Jr. L. J. Stecher

“ I still felt the fear sensation, but it no longer had the power to bother me much. With that drug in my blood stream, no emotion could affect me strongly.
As I worked my way through the tinkling jungle of ice trees, there was an amazing change. Before my eyes, the trees suddenly seemed to clothe themselves in leaves and bark, and the sounds became those of birds and insects. I was working my way through a jungle of Earth. The heavy gravity of Sunder's Pride had not disturbed me before, but now it was replaced by the almost buoyant feeling resulting from the far lighter gravity of Earth. ”

“ It had been manned by a dozen adventurous people, captained by Crownwall, and had headed out on its ion drive until it was safely clear of the warping influence of planetary masses. Then, after several impatient days of careful study and calculation, the distorter drive had been activated, for the first time in Earth's history, and, for the twelve, the stars had winked out.
The men of Earth had decided that it should work in theory. They had built the drive—a small machine, as drives go—but they had never dared to try it, close to a planet. ”

“ We have performed our function in a satisfactory manner and will continue to do so as long as we are needed."
"And that makes you a weapon?" asked Bates incredulously. "I don't get it."
Farnum felt a shiver go through him. "I see it. The concept is completely diabolical."
"It's not diabolical at all," answered the Oracle. "When you become capable of civilization, we can do you no further harm at all. We will cease to be a weapon at that time." ”

“ It was known, or at least suspected, that the Palace was merely a mile-long spaceship.
Garth, as tradition required, climbed the seven-mile-long rock-hewn path to the Palace on foot. He paused for a moment on the broad platform at the top of the pyramid to catch his breath and let the beating of his heart slow to normal after his long climb before he entered The Palace. He sighed deeply. The sufferings a reporter was willing to go through to get a story or take a dare! ”

“ I found that I had a problem—I couldn't figure which one of my three stumpy legs to start walking with. I extended all my eyes and examined myself. I looked like an Alien wearing a checked kilt.
Unhappily, I tried to lick my labial fringes with my tongue—and suddenly realized that I had no tongue! It was an unnerving realization, even to me. But then I knew why the Aliens were transmitting hatred of themselves; any Earthman who knew what an Alien looked like would attack me on sight. ”

“ There were two towheaded kids—about eight or nine years old, I should judge—floating in empty space, with their noses flattened against the viewport glass. They were as brown as berries, and as naked as jaybirds, and as cute as chipmunks, and as alike as two peas, and as improbable as virtue. ”

“ The fruit of the marocca is delicious and fabulously expensive. The plant grew only on the single planet Mypore II. Transshipped seeds invariably failed to germinate, which explained its rarity.
The Myporians were usually, and understandably, bitterly, opposed to letting any of the living plants get shipped off their planet. But when I offered them a sizable piece of cash plus a perpetual share of the profits for letting us take a load of marocca plants to Gloryanna III, they relented and, for the first time in history, gave their assent. ”

“ Farnum operated the compact computer, aligning the ship's velocity vector precisely while the stars could still be seen. Bates controlled the engines, metering their ravenous demand for power just this side of destructive detonation, while the ship sucked energy from space—from the adjacent universe on the other side of Limbo. Finally the computer chimed, relays snicked, and the ship slid into the emptiness of Limbo as the stars winked out. ”

“ Garth took a gun from the rack and pulled the trigger. The explosive bullet erupted noisily, completely disintegrating the huddled form and the wheelchair.
With the echo of the explosion, strong steel fingers grasped Garth’s arms, holding him immovable. He felt himself being carried swiftly back toward the entrance of the ship.
“The damage to that communication unit is unimportant,” said The Visitor. “I have strength and desire and deep longings, but I cannot exercise my will without an order from a human. ”

“ His Effulgence lifted a tentacle swiftly, before Ggaran, lunging angrily forward, could speak. "Then what do you want of us?"
"It seems to me that we need no wordy assurances from each other," said Crownwall, and he puffed a cigarette aglow. "We can arrange something a little more trustworthy, I believe. On your side, you have the power to destroy our only planet at any time. That is certainly adequate security for our own good behavior and sincerity.
"It is impossible for us of Earth to destroy all of your planets. ”

“ He was rich rich. Penguin has almost twice the diameter of this planet, but it's light enough to have about the same surface gravity. To give you an idea, its two biggest bodies of water are about the size of the Atlantic Ocean, back on the Earth you've studied so much about. On Penguin they call them lakes. And the Prinkip owns the whole planet—free and clear. I should be so lucky with Delta Crucis.
"The Prinkip is a little skinny man, but that doesn't keep him from having a large-size hobby to go with his large-size planet. The Prinkip collects animals—one from each planet in his sector. ”

“ No Princeton man would ever dream of doing away with someone he had taken a dislike to quite so crudely. Or messily.
By voluntary control of my heart, I slowed the action down to the point where I managed to keep from bleeding to death, but my larynx was destroyed beyond repair. That was when I got my Voder installation. It fitted neatly where my lungs used to be, and because it used the same resonant cavities, I soon learned to imitate my own voice well enough so that nobody could tell the difference, "before" or "after." ”

“ They trusted me, all those men and women, both passengers and crew. They knew that I was careful and accurate. I’d made a thousand flights and had never had any trouble.
“In six hours of flight, we were clear enough from all planetary masses and my velocity vector was right on the nose, so I shifted over into hyper-space. You won’t ever see hyper-space, my boy, and your kids and their kids won’t see it for another two hundred years or more, but it’s the most beautiful sight in the Universe. It never grows old, never grows tiresome.” ”

“ Farnum went on urgently, "somebody else reaches the stars, finds the planet with the Oracle—and takes the thing back home. Can you imagine what will happen to these people on this world if they lose their Oracle? Their own learning and traditions and way of life have been destroyed—just take a look at their anarchic clothing and architecture. The Oracle is the only thing that keeps them going—downhill—and makes sure they don't start back again."
"It won't happen that way to us," Bates argued. "We won't let the Oracle get into general use, so Earth won't ever learn to depend on it. ”

“ Each of those planets is quite capable of defending itself from raids, or even large-scale assaults that would result in its capture and subjugation—just as your little Earth can defend itself.
"Naturally, each is vulnerable to economic blockade—trade provides a small but vital portion of the goods each planet uses. All that a world requires for a healthy and comfortable life cannot be provided from the resources of that single world alone, and that gives us a very considerable measure of control. ”

“ Carter asked. "I don't know anything at all about these Aliens."
"Can't you use your mental training to help you learn to talk mind to mind?"
"I suppose so. That shouldn't take more than a few days. The techniques are well established with other new races we've encountered. But learning his language won't make him answer."
I looked at him with my most superior manner. "While you're learning his language, I suggest you learn some of his psychology. Then you can get some of our engineers to design you a machine that will function the way a polygraph does with humans—act as a lie detector. ”

“ I can't do that!' The boy's forehead was all wrinkled with his effort at thinking. 'Dad says that when you start in to giffling, you've got to carry through what you start.'
"'But it's my life you're giffling around with,' I protested. 'You don't have to worry. You can stay alive in the vacuum of space, or jump around without a ship, but I can't. Just leave me alone, why don't you? Just show me the way to go home and then leave me alone, like a good boy.'
"Jim shook his head. 'I'm just going to have to get help, sir,' he said.
"Mike and Aloysius both looked scared. ”

“ Like I said, a Delta class freighter can do almost anything. Beulah gave me the answer herself. If you've ever lived with an elephant, one thing becomes clear mighty fast. They're a mighty efficient machine for converting fodder into elephant droppings. So I made a bin on the opposite side of the compartment from Beulah, and let her gradually fill it while she ate me out of balance. ”

“ Most civilizations develop only as the result of struggle and bloodshed, with people killing people by the thousands and millions. I could have raised your people to the technological level where they are now in a few hundred years, if I hadn’t worried about killing. To do it the way it has been done—so that you can’t imagine why one human should kill another—has taken most of the time. ”

“ There must be hundreds of possible patterns—all of them destructive in the presence of greed and laziness and lust for power. For example, a planet—maybe this one—gets space travel. It sets up colonies on several worlds. It's expanding and dynamic. Then it finds an Oracle and takes it back to its own world. With all questions answered for it, the civilization stops being dynamic and starts to stagnate. ”

“ As you have said, there are more planets that belong to you than there are human beings on Earth. But there is a way for us to be reasonably sure that you will behave yourselves. You will transfer to us, at once, a hundred of your planet-destroying bombs. That will be a sufficient supply to let us test some of them, to see that they are in good working order. Then, if you try any kind of double-cross, we will be able to use our own methods—which you cannot prevent—to send one of those bombs here to destroy this planet. ”

“ Alien the First shrugged. "They make interesting toys," he said. "But, of course, they are useless crutches in building a civilization. They bring good prices when peddled for the amusement of our children and the shallower-minded adults."
"Listening to your remarks about our spaceships," I continued, "I presume all of you teleported here. We Earthmen may not be very good at Mind Control, but I think we have a good grasp of the principles, and I don't see how you could teleport without some sort of terminal device. ”

“ In the few seconds before the sphere would have blown, turning all of us into a fine grade of face powder, I had to find a star with a planet that would support human life, bring the ship down out of hyper-space with velocity matched closely enough so that I could land on the planet, and jettison the sphere that was going wild. ”

“ The food I carried would weigh the same as the elephant.
"I wondered how elephants would like weightlessness, so I took my Indian elephant up on a little jaunt around Earth's satellite. The Moon, they call it. Elephants don't like weightlessness at all." ”

“ Farnum jittered between bringing Bates back and taking off as fast as the ship could go. The body still lay there, motionless; there was nothing he could do for the Oracle's first Earth victim—the first and the last, he swore grimly. He had to speed home and make them understand the danger before they found another planet with an Oracle, so that they could keep clear of its deadly temptations. The Magellanic race could be outwitted yet, in spite of their lethal cleverness. ”

“ I'm Viceroy of one of the hundred Sectors of the Empire. I rule over a total of a hundred Satrapies; these average about a hundred Provinces each. Provinces consist, in general, of about a hundred Clusters apiece, and every Cluster has an average of a hundred inhabited solar systems. There are more inhabited planets in the Galaxy than there are people on your single world. I, personally, rule three hundred trillion people, half of them of my own race. And yet I tell you that it would be an equal partnership. ”