man.' And Underwood dared not trust that glib explanation. Many others besides Underwood found they could no longer endure the instability of their own culture. Among these were many of the world's leading scientists. Most of them went to the jungle lands of Venus. The scientific limitations of such a frontier existence had kept Underwood from joining the Venusian colonies, but he'd been very close to going just before he got the offer of Chief Physicist with the Smithson Institute expedition in the asteroid fields. He wondered now what he'd have done if the offer hadn't come. The interphone annunciator buzzed. Underwood turned off the news as the bored communications operator in the control room announced, "Doc Underwood. Call for Doc Underwood." Underwood cut in. "Speaking," he said irritably. The voice of Terry Bernard burst into the room. "Hey, Del! Are you going to get rid of that hangover and answer your phone or should we embalm the remains and ship 'em back?" "Terry! You fool, what do you want? Why didn't you say it was you? I thought maybe it was that elephant-foot Maynes, with chunks of mica that he thought were prayer sticks." "The Stroids didn't use prayer sticks." "All right, skip it. What's new?" "Plenty. Can you come over for a while? I think we've really got something here." "It'd better be good. We're taking the ship to Phyfe. Where are you?" "Asteroid C-428. It's about 2,000 miles from you. And bring all the hard-rock mining tools you've got. We can't get into this thing." "Is that all you want? Use your double coated drills." "We wore five of them out. No scratches on the thing, even." "Well, use the Atom Stream, then. It probably won't hurt the artifact." "I'll say it won't. It won't even warm the thing up. Any other ideas?" Underwood's mind, which had been half occupied with mulling over his personal problems while he talked with Terry, swung startledly to what the archeologist was saying. "You mean that you've found a material the Atom Stream won't touch? That's
Prev.
Back
Top