invite Winch, from the National Art Commission? It wouldn't be much of a change for the worse for him."
"No brains," the Secretary for Raw Materials said briefly. "Heads up!"
Steiner caught the ball and slugged it back at him. "What good are brains?" he asked quietly.
"Close the ranks, gentlemen," State said. "These long shots are too hard on my arms."
The ranks closed and the Cabinet told Steiner what good were brains. He ended by accepting.
The Moon is all Republic. Mars is all Soviet. Titan is all Republic. Ganymede is all Soviet. But Io and Callisto, by the Treaty of Greenwich, are half-and-half Republic and Soviet.
Down the main street of the principal settlement on Io runs an invisible line. On one side of the line, the principal settlement is known as New Pittsburgh. On the other side it is known as Nizhni-Magnitogorsk.
Into a miner's home in New Pittsburgh one day an eight-year-old boy named Grayson staggered, bleeding from the head. His eyes were swollen almost shut.
His father lurched to his feet, knocking over a bottle. He looked stupidly at the bottle, set it upright too late to save much of the alcohol, and then stared fixedly at the boy. "See what you made me do, you little bastard?" he growled, and fetched the boy a clout on his bleeding head that sent him spinning against the wall of the hut. The boy got up slowly and silently—there seemed to be something wrong with his left arm—and glowered at his father.
He said nothing.
"Fighting again," the father said, in a would-be fierce voice. His eyes fell under the peculiar fire in the boy's stare. "Damn fool—"
A woman came in from the kitchen. She was tall and thin. In a flat voice she said to the man: "Get out of here." The man hiccupped and said: "Your brat spilled my bottle. Gimme a dollar."
In the same flat voice: "I have to buy food."
"I said gimme a dollar!" The man slapped her face—it did not
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