Genre Science Fiction. Page - 16

that the point rests upon the exact latitude and longitude of Helium. Then I start the engine, roll up in my sleeping silks and furs, and with lights burning, race through the air toward Helium, confident that at the appointed hour I shall drop gently toward the landing-stage upon my own palace, whether I am still asleep or no.""Provided," suggested Thuvan Dihn, "you do not chance to collide with some other night wanderer in the meanwhile." Carthoris smiled. "No

to force you to resign. With your contract, he can't do that, not without good and sufficient cause, and under the Faculty Tenure Law, that means something just an inch short of murder in the first degree. Now, what's Whitburn got on you?"Beat around the bush and try to build a background, or come out with it at once and fill in the details afterward? He debated mentally for a moment, then decided upon the latter course. "Well, it happens that I have the ability to prehend future

t sitting there listening to the talk--listening and remembering. She didn't open her own mouth often. But when she did spacers had learned to listen. And the lucky few who heard her rare spoken words--these will never forget Steena.She drifted from port to port. Being an expert operator on the big calculators she found jobs wherever she cared to stay for a time. And she came to be something like the master-minded machines she tended--smooth, gray, without much personality of her own. But it

g us or among yourselves. As for those genealogies of yours which you have recounted to us, Solon, they are no better than the tales of children; for, in the first place, you remember one deluge only, whereas there were many of them; and, in the next place, you do not know that there dwelt in your land the fairest and noblest race of men which ever lived, of whom you and your whole city are but a seed or remnant. And this was unknown to you, because for many generations the survivors of that

there was a heavy element of risk involved. Three teams of recruits--the Eskimos from Point Barren, the Apaches, and the Islanders--all picked because their people had a high survival rating in the past, to be colonists on widely different types of planets. Well, the Eskimos and the Islanders aren't matched to any of the worlds on those snooped tapes, but Topaz is waiting for the Apaches. And we may have to move them in there in a hurry. It's a rotten gamble any way you see it!""I'll

They came up a natural seven and Jason smiled.When he scooped them up the smile slowly faded. The dice were transparent, finely made, evenly weighted on all sides--and crooked. The pigment on the dots of five sides of each die was some heavy metal compound, probably lead. The sixth side was a ferrous compound. They would roll true unless they hit a magnetic field--that meant the entire surface of the table could be magnetized. He could never have spotted the difference if he hadn't looked at

rather eat from your deep-freeze anytime than from the FP!"Bill MacDonald looked across the table at Jean and said, "All right, Jean." Jean and all the MacDonalds bent their heads and the girl began, "We thank Thee for our daily bread as by Thy hands...." As the girl spoke Phil's gaze drifted around to his wife, who lifted her shoulders in mystified amazement. But it was a bigger surprise to see John's bent head. For the moment John was a part of this family--part of a

ld race. Don't deny it.""I don't." The thin man, Drew, broke in angrily. "He's not full grown yet. Just fourteen, isn't he? How can you be sure what he'll be like later? He'll be a problem. They've always been problems." They were afraid. That was what was the matter with them. Walden sighed. "Tell them what you've been studying, Eric," he said aloud. For a minute Eric was too tongue-tied to answer. He stood motionless, waiting for them to laugh at him.

It went off right over Middletown, and it did something..." He faltered, and then said, "Nobody really knew what a super-atomic bomb would do. There were logical theories and assumptions about it, but nobody really knew anything except that the most violent concentrated force in history would be suddenly released. Well, it was released, over Middletown. And it was violent. So violent that..."He stopped, again, as though he could not quite muster up the courage to voice the

equences of early theory. Pilots didn't go back in time, didn't show up younger than a twin brother. The ship simply became invisible as it moved faster than the light around it.It was just a matter of propulsion. Find a way to increase energy and you keep breaking speed records. That was the key to the Boscon Prop. Ironically, Boscon's basic principles dated back to the invention of the wheel. In watching a simple spinning disk, Boscon understood that the number of rotations was the constant