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experiences were among the bleaker memories of his numerous space flights the darkness, the sense of
utterly barren rock, the profound lack of sensory stimulation. Oddly, the larger they were, the worse the
feeling was.
He had discovered that he could have a kind of intellectual affinity with a rock less than a thousand feet
in diameter. This was particularly true when he encountered an in-articulate mass that had finally been
precipitated into a hyperbolic orbit. When he computed that it was thus destined to leave the solar system
forever, he would find himself imagining how long it had been in space, how far it had gone, and how it
would now hurtle away from the solar system and spend eons between the stars, and he could not help
feeling a sense of loss.
A government representative a human being named John Mathews interrupted his thought.  Mr.
Cemp, I d like to ask you a very personal question.
Cemp looked at him and nodded.
The man went on,  According to reports, several hundred Earth Silkies have already defected to these
native Silkies. Evidently, you don t feel as they do, that the Silkie planetoid is home. Why not?
Cemp smiled.  Well, first of all, he said,  I would never buy a pig in a poke the way they have done.
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He hesitated. Then, in a serious tone, he continued. Entirely apart from my feelings of loyalty to Earth, I
do not believe the future of life forms will be helped or advanced by any rigid adherence to the idea that I
am a lion, or I am a bear. Intelligent life is, or should be, moving toward a common civilization. Maybe
I m like the farm boy who went to the city Earth. Now my folks want me to come back to the farm.
They ll never understand why I can t, so I don t even try to explain it to them.
 Maybe, said Mathews,  the planetoid is actually the big city and Earth the farm. What then?
Cemp smiled politely but merely shook his head.
Mathewspersisted,  One more question. How should Silkies be treated?
Cemp spread his hands.  I can t think of a single change that would be of value.
He meant it. He had never been able to get excited about the pecking order. Yet he had known for a
long time that some Silkies felt strongly about their inferior as it seemed to them role. Others, like
himself, did their duty, were faithful to their human wives, and tried to enjoy the some-what limited
possibilities of human civilization limited for Silkies, who had so many additional senses for which there
was no real creative stimulation.
Presumably, things could be better. But meanwhile, they were what they were. Cemp recognized that
any attempt to alter them would cause fear and disturbance among human beings. And why do that
merely to satisfy the egos of some-what fewer than two thousand Silkies?
At least, that had been the problem until now. The coming of the space Silkies would add an indefinite
number of new egos to the scene, yet, Cemp reasoned, not enough to change the statistics meaningfully.
Aloud, he said,  As far as I can see, under all conceivable circumstances, there is no better solution to
the Silkie problem than that which exists right now.
Charley Baxter chose that moment to end the discussion, saying,  Nat, you have our best, our very best,
wishes. And our complete confidence. A spaceship will rush you to Mercury s orbit and give you a head
start. Good luck.
6
The scene ahead was absolutely fantastic.
The Silkie planetoid would make its circuit of the sun far inside Mercury s eccentric orbit, and the
appearance was that it might brush the edges of the great clouds of hot gas that seemed to poke out like
streamers or shapeless arms from the sun s hot surface.
Cemp doubted if such a calamity would actually occur, but as he periodically subjected his steel-hard
chitinous Silkie body to the sun s gravity, he sensed the enormous pull of it at this near distance. The
circle of white fire filled almost the entire sky ahead. The light was so intense and came in on him on so
many bands that it overwhelmed his receptor system whenever he let it in. And he had to open up at
intervals in order to make readjustments in his course.
The two hurtling bodies his own and that of the planet-oid were presently on a collision course. The [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]