Raymond F. Jones

“ She looked out towards the fields, shimmering in the heat of the day.
"That's not true, Bonnie. You know it isn't. I've always loved you and needed you, and it's grown greater every hour we've been together."
"Then you'll have to prove it! Give up this hell-world you want us to call home, and give us back our Earth. If you love me, you can prove it."
"It's no test of love to make a man give up the goal that means his life to him. ”

“ You will not find many worlds on which we are unknown, and they call us the ones who serve. Even on your world you have the saying of a philosopher who taught that any who would be master should become the servant of all. Your people once understood it."
"Not as a literal undertaking," said Cameron. "You can't submerge your entire racial identity as you have done. That is not what the saying meant."
"To us it does," said Venor solemnly. "We would master the Universe—and therefore we must serve it. That is the core of the law of the Idealists." ”

“ We professional scientists are no strange species, alien to our race. Our only difference is perhaps that we undertake more problems than does the average of our fellow men, and of a more complex kind. That is all.
"The essence of our science is a relentless personal yearning to know and understand the Universe. And in that, the scientist must not be forbidden to ask whatever question occurs to him. The moment we put any restraint upon our fields of inquiry, or set bounds to the realms of our mental aspirations, our science ceases to exist and becomes a mere opportunist technology." ”

“ Sweat burst anew from every pore. Blindly, he pressed the jet control and forced himself into space.
He arced a short distance along the curve of the ship and then forced himself down into contact with the hull. He clung by foot and hand magnetic pads, sick with nausea and vertigo.
He had believed that by clinging to the outside of the hull he could escape detection and endure the flight back to Earth. In his sickness of body and mind the whole plan now looked like utter folly. He retched and closed his eyes and lay on the hull through the beginning of an eternity. ”

“ Terry said quietly, "See why I'm an archeologist?"
"I think I do—almost," Underwood answered.
The gemlike structure beneath their feet glistened like polished ebony. It caught the distant stars in its thousand facets and cast them until it gleamed as if with infinite lights of its own.
The workmen, too, were caught in its spell, for they stood silently contemplating the mystery of a people who had created such beauty. ”

“ They are attacking Earthmen and seek to drive you from this planet. If they can be subdued quickly, the rebellion may end. If not, we are doomed, and all Earth with us."
The silence was charged, then a dozen men leaped up at once. "Show us where they are. We'll kill the dirty—"
"You are fighting men, not a mob," Alayna warned. "Ready your lances and follow me."
Swiftly, like a wraith of light she ran from the dais to the doorway where Roal and Shorty waited. "Here are your men, a hundred and more. I'll show you the chamber of the Thousand Minds." ”

“ Professor Maddox looked away. "You give me too much credit, Son."
Ken continued to look at his father, at the thick notebook whose scrawled symbols told the story. So this is the way it happens, he thought. You don't set out to be a great scientist at all. If you can put all other things out of your mind, if you can be absorbed with your whole mind and soul in a problem that seems important enough, even though the world is collapsing about your head; then, if you are clever enough and persevering enough, you may find yourself a great scientist without ever having tried. ”

“ But do you know what happens to an adult human being when the program on which his entire life is patterned is destroyed?"
Fenwick shook his head. "What is it like?"
"It's like it was in the beginning, in that moment of first awareness of the external universe. He is aware of the universe, but has no understanding of it. Previous understanding—or what he thought was understanding—has been invalidated, destroyed. The drive to keep living, that was present in that first moment of awareness, has weakened. The strongest impulse is to escape the terror that follows awareness without understanding. ”

“ Mary was looking out the kitchen window toward the thin crescent of moon that was setting over the city. She thought of Allan, who would soon be voyaging to that alien world. "It's like a trap up there in the sky. We should never have tried to reach it."
"No—it's not like that at all," said Jim vigorously. "We'll solve whatever problems we find there. But think of it! We don't have to build a ship capable of crossing billions of light years of space to see what's out there. Something from out there has come to us and parked right in our own front yard. ”

“ Mark Jorden put his arm about her as if to force away her grief.
"I know, Bonnie," said Ashby softly. "I can see in your face what's happened to you. It's going to be all right. Everything doesn't end for you when the test is over."
"Oh, shut up!" said Bonnie in a sudden rage that made her tears come faster. "If I ever work on another of your damned experiments it will be when I've lost my senses entirely! You don't know what this does to people. ”

“ Cameron said with sudden intensity. "You have teleportation—and how many other unknown psychic powers? You have forced us to believe you can tame such a vicious world as the Markovian Nucleus once was.
"But where is there a life of your own? With all your powers you must live at the whim of other cultures. Where is your culture? Where is your own purpose? In spite of all you have, your life is a parasitical one."
Venor smiled gently. "Is not the parent—or the teacher—the servant of the child?" he said. "Has it not always been so if a species is to rise very far in its conquest of the Universe? ”

“ For a moment, George felt a sense of pity for the alien technician. He saw the reason for the irritable truculence Sleth Forander had displayed at first. His deep, blind admiration for Earthmen had made it necessary to build a wall against them. Now that wall was down. George almost regretted what he had to say.
"You don't go forward by walking backwards," he said slowly. The Ragalian stood motionless as if struck by a blow. ”

“ Trained in the precise methods of the physical sciences, he had long fought against the fascination of the immense puzzles which the archeologists were trying to solve, but no man could long escape. In the quiet, starlit blackness there rang the ancient memories of a planet vibrant with life, a planet of strange tongues and unknown songs—a planet that had died so violently that space was yet strewn with its remains—so violently that somewhere the echo of its death explosion must yet ring in the far vaults of space. ”

“ We are using space flight for the boring, the trivial, the stupid; using genius for a toy, like a child banging an atomic watch on the floor. It happened with all our great discoveries and inventions: the gasoline engine, the telephone, the wireless. We've built civilizations of monumental stupidity on the wonders of nature. ”

“ Ken exclaimed with a burst of feeling. "It shows what ignorance of something new and strange can do. One feebleminded, old woman can infect a whole crowd with her crazy superstitions, just because they don't know any more about this thing than she does!"
"It's more than that," said Maria quietly. "It's the feeling that people have always had about the world they find themselves in. It doesn't matter how much you know about the ocean and the winds and the tides, there is always a feeling of wonder and fear when you stand on the shore and watch enormous waves pounding the rocks. ”

“ He ran behind her, letting her remain far enough in the lead so that she was like an elusive, darting dream inspiring the cursing spacemen who roared out of the tavern room in a surging tide. Most of them were in poor shape as fighting men, Roal knew. Their minds were sodden with drink and some with harmeena, perhaps. But each represented a gun that could be turned against the Thousand Minds. ”

“ Remember how your men fell one by one, and their weapons went cold and the force shell dropped for lack of control? Remember, Demarzule, it was the Dragbora you fought that day, and it is the Dragbora you fight now. I have not come to challenge as a puny Earthman. I come as a Dragboran—to complete the unfinished task of my ancestors!"
The Sirenian was silent and new confidence filled Underwood. He felt that he was not fighting alone, that all of the ancient Dragboran civilization was behind him, battling its age-old enemies to extinction. He felt as if Jandro himself were there. ”

“ I had hoped to study the history and ways of the Markovians. As Sal Karone has told me, they don't want strangers to make such a study. You are perhaps not so unwilling to be known—?"
"We wish the entire Universe might know of us and be as we are."
"You hardly make that possible, subjugating your identity so completely to that of another race. The worlds will never know of you unless you become strong and unified as a people and obtain a name of your own."
"Our name is known," said Venor. "We are the Idealists. ”

“ The choice is not one which a new world is invited to make; the choice is made for it. A world which begins to send its ships through space becomes a member of the Council, or its ships cease to travel. The world itself may cease to exist."
"You mean this dictatorial Council determines whether a world is fit to survive and actually wipes out those it decides against?" gasped Mel in horror. "They set themselves up as judges in the Universe?"
"That's about the way they operate, to put it bluntly," said Connemorra. ”

“ Almost without exception it is filled with great suns that are flaming, atomic furnaces, or dead cinders of planets to which a scrap of poisonous atmosphere may cling. Yes, it is indeed a great miracle that here in this corner of the universe conditions exist where living things have found a foothold. We may be glad that this is so, but it does not pay man to ever forget the fierceness of the home in which he lives. Earth is merely one room of that home, on the pleasant, sunny side of the house. But the whole universe is his home."
"That's the thing I've been trying to say," Ken answered. ”

“ Yet why should a man live except for happiness? Someone like Alayna could be happiness for him, he thought. The Queen of the Silver Stars could be happiness.
He dragged his mind abruptly out of the dream world of Alayna's song. He was Captain Roal Hartford of the Solar Bureau of Investigation. His world was the world of dope peddlers, thieves, and murderers that infested the starways. He was a little cog in a great machine and he knew that he had to keep going to keep the machine from breaking down. It wouldn't do for him to wonder why the machine should be kept running at all. ”

“ Still more than a score of them to defeat the single crippled laboratory ship, more than he could hope to conquer in time.
But they did not fire. Their shields remained intact; then slowly their courses changed and they drifted away. Without comprehension, Underwood peered into those hulls and knew the answer.
The news had come to them of Demarzule's death. Like men in pursuit of a mirage, they could not endure the reality that came with the vanishing of their dream. ”

“ It was his father's expression and his words in the laboratory the night before.
Ken recognized that he had never doubted for an instant that scientists and their tools were wholly adequate to solve this problem in a reasonable time. He had been aware there would be great hardships, but he had never doubted there would be an end to that time. He had believed his father, as a scientist, had the same faith.
It was a staggering shock to learn that his father had no faith in science; a shock to be told that science was not a thing that warranted a man's faith. ”

“ Do not try to find out the hidden things of the Masters. That is what you have come for, is it not, Cameron Wilder? That is why you have taken so much trouble to learn the language which we speak. I say do not inquire of the things about which they do not wish to speak. My Masters are a people who cannot yet be understood by the men of other worlds. In time there will be understanding, but that time is not yet. You will only bring disaster and disappointment upon us and yourselves by attempting to hasten that time. ”

“ Suddenly there was a faltering and Underwood exulted within himself. Demarzule's force wavered for the barest fraction of an instant, and it was not a feint.
"You are old and weak," said Underwood. "Half a million years ago, civilization rejected you. We reject you!"
He smashed on almost without hindrance now. Demarzule's great form writhed in pain upon the throne—and fought with one desperate surge of energy.
Underwood caught and hurled it back mercilessly. He felt his way into the innermost recesses of the Sirenian mind, groped along the nerve ways of the Great One. ”