Randall Garrett

“ Senesin, I no more want war than you do. I am trying to avoid it with every power at my command. I have that duty to my people. But I have another duty, too. A duty, not just to the Empire, but to the human race as a whole. And that duty is to establish, not a Terran Empire, but a Galactic Empire—a single, consolidated government for every planet in the galaxy. Man can't go on this way, divided, split up, warring with himself. Man can't live in isolation, cut off from other worlds, other types of societies. ”

“ The inside of the building, his immediate surroundings, looked almost homey after seeing that monstrous, endless city outside.
He skirted the table with its still-humming machine and walked toward the door that led to the other room. A picture hanging on a nearby wall caught his eye, and he stopped. It was a portrait of a man in unfamiliar, outlandish clothing, but Broom had seen odder clothing in his travels. But the thing that had stopped him was the amazing reality of the picture. It was almost as if there were a mirror there, reflecting the face of a man who stood invisibly before it. ”

“ And yet the Nipe had taken that door out in a second, without much effort at all.
The crowd that had gathered at the scene of the crime had not been large. The very thought of the Nipe kept people away from places where he was known to have been. The specter of the Nipe evoked a fear, a primitive fear—fear of the dark and fear of the unknown, combined with the rational fear of a very real, very tangible danger.
And yet, there had been a crowd of onlookers. In spite of their fear, it is hard to keep human beings from being curious. ”

“ Nowhere in the minds of any of the personnel of the Redford Project was there any conscious knowledge of sabotage. Not even in the mind of Konrad Bern.
Dr. Roger Kent, a tall, lantern-jawed sad-eyed man in his forties, had been hard to get through to at first, but as soon as MacHeath discovered that the hard block Kent had built up around himself was caused by grief over a wife who had been dead five years, he became as easy to read as a billboard. Kent had submerged his grief in work; the eternal drive of the true scientist to drag the truth out of Mother Nature. ”

“ If you don’t want a bomb to explode, but the only way to destroy that bomb is by blowing it up with another bomb of equal power, where is the gain?
And if the total mental power required to move a planet is greater than any single human mind can endure—or even greater than the total mental endurance of a thousand planetsfull of minds, is there any gain?
There is not, and can never be, a system without limits, and the human mind is a system which obeys that law.
None the less, Spencer Candron kept his mind on flight, on repulsion, on movement, as long as he could. ”

“ Exhausted, Jon leaned against the Tower to support himself, and shook his head. "Why did you save me? The Tower was yours. Why?"
"I think I understand," the Wild One said slowly. He threw his sword to the ground. "It is something I have long thought of. We fight you because we hate you—because we envy your free life. You have something to fight for, in this Tower. I—I want to join you. I want to join the Free People!"
Jon smiled. "You're welcome to come to our village with me," he said. "We believe in freedom—the way the Old Ones did." ”

“ Damn the megalomaniacs, anyway! Houston subconsciously tightened his fists. He, personally, had more to fear from the Normals than from another Controller. Normals could kill or imprison him, while a Controller would have a hard time doing either, directly.
But Houston could understand the Normal man; he could see how fear of a Controller could drive a man without the ability into a frenzied panic. He could understand, even forgive their actions, born and bred in ignorance and fear. ”

“ Having walked all the way down to this box on Fifty-sixth Street, Malone had recovered his former sensitivity range to temperature and felt pathetically grateful for the coolish sea breeze that made New York somewhat less of an unbearable Summer Festival than was normal.
The lobby of the building was glittering and polished, as if human beings could not possibly exist in it. Malone took an elevator to the sixth floor, stepped out into a small, equally polished hall, and hurriedly looked off to his right. ”

“ Nikki said bitingly.
"Hoho!" the fat man laughed hugely. "You improve, my dear, really you do. Yes, indeed she was. And when she married Dr. Varden, she married a man who was already a millionaire several times over. He was not only capable of doing basic research into the laws of the universe, but of capitalizing on them. He was one of those truly rare persons, the all-around genius. It was as if Newton had been able to invent and use an antigravity device, or if Einstein had perfected the atomic bomb and sold it to the United States Government." ”

“ Freedom to work until you are no longer of any use to them, and then be turned out to die—with no home, and no food to support you. Freedom to live by yourselves, with every man's hand against you, with every pittance that you earn taxed to support a government that has no thought for the individual! ”

“ The intercom was gone, too, along with the air conditioners, the lights, and half a dozen other sub-circuits.
Mike the Angel scrambled out of bed and felt for his clothing, wishing he had something as prosaic as an old-fashioned match, or even a flame-type cigarette lighter. He found his lighter in his belt pocket as he pulled on his uniform. He jerked it out and thumbed it. In the utter darkness, the orange-red glow gave more illumination than he had supposed. If a man’s eyes are adjusted to darkness, he can read print by the glow of a cigarette, and the lighter’s glow was brighter than that. ”

“ Colonel Sebastian MacMaine had been born and reared in that society. He could see many of its faults, but he didn't have the orientation to see all of them. As he'd grown older, he'd seen that, regardless of the position a man held according to seniority, a smart man could exercise more power than those above him if he did it carefully.
A man is a slave if he is held rigidly in a pattern and not permitted to step out of that pattern. In ancient times, a slave was born at the bottom of the social ladder, and he remained there all his life. ”

“ Jim threw a wild, wobbly punch at the man, and then the other four moved in on him. He fought back blindly for a few moments, but then a fist raked across his jaw, another smashed into his stomach, and the gun descended a second time. It caught him on the side of the head, and he sagged to the floor.
The thick padding was the last thing he felt before he blacked out.
The pain of awakening was worse than the pain of the blow. Jim's head throbbed as though there were a motorcycle engine inside it. ”

“ Sir Gaeton looked at him with a smile that held both irony and respect. "In truth, sir knight, it is apparent that you fear neither men nor heat. Nor is your own blood too cool. True, I ride with your Normans and your English and your King Richard of the Lion's Heart, but I am a Gascon, and have sworn no fealty to him. But to side with the Duke of Burgundy against King Richard—" He gave a short, barking laugh. "I fear no man," he went on, "but if I had to fear one, it would be Richard of England."
Sir Robert's voice came like a sword: steely, flat, cold, and sharp. ”

“ INSANITY IS a retreat from reality, an escape within the mind from the reality outside the mind. But what if there is no detectable reality outside the mind? What is there to escape from? Suicide—death in any form—is an escape from life. ”

“ Imagine a race with a perfect memory—a memory that never fades. A memory in which each bit of data is as bright and as fresh as the moment it was imprinted, and as readily available as the data stored in a robot's mind. ”

“ Somewhere in the black galactic depths of Malone's mind, a very small hot star gulped, took a deep breath and became a supernova.
The light was tremendous! It shed beams over everything, beams of a positively supernal brilliance. And in the all-pervasive brightness of that single inner light, bits of data began to fall into place with all the precision of aerial bombs, each falling neatly and exactly into its own little predetermined bomb crater. ”

“ My boy, please keep it in mind that four years of undergraduate work does not qualify one as a mathematician. It is merely the first stepping stone on the way. You have a great deal of studying yet to do, a great many books yet to read and absorb—books, I may say, written by men older, wiser, and more learned than yourself.
Please don't waste your time with such frivolous nonsense as toying with symbols derived from wine barrels. No good can come out of a wine barrel, my boy. ”

“ This is their universe!
"Of course, these men proclaim to all the world that they are perfectly willing to change their axioms. And the better a scientist he is, the more he believes, in his heart-of-hearts, that he really would change. He really thinks, consciously, that he wants others to test his theories.
"But notice: A theory is only good if it explains all known phenomena in its field. If it does, then the only thing that can topple it is a new fact. The only thing that can threaten the complex structure formulated by a really creative, painstaking, mathematical physicist is experiment!" ”

“ Night had fallen—the night whose end would bring the death of Galth of Rastol and of a thousand innocent, unsuspecting colonists.
Stone stared at the polychrome hues of the sunset for a long minute, clenched his fists, and made his decision; there was only one thing to do.
He strolled quietly around the spaceport, looking for a way out. There were none which were unguarded; Earth didn't like unwanted or unauthorized colonists sneaking in on them. ”

“ Forsythe, on the other hand, tried to put on a front for others, and, in doing so, had managed to delude himself pretty thoroughly.
Taggert's humor was not malicious; he was not laughing at them. He was admiring the skill of the human mind in tying itself in knots. When one watches a clever contortionist going through his paces, one doesn't laugh at the contortionist; one admires and enjoys the weird twists he can get himself into. And, like Taggert, one can only feel sympathy for one whose knots have become so devious and intricate that he can never extricate himself. ”

“ Dodeth ignored the traffic altogether. He had other things to think about, and he knew—without even bothering to consider it—that Ardan could be relied upon to take care of everything. Even if it cost him his own pseudolife, Ardan would do everything in his power to preserve the safety and health of his passenger. Once in a while, in unusual circumstances, a robot would even disobey orders to save a life, for obedience was strictly secondary to the sanctity of human life, just as the robot's desire to preserve his own pseudoliving existence was outranked by the desire to obey. ”

“ Ghuvek paced angrily around the seated Earthman without speaking.
"All right," he said finally. "Shut the machine off. Obviously, the Earthman's brain just does not respond." There was anger and more than a touch of surprise in his voice. "Take the brainprobe away."
"Yes, Sire."
Ghuvek's eyes grew hard. "There are, however, older and cruder ways. What do you say to torture, eh, Earthman?"
"I'm not much in favor of it," said Marten. "I can't say I care for the idea at all."
"Good," Ghuvek said. "Yknor, prepare the torture!"
No human being likes physical torture. ”

“ We must win! None of you want to become slaves in the factories of the Invaders. I know that, and you know it. Who among you would slave your life away in the sweatshops of the Invaders, knowing that those for whom you worked might, at any time, simply deprive you of your livelihood at their own whim, since they feel no sense of responsibility toward you as individuals? ”

“ Miss Jaqueline Ravenhurst evidently had no desire to talk to me at the moment.
On Ceres, as on most of the major planetoids, a man's home is his castle, even if it's only a hotel room. Raw nickel-iron, the basic building material, is so cheap that walls and doors are seldom made of anything else, so a hotel room is more like a vault than anything else on Earth. Every time I go into one of the hotels on Ceres or Eros, I get the feeling that I'm either a bundle of gold certificates or a particularly obstreperous prisoner being led to a medieval solitary confinement cell. ”

“ For the first time, Malone felt the chill of panic. Here, he thought, was insanity of a very real and frightening kind. Queen Elizabeth Thompson was one thing—and she was almost funny, and likable, after all. But William Logan was something else, and something that sent a wave of cold shivering into the room.
What made it worse was that Logan wasn't a man, but a boy, barely nineteen. Malone had known that, of course—but seeing it was something different. The lanky, awkward figure wrapped in a hospital strait jacket was horrible, and the smooth, unconcerned face was, somehow, worse. ”

“ The blueskin led him down the twisting byways of Mars City, through heaps of filth and dark alleys. Mars was an old planet, cold and arid; its cities were thousands of years old, its people well skilled in the arts of evil. It wasn't the sort of planet an Earthman liked to stay on for long.
Kendall scowled. The way it looked, he'd be here longer than he was counting on. Hell, it would cost fifty dollars just to radio Earth and tell Kathy what had happened. ”

“ Parmay pushed Tallen aside and headed for the communicator.
The news hit Earth like a slug in the teeth. For the second time in half a millennium the human race was brought face to face with the fact that it was not the only intelligence in the galaxy, much less in the whole universe.
The instant the news came, a fleet of armed ships was given its orders, and within six hours they were squirting through hyperspace toward Therbis. ”

“ At last the Nipe came to another of the many places where the tunnels met with others of the network. He crossed through several rooms, all very large and cluttered with the dusty, long-dead bones of hundreds of the local intelligent life-form—if (and he was not sure in his own mind of this) they could actually be called intelligent. But he moved carefully, stepping over the human bones and the empty, staring skulls. They had apparently been properly devoured, although he could not be sure whether it had been done by their own kind or by the little quadrupeds. ”

“ War on any scale was outlawed, along with boom-and-bust economic cycles, and prudery—no change was more startling than the face of New York, where, for instance, the Empire State Building became the Tower of Zeus!
In this totally altered world, William Forrester was an acolyte of Athena, Goddess of Wisdom, and therefore a teacher, in this case of a totally altered history—and Maya Wilson, girl student, evidently had a totally altered way of grading in mind—but what else would a worshipper of Venus, Goddess of Love, have in mind? ”

“ Sir Gaeton de l'Arc-Tombé sat tall and straight in his saddle, his visor up, his blue eyes narrowed against the glare of the sun.
Sir Robert's lips formed a smile. "They are not far off, Sir Gaeton. They have been following us. As we march parallel to the seacoast, so they have been marching with us in those hills to the east."
"Like the jackals they are," said Sir Gaeton. "They assail us from the rear, and they set up traps in our path ahead. Our spies tell us that the Turks lie ahead of us in countless numbers. And yet, they fear to face us in open battle." ”

“ Sand said without raising his eyes, "is a nice, painless way to commit suicide."
Malone walked several blocks without noticing where he was going. He tried to think things over, and everything seemed to fall into a pattern that remained, agonizingly, just an inch or so out of his mental reach. The mental bursts, the trouble the United States was having, Palveri, Queen Elizabeth, Burris, Mike Sand, Dr. O'Connor, Sir Lewis Carter and even Luba Ardanko juggled and flowed in his mind like pieces out of a kaleidoscope. ”

“ But the Space Service does fight, in its own way. It fights the airlessness of space and the unfriendly atmospheres of exotic planets, using machines, intelligence, knowledge, and human courage as its weapons. Some battles have been lost; others have been won. And the war is still going on. It is an unending war, one which has no victory in sight.
It is, as far as we can tell, the only war in human history in which Mankind is fully justified as the invading aggressor. ”

“ And when the pressure of nothingness becomes too great to bear, it becomes necessary to escape; a man under great enough pressure will take the easy way out. But if there is no easy way? Why, then a man must take the hard way.
For Paul Wendell, there was no escape from his dark, senseless Gehenna by way of death, and even insanity offered no retreat; insanity in itself is senseless, and senselessness was what he was trying to flee. The only insanity possible was the psychosis of regression, a fleeing into the past, into the crystallized, unchanging world of memory. ”

“ He stopped as another memory came back. He remembered being in the stone-walled dungeon, with its smelly straw beds, lit only by the faint shaft of sunlight that came from the barred window high overhead.
Contarini, the short, wiry little Italian who was in the next cell, looked at him through the narrow opening. "I still think it can be done, my friend. It is the mind and the mind alone that sees the flow of time. The body experiences, but does not see. Only the soul is capable of knowing eternity."
Broom outranked the little Italian, but prison can make brothers of all men. ”

“ In one blazing moment, Houston realized that the Controller was telling the truth!
No mental communication can be expressed properly in words. In, behind, and around each statement, other, dimmer nuances of thought gleam through. Each thought tells the receiver much more than can be put down in crude verbal symbols.
Thus, Houston already knew that Lasser, Sager, and Pederson were the three top men in a world-wide clique of megalomaniac Controllers. ”

“ Jon whirled and leaped forward for the battle, just as he saw Len fall to the giant's sword.
"Give back! Give back!" someone yelled. "They're beating us!"
They're not beating me, Jon thought fiercely, as he laid open his opponent's arm with a savage slash and followed immediately with a quick swipe that ripped open the Wild One's throat.
Breathing hard, now, Jon turned to look for his next opponent. He had but one thought: the Tower must be defended. The Tower was sacred to the Free People; the Tower must be defended. ”

“ To a human being, the cold expanse of water that gleamed like ink in the light of the Nipe's illuminator would have been a barricade as impenetrable as steel. But to the Nipe the tidal pool was simply another of his defenses, for it concealed the only entrance he ever used. He went in after adjusting his scuba mask and began swimming toward the opening that led to the estuary of the sea, his eight strong limbs working in unison in a way that would have been the envy of a rowing team. ”

“ Malone began to feel as if he were involved in the Athanasian Creed. "I don't think the spies are the real spies," he said stubbornly. "I mean the spies we're all looking for."
"Do you mean to stand there and tell me," Burris went on inexorably, "that you take the word of spies when they tell you about their own activities?"
"Their confessions—"
"Spies can lie, Malone," Burris said gently. "As a matter of fact, they usually do. We have come to depend on it as one of the facts of life." ”

“ Poseidon/Neptune had come in more briskly, smelling of fish, his skin pale green and glistening wet, his fingers and toes webbed and his eyes bulging and wide. Phoebus Apollo had strolled in, looking authentically like a Greek God, face and figure unbelievably perfect, and a pleased, stupid smile spread all over his countenance. Hermes/Mercury, slim and wily, with a foxy face and quick movements, had slipped in silently. And all the others had been there, too. Mars looked grim, but when Forrester was formally proposed for Godhood, Mars made no objection. ”

“ One important event in every ten centuries of Nipe history would still give a Nipe historian ten thousand events to remember just since the invention of the steam engine. What, then, does Nipe history become? A series of folk chants, of chansons de geste."
"Why?" Stanton asked. "If they have perfect memories, why would histories be distorted?"
"Time, my dear boy. Time." Yoritomo spread his hands in a gesture of futility. "When one has a few million years of history to learn, it must become distorted, even in a race with a perfect memory. ”

“ The Autumn Bacchanal was devoted to the celebration of the harvest, and more specifically the harvest and processing of the grape. All the wineries for hundreds of miles around had shipped hogshead after hogshead and barrel after barrel of fine wine—red, white, rose, still, or sparkling—as joyous sacrifice to Dionysus/Bacchus, and in thanks that the fertility rites of the Vernal Bacchanal had brought them good crops. Wine flowed from everywhere into the city, and now the immense reserves were stacked away, awaiting the revels. ”

“ Once the Nipe had been conquered, what purpose would there be in the life of Bartholomew Stanton? He was surrounded by people, but he was not one of them. He was immersed in a society that was not his own because it was not, could not be, geared to his abilities and potentials. But there was no other society to turn to, either.
He was not a man "alone, afraid" in a world he had never made. He was a man who had been made for a world, a society, that did not exist.
Women? A wife? A family life? ”

“ Mannheim thought rapidly. Whatever the Nipe was up to, it wouldn't include planting a bomb or anything that might kill anyone accidentally. If there was a life in danger, it was his own, and the danger would come from the Nipe's hands, not from any device or weapon.
He was thankful that it was Captain Greer up in that tower, not an ordinary guard who would have fired the instant he saw the alien through the infra-red-transparent walls. Even so, he knew that the captain's fingers must be tightening on those triggers. No human being could do otherwise with that monster in his sights. ”