[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Startling Stories, February 1953.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Man, n. A pentagonal, dipolar, monoplane dominant, of intelligence96, native of District 10039817. Unabsorbed.
It is a truism that a human being can get used to very nearlyeverything. The hardy Eskimo, lying belly-down on a plain of ice thatstretched unbroken to the sky, probably spent little of his time inmeditating upon the vastness and inscrutability of the Universe ... hewas thinking of his dinner. And Charles Samson, seven hundred yearslater, looked past his long nose at a scene of equal majesty—ourgalaxy, viewed from a ship in mid-arc—in a similar frame of mind.
It was approximately sixteen hours, galactic time; a trifle lateraccording to Samson's stomach. He had played a vicious game of handballwith his wife an hour and a half before, and now he was hungry.
The Eskimo, although a patient man, might have reflected that it wasunreasonable of this particular seal to wake up and look around him atthis precise moment. Samson, equally virtuous, told himself that hiswife might have chosen a more opportune time to experiment with hercookery. Midge had conceived an idea for a soufflé such as had neverbefore been seen by Man, and had accordingly been adding new circuitsto the autochef for the past eighty-five minutes.
If she ran to form, the soufflé—which would be a triumph, in spite ofseventeen separate miscalculations—would be served in about twentyminutes more. Samson would have preferred an artless slab of steaknow.
These, it may be considered, were picayune thoughts to occupy a brainwhich had been interminably trained and tested, stocked with a fabulousassortment of knowledge, and then sent out, with one other human mindfor company, to patrol a hegemony ten billion times as vast as Caesar's.
At the moment, however, there was nothing world-shaking for it to do.Charles and Midge, like a thousand other teams of trouble-shootersassigned to the volume of space known as Slice 103, earned their pay byintense, difficult, and sometimes dangerous labor which averaged threemonths out of the year; the rest of their time was spent in travelingfrom one assignment to the next, or simply in drifting, waiting forsomething of importance to turn up.
Two days ago, for example, they had been halfway along a leisurely arcbetween the Hilkert system and the observatory settlement on de BroglieII, when Slice H.Q. had buzzed them and told them to change coursefor Kenilworth IV—an isolated and obscure one-man post out on theperimeter of the Slice. Tomorrow, as likely as not, another messagewould inform them that the trouble, whatever it was, had simmereddown. Then they would blast into a new arc, and it would be six days,at least—even if another wild-goose chase did not intervene—beforethey touched ground. Meanwhile, they amused themselves as well as theycould....
As for the stars, which lay spread out to the infinity beyond theinch-thick vitrin of the ship's veranda window, the trouble with themwas that they were always the same. Maugham records that when he firstsaw the Taj Mahal, he felt an ineffable surprise and joy; but on thefollowing day, it was only a beautiful building. He had seen it before.
Samson had been in space for something over half his lifetime.Accordingly, when the communicator bell rang, it shattered nomeditations on the relations of Man to Nature; on the contrary, Samson,uncoiling himself and walking through the doorway into the lounge,carried with h