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you on a more equal footing. Space travel travel between different star systems is not just a matter of being able to build star Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html ships. Any post-nuclear culture can stumble on that trick. Space travel is a state of mind. The journey s always hell, and you never find a planet, however lovely, that suits you as well as the one you were born on. You need an incentive. What sort of an incentive? Have you any idea? I take it you are not referring to interstellar trading or conquest? Correct. I m afraid I don t know what sort of an incentive you mean. The Minister gave something like a chuckle and said, I ll try and show you presently. You were going to tell me why federation would be a bad thing for Earth. No doubt it has been to your purpose to learn some-thing of our history. It is full of dark things. Blood; war; lost causes; forgotten hopes; ages in chaos and days when even desperation died. It is no history to be proud of. Though many men individually seek good, col-lectively they lose it as soon as it is found. Yet we have one quality which always gives cause for hope that tomorrow may be better: initiative. Initiative has never faded, even when we crawled from what seemed the last ditch. But if we know that there exists a collective culture of several thousand worlds which we can never hope to emulate, what is to prevent us sinking back into despair for ever? An incentive, of course. As he spoke, Jandanagger led the way into a small, boomerang-shaped room with wide windows. They sank on to a low couch, and at once the room moved. The dizzy view from the window shifted and rolled beneath them. The room was airborne, This is our nearest equivalent to your trains. It runs on a nucleonically bounded track. We are only going as far as the next building; there is some equipment there I would like you to inspect. No reply seemed to be required; Farro sat silent. He had known an electric moment of fear when the room first moved. In no more than ten seconds they swooped to the branch of another Galactic building, becoming part of it. Once more leading the way, Jandanagger escorted him to a lift, which took them down into a basement room. They had arrived. The equipment of which Jan-danagger had spoken was not particularly impressive to look at. Before a row of padded seats ran a counter, above which a line of respirator-like masks hung, with several cables trailing from them into the wall. The Galactic Minister seated himself, motioning Farro into an adjoining seat. What is this apparatus? Farro asked, unable to keep a slight tinge of anxiety from his tone. It is a type of wave-synthesizer. In effect, it renders down many of the wavelengths which man cannot detect by himself, translating them into paraphrased terms which he can. At the same time, it feeds in objective and subjective impressions of the universe. That is to say, you will experience when you fit Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html the mask and I switch on instrumental recordings of the universe (visual and aural and so on) as well as human impressions of it. I should warn you that owing to your lack of train-ing, you may unfortunately gather a rather confused impression from the synthesizer. All the same, I fancy that it will give you a better rough idea of what the galaxy is like than you would get from a long star journey. Let s go, Farro said, clutching his cold hands to-gether. Now the entire column of lemmings had embarked into the still water. They swam smoothly and silently, their communal wake soon dissolving into the grandly gentle motion of the sea. Gradually the column attenu-ated as the stronger animals drew further ahead and the weaker ones dropped behind. One by one, inevitably, these weaker animals drowned; yet until their sleek heads finally disappeared below the surface, they still pressed forward with bulging eyes fixed upon the far and empty horizon. No human spectator, however devoid of anthropo-morphic feeling, could have failed to ask himself: what might be the nature of the goal that prompted such a sacrifice? The inside of the mask was cold. It fitted loosely over his face, covering his ears and leaving only the back of his head free. Again a touch of unreasoning fear shot through him. The switch is by your hand, the Minister said. Press it. Farro pressed the switch. Darkness submerged him. I am with you, the Minister said steadily. I have a mask on too, and can see and feel what you do. A spiral was curling out into the darkness, boring its way through nothing: an opaque, smothering nothing as warm as flesh. Materializing from the spiral issued a growing cluster of bubbles, dark as polyhedric grapes, multiplying and multiplying as if breathed from an inexhaustible bubble pipe. The lights on their surfaces, glittering, changing, spun a misty web which gradually veiled the operation. Cells are being formed, beaten out in endless dup-lication on the microscopic anvils of creation. You witness the beginning of a new life, Jandanagger said, his voice sounding distant. Like a curtain by an open window, the cells trembled behind their veil, awaiting life. And the moment of its coming was not perceptible. It was only that now the veil had something to conceal within itself; its trans-lucence dimmed, its surface patterned, a kind of blind purpose shaped it into more definite outline. No longer was it beautiful. Consciousness simmered inside it, a pinpoint of instinct-plus without love or knowledge, an eye trying to see through a lid of skin. It was not inert; instead, it struggled on the verge of terror, undergoing the [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] |
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