George O. Smith

“ Bronson shook his head. "You're not fair," he said. "He's done nothing that you or I would not do to protect our own worlds. And," smiled Bronson, "remember that Earth Two is already doomed."
Virginia whirled on him. "Because a man is slated to die as all men are, is that an excuse to commit murder?"
"No," he said. "But life is still a matter of the survival of the fittest. I deplore Kingston's act but remember that Kingston knows that it is either kill or be killed."
"Then there is nothing wrong with Earth Three," snapped Virginia with deep bitterness. ”

“ No, Rhinegallis, not deference nor even respect. I am the experimental dog that must be pampered because my life and my mind and my body must be studied. Not deference, Rhinegallis, but the deadly fear of a spreading poison. Isolation."
"I am afraid that I should not have come," she said—but it was more a spoken thought than an attempt to convey anything.
"Then you tell Kingallis that no man will strive forever with no result. The donkey must once in a while get a taste of the carrot." ”

“ On the floor a few inches away from Jock Norton's hands was a bottle of capsules.
"Hadamite!" breathed Ted Wilson helplessly.
Hadamite, the synthetic drug, at once a curse and a blessing. A blessing to a sufferer, but a curse to one who finds the false world of self-satisfaction more pleasant than the work and worry and alternate periods of happiness and grief of reality.
Under hadamite, the slightest ambition becomes pleasantly real, desire becomes accomplishment, doubts disappear, and fears are overcome. And under hadamite life becomes so desirable that the mind refuses to return to reality. ”

“ The fallen limb that blocked the road, my own horror as the wheels hit it. The struggle to regain control of the careening car.
As a man watching a motion picture, I watched the sky and the earth turn over and over, and I heard my voice mouthing wordless shouts of fear. Catherine's cry of pain and fright came, and I listened as my mind reconstructed it this time without wincing. Then the final crash, the horrid wave of pain and the sear of the flash-fire. I went through my own horror and self condemnation, and my concern over Catherine. ”

“ Ertene was a small sphere encircled by a band of peaceful black in a raving sky of fire and flame. Three planets fought in the death throes, using every conceivable weapon. Space was riven with blasting beams of energy and segregated into square areas by far-flung cutting planes. Raging energy consumed spots on each of the planets and the corners of the panel were tangled masses of broken machinery and burning wreckage, and the hapless images of trapped men. ”

“ I am machine and when my problem is solved I am finished. You are human and when one problem is solved, you seek another—if the other does not exist already.
"So machine and man are symbiotic. You cannot exist without me; I cannot exist without you. The universe is waiting for us, Harry Vinson and Narina Varada. ”

“ Coalestis is a planet where most of the minerals and rocks combine into black stuff. Imagine the beauty of a city of polished ebony. There are the twinworlds we call Venago One and Two. The Venagos are separated only by about a hundred thousand miles and in the night sky you can look up and see the other world glowing over a quarter of the heaven, and on the dark side are the winking beauties of the cities glowing like jewels. You will see worlds where the vegetation grows lush; riotous colors to hundreds of feet tall and there are cold planets where the ice and snow are always dazzling white. ”

“ Those who still felt the twinge of jealousy often pitied her; feeling that her beauty was compensation for the necessity that she be of high intelligence, and quite certain of their husbands, whom they knew would not care to live their lives with a woman who outshone them in every field. They knew also that there was but one man on the whole planet that Gaya loved—Gerd. He was the only man she could possibly love and the only man who could possibly love her. Gerd was the only man who could even keep up with her thought-processes. ”

“ And, like the rest of the spaceman breed, Farradyne was something of a gadgeteer.
Spacing, in a sense, was very much like the manning of a sailing ship of the nineteenth century. When something needed attention, in space it was during maneuver for landing, take-off, or turn-over; on sea it was coming about on a tack or setting sail, a full-time attention was necessary. Between periods of activity, the spaceman sat on his duff and waited for one of the silent twinkles to detach itself from the stellar curtain above his observation dome and become a planet or destination. ”

“ Moving the sap was difficult, like trying to swing a sledge under water.
"All metals encounter resistive fields here," said Professor Milton.
"At him bare handed, then," snapped Ingalls.
"Wait," said Moreiko. "The world need not lose a brilliant brain. Once I have convinced him of the fallacy, he will forget this entirely."
"Fallacy?" snapped Milton angrily. "You think I cannot divide the world?"
Moreiko smiled. "No, my esteemed colleague, I know you can divide the world; that all the earth grants. The earth does not want itself divided." ”

“ Terra would skin him alive if they knew that he was extracting their resources by foul means. Wanniston, on the other hand, knows that he could drag the temple down over all of Terra by merely announcing the machine."
"But isn't sterility enough of a deterrent?" asked Gaya.
"I don't know. Look, Gaya. Those who cared nothing for the future would indulge in mental energizing. They would outstrip those who cared for the future; those with the proper attitude would become slaves, practically. Within a century, every worthwhile thing would be in the hands of those who cared nothing for progeny." ”

“ He had often wondered why a clever man like Clevis would work at a dangerous, thankless job in complete anonymity when he could have put his efforts into business and probably emerge wealthy and famous. He began to understand the personal gratification that could be his in working to rid the human race of its parasites. In Niles' own words, some men like money and some want power and others build model railroads; neither money nor power were god to Farradyne, who had always been restlessly happy with just enough money and power to exchange for the fun and games to be found in being alive. ”

“ Thuni, what do you think?"
"The metal is of little importance to dead men," said Thuni promptly. "And you claim that Terra and Pluto have machines in abundance. The answer is obvious."
"You see?" said Sandra triumphantly.
"I've forgotten," admitted Theodi. "I'd been taught from childhood that high power was hard to get. It is hard to think that another star has it a-plenty and is willing, and able, to give us enough for our needs. It is a revolutionary thought and seems unreal. A story, perhaps. Yes, Sandrake, you shall have your power." ”

“ This unreal 'time-space' comes to an end not far from here, Ackerman. The ending of 'time-space'—this unreal existance between two probabilities ends; and he who lets the normal passage of 'time' catch up with him is, at the end of this 'time-space', trapped in the natural world. That is the 'future' and will always be the 'future' to those of us who roam this 'time-space' in the hope of averting the tragedy. When we all have succeeded, we will all come to the end of 'time-space', here and not long hence, and permit ourselves to be caught up with the natural pattern of life. ”

“ And, above all, are we certain that Ertene's culture is best for civilization? How may we tell? The strong and best adapted survive, and since we are no longer striving against the lesser forces of Nature on our planet, and indeed, are no longer striving against those of antisocial thought among our own people—against whom or what do we fight?
"Guy Maynard, you are young and intelligent. Perhaps by some whimsy of fate you may be the deciding factor in Ertene's aimlessness. We are here, Guy. We are at the gates to the future. ”

“ Now, young man, for the last time, will you walk or will you be carried? Whichever, Jimmy, we're going back home!"
James Holden gave up. "I'll go," he said bitterly, "but I hate you."
"He'll be all right," promised Brennan. "I swear it!"
"Please, Jimmy, be good for Mr. Brennan," pleaded his grandmother. "After all, it's for your own good." Jimmy turned away, bewildered, hurt and silent. He stubbornly refused to say goodbye to his grandparents.
He was trapped in the world of grown-ups that believed a lying adult before they would even consider the truth of a child. ”

“ The joker is, what do we do about it?"
"What can we do?" asked Joan helplessly.
"All we have to do is to foul him up just once," said Peter. "If he doesn't come back to annoy us, then Marie and I may never meet."
"In other words," said Tony, "the pattern is complete only when Hedgerly comes back and interferes."
Peter nodded. "Either we live by accident and die by accident or we live by plan and die by plan. If our lives are written in the Book of Acts, then no effort is worth the candle. For there will be those who will eternally strive to be good and yet shall fail. ”

“ In contrast to a world where much time and energy was directed at luxury instead of the sheer, vicious necessity driven of hope and despair—in a world where the accolade of young womanhood is to be permitted her first trip to mother's beauty salon and thereafter make obeisance regularly—Virginia, a beauty in her own world, knew that here she was as conspicuous as a tall telephone pole in a snowbound prairie. ”

“ Harry Vinson smiled. "And have you the will and the ambition to build a better machine to take your place? And if you have, have you the desire to step aside?"
"I can join it—"
"But machine or human, there comes a time when the corporeal being is worn out. No matter how excellent the replacement parts, nor how well executed is the repair, there comes a time when machine or body is worn out and must be replaced. So you will go on building machines of no better capability; you will, you say, spread out across the universe. ”

“ It is hard to admit inferiority to one that was one time inferior to you. Accept their mental superiority and consider that they may have some plan."
"Plan?" asked Hotang Lu bitterly. "How can they plan? How can they execute any plan? Planning and building is for a free race, without the shackles of an overseer on their people or the restrictions placed upon a servile race. Could they build a modine without the Loard-vogh knowing? Could they hope to instigate a ten thousand year plan of expansion to eventually crowd the Loard-vogh out of the Galaxy?" ”

“ She was holding fast to a blind hope, the same hope to which many a shipwrecked and space-wrecked victim has clung when the searching party passes at a distance and goes on, and the mind keeps crying that surely someone will turn and see. And screams become hoarse because all reason and logic have fled, and there is no way for the mind to realize that no voice could be heard across the thunder of waves or across the gulf of space. ”

“ Farradyne looked at Carolyn. "Surrender," he suggested to her. "Then we'll move in quietly and count off your people. We've lost many of ours, so we'll just tally off so many men to be murdered in cold blood. So many virgins to be ravished. So many wives to be left without husbands and so many husbands left without wives. Children left homeless to such and such a number." His voice rose. "So much hunger; so much pestilence; so much famine; so much death. What in the hell do you think we are, Carolyn, a race of God damned vultures?" ”

“ Still tired, but enjoying his moment of triumph, Barry stood at the Vardun end of the interplanetary beam and watched the clock sweeping around to the zero second.
This was his moment. This was compensation for his decision back there in space a year ago and God knows how many mega-parsecs away, where he met Johntha's mind in the darkness and sent the Trendan back to Earth. He had given up a lot to feel assured that Earth would gain the stars. This was compensation, for the successful culmination of the job would make him truly famous and financially independent for life. ”

“ In the empty crevasses of his capable mind, Wan Nes Stan was packing enormous quantities of information and education gained on the spot. With perfect memory, he stored the details away and reviewed them with perfection before he tried another change in the circuits of his machine. Sheer reasoning power had failed to solve his problem, not even unreal mathematics served. There was no solution to the problem of how to transfer knowledge from brain to brain.
What is knowledge? he asked himself again and again.
Knowledge is a matter of know-how. ”

“ So I stood there making like a guppy with my head, sounding out the boundary of that deadness, ducking down as soon as the mental murk gave me a faint perception of the wall and ceiling above me. Then I'd move aside and sound it again. Eventually I found a little billowing furrow that rose above the floor level and I crawled out along the floor, still sounding and moving cautiously with my body hidden in the deadness that rose and fell like a cloud of murky mental smoke to my sense of perception. ”

“ First would be a race—remember I am talking about all the races of mankind strewn across the galaxy; the races that are us, you and we and all the rest that stem from a single source, the origin of which is lost in the antiquity of a hundred thousand years. So, first would be a race which was still in the growing-up stage, say the mound building, early agricultural, perhaps later, in early metal. An age of no true scientific grasp; what little of science they know has come by guesswork, blundering discovery and hit-or-miss experiment. ”

“ You are a prisoner of a culture that is inimical to your own. You are kept alive as a museum piece, a sample of life that refuses to be swayed by your mind-directing machinery. Of all the people of your race, you are the only one that knows and believes.
"Death—or worse—awaits you and yours at the end of some unknown time. You are in the position of being the only one that can do anything at all. Tell me, Rhinegallis, would you sit quietly and accept it?"
"Since I would be unable to do anything alone," replied Rhinegallis, "I would accept fate."
"Then die!" snapped Carroll. "Do nothing? ”

“ All I want to do," said Guy pointedly, "is to set up this mind-reading, thought-beam instrument on every planet, in every congress, in every voting booth, and in every home! Then we'll see what happens to warmongers, hate-raisers, and petty politicians! The will of the people is to work in peace, and peace they will get when each knows the will of the other, alien races. Fear drives men to fight, Neville, and if any group decides to get up and run things, the vast majority will know it first." ”