He forced himself to enjoy these pleasures for a month; then he fled the city and established a crystal bubble on a crag in the Andes. To nourish himself, he contrived a thick liquid, which, while by no means as exhilarating as the substances of the green realm, was innocent of organic contamination.
After a certain degree of improvisation and make-shift, he arranged his life to its minimum discomfort. The view was one of austere grandeur; not even the condors came to disturb him. He sat back to ponder the chain of events which had started with his discovery of Gerald Mclntyre's workbook. He frowned. Gerald Mclntyre? He jumped to his feet, looked far over the crags.
He found Gerald Mclntyre at a wayside service station in the heart of the South Dakota prairie. Mclntyre was sitting in an old wooden chair, tilted back against the peeling yellow paint of the service station, a straw hat shading his eyes from the sun.
He was a magnetically handsome man, blond of hair, brown of skin, with blue eyes whose gaze stung like the touch of icicle. His left thumbnail glistened green. Fair greeted him casually; the two men surveyed each Other with wry curiosity.
"I see you have adapted yourself," said Howard Fair.
Mclntyre shrugged. "As well as possible. I try to maintain a balance between solitude and the pressure of humanity." He looked into the bright blue sky where crows flapped and called. "For many years I lived in isolation. I began to detest the sound of my own breathing."
Along the highway came a glittering automobile, rococo as a hybrid goldfish. With the perceptions now available to them, Fair and Mclntyre could see the driver to be red-faced and truculent, his companion a peevish woman in expensive clothes.
'There are other advantages to residence here," said Mclntyre. "For instance, I am able to enrich the lives of passersby with trifles of novel adventure." He made a small gesture; two dozen crows swooped down and flew beside the automobile. They settled on the fenders, strutted back and forth along the hood, fouled the windshield.
The automobile squealed to a halt, the driver jumped out, put the birds to flight. He threw an ineffectual rock, waved his arms in outrage, returned to his car, proceeded.
"A paltry affair," said Mclntyre with a sigh. "The truth of the matter is that I am bored." He pursed his mouth and blew forth three bright puffs of smoke: first red, then yellow, then blazing blue. "I have arrived at the estate of foolishness, as you can see."
Fair surveyed his great-uncle with a trace of uneasiness. Mclntyre laughed. "No more pranks. I predict, however, that you will presently share my malaise."
"I share it already," said Fair. "Sometimes I wish I could abandon all my magic and return to my former innocence."
"I have toyed with the idea," Mclntyre replied thoughtfully. "In fact I have made all the necessary arrangements. It is really a simple matter." He led Fair to a small room behind the station. Although the door was open, the interior showed a thick darkness.
Mclntyre, standing well back, surveyed the darkness with a quizzical curl to his lip. "You need only enter. All your magic, all your recollections of the green realm will depart. You will be no wiser than the next man you meet. And with your knowledge will go your boredom, your melancholy, your dissatisfaction."
Fair contemplated the dark doorway. A single step would resolve his discomfort.
He glanced at Mclntyre; the two surveyed each other with sardonic amusement. They returned to the front of the building.
"Sometimes I stand by the door and look into the darkness," said Mclntyre. "Then I am reminded how dearly I cherish my boredom, and what a precious commodity is so much misery,"
Fair made himself ready for departure. "I thank you for this new wisdom, what a hundred more years in the green realm would not have taught me. And now-for a time, at least-I go back to my crag in the Andes."
Mclntyre tilted his chair against the wall of the service station. "And I-for a time, at least-will wait for the next passerby."
"Good-bye, then, Uncle Gerald."
"Good-bye, Howard."
The Ten Books
They were as alone as it is possible for living man to be in the black gulf between the stars. Far astern shone the suns of the home worlds-ahead the outer stars and galaxies in a fainter ghostly glimmer.
The cabin was quiet. Betty Welstead sat watching her husband at the assay table, her emotions tuned to his. When the centrifuge scale indicated heavy metal and Welstead leaned forward she leaned forward too in unconscious sympathy. When he burnt scrapings in the spectroscope and read Lead from the brightest pattern and chewed at his lips Betty released her pent-up breath, fell back in her seat.
Ralph Welstead stood up, a man of medium height- rugged, tough-looking-with hair and skin and eyes the same tawny color. He brushed the whole clutter of rock and ore into the waste chute and Betty followed him with her eyes.
Welstead said sourly, "We'd be millionaires if that asteroid had been inside the Solar system. Out here, unless it's pure platinum or uranium, it's not worth mining."
Betty broached a subject which for two months had been on the top of her mind. "Perhaps we should start to swing back in."
Welstead frowned, stepped up into the observation dome. Betty watched after him anxiously. She understood very well that the instinct of the explorer as much as the quest for minerals had brought them out so far.
Welstead stepped back down into the cabin. "There's a star ahead"-he put a finger into the three-dimensional chart- "this one right here, Eridanus two thousand nine hundred and thirty-two. Let's make a quick check-and then we'll head back in."
Betty nodded, suddenly happy. "Suits me." She jumped up, and together they went to the screen. He aimed the catch-all vortex, dialed the hurrying blur to stability and the star pulsed out like a white-hot coin. A single planet made up the entourage.
"Looks about Earth-size," said Welstead, interest in his voice, and Betty's heart sank a trifle. He tuned the circuit finer, turned up the magnification and the planet leapt at them. "Look at that atmosphere! Thick!" He swiveled across the jointed arm holding the thermocouple and together they bent over the dial.
"Nineteen degrees Centigrade. About Earth-norm. Let's look at that atmosphere. You know, dear, we might have something tremendous here! Earth-size, Earth temperature ..." His voice fell off in a mutter as he peered through the spectroscope, flipping screen after screen past the pattern from the planet. He stood up, cast Betty a swift exultant glance, then squinted in sudden reflection. "Better make sure before we get too excited."
Betty felt no excitement. She watched without words as Welstead thumbed through the catalogue.
"Whee!" yelled Welstead, suddenly a small boy. "No listing! It's ours!" And Betty's heart melted at the news. Delay, months of delay, while Welstead explored the planet, charted its oceans and continents, classified its life. At the same time, a spark of her husband's enthusiasm caught fire in her brain and interest began to edge aside her gloom.
"We'll name it 'Welstead,'" he said. "Or, no-'Elizabeth' for you. A planet of your own! Some day there'll be cities and millions of people. And every time they write a letter or throw a shovelful of dirt or a ship lands-they'll use your name."
"No, dear," she said. "Don't be ridiculous. We'll call it 'Welstead'-for us both."
They felt an involuntary pang of disappointment later on when they found the planet already inhabited, and by men.
Yet their reception astonished them as much as the has discovery of the planet and its people. Curiosity, even hostilily might have been expected....
They had been in no hurry to land, preferring to fall in an orbit just above the atmosphere, the better to study the planet and its inhabitants.