinctive desire to carve ivory letter-openers. He has energy-and the outlet it takes depends on the opportunities available.
"That's what's wrong. All of us have energy, the desire to move, act, do. But we're bottled up here, sealed off, on one planet. So we buy Worldcraft bubbles and make little worlds of our own. But microscopic worlds aren't enough. They're as satisfactory as a toy sailboat is to a man who wants to go sailing."
♥ "It's turning sour, all right. Quite a scene, wasn't it?" He reflected, frowning. "But the bubbles are better than nothing. What do you suggest? Give up our bubbles? What should we do instead? Just sit around and talk?"
"Nat loves to talk," Julia murmured.
"Like all intellectuals." Bart trapped Hull's sleeve. "When you sit in your seat in the Directorate you're with the Intellectual and Professional class-gray stripe."
"And you?"
"Blue stripe. Industrial. You know that."
Hull nodded. "That's right. You're with Terran Spaceways. The ever-hopeful company."
"So you want us to give up our bubbles and just sit around. Quite a solution to the problem."
♥ Packman preferred to sit with the property group, considering Worldcraft real estate instead of industry. Property still had the edge on prestige.
♥ "The theory and construction of the Worldcraft product, the sub-atomic universe system, is known to you. An infinite number of sub-atomic worlds exist, microscopic counterparts of our own spatial coordinate. Wordcraft developed, almost a century ago, a method of controlling to thirty decimals the forces and stresses involved on these micro-coordinate planes, and a fairly simplified machine which could be manipulated by any adult person.
"These machines for controlling specific areas of sub-atomic coordinates have been manufactured and sold to the general public with the slogan: 'Own Your Own World.' The idea is that the owner of the machine becomes literally a world owner, since the machine controls forces that govern a sub-atomic universe that is directly analogous to our own.
"By purchasing one of these Worldcraft machines, or bubbles, the person finds himself in possession of a virtual universe, to do with as he sees fit. Instruction manuals supplied by the Company show him how to control these minute worlds so that life forms appear and rapidly evolve, giving rise to higher and higher forms until at last-assuming the owner is sufficiently skillful-he has in his personal possession a civilization of beings on a cultural par with our own.
"During the last few years we have seen the sale of these machines grow until now almost everyone possesses one or more sub-atomic worlds, complete with civilizations, and these years have also seen many of us take our private universes and grind the inhabitants and planets into dust.
"There is no law which prevents us from building up elaborate civilizations, evolved at an incredible rate of speed, and then crushing them out of existence. That is why my proposal has been presented. These minute civilizations are not dreams. They are real. They actually exist. The microscopic inhabitants are- ..The inhabitants are, at present, subject to the slightest whim their owner may feel. If we wish to reach down and crush their world, turn on tidal waves, earthquakes, tornadoes, fire, volcanic action-if we wish to destroy them utterly, there is nothing they can do.
"Our position in relation to these minute civilizations is godlike. We can, with a wave of the hand, obliterate countless millions. We can send the lightning down, level their cities, squash their tiny buildings like ant hills. We can toss them about like toys, playthings, victims of our every whim. ..I want to see Worldcraft bubbles outlawed. We owe it to these civilizations on humanitarian grounds, on moral grounds-"
♥ Hull shook his head. No more Worldcraft. Stock was already being dumped. Worthless. Probably the State would absorb the bubbles already in existence and seal them off, leaving the inhabitants free to determine their own futures.
The neurotic smashing of laboriously achieved cultures was a thing of the past. The building of living creatures would no longer be pushed over to amuse some god suffering from ennui and frustration.'
~~The Trouble with Bubbles.
♥ "We got up. And we were-here."
Douglas was deep in thought. "Here. Seven years in the future. Moved forward through time. We know nothing about time travel. No work has been done with it. There seem to be evident military possibilities."
"How did the war begin?" Mary asked faintly.
"Begin? It didn't begin. You remember. There was war seven years ago."
"The real war. This."
"There wasn't any point when it became-this. We fought in Korea. We fought in China. In Germany and Yugoslavia and Iran. It spread, farther and father. Finally the bombs were falling here. It came like the plague. The war grew. It didn't begin."
.."Seven years," Mary said. "So much has changed. It doesn't seem possible."
"So much?" Douglas shrugged. "I suppose so. I remember what I was doing seven years ago. I was still in school. Learning. I had an apartment and a car. I went out dancing. I bought a TV set. But these things were there. The twilight. This. Only I didn't know. None of us knew. But they were there."
♥ "The concentrated energy must have tipped some unstable time fault. Like a rock fault. We're always starting earthquakes. But a time quake... Interesting. That's what happened, I think. The release of energy, the destruction of matter, sucked your house into the future. Carried the house seven years ahead. This street, everything here, this very spot, was pulverized. Your house, seven years back, was caught in the undertow. The blast must have lashed back through time."
"Sucked into the future," Tim said. "During the night. While we were asleep."
~~Breakfast at Twilight.
♥ "What is it?"
"It's a god," Eric muttered. "A minor Ganymedean deity. I got it practically at cost."
Pat gazed down at the box with fear and growing disgust. "That? That's a-a god?"
In the box was a small, motionless figure, perhaps ten inches high. It was old, terribly old. Its tiny clawlike hands were pressed against its scaly breast. Its insect face was twisted in a scowl of anger-mixed with cynical lust. Instead of legs it rested on a tangle of tentacles. The lower portion of its face dissolved in a complex beak, mandibles of some hard substance. There was an odor to it, as of manure and stale beer. It appeared to be bisexual.
♥ "How does a god come into being?" Tom asked. "Does a god created itself? If it's dependent on something prior then there must be a more ultimate order of being which-"
"Gods," the tiny figure stated, "are inhabitants of a higher level, a greater plane of reality. A more advance dimension. There are a number of planes of existence. Dimensional continuums, arranged in a hierarchy. Mine is one above yours."
"What are you doing here?"
"Occasionally beings pass from one dimensional continuum to another. When they pass from a superior continuum to an inferior-as I have done-they are worshipped as gods."
Tom was disappointed. "You're not a god at all. You're just a life-form of a slightly different dimensional order that's changed phase and entered out vector."
The little figure glowered. "You make it sound simple. Actually, such a transformation requires great cunning and is seldom done. I came here because a member of my race, a certain malodorous Nar Dolk, committed a heinous crime and escaped into this continuum. Our law obliged me to follow in hot pursuit. In the process this flotsam, this spawn of dampness, escaped and assumed some disguise or other. I continually search, but he has not yet been apprehended." The small god broke off suddenly. "Your curiosity is idle."
~~A Present for Pat.
♥ "If more of them notified us-"
Peters grinned crookedly. "It's a wonder any of them do. There's a reason why hoods are sent to these people. They're not picked out at random."
"Why are they picked?>"
"They have something to hide. Why else would hoods be sent to them?"
"What about those who do notify us?"
"They're afraid to wear them. They pass the hoods on to us-to avoid suspicion."
Ross reflected moodily. "I suppose so."
"An innocent man has no reason to conceal his thoughts. Ninety-nine per cent of the population is glad to have its mind scanned. Most people want to prove their loyalty. But this one per cent is guilty of something."
♥ Ross studied the youth. Blonde hair, blue eyes. An ordinary looking kid, maybe a college sophomore. But Ross knew better. Ernest Abbud was a telepathic mutant-a teep. One of several hundred employed by Clearance for its loyalty probes.
Before the teeps, loyalty probes had been haphazard. Oaths, examinations, wire-tappings, were not enough. The theory that each person had to prove his loyalty was fine-as a theory. In practice few people could do it. It looked as if the concept of guilty until proved innocent might have to be abandoned and the Roman law restored.
The problem, apparently insoluble, had found its answer in the Madagascar Blast of 2004. Waves of hard radiation had lapped over several thousand troops stationed in the area. Of those who lived, few produced subsequent progeny. But of the several hundred children born to the survivors of the blast, many showed neural characteristics of a radically new kind. A human mutant had come into being-for the first time in thousands of years.
The teeps appeared by accident. But they solved the most pressing problem the Free Union faced: the detection and punishment of disloyalty. The teeps were invaluable to the Government of the Free Union-and the teeps knew it.
♥ Abbud reached into his coat. He brought out a tape spool and tossed it down on the desk in front of Ross. "Here you are."
"What's this?"
"The total probe of Franklin. All levels-completely searched and recorded."
Ross stared up at the youth. "You-"
"We went ahead with it." Abbud moved toward the door. "It's a good job. Cummings did it. We found considerable disloyalty. Mostly ideological rather than overt. You'll probably want to pick him up. When he was twenty-four he found some old books and music records. He was strongly influenced. The latter part of the tape discusses fully our evaluation of his deviation."
♥ "What are they doing it for?" Franklin asked. "The teeps. Why do they want to get power?"
"Human nature, I suppose."
"Human nature?"
"The teeps are not different from the Jacobins, the Roundheads, the Nazis, the Bolsheviks. There's always some group that wants to lead mankind-for its own good, of course."
"Do the teeps believe that?"
"Most teeps believe they're the natural leaders of mankind. Non-telepathic humans are an inferior species. Teeps are the next step up, homo superior. And because they're superior, it's natural. They should lead. Make all the decisions for us."
"And you don't agree," Franklin said.
"The teeps are different from us-but that doesn't mean they're superior. They're human beings with a special ability. But that doesn't give them a right to tell us what to do. It's not a new problem."
"Who should lead mankind, then?" Franklin asked. "Who should be the leaders?"
"Nobody should lead mankind. It should lead itself."
~~The Hood Maker.
♥ Olham watched him. He saw the man's hand tighten around the metal rod. In a moment the door would swing back, the air in the ship would rush out. He would die, and presently they would realize their mistake. Perhaps at some other time, when there was no war, men might not act this way, hurrying an individual to his death because they were afraid. Everyone was frightened, everyone was willing to sacrifice the individual because of the group fear.
He was being killed because they could not wait to be sure of his guilt. There was not enough time.
He looked at Nelson. Nelson had been his friend for years. They had gone to school together. He had been best man at his wedding. Now Nelson was going to kill him. But Nelson was not wicked; it was not his fault. It was the times. Perhaps it had been the same way during the plagues. When men had shown a spot they probably had been killed, too, without a moment's hesitation, without proof, on suspicion alone. In times of danger there was no other way.
He did not blame them. But he had to live.
~~Imposter.
♥ Ed Parks got up from the table and moved into the living room of his modest five-room dwelling unit, located in the section of the city set aside for humans. He didn't feel like eating. "Robots." He clenched his fists futilely. "I'd like to get hold of one of them. Just once. Get my hands into their guts. Rip out handfuls of wire and parts. Just once before I die."
"Maybe you'll get your chance."
"No. No, it'll never come to that. Anyhow, humans wouldn't be able to run things without robots. It's true, honey. Humans haven't got the integration to maintain a society. The Lists prove that twice a year. Let's face it. Humans are inferior to robots. But it's their damn holding it up to us! Like today with Donnie. Holding it up to our faces. I don't mind being a robot's body servant. It's a good job. Pays well and the work is light. But when my kid gets told he's-"
Ed broke off. Donnie had come out of his room slowly, into the living room. "Hi, Dad."
"Hi, son." Ed thumped the boy gently on the back. "How you doing? Want to take in a show tonight?"
Humans entertained nightly on the vid-screens. Humans made good entertainers. That was one area the robots couldn't compete in. Human beings painted and wrote and danced and sang and acted for the amusement of robots. They cooked better, too, but robots didn't eat. Human beings had their place. They were understood and wanted: as body servants, entertainers, clerks, gardeners, construction workers, repairmen, odd-jobbers and factory workers.
But when it came to something like civic control coordinator or traffic supervisor for the usone tapes that fed energy into the planet's twelve hydro-systems-
♥ The two men had stopped by the service entrance of the enormous Structural Research Building. Robot officials moved busily in and out through the main doors, at the front of the building. Robot planners who guided Terran society with skill and efficiency.
Robots ran Earth. It had always been that way. The history tapes said so. Humans had been invented during the Total War of the Eleventh Millibar. All types of weapons had been tested and used; humans were one of many. The War had utterly wrecked society. For decades after, anarchy and ruin lay everywhere. Only gradually had society reformed under the patient guidance of robots. Humans had been useful in the reconstruction. But why they had originally been made, what they had been used for, how they had served in the War-all knowledge had perished in the hydrogen bomb blasts. The historians had to fill in with conjecture. They did so.
♥ "By the way... We're having a meeting tonight. Want to come over and make a speech? Should have a good turn out."
"Meeting?"
"Party meeting. Equality." L-87t made a quick sign with its right gripper, a sort of half-arc in the air. The Equality sign. "We'd be glad to have you, Jim. Want to come?"
"No. I'd like to, but I have things to do."
"Oh." The robot moved toward the door. "All right. Thanks anyhow." It lingered at the door. "You'd give us a shot in the arm, you know. Living proof of our contention that a human being is the equal of a robot and should be afforded such recognition."
Crow smiled faintly. "But a human isn't the equal of a robot."
"L-87t sputtered indignantly. "What are you saying? Aren't you the living proof? Look at your List scores. Perfect. Not a mistake. And in a couple of weeks you'll be Class One. Highest there is."
Crow shook his head. "Sorry. A human isn't the equal of a robot anymore than he's the equal of a stove. Or a diesel motor. Or a snowplow. There are a lot of things a human can't do. Let's face facts."
L-87t was baffled. "But-"
"I mean it. You're ignoring reality. Humans and robots are completely different. We humans can sing, act, write plays, stories, operas, paint, design sets, flower gardens, buildings, cook delicious meals, make love, scratch sonnets on menus-and robots can't. But robots can build elaborate cities and machines that function perfectly, work for days without rest, think without emotional interruption, gestalt complex data without a time lag.
"Humans excel in some fields, robots in others. Humans have highly developed emotions and feelings. Esthetic awareness. We're sensitive to colors and sounds and textures and soft music mixed with wine. All very fine things. Worthwhile. But realms totally beyond robots. Robots are purely intellectual. Which is fine, too. Both realms are fine. Emotional humans, sensitive to art and music and drama. Robots who think and plan and design machinery. But that doesn't mean we're both the same."
L-87t shook its head sadly. "I don't understand you, Jim. Don't you want to help your race?"
"Of course. But realistically. Not by ignoring facts and making an illusionary assertion that men and robots are interchangeable. Identical elements."
~~James P. Crow.
♥ Earth was alive, thriving with activity. Planets and animals and insects in boundless confusion. Night forms, day forms, land and water types, incredible kinds and numbers that had never been catalogued, probably never would be.
By the end of the War every surface inch was radioactive. A whole planet sprayed and bombarded by hard radiation. All life subjected to beta and gamma rays. Most life died-but not all. Hard radiation brought mutation-at all levels, insects, plant and animal. The normal mutation and selection process was accelerated millions of years and seconds.
These altered progeny littered the Earth. A crawling teeming glowing horde of radiation-saturated beings. In this world, only those forms which could use hot soil and breathe particle-laden air survived. Insects and animals and men who could live in a world with a surface so alive that it glowed at night.
♥ Watching the shiny bugs stride along, Trent had trouble believing they had once been human beings. Their ancestors, at least. In spite of their incredible altered physiology the bugs were mentally about the same as he. Their tribal arrangement approximated the human organic states, communism and fascism.
♥ "You're the only one." The bug was pleased. "We'll get a bonus for this-for capturing you. There's a standing reward. Nobody's ever claimed it before."
A human was wanted here too. A human brought with him valuable gnosis, odds and ends of tradition the mutants needed to incorporate into their shaky social structures. Mutant cultures were still unsteady. They needed contact with the past. A human being was a shaman, a Wise Man to teach and instruct. To teach the mutants how life had been, how their ancestors had lived and acted and looked.
A valuable possession for any tribe-especially if no other humans existed in the region.
Trent cursed savagely. None? No others? There had to be other humans-some place. If not north, then east. Europe, Asia, Australia. Some place, somewhere on the globe. Humans with tools and machines and equipment. The Mine couldn't be the only settlement, the last fragment of true man. Prized curiosities-doomed when their compressors burned out and their food tanks dried up.
♥ The men were almost finished. The last cars were half empty, bringing up the final remains from underground. Books, records, pictures, artifacts-the remains of a culture. A multitude of representative objects, shot into the hold of the ship to be carried off, away from Earth.
"Where?" Trent asked.
"To Mars for the time being. But we're not staying there. We'll probably go on out, towards the moons of Jupiter and Saturn. Ganymede may turn out to be something. If not Ganymede, one of the others. If worse comes to worst we can stay on Mars. It's pretty dry and barren, but it's not radioactive."
"There's no chance here-no possibility of reclaiming the radioactive areas? If we could cool off Earth, neutralize the hot clouds and-"
"If we did that," Norris said, "They'd all die."
"They?"
"Rollers, runners, worms, toads, bugs, all the rest. The endless varieties of life. Countless forms adapted to this Earth-this hot Earth. These plants and animals use the radioactive metals. Essentially the new basis of life here is an assimilation of hot metallic salts. Salts which are utterly lethal to us."
"But even so-"
"Even so, it's not really our world."
"We're the true humans," Trent said.
"Not any more. Earth is alive, teeming with life. Growing wildly-in all directions. We're one form, an old form. To live here, we'd have to restore the old conditions, the old factors, the balance as it was three hundred and fifty years ago. A colossal job. And if we succeeded, if we managed to cool Earth, none of this would remain."
Norris pointed at the great brown forests. And beyond it, towards the south, at the beginning of the steaming jungle that continued all the way to the Straits of Magellan.
"In a way it's what we deserve. We brought the War. We changed Earth. Not destroyed-changed. Made it so different we can't live here any longer."
Norris indicated the lines of helmeted men. Men sheathed in lead, in heavy protection suits, covered with layers of metal and wiring, counters, oxygen tanks, shields, food pellets, filtered water. The men worked, sweated in their heavy suits. "See them? What do they resemble?"
A worker came up, gasping and panting. For a brief second he lifted his viewplate and took a hasty breath of air. He slammed his plate and nervously locked it in place. "Ready to go, sir. All loaded."
"Change of plan," Norris said. "We're going to wait until this man's companions get here. Their camp is breaking up. Another day won't make any difference."
"All right, sir." The worker pushed off, climbing back down to the surface, a weird figure in his heavy lead-lined suit and bulging helmets and intricate gear.
"We're visitors," Norris told him.
Trent flinched violently. "What?"
"Visitors on a strange planet. Look at us. Shielded suits and helmets, spacesuits-for exploring. We're a rocket-ship stopping at an alien world on which we can't survive. Stopping for a brief period to load up-and then take off again."
"Closed helmets," Trent said, in a strange voice.
"Closed helmets. Lead shields. Counters and special food and water. Look over there."
A small group of runners were standing together, gazing up in awe at the great gleaming ship. Off to the right, visible among the trees, was a runner village. Checker-board crops and animal pens and board houses.
"The natives," Norris said. "The inhabitants of the planet. They can breathe the air, drink the water, eat the plant-life. We can't. This is their planet-not ours. They can live here, build up a society."
"I hope we can come back."
"Back?"
"To visit-some time."
Norris smiled ruefully. "I hope so too. But we'll have to get permission from the inhabitants-permission to land." His eyes were bright with amusement-and, abruptly, pain. A sudden agony that gleamed out over everything else. "We'll have to ask them if it's all right. And they may say no. They may not want us.
~~Planet for Transients.
♥ "Imagine a grown man coming down here and playing with model trains!"
"Power." Tyler pushed an engine along a track. "That's why it appeals to boys. Trains are big things. Huge and noisy. Power-sex symbols. The boy sees the train rushing along the track. It's so huge and ruthless it scares him. Then he gets a toy train. A model, like these. He controls it. Makes it start, stop. Go slow. Fast. He runs it. It responds to him."
Madge shivered. "Let's go upstairs where it's warm. It's so cold down here."
"But as the boy grows up, he gets bigger and stronger. He can shed the model-symbol. Master the real object, the real train. Get genuine control over things. Valid mastery." Tyler shook his head. "Not this substitute thing. Unusual, a grown person going to such lengths."
~~Small Town.
♥ "Does each family have its separate deity?"
Williamson laughed. "No. We worship in common a vague animism. A sense of the general positive vitality of the universal process."
.."Interesting. A decentralized society, moving gradually back into primitive tribalism. A society that voluntarily rejects the advanced technocratic and cultural products of the Galaxy, and thus deliberately withdraws from contact with the rest of mankind."
"From the uniform Relay-controlled society only," Williamson insisted.
"Do you know why Relay maintains a uniform level for all worlds?" Rogers asked "I'll tell you. There are two reasons. First, the body of knowledge which men have amassed doesn't permit duplication of experiment. There's no time. When a discovery has been made it's absurd to repeat it on countless planets throughout the universe. Information gained on any of the thousand worlds is flashed to Relay Center and then out again to the whole Galaxy. Relay studies and selects experiences and co-ordinates then into a rational, functional system without contradictions. Relay orders the total experience of mankind into a coherent structure. ..If uniform culture is maintained, controlled from a central source, there won't be war. ..We've abolished war. It's as simple as that. We have a homogeneous culture like that of ancient Rome-a common culture for all mankind which we maintain throughout the Galaxy. Each planet is as involved in it as any other. There are no backwaters of culture to breed envy and hatred."
"Such as this."
Rogers let out his breath slowly. "Yes-you've confronted us with a strange situation. We've searched for Williamson's World for three centuries. We've wanted it, dreamed of finding it. It has seemed like Prester John's Empire-a fabulous world, cut off from the rest of humanity. Maybe not real at all. Frank Williamson might have crashed. ..He didn't, and Williamson's World is alive with a culture of its own. Deliberately set apart, with its own way of life, its own standards. Now contact has been made, and our dream has come true."
~~Souvenir.
♥ "Earth!" Halloway murmured. He had just finished telling Young about the telescope.
"I can't believe it," Young said. "But the description fitted Earth thousands of years ago..."
"Howe long ago did they take off?" Halloway asked.
"About six hundred thousand years ago," Judde said.
"And their colonies descended into barbarism on the new planet."
The four men were silent. They looked at each other, tight-lipped.
"We've destroyed two worlds," Halloway said at last. "Not one. Mars first. We finished up here, then we moved to Terra. And we destroyed Terra as systematically as we did Mars."
"A closed circle," Mason said. "We're back where we started. Back to reap the crop our ancestors sowed. They left Mars this way. Useless. And now we're back here poking around the ruins like ghouls. ..We're Martians. Descendants of the original stock that left here. We're back from the colonies. Back home." Mason's voice rose hysterically. "We're home again, where we belong!"
Judde pushed aside the scanner and got to his feet. "No doubt about it. I checked their analysis with our own archeological records. It fits. Their escape world was Terra, six hundred thousand years ago."
..They looked at each other.
"Tell Davidson we're going on," Halloway ordered. "We'll keep on until we find it. We're not staying on his God-forsaken junkyard." His gray eyes glowed. "We'll find it, yet. A virgin world. A world that's unspoiled."
"Unspoiled," Young echoed. "Nobody there ahead of us."
"We'll be the first," Judde muttered avidly.
"It's wrong!" Mason shouted. "Two are enough! Let's not destroy a third world!"
Nobody listened to him. Judde and Young and Halloway gazed up, faces eager, hands clenching and unclenching. As if they were already there. As if they were already holding onto the new world, clutching it with all their strength. Tearing it apart, atom by atom...
~~Survey Team.