Betsy Curtis

“ The first time was in a placenta from the garbage can. We had been culturing polio viruses in human placentas (very interesting personalities viruses are, too) and I'd been sent a whole placenta more than I needed. What can a mother tell a placenta which has been doing its work and is still in excellent shape, just like that civilization in the Phoenix Nebula some two and a half millennia ago? Does she say, 'There's nothing more for you in time or space; the baby is born, I abandon you to utter nothingness'? Very rarely. And even then she doesn't mean it. But the life does go out of the cells. ”

“ Samuel Wyckoff was sitting on the edge of the bunk. Not a short man, but thin like all the healthy old ones: wispy white hair and faded blue eyes and a tremulous look about the mouth made him seem fragile. He was half-dressed; his thin long hands gripped the edge of the bunk; and he was staring at the floor a foot or two his side of the door.
"Going to bed early?" Elbert Avery was politely apologetic.
"No."
"Changing, then. It doesn't matter. Captain Daneshaw is having me ask around to find out how you people enjoyed the party last night. ”

“ If I have to blast off and start from scratch in some other part of this blamed universe, you stupid, gutless ... why, you aren't even men. You worms don't even run when you see a car coming at you. Too blamed dumb to come in out of the rain."
I stick my head around the corner and look in, and there is the back of a big guy in a Mercury-made suit and with a bald head that is red all the way round to the back of his neck. On the other side of the room I see a couple of the sorriest-looking Anestha God ever makes, shuffling their feet and looking like kicked dogs.
I turn to Pierre. ”

“ Tim was gentle, reproachful, "wait a minute. Everybody here knows how you built up Avery, Inc. singlehanded into the biggest transport corporation in the world and how you bowed out to let younger men have their chance at running the most successful business in the country." He came over and perched on the edge of the desk close to Avery. "You know the Block Nineteen Association wouldn't even be able to buy Christmas cards if you weren't handling our little investments. There isn't one person on this experiment that doesn't respect you." ”

“ I drew back the sheet and observed the drying of the serum at the edges of the incision.
"How soon can I get out of here?" he asked eagerly. "I must go to the other members of the crew at once!"
"First to confession," I reminded him. "And then, depending on God's will, it may be weeks or even days. I cannot predict the speed of a miracle."
And it was well I did not try. It was a scant ten hours later that the figure of Father Phillip Burt was wheeled in a chair to a waiting ambulance that was to take him to the first of the hospitals where a member of the crew lay in desolate quarantine. ”

“ The door tightened against his foot.
"But madame," his foot did not budge and his smile became both engaging and pleading, "all I ask is a chance to show you our line. Our products sell themselves. Besides, I'm paid on a demonstration basis—so much for every potential customer who receives our free sample and so much for every home demonstration. You wouldn't want me to lose two-fifty when it would take only six and a third minutes of your time exactly to look over one of the most amazing displays ever...." ”

“ Pierre yanks the fellow up on his feet and hugs him and starts to jabber away so fast I can't tell what he is saying. Foreigners always talk faster than anybody else. The other guy puts in a word or two every once in a while and then he scrams off through the trees.
"That's Noor," Pierre informs me, "the guy my sister Jennel is glenched to. He's gonna get us a couple of kloas so nobody'll notice us around the mine. He's feeling mighty low, but I can't figure out why. He says Jennel and the old man are okay, only he can't ever carry Jennel to his own house because he ain't man enough. ”

“ The young man bent a little under the weight of the battered black suitcase as he crossed Maple and started up Prospect on Miss Noble's side. She could see him set the case down on the wide porch of the Raney house and wipe his forehead with a handkerchief. Then she lost sight of him as he advanced to the door. He could be a visitor to the Raney's, but they were out of town on vacation. He could be a salesman.
Miss Barbara shifted her rocker to the other side of the window where she could watch without having to disturb the curtain. This second-floor sitting room made an excellent lookout. ”

“ The passengers are rioting!"
"Not rioting—praying more likely," corrected the man at the door.
"That'll keep 'em out of trouble," Avery flipped back, his pencil moving feverishly across a scratch pad.
Wyckoff called across the clatter of the spitter, now operating with a ferocious din, "What'll we tell 'em, Avery? They've got to know something or there will be a riot or worse. Is there really any danger?"
"There's always danger," Avery was growling again, "when some unmitigated unweaned engineers on an unmentionable planet cook up a foolproof system of astrogation." ”

“ A man might not be able to tell his cells much, but remember, a god can. Now let's go a step further in. Let a cell be God and let its individual molecules be its creatures. And this God tells His creatures that it's all over ... no more purposes, no more action because there's no reason for it ... what then?"
"The molecules break down?" Facetiously.
"Exactly. And the atoms disperse and the electron shells fall away and what happens after that, I'm hardly prepared to say." ”

“ The big guy sits down in a chair real quick, and, sucking in a big breath, he starts going all fatherly at Pierre, telling him that he doesn't want to have to hit him back, because Pierre will not feel it when he kills him, which he doesn't want to have to do because Pierre is just a poor weak Anesthon who don't know from nothing, and he doesn't want to injure any of his workers and he is just telling Pierre's old man a few things to protect the Anestha. ”

“ Slipping on his officer's braidjac, he nodded curtly to the Second Astrogator and went out into the corridor.
Twenty feet up the dark passage was the first of the eight rearward porthole stations. Avery slipped into the niche beside the observer's chair, and the watcher, sensing the astrogator's presence, shook his head vigorously against the hypnotic glitter of the stars and looked up. "How's it go?" from Avery.
"Go? Who's going anyplace? Stars sit still, we sit still just looking." Watcher Peters' voice was flat. "You sure anybody's going somewhere?" ”

“ In the garden room, Barbara stopped to choose an orchid.
Rod Harris wandered on to the receptionist's desk, where the girl of the black curls waited, smiling.
He looked back at Barbara, then smiled down at the girl. "Just like I said ... a short meeting. No need for any dictating. Lucky you."
"Oh, I don't know," she countered coyly.
"Say, I heard a story the other day you might like. Do you like stories?" ”

“ Tim Daneshaw raised his hand, unnecessarily, for silence. Avery spoke.
"With your assistance, we shall land on Venus on schedule."
A great sigh from hundreds of lips.
Avery continued, "We are off course because of a factor that was overlooked in building the Colonia. But there is no reason why we can't meet our new home when she gets there. There is no reason why we can't do a better job than the engineers and Space Commission expected of us." No reason. There were more ways of outsmarting young fools than tying their feet with high tension wire. He gestured at Sam Wyckoff. ”

“ The trip from Venus Space Base to Gorlin is fast on account of over-drive, but even so I have no trouble passing Pierre off as a fighter who has the jitters and is headed for a vacation where he learns to take it easy the easy way. He is always burning his fingers or his mouth on a cigarette, and I have to keep an eye on him all the time. ”

“ Consider yourself, then, the deity of yourself, your body, of each personality-packed cell within it. Those cells respond more or less well to your purposes and your plans. You love them all and they love you, whether or not they know it very well. ”

“ We could threaten to commit suicide en masse and blackmail the government into backing us for fear of one of those social breakdown investigations by the United Assembly, and we could fix the Assembly by threatening to flood the international publications with articles about the mental horrors of old age and break down the whole socialized medicine convention at the international level. ”

“ It is just beginning to filter through my thick skull that the boss is connected with all this dying out of the Anestha, as the Sunday paper puts it, and I grab Pierre away from Jennel and hustle him through the gate.
"Look, Pierre," I says, "we'll go around and listen by them long windows and see what cooks. I'll bet that boss is up to something dirty in there. If he is the one who messed up Jennel," I says, "we better just mess him up some."
There is nobody in sight on the lawn and we just march up to the window easy as pie. There is this big booming voice giving somebody what for. ”

“ Luke's as our "share" of the research project on the mysterious disease which afflicted most of the crew of the recently returned Phoenix Nebula expedition. News of the disease, of course, was not spread beyond the research teams, as the public seems to fear a plague worse than damnation itself. And it didn't seem to be a very serious disease: Father Phillip was easily the worst case of all; and although several members of the expedition had died, their deaths could be evaluated as due to secondary infections of common enough earth origin. Very few of the crew members were in actual pain ”

“ To be quite frank, then, the subjects in Block Nineteen are getting restless. I don't think we could keep them here more than ten years longer, no matter how many diversions we tried. They want to do something, be something. And yet I don't believe they could be any more miserable than back in a world which has been growing away from them for a hundred years, a world which doesn't want or understand them any more than you want Avery in your company. ”

“ Pierre gives the man a look. "Workers? Mines? Blasting?" he says. "What gives? There are no mines on Gorlin," he says, "just a few quarries and a lot of big farms. We never have to kill ourselves working. What gives?" he says.
"Oh," the man comes back, "there's a couple big targ mines in full swing. Some big Earth concern is shipping out the stuff five freighters a day to Mercury for mass insulation. All native workers. They don't get paid much—weej cigarettes, bubble bath, some thiska, electro-fur blankets, stuff like that—but I don't hear yapping. ”

“ Now back to man as man, not God, for the next. While you and your eager predecessors were pushing outward to the stars, I and mine were exploring cells. And we found cells dying from simple lack of faith ... or, you might say, from an excess of faith in purposes which had been abandoned. ”

“ The light in the cabin was off, but in the dim reflection from the corridor walls, Tim could see Wyckoff was lying in the bunk, which faced the door, on his back with the covers pulled up under his chin. "Asleep so soon, Sam?" asked Tim in a low voice.
"Not quite. What is it?"
"El Avery was just up. Said you looked exhausted and naturally I was a little worried. Had a check-up with the doctor recently?"
"No ... no ... don't worry about me," faintly.
"That's part of my job. We want everybody to get to Venus ready for a hard pull. Have you been studying too hard on the trip?" ”

“ Kidney cells are busy little widgets doing a tremendous job night and day. Like the individual muscle fibers of the heart, they work on year after year with no vacations, no coffee breaks, secure in the knowledge of their purpose. ”

“ Jennel lets go of me then and says she hopes Pierre is a strong man and a good worker and that the boss likes him. And then she gives a big sigh and says if the boss don't like him, we can find her over there where the men are cutting down a bunch of trees, because if one of the trees likes her, it will maybe fall on her pretty soon.
Pierre tells her to wait right there by the gate because he is coming back. He isn't looking for work so the boss won't care if he is strong or not. ”

“ I guess all they live for is pleasure and a pat on the back. One time a little runty Anesthon guy even builds a whole stone blockhouse for a first looie, when the looie thinks real hard that the little guy looks like a first-rate hod carrier. Time the house is built, the Anesthon's hands is all bloody and one ankle broke where a chunk of rock drops on him. He don't notice it, of course.
Pierre gets all worked up about them Anestha dying out. That's my boy Pierre, the heavyweight. I name him Pierre so's nobody thinks he is tough till afterward. He comes from Gorlin. ”

“ Brill was slow to hope. "The Company certainly has the organization to put it through. But you'd never get them to go. Why, Avery thinks the whole Colonia enterprise is financially unsound. He says it's the duty of every thinking man to do all he can to stop such ruinous nonsense. Colonization is expensive, but it is undoubtedly best for the people of the world!... But that old Avery doesn't give a hang for the Assembly's making a gift of Venus to the people." ”

“ The discovery part of this investigation, however, is that man does act as a god to his cells, can tell them things and know that they hear his still small voice. And among other things which man has to say to his cells is his promise of immortality to each and every one. ”

“ The bridal of the earth and sky, The dews shall weep thy fall tonight, For thou must die. No one would have to weep for him. He wasn't going to die. He would walk on the lawns today and enjoy the burgeoning of spring without pain, without fear. He would read Wordsworth and plan a vacation walking trip.
The bell next to his ear pinged—the machine had finished his daily metabolic record—he pressed the button that raised the heavy case to the ceiling. ”

“ His office door now flew open with a crash against the 50-year file case, then was banged shut again and Bob Warner's white-jacketed body was leaning toward him over his desk.
"Two suicides at once, Dr. Farrar!" Dr. Warner was almost shouting at him, "and one last week and four others in the past year! They'll investigate us and upset the subjects and everybody. They'll get out of Block Nineteen and go poking around in genetics and new diseases and want to know where and why every cent is being spent and wind up trying to cut the staff or change the diets or some other stupidity." ”

“ Why, our officers receive psychotesting every six months to assure the policy-holders that they have no personal power ambitions. I tell you, Doctor, that such men as Elbert Avery are a threat to our national democracy. He seems perfectly capable of going back into business at the drop of a hat. The Company may have to send a man to Washington to work out some sort of control to prevent such men from re-entering business. ”

“ I wouldn't be surprised if Avery'd make a good top man—more autocratic, less tolerant than you, but there are more ways of killing a cat ... and I'll assign you nurses in six hour shifts. It'll keep some of the girls out of mischief."
"Frank ... have a heart!"
"You have one—and hang onto it." Doc Keighley gathered up his bag and left the cabin.
Outside the door he almost bumped into Jack White, Second Astrogator, and Steward Loomis. "Loo, get El Avery up here right away before the hypo hits him. Jack, you go in and sit with him till Avery gets here. ”

“ Brill's tones were rich with wounded innocence. "The Company only wants to know what are the probabilities of mental breakdown at different ages, say a hundred and sixty, a hundred and eighty, two hundred. If we had some assurance of even a slight but definite tendency to, shall we say, mental erosion, with an increase in age above a hundred and fifty, The Company might find it possible to continue some such annuity plan as is now in operation." The man talked like an annual report, it seemed to Dr. Farrar, but with the difference that it had something to do with him. ”

“ There isn't anybody in Block Nineteen that doesn't know I ran out when the government began hemming in big corporations with thousands of petty restrictions on mansized business so that a company president was nothing more than a yes-man to a regiment of lawyers and government accountants. ”

“ The ping-ping-ping of a tiny bell indicated pilot-room intercom and Tim flipped a switch.
A plasticoid box on the wall spoke in Elbert Avery's dry tones. "Off duty now, Tim. You want to see me?"
Daneshaw spoke to the box on his desk, "Forsberg's here," he said. "You might come up and give us your opinion on the party. Were you there?"
"No, I was here. What happened, Arnie? The little ladies and gentlemen get rough over their grog?"
The recreation director twisted guiltily in his chair and muttered, "Wish they had!"
"No, El. Party seems to have been rather unpopular. ”

“ He sat down with a thump and bent back over the calculator keyboard. "Those babies don't care what they lose or how!"
He set to work again with White's eighth set of solutions forming them into factors of equations of his own. Powell, passing around the welter of paper, was the first to notice the observers and yelled at them, "You boys round up the engine room crew, quick. Get them into the boom room and tell 'em to stand by for intermittent rocket and main tube fire! Beat it!"
Jack White looked up from his keyboard, "And get the passengers into bed for turnover, too!" ”

“ Nobody knows what you were and nobody cares what you are and there's not one damn thing worth spending ten minutes on that they don't say, 'Take it easy, don't strain yourself, don't get worked up, why don't you take a rest or play a nice relaxing game of checkers.' I don't like pet mice and I think raffia baskets are an abomination. You're right about suicide not being noble—it's just common sense! ”

“ Avery turned to Samuel Wyckoff. "Guess you get right into harness. This is for you." Then to Loomis, "Sam's my righthand man for just this sort of thing. Give him all the help you can," and back to Wyckoff: "We'll see you up nose-side as soon as you're through. We've got to plan fast so's not to upset the whole crowd. You take the elevator down: we'll walk up. We're in no hurry."
As the elevator glided down out of sight past the transplast door, and Loomis returned along the corridor, Avery and White turned into the narrow winding stair to climb slowly to the fourth floor above. ”

“ I rather lose track of world news in my job here."
"She'd be ready to blast in fourteen months if they could decide about passengers and crew. Every nation in the Assembly and every bloc from farm and free-lifers to commists wants to be the first to start the colony, mostly from distrust of the others, but no particular individuals seem to want to be the first to cut the ties. The crew has to stay with the colony for months, you know, until they're settled and know what else they need. The Colonia's the only large ship under construction. ”

“ You know how nurses gossip. But we'd better talk to Daneshaw first. He's always sound on what's going on in Block Nineteen."
"But Dr. Farrar, Daneshaw can't bring them back. He's just another subject. You could swear the nurses to secrecy for the good of the hospital. It's not as if it were anything strange or exciting. If we get an investigation, the subjects will run amok. Blood pressures will go up and some of them won't eat and others won't sleep thinking up fancy stories to tell the investigating commission and the smooth curve charts will be all shot to...." ”

“ Some architect must have decided that it was the custom for old men not to be over five feet eight and installed accordingly. Old men should be bowed down with years, but Tim Daneshaw was still six feet three in spite of four inches shrinkage since his thirties, his tall body still unbowed by years or habit. ”

“ The United Assembly didn't mean us to work ourselves to death."
"What did they mean us to do?" Wyckoff asked with the first sign of interest.
Avery let loose one of his rare chuckles. "Who knows? They don't. Something impractical, you can be sure. But they didn't send us out to die. We cost 'em too much."
"More than we're worth." A statement.
"Of course. Billions, actually, and on some fool thing like this. You can't teach 'em. Government generations are too short. The only administration they care about is the last one and how to talk it down. ”

“ Farrar laughed, "Intriguing thought, a thousand near-200-year-oldsters running amok. But seriously, if they kill themselves off this way, it will mess things up. Don't worry about your job yet, Doctor. Daneshaw will think of something. On your way out, ask Miss Herrington to get in touch with him. Now you get back to Block Nineteen and see that everything stays quiet for a while. ”

“ After the shot, he took out a bottle of capsules, closed his bag and drew up the chair from the desk.
"You know, Tim," he began softly, "we're both old men. We can keep going indefinitely as long as the rate is slow and steady. Acceleration is mighty dangerous. Now you're going to rest."
"... could stand a few days of taking it easy...."
"Not a few days—months. Flat in bed."
"But the ship ... the people...." The vision of Samuel Wyckoff rose again.
"The crew and the Lord can take care of the ship; we people will have to take care of ourselves. ”