New ball amusing
from Associated Press Hitchcock looked up at the mountains. The valley had curved. Mountains rose skyward all around them. If the guy knows why I trail him, he wondered, why doesnt he show it? Why this spectacular concern? "I dont know. It isnt our business. Now steady up— Hagan's coming back with our glass." The churning in my stomach was beginning to subside. No. Meeting someone. Intelligent meddler is probably as good a description of experimental scientist” as any other. And certain qualities are necessary for the job: a capacity for detailed research; a faculty for accurate extrapolation (or hunch, or precognition); and (for intelligent meddling) a recognitionof the human values involved. Nothing, Vandervell said. For once in a long time Im not worrying about anything at all.” He rubbed the pane with his sleeve. “Where’s the old devil-boy? Don’t tell me he’s gone.” He peered through the falling dust. “There he is.” Billy Boyce, aged six, was going shopping. He had saved up seventy-four cents to buy his mother a birthday present. His sister, aged fourteen, gave him twenty-six cents more, which made it an even dollar, and said shed pay the sales tax. "No. None here. Ratlit gets it from a man who hangs out in Gergs over on Calle-X. Oh, Ratlit used to get it for me every day, such a nice little boy, every day he would bring me my lovely medicine. I never had to leave my room at all. You go get it for me, Vyme." Golden? I hadnt even joined the group yet when I first heard the word. I was sixteen and a sophomore at Luna Vocational. I was born in a city called New York on a planet called Earth. Luna is its one satellite. Youve heard of the system, I'm sure; that's where we all came from. A few other things about it are well known. Unless you're an anthropologist, though, I doubt you've ever been there. It's way the hell off the main trading routes and pretty primitive. I was a drive-mechanics major, on scholarship, living in and studying hard. All morning in Practical Theory (a ridiculous name for a ridiculous class, I thought then) we'd spent putting together a model keeler-intergalactic drive. Throughout those dozens of helical inserts and superinertia organus sensitives, I had been silently cursing my teacher, thinking, about like everyone else in the class, "So what if they can fly this jalopy from one galaxy to another. Nobody will ever be able to ride in them. Not with the Psychic and Physiologic shells hanging around this cluster of the Universe." So the son Clarence Little-Saddle inherited. He also lived on the land for many years without paying taxes. Possibly. Lets see. How about this: a relay system for electromagnetic radiation comprising a series of satellites in orbit around the earth, said satellites being so positioned that— I stopped and said, Then go on from there defining the positions that are necessary to make the system work. Mr. Clarke could tell us what the minimum conditions would have to be.” Directly in front of him he could see a velvet-lined platform, equipped with a white metal rail to the center of which a large floral ribbon had been tied. Beyond was the orchestra, disposed in a semicircle, each of the twenty members sitting at a small boxlike desk on which rested his instrument, tone generator and cathode tube. They were all present, and the light reflected from the ray screens threw a vivid phosphorescent glow onto the silver wall behind them. I tried to ignore the insult and concentrated on writing the cheque. One of the outsize drops broke across my knuckles, splattering the pink paper. We were just driving past the solar pond—the equivalent of the boiler in a conventional heat engine. This was an idea that the Russians had borrowed from the Israelis; it was simply a shallow lake, blackened at the bottom, holding a concentrated solution of brine. It acts as a very efficient heat trap, and the suns rays bring the liquid up to almost 200 degrees Fahrenheit. Submerged in it were the hot grids of the thermoelectric system, every inch of two fathoms down. Massive cables connected them to my department, 150 degrees colder and 3,000 feet lower, in the undersea canyon that comes to the very entrance of Trinco harbor. "Selina," I shouted. "Dont open it!" I keep thinking of that sentence in Tom Dischs autobiographical note: After Descending, things picked up. Are evolution and devolution necessary reciprocals, in a closed (or even spiraling) cycle? Then the “decadent” can hardly be distinguished from the “renascent.” You have not yet explained, Hitchcock reminded him again, why you have neglected the welfare of the natives here ... why you vivisect them, and—” Yes, maam, he said emphatically. We sure know the work Mike’s done and we know he’ll do even bigger things now. Let me tell you, you’re working for a great man, a great man whose return all America is waiting for. Someday his name will be known all over the world. . . .” Ruths first question, when I came through the kitchen door, flared my rage up again..
