Dave Dryfoos

“ The Agvars—furry, savage half-men, with something of the dog and something of the ape and little of the man about them—the Agvars let him live, Chet realized, for exactly one reason: he made them feel superior.
They'd learn now! Even though the children had stopped shrieking and gone away, disgusted at his passivity, no villager's insensitive ears could yet hear the ship.
In their boastfulness, the Agvars had invited other tribes to come and look at him and poke at him and laugh at him. His presence was known over the whole planet. He'd be found, no matter where on Hedlot the spaceship landed. ”

“ Your friends are only machines, built by our ancestors. We are Men—and the city is ours, not theirs!"
"It can't be," Roddie objected. "The city surely belongs to those who are superior, and my friends are superior to your people, even to me. Each of us has a purpose, though, while you Invaders seem to be aimless. Each of us helps preserve the city; you only try to rob and end it by destroying it. My people must be the true Men, because they're so much more rational than yours.... And it isn't rational to let you escape."
Ida had turned up her tear-streaked face to stare at him. ”

“ So I didn't want to tell you because you must not let yourself become afraid, Naomi. We're clearing trees from the land, in certain areas. And it's their planet, after all. Fear is their weapon and fear can kill!"
"You still—all you men—should have let us women know! What do you think we are? Besides, I don't really believe you. How can fear kill?"
"Haven't you ever heard of a savage who gets in bad with his witch-doctor and is killed by magic? The savage is convinced, having seen or heard of other cases, that he can be killed. The witch-doctor sees to it he's told he will be killed. ”

“ He would tell of the wind and the rain and the snow; of the cattalo herds that roamed to the west and the cities that lay to the east and the stars and the Moon that they never had seen. He would claim to have been in the endless forests and on the treeless plains and to have tasted the salt ocean and drunk of the freshwater lakes and rivers. ”

“ As always when Invaders broke in from the north, he'd been left behind with his nurse, Molly, while the soldiers went out to fight.
And nowadays Molly's presence wasn't the comfort it used to be. He felt almost ready to jump out of his skin, the way she rocked and knitted in that grating ruined chair, saying over and over again, "The soldiers don't want little boys. The soldiers don't want little boys. The soldiers don't—"
"I'm not a little boy!" Roddie suddenly shouted. "I'm full-grown and I've never even seen an Invader. Why won't you let me go and fight?" ”

“ Pine has a job to do."
"What's that, Doctor?"
"I'm going to study your Agvar friends, Mr. Barfield. Want to help?"
"Sure," Chet said. "There's nothing I'd rather do than bring you a few corpses to dissect."
"That—ah—that isn't the idea," Dr. Pine said, bending his fingers and rocking from toes to heels. "I—ah—I want to do a little anthropology—study them in the life...."
"Why?" Chet demanded. "I can tell you all about them. I can tell you what they did to me, too! They don't deserve to live! And this planet won't be safe for spacemen till they're dead. Why waste time studying them? ”

“ An old guy falls so far behind the times, the only place for him is a Home."
"But if a man wants to stay out," said Ollie, "I don't see why he can't."
"Old guys are dangerous to the rest of us. I saw three people killed, not long ago, trying to dodge an oldtimer who walked too slow to get across a wide street before the lights changed against him."
"They could have slowed the signal," Ollie said. "But no! Always it's the man who has to adapt to the machine, not the machine to the man. The only way to get by in this world is to find some machine you just naturally fit." ”

“ Behind him the cabin began to smoke.
Ted wasn't afraid, then. He understood what he faced. And Richard wasn't afraid, either, because he didn't understand.
But she? Surreptitiously Naomi pinched her hip till it felt black and blue. That was for being such a fool. She must not be afraid!
"Daddy seems to be staying there," she said. "Let's wait for him at home, Richard."
"Are you going to make Daddy burn our tree?"
She jumped as if stung. Then, consciously womanlike, she sought relief in talk.
"What do you think we should do, dear?"
"Oh, I like the tree, Mommie. It's cool under there. ”

“ There were too many changes like that in this gadget-mad world; too many new ways of doing old things. Life had no stability.
He stalked into the kitchen wishing he could skip breakfast—anger always unsettled his stomach. But everyone was required to eat at least three meals a day. The vast machine-records system that kept track of each person's consumption would reveal to the Ration Board any failure to use his share of food, so he dialed Breakfast Number Three—tomato juice, toast, and coffee. ”

“ Kate pushed away from him, frowning. "Sometimes you're so silly, it scares me. You know perfectly well that if you don't take Mr. Kojac's job, someone else will. He'd rather have it in your hands than in a stranger's, and I'd rather live on his income than on a laborer's. So stop moping and drink your Daystart, while I call a cab."
No help in that quarter, Bozzy decided as she left. All Kate could think of was that she'd soon be the wife of a big-shot: the manager—that is, controls setter—of a furniture factory. ”

“ Then his face livened. "What job? In paper?"
"Yes." There could be no other, for a man his age.
"It says 'dangerous,'" said the grocer. "I think maybe they cut you up, find out how you live so long. Or make you sick to try new cure.
"You find better job—or Home. That one bad." There was a slight pause.
"Look. I close soon. You sweep store, I give you dollar."
"You're a good guy," said Ollie. "But I've got three dollars now." He showed them proudly. "You save yours for somebody who doesn't have a job to try for." ”

“ Ida said viciously. "You can't make me beg. Go ahead and kill—see if it proves you're superior. My people will take over the city regardless of you and me, and regardless of your jumping-jack friends, too! Men can accomplish anything!"
Scornfully she turned and looked toward the western twilight. It was Roddie's turn to stand and stare.
"Purpose!" Ida flung at him over her shoulder. "Logic! Women hear so much of that from men! You're a man, all right! Men always call it logic when they want to destroy! Loyalty to your own sort, kindness, affection—all emotional, aren't they? ”

“ Thinking of that, thinking back over each agonizing hour since his landing on Venus, George Main wondered what he should have done, what he could now do, to prevent the utter waste of their efforts and their lives.
The wind was his enemy—and the wind couldn't even be seen. Only the dust it carried was visible. Too visible. Dust was so thick in the upper atmosphere that the scope-readers had mistaken dust-clouds for solid ground. ”

“ You can come to the house year after year after year, and tell us about the sky and the wind and the moon and the dew and the grass and the sun. You can even take money for our share of them. But when it comes time to produce—when we're old enough to go where these things are supposed to be—you think of excuses. ”

“ And why in the world not take for peace a risk we'd routinely accept in war?"
Why not? But why not minimize it, just the same. The Agvars, invisible but noisy, were all around them, now. At any moment the woods might rain spears.
"It would be safer with two of us," Chet said musingly. "Your knowledge of anthropology and medicine—mine of the people—"
"Barfield, you're still on the sicklist," Commander Seymour pointed out. He watched Chet's face for a long moment before adding, "Still—if you're over your sick-minded need for revenge—it's possible Dr. Pine may find you fit. It's up to him." ”

“ She was intent on the tower itself. Following her eyes, Roddie saw his duty made suddenly clear.
Easy to make out even in the fading light was the route by which Invaders could cross to the foot of this tower on the remaining ruins of the road, climb to where he now stood, and then descend the cable over the bridge's gap and catch the city unaware. Easy to estimate was the advantage of even this perilous route over things that scattered on the water and prevented a landing in strength. Easy to see was the need to kill Ida before she carried home this knowledge. ”

“ But don't be afraid of them, Naomi. So long as you're not, they can't hurt you. They're not bothering us now."
"No. But where's Richard?"
Naomi's eyes swept past Ted, encompassing the cabin. No Richard! He'd been left outside ...
Glass tinkled and crashed as she flung back the cabin door. "Richard! Richard!"
Her child was not in sight. Nor within earshot, it seemed.
"Richard Heckscher! Where are you?" Sanity returned with the conventional primness. And it brought her answer.
"Here I am, Mommie! Look-at!"
He was in a tree! ”

“ The pebble was a native object, known to be lifeless, inanimate. The watch was a strange something that moved. The can-lid did not move. The hand—gloved, though they could not know that—was an object that moved.
The dance was a question, therefore. Alive, or dead? The teardrops wanted to know. Is the watch that moves by itself alive? The strangely symmetrical lid of a can, is it alive? The oddshaped hand?
These teardrops had good minds—could grasp abstractions. In a sense, George felt, the difference between animate and inanimate objects is an abstraction. ”

“ You're an excellent mechanical engineer, Fred, but you're not an economist. That's why you don't understand. Just excuse me for a minute, and I'll show you."
He left the field of view. Fred waited incuriously for him to return, suddenly conscious of the fact that he now had nothing better to do with his time.
George was back in less than a minute, anyhow. "O.K.," he said briskly. "Now, where were we? Oh, yes. I just wanted to say that production is a form of consumption, too—even the production of machine-tools and labor-saving devices. ”

“ As they grew to be nine, ten, eleven, twelve, every winter when Old Arch would come around, my grandfather and his sister Annie would ask, "When are you going to take us to see the sky, Arch?" And he would say, "When you're older. When your folks say you can go." And, "When it's summer, and not too cold for these old bones."
But when my grandfather was fourteen he followed Old Arch out and down the stairs after the old man had paid his annual call, and he stopped him on a landing to ask, "Arch, have you ever taken anyone Outside?"
"No," Arch said, sighing. "People won't go." ”

“ Before the lights could go up on the next program, Les switched the set off.
"What do you think?" he asked Janet.
"I don't know," she said. "Nobody in my family has ever worked."
"Mine, either. But I once knew a fellow who'd tried for a job. He seemed o.k. to me, but he sure didn't get a good one! Had a clerical position, with business machines, and their output was geared down to spread the work. So he didn't have enough to do ... just stacked punched cards or something every day for eighty years!" ”