Maybe Ariel was right, he thought as he watched the other two strip line out of their reels and make a few exploratory casts out over the water. Derec mimicked their motions and saw with delight that he evidently knew, on some instinctive level, how to cast a fly into a pond. He watched the fly settle through the mist and touch the water, sending a single ripple out like an ever-widening target for the fish to zero in on.
Yes indeed. Maybe Ariel was right. Maybe there was more to life than robots after all.
Jerry Oltion
Jerry Oltion, the author of Frame of Reference, a novel about a generation-style starship that isn’t, is also the author of Alliance, book four in the Isaac Asimov ’ s Robots and Aliens series. He is currently at work on Paradise Passed, an interstellar colony novel. His short stories appear frequently in Analog magazine, two of them winning first and third places in the 1987 Reader’s Choice Awards. His stories have also been nominated for the Nebula Award.