Stephen Bartholomew

“ Edwin poked the other in the chest. "I assume you know what will happen to Society if the Textile Industry becomes economically unstable?"
"Well, yes sir, but...."
"Then I assume you realize that the Board of Directors will stop at nothing to preserve the status quo! And since you happen to be our chief industrial chemist, the entire problem lands in your lap! Now, we want to know how to make an all-weather suit, and we want to know fast. Therefore, Charles, you're going to tell us how to do it! Understand?" ”

“ The young man, already sweating, looked in desperation at the green crystal vase that Martin Devere insisted on holding in front of the television lens. (Back at the Institute, a dozen faces were flushing red with indignation as their owners realized what the old man had been holding back.)
"Tell me, Dr. Devere," the young man asked. "You seem—er—a very modest man. Doesn't it make you the least bit proud to know that you've saved the world?"
Martin Devere lowered his vase and gave the young man a puzzled look. ”

“ He said one thing that I had never forgotten.
"Do you know why we are ahead of you in space?" he had said, staring with dignity at the tall blonde at a nearby table. "It is because of your bourgeois sentimentality. You do not like risking men. You build a skyscraper in New York to house some insurance company. Two or three construction workers are maimed or killed on the job. One of your coal mines collapses and fifty men are trapped. Yet, look. You are afraid of losing men in space because of what the people at home might think. So you are too conservative, you avoid risks. ”

“ The sight had given the rescue pilot a peculiar feeling, he mentioned later, seeing this blue-white star slowly growing in the sky until it was brighter than Venus, seeing this new star rise, a point of white fire, and knowing the star was a man.
Then they had suited up and blown the cabin pressure. The co-pilot had gone out the hatch while the pilot remained at his controls. Watching through the periscope, he could see Duport spread-eagled against the sky, the left side of his body a glare of sunlight, the right side in shadow. ”

“ Edwin sat down again, folded his arms on the desk, and scowled. "That's where you come in! The IBM informs us that there is only one possible way to stabilize our economy, to raise our profit margin to its former level—and that is by further standardization!"
Charles raised his eyebrows. "You mean a sexless wardrobe, sir? That's been tried...."
"No, that's not what I mean!" Edwin snapped. "What I mean is an all-weather suit!" ”

“ Martin Devere turned the vase slowly in his hands.
"Not for a while yet, Pop." The man with the gun on his hip got to his feet and stretched.
"I don't mind telling you what it's all about, Pop. You're all right. It's simple. My partner and I were sent here by a certain national power that doesn't like being told how to run its own affairs by the United Governments. We're striking the first blow for Freedom. That thing we're putting together out there is a bomb. It could—disable—most of Earth. ”

“ Joseph Partch's world was made up of sounds and noises, he decided. Dimly, he wondered of what civilization itself would be constructed if all the sounds were once taken away. Why, after all, was the world of Man so noisy? It was almost as if—as if everybody were making as much noise as they could to conceal the fact that there was something lacking. ”

“ I put the letter aside and wondered what else I could do to kill time. I got out some of the film plates I'd made of the surface of Mars. Of course I had transmitted them all to Lunar Base, but it would have been nice if I could have delivered the original plates. I studied them for a while but didn't find anything I hadn't seen before. Well, I had done my job at least. I had orbited Mars, I had the glory of being the first American to do that. I had dropped the instrument package and transmitted all the data I could get back to Lunar. My only failure would be in not bringing back the ship. ”

“ He stared at his cold blue eyes.
At last Duport said, "Once the research station really gets going, the results should be magnificent, sir."
The American moved away. "Yes, but don't be naive, Duport. Don't believe what you read in the papers. The real reason for the station—the reason for the U.N. Space Corps—is practical politics. If the Corps didn't exist, the U.S. and Russia would go to the Moon separately. And neither side would tell the other what they were doing there. A joint effort is the only way to make sure that nobody plants missiles up there. ”

“ Wait. You have a specific problem to solve. The problem being how to stop that leak in the hull long enough to get home alive. It was a problem of basic survival. I was confident. I knew that if any possible solution to my predicament existed I would find it. I was my own data computer now, but with eyes and ears and imagination. I opened my senses again and concentrated on the flood of information coming at me from the instrument panel. ”

“ Everyone on Earth who reads popular magazines or watches TV knows the story of Martin Devere, "The Hermit of Mars." Over the years, now that he is dead, he has become a sort of culture hero, as Dr. Livingston or Albert Schweitzer once were. Though Martin Devere could not be called a humanitarian in any sense of the word. After his divorce from his first and only wife, at the age of 45, he never gave much thought again either to women or any other kind of people—except for his long-dead Martians. ”

“ The American pilot had not moved from his place since lift-off. Outside, it had begun to rain.
At last, the critical moment came.
"Range is now five hundred kilometers and closing," the voice said. "I now have a visual sight. Repeat. I have a visual sight. I can see him. Switching from computer to manual control." Several minutes of silence. The pilot was jockeying closer to Duport, making delicate adjustments in his ship's orbital path. He had a small target. A single wrong judgement could cause him to drift hundreds of kilometers off course, wasting a critical amount of fuel. ”

“ Charles was absently aware that the female standard of beauty had been exemplified by a woman named Marilyn, and that the masculine standard had been represented in someone named Marlon.
So, gradually, all of the new female stars that were selected by Hollywood resembled Marilyn as much as possible, and male leads were selected to look like Marlon. If anyone had a nose that wasn't quite right, or large ears, a little plastic surgery quickly remedied the problem, and if a female starlet happened to have brown hair, peroxide was always handy. ”

“ But everyone should know by now how Martin Devere first came to Mars at the age of 50. Even then he was the oldest man on the planet, and Mars sustained quite a large research colony at the time. Only Martin Devere's unchallenged scientific reputation, together with his apparent good health, enabled him to leave Earth as head of a five-man archeological team. This turned up the first fossil ruins far beneath the desert sand.
Then there came a day when the Space Institute of the United Governments decided to abandon Project Mars. It was getting too expensive to maintain. ”

“ And some firms had partially solved the problem by using personnel that were totally deaf, because such persons were the only ones who could stand the terrific noise levels that a technological civilization forced everyone to endure. The noise from a commercial rocket motor on the ground had been known to drive men mad, and sometimes kill them. ”

“ The tall man frowned in confusion and blinked at the weapon in his hand. Then he stared at the transparent dome above him, as if realizing for the first time that only a thin bubble of plastic separated him from near-vacuum, now that he had removed his suit.
"I was just making some coffee when you showed up," Martin Devere said, turning away. "Have some? I'm afraid it's instant. I've given up trying to get the Institute to send me a can of real coffee in the rocket. They think I need canned TV shows more."
"He's harmless," the bald man said. "You can see he's just an old senile nut. ”

“ So he knew that she would, embarrassingly, call Edwin to check up on him, but he didn't really care.
The real problem was the all-weather suit.
Charles put his small corps of assistants on the project, investigating several lines of thought at once. Every day, someone would drop around for a while to check on his progress, and he had no delusions about what would happen if he failed. The entire economic stability of his society depended on his coming up with an all-weather suit, and he began to have trouble sleeping nights. ”

“ As you are well aware, Duport, the research station is here, near the center of the Crater of Copernicus. The three trips so far by the Quixote have been sufficient to set up the dome and to land enough equipment to keep the colony independent for several months if necessary. So far, there aren't any men there. That's our job, the Prospero's. We're going to have five passengers with us, research scientists, I haven't met them yet. All I know about them is that one is American and one Russian. Our job is to get them into the station, alive, and then bring back the ship. ”

“ You are always ready for the Wild Chance, the impossible possibility. You expect the unexpected. You hope for the hopeless. Being sentimental, you have imagination."
His words came back to me. The unpredictable, the wild chance, the impossible possibility. That was all that could save me now. But what? Maybe another meteor would come along and plug the hole the first one had made. No. I had to think my way out of this one. But what if there was no way out?
I pushed myself to the aft bulkhead, turned and looked forward to the instrument panel. ”

“ If they'd had time to develop space travel they might have saved themselves. Then again, with a technology like yours, they might have blown themselves up long before the natural catastrophe ..."
"What do you mean like yours?" the tall man said. "You mean like ours, don't you?"
But Martin Devere turned away without answering.
"Do you have another bottle of bourbon, old man?"
"No, I'm afraid not," Devere said. "There was only that one bottle."
"Too bad. We should have a little celebration." The bald man began sealing himself into his spacesuit.
"I'll wait for you here," his partner said. ”

“ Of course the National Mental Health people said constant music had a beneficial effect on office workers, so Joseph was no one to object, even though he did wonder if anyone could ever actually listen to it over the other noise. ”

“ Charles replied, waiting.
"The fact of the matter is, we are in dire straits." Edwin stared at the other ominously. "As you well know, the Textile Industry, like every other business firm in the world, has functioned entirely without economic troubles of any sort for the past fifty years." ”

“ Bronson told me, "It isn't just a matter of I.Q. It increases the total level of consciousness. Ordinarily the human brain screens out thousands of irrelevant stimuli. You're not aware of your watch ticking, or the fly on the wall, or your own body odor. You just don't notice them. But under LRXD, the brain becomes aware of everything simultaneously. Nothing is screened out. Furthermore, the subject is capable of correlating everything. The human brain becomes as efficient as a Mark 60 computer, with the advantage of imagination and intuition. ”

“ You'll find conditions are rather primitive on the island, but you won't be here long. The ferryboat leaves in six days."
"Yes, sir."
The American was fascinated by Duport's eyes, their unnatural, bright glaze. The boy never seemed to blink. He yet stood at attention, looking down at the older man with unshifting eyes.
"Stand at ease, Duport. As long as you're early, we might as well start the briefing now." On an impulse, he went to the projection screen and touched a switch which flashed on a photomap of the lunar landing area. ”

“ We do know, for instance, that they never had much interest in technology. Not that they lacked intelligence. They could build a machine when it suited their purposes, whatever those may have been. And I don't say they weren't interested in science. They had a highly developed theoretical science, as sophisticated as their art. ”

“ Edwin said. "These are the sales charts for our six suits. As you know, we make three different types for marlons, and three for marilyns. Hot-weather, cold-weather, and medium-weather. Each suit is designed to last a carefully calculated length of time, and each consumer need only buy three suits a year. They are exactly alike except for slight size differences, and because of elastic fabrics these differences are held to a minimum. With this system the Textile Industry attained the ultimate in Standardization, the ultimate in efficiency."
Charles rubbed his chin thoughtfully. ”

“ And then he turned, and his eyes fell on Bob Wills' machine. It could reduce the noise level of a rocket motor by 25 per cent, Wills had said. Here in the office, the sound level was less than that of a rocket motor. ”

“ Then his voice faltered. "Don't you see? My God, what we have yet to learn about psi forces, psychokinesis.... There was nothing to prevent all the air in your ship from leaking out through that pinhole, nothing except—you."
The general leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, looking out into the gathering darkness.
"We've got to find out what this drug does," he said.
"The space program ..." I began.
"Space program?" He pulled on his cigarette. "Hell. What are rockets, compared to this?" ”

“ All trace of senility had vanished as suddenly as it had appeared. "Like, say, if you were out there long enough for your suit power to go dead. You'd freeze to a hunk of ice in a few minutes.... Me, I never go outside at night."
"Shut up," the bald man said.
All day the bald man had been out alone, working on his electronic circuits. Evidently this left his partner nothing to do except study schematics.
Now Martin Devere was aware that his guest had been staring at him for several minutes without speaking. Martin Devere went on polishing the green crystal vase he held in his hand. ”

“ Then they were in the ferry ship, waiting for the engineers to finish inspecting the Prospero before casting off and going into a re-entry spiral, towards the Pacific landing area. Meanwhile, the medic had finished his preliminary physical of each of the crew. Most of the men rested quietly, reading newspapers and waiting. The American pilot had strapped himself to one of the crash couches and taken a short nap. Then he got up to look through a periscope at the three engineers working near the Prospero's power tank. ”