Frank M. Robinson

“ Why do people commit suicide?
Templin tightened his safety belt and lay back on the acceleration bunk. The lights in the cabin dimmed to a dull, red glow that meant the time for takeoff was nearing. He could hear noises from deep within the ship and the tiny whir of the ventilator fan, filling the air with the sweetish smell of sleeping gas. To sleep the trip away was better than to face the dull monotony of the stars for days on end. ”

“ Have you ever seen the glorious pool of light around a radio broadcasting station? Have you ever marveled at the thin, trailing filaments of color tangling in the nest of television antennas that the city carries on its rooftops?
The professor was worried, for along with losing my sight of this world, I began to lose interest in it. A truly blind man wouldn't for he has nothing to replace vision with, he's still bound to the commonplace globe. He can improve his hearing or his sense of touch, but nothing replaces his sight. ”

“ Pain that threaded along his nerves and burned into every segment of his body, pain that threatened to fry his cortical centers.
Pain that scattered the particles of personality that were Stanley Martin and shriveled them to nothingness. Pain that obliterated the last traces of conscience and memory.
"You hate the human race," a voice repeated smoothly.
"Yes," Stan said, not hesitating. "I hate the human race." And then he started to sweat and shake with an unreasoning anger that flooded him as suddenly as if somebody had turned on a hose. ”

“ There was a sudden surge of the ship and the springs holding the hammock stretched as easy as a dime store rubber-band. He felt his weight double and treble. His breath came in tight little gasps as if a sorting machine had been dumped on his chest. The weight kept increasing and the cabin started to spin. Little black dots danced around the edges of his area of vision and gradually covered it. He felt he was smothering in a dark, black pit....
Maxwell's face flashed at him out of the darkness. "Always supply the man, eh?" ”

“ McCandless didn't reply immediately and the Captain thought to himself, why not be more honest? Why don't you tell him that all your life you've fought the Combine and the conflict has been the only thing that has lent meaning to living? You hate for thirty years and you become a slave to that hatred—you don't forget it with a snap of the fingers and go charging to the rescue like a knight in shining armor.
"The aliens are ... alien, sir," McCandless suddenly said. "The men on the Josef are ... human beings." ”

“ Oh, I could still get around in your world. I could still "see" people. All objects radiate heat, even ice. As an object's temperature goes up, the wavelength of the radiation given off goes up to the infra-red, then into the visible. I could tell how hot water was by looking at it. I could see people by the heat they gave off, glowing figures moving down the street and around the lab!
And still my range of vision shifted. Down to short waves and radio waves, the language of international communication, the wavelengths that continents and countries speak to each other in. ”

“ Ainsworth's face looked like it was carved from a block of ice.
"Look at me, Martin! Look at me!"
Stan looked and felt the sweat pop out on his forehead and his stomach knot into a small, hard ball.
Mr. Ainsworth was fading, the frames slipping past so slow Stan could count them. And the image that was building up in Mr. Ainsworth's place....
Stan screamed and staggered back against the bulkhead, his arm raised before his eyes.
"You're going to help us," the creature said in a horribly liquid voice. "You're going to help us because you want to. We need advance men to soften this planet up. ”

“ His name was Joe Shannon, used to work for Stellar Electric up in Fremont. Young fellow, not more'n twenty-five or so. Rail thin, wispy hair, serious look—you know, the one suit, absent-minded type. Joe was a brain. A triple-A, gold-plated, genuine genius. Had a wife named Marge. Not beautiful but pretty and a nice figure and a cook you never saw the likes of. Like I say, she was married to Joe but Joe was married to his work and after you'd been around a while, you could tell there was friction. ”

“ Templin said almost savagely. "Or perhaps the ones who really know something haven't come around."
Eckert got his pipe and sat near the doorway, letting the sunlight streaming through the foliage of a nearby tree dapple his face with a checkerboard pattern of modulated lights and velvety shadows.
"If they're evading us or if they're lying, then the society is a dangerous one for us. But I still can't believe it. They're not warlike. They don't seem to have many weapons and definitely none of an advanced type." ”

“ You can see them on the street-car on their way to work. Half will sit with blank stares on their faces, reading the transitads, while the other half will sit with their noses buried in their papers. Watch them. If they looked alike you'd be reminded of the rockettes on the stage of the RCA Music Hall. Or walk into a bar when the fights are on and watch the customers with their faces glued to the TV sets. All with their glasses of beer in the right hand, all with the same rapt expressions on their faces.
You see, they're imitating human beings. And they've got an organization. ”

“ Stan objected.
"And the others are so much different?" Mr. Ainsworth sneered. "Nobody cared about you, Stan—not even your own family. No human being cares for anybody else but himself! There's a war every generation where they slaughter each other by the millions. And sickness. Have they ever made any really concerted drive against it? Have they ever really tried to stamp out poverty?"
His lip curled. "They're apes! Nothing but apes!"
"You talk like you're not human!" Stan said, and then realized that he had made a mistake. ”

“ As for the pilot, there are thousands of men in this country alone who are probably qualified for the job. To find one would be routine, I should think."
"It's somewhat more complicated than picking a pilot out of a hat, Mr. Whiteford. Not just any pilot will do. There are, of course, certain technical qualifications but there are more important ones than that. Our man would have to be perfect mentally—no nervousness, neurosis, streaks of instability or anything of the sort. We could hardly trust 75,000,000 dollars worth of rocket to a man who wasn't sound physically and mentally." ”

“ Eberlein stared at the bunker thoughtfully.
"It costs a lot of money to send ships up here and establish a colony. It will cost a lot to expand it. And with that kind of investment, you don't take chances. You have to have the best men for the job. You get them even if they don't want to do it."
He gestured at the small, blotchy globe of blue and green that was the Earth, riding high in the black sky.
"You remember what it was like five years ago, Dahl? Nations at each other's throats, re-arming to the teeth? ”

“ He had the same sort of detached attitude that Forsythe seemed to have; the attitude you had when you went to a museum, Manning thought suddenly.
"We do all right," Forsythe said cheerfully. "A volume of half a million dollars last year."
"You trade right up to the limit, don't you?" the stranger asked casually.
"Right to the limit. How about you?"
"Not so good. I've got a poor territory. It seems capitalism went out of style thirty years ago."
Forsythe chuckled. "That's the way it goes when the corporation hands out territories. You pays your money and you takes your choice." ”

“ Eckert rolled up the thin, slatted blinds and stared out at the scenery. A hundred feet down the road, a native woman was going to market, leading a species of food animal by the halter.
"They grow their women nice, don't they?"
"Physically perfect, like the men," Templin grumbled. "You could get an inferiority complex just from watching the people here. Everybody's so damn perfect. Nobody's sick, nobody's unhealthy, nobody is too fat or too thin, nobody's unhappy. The only variation is that they don't all look alike. ”

“ My ruler had amputated part of a floppy lettuce leaf that hung from McCleary's sandwich.
I settled down in my chair again and started paying attention to my lunch. "Nothing like it," I added between mouthfuls of liverwurst.
"How about entertainment?" Young winked slyly.
"Well, you know—the wife will be along," I said. "But some of the places near the Grand Canal—and those Martian Mist Maidens! Brother, if I was unattached...."
"There ain't any life on Mars," McCleary said, suspicious again.
All three of us looked at him in shocked silence.
"He says there's no life on Mars!" Donley repeated. ”

“ Stan relaxed his grip and let his arms hang limply at his side.
"Avis is an Aurelian," Tanner went on. "Her system and ours have fought many bloody battles for this planet. We're still fighting them—down here, now." He paused. "You haven't been told everything—operators are fed knowledge bit by bit, when they can fit it in. As a Thuscan agent, Martin, you're told just as much as the high command thinks necessary!"
His voice softened, became more persuasive. "We kill but not blindly, Stan. This is an important war—it's a war for an entire planet. We have to be brutal but the stakes are high. ”

“ A turn of the wheel and perhaps it would be a peace-loving democracy while the United States would be the abattoir of human hopes. Who could tell? A thousand years from now the present bloodbaths and tortures and mass deaths would be history.
But if the aliens won you ran the chance of there being no history at all.
The wheelhouse was silent. The Captain could feel a dozen pairs of eyes watching him, waiting for his decision. Outside the ports, on the far horizon, there came a steady, golden pulsing.
He looked up at McCandless and Davis. ”

“ It was quiet as Karl guided his mount along the dimly marked trail and he caught himself thinking of the return trip he would be making that night. It would be nice to have somebody new to talk to. And it would be good to have somebody to help with the trapping and tanning, somebody who could tend the small vegetable garden at the rear of his shack and mend his socks and wash his clothes and cook his meals. ”

“ All I know is that it's big."
"Most scientists say the universe is infinite," Joe explains. "And if it's infinite, then it must have an infinite number of worlds in it. An actual world to match whatever kind of world you can dream up, let's say. All you have to do is step into the Paradise booth, put on the cap, visualize the kind of world you want to live in so it shows on the screen, and off you go!" ”

“ You didn't want to leave, neither did I, and neither did Pendleton."
Templin turned on him. "So it was paradise. Would it have been criminal if I had stayed there? Who would it have hurt?"
"It would have hurt you," Eckert said gravely. "Because the Tunpeshans would never have accepted you. We're too different, Ray. We're too aggressive, too pushy, too persistent. We're not—perfect. You see, no matter how long we stayed there, we would never have fit in. We lived in a harsh society and we bear the scars of it. Our own environment has conditioned us, and we can't change. ”

“ Manning started for the door. "Thanks for all the information I didn't get. And thanks for the cigar."
He stood on the street for a few minutes after leaving the building agent's office. It was a hot summer day, the only relief being the slight breeze that blew off the lake. The street was crowded with men in seer sucker suits, sweltering in the heat and mopping their foreheads. Young girls in thin blouses and light weight skirts, as young girls always seemed to do, managed to look cool and fresh. ”

“ Of course the girls we sent aren't the most beautiful or the most glamorous. Those girls are already married and you couldn't get them to leave, no matter what you did. The girls we sent are the ones who weren't wanted here on Earth. We even killed two birds with one stone and solved the crime problem."
He held up his hand when MacDonald started to object.
"Don't say it, Mac. Stop and think for a moment. What danger can a shoplifter do on a colony planet? There's nothing to steal. And without large cities, most other types of crime will have equally tough sledding. ”

“ I spent the next two weeks doing nothing but looking at our world. Do you think you really appreciate your sight? If you knew you had but a few weeks of sight left, what would you do with it? Visit famous landmarks? See the country? If you thought about it, I think you'd do the same as I did. I began to enjoy what was close at hand, the surroundings I had lived in. Everyday sights held a certain fascination for me. The stark black and white mosaic of a city at the tag end of winter; the sheer, raucous color of the magazines at your local newsstand ”

“ Hasn't it occurred to you that the qualifications you set up for a pilot were all wrong? When has a completely normal man ever succeeded at anything that was a little difficult? Why did you succeed? Because you're just a shade neurotic, because you've got a streak of monomania in you. It's what built up Personnel Incorporated. It's what got you to the moon and back. Hell, Whiteford, after this when we want pilots we'll just run your characteristics on the sorter and pick them out that way!"
Whiteford glared at him and for a moment Maxwell felt sorry. He had pushed a big man off a pedestal ”

“ In a few hours they'd be relieved by members of the Third research group and they'd be on their way back to Earth.
And that includes me, Chapman thought. I'm going home. I'm finally going home.
He walked silently to the one small, quartz window in the room. It was morning—the Moon's "morning"—and he shivered slightly. The rays of the Sun were just striking the far rim of the crater and long shadows shot across the crater floor. The rest of it was still blanketed in a dark jumble of powdery pumice and jagged peaks that would make the Black Hills of Dakota look like paradise. ”

“ Davis frowned and rubbed the tip of his nose thoughtfully. "Well, it looks to me, Bill, as if we have a situation here where an unknown ship from somewhere—I'm not saying where—has investigated two ships on maneuvers and finally chosen to hover over one, for what reasons we don't know. To me it looks like the only things we can do is notify Washington and stand by for orders."
Great God, the Captain thought, disgusted, there was nothing worse than a Commander bucking for four stripes. A more cautious man didn't exist on the face of the Earth nor, possibly, a more fearful one. ”

“ It wasn't a driving rain, just a gentle drizzle that made the lanes muddy and plastered Eckert's tunic against him. He didn't mind it; the rain was warm and the trees and grass smelled good in the wet.
"How would you classify the culture after seeing the ceremony, Ted?" Templin asked.
"About what you would expect. An Apollonian culture, simple and dignified. Nothing in excess, no striving for great emotional release."
Templin nodded soberly. "It grows on you, doesn't it? You find yourself getting to like the place. And I suppose that's dangerous, too. ”

“ They were capable looking men but not the grim, hard-eyed professionals that Stan was used to working with.
The woman walked over to Stan and slapped his face—hard—her nails digging bloody furrows in his skin.
"How does it feel to be a traitor? How does it feel to sell out your native planet for nothing at all?"
He didn't know what she was talking about and his face showed it.
"It was a clever scheme," she continued bitterly. "To win a planet, you first cut off its head—you eliminate the scientists!" She leveled her hand weapon at him. ”

“ Nothing's impossible, you know."
"Perpetual motion machines are," Escher said quietly. "And pulling yourself up by your boot-straps. But I get the point. Nevertheless, women just don't want to colonize. And who can blame them? Why should they give up living in a luxury civilization, with as many modern conveniences as this one, to go homesteading on some wild, unexplored planet where they have to work their fingers to the bone and play footsie with wild animals and savages who would just as soon skin them alive as not?"
"What do you advise I do, then?" MacDonald demanded. ”

“ Maxwell twirled his hat self-consciously. A half smile played on his lips. "Oh, sure. Absolutely." He tamped his pipe. "You know, it's hard to visualize anybody wanting to go to the moon. It must be—well, some terrific drive that makes them do it."
Whiteford stared at him suspiciously. "What are you getting at?"
Maxwell looked innocent and gave an exaggerated shrug. "Why, nothing! Nothing at all. It's just that it seems ... seems so unusual that you couldn't find a qualified man, a completely normal man who wanted to go!" ”

“ Chapman repeated dully. "I haven't anything to go back for."
"You're doing a much braver thing than you may think," a voice cut in. It belonged to Eberlein.
Chapman looked at him. Eberlein flushed, then turned and walked-stiffly to the lock to join the others.
Just before the inner door of the lock shut, they could hear Chapman, his hands on his hips, breaking in the Third on how to be happy and stay healthy on the Moon. His voice was ragged and strained and sounded like a top-sergeant's.
Dahl and Eberlein stood in the outer port of the relief ship, staring back at the research bunker. ”

“ Tanner said shortly. "Mr. Ainsworth wouldn't like it. Neither would I."
Stan hardly heard him. It didn't mean anything to him one way or the other, he kept telling himself. They were apes.
Just apes.
"What will the apes say when this is over and they discover the shattered houses and the bodies?"
Tanner picked off another running figure.
"There'll be no bodies. The wind disperses the ashes as soon as the field is let up. As for the rest—the apes are ingenious in thinking up explanations. They never believe in anything they haven't seen themselves." ”

“ Leonard, who had the biggest farm on Midplanet; and then the fellow who specialized in catching and breaking in yllumphs, whose name Karl couldn't remember.
"They say they're good workers," Hill said.
Karl nodded. "Pretty, too."
They threaded their way through the crowded and muddy streets. Landing City wasn't big, compared to some of the cities on Altair, where he had been raised, but Karl was proud of it. Some day it would be as big as any city on any planet—maybe even have a population of ten thousand people or more. ”

“ Templin murmured. "This is a lovely place to be. The climate is wonderful, the people are happy, hard-working. The society itself seems to be—perfect. Sometimes you can't help but compare it too damn favorably to Earth."
Eckert shoved the papers to one side and came over to where Templin sat. He felt rather lazy himself. The warmth and sunshine corroded ambition, as it did in most climates like this.
"You know, there isn't any crime here," Templin continued. He laughed to himself. "Except the minor crime wave we caused when we landed here five months ago. ”

“ Have you made any friends to take the place of those back home?"
"It takes time to become acquainted, even more time to make friends," Templin said defensively.
"You can't desert the Service," Eckert pointed out. "You still have your duty."
Templin laughed in his pillow. "It won't work, Ted. Duty's just a catch word, a jingo phrase. They can get along without me and you know it."
"What about Pendleton, Ray? He died here, you know, in mysterious circumstances."
"Would going back help him any? He wasn't murdered; we know that. And why do people commit suicide? ”

“ The world slipped into a haze of red and his hand darted for the pocket where he kept his heat gun—to pause, uncertainly, when he remembered it lay on the concrete fifteen feet away.
"I'm no ape!"
She laughed. "They've made you into a Pavlovian dog that drools whenever they ring a bell—and you don't even realize what they've done to you! They pull the strings and their marionette jerks and dances and does their dirty work for them!"
Stan stared at her coldly. "What are you going to do?" ”

“ It might be a pleasant six months at that, away from the din and the hustle and confusion, spending the time in a place where the sun was warm and inviting.
I must be getting old, he thought, thinking about the warmth and comfort. Like old dogs and octogenarians.
Templin was looking at the scenery with a disappointed expression on his face. Eckert stole a side glance at him and for a fleeting moment felt vaguely concerned. "Don't be disappointed if it doesn't look like cloak-and-dagger right off, Ray. What seems innocent enough on the surface can prove to be quite dangerous underneath." ”

“ Stan swung around and grabbed Tanner by the lapels, crossing his hands so the cloth was drawn tight around Tanner's throat and his knuckles dug into the flesh.
"I haven't been getting the answers," he said in a thin voice. "The girl's no ape—she knows too much, her weapons are too far advanced, her men are too well organized!" His voice started to shake with nervous reaction. "I'm supposed to be running the operation down here and I don't even know what's going on!"
"The answers should have occurred to you," Tanner said, his face a mask. "We're not the only ones who want this planet, Martin!" ”

“ Eckert sighed and watched a fat bug waddle across a small patch of sunlight on the wooden floor. It was bad enough drawing an assignment in a totally foreign culture, even if the natives were humanoid. It complicated things beyond all measure when your partner in the project seemed likely to turn into a vendettist. It meant that Eckert would have to split his energies. He'd have to do what investigating he could among the Tunpeshans, and he'd have to watch Templin to see that he didn't go off half-cocked and spoil everything. ”