deep-sea plants? Although the tumult on the water had lasted only moments, his memory retained the vivid picture of the beast: a thing like a carrot, to use a crude but exact comparison, frilled around its body with dozens of fins, bearing specialised sense-organs ranging from pressure-detectors to olfactory glands, its mouth where an Earthly creature’s tail would be, furnished with lips which served the double purpose offlukes and food-gatherers, upon which the comb-like serrations could open and shut as the feathers of a bird’s wing do.
Fascinating!
But his excitement was superficial. Sighing, settling back in his seat as the boat automatically resumed its course, he admitted to himself that what he felt on seeing that alien beast come charging up for air was exactly what a hunter might have felt on spotting his first elephant. Beyond the—well, literally, the
fun
of seeing it, what was there to gratify him? Merely the recounting of a fabulous tale to envious stay-at-homes. His temperament had never involved him in what he had imagined, a minute earlier, as furnishing Yoko with a lifetime interest: the patient dissection of a whole new biological system.
Naturally, before being sent here for the first time, he like all his companions had been taught to use the instruments with which the
Argo
was equipped, and those included biological analysers. After their five months’ stay, at least half of what they now knew about Asgard’s animal and vegetable life had already been established, or at least could be guessed with reasonable certainty by comparing it with Earth’s. Gathering this huge mass of data, though, had been a matter of rote-following for him. It was the computers that took it in and understood it. All he did was feed them.
He knew a little about a vast number of subjects. The first visitors to Asgard might have been confronted with any sort of emergency from man-eating monsters to plague. They might even have wrecked their ship and been compelled to colonise the planet involuntarily. Accordingly, they had to have a grasp of the outline of any given area of knowledge, so that they could ask the proper questions when they needed to extract more specific guidance from the computers—or guess.
But knowing a little about many subjects was dilettantism. He had no all-absorbing passion to satisfy him. He was an observer, an explorer, a …
“Hell, I’m a
tourist!”
he said to the uncaring air. And, as though that fit of gloomy cynicism had somehow relieved his intolerable mental burden, he turned to break out his noon meal from the rack of cartons behind his seat. By this evening he would have reached the first island which promised a chance of diamonds, according to the computers.
It would be good to have work to do, real genuine valuable work which would contribute to the welfare and success of the colony. It would buy him a sort of personal stake.
But finding diamonds wouldn’t be what he needed. He wouldn’t know a diamond in the uncut state if he kicked it on the path! The credit would belong to Ulla and the computers!
Ripping the top from his meal-carton with a savage gesture, he muttered, “I never dreamed anybody—I or anybody else—could wind up in a state where everything was going perfectly and he was going out of his mind with frustration in spite of it!”
IX
I T FELT very strange to come back inside the ship after living for so long in the village below, Parvati noticed. No sooner had she become aware of the reaction than her mind was away in search of possible reasons.
It was as though she were being screened from exterior reality, perhaps, as a metal box will screen a receiver from a broadcast. And, of course, there were metal boxes around her—from the hull of the ship itself successively reducing to the scale of the automatic elevator which was carrying her up to the computer levels, with its padded walls of a soothing dark blue.
The ship is of Earth,
she reasoned.
It seems
Fascinating!
But his excitement was superficial. Sighing, settling back in his seat as the boat automatically resumed its course, he admitted to himself that what he felt on seeing that alien beast come charging up for air was exactly what a hunter might have felt on spotting his first elephant. Beyond the—well, literally, the
fun
of seeing it, what was there to gratify him? Merely the recounting of a fabulous tale to envious stay-at-homes. His temperament had never involved him in what he had imagined, a minute earlier, as furnishing Yoko with a lifetime interest: the patient dissection of a whole new biological system.
Naturally, before being sent here for the first time, he like all his companions had been taught to use the instruments with which the
Argo
was equipped, and those included biological analysers. After their five months’ stay, at least half of what they now knew about Asgard’s animal and vegetable life had already been established, or at least could be guessed with reasonable certainty by comparing it with Earth’s. Gathering this huge mass of data, though, had been a matter of rote-following for him. It was the computers that took it in and understood it. All he did was feed them.
He knew a little about a vast number of subjects. The first visitors to Asgard might have been confronted with any sort of emergency from man-eating monsters to plague. They might even have wrecked their ship and been compelled to colonise the planet involuntarily. Accordingly, they had to have a grasp of the outline of any given area of knowledge, so that they could ask the proper questions when they needed to extract more specific guidance from the computers—or guess.
But knowing a little about many subjects was dilettantism. He had no all-absorbing passion to satisfy him. He was an observer, an explorer, a …
“Hell, I’m a
tourist!”
he said to the uncaring air. And, as though that fit of gloomy cynicism had somehow relieved his intolerable mental burden, he turned to break out his noon meal from the rack of cartons behind his seat. By this evening he would have reached the first island which promised a chance of diamonds, according to the computers.
It would be good to have work to do, real genuine valuable work which would contribute to the welfare and success of the colony. It would buy him a sort of personal stake.
But finding diamonds wouldn’t be what he needed. He wouldn’t know a diamond in the uncut state if he kicked it on the path! The credit would belong to Ulla and the computers!
Ripping the top from his meal-carton with a savage gesture, he muttered, “I never dreamed anybody—I or anybody else—could wind up in a state where everything was going perfectly and he was going out of his mind with frustration in spite of it!”
IX
I T FELT very strange to come back inside the ship after living for so long in the village below, Parvati noticed. No sooner had she become aware of the reaction than her mind was away in search of possible reasons.
It was as though she were being screened from exterior reality, perhaps, as a metal box will screen a receiver from a broadcast. And, of course, there were metal boxes around her—from the hull of the ship itself successively reducing to the scale of the automatic elevator which was carrying her up to the computer levels, with its padded walls of a soothing dark blue.
The ship is of Earth,
she reasoned.
It seems
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