Jim Harmon

“ The dog came to him when it wanted somebody to own it, protect it, feed it, love it. These aliens want Earthmen to colonize the planet. We came here, you see, same as the dog came to Nagurski."
"Well, I've learned one thing from all of this," Quade said. "I've been a blind, arrogant, cocksure fool, following courses that were good on some worlds, most worlds, but not good on all worlds. I'm never going to be that foolhardy again."
"But you're losing confidence, Quade! You aren't sure of yourself any more. Isn't confidence a spaceman's most valuable asset?" ”

“ We can take off in a reasonable facsimile of a spaceship."
"Not," he persisted, "if too many parts are missing."
"Nagurski, if you are looking for a job safer than space exploration, why don't you go back to testing cosmic bomb shelters?"
Nagurski flushed. "Look here, Captain, you are being too damned cautious. There is a way one handles the survey of a planet like this, and this isn't the way."
"It's my way. You heard what Quade said. You know it yourself. The men have to have something tangible to hang onto out there. One slender cable isn't enough of an edge on sensory anarchy. ”

“ Quade was as conversational as ever, though. "I can't see irregularities occurring in a gravitational field. We must have compensated for the transphasia while we still had a point of reference, the solid reality of the spaceship. But out here, where all we have to hang onto is each other, our concept of reality goes bang and deflates to a tired joke." ”

“ Why was Quade vulnerable in his spacesuit, as I knew from experience he would be?
How could we be less vulnerable, or preferably invulnerable?
"Captain, you got nothing to worry about," Quartermaster Farley said. He patted a space helmet paternally. "You got yourself a self-contained environment. The suit's eye looks into yours at the arteries in the back of your eyeball so it can read your amber corpuscles and feed you your oxygen in the right amounts; you're a bottle-fed baby. If transphasia gets you seeing limburger, turn on the radar and you're air-conditioned as an igloo. ”

“ We can turn up or block out sound. We can use radar to extend our sight, but the Space Service hasn't yet developed anything to make spacemen taste or smell better."
"They are going to smell like a herd of winos," Farley said. "I don't like to think how they would taste."
"It's an entirely practical idea. Tea-tasters used to drink almond-and-barley water to sharpen their senses. I've observed that wine helps you appreciate culinary art more. Considering the mixed-up sensory data under transphasia, wine may help us to see where we are going." ”

“ You have to meet and fight a planet on its own terms. Fighting confused sounds and tastes with music and wine was crude, but it was on the right track. Out there, we understood language because we were familiar with alien languages changed to other sense mediums by cybernetic translators. Using the translator, we can learn to recognize all confused data as easily. I'm starting indoctrination courses."
"I doubt that that is necessary, sir," Quade said. "Experienced spacemen are experienced with transphasia. ”

“ I yelped. "Everyone needs a partner out there. Send out a team to follow his cable and drag him in here by it."
"He didn't hook on a cable, Captain," Wallace said. "I suppose he intended to go beyond the three-mile limit as you demanded."
"Shut up, Wallace. You don't have to like me, but you can't twist what I said as long as I command this spacer."
"Cool off, Gav," Nagurski advised me. "It's been done before. Anybody else would have been a fool to go out alone, but Quade is the most experienced man we have. He knows transphasia. Trust him." ”

“ We go. You and me. I hope you can stand my company."
"I'm not sure I can," he answered reluctantly. "My hazard pay doesn't cover exploring with rookies. With all due respect, Captain."
I clapped him on the shoulder. "But, man, you have just been telling me all we had to worry about was common transphasia. A man with your experience could protect himself and cover even a rookie, under such familiar conditions—right?"
"Yes, sir, I suppose I could," Quade said, bitterly aware he had lost out somewhere and hoping that it wasn't the start of a trend. ”

“ Not only for humane reasons—he was the most important member of the crew. With him around, there were only two opinions, his and mine. Without him, I'd have endless opinions to contend with.
But it wouldn't do any good to go out no better equipped than he. There was no time to wait for tractors to be built if we wanted to reach him alive, and we certainly couldn't reach him five or ten miles out with our three miles of safety line. We would have to go in spacesuits.
But how would that leave us any better off than Quade? ”

“ Farley lugged Quade over on his back and read his gauges.
The Quartermaster rose with grim deliberation, and hiccuped. "Better get him back to the spaceship fast. I've seen this kind of thing before with transphasia. His body cooled down because of the screaming wind—psychosomatic reaction—and his heating circuits compensated for the cool flesh. The poor devil's got frostbite and heat prostration." ”

“ I shrugged. "It might be distracting."
"Captain, take my word for it," argued Farley. "Constant sonic feedback inside a spacesuit will set you rocking against the grain."
"Devise some regular system of interruptions," I suggested.
"Then the pattern will drive you crazy. Maybe in a few months, with luck, I could plan some harmonic scale you could tolerate—"
"We don't have a few months," I said. "How about music? There's a harmonic scale for you, and we can endure it, some of it. ”

“ My leaded boots were driven down into fertile soil, and my helmet was ringing like a bell. I got a jerky picture of the beast jumping up and down on top of the others joyously. Only the stiff space armor was holding up our slack frames.
"Let's let him escape," Hoffman suggested on the audio circuit.
"I'd like to," Nagurski admitted, "but the other beasts won't let us get past their circle."
It was true. The aliens formed a ring around us, and each time a bouncing boy hit the line, he only bounced back on top of us. ”

“ In departing from standard procedure that we have learned to trust, you are risking more than a few men—you risk the whole mission in gambling so much of the ship. A captain doesn't take chances like that! ”