were no new cases of scurvy today, and naturally all those to whom he had administered massive doses of ascorbic acid were instantly on the mend. But there remained the risk that no way would be found to cope with the recurrence of this trouble, or the development of another like it. In which case the resentment of the colonists would devolve on him, because the cause of their failure would lie in his area of responsibility.
I wish I could duck out like Dennis,
Tai Men thought.
And come back in a month’s time to find the problem solved…
For Kitty Minakis, launching the usual batch of high-altitude radiosondes, the envy she felt on noticing Dennis’s, boat stemmed chiefly from boredom. Once, long ago, she had thoroughly enjoyed the speciality to which she had committed her mathematical talents; she was a brilliant mental calculator capable of handling even such complex independent variables as were involved in weather forecasting with minimum recourse to computers.
But she had mastered that. Centuries of gathering information about Earth’s weather had reduced prediction to almost an exact discipline. She had offered herself for Asgard in the hope of finding new, tougher challenges.
Instead, she had found Asgard’s weather ridiculously simple. It was closer to the ideal case of a water-covered globe than Earth, hence everything was less complex.
Sighing, she wished she could escape, even for a few days, from what was becoming a dull, repetitious job.
Dan Sakky had seized gladly on the chance of assigning two of his team to help Tai Men, and today, in place of one of them, he was driving a powerdozer and levelling foundations. Getting to grips with the basics of his job—that was what he needed. He wanted the resistance of rock, the dull stolidity of clay. He would almost have preferred to be using a pick and shovel.
Pausing to watch Dennis’s boat as it skimmed towards the horizon, he wished that he too could find a brief respite. He had spent too long with abstracts, and abstracts were soft, easy, frustrating. Already in his spare time he had designed a gloriously functional city to occupy this island, capable of housing and servicing half a million people in enormous comfort. But all that was a game.
And, although it was certainly good to wrestle with the obdurate material he used for his creations, at the back of his mind sniggered the suspicion that it might all go for nothing because the people to use what he built might be too sick to enjoy what he gave them. Over that, as a construction man, he had no control.
Standing on the dam which held back their reservoir of fresh water, Ulla Berzelius glanced up from the dials of her portable analyser, and spotted Dennis’s boat as it vanished. She had just discovered that the indium she was looking for was present in adequate quantities.
Hell! What’s the use of a
world which gives you exactly what you think you want, then takes away, mocking, something you didn’t know you needed? I wish I
could be going off like Dennis, not in search of these damned dull minerals that we already knew from the astronomers must exist, but looking for jewels—enormous, lovely, absolutely useless jewels!
I wonder how many more of us are sick of things we need, and desperate for things we’d simply enjoy.
VIII
T HE COMPUTERS had furnished Dennis with a shortest course taking in all the promising areas where the local geology hinted at diamond deposits. It had also indicated that by following the tide-run he could keep his time away from the island down to a maximum of nine days.
Perversely, he elected to follow the charted course in precisely the opposite direction. He felt that if he could not stretch his absence to the point where before he turned for home he was hungry for company, he was never going to rid himself of his craving for Earth.
Isn’t it curious that the explorer, not the settlers, should be homesick?
Resting easily in the open cockpit of the boat, its
I wish I could duck out like Dennis,
Tai Men thought.
And come back in a month’s time to find the problem solved…
For Kitty Minakis, launching the usual batch of high-altitude radiosondes, the envy she felt on noticing Dennis’s, boat stemmed chiefly from boredom. Once, long ago, she had thoroughly enjoyed the speciality to which she had committed her mathematical talents; she was a brilliant mental calculator capable of handling even such complex independent variables as were involved in weather forecasting with minimum recourse to computers.
But she had mastered that. Centuries of gathering information about Earth’s weather had reduced prediction to almost an exact discipline. She had offered herself for Asgard in the hope of finding new, tougher challenges.
Instead, she had found Asgard’s weather ridiculously simple. It was closer to the ideal case of a water-covered globe than Earth, hence everything was less complex.
Sighing, she wished she could escape, even for a few days, from what was becoming a dull, repetitious job.
Dan Sakky had seized gladly on the chance of assigning two of his team to help Tai Men, and today, in place of one of them, he was driving a powerdozer and levelling foundations. Getting to grips with the basics of his job—that was what he needed. He wanted the resistance of rock, the dull stolidity of clay. He would almost have preferred to be using a pick and shovel.
Pausing to watch Dennis’s boat as it skimmed towards the horizon, he wished that he too could find a brief respite. He had spent too long with abstracts, and abstracts were soft, easy, frustrating. Already in his spare time he had designed a gloriously functional city to occupy this island, capable of housing and servicing half a million people in enormous comfort. But all that was a game.
And, although it was certainly good to wrestle with the obdurate material he used for his creations, at the back of his mind sniggered the suspicion that it might all go for nothing because the people to use what he built might be too sick to enjoy what he gave them. Over that, as a construction man, he had no control.
Standing on the dam which held back their reservoir of fresh water, Ulla Berzelius glanced up from the dials of her portable analyser, and spotted Dennis’s boat as it vanished. She had just discovered that the indium she was looking for was present in adequate quantities.
Hell! What’s the use of a
world which gives you exactly what you think you want, then takes away, mocking, something you didn’t know you needed? I wish I
could be going off like Dennis, not in search of these damned dull minerals that we already knew from the astronomers must exist, but looking for jewels—enormous, lovely, absolutely useless jewels!
I wonder how many more of us are sick of things we need, and desperate for things we’d simply enjoy.
VIII
T HE COMPUTERS had furnished Dennis with a shortest course taking in all the promising areas where the local geology hinted at diamond deposits. It had also indicated that by following the tide-run he could keep his time away from the island down to a maximum of nine days.
Perversely, he elected to follow the charted course in precisely the opposite direction. He felt that if he could not stretch his absence to the point where before he turned for home he was hungry for company, he was never going to rid himself of his craving for Earth.
Isn’t it curious that the explorer, not the settlers, should be homesick?
Resting easily in the open cockpit of the boat, its
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