Jim Harmon

“ I knew I could not let Doc's—Dad's—time travel thing fall into anyone's hands. I remembered that all the copies of the books had disappeared with their readers now. There must not be any more, I knew.
Miss Casey did her duty and tried to stop me with a judo hold, but I don't think her heart was in it, because I reversed and broke it.
I kicked the thing to pieces and stomped on the pieces. Maybe you can't stop the progress of science, but I knew it might be millenniums before Doc's genes and creative environment were recreated and time travel was rediscovered. ”

“ Collins nodded again.
LIGHTSPEED.
There was finally something human within Sam Collins that he could not deny. He wanted to live. It wasn't true. He did care what happened.
You do? said somebody.
He does? asked somebody else, surprised, and suddenly he again got the image of wiser, older creatures, a little ashamed because of what they had done to the creature named Doc Candle.
He does, chorused several voices, and Sam Collins cried aloud: "I do! I want to live!" They were just touching lightspeed; he felt it. ”

“ I didn't have too much confidence in it and I hoped Charlie Baxter had less. Lots of things can change on a planet in fifty years, including its inhabitants.
Bronoski picked up Baxter's tracks and those of the two guards, Elliot and Sidney, with ultra-violet light. They were cold splotches of green fire against the rotting black peat of the jungle path. The whole dark, tangled mess smelled of sour mash, an intoxicating bourbon-type aroma. ”

“ Coleman cocked his head thoughtfully, concerned. "That seems rather extreme, Warden."
"You would suggest a shorter sentence?"
"If it were my place to choose, yes. A few years, perhaps. But life—no, I think not."
I threw up my hands. You don't often see somebody do that, but I did. I couldn't figure him. Coleman had wealth and power as a councilman in the real world, but I had thought somehow he wanted to escape to a Dream world. Yet he didn't want to be in for life, the way Paulson and Horbit did. ”

“ Sleep is a habit.
Ryan and Nogol were jarred awake in the night by the spaceship blasting off without them. They ran out and shook their tiny fists in fury at the rising flame.
Operating a spaceship alone was no cinch but it could be done. Ekstrohm would get back to the nearest Federation base and report the planetoid without death. He didn't have absolute confidence in any government, no. But he suspected the Federation could do more with the world than two men like Ryan and Nogol. ”

“ More and more, I was coming to believe that Granite City wasn't a job for an investigative adjuster like myself but a psychological adjuster. Crime is a structural flaw in a community, yes. But when the whole society is criminal, distorted, you can't isolate the flaw. The whole village was meat for a sociologist; let him figure out why otherwise decent citizens felt secure in conspiracy to defraud an honored corporation. ”

“ Look at yourself, Quade. You've been busted to Ordinary Spaceman for just that kind of thinking, for relying on tradition, on things that have worked before. Not only your thinking is slipshod, you've grown careless about everything else, even your own life."
"Just a minute, Captain. I've never been 'busted.' In the Exploration Service, we regard Ordinary Spaceman as our highest rank. With my hazard pay, I get more hard cash than you do, and I'm closer to retirement." ”

“ Collins nodded to himself. Of course, Colonel Smith-Boerke had been waiting for him. And Doc Candle had driven him right to him. It was inescapable. He had been intended to escape and turn up right here all along.
"What do you want with me?"
Smith-Boerke's flushed face brightened. "You want to become a hero? A hero so big that all these trumped-up charges against you will be dropped? It'll be romantic. Back to Lindbergh-to-Paris. Tell me, Collins, how would you like to be the first man to travel faster than light?" ”

“ She thought I was a human—an Earth human. I was a man, of course, not an alien like a Martian. Earthmen ran the whole Solar Federation, but I was just as good as an Earthman. With my suntan and short mane, I could pass, couldn't I? ”

“ Coleman sat back down suddenly.
"You don't want life as a Sleeper, do you?" I pursued. "You did want a relatively short sentence of a few months or a few years. I can think of two reasons why. The answer is probably a combination of both. In the first place, you are a joy-popper with Dreams—you don't want to live out your life in one, but you like a brief Dream every few years like an occasional dose of a narcotic. In the second place, you probably have political reasons for wanting to hide out somewhere in safety for the next few years. ”

“ Your trust of these damn-fool spacemen is why you are no longer a captain. You can't trust anything out here in space, much less human nature. Even I know that much!"
He was pained. "If you don't trust the men, they won't trust you, Gav."
"They don't have to trust me. All they have to do is obey me or, by Jupiter, get frozen stiff and thawed out just in time for court-marshal back home. Listen," I continued earnestly, "these men aren't going to think of me—of us, the officers, as their leaders. As far as the crew is concerned, Ordinary Spaceman Quade is the best man on this ship." ”

“ Why are the good people of Granite City doing this to you? By any chance, you wouldn't happen to know of a mass fraud they are perpetrating on Manhattan-Universal?"
"I know nothing of their ethical standards," Parnell said, "but I do know that they are absolutely subhuman!"
"I admit I have met likelier groups of human beings in my time."
"No, understand me. These people are literally subhuman—they are inferior to other human beings." ”

“ Infield said, realizing it was not the right thing to say but tiring of constant pretense.
"You don't understand. Everyone has some little phobia or fixation. Maybe everyone didn't have one once, but after being told they did have them for generations, everyone who didn't have one developed a defense mechanism and an aberration so they would be normal. If that phobia isn't brought to the surface and Cured, it may arise any time and endanger other people. The only safe, good sound citizens are Cured. Those lacking Cures—the Incompletes—must be dealt with." ”

“ It was a lonely job to find a lonely man, General, and maybe it was a crooked job to walk a crooked mile to find a crooked man.
I had to do it alone. No one else had enough experience in primitive psychology to recognize the phenomenon of loneliness, even as Madison had said. ”

“ I knew something. "I don't wash because I drink coffee."
"It's all right to drink coffee, isn't it?" he asked.
"Of course," I said, and added absurdly, "That's why I don't wash."
"You mean," Andre said slowly, ploddingly, "that if you bathed, you would be admitting that drinking coffee was in the same class as any other solitary vice that makes people wash frequently."
I was knocked to my knees.
"Kevin," the Martian said, "drinking coffee represents a major vice only in Centurian humanoids, not Earth-norm human beings. Which are you?" ”

“ Before he could perform his usual pratfall, Sidney and Elliot were at his sides, supporting him by his thin biceps. He glared at them and shrugged them off, informing them wordlessly that he would have regained his balance if they had given him half a chance.
"We do not understand," the native repeated. "Do you hold us in so much contempt as to claim all of us as your brothers?"
"All beings are brothers," Charlie said. "We were made blood brothers by your people and my people several hundred of your years ago." ”

“ Over the years, he had had buddies in space in whom he thought he could confide. The buddies invariably took advantage of him. Since he couldn't sleep anyway, he might as well stand their watches for them or write their reports. Where the hell did he get off threatening to report any laxness on their part to the captain? A man with insomnia had better avoid bad dreams of that kind if he knew what was good for him.
Ekstrohm had to hide his secret.
In a camp, instead of shipboard, hiding the secret was easier. But the secret itself was just as hard. ”

“ Price leaned forward. "There is one phobia that is so wide-spread, a Cure is not even thought of—hypochondria. Hundreds of people come to your office for a Cure and you turn them away. Suppose you and the other Cured psychiatrists give everybody who comes to you a Cure?"
Infield gestured vaguely. "A psychiatrist wouldn't hand out Cures unless they were absolutely necessary." ”