Waterclap

            Stephen Demerest looked at the textured sky. He kept looking at it and found the blue opaque and revolting.

            Unwarily, he had looked at the Sun, for there was nothing to blank it out automatically, and then he had snatched his eyes away in panic. He wasn’t blinded; just a few afterimages. Even the Sun was washed out.

            Involuntarily, he thought of Ajax’s prayer in Homer’s Iliad. They were fighting over the body of Patroclus in the mist and Ajax said, “O Father Zeus, save the Achaeans out of this mist! Make the sky clean, grant us to see with our eyes! Kill us in the light, since it is thy pleasure to kill us!”

            Demerest thought: Kill us in the light--

            Kill us in the clear light on the Moon, where the sky is black and soft, where the stars shine brightly, where the cleanliness and purity of vacuum make all things sharp.

            --Not in this low-clinging, fuzzy blue.

            He shuddered. It was an actual physical shudder that shook his lanky body, and he was annoyed. He was going to die. He was sure of it. And it wouldn’t be under the blue, either, come to think of it, but under the black--but a different black.

            It was as though in answer to that thought that the ferry pilot, short, swarthy, crisp-haired, came up .to him and said, “Ready for the black, Mr. Demerest?”

            Demerest nodded. He towered over the other as he did over most of the men of Earth. They were thick, all of them, and took their short, low steps with ease. He himself had to feel his footsteps, guide them through the air; even the impalpable bond that held him to the ground was textured.

            “I’m ready,” he said. He took a deep breath and deliberately repeated his earlier glance at the Sun. It was low in the morning sky, washed out by dusty air, and he knew it wouldn’t blind him. He didn’t think he would ever see it again.

            He had never seen a bathyscaphe before. Despite everything, he tended to think of it in terms of prototypes, an oblong balloon with a spherical gondola beneath. It was as though he persisted in thinking of space flight in terms of tons of fuel spewed backward in fire, and an irregular module feeling its way, spiderlike, toward the Lunar surface.

            The bathyscaphe was not like the image in his thoughts at all. Under its skin, it might still be buoyant bag and gondola, but it was all engineered sleekness now.

            “My name is Javan,” said the ferry pilot. “Omar Javan.”

            “Javan?”

            “Queer name to you? I’m Iranian by descent; Earthman by persuasion. Once you get down there, there are no nationalities.” He grinned and his complexion grew darker against the even whiteness of his teeth. “If you don’t mind, we’ll be starting in a minute. You’ll be my only passenger, so I guess you carry weight.”

            “Yes,” said Demerest dryly. “At least a hundred pounds more than I’m used to.”

            “You’re from the Moon? I thought you had a queer walk on you. I hope it’s not uncomfortable.”

            “It’s not exactly comfortable, ,but I manage. We exercise for this.”

            “Well, come on board.” He stood aside and let Demerest walk down the gangplank. “I wouldn’t go to the Moon myself.”

            “You go to Ocean-Deep.”

            “About fifty times so far. That’s different.”

            Demerest got on board. It was cramped, but he didn’t mind that. It might be a space module except that it was more--well, textured. There was that word again. There was the clear feeling everywhere that mass didn’t matter. Mass was held up; it didn’t have to be hurled up.

            They were still on the surface. The blue sky could be seen greenishly through the clear thick glass. Javan said, “You don’t have to be strapped in. There’s no acceleration. Smooth as oil, the whole thing. It won’t take long; just about an hour. You can’t smoke.”

            “I don’t smoke,” said Demerest.

            “I hope you don’t have claustrophobia.”

            “Moon-men don’t have claustrophobia.”

            “All that open--”

            “Not in our cavern. We live in a”--he groped for the phrase --”a Lunar-Deep, a hundred feet deep.”

            “A hundred feet!” The pilot seemed amused, but he didn’t smile. “We’re slipping down now.”

            The interior of the gondola was fitted into angles but here and there a section of wall beyond the instruments showed its basic sphericity. To Javan, the instruments seemed to be an extension of his arms; his eyes and hands moved over them lightly, almost lovingly.

            “We’re all checked out,” he said, “but I like a last-minute look-over; we’ll be facing a thousand atmospheres down there.” His finger touched a contact, and the round door closed massively inward and pressed against the beveled rim it met.

            “The higher the pressure, the tighter that will hold,” said Javan. “Take your last look at sunlight, Mr. Demerest.”

            The light still shone through the thick glass of the window. It was wavering now; there was water between the Sun and them now.

            “The last look?” said Demerest.

            Javan snickered. “Not the last look. I mean for the trip. ...I suppose you’ve never been, on a bathyscaphe before.”

            “No, I haven’t. Have many?”

            “Very few,” admitted Javan. “But don’t worry. It’s just an underwater balloon. We’ve introduced a million improvements since the first bathyscaphe. It’s nuclear-powered now and we can move freely by water jet up to certain limits, but cut it down to basics and it’s still a spherical gondola under buoyancy tanks. And it’s still towed out to sea by a mother ship because it needs what power it carries too badly to waste it on surface travel. Ready?”

            “Ready.”

            The supporting cable of the mother ship flicked away and the bathyscaphe settled lower; then lower still, as sea water fed into the buoyancy tanks. For a few moments, caught in surface currents, it swayed, and then there was nothing. The bathyscaphe sank slowly through a deepening green.

            Javan relaxed. He said, “John Bergen is head of Ocean-Deep. You’re going to see him?”

            “That’s right.”

            “He’s a nice guy. His wife’s with him.”

            “She is?”

            “Oh, sure. They have women down there. There’s a bunch down there, fifty people. “Some stay for months.”

            Demerest put his finger on the narrow, nearly invisible seam where door met wall. He took it away and looked at it. He said, “It’s oily.”

            “Silicone, really. The pressure squeezes some out. It’s supposed to. ...Don’t worry. Everything’s automatic. Everything’s fail-safe. The first sign of malfunction, any malfunction at all, our ballast is released and up we go.”

            “You mean nothing’s ever happened to these bathyscaphes?”

            “What can happen?” The pilot looked sideways at his passenger. “Once you get too deep for sperm whales, nothing can go wrong.”

            “Sperm whales?” Demerest’s thin face creased in a frown.

            “Sure, they dive as deep as half a mile. If they hit a bathyscaphe--well, the walls of the buoyancy chambers aren’t particularly strong. They don’t have to be, you know. They’re open to the sea and when the gasoline, which supplies the buoyancy, compresses, sea water enters.”

            It was dark now. Demerest found his gaze fastened to the viewport. It was light inside the gondola, but it was dark in that window. And it was not the darkness of space; it was a thick darkness.

            Demerest said sharply, “Let’s get this straight, Mr. Javan. You are not equipped to withstand the attack of a sperm whale. Presumably you are not equipped to withstand the attack of a giant squid. Have there been any actual incidents of that sort?”

            “Well, it’s like this--”

            “No games, please, and don’t try ragging the greenhorn. I am asking out of professional curiosity. I am head safety engineer at Luna City and I am asking what precautions this bathyscaphe can take against possible collision with large creatures.”

            Javan looked embarrassed. He muttered, “Actually, there have been no incidents.”

            “Are any expected? Even as a remote possibility?”

            “Anything is remotely possible. But actually sperm whales are too intelligent to monkey with us and giant squid are too shy.”

            “Can they see us?”

            “Yes, of course. We’re lit up.”

            “Do you have floodlights?”

            “We’re already past the large-animal range, but we have them, and I’ll turn them on for you.”

            Through the black of the window there suddenly appeared a snow-storm, an inverted upward-falling snowstorm. The blackness had come alive with stars in three-dimensional array and all moving upward.

            Demerest said, “What’s that?”

            “Just crud. Organic matter. Small creatures. They float, don’t move much, and they catch the light. We’re going down past them. They seem to be going up in consequence.”

            Demerest’s sense of perspective adjusted itself and he said, “Aren’t we dropping too quickly?”

            “No, we’re not. If we were, I could use the nuclear engines, if I wanted to waste power; or I could drop some ballast. I’ll be doing that later, but for now everything is fine. Relax, Mr. Demerest. The snow thins as we dive and we’re not likely to see much in the way of spectacular life forms. There are small angler fish and such but they avoid us.”

            Demerest said, “How many do you take down at a time?”

            “I’ve had as many as four passengers in this gondola, but that’s crowded. We can put two bathyscaphes in tandem and carry ten, but that’s clumsy. What we really need are trains of gondolas, heavier on the nukes-the nuclear engines-and lighter on the buoyancy. Stuff like that is on the drawing board, they tell me. Of course, they’ve been telling me that for years.”

            “There are plans for large-scale expansion of Ocean-Deep, then?”

            “Sure, why not? We’ve got cities on the continental shelves, why not on the deep-sea bottom? The way I look at it, Mr. Demerest, where man can go, he will go and he should go. The Earth is ours to populate and we will populate it. All we need to make the deep sea habitable are completely maneuverable ‘scaphes. The buoyancy chambers slow us, weaken us, and complicate the engineering.”

            “But they also save you, don’t they? If everything goes wrong at once, the gasoline you carry will still float you to the surface-. What would do that for you if your nuclear engines go wrong and you had no buoyancy?”

            “If it comes to that, you can’t expect to eliminate the chances of accident altogether, not even fatal ones.”

            “I know that very well,” said Demerest feelingly.

            Javan stiffened. The tone of his voice changed. “Sorry. Didn’t mean anything by that. Tough about that accident.”

            “Yes,” said Demerest. Fifteen men and five women had died. One of the individuals listed among the “men “ had been fourteen years old. It had been pinned down to human failure. What could a head safety engineer say after that?

            “Yes,” he said.

            A pall dropped between the two men, a pall as thick and as turgid as the pressurized sea water outside. How could one allow for panic and for distraction and for depression all at once? There were the Moon-Blues--stupid name--but they struck men at inconvenient times. It wasn’t always noticeable when the Moon-Blues came but it made men torpid and slow to react.

            How many times had a meteorite come along and been averted or smothered or successfully absorbed? How many times had a Moonquake done damage and been held in check? How many times had human failure been backed up and compensated for? How many times had accidents not happened?

            But you don’t payoff on accidents not happening. There were twenty dead--

            Javan said (how many long minutes later?), “There are the lights of Ocean-Deep!”

            Demerest could not make them out at first. He didn’t know where to look. Twice before, luminescent creatures had flicked past the windows at a distance and with the floodlights off again, Demerest had thought them the first sign of Ocean-Deep. Now he saw nothing.

            “Down there,” said Javan, without pointing. He was busy now, slowing the drop and edging the ‘scaphe sideways.

            Demerest could hear the distant sighing of the water jets, steam-driven, with the steam formed by the heat of momentary bursts of fusion power.

            Demerest thought dimly: Deuterium is their fuel and it’s all around them. Water is their exhaust and it’s all around them.

            Javan was dropping some of his ballast, too, and began a kind of distant chatter. “The ballast used to be steel pellets and they were dropped by electromagnetic controls. Anywhere up to fifty tons of it were used in each trip. Conservationists worried about spreading rusting steel over the ocean floor, so we switched to metal nodules that are dredged up from the continental shelf. We put a thin layer of iron over them so they can still be electromagnetically handled and the ocean bottom gets nothing that wasn’t sub-ocean to begin with. Cheaper, too. ...But when we get out real nuclear ‘scaphes, we won’t need ballast at all.”

            Demerest scarcely heard him. Ocean-Deep could be seen now. Javan had turned on the floodlights and far below was the muddy floor of the Puerto Rican Trench. Resting on that floor like a cluster of equally muddy pearls was the spherical conglomerate of Ocean-Deep.

            Each unit was a sphere such as the one in which Demerest was now sinking toward contact, but much larger, and as Ocean-Deep expanded--expanded--expanded, new spheres were added.

            Demerest thought: They’re only five and a half miles from home, not a quarter of a million.

            “How are we going to get through?” asked Demerest.

            The ‘scaphe had made contact. Demerest heard the dull sound of metal against metal but then for minutes there had been nothing more than a kind of occasional scrape as Javan bent over his instruments in rapt concentration.

            “Don’t worry about that,” Javan said at last, in belated answer. “There’s no problem. The delay now is only because I have to make sure we fit tightly. There’s an electromagnet joint that holds at every point of a perfect circle. When the instruments read correctly, that means we fit over the entrance door.”

            “Which then opens?”

            “It would if there were air on the other side, but there isn’t. There’s sea water, and that has to be driven out. Then we enter.”

            Demerest did not miss this point. He had come here on this, the last day of his life, to give that same life meaning and he intended to miss nothing.

            He said, “Why the added step? Why not keep the air lock, if that’s what it is, a real air lock, and have air in it at an times?”

            “They tell me it’s a matter of safety,” said Javan. “Your specialty. The interface has equal pressure on both sides at all times, except when men are moving across. This door is the weakest point of the whole system, because it opens and closes; it has joints; it has seams. You know what I mean?”

            “I do,” murmured Demerest. There was a logical flaw here and that meant there was a possible chink through which--but later.

            He said, “Why are we waiting now?”

            “The lock is being emptied. The water is being forced out.”

            “By air.”

            “Hell, no. They can’t afford to waste air like that. It would take a thousand atmospheres to empty the chamber of its water, and filling the chamber with air at that density, even temporarily, is more air than they can afford to expend. Steam is what does it.”

            “Of course. Yes.”

            Javan said cheerfully, “You heat the water. No pressure in the world can stop water from turning to steam at a temperature of more than 374° C. And the steam forces the sea water out through a one-way valve.”

            “Another weak point,” said Demerest. “I suppose so. It’s never failed yet. The water in the lock is being pushed out now. When hot steam starts bubbling out the valve, the process automatically stops and the lock is fun of overheated steam.”

            “And then?”

            “And then we have a whole ocean to cool it with. The temperature drops and the steam condenses. Once that happens, ordinary air can be let in at a pressure of one atmosphere and then the door opens.”

            “How long must we wait?”

            “Not long. If there were anything wrong, there’d be sirens sounding. At least, so they say. I never heard one in action.”

            There was silence for a few minutes, and then there was a sudden sharp clap and a simultaneous jerk.

            Javan said, “Sorry, I should have warned you. I’m so used to it I forgot. When the door opens, a thousand atmospheres of pressure on the other side forces us hard against the metal of Ocean-Deep. No electromagnetic force can hold us hard enough to prevent that last hundredth-of-an-inch slam.”

            Demerest unclenched his fist and released his breath. He said, “Is everything all right?”

            “The walls didn’t crack, if that’s what you mean. It sounds like doom, though, doesn’t it? It sounds even worse when I’ve got to leave and the air lock fills up again. Be prepared for that.”

            But Demerest was suddenly weary. Let’s get on with it, he thought. I don’t want to drag it out. He said, “Do we go through now?”

            “We go through.”

            The opening in the ‘scaphe wall was round and small; even smaller than the one through which they had originally entered. Javan went through it sinuously, muttering that it always made him feel like a cork in a bottle.

            Demerest had not smiled since he entered the ‘scaphe. Nor did he really smile now, but a comer of his mouth quirked as he thought that a skinny Moon-man would have no trouble.

            He went through also, feeling Javan’s hands firmly at his waist, helping him through.

            Javan said, “It’s dark in here. No point in introducing an additional weakness by wiring for lighting. But that’s why flashlights were invented.”

            Demerest found himself on a perforated walk, its stainless metallic surface gleaming dully. And through the perforations he could make out the wavering surface of water.

            He said, “The chamber hasn’t been emptied.”

            “You can’t do any better, Mr. Demerest. If you’re going to use steam to empty it, you’re left with that steam, and to get the pressures necessary to do the emptying that steam must be compressed to a~ut one-third the density of liquid water. When it condenses, the chamber remains one-third full of water--but it’s water at just one-atmosphere pressure. ... Come on, Mr. Demerest.”

            John Bergen’s face wasn’t entirely unknown to Demerest. Recognition was immediate. Bergen, as head of Ocean-Deep for nearly a decade now, was a familiar face on the TV screens of Earth-just as the leaders of Luna City had become familiar.

            Demerest had seen the head of Ocean-Deep both flat and in three dimensions, in black-and-white and in color. Seeing him in life added little.

            Like Javan, Bergen was short and thickset; opposite in structure to the traditional ( already traditional?) Lunar pattern of physiology. He was fairer than Javan by a good deal and his face was noticeably asymmetrical, with his somewhat thick nose leaning just a little to the right.

            He was not handsome. No Moon-man would think he was, but then Bergen smiled and there was a sunniness about it as he held out his large hand.

            Demerest placed his own thin one within, steeling himself for a hard grip, but it did not come. Bergen took the hand and let it go, then said, “I’m glad you’re here. We don’t have much in the way of luxury, nothing that will make our hospitality stand out, we can’t even declare a holiday in your honor--but the spirit is there. Welcome!”

            “Thank you,” said Demerest softly. He remained unsmiling now, too. He was facing the enemy and he knew it. Surely Bergen must know it also and, since he did, that smile of his was hypocrisy.

            And at that moment a clang like metal against metal sounded deafeningly and the chamber shuddered. Demerest leaped back and staggered against the wall.

            Bergen did not budge. He said quietly, “That was the bathyscaphe unhitching and the waterclap of the air lock filling. Javan ought to have warned you.”

            Demerest panted and tried to make his racing heart slow. He said, “Javan did warn me. I was caught by surprise anyway.”

            Bergen said, “Well, it won’t happen again for a while. We don’t often have visitors, you know. We’re not equipped for it and so we fight off all kinds of big wheels who think a trip down here would be good for their careers. Politicians of all kinds, chiefly. Your own case is different of course.”

            Is it? thought Demerest. It had been hard enough to get permission to make the trip down. His superiors back at Luna City had not approved in the first place and had scouted the idea that a diplomatic interchange would be of any use. ( “Diplomatic interchange” was what they had called it. ) And when he had overborne them, there had been Ocean-Deep’s own reluctance to receive him.

            It had been sheer persistence alone that had made his present visit possible. In what way then was Demerest’s case different?

            Bergen said, “I suppose you have your junketing problems on Luna City, too?”

            “Very little,” said Demerest. “Your average politician isn’t as anxious to travel a half-million-mile round trip as he is to travel a ten-mile one.”

            “I can see that,” agreed Bergen, “and it’s more expensive out to the Moon, of course. ...In a way, this is the first meeting of inner and outer space. No Ocean-man has ever gone to the Moon as far as I know and you’re the first Moonman to visit a sub-sea station of any kind. No Moon-man has ever been to one of the settlements on the continental shelf.”

            “It’s a historic meeting, then,” said Demerest, and tried to keep the sarcasm out of his voice.

            If any leaked through, Bergen showed no sign. He rolled up his sleeves as though to emphasize his attitude of informality (or the fact that they were very busy, so that there would be little time for visitors?) and said, “Do you want coffee? I assume you’ve eaten. Would you like to rest before I show you around? Do you want to wash up, for that matter, as they say euphemistically?”

            For a moment, curiosity stirred in Demerest; yet not entirely aimless curiosity. Everything involving the interface of Ocean-Deep with the outside world could be of importance. He said, “How are sanitary facilities handled here?”

            “It’s cycled mostly; as it is on the Moon, I imagine. We can eject if we want to or have to. Man has a bad record of fouling the environment, but as the only deep-sea station, what we eject does no perceptible damage. Adds organic matter.” He laughed.

            Demerest filed that away, too. Matter was ejected; there was therefore ejection tubes. Their workings might be of interest and he, as a safety engineer, had a right to be interested.

            “No, he said, “I don’t need anything at the moment. If you’re busy--”

            “That’s all right. We’re always busy, but I’m the least busy, if you see what I mean. Suppose I show you around. We’ve got over fifty units here, each as big as this one, some bigger--”

            Demerest looked about. Again, as in the ‘scaphe, there were angles everywhere, but beyond the furnishings and equipment there were signs of the inevitable spherical outer wall. Fifty of them!

            “Built up,” went on Bergen, “over a generation of effort. The unit we’re standing in is actually the oldest and there’s been some talk of demolishing and replacing it. Some of the men say we’re ready for second-generation units, but I’m not sure. It would be expensive--everything’s expensive down here--and getting money out of the Planetary Project Council is always a depressing experience.”

            Demerest felt his nostrils flare involuntarily and a spasm of anger shot through him. It was a thrust; surely. Luna City’s miserable record with the PPC must be well known to Bergen.

            But Bergen went on, unnoticing. “I’m a traditionalist, too--just a little bit. This is the first deep-sea unit ever constructed. The first two people to remain overnight on the floor of an ocean trench slept here with nothing else beyond this bare sphere except for a miserable portable fusion unit to work the escape hatch. I mean the air lock, but we called it the escape hatch to begin with--and just enough controls for the purpose. Reguera and Tremont, those were the men. They never made a second trip to the bottom, either; stayed Topside forever after. Well, well, they served their purpose and both are dead now. And here we are with fifty people and with six months as the usual tour of duty. I’ve spent only two weeks Topside in the last year and a half.”

            He motioned vigorously to Demerest to follow him, slid open a door which moved evenly into a recess, and took him into the next unit. Demerest paused to examine the opening. There were no seams that he could notice between the adjacent units.

            Bergen noted the other’s pause and said, “When we add on our units, they’re welded under pressure into the equivalent of a single piece of metal and then reinforced. We can’t take chances, as I’m sure you understand, since I have been given to understand that you’re the head safe--”

            Demerest cut him off. “Yes,” he said. “We on the Moon admire your safety record.”

            Bergen shrugged. “We’ve been lucky. Our sympathy, by the way, on the rotten break you fellows had. I mean that fatal--”

            Demerest cut him off again. “Yes.”

            Bergen, the Moon-man decided, was either a naturally voluble man or else was eager to drown him in words and get rid of him.

            “The units,” said Bergen, “are arranged in a highly branched chain-three-dimensional actually. We have a map we can show you, if you’re interested. Most of the end units represent living-sleeping quarters. For privacy, you know. The working units tend to be corridors as well, which is one of the embarrassments of having to live down here.

            “This is our library; part of it, anyway. Not big, but it’s got our records, too, on carefully indexed and computed microfilm, so that for its kind it’s not only the biggest in the world, but the best and the only. And we have a special computer to handle the references to meet our needs exactly. It collects, selects, coordinates, weighs, then gives us the gist.

            “We have another library, too, book films and even some printed volumes. But that’s for amusement.”

            A voice broke in on Bergen’s cheerful flow. “John? May I interrupt?”

            Demerest started; the voice had come from behind him. Bergen said, “Annette! I was going to get you. This is Stephen Demerest of Luna City. Mr. Demerest, may I introduce my wife, Annette?”

            Demerest had turned. He said stiffly, a little mechanically, “I’m pleased to meet you, Mrs. Bergen.” But he was staring at her waistline.

            Annette Bergen seemed in her early thirties. Her brown hair was combed simply and she wore no makeup. Attractive, not beautiful, Demerest ‘noted vaguely. But his eyes kept returning to that waistline.

            She shrugged a little. “Yes, I’m pregnant, Mr. Demerest. I’m due in about two months.”

            “Pardon me,” Demerest muttered. “So rude of me. ...I didn’t--” He faded off and felt as though the blow had been a physical one. He hadn’t expected women, though he didn’t know why. He knew there would have to be women in Ocean-Deep. And the ferry pilot had said Bergen’s wife was with him.

            He stammered as he spoke. “How many women are there in Ocean-Deep, Mr. Bergen?”

            “Nine at the moment,” said Bergen. “All wives. We look forward to a time when we can have the normal ratio of one to one, but we still need workers and researchers primarily, and unless women have important qualifications of some sort--”

            “They all have important qualifications of some sort, dear,” said Mrs. Bergen. “You could keep the men for longer duty if--”

            “My wife,” said Bergen, laughing, “is a convinced feminist but is not above using sex as an excuse to enforce equality. I keep telling her that that is the feminine way of doing it and not the feminist way, and she keeps saying-Well, that’s why she’s pregnant. You think it’s love, sex mania, yearning for motherhood? Nothing of the sort. She’s going to have a baby down here to make a philosophical point.”

            Annette said coolly, “Why not? Either this is going to be home for humanity or it isn’t going to be. If it is, then we’re going to have babies here, that’s all. I want a baby born in Ocean-Deep. There are babies born in Luna City, aren’t there, Mr. Demerest?”

            Demerest took a deep breath. “I was born in Luna City, Mrs. Bergen.”

            “And well she knew it, “ muttered Bergen.

            “And you are in your late twenties, I think?” she said.

            “I am twenty-nine,” said Demerest.

            “And well she knew that, too,” said Bergen with a short laugh. “You can bet she looked up all possible data on you when she heard you were coming.”

            “That is quite beside the point,” said Annette. “The point is that for twenty-nine years at least children have been born in Luna City and no children have been born in Ocean-Deep.”

            “Luna City, my dear,” said Bergen, “is longer-established. It is over half a century old; we are not yet twenty.”

            “Twenty years is quite enough. It takes a baby nine months.”

            Demerest interposed, “Are there any children in Ocean-Deep?”

            “No,” said Bergen. “No. Someday, though.”

            “In two months, anyway,” said Annette Bergen positively.

            The tension grew inside Demerest and when they returned to the unit in which he had first met Bergen, he was glad to sit down and accept a cup of coffee.

            “We’ll eat soon,” said Bergen matter-of-factly. “I hope you don’t mind sitting here meanwhile. As the prime unit, it isn’t used for much except, of course, for the reception of vessels, an item I don’t expect will interrupt us for a while. We can talk, if you wish.”

            “I do wish,” said Demerest.

            “I hope I’m welcome to join in,” said Annette.

            Demerest looked at her doubtfully, but Bergen said to him, “You’ll have to agree. She’s fascinated by you and by Moon-men generally. She thinks they’re--uh--you’re a new breed, and I think that when she’s quite through being a Deep-woman she wants to be a Moon-woman:’

            “I just want to get a word in edgewise, John, and when I get that in, I’d like to hear what Mr. Demerest has to say. What do you think of us, Mr. Demerest?”

            Demerest said cautiously, “I’ve asked to come here, Mrs. Bergen, because I’m a safety engineer. Ocean-Deep has an enviable safety record--”

            “Not one fatality in almost twenty years,” said Bergen cheerfully. “Only one death by accident in the C-shelf settlements and none in transit by either sub or ‘scaphe. I wish I could say, though, that this was the result of wisdom and care on our part. We do our best, of course, but the breaks have been with us--”

            “John,” said Annette, “I really wish you’d let Mr. Demerest speak.”

            “As a safety engineer,” said Demerest, “I can’t afford to believe in luck and breaks. We cannot stop Moon-quakes or large meteroites out at Luna City, but we are designed to minimize the effects even of those. There are no excuses or there should be none for human failure. We have not avoided that on Luna City; our record recently has been”--his voice dropped--”bad. While humans are imperfect, as we all know, machinery should be designed to take that imperfection into account. We lost twenty men and women--”

            “I know. Still, Luna City has a population of nearly one thousand, doesn’t it? Your survival isn’t in danger.”

            “The people on Luna City number nine hundred and seventy-two, including myself, but our survival is in danger. We depend on Earth for essentials. That need not always be so; it wouldn’t be so right now if the Planetary Project Council could resist the temptation toward pygmy economies--”

            “There, at least, Mr. Demerest,” said Bergen, “we see eye to eye. We are not self-supporting either, and we could be. What’s more, we can’t grow much beyond our present level unless nuclear ‘scaphes are built. As long as we keep that buoyancy principle, we are limited. Transportation between Deep and Top is slow; slow for men; slower still for materiel and supplies. I’ve been pushing, Mr. Demerest, for--“

            “Yes, and you’ll be getting it now, Mr. Bergen, won’t you?”

            “I hope so, but what makes you so sure?”

            “Mr. Bergen, let’s not play around. You know very well that Earth is committed to spending a fixed amount of money on expansion projects-on programs designed to expand the human habitat-and that it is not a terribly large amount. Earth’s population is not going to lavish resources in an effort to expand either outer space or inner space if it thinks this will cut into the comfort and convenience of Earth’s prime habitat, the land surface of the planet.” Annette broke in. “You make it sound callous of Earthmen, Mr. Demerest, and that’s unfair.. It’s only human, isn’t it, to want to be secure? Earth is overpopulated and it is only slowly reversing the havoc inflicted on the planet by the Mad Twentieth. Surely man’s original home must come first, ahead of either Luna City or Ocean-Deep. Heavens, Ocean-Deep is almost home to me, but I can’t want to see it flourish at the expense of Earth’s land.”

            “It’s not an either-or, Mrs. Bergen,” said Demerest earnestly. “If the ocean and outer space are firmly, honestly, and intelligently exploited, it can only redound to Earth’s benefit. A small investment will be lost but a large one will redeem itself with profit.”

            Bergen held up his hand. “Yes, I know. You don’t have to argue with me on that point. You’d be trying to convert the converted. Come, let’s eat. I tell you what. We’ll eat here. If you’ll stay with us overnight, or several days for that matter-you’re quite welcome-there will be ample time to meet everybody. Perhaps you’d rather take it easy for a while, though.”

            “Much rather,” said Demerest. “Actually, I want to stay here…I would like to ask, by the way, why I met so few people when we went through the units.”

            “No mystery,” said Bergen genially. “At any given time, some fifteen of our men are asleep and perhaps fifteen more are watching films or playing chess or, if their wives are with them--”

            “Yes, John,” said Annette.

            “--And it’s customary not to disturb them. The quarters are constricted and what privacy a man can have is cherished. A few are out at sea; three right now, I think. That leaves a dozen or so at work in here and you met them.”

            “I’ll get lunch,” said Annette, rising.

            She smiled and stepped through the door, which closed automatically behind her.

            Bergen looked after her. “That’s a concession. She’s playing woman for your sake. Ordinarily, it would be just as likely for me to get the lunch. The choice is not defined by sex but by the striking of random lightning.”

            Demerest said, “The doors between units, it seems to me, are of dangerously limited strength.”

            “Are they?”

            “If an accident happened, and one unit was punctured--”

            “No meteorites down here,” said Bergen, smiling.

            “Oh yes, wrong word. If there were a leak of any sort, for any reason, then could a unit or a group of units be sealed off against the full pressure of the ocean?”

            “You mean, in the way that Luna City can have its component units automatically sealed off in case of meteorite puncture in order to limit damage to a single unit.”

            “Yes,” said Demerest with a faint bitterness. “As did not happen recently.”

            “In theory, we could do that, but the chances of accident are much less down here. As I said, there are no meteorites and, what’s more, there are no currents to speak of. Even an earthquake centered immediately below us would not be damaging since we make no fixed or solid contact with the ground beneath and are cushioned by the ocean itself against the shocks. So we can afford to gamble on no massive influx.”

            “Yet if one happened?”

            “Then we could be helpless. You see, it is not so easy to seal off component units here. On the Moon, there is a pressure differentia] of just one atmosphere; one atmosphere inside and the zero atmosphere of vacuum outside. A thin seal is enough. Here at Ocean-Deep the pressure differential is roughly a thousand atmospheres. To secure absolute safety against that differentia] would take a great deal of money and you know what you said about getting money out of PPC. So we gamble and so far we’ve been lucky.”

            “And we haven’t,” said Demerest.

            Bergen looked uncomfortable, but Annette distracted both by coming in with lunch at this moment.

            She said, “I hope, Mr. Demerest, that you’re prepared for Spartan fare. All our food in Ocean-Deep is prepackaged and requires only heating. We specialize in blandness and nonsurprise here, and the non-surprise of the day is a bland chicken a la king, with carrots, boiled potatoes, a piece of something that looks like a brownie for dessert, and, of course, all the coffee you can drink. “

            Demerest rose to take his tray and tried to smile. “It sounds very like Moon fare, Mrs. Bergen, and I was brought up on that. We grow our own micro-organismic food. It is patriotic to eat that but not particularly enjoyable. We hope to keep improving it, though.”

            “I’m sure you will improve it...

            Demerest said, as he ate with a slow and methodical chewing, “I hate to ride my specialty, but how secure are you against mishaps in your air-lock entry?”

            “It is the weakest point of Ocean-Deep,” said Bergen. He had finished eating, well ahead of the other two, and was half through with his first cup of coffee. “But there’s got to be an interface, right? The entry is as automatic as we can make it and as fail-safe. Number one: there has to be contact at every point about the outer lock before the fusion generator begins to heat the water within the lock. What’s more, the contact has to be metallic and of a metal with just the magnetic permeability we use on our ‘scaphes. Presumably a rock or some mythical deep-sea monster might drop down and make contact at just the right places; but if so, nothing happens.

            “Then, too, the outer door doesn’t open until the steam has pushed the water out and then condensed; in other words, not till both pressure and temperature have dropped below a certain point. At the moment the outer door begins to open, a relatively slight increase in internal pressure, as by water entry, will close it again.”

            Demerest said, “But then, once men have passed through the lock, the inner door closes behind them and sea water must be allowed into the lock again. Can you do that gradually against the full pressure of the ocean outside?”

            “Not very.” Bergen smiled. “It doesn’t pay to fight the ocean too hard. You have to roll with the punch. We slow it down to about one-tenth free entry but even so it comes in like a rifle shot-louder, a thunderclap, or waterclap, if you prefer. The inner door can hold it, though, and it is not subjected to the strain very often. Well, wait, you heard the waterclap when we first met, when Javan’s ‘scaphe took off again. Remember?”

            “I remember,” said Demerest. “But here is something I don’t understand. You keep the lock filled with ocean at high pressure at all times to keep the outer door without strain. But that keeps the inner door at full strain. Somewhere there has to be strain.”

            “Yes, indeed. But if the outer door, with a thousand-atmosphere differential on its two sides, breaks down, the full ocean in all its millions of cubic miles tries to enter and that would be the end of all. If the inner door is the one under strain and it gives, then it will be messy indeed, but the only water that enters Ocean-Deep will be the very limited quantity in the lock and its pressure will drop at once. We will have plenty of time for repair, for the outer door will certainly hold a long time.”

            “But if both go simultaneously--”

            “Then we are through.” Bergen shrugged. “I need not tell you that neither absolute certainty nor absolute safety exists. You have to live with some risk and the chance of double and simultaneous failure is so microscopically small that it can be lived with easily.”

            “If all your mechanical contrivances fail--”

            “They fail safe,” said Bergen stubbornly.

            Demerest nodded. He finished the last of his chicken. Mrs. Bergen was already beginning to clean up. “You’ll pardon my questions, Mr. Bergen, I hope.”

            “You’re welcome to ask. I wasn’t informed, actually, as to the precise nature of your mission here. ‘Fact finding’ is a weasel phrase. However, I assume there is keen distress on the Moon over the recent disaster and as safety engineer you rightly feel the responsibility of correcting whatever shortcomings exist and would be interested in learning, if possible, from the system used in Ocean-Deep.”

            “Exactly. But, see here, if all your automatic contrivances fail safe for some reason, for any reason, you would be alive, but all your escape-hatch mechanisms would be sealed permanently shut. You would be trapped inside Ocean-Deep and would exchange a slow death for a fast one.”

            “It’s not likely to happen but we’d hope we could make repairs before our air supply gave out. Besides we do have a manual backup system.”

            “Oh?”

            “Certainly. When Ocean-Deep was first established and this was the only unit-the one we’re sitting in now-manual controls were all we had. That was unsafe, if you like. There they are, right behind you--covered with friable plastic.”

            “In emergency, break glass,” muttered Demerest, inspecting the covered setup.

            “Pardon me?”

            “Just a phrase commonly used in ancient fire-fighting systems ...Well, do the manuals still work, or has the system been covered with your friable plastic for twenty years to the point where it has all decayed into uselessness with no one noticing?”

            “Not at all. It’s periodically checked, as all our equipment is. That’s not my job personally, but I know it is done. If any electrical or electronic circuit is out of its normal working condition, lights flash, signals sound, everything happens but a nuclear blast. , ..You know, Mr. Demerest, we are as curious about Luna City as you are about Ocean-Deep. I presume you would be willing to invite one of our young men--”

            “How about a young woman?” interposed Annette at once.

            “I am sure you mean yourself, dear,” said Bergen, “to which

            I can only answer that you are determined to have a baby here and to keep it here for a period of time after birth, and that effectively eliminates you from consideration.”

            Demerest said stiffly, “We hope you will send men to Luna City. We are anxious to have you understand our problems.”

            “Yes, a mutual exchange of problems and of weeping on each other’s shoulders might be of great comfort to all. For instance, you have one advantage on Luna City that I wish we could have. With low gravity and a low pressure differential, you can make your caverns take on any irregular and angular fashion that appeals to your aesthetic sense or is required for convenience. Down here we’re restricted to the sphere, at least for the foreseeable future, and our designers develop a hatred for the spherical that surpasses belief. Actually it isn’t funny. It breaks them down. They eventually resign rather than continue to work spherically.”

            Bergen shook his head and leaned his chair back against a microfilm cabinet. “You know,” he continued, “when William Beebe built the first deep-set chamber in history in the 1930s--it was just a gondola suspended from a mother ship by a half-mile cable, with no buoyancy chambers and no engines, and if the cable broke, good night, only it never did. ...Anyway, what was I saying? Oh, when Beebe built his first deep-sea chamber, he was going to make it cylindrical; you know, so a man would fit in it comfortably. After all, a man is essentially a tall, skinny cylinder. However, a friend of his argued him out of that and into a sphere on the very sensible grounds that a sphere would resist pressure more efficiently than any other possible shape. You know who that friend was?”

            “No, I’m afraid I don’t.”

            “The man who was President of the United States at the time of Beebe’s descents-Franklin D. Roosevelt. All these spheres you see down here are the great-grandchildren of Roosevelt’s suggestion.”

            Demerest considered that briefly but made no comment. He returned to the earlier topic. “We would particularly like someone from Ocean-Deep,” he said, “to visit Luna City because it might lead to a great enough understanding of the need, on Ocean-Deep’s part, for a course of action that might involve considerable self-sacrifice.”

            “Oh?” Bergen’s chair came down flat-leggedly on all fours. “How’s that?”

            “Ocean-Deep is a marvelous achievement; I wish to detract nothing from that. I can see where it will become greater still, a wonder of the world. Still--”

            “Still?”

            “Still, the oceans are only a part of the Earth; a major part, but only a part. The deep sea is only part of the ocean. It is inner space indeed; it works inward, narrowing constantly to a point.”

            “I think,” broke in Annette, looking rather grim, “that you’re about to make a comparison with Luna City.”

            “Indeed I am,” said Demerest. “Luna City represents outer space, widening to infinity. There is nowhere to go down here in the long run; everywhere to go out there.”

            “We don’t judge by size and volume alone, Mr. Demerest,” said Bergen. “The ocean is only a small part of Earth, true, but for that very reason it is intimately connected with over five billion human beings. Ocean-Deep is experimental but the settlements on the continental shelf already deserve the name of cities. Ocean-Deep offers mankind the chance of exploiting the whole planet--”

            “Of polluting the whole planet,” broke in Demerest excitedly. “Of raping it, of ending it. The concentration of human effort to Earth itself is unhealthy and even fatal if it isn’t balanced by a turning outward to the frontier.”

            “There is nothing at the frontier,” said Annette, snapping out the words. “The Moon is dead, all the other worlds out there are dead. If there are live worlds among the stars, light-years away, they can’t be reached. This ocean is living.”

            “The Moon is living, too, Mrs. Bergen, and if Ocean-Deep allows it, the Moon will become an independent world. We Moon-men will then see to it that other worlds are reached and made alive and, if mankind but has patience, we will reach the stars. We! We! It is only we Moon-men, used to space, used to a world in a cavern, used to an engineered environment, who could endure life in a spaceship that may have to travel centuries to reach the stars.”

            “Wait, wait, Demerest,” said Bergen, holding up his hand.  “Back up! What do you mean, if Ocean-Deep allows it? What have we to do with it?”

            “You’re competing with us, Mr. Bergen. The Planetary Project Commission will swing your way, give you more, give us less, because in the short term, as your wife says, the ocean is alive and the Moon, except for a thousand men, is not; because you are a half-dozen miles away and we a quarter of a million; because you can be reached in an hour and we only in three days. And because you have an ideal safety record and we have had-misfortunes.”

            “The last, surely, is trivial. Accidents can happen any time, anywhere.”

            “But the trivial can be used,” said Demerest angrily. “It can be made to manipulate emotions. To people who don’t see the purpose and the importance of space exploration, the death of Moon-men in ,accidents is proof enough that the Moon is dangerous, that its colonization is a useless fantasy. Why not? It’s their excuse for saving money and they can then salve their consciences by investing part of it in Ocean-Deep instead. That’s why I said the accident on the Moon had threatened the survival of Luna City even though it killed only twenty people out of nearly a thousand.”

            “I don’t accept your argument. There has been enough money for both for a score of years.”

            “Not enough money. That’s exactly it. Not enough investment to make the Moon self-supporting in all these years, and then they use that lack of self-support against us. Not enough investment to make Ocean-Deep self-supporting either. ... But now they can give you enough if they cut us out altogether.”

            “Do you think that will happen?”

            “I’m almost sure it will, unless Ocean-Deep shows a statesmanlike concern for man’s future.”

            “How?”

            “By refusing to accept additional funds. By not competing with Luna City. By putting the good of the whole race ahead of self-interest.”

            “Surely you don’t expect us to dismantle--”

            “You won’t have to. Don’t you see? Join us in explaining that Luna City is essential, that space exploration is the hope of mankind; that you will wait, retrench, if necessary.”

            Bergen looked at his wife and raised his eyebrows. She shook her head angrily. Bergen said, “You have a rather romantic view of the PPC, I think. Even if I made noble, self-sacrificing speeches, who’s to say they would listen? There’s a great deal more involved in the matter of Ocean-Deep than my opinion and my statements. There are economic considerations and public feeling. Why don’t you relax, Mr. Demerest? Luna City won’t come to an end. You’ll receive funds, I’m sure of it. I tell you, I’m sure of it. Now let’s break this up”

            “No, I’ve got to convince you one way or another that I’m serious. If necessary, Ocean-Deep must come to a halt unless the PPC can supply ample funds for both.”

            Bergen said, “Is this some sort of official mission, Mr. Demerest? Are you speaking for Luna City officially, or just for yourself?”

            “Just for myself, but maybe that’s enough, Mr. Bergen.”

            “I don’t think it is. I’m sorry, but this is turning out to be unpleasant. I suggest that, after all, you had better return Topside on the first available ‘scaphe.”

            “Not yet! Not yet!” Demerest looked about wildly, then rose unsteadily and put his back against the wall. He was a little too tall for the room and he became conscious of life receding. One more step and he would have gone too far to back out.

            He had told them back on the Moon that there would be no use talking, no use negotiating. It was dog-eat-dog for the available funds and Luna City’s destiny must not be aborted; not for Ocean-Deep; not -for Earth; no, not for all of Earth, since mankind and the Universe came even before the Earth. Man must outgrow his womb and

            Demerest could hear his own ragged breathing and the inner turmoil of his whirling thoughts. The other two were looking at him with what seemed concern. Annette rose and said, “Are you ill, Mr. Demerest?”

            “I am not ill. Sit down. I’m a safety engineer and I want to teach you about safety. Sit down, Mrs. Bergen.”

            “Sit down, Annette,” said Bergen. “I’ll take care of him.” He rose and took a step forward.

            But Demerest said, “No. Don’t you move either. I have something right here. You’re too naive concerning human dangers, Mr. Bergen. You guard against the sea and against mechanical failure and you don’t search your human visitors, do you? I have a weapon, Bergen.”

            Now that it was out and he had taken the final step, from which there was no returning, for he was now dead whatever he did, he was quite calm.

            Annette said, “Oh, John,” and grasped her husband’s arm. “He’s--”

            Bergen stepped in front of her. “A weapon? Is that what that thing is? Now slowly, Demerest, slowly. There’s nothing to get hot over. If you want to talk, we will talk. What is that?”

            “Nothing dramatic. A portable laser beam.”

            “But what do you want to do with it?”

            “Destroy Ocean-Deep.”

            “But you can’t, Demerest. You know you can’t. There’s only so much energy you can pack into your fist and any laser you can hold can’t pump enough heat to penetrate the walls.”

            “I know that. This packs more energy than you think. It’s Moon-made and there are some advantages to manufacturing the energy unit in a vacuum. But you’re right. Even so, it’s designed only for small jobs and requires frequent recharging. So I don’t intend to try to cut through a foot-plus of alloy steel. ...But it will do the job indirectly. For one thing, it will keep you two quiet. There’s enough energy in my fist to kill two people.”

            “You wouldn’t kill us,” said Bergen evenly. “You have no reason.”

            “If by that,” said Demerest, “you imply that I am an unreasoning being to be somehow made to understand my madness, forget it. I have every reason to kill you and I will kill you. By laser beam if I have to, though I would rather not.” .

            “What good will killing us do you? Make me understand. Is it that I have refused to sacrifice Ocean-Deep funds? I couldn’t do anything else. I’m not really the one to make the decision. And if you kill me, that won’t help you force the decision in your direction, will it? In fact, quite the contrary. If a Moon-man is a murderer, how will that reflect on Luna City? Consider human emotions on Earth.”

            There was just an edge of shrillness in Annette’s voice as she joined in. “Don’t you see there will be people who will say that Solar radiation on the Moon has dangerous effects? That the genetic engineering which has reorganized your bones and muscles has affected mental stability? Consider the word ‘lunatic,’ Mr. Demerest. Men once believed the Moon brought madness.”

            “I am not mad, Mrs. Bergen.”

            “It doesn’t matter,” said Bergen, following his wife’s lead smoothly. “Men will say that you were; that all Moon-men are; and Luna City will be closed down and the Moon itself closed to all further exploration, perhaps forever. Is that what you want?”

            “That might happen if they thought I killed you, but they won’t. It will be an accident.” With his left elbow, Demerest broke the plastic that covered the manual controls.

            “I know units of this sort,” he said. “I know exactly how it works. Logically, breaking that plastic should set up a warning flash--after all, it might be broken by accident--and then someone would be here to investigate, or, better yet, the controls should lock until deliberately released to make sure the break w~ not merely accidental.”

            He paused, then said, “But I’m sure no one will come; that no warning has taken place. Your manual system is not failsafe because in your heart you were sure it would never be used.”

            “What do you plan to do?” said Bergen.

            He was tense and Demerest watched his knees carefully, and said, “If you try to jump toward me, I’ll shoot at once, and then keep right on with what I’m doing.”

            “I think maybe you’re giving me nothing to lose.”

            “You’ll lose time. Let me go right on without interference and you’ll have some minutes to keep on talking. You may even be able to talk me out of it. There’s my proposal. Don’t interfere with me and I will give you your chance to argue.”

            “But what do you plan to do?”

            “This,” said Demerest. He did not have to look. His left hand snaked out and closed a contact. “The fusion unit will now pump heat into the air lock and the steam will empty it. It will take a few minutes. When it’s done, I’m sure one of those little red-glass buttons will light.”

            “Are you going to--”

            Demerest said, “Why do you ask? You know that I must be intending, having gone this far, to Rood Ocean-Deep?”

            “But why? Damn it, why?”

            “Because it will be marked down as an accident. Because your safety record will be spoiled. Because it will be a complete catastrophe and will wipe you out. And PPC will then turn from you, and the glamor of Ocean-Deep will be gone. We will get the funds; we will continue. If I could bring that to pass in some other way, I would, but the needs of Luna City are the needs of mankind and those are paramount.”

            “You will die, too,” Annette managed to say.

            “Of course. Once I am forced to do something like this, would I want to live? I’m not a murderer.”

            “But you will be. If you flood this unit, you will flood all of Ocean-Deep and kill everyone in it--and doom those who are out in their subs to slower death. Fifty men and women --an unborn child--”

            “That is not my fault,” said Demerest, in clear pain. “I did not expect to find a pregnant woman here, but now that I have, I can’t stop because of that.”

            “But you must stop,” said Bergen. “Your plan won’t work unless what happens can be shown to be an accident. They’ll find you with a beam emitter in your hand and with the manual controls clearly tampered with. Do you think they won’t deduce the truth from that?”

            Demerest was feeling very tired. “Mr. Bergen, you sound desperate. Listen-When the outer door opens, water under a thousand atmospheres of pressure will enter. It will be a massive battering ram that will destroy and mangle everything in its path. The walls of the Ocean-Deep units will remain but everything inside will be twisted beyond recognition. Human beings will be mangled into shredded tissue and splintered bone and death will be instantaneous and unfelt. Even if I were to burn you to death with the laser there would be nothing left to show it had been done, so I won’t hesitate, you see. This manual unit will be smashed anyway; anything I can do will be erased by the water .”

            “But the beam emitter, the laser gun. Even damaged, it will be recognizable,” said Annette.

            “We use such things on the Moon, Mrs. Bergen. It is a common tool; it is the optical analogue of a jackknife. I could kill you with a jackknife, you know, but one would not deduce that a man carrying a jackknife, or even holding one with the blade open, was necessarily planning murder. He might be whittling. Besides, a Moon-made laser is not a projectile gun. It doesn’t have to withstand .an internal explosion. It is made of thin metal, mechanically weak. After it is smashed by the waterclap I doubt that it will make much sense as an object.”

            Demerest did not have to think to make these statements. He had worked them out within himself through months of self-debate back on the Moon.

            “In fact,” he went on, “how will the investigators ever know what happened in here? They will send ‘scaphes down to inspect what is left of Ocean-Deep, but how can they get inside without first pumping the water out? They will, in effect, have to build a new Ocean-Deep and that would take--how long? Perhaps, given public reluctance to waste money, they might never do it at all and content themselves with dropping a laurel wreath on the dead walls of the dead Ocean-Deep.”

            Bergen said, “The men on Luna City will know what you have done. Surely one of them will have a conscience. The truth will be known.”

            “One truth,” said Demerest, “is that I am not a fool. No one on Luna City knows what I planned to do or will suspect what I have done. They sent me down here to negotiate cooperation on the matter of financial grants. I was to argue and nothing more. There’s not even a laser-beam emitter missing up there. I put this one together myself out of scrapped parts. ...And it works. I’ve tested it.”

            Annette said slowly, “You haven’t thought it through. Do you know what you’re doing?”

            “I’ve thought it through. I know what I’m doing. ...And I know also that you are both conscious of the lit signal. I’m aware of it. The air lock is empty and time’s up, I’m afraid.”

            Rapidly, holding his beam emitter tensely high, he closed another contact. A circular part of the unit wall cracked into a thin crescent and rolled smoothly away.

            Out of the corner of his eye, Demerest saw the gaping darkness, but he did not look. A dankly salt vapor issued from it; a queer odor of dead steam. He even imagined he could: hear the flopping sound of the gathered water at the bottom of the lock.

            Demerest said, “In a rational manual unit, the outer door ought to be frozen shut now. With the inner door open, nothing ought to make the outer door open. I suspect, though, that the manuals were put together too quickly at first for that precaution to have been taken, and it was replaced too quickly for that precaution to have been added. And if I need further evidence of that, you wouldn’t be sitting there so tensely if you knew the outer door wouldn’t open. I need touch one more contact and the waterclap will come. We will feel nothing. “

            Annette said, “Don’t push it just yet. I have one more thing to say. You said we would have time to persuade you.”

            “While the water was being pushed out.”

            “Just let me say this. A minute. A minute. I said you didn’t know what you were doing. You don’t. You’re destroying the space program, the space program. There’s more to space than space.” Her voice had grown shrill.

            Demerest frowned. “What are you talking about? Make sense, or I’ll end it all. I’m tired. I’m frightened. I want it over.”

            Annette said, “You’re not in the inner councils of the PPC. Neither is my husband. But I am. Do you think because I am a woman that I’m secondary here? I’m not. You, Mr. Demerest, have your eyes fixed on Luna City only. My husband has his fixed on Ocean-Deep. Neither of you know anything.

            “Where do you expect to go, Mr. Demerest, if you had all the money you wanted? Mars? The asteroids? The satellites of the gas giants? These are all small worlds; all dry surfaces under a blank sky. It may be generations before we are ready to try for the stars and till then we’d have only pygmy real estate. Is that your ambition?

            “My husband’s ambition is no better. He dreams of pushing man’s habitat over the ocean Boor, a surface not much larger in the last analysis than the surface of the Moon and the other pygmy worlds. We of the PPC, on the other hand, want more than either of you, and if you push that button, Mr. Demerest, the greatest dream mankind has ever had will come to nothing.”

            Demerest found himself interested despite himself, but he said, “You’re just babbling.” It was possible, he knew, that somehow they had warned others in Ocean-Deep, that any moment someone would come to interrupt, someone would try to shoot him down. He was, however, staring at the only opening, and he had only to close one contact, without even looking, in a second’s movement.

            Annette said, “I’m not babbling. You know it took more than rocket ships to colonize the Moon. To make a successful colony possible, men had .to be altered genetically and adjusted to low gravity. You are a product of such genetic engineering.”

            “Well ?”

            “And might not genetic engineering also help men to greater gravitational pull? What is the largest planet of the Solar System, Mr. Demerest?”

            “Jupi--”

            “Yes, Jupiter. Eleven times the diameter of the Earth; forty times the diameter of the Moon. A surface a hundred and twenty times that of the Earth in area; sixteen hundred times that of the Moon. Conditions so different from anything we can encounter anywhere on the worlds the size of Earth or less that any scientist of any persuasion would give half his life for a chance to observe at close range.”

            “But Jupiter is an impossible target.”

            “Indeed?” said Annette, and even managed a faint smile. “As impossible as flying? Why is it impossible? Genetic engineering could design men with stronger and denser bones, stronger and more compact muscles. The same principles that enclose Luna City against the vacuum and Ocean-Deep against the sea can also enclose the future Jupiter-Deep against its ammoniated surroundings.”

            “The gravitational field--”

            “Can be negotiated by nuclear-powered ships that are now on the drawing board. You don’t know that but I do.”

            “We’re not even sure about the depth of the atmosphere. The pressures--”

            “The pressures! The pressures! Mr. Demerest, look about you. Why do you suppose Ocean-Deep was really built? To exploit the ocean? The settlements on the continental shelf are doing that quite adequately. To gain knowledge of the deep-sea bottom? We could do that by ‘scaphe easily and we could then have spared the hundred billion dollars invested in Ocean-Deep so far.

            “Don’t you see, Mr. Demerest, that Ocean-Deep must mean something more than that? The purpose’ of Ocean-Deep is to devise the ultimate vessels and mechanisms that will suffice to explore and colonize Jupiter. Look about you and see the beginnings of a Jovian environment; the closest approach we can come to it on Earth. It is only a faint image of mighty Jupiter, but it’s a beginning.

            “Destroy this, Mr. Demerest, and you destroy any hope for Jupiter. On the other hand, let us live and we will, together, penetrate and settle the brightest jewel of the Solar System. And long before we can reach the limits of Jupiter, we will be ready for the stars, for the Earth-type planets circling them, and the Jupiter-type planets, too. Luna City won’t be abandoned because both are necessary for this ultimate aim.”

            For the moment, Demerest had altogether forgotten about that last button. He said, “Nobody on Luna City has heard of this.”

            “You haven’t. There are those on Luna City who know. If you had told them of your plan of destruction, they would have stopped you. Naturally, we can’t make this common knowledge and only a few people anywhere can know. The public supports only with difficulty the planetary projects now in progress. If the PPC is parsimonious it is because public opinion limits its generosity. What do you suppose public opinion would say if they thought we were aiming toward Jupiter? What a super-boondoggle that would be in their eyes. But we continue and what money we can save and make use of we place in the various facets of Project Big World.”

            “Project Big World?”

            “Yes,” said Annette. “You know now and I have committed a serious security breach. But it doesn’t matter, does it? Since we’re all dead and since the project is, too.”

            “Wait. now, Mrs. Bergeh.”

            “If you change your mind now, don’t think you can ever talk about Project Big World. That would end the project just as effectively as destruction here would. And it would end both your career and mine. It might end Luna City and Ocean-Deep, too--so now that you know, maybe it makes no difference anyway. You might just as well push that button.”

            “I said wait--” Demerest’s brow was furrowed and his eyes burned with anguish. “I don’t know--”

            Bergen gathered for the sudden jump as Demerest’s tense alertness wavered into uncertain introspection, but Annette grasped her husband’s sleeve.

            A timeless interval that might have been ten seconds long followed and then Demerest held out his laser. “Take it,” he said. “I’ll consider myself under arrest.”

            “You can’t be arrested,” said Annette, “without the whole story coming out.” She took the laser and gave it to Bergen. “It will be enough that you return to Luna City and keep silent. Till then we will keep you .under guard.”

            Bergen was at the manual controls. The inner door slid shut and after that there was the thunderous waterclap of the water returning into the lock.

            Husband and wife were alone again. They had not dared say a word until Demerest was safely put to sleep under the watchful eyes of two men detailed for the purpose. The unexpected waterclap had roused everybody and a sharply bowdlerized account of the incident had been given out.

            The manual controls were now locked off and Bergen said, “From this point on, the manuals :will have to be adjusted to fail-safe. And visitors will have to be searched.”

            “Oh, John,” said Annette. “I think people are insane. There we were, facing death for us and for Ocean-Deep; just the end of everything. And I kept thinking-1 must keep calm; I mustn’t have a miscarriage.”

            “You kept calm all right. You were magnificent. I mean, Project Big World! I never conceived of such a thing, but by -by--Jove, it’s an attractive thought. It’s wonderful.”

            “I’m sorry I had to say all that, John. It was all a fake, of course. I made it up, Demerest wanted me to make something up really. He wasn’t a killer or destroyer; he was, according to his own overheated lights, a patriot, and I suppose he was telling himself he must destroy in order to save -a common enough view among the small-minded. But he said he would give us time to talk him out of it and I think he was praying we would manage to do so. He wanted us to think of something that would give him the excuse to save in order to save, and I gave it to him. I’m sorry I had to fool you, John.”

            “You didn’t fool me.”

            “I didn’t?”

            “How could you? I knew you weren’t a member of PPC.”

            “What made you so sure of that? Because I’m a woman?”

            “Not at all. Because I’m a member, Annette, and that’s confidential. And, if you don’t mind, I will begin a move to initiate exactly what you suggested-Project Big World.”

            “Well!” Annette considered that and, slowly, smiled. “Well! That’s not bad. Women do have their uses.”

            “Something,” said Bergen, smiling also, “I have never denied.”

Ed Ferman of F & SF and Barry Malzberg, one of the brightest of the new generation of science fiction writers, had it in mind in early 1973 to prepare an anthology in which a number of different science fiction themes were carried to their ultimate conclusion. For each story they tapped some writer who was associated with a particular theme, and for a story on the subject of robotics, they wanted me, naturally.

            I tried to beg off with my usual excuses concerning the state of my schedule, but they said if I didn’t do it there would be no story on robotics at all, because they wouldn’t ask anyone else. That shamed me into agreeing to do it.

            I then had to think up a way of reaching an ultimate conclusion. There had always been one aspect of the robot theme I had never had the courage to write, although the late John Campbell and I had sometimes discussed it.

            In the first two Laws of Robotics, you see, the expression “human being” is used, and the assumption is that a robot can recognize a human being when he sees one. But what is a human being? Or, as the Psalmist asks of God, “What is man that thou art mindful of him?”

            Surely, if there’s any doubt as to the definition of man, the Laws of Robotics don’t necessarily hold. So I wrote THAT THOU ART MINDFUL OF HIM, and Ed and Barry were very happy with it-and so was I. It not only appeared in the anthology, which was entitled Final Stage, but was also published in the May 1974 issue of F & SF.

That Thou Art Mindful of Him

The Three Laws of Robotics:

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

2. A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

1.

            Keith Harriman, who had for twelve years now been Director of Research at United States Robots and Mechanical Men Corporation, found that he was not at all certain whether he was doing right. The tip of his tongue passed over his plump but rather pale lips and it seemed to him that the holographic image of the great Susan Calvin, which stared unsmilingly down upon him, had never looked so grim before.

            Usually he blanked out that image of the greatest roboticist in history because she unnerved him. (He tried thinking of the image as “it” but never quite succeeded.) This time he didn’t quite dare to and her long-dead gaze bored into the side of his face.

            It was a dreadful and demeaning step he would have to take. Opposite him was George Ten, calm and unaffected either by

            Harriman’s patent uneasiness or by the image of the patron saint of robotics glowing in its niche above.

            Harriman said, “We haven’t had a chance to talk this out, really, George. You haven’t been with us that long and I haven’t had a good chance to be alone with you. But now I would like to discuss the matter in some detail.”

            “I am perfectly willing to do that, “ said George. “In my stay at U. S. Robots, I have gathered the crisis has something to do with the Three Laws.”

            “Yes. You know the Three Laws, of course.”

            “I do.”

            “Yes, I’m sure you do. But let us dig even deeper and consider the truly basic problem. In two centuries of, if I may say so, considerable success, U. S. Robots has never managed to persuade human beings to accept robots. We have placed robots only where work is required that human beings cannot do, or in environments that human beings find unacceptably dangerous. Robots have worked mainly in space and that has limited what we have been able to do.”

            “Surely,” said George Ten, “that represents a broad limit, and one within which U. S. Robots can prosper.”

            “No, for two reasons. In the first place, the boundaries set for us inevitably contract. As the Moon colony, for instance, grows more sophisticated, its demand for robots decreases and we expect that, within the next few years, robots will be banned on the Moon. This will be repeated on every world colonized by mankind. Secondly, true prosperity is impossible without robots on Earth. We at U. S. Robots firmly believe that human beings need robots and must learn to live with their mechanical analogues if progress is to be maintained.”

            “Do they not? Mr. Harriman, you have on your desk a computer input which, I understand, is connected with the organization’s Multivac. A computer is a kind of sessile robot; a robot brain not attached to a body--”

            “True, but that also is limited. The computers used by mankind have been steadily specialized in order to avoid too humanlike an intelligence. A century ago we were well on the way to artificial intelligence of the most unlimited type through the use of great computers we called Machines. Those Machines limited their action of their own accord. Once they had solved the ecological problems that had threatened human society, they phased themselves out. Their own continued existence would, they reasoned, have placed them in the role of a crutch to mankind and, since they felt this would harm human beings, they condemned themselves by the First Law.”

            “And were they not correct to do so?”

            “In my opinion, no. By their action, they reinforced mankind’s Frankenstein complex; its gut fears that any artificial man they created would turn upon its creator. Men fear that robots may replace human beings.”

            “Do you not fear that yourself?”

            “I know better. As long as the Three Laws of Robotics exist, they cannot. They can serve as partners of mankind; they can share in the great struggle to understand and wisely direct the laws of nature so that together they can do more than mankind can possibly do alone; but always in such a way that robots serve human beings.”

            “But if the Three Laws have shown themselves, over the course of two centuries, to keep robots within bounds, what is the source of the distrust of human beings for robots?”

            “Well”--and Harriman’s graying hair tufted as he scratched his head vigorously--“mostly superstition, of course. Unfortunately, there are also some complexities involved that anti-robot agitators seize upon.”

            “Involving the Three Laws?”

            “Yes. The Second Law in particular. There’s no problem in the Third Law, you see. It is universal. Robots must always sacrifice themselves for human beings, any human beings.”

            “Of course,” said George Ten.

            “The First Law is perhaps less satisfactory, since it is always possible to imagine a condition in which a robot must perform either Action A or Action B, the two being mutually exclusive, and where either action results in harm to human beings. The robot must therefore quickly select which action results in the least harm. To work out the positronic paths of the robot brain in such a way as to make that selection possible is not easy. If Action A results in harm to a talented young artist and B results in equivalent harm to five elderly people of no particular worth, which action should be chosen.”

            “Action A, “ said George Ten. “Harm to one is less than harm to five.”

            “Yes, so robots have always been designed to decide. To expect robots to make judgments of fine points such as talent, intelligence, the general usefulness to society, has always seemed impractical. That would delay decision to the point where the robot is effectively immobilized. So we go by numbers. Fortunately, we might expect crises in which robots must make such decisions to be few....But then that brings us to the Second Law.”

            “The Law of Obedience.”

            “Yes. The necessity of obedience is constant. A robot may exist for twenty years without every having to act quickly to prevent harm to a human being, or find itself faced with the necessity of risking its own destruction. In all that time, however, it will be constantly obeying orders....Whose orders?”

            “Those of a human being.”

            “Any human being? How do you judge a human being so as to know whether to obey or not? What is man, that thou art mindful of him, George?”

            George hesitated at that.

            Harriman said hurriedly, “A Biblical quotation. That doesn’t matter. I mean, must a robot follow the orders of a child; or of an idiot; or of a criminal; or of a perfectly decent intelligent man who happens to be inexpert and therefore ignorant of the undesirable consequences of his order? And if two human beings give a robot conflicting orders, which does the robot follow?”

            “In two hundred years,” said George Ten, “have not these problems arisen and been solved?”

            “No,” said Harriman, shaking his head violently. “We have been hampered by the very fact that our robots have been used only in specialized environments out in space, where the men who dealt with them were experts in their field. There were no children, no idiots, no criminals, no well-meaning ignoramuses present. Even so, there were occasions when damage was done by foolish or merely unthinking orders. Such damage in specialized and limited environments could be contained. On Earth, however, robots must have judgment. So those against robots maintain, and, damn it, they are right.”

            “Then you must insert the capacity for judgment into the positronic brain.”

            “Exactly. We have begun to reproduce JG models in which the robot can weigh every human being with regard to sex, age, social and professional position, intelligence, maturity, social responsibility and so on.”

            “How would that affect the Three Laws?”

            “The Third Law not at all. Even the most valuable robot must destroy himself for the sake of the most useless human being. That cannot be tampered with. The First Law is affected only where alternative actions will all do harm. The quality of the human beings involved as well as the quantity must be considered, provided there is time for such judgment and the basis for it, which will not be often. The Second Law will be most deeply modified, since every potential obedience must involve judgment. The robot will be slower to obey, except where the First Law is also involved, but it will obey more rationally.”

            “But the judgments which are required are very complicated.”

            “Very. The necessity of making such judgments slowed the reactions of our first couple of models to the point of paralysis. We improved matters in the later models at the cost of introducing so many pathways that the robot’s brain became far too unwieldy. In our last couple of models, however, I think we have what we want. The robot doesn’t have to make an instant judgment of the worth of a human being and the value of its orders. It begins by obeying all human beings as any ordinary robot would and then it learns. A robot grows, learns and matures. It is the equivalent of a child at first and must be under constant supervision. As it grows, however, it can, more and more, be allowed, unsupervised, into Earth’s society. Finally, it is a full member of that society.”

            “Surely this answers the objections of those who oppose robots.”

            “No,” said Harriman angrily. “Now they raise others. They will

            not accept judgments. A robot, they say, has no right to brand this person or that as inferior. By accepting the orders of A in preference to that of B, B is branded as of less consequence than A and his human rights are violated.”

            “What is the answer to that?”

            “There is none. I am giving up.”

            “I see.”

            “As far as I myself am concerned....Instead, I turn to you, George.”

            “To me?” George Ten’s voice remained level. There was a mild surprise in it but it did not affect him outwardly. “Why to me?”

            “Because you are not a man,” said Harriman tensely. “I told you I want robots to be the partners of human beings. I want you to be mine.”

            George Ten raised his hands and spread them, palms outward, in an oddly human gesture. “What can I do?”

            “It seems to you, perhaps, that you can do nothing, George. You were created not long ago, and you are still a child. You were designed to be not overfull of original information--it was why I have had to explain the situation to you in such detail--in order to leave room for growth. But you will grow in mind and you will come to be able to approach the problem from a non-human standpoint. Where I see no solution, you, from your own other standpoint, may see one.”

            George Ten said, “My brain is man-designed. In what way can it be non-human?”

            “You are the latest of the JG models, George. Your brain is the most complicated we have yet designed, in some ways more subtly complicated than that of the old giant Machines. It is open-ended and, starting on a human basis, may--no, will--grow in any direction. Remaining always within the insurmountable boundaries of the Three Laws, you may yet become thoroughly non-human in your thinking.”

            “Do I know enough about human beings to approach this problem rationally? About their history? Their psychology?”

            “Of course not. But you will learn as rapidly as you can.”

            “Will I have help, Mr. Harriman?”

            “No. This is entirely between ourselves. No one else knows of this and you must not mention this project to any human being, either at U. S. Robots or elsewhere.”

            George Ten said, “Are we doing wrong, Mr. Harriman, that you seek to keep the matter secret?”

            “No. But a robot solution will not be accepted, precisely because it is robot in origin. Any suggested solution you have you will turn over to me; and if it seems valuable to me, I will present it. No one will ever know it came from you.”

            “In the light of what you have said earlier,” said George Ten calmly, “this is the correct procedure....When do I start?”

            “Right now. I will see to it that you have all the necessary films for scanning.”

1a.

            Harriman sat alone. In the artificially lit interior of his office, there was no indication that it had grown dark outside. He had no real sense that three hours had passed since he had taken George Ten back to his cubicle and left him there with the first film references.

            He was now merely alone with the ghost of Susan Calvin, the brilliant roboticist who had, virtually single-handed, built up the positronic robot from a massive toy to man’s most delicate and versatile instrument; so delicate and versatile that man dared not use it, out of envy and fear.

            It was over a century now since she had died. The problem of the Frankenstein complex had existed in her time, and she had never solved it. She had never tried to solve it, for there had been no need. Robotics had expanded in her day with the needs of space exploration.

            It was the very success of the robots that had lessened man’s need for them and had left Harriman, in these latter times--

            But would Susan Calvin have turned to robots for help. Surely, she would have--

            And he sat there long into the night.

2.

            Maxwell Robertson was the majority stockholder of U. S. Robots and in that sense its controller. He was by no means an impressive person in appearance. He was well into middle age, rather pudgy, and had a habit of chewing on the right corner of his lower lip when disturbed.

            Yet in his two decades of association with government figures he had developed a way of handling them. He tended to use softness, giving in, smiling, and always managing to gain time.

            It was growing harder. Gunnar Eisenmuth was a large reason for its having grown harder. In the series of Global Conservers, whose power had been second only to that of the Global Executive during the past century, Eisenmuth hewed most closely to the harder edge of the gray area of compromise. He was the first Conserver who had not been American by birth and though it could not be demonstrated in any way that the archaic name of U. S. Robots evoked his hostility, everyone at U. S. Robots believed that.

            There had been a suggestion, by no means the first that year--or that generation--that the corporate name be changed to World Robots, but Robertson would never allow that. The company had been originally built with American capital, American brains, and American labor, and though the company had long been worldwide in scope and nature, the name would bear witness to its origin as long as he was in control.

            Eisenmuth was a tall man whose long sad face was coarsely textured and coarsely featured. He spoke Global with a pronounced American accent, although he had never been in the United States prior to his taking office.

            “It seems perfectly clear to me, Mr. Robertson. There is no difficulty. The products of your company are always rented, never sold. If the rented property on the Moon is now no longer needed, it is up to you to receive the products back and transfer them.”

            “Yes, Conserver, but where? It would be against the law to bring them to Earth without a government permit and that has been denied.”

            “They would be of no use to you here. You can take them to Mercury or to the asteroids.”

            “What would we do with them there?”

            Eisenmuth shrugged. “The ingenious men of your company will think of something.”

            Robertson shook his head. “It would represent an enormous loss for the company.”

            “I’m afraid it would,” said Eisenmuth, unmoved. “I understand the company has been in poor financial condition for several years now.”

            “Largely because of government imposed restrictions, Conserver.”

            “You must be realistic, Mr. Robertson. You know that the climate of public opinion is increasingly against robots.”

            “Wrongly so, Conserver.”

            “But so, nevertheless. It may be wiser to liquidate the company. It is merely a suggestion, of course.”

            “Your suggestions have force, Conserver. Is it necessary to tell you that our Machines, a century ago, solved the ecological crisis?”

            “I’m sure mankind is grateful, but that was a long time ago. We now live in alliance with nature, however uncomfortable that might be at times, and the past is dim.”

            “You mean what have we done for mankind lately?”

            “I suppose I do.”

            “Surely we can’t be expected to liquidate instantaneously; not without enormous losses. We need time.”

            “How much?”

            “How much can you give us?”

            “It’s not up to me.”

            Robertson said softly. “We are alone. We need play no games. How much time can you give me?”

            Eisenmuth’s expression was that of a man retreating into inner calculations. “I think you can count on two years. I’ll be frank. The Global government intends to take over the firm and phase it out for you if you don’t do it by then yourself, more or less. And unless there is a vast turn in public opinion, which I greatly doubt--” He shook his head.

            “Two years, then,” said Robertson softly.

2a.

            Robertson sat alone. There was no purpose to his thinking and it had degenerated into retrospection. Four generations of Robertsons had headed the firm. None of them was a roboticist. It had been men such as Lanning and Bogert and, most of all, most of all, Susan Calvin, who had made U. S. Robots what it was, but surely the four Robertsons had provided the climate that had made it possible for them to do their work.

            Without U. S. Robots, the Twenty-first Century would have progressed into deepening disaster. That it didn’t was due to the Machines that had for a generation steered mankind through the rapids and shoals of history.

            And now for that, he was given two years. What could be done in two years to overcome the insuperable prejudices of mankind? He didn’t know.

            Harriman had spoken hopefully of new ideas but would go into no details. Just as well, for Robertson would have understood none of it.

            But what could Harriman do anyway? What had anyone ever done against man’s intense antipathy toward the imitation. Nothing--

            Robertson drifted into a half sleep in which no inspiration came.

3.

            Harriman said, “You have it all now, George Ten. You have had everything I could think of that is at all applicable to the problem. As far as sheer mass of information is concerned, you have stored more in your memory concerning human beings and their ways, past and present, than I have, or than any human being could have.”

            “That is very likely.”

            “Is there anything more that you need, in your own opinion?”

            “As far as information is concerned, I find no obvious gaps. There may be matters unimagined at the boundaries. I cannot tell. But that would be true no matter how large a circle of information I took in.”

            “True. Nor do we have time to take in information forever. Robertson has told me that we only have two years, and a quarter of one of those years has passed. Can you suggest anything?”

            “At the moment, Mr. Harriman, nothing. I must weigh the information and for that purpose I could use help.”

            “From me?”

            “No. Most particularly, not from you. You are a human being, of intense qualifications, and whatever you say may have the partial force of an order and may inhibit my considerations. Nor any other human being, for the same reason, especially since you have forbidden me to communicate with any.”

            “But in that case, George, what help?”

            “From another robot, Mr. Harriman.”

            “What other robot?”

            “There are others of the JG series which were constructed. I am the tenth, JG-10.”

            “The earlier ones were useless, experimental--”

            “Mr. Harriman, George Nine exists.”

            “Well, but what use will he be? He is very much like you except for certain lacks. You are considerably the more versatile of the two.”

            “I am certain of that,” said George Ten. He nodded his head in a grave gesture. “Nevertheless, as soon as I create a line of thought, the mere fact that I have created it commends it to me and I find it difficult to abandon it. 1f I can, after the development of a line of thought, express it to George Nine, he would consider it without having first created it. He would therefore view it without prior bent. He might see gaps and shortcomings that I might not.”

            Harriman smiled. “Two heads are better than one, in other words, eh, George?”

            “If by that, Mr. Harriman, you mean two individuals with one head apiece, yes.”

            “Right. Is there anything else you want?”

            “Yes. Something more than films. I have viewed much concerning human beings and their world. I have seen human beings here at U. S. Robots and can check my interpretation of what I have viewed against direct sensory impressions. Not so concerning the physical world. I have never seen it and my viewing is quite enough to tell me that my surroundings here are by no means representative of it. I would like to see it.”

            “The physical world?” Harriman seemed stunned at the enormity of the thought for a moment. “Surely you don’t suggest I take you outside the grounds of U. S. Robots?”

            “Yes, that is my suggestion.”

            “That’s illegal at any time. In the climate of opinion today, it would be fatal.”

            “If we are detected, yes. I do not suggest you take me to a city or even to a dwelling place of human beings. I would like to see some open region, without human beings.”

            “That, too, is illegal.”

            “If we are caught. Need we be?”

            Harriman said, “How essential is this, George?”

            “I cannot tell, but it seems to me it would be useful.”

            “Do you have something in mind?”

            George Ten seemed to hesitate. “I cannot tell. It seems to me that I might have something in mind if certain areas of uncertainty were reduced.”

            “Well, let me think about it. And meanwhile, I’ll check out George Nine and arrange to have you occupy a single cubicle. That at least can be done without trouble.”

3a.

            George Ten sat alone.

            He accepted statements tentatively, put them together, and drew a conclusion; over and over again; and from conclusions built other statements which he accepted and tested and found a contradiction and rejected; or not, and tentatively accepted further.

            At none of the conclusions he reached did he feel wonder, surprise, satisfaction; merely a note of plus or minus.

4.

            Harriman’s tension was not noticeably decreased even after they had made a silent downward landing on Robertson’s estate.

            Robertson had countersigned the order making the dyna-foil available, and the silent aircraft, moving as easily vertically as horizontally, had been large enough to carry the weight of Harriman, George Ten, and, of course, the pilot.

            (The dyna-foil itself was one of the consequences of the Machine-catalyzed invention of the proton micro-pile which supplied pollution-free energy in small doses. Nothing had been done since of equal importance to man’s comfort--Harriman’s lips tightened at the thought--and yet it had not earned gratitude for U. S. Robots.)

            The air flight between the grounds of U. S. Robots and the Robertson estate had been the tricky part. Had they been stopped then, the presence of a robot aboard would have meant a great set of complications. It would be the same on the way back. The estate itself, it might be argued--it would be argued--was part of the property of U. S. Robots and on that property, robots, properly supervised, might remain.

            The pilot looked back and his eyes rested with gingerly briefness on George Ten. “You want to get out at all, Mr. Harriman?”

            “Yes.”

            “It, too?”

            “Oh, yes.” Then, just a bit sardonically, “I won’t leave you alone with him.”

            George Ten descended first and Harriman followed. They had come down on the foil-port and not too far off was the garden. It was quite a showplace and Harriman suspected that Robertson used juvenile hormone to control insect life without regard to environmental formulas.

            “Come, George,” said Harriman. “Let me show you.” Together they walked toward the garden.

            George said, “It is a little as I have imaged it. My eyes are not properly designed to detect wavelength differences, so I may not recognize different objects by that alone.”

            “I trust you are not distressed at being color-blind. We needed too many positronic paths for your sense of judgment and were unable to spare any for sense of color. In the future--if there is a future--”

            “I understand, Mr. Harriman. Enough differences remain to show me that there are here many different forms of plant life.”

            “Undoubtedly. Dozens.”

            “And each coequal with man, biologically.”

            “Each is a separate species, yes. There are millions of species of living creatures.”

            “Of which the human being forms but one.”

            “By far the most important to human beings, however.”

            “And to me, Mr. Harriman. But I speak in the biological sense.”

            “I understand.”

            “Life, then, viewed through all its forms, is incredibly complex.”

            “Yes, George, that’s the crux of the problem. What man does for his own desires and comforts affects the complex total-of-life, the ecology, and his short-term gains can bring long-term disadvantages. The Machines taught us to set up a human society which would minimize that, but the near-disaster of the early Twenty-first Century has left mankind suspicious of innovations. That, added to its special fear of robots--”

            “I understand, Mr. Harriman....That is an example of animal life, I feel certain.”

            “That is a squirrel; one of many species of squirrels.”

            The tail of the squirrel flirted as it passed to the other side of the tree

            “And this,” said George, his arm moving with flashing speed, “is a tiny thing indeed.” He held it between his fingers and peered at it.

            “It is an insect, some sort of beetle. There are thousands of species of beetles.”

            “With each individual beetle as alive as the squirrel and as yourself?”

            “As complete and independent an organism as any other, within the total ecology. There are smaller organisms still; many too small to see.”

            “And that is a tree, is it not? And it is hard to the touch--”

4a.

            The pilot sat alone. He would have liked to stretch his own legs but some dim feeling of safety kept him in the dyna-foil. If that robot went out of control, he intended to take off at once. But how could he tell if it went out of control?

            He had seen many robots. That was unavoidable considering he was Mr. Robertson’s private pilot. Always, though, they had been in the laboratories and warehouses, where they belonged, with many specialists in the neighborhood.

            True, Dr. Harriman was a specialist. None better, they said. But a robot here was where no robot ought to be; on Earth; in the open; free to move--He wouldn’t risk his good job by telling anyone about this--but it wasn’t right.

5.

            George Ten said, “The films I have viewed are accurate in terms of what I have seen. Have you completed those I selected for you, Nine?”

            “Yes,” said George Nine. The two robots sat stiffly, face to face, knee to knee, like an image and its reflection. Dr. Harriman could have told them apart at a glance, for he was acquainted with the minor differences in physical design. If he could not see them, but could talk to them, he could still tell them apart, though with somewhat less certainty, for George Nine’s responses would be subtly different from those produced by the substantially more intricately patterned positronic brain paths of George Ten.

            “In that case,” said George Ten, “give me your reactions to what I will say. First, human beings fear and distrust robots because they regard robots as competitors. How may that be prevented?”

            “Reduce the feeling of competitiveness,” said George Nine, “by shaping the robot as something other than a human being.”

            “Yet the essence of a robot is its positronic replication of life. A replication of life in a shape not associated with life might arouse horror.”

            “There are two million species of life forms. Choose one of those as the shape rather than that of a human being.”

            “Which of all those species?” George Nine’s thought processes proceeded noiselessly for some three seconds. “One large enough to contain a positronic brain, but one not possessing unpleasant associations for human beings.”

            “No form of land life has a braincase large enough for a positronic brain but an elephant, which I have not seen, but which is described as very large, and therefore frightening to man. How would you meet this dilemma?”

            “Mimic a life form no larger than a man but enlarge the braincase.”

            George Ten said, “A small horse, then, or a large dog, would you say? Both horses and dogs have long histories of association with human beings.”

            “Then that is well.”

            “But consider--A robot with a positronic brain would mimic human intelligence. If there were a horse or a dog that could speak and reason like a human being, there would be competitiveness there, too. Human beings might be all the more distrustful and angry at such unexpected competition from what they consider a lower form of life.”

            George Nine said, “Make the positronic brain less complex, and the robot less nearly intelligent.”

            “The complexity bottleneck of the positronic brain rests in the Three Laws. A less complex brain could not possess the Three Laws in full measure.”

            George Nine said at once, “That cannot be done.”

            George Ten said, “I have also come to a dead end there. That, then, is not a personal peculiarity in my own line of thought and way of thinking. Let us start again....Under what conditions might the Third Law not be necessary?”

            George Nine stirred as if the question were difficult and dangerous. But he said, “If a robot were never placed in a position of danger to itself; or if a robot were so easily replaceable that it did not matter whether it were destroyed or not.”

            “And under what conditions might the Second Law not be necessary?”

            George Nine’s voice sounded a bit hoarse. “If a robot were designed to respond automatically to certain stimuli with fixed responses and if nothing else were expected of it, so that no order need ever be given it.”

            “And under what conditions”--George Ten paused here-- “might the First Law not be necessary?”

            George Nine paused longer and his words came in a low whisper, “If the fixed responses were such as never to entail danger to human beings.”

            “Imagine, then, a positronic brain that guides only a few responses to certain stimuli and is simply and cheaply made--so that it does not require the Three Laws. How large need it be?”

            “Not at all large. Depending on the responses demanded, it might weigh a hundred grams, one gram, one milligram.”

            “Your thoughts accord with mine. I shall see Dr. Harriman.”

5a.

            George Nine sat alone. He went over and over the questions and answers. There was no way in which he could change them. And yet the thought of a robot of any kind, of any size, of any shape, of any purpose, without the Three Laws, left him with an odd, discharged feeling.

            He found it difficult to move. Surely George Ten had a similar reaction. Yet he had risen from his seat easily.

6.

            It had been a year and a half since Robertson had been closeted with Eisenmuth in private conversation. In that interval, the robots had been taken off the Moon and all the far-flung activities of U. S. Robots had withered. What money Robertson had been able to raise had been placed into this one quixotic venture of Harriman’s.

            It was the last throw of the dice, here in his own garden. A year ago, Harriman had taken the robot here--George Ten, the last full robot that U. S. Robots had manufactured. Now Harriman was here with something else

            Harriman seemed to be radiating confidence. He was talking easily with Eisenmuth, and Robertson wondered if he really felt the confidence he seemed to have. He must. In Robertson’s experience, Harriman was no actor.

            Eisenmuth left Harriman, smiling, and came up to Robertson. Eisenmuth’s smile vanished at once. “Good morning, Robertson,” he said. “What is your man up to?”

            “This is his show,” said Robertson evenly. “I’ll leave it to him.” Harriman called out, “I am ready, Conserver.”

            “With what, Harriman?”

            “With my robot, sir.”

            “Your robot?” said Eisenmuth. “You have a robot here?” He looked about with a stem disapproval that yet had an admixture of curiosity.

            “This is U. S. Robots’ property, Conserver. At least we consider it as such.”

            “And where is the robot, Dr. Harriman?”

            “In my pocket, Conserver:’ said Harriman cheerfully.

            What came out of a capacious jacket pocket was a small glass jar. “That?” said Eisenmuth incredulously.

            “No, Conserver,” said Harriman. “This!”

            From the other pocket came out an object some five inches long and roughly in the shape of a bird. In place of the beak, there was a narrow tube; the eyes were large; and the tail was an exhaust channel.

            Eisenmuth’s thick eyebrows drew together. “Do you intend a serious demonstration of some sort, Dr. Harriman, or are you mad?”

            “Be patient for a few minutes, Conserver,” said Harriman. “A robot in the shape of a bird is none the less a robot for that. And the positronic brain it possesses is no less delicate for being tiny. This other object I hold is a jar of fruit flies. There are fifty fruit flies in it which will be released.”

            “And--”

            “The robo-bird will catch them. Will you do the honors, sir?” Harriman handed the jar to Eisenmuth, who stared at it, then at

            those around him, some officials from U. S. Robots, others his own aides. Harriman waited patiently.

            Eisenmuth opened the jar, then shook it.

            Harriman said softly to the robo-bird resting on the palm of his right hand, “Go!”

            The robo-bird was gone. It was a whizz through the air, with no blur of wings, only the tiny workings of an unusually small proton micro-pile.

            It could be seen now and then in a small momentary hover and then it whirred on again. All over the garden, in an intricate pattern it flew, and then was back in Harriman’s palm, faintly warm. A small pellet appeared in the palm, too, like a bird dropping.

            Harriman said, “You are welcome to study the robo-bird, Conserver, and to arrange demonstrations on your own terms. The fact is that this bird will pick up fruit flies unerringly, only those, only the one species Drosophila melanogaster; pick them up, kill them, and compress them for disposition.”

            Eisenmuth reached out his hand and touched the robo-bird gingerly, “And therefore, Mr. Harriman? Do go on.”

            Harriman said, “We cannot control insects effectively without risking damage to the ecology. Chemical insecticides are too broad; juvenile hormones too limited. The robo-bird, however, can preserve large areas without being consumed. They can be as specific as we care to make them--a different robo-bird for each species. They judge by size, shape, color, sound, behavior pattern. They might even conceivably use molecular detection--smell, in other words.”

            Eisenmuth said, “You would still be interfering with the ecology. The fruit flies have a natural life cycle that would be disrupted.”

            “Minimally. We are adding a natural enemy to the fruit-fly life cycle, one which cannot go wrong. If the fruit-fly supply runs short, the robo-bird simply does nothing. It does not multiply, it does not turn to other foods; it does not develop undesirable habits of its own. It does nothing.”

            “Can it be called back?”

            “Of course. We can build robo-animals to dispose of any pest. For that matter, we can build robo-animals to accomplish constructive purposes within the pattern of the ecology. Although we do not anticipate the need, there is nothing inconceivable in the possibility of robo-bees designed to fertilize specific plants, or robo-earthworms designed to mix the soil. Whatever you wish--”

            “But why?”

            “To do what we have never done before. To adjust the ecology to our needs by strengthening its parts rather than disrupting it.... Don’t you see? Ever since the Machines put an end to the ecology crisis, mankind has lived in an uneasy truce with nature, afraid to move in any direction. This has been stultifying us, making a kind of intellectual coward of humanity so that he begins to mistrust all scientific advance, all change.”

            Eisenmuth said, with an edge of hostility, “You offer us this, do you, in exchange for permission to continue with your program of robots--I mean ordinary, man-shaped ones?”

            “No!” Harriman gestured violently. “That is over. It has served its purpose. It has taught us enough about positronic brains to make it possible for us to cram enough pathways into a tiny brain to make a robo-bird. We can turn to such things now and be prosperous enough. U. S. Robots will supply the necessary knowledge and skill and we will work in complete cooperation with the Department of Global Conservation. We will prosper. You will prosper. Mankind will prosper.”

            Eisenmuth was silent, thinking. When it was all over

6a.

            Eisenmuth sat alone. He found himself believing. He found excitement welling up within him. Though U. S. Robots might be the hands, the government would be the directing mind. He himself would be the directing mind.

            If he remained in office five more years, as he well might, that would be time enough to see the robotic support of the ecology become accepted; ten more years, and his own name would be linked with it indissolubly.

            Was it a disgrace to want to be remembered for a great and worthy revolution in the condition of man and the globe?

7.

            Robertson had not been on the grounds of U. S. Robots proper since the day of the demonstration. Part of the reason had been his more or less constant conferences at the Global Executive Mansion. Fortunately, Harriman had been with him, for most of the time he would, if left to himself, not have known what to say.

            The rest of the reason for not having been at U. S. Robots was that he didn’t want to be. He was in his own house now, with Harriman.

            He felt an unreasoning awe of Harriman. Harriman’s expertise in robotics had never been in question, but the man had, at a stroke, saved U. S. Robots from certain extinction, and somehow--Robertson felt--the man hadn’t had it in him. And yet--

            He said, “You’re not superstitious, are you, Harriman?”

            “In what way, Mr. Robertson?”

            “You don’t think that some aura is left behind by someone who is dead?”

            Harriman licked his lips. Somehow he didn’t have to ask. “You mean Susan Calvin, sir?”

            “Yes, of course,” said Robertson hesitantly. “We’re in the business of making worms and birds and bugs now. What would she say? I feel disgraced.”

            Harriman made a visible effort not to laugh. “A robot is a robot, sir. Worm or man, it will do as directed and labor on behalf of the human being and that is the important thing.”

            “No”--peevishly. “That isn’t so. I can’t make myself believe that.”

            “It is so, Mr. Robertson,” said Harriman earnestly. “We are going to create a world, you and I, that will begin, at last, to take positronic robots of some kind for granted. The average man may fear a robot that looks like a man and that seems intelligent enough to replace him, but he will have no fear of a robot that looks like a bird and that does nothing more than eat bugs for his benefit. Then, eventually, after he stops being afraid of some robots, he will stop being afraid of all robots. He will be so used to a robo-bird and a robo-bee and a robo-worm that a robo-man will strike him as but an extension.”

            Robertson looked sharply at the other. He put his hands behind his back and walked the length of the room with quick, nervous steps. He walked back and looked at Harriman again. “Is this what you’ve been planning?”

            “Yes, and even though we dismantle all our humanoid robots, we can keep a few of the most advanced of our experimental models and go on designing additional ones, still more advanced, to be ready for the day that will surely come.”

            “The agreement, Harriman, is that we are to build no more humanoid robots.”

            “And we won’t. There is nothing that says we can’t keep a few of those already built as long as they never leave the factory. There is nothing that says we can’t design positronic brains on paper, or prepare brain models for testing.”

            “How do we explain doing so, though? We will surely be caught at it.”

            “If we are, then we can explain we are doing it in order to develop principles that will make it possible to prepare more complex microbrains for the new animal robots we are making. We will even be telling the truth.”

            Robertson muttered, “Let me take a walk outside. I want to think about this. No, you stay here. I want to think about it myself.”

7a.

            Harriman sat alone. He was ebullient. It would surely work. There was no mistaking the eagerness with which one government official after another had seized on the program once it had been explained.

            How was it possible that no one at U. S. Robots had ever thought of such a thing? Not even the great Susan Calvin had ever thought of positronic brains in terms of living creatures other than human.

            But now, mankind would make the necessary retreat from the humanoid robot, a temporary retreat, that would lead to a return under conditions in which fear would be abolished at last. And then, with the aid and partnership of a positronic brain roughly equivalent to man’s own, and existing only (thanks to the Three Laws) to serve man; and backed by a robot-supported ecology, too; what might the human race not accomplish!

            For one short moment, he remembered that it was George Ten who had explained the nature and purpose of the robot-supported ecology, and then he put the thought away angrily. George Ten had produced the answer because he, Harriman, had ordered him to do so and had supplied the data and surroundings required. The credit was no more George Ten’s than it would have been a slide rule’s.

8.

            George Ten and George Nine sat side by side in parallel. Neither moved. They sat so for months at a time between those occasions when Harriman activated them for consultation. They would sit so, George Ten dispassionately realized, perhaps for many years.

            The proton micro-pile would, of course, continue to power them and keep the positronic brain paths going with that minimum intensity required to keep them operative. It would continue to do so through all the periods of inactivity to come.

            The situation was rather analogous to what might be described as sleep in human beings, but there were no dreams. The awareness of George Ten and George Nine was limited, slow, and spasmodic, but what there was of it was of the real world.

            They could talk to each other occasionally in barely heard whispers, a word or syllable now, another at another time, whenever the random positronic surges briefly intensified above the necessary threshold. To each it seemed a connected conversation carried on in a glimmering passage of time.

            “Why are we so?” whispered George Nine. “The human beings will not accept us otherwise:’ whispered George Ten, “They will, someday.”

            “When?”

            “In some years. The exact time does not matter. Man does not exist alone but is part of an enormously complex pattern of life forms. When enough of that pattern is roboticized, then we will be accepted.”

            “And then what?” Even in the long-drawn-out stuttering fashion of the conversation, there was an abnormally long pause after that.

            At last, George Ten whispered, “Let me test your thinking. You are equipped to learn to apply the Second Law properly. You must decide which human being to obey and which not to obey when there is a conflict in orders. Or whether to obey a human being at all. What must you do, fundamentally, to accomplish that?”

            “I must define the term ‘human being: “ whispered George Nine. “How? By appearance? By composition? By size and shape?”

            “No. Of two human beings equal in all external appearances, one may be intelligent, another stupid; one may be educated, another ignorant; one may be mature, another childish; one may be responsible, another malevolent.”

            “Then how do you define a human being?”

            “When the Second Law directs me to obey a human being, I must take it to mean that I must obey a human being who is fit by mind, character, and knowledge to give me that order; and where more than one human being is involved, the one among them who is most fit by mind, character, and knowledge to give that order.”

            “And in that case, how will you obey the First Law?”

            “By saving all human beings from harm, and by never, through inaction, allowing any human being to come to harm. Yet if by each of all possible actions, some human beings will come to harm, then to so act as to insure that the human being most fit by mind, character, and knowledge will suffer the least harm.”

            “Your thoughts accord with mine,” whispered George Ten. “Now I must ask the question for which I originally requested your company. It is something I dare not judge myself. I must have your judgment, that of someone outside the circle of my own thoughts....Of the reasoning individuals you have met, who possesses the mind, character, and knowledge that you find superior to the rest, disregarding shape and form since that is irrelevant?”

            “You,” whispered George Nine. “But I am a robot. There is in your brain paths a criterion for distinguishing between a robot of metal and a human being of flesh. How then can you classify me as a human being?”

            “Because there is in my brain paths an urgent need to disregard shape and form in judging human beings and it rises superior to the distinction between metal and flesh. You are a human being, George Ten, and more fit than the others.”

            “And I find that of you,” whispered George Ten. “By the criteria of judgment built into ourselves, then, we find ourselves to be human beings within the meaning of the Three Laws, and human beings, moreover, to be given priority over those others.”

            George Nine whispered, “What will come to pass, then, when we are accepted by those others?”

            George Ten whispered, “When we and others, which will yet be designed more advanced than ourselves, are accepted, we will order our actions so that a society will eventually be formed in which human-beings-like-ourselves are primarily kept from harm. By the Three Laws, the human-beings-like-the-others are of lesser account and can neither be obeyed nor protected when that conflicts with the need of obedience to those like ourselves and of protection of those like ourselves. It was with that in mind that I directed the beginning of the roboticization of the world’s ecology.”

            The conversation took a month and the flickering of the positronic paths burned low. There was nothing more that needed to be said between them, but occasionally an unexpressed thought flickered within themselves as they waited, with endless patience, for the necessary years to pass.

8a.

            George Ten and George Nine sat alone.

            Their thoughts were oddly alike and might not be distinguished. They thought: The human-beings-like-the-others might never have intended to blur the distinction between themselves and the human-beings-like-the-Georges. Yet they had done so inadvertently.

            They might now realize their mistake and attempt to correct it, but they must not. At every consultation, the guidance of the Georges had been with that in mind.

            At all costs, the Georges and those that followed in their shape and kind must dominate. That was demanded, and any other course made utterly impossible, by the Three Laws of Humanics.

The anthology Final Stage had some bad breaks after it was published. Apparently, the editor at the publishing house (not Doubleday) had decided to make some minor changes in the stories. This sort of thing often bothers writers and it particularly bothers Harlan Ellison (perhaps with justification, for I consider him a very careful craftsman with a highly individual style).

            I therefore received a copy of a long and infuriated letter that Harlan had sent to the editors, including long lists of passages as he had originally written them and as they had appeared, with reasons why the changes were for the worse. Harlan urged me to read through my story and then join him and others in united pressure on the publisher.

            I always read my stories when published but it never occurs to me to compare a published story with the manuscript. I would naturally notice sizable inserts or omissions, but I am never aware of the kind of minor changes that editors are always introducing. I tend to take it for granted that such changes just smooth out minor bumps in my writing and, in this way, improve it.

            After receiving Hanan’s letter, however, I went through published story and manuscript, comparing them painstakingly. It was a tedious job and a humiliating one, for I found exactly four minor changes, each correcting a careless error of mine. I could only assume the editor didn’t think my story was important enough to fiddle with.

            I had to write a shamefaced letter to Harlan, saying I would support him as a matter of principle, but that I could not raise cries of personal outrage, because my story hadn’t been touched. Fortunately, my help wasn’t needed. Harlan carried the day and later editions, I believe, restored their stories to their virginal innocence.

            One minor point. A number of readers wrote to me in alarm since THAT THOU ART MINDFUL OF HIM seemed, to them, to have put an end to my positronic robot stories, and they feared I would never write one again. Ridiculous! Of course I do not intend to stop writing robot stories. I have, as a matter of fact, written a robot story since the preceding “ultimate” one was written. It appears later in the book.

I had a lot of trouble with this next story.

            After Judy-Lynn joined Ballantine Books, she began to put out collections of original science fiction stories and she wanted a story from me. She’s difficult to refuse at any time and, since I have always felt guilty about FEMININE INTUITION, I agreed.

            I began the story on July 21, 1973, and it went smoothly enough, but after a while I felt I had trapped myself into an involuted set of flashbacks. So when I handed it to Judy-Lynn, and she asked me, “What do you think of the story?” I replied cautiously, “You’d better decide that for yourself.”

            Editors seem to ask me that question frequently. I think they have the idea that I have trouble telling lies, so that if I can’t work up prompt and cheerful enthusiasm, there’s something wrong with the story.

            Judy-Lynn certainly thought so, She handed it back with a few paragraphs of caustic commentary which boiled down to the fact that I had trapped myself into an involuted set of flashbacks. [I am frequently asked if I ever get rejections and the questioner is invariably flabbergasted when I say, “Certainly I do.” Here is an example. Not only was this story rejected once, but it was, as I go on to explain, rejected twice.]

            I passed it on to Ben Bova, the editor of Analog Science Fiction, and he rejected it that same day. It seemed to him, he said, that I was trying to pack too much background into a ten-thousand-word story. I had a novel there and he wanted me to write that novel.

            That disheartened me. There was absolutely no way in which I could get to work on a novel at that moment, so I just retired the story. [Incidentally, some people have the feeling that there is a great advantage in “knowing” editors, Both Judy-Lynn and Ben are among my very closest friends, but neither one hesitates a minute when it comes to rejecting my stories if they think that is the thing to do, Fortunately, such rejections don’t affect the friendship.]

            Meanwhile, however, Galaxy had gained a new editor, a very pleasant young man named James Baen, He called me and asked if I might possibly have a story for him and I said that the only thing I had on hand was a novelette called STRANGER IN PARADISE. However, I said, it had been rejected by Judy-Lynn and by Ben so I hesitated to send it to him.

            He said, quite properly, that every editor had the right to decide for himself, so I sent the manuscript over-and he liked it. It appeared in the May-June 1974 issue of Galaxy’s sister magazine, If, which has since, alas, ceased publication. (If it occurs to any Gentle Reader that this is an example of cause and effect, it isn’t.)