James V. McConnell

“ Each one dreamed a thousand times too many, each separate strand of memory-weed now nothing but a stereotyped shred of what might have once been a part of life and of living.
With the quietness of deserted ships they drift in procession past his sphere of consciousness. Wait! There's one that seems familiar. He stops the mental parade for a moment, not hearing the voice of his companion, the woman in the green uniform.
"It's getting late, Mr. Symmes." She turned from the window and glanced at the wizenedness, the fragile remainder of the man, the almost empty shell. ”

“ Underneath the bottom floor of that building are the bodies of many millions more, Joseph, just as there are bodies under all of our buildings. Bodies of those wealthy few who could afford to escape cremation and find surcease of life in the loamy substance of the Earth itself. I shudder to tell you how tightly packed they are, of the skin-tight coffins which we had to devise, of the geometrical tricks involved in jamming as many bodies as possible in the least amount of space. And yet, it is burial, and it is in the Earth itself. ”

“ Make the most of your vacation. After all, it isn't every day in the year that you come hunting humans, you know."
Shrugging his shoulders for an answer, William Karsten relaxed again. The aroma of the cooking meat permeated the morning breeze, mingling with the subtler smells of pine and warm rich earth. In the nearby trees birds sang out loud.
"Wonder how many we'll get this year?" asked Thurman after a while.
Emmett looked up from his chores. "If you boys will just follow my directions, you'll get the limit." He smiled proudly. "My hunters always come back with the limit. You know that." ”

“ No matter what the crime of the defendant, this is a greater one. For this is a crime not just against my client, but against all men. This sentence robs all men of their most precious freedom—the right to die at their appointed times. Nothing is more damaging to the basic dignity of the human race than this most hideous ..."
"... This Court recognizes only the four freedoms. The freedom of death is not one of these. The sentence stands. The Court is adjourned."
There were tears in the eyes of his lawyer, although young Oliver Symmes did not quite comprehend, as yet, their meaning. ”

“ If we choose slavery we'll live and breathe and die just as we always have. We'll do all of these things on alien planets, having forgotten the Earth we sprang from and all our past history, as sorry as some of that has been. We'll have forgotten who we are. We will have lost ourselves."
He banged a fist down on the table. "But we will exist! The protection of the race comes first, and we've got to make sure that it is protected, that the Sunward makes the logical decision. I'll steer things as best I can, but I'll need help."
He turned to Broussard. "I'm not a psychologist. ”

“ Consolator Steen sighed deeply. "I don't think you understand, Joe. It isn't a matter of price. Manhattan is simply not available to you, for the reason that it is not for sale. I know that you have heard otherwise; I am sure that rumors have reached your ears that burial in Manhattan could be effected for a mere trillion credits. But these fantastic tales are incorrect—for two reasons.
"The first reason, Joe, is a financial one. To the average man, a mere million credits is such a gigantic, unobtainable sum that he is sure anything in the Galaxy could be obtained for a trillion. ”

“ If Skinner had never invented his blasted box, if the maze and the jumping stand had not been developed, we probably would have entirely different theories of learning today than we now have. For if nothing else, the type of equipment that one uses drastically reduces the type of behavior that one's subjects can show, and one's theories have to account only for the type of behavior that appears in the laboratories. ”

“ Lan Sur paused for a moment, to let the significance of his words sink in. "There have been others, of course, but they soon passed under our control. Just as your civilization will now pass under our control."
He read the sudden, stark fear that appeared in their eyes correctly without needing the affirming echo from the computer.
"The Dakn Empire has learned that whenever it discovers a new civilization, it must absorb this new culture immediately. There is no other choice. And your race must follow the pattern of the thousands we have encountered in the past. There is no choice. ”

“ Dead faces....
Four walls around him, bare to the point of boredom. Through the barred window, the throbbing throat of the crowd talked to him. His young body took it in, his young mind accepted it, catalogued it and pushed it out of consciousness. And for each individual voice there was an individual face, staring up at his cell from the comparative safety of outside. Young Oliver Symmes could not see the faces from where he sat, waiting, but he could sense them. ”

“ The chair received Krieg's body as if it were the most precious burden it had ever held. Its soft contours almost demanded that he relax, yield the tenseness of his muscles to its smooth and welcoming shape. Its surface closed around him as if it were a second skin, then began to tingle in gentle caress. Joseph Krieg had never felt so comforted in his life.
Consolator Steen seated himself behind his desk, then waited until his assistant, Braun, had taken a chair some feet away. He smiled paternally. "May I ask you one favor? ”

“ He was almost at the door when Hawkins stopped him.
"Broussard!" Hawkins shouted. "What in God's name makes a man's personality so dear to him? Why has it always been just about the last thing that a man will give up? You're the psychologist. You must know the answer. Even a man with a diseased mind who knows that he's sick and wants help badly will fight back tooth and nail when you try to change even one small part of his personality make-up. ”

“ Karsten walked over to the center of the little forest clearing where they had built the fire. "Might as well have a cup, I guess," he said. His face, furrowed with deep lines that had taken half a life-time to create, wore a slight frown. "But I wish that Emmett would get back. What's the sense of hiring a hunting guide if he's not around to take care of things for you? I'm getting hungry."
Thurman laughed at him. "If you'd worry more about where we're going to hunt instead of spending all your time thinking about your stomach, we'd probably have better luck," he said. ”

“ Oh, they were clever, those ancient ones who realized that if a civilization is to be kept together, it must have a myth. And so they gave our civilization its myth—that of Earth, the Great Ancestral Home. Just accidentally, it also offered Earth a means of retaining at least a part of her power. ”

“ I may have told you that this new species seemed quite identical to our usual laboratory animals, so we included a couple of the "toys" that our home animals seem so fond of—thin pieces of material made from wood-pulp and a tiny stick of graphite. Imagine our surprise, and our pleasure, when this new specimen made exactly the same use of the materials as have all of our home colony specimens. Could it be that there are certain innate behavior patterns to be found throughout the universe in the lower species? ”

“ As much as he enjoyed an occasional conversation with the psychologist, Broussard's questions often got on his nerves.
"Don't you think it's better we discovered subspace than if we were still back trying to beat the speed of light in our own universe?" Broussard asked him.
"Oh, stop looking for a dangling neurosis somewhere, Broussard," Hawkins said, managing a smile. "You know quite well that I've got absolutely nothing at all against the use of subspace for 'rapid transportation,' so to speak. It's just that I'm the sort of man who likes to know where he's going all the time. ”

“ I always take them at lunch."
"You won't need them if you're eating real food."
He whipped his voice into petulance. "Yes, I will! I don't care if it is real food—I want my pills!"
"I'll get them for you later. Go ahead and eat first."
"I can't eat until I take my pink pills! You ought to know that! I won't touch a thing until I get them! You've ruined my birthday party."
The whims of the aging are without logic, so she went to get the pills, leaving Oliver Symmes and the gleaming, sharp knife together, unattended. ”

“ We've destroyed the forests and the rolling plains and planted the land for miles above and below with throbbing inorganic monsters. We've hollowed out the very mountains to make more space. Space for nine hundred billion people, Joseph. And still we are cramped almost beyond belief. We need to expand a hundredfold. ”

“ We fought a hard battle with Spence and Hull, and actually had them with their backs to the wall at one point, when suddenly they came up with the concept of "secondary reinforcement." That is, anything associated with a reward takes on the ability to act as a reward itself. For example, the mere sight of food would become a reward in and of itself—almost as much a reward, in fact, as is the eating of the food. The sight of food, indeed! But nonetheless, it saved their theories for the moment. ”

“ It seems that some of the hunters—not people like you, mind—but some of them have been altering the color of the stripes after they've bagged their game." He smiled. "And we can't have that, you know. It just isn't sporting. When you display your trophies, you want all the glory that's coming to you. But no more than you actually deserve."
Putting his hands on the arms of the chair, the Warden made a valiant effort and managed, just barely, to remove his body from the comforting confines of the chair. "Well," he said, "I must be off. Have a lot of other hunters to see before the season opens." ”

“ We do not care for friction, and we always seek to avoid it. By forcing you to join us now—or by destroying you if you refuse—we make absolutely sure that your race will never be the cause of any friction to us in the future."
"Friction?" asked Broussard slowly.
"If we allowed you to go your own way, your population would expand and you would be forced to take over more and more of this area of the universe. We have our own plans for this part of the galaxy which do not include fighting constant wars with you for the possession of each new planetary system that one of us sees fit to colonize." ”

“ I am delighted to get on with things. And I must say, I find your attitude extraordinarily sane. The problem is, really, a simple one best met head on. You are here because you know that as it come to all men, death must come to you too. And you feel the necessity to make certain that when your time comes, you will be brought to Earth to your final rest. You are a son of Earth. This is your great ancestral home."
Krieg started slightly, then relaxed almost in reverie. Steen smiled inwardly at the power of words, repeated, to invoke long forgotten memories. ”