The trail wound along a stream of cold, fast water. Sam watched the dark olive shadows lurking in the pools. Trout, of course. Sam drew the line at bass and carp,
He came out of the trees and into a field of tall grass. There were yellow flowers and insects buzzed in the air. He sensed the closeness of shapes and forms, but he could not see them in the breeze-swept grass. There was life here, and death, and life again.
But not for long.
He turned and retraced his steps. He felt a little better.
The raccoons were still in the oak.
Sam went back inside. Back to the salt mine.
He worked hard until dinner.
"What was the exact hour?" Lois asked him, absently stroking one of her remarkable legs. (She had two of them.)
"I don't remember," Sam said. "I was very young."
"Come on, Sam. I'm not stupid. You can't tell me that with all the resources of your mysterious enterprises you can't find out the exact time."
"I am telling you. I don't know." Sam looked at her, which was always pleasant in a tense sort of way. Lois was sensual but there was no softness in her. She had a lacquered surface stretched like a drumhead over taut springs. She always looked perfect, but even her casual clothes were somehow formal. She never forgot herself. She was a challenge, which was fine once in a while. Sam was old enough to decline most challenges without dishonor.
Lois did not have to remind Sam that she had a brain. Sam never made that mistake. Her little reference to "mysterious enterprises" was an effective threat. At thirty, she had climbed the highest pinnacle on her scale of values: she was the wife of the richest man in the world. She didn't want a settlement. She wanted it all. Sam had no children.
Bright, yes. Cunning, yes. Skilled, certainly. Faithful with her body, yes-Lois took no needless risks. But that fine-boned head enclosed a brain that was all output; not much of significance ever went in. The hard violet eyes looked out from jelly that had been molded in Neolithic times.
She would have made a dandy witch.
She spent her days puttering with expensive clothing and obscure cosmetics. She had a library of real books, thus proving her intellectual capacity. They were all about reincarnation and astrology. She considered herself something of an expert with horoscopes. A pun had frequently occurred to Sam in this connection, but he had refrained. He was not a cruel man.
"I want to do it for you," she «aid. "You have decisions to make. It would help. Really, Sam."
She was quite sincere, like all fanatics. It was a gift she could give him, and that was important to her. It was an ancient problem for women like Lois: what do you give to a man who has everything? The gag presents get pretty thin very quickly, and Sam was not a man who was easily convulsed.
He sipped his drink, enjoying it. He always drank Scotch; the labs could create nothing better. "Well," he said, "I haven't a clue about the minute of my birth. I'd just as soon forget my birthday."
Lois was patient. "It would be so simple to find out."
"But I don't give a damn."
"I give a damn. What about me? It's a small thing. I know the day, of course. But if the moons of Saturn were in the right position…"
Sam raised his eyebrows and took a large swallow of Scotch before he answered. "They are always in the right position," he said carefully, 'That's the way moons are."
"Oh, Sam." She did not cry; she had learned some things,
Sam Gregg stood up to refill his glass. He did not like to have obtrusive robots around the house. Self-reliance and all that.
He was not unaware of himself. He did not look his age. He was a tall, angular man. There was still strength in him. His hair was gray, not white. His craggy face was lined but there was no flab on him. His brown eyes were sharp, like dirty ice,
Sam sometimes thought of himself as a vampire in one of the still-popular epics. ("Ah, my dear, velcome to Castle Mor-dar. A moment while I adjust my dentures.") Splendid-looking chap, distinguished even. But then, suddinkly, at the worst possible moment, he dissolves into a puff of primeval dust…
"Let's go beddy-bye," Sam said, draining his glass. "Maybe I can remember."
"I'll help you," Lois said, reporting for duty.
"You'll have to," Sam agreed.
Sam worked very hard the next few weeks. He even found time to check the hour and the minute of his birth. He was being very careful indeed, trying to think of everything.
Lois was delighted. She retreated to her mystic stewpott consulted her illustrated charts, talked it over with several dead Indians, and informed Sam that he was thinking about a long, long journey.
Sam didn't explode into laughter.
His work was difficult because so much of it involved waiting. There were many programs to consider, all of them set in motion years ago. They had to mesh perfectly. They all depended on the work of other men. And they all had to be masked.
It wasn't easy. How, for instance, do you hide a couple of spaceships? Particularly when they keep taking off and landing with all the stealth of trumpeting elephants?
("Spaceship? I don't see any spaceship. Do you see a spaceship?")
Answer: You don't hide them. You account for them. For all practical purposes, Sam owned the space station that orbited the Earth. He controlled it through a mosaic of interlocking companies, domestic and foreign. It was only natural for him to operate a few shuttle ships. A man has a right to keep his finger in his own pie.
Owned the space station, Daddy?
Yes, Junior. Listen, my son, and you shall hear…
The great space dream had been a bust. A colossal fizzle. A thumping anticlimax.
The trails blazed by the space pioneers led-quite literally-Nowhere.
Fortunately or otherwise, Mighty Man could not create the solar system in his own image. The solar system was one hell of a place, and not just on Pluto. There were no conveniently verdant worlds. There were just rocks and craters, heat and cold, lifeless dust and frozen chemicals.
There were other suns, other planets. Big deal. There were no handy space warps, no faster-than-light drives. Unmanned survey ships took a very long time to report, and their news produced no dancing in the streets: rocks, craters, desolation. Who would spend a lifetime to visit Nothing?
Would you? (Naw, I'd rather go see Grandma.)
Scientific bases had been established on Luna, and they survived. They survived with enormous expense, with highly trained personnel, with iron discipline. Even the scientific teams had to be replaced at short intervals.
Radiation, you know. Puts funny kinks in the old chromosomes.
The Mars Colony of half a century ago, widely advertised as a solution to the population crisis, was a solution only in the grim sense of a Final Solution. Even with the life-support pods-Sam had lost a fortune on the early models, but he had learned a few things-it was no go. Five thousand human beings had gone to Mars to start the New Life. (A drop in the bucket, to be sure. But there was much talk about Beginnings, and Heroic Ancestors, and First Steps.) A few of them had gotten back. Most had died or gone mad or both. Some of them were still there, although this was not generally known. They -were no longer human.
The problem was that it was perfectly possible to set up a scientific base on Mars, or even a military base if there had been any need for one. But soldiers on Mars are a joke, and appropriations committees had long since stopped playing the old game: Can You Top This? Scientists could do little on Mars that they could not do on Luna. And people-plain, ordinary people, the kind that swarmed the Earth and scratched for a living, the kind that had to go-could not exist on Mars.