burst of frankness, “Wish I could cut loose like that!”
“Why—?” Dennis had been about to say: “Why on earth?” He cancelled it, and substituted: “Why in the world?”
“Oh! I don’t know.” Saul shrugged helplessly. “I guess—yes, maybe this is why. If it was something I could do something about which had suddenly gone wrong with our plans, I wouldn’t be worried. I’d just buckle to and sort the problem out. Hell, we lost the
Pinta,
didn’t we? And you saw what happened: everyone sort of cursed the universe and put twice as much energy into everything to get their own back. But this scurvy bit is different. It’s something I only knew of as a word in a history book, before now.”
Pounding fist into palm, he concluded, “It’s ridiculous! Everything is going better than we expected bar this one thing which hasn’t even done us serious harm yet, and very well may not do harm at all—and here I am with my skin practically crawling! Does it hit you that way?”
“I guess it does,” Dennis admitted. “But I wish you hadn’t told me how you’re feeling. I hoped it was just me.”
High up on the skeletal web of naked girders which had been the bones of the Niña—still were, though now grotesquely revolting because they were being systematicallyflayed of their hull-skin—Abdul Hassan saw the plume of steam that rose when Dennis fired the engines of his boat. He paused in the conversation he was having, which concerned the problem of which cannibalised parts should be held in reserve, which put straight to work, and repressed an unexpected shiver.
Tibor Gyorgy, who was responsible for their electronics systems, said in alarm, “Something wrong, Abdul?”
With some effort, the colony’s chairman recovered his self-possession. “No, nothing,” he lied, and went on talking in a perfectly normal tone. But behind the mask he was wishing there could be a way out for him, as there was for Dennis—wishing, in effect, that he was not indispensable.
All right, so it’s wonderful to be here on a strange new planet and find that outwardly it’s kindly, gentle, hospitable … But that’s only the way it looks. We know that it may injure us in some way we can’t suspect because we never lived on another planet before, at least not without canned air, spacegear, big obvious dangers like vacuum. So we must think, think, think and never ever stop!
How long can a human being manage to burden his mind with the need to make a conscious decision about every action he undertakes, even about his next breath? And I of all people dare not make even a single error.
I’m in a trap, and I don’t know what the trap is. I only know it’s there.
They had chosen Parvati Chandra for the colony, and Max Ulfilas who was dead, because they were not simply psychologists. They both had a rare, perhaps unprecedented, gift for extracting the pattern of a trend from actions they could see still going on. Asgard was sure to evolve its own kind of society, different from any on Earth—although since the raw material was human, there would be resemblances. It was necessary to provide that society with a sociology that did notneed the hindsight of history to know when it had gone astray.
Crossing a ridge on her way to one of the experimental vegetable-plots, she glanced back and saw Dennis’s boat as it rose on its foils after leaving the harbour. For an instant she was overwhelmed by a vain desire: that she could have accepted his invitation of last night to go with him on his exploring trip.
But I couldn’t desert the colony when it faces its first major crisis … Yet I want to. I want to desperately!
Dispassionately, she considered for the first time whether she might not have to recommend the abandonment of Asgard, and whether she could cope with the hysterical resentment of the would-have-been settlers.
Tai Men was again taking the morning sick call at the entrance to the
Santa Maria’s
main lock. There
“Why—?” Dennis had been about to say: “Why on earth?” He cancelled it, and substituted: “Why in the world?”
“Oh! I don’t know.” Saul shrugged helplessly. “I guess—yes, maybe this is why. If it was something I could do something about which had suddenly gone wrong with our plans, I wouldn’t be worried. I’d just buckle to and sort the problem out. Hell, we lost the
Pinta,
didn’t we? And you saw what happened: everyone sort of cursed the universe and put twice as much energy into everything to get their own back. But this scurvy bit is different. It’s something I only knew of as a word in a history book, before now.”
Pounding fist into palm, he concluded, “It’s ridiculous! Everything is going better than we expected bar this one thing which hasn’t even done us serious harm yet, and very well may not do harm at all—and here I am with my skin practically crawling! Does it hit you that way?”
“I guess it does,” Dennis admitted. “But I wish you hadn’t told me how you’re feeling. I hoped it was just me.”
High up on the skeletal web of naked girders which had been the bones of the Niña—still were, though now grotesquely revolting because they were being systematicallyflayed of their hull-skin—Abdul Hassan saw the plume of steam that rose when Dennis fired the engines of his boat. He paused in the conversation he was having, which concerned the problem of which cannibalised parts should be held in reserve, which put straight to work, and repressed an unexpected shiver.
Tibor Gyorgy, who was responsible for their electronics systems, said in alarm, “Something wrong, Abdul?”
With some effort, the colony’s chairman recovered his self-possession. “No, nothing,” he lied, and went on talking in a perfectly normal tone. But behind the mask he was wishing there could be a way out for him, as there was for Dennis—wishing, in effect, that he was not indispensable.
All right, so it’s wonderful to be here on a strange new planet and find that outwardly it’s kindly, gentle, hospitable … But that’s only the way it looks. We know that it may injure us in some way we can’t suspect because we never lived on another planet before, at least not without canned air, spacegear, big obvious dangers like vacuum. So we must think, think, think and never ever stop!
How long can a human being manage to burden his mind with the need to make a conscious decision about every action he undertakes, even about his next breath? And I of all people dare not make even a single error.
I’m in a trap, and I don’t know what the trap is. I only know it’s there.
They had chosen Parvati Chandra for the colony, and Max Ulfilas who was dead, because they were not simply psychologists. They both had a rare, perhaps unprecedented, gift for extracting the pattern of a trend from actions they could see still going on. Asgard was sure to evolve its own kind of society, different from any on Earth—although since the raw material was human, there would be resemblances. It was necessary to provide that society with a sociology that did notneed the hindsight of history to know when it had gone astray.
Crossing a ridge on her way to one of the experimental vegetable-plots, she glanced back and saw Dennis’s boat as it rose on its foils after leaving the harbour. For an instant she was overwhelmed by a vain desire: that she could have accepted his invitation of last night to go with him on his exploring trip.
But I couldn’t desert the colony when it faces its first major crisis … Yet I want to. I want to desperately!
Dispassionately, she considered for the first time whether she might not have to recommend the abandonment of Asgard, and whether she could cope with the hysterical resentment of the would-have-been settlers.
Tai Men was again taking the morning sick call at the entrance to the
Santa Maria’s
main lock. There
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