proved too quiet an occupation at first. Gosseyn turned on the recorder and gradually settled down. He began to read in a more sustained fashion. He ate lunch with a book beside his plate. By evening he was even more relaxed. With considerable anticipation, he lifted a side of beef from a deep freezer and sliced off a thick steak. After dinner he picked up the volume on Venusian history. It told the story of the first men to walk on Venus late in the twentieth century. It described how the boiling hell of that atmosphere was tamed as early as the first quarter of the twenty-first century, of how ice meteorites from Jupiter were coasted into a close orbit around Venus, and of how as a result it rained for thousands of days and nights.
The ice meteorites ranged in size from ten to a hundred cubic miles; and when they had melted their huge volume of water down on the surface, and into the atmosphere, Venus had oceans and oxygen in its atmosphere. By 2081 A.D. the Institute of General Semantics, just then entering its governmental phase, realized the null-A potentialities of the bountiful planet. By this time, transported trees and other plants were growing madly. The Machine method of selecting colonists came a hundred or so years later, and the greatest selective emigration plan in the history of man began to gather momentum.
Population of Venus as of 2560 A.D.-119,000,038 males, 120,143,280 females, the book said. When he finally put it down, Gosseyn wondered if the surplus of females might explain why a null-A woman had married John Prescott.
He took The Egotist on Non-Aristotelian Venus to bed with him. A note in the frontispiece explained that Dr. Lauren Kair, Ps.D., the author, would be practicing on Earth in the city of the Machine from 2559 A.D. to 2564 A.D. Gosseyn glanced through the chapter headings and finally turned to one captioned, “Physical Injuries and their Effects on the Ego.” A paragraph caught his attention:
The most difficult to isolate of all abnormal developments of the ego is the man or woman who has been in an accident that has resulted in injuries which do not immediately cause aftereffects.
Gosseyn stopped there. He hadn’t known what he was looking for, but here at last was a concrete logicality about “X.” “X,” the frightfully injured, the abnormal ego that had developed unnoticed by psychiatrists whose duty it was to watch for dangerous individuals.
Gosseyn awakened the following morning in a silent house. He climbed out of bed, amazed that he was still undiscovered. He’d give Crang another day and night, he decided, then take positive action. There were several things he could do. A videophone call, for instance, to the nearest exchange. And the tunnel in the tree should be explored.
The second day passed without incident.
Morning of the third day. Gosseyn ate his breakfast hurriedly and headed for the videophone. He dialed “Long Distance” and waited, thinking how foolish he had been not to do it before. The thought ended as a robot eye took form on the video plate.
“What star are you calling?” the robot’s voice asked matter of factly.
Gosseyn stared at it blankly and finally stammered, “I’ve changed my mind.” He hung up and sank back into his chair. He should have realized, he thought shakily, that the galactic base on Venus would have a private exchange, and that they would have direct communication with any planet anywhere. What star? For these people long distance meant long!
He studied the dial again and put his finger in the slot marked “Local.” Once more a robot eye looked at him.
Its voice answered his request unemotionally. “Sorry, I can put no outside calls through from that number except from Mr. Crang himself.”
Click!
Gosseyn climbed to his feet. The silence of the apartment flowed around him like a waveless sea. It was so quiet that his breathing was loud and he could hear the uneven beating of his heart. The voice of the
The ice meteorites ranged in size from ten to a hundred cubic miles; and when they had melted their huge volume of water down on the surface, and into the atmosphere, Venus had oceans and oxygen in its atmosphere. By 2081 A.D. the Institute of General Semantics, just then entering its governmental phase, realized the null-A potentialities of the bountiful planet. By this time, transported trees and other plants were growing madly. The Machine method of selecting colonists came a hundred or so years later, and the greatest selective emigration plan in the history of man began to gather momentum.
Population of Venus as of 2560 A.D.-119,000,038 males, 120,143,280 females, the book said. When he finally put it down, Gosseyn wondered if the surplus of females might explain why a null-A woman had married John Prescott.
He took The Egotist on Non-Aristotelian Venus to bed with him. A note in the frontispiece explained that Dr. Lauren Kair, Ps.D., the author, would be practicing on Earth in the city of the Machine from 2559 A.D. to 2564 A.D. Gosseyn glanced through the chapter headings and finally turned to one captioned, “Physical Injuries and their Effects on the Ego.” A paragraph caught his attention:
The most difficult to isolate of all abnormal developments of the ego is the man or woman who has been in an accident that has resulted in injuries which do not immediately cause aftereffects.
Gosseyn stopped there. He hadn’t known what he was looking for, but here at last was a concrete logicality about “X.” “X,” the frightfully injured, the abnormal ego that had developed unnoticed by psychiatrists whose duty it was to watch for dangerous individuals.
Gosseyn awakened the following morning in a silent house. He climbed out of bed, amazed that he was still undiscovered. He’d give Crang another day and night, he decided, then take positive action. There were several things he could do. A videophone call, for instance, to the nearest exchange. And the tunnel in the tree should be explored.
The second day passed without incident.
Morning of the third day. Gosseyn ate his breakfast hurriedly and headed for the videophone. He dialed “Long Distance” and waited, thinking how foolish he had been not to do it before. The thought ended as a robot eye took form on the video plate.
“What star are you calling?” the robot’s voice asked matter of factly.
Gosseyn stared at it blankly and finally stammered, “I’ve changed my mind.” He hung up and sank back into his chair. He should have realized, he thought shakily, that the galactic base on Venus would have a private exchange, and that they would have direct communication with any planet anywhere. What star? For these people long distance meant long!
He studied the dial again and put his finger in the slot marked “Local.” Once more a robot eye looked at him.
Its voice answered his request unemotionally. “Sorry, I can put no outside calls through from that number except from Mr. Crang himself.”
Click!
Gosseyn climbed to his feet. The silence of the apartment flowed around him like a waveless sea. It was so quiet that his breathing was loud and he could hear the uneven beating of his heart. The voice of the
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