Useless shy steel
Casey said impatiently,Having Fredric in our hands now is a minor matter, an immediate bargaining point to emphasize our position. Senator, we have investigated you thoroughly. You have a wife of whom you are moderately fond, and a mistress whom you love. You have three adult children by your first wife, and four grandchildren. You have two children by your second wife, Fredric and Janie. You have a living uncle and two aunts, and five first cousins. Being a politician, you have many surface friends, which we shall largely ignore, but you also know some thirty persons who mean much to you. Yes, Mack, I did, she said. Sam had nothing to do with it. It was entirely my idea—and your fault.” In the range control tower, Corporal Weisbaum was getting madder every second. Still shaking his gray head, Scarfe rode the elevator back to the peace of the observation platform. He liked to watch the scientific men at work over the scanners, taking notes or recording. They treated him with respect. All the same, life was complex, full of all sorts of knotty, nasty little problems that could never be discussed . . . like how one should really handle a man like Swanwick, the prickly idiot. Gauck sat on his stool and watched them. by Hilbert Schenck, Jr. Wait it out, I guess. Wait till tomorrow at least, until they break the jam. Then get back out there. Of course, that wont be as easy as it sounds. Probably have to get over to the nearest approach and hike in—maybe two, three miles of freeway, up the center strip, I suppose— plus gettingto the approach itself, which is right in the middle of town. Maybe I can borrow a bike. I don’t know quite how we’ll . . . Kenebucks hands clenched suddenly on the glass. He stared at Ian, and then burst out into a laugh that rang a little wildly against the emptiness of the large room. "I suppose," said Number Two, "that you would like me to see that a proper suit is made, the beginnings of tights and a brocade ... vest, shall we call it? Pink or blue? No, lets make it gold or silver with touches of red. I can sew it up myself out of silk and satin and, if you like, with little white wings to give the feeling of lightness to it all. Would you like them on the shoulder blades or buttocks?" The difference was in Ian, in the way he stood there. He was, saw Tyburn, simply . . . waiting. That same patient indifference Tyburn had seen upon him in the Terminal office was there again. In the split second of his single step into the room he had discovered the men, had measured them, and stopped. Now, he waited, in his turn, for one of them to make a move. Long as you say nothing about what were fixing to do, Lazeer said. Just be back by eight-thirty this evening.”* * * * Mangon held up his Coke bottle. By spectroscopic study of starlight, we have decided that seven stars exist within 15 light years of us which have a luminosity and lifetime like that of our own sun. These seven stars are old enough to have given birth to planets from which radio broadcasts could be expected. The stars are: Tau Ceti, Omicron-Two Eridani, Epsilon Eridani, Epsilon Indi, Alpha Centauri, 70 Ophiuchi and 61 Cygni. Muller nodded cockily.I figured you would, he said. “I got it all ready for you.” Thank you, said Miss Hutton. Ian looked down at him. And it seemed to Tyburn that the Dorsai face had gone away from him, somehow become as remote and stony as a face carved high up on some icy mountains top. Im lonely.’ There was a harmony in the design of the arena which an artist might find pleasing. The curved granite walls which extended upward three hundred feet from its base were polished and smooth like the sides of a bowl. A fly, perhaps a lizard, could crawl up those glistening walls—but surely not a man. The walls encircled an egg-shaped area which was precisely three thousand meters long and two thousand one hundred meters wide at its widest point. There were two large hills located on either side of the arena exactly midway from its center to its end. If you were to slicethe arena crosswise, your knife would dissect a third, tree-studded hill and a small, clear lake; and the two divided halves would each be the exact mirror image of the other down to the smallest detail. If you were a farmer you would notice the rich flat soil which ran obliquely from the two larger hills toward the lake. If you were an artist you might find pleasure in contemplating the rich shades of green and brown presented by the forested lowlands at the lakes edge. A sportsman seeing the crystalline lake in the morning’s first light would find his fingers itching for light tackle and wading boots. Boys, particularly city boys, would yearn to climb the two larger hills because they looked easy to climb, but not too easy. A general viewing the topography would immediately recognize that possession of the central hill would permit dominance of the lake and the surrounding lowlands..
