Benson did his best to keep his colony from going native, but what can you do when the Natives have a rare human intelligence and know all about the facts of life?
For all his perfection and magnificence he was but a baby with a new found freedom in a strange and baffling world . . . .
“It is rather unusual,” Magnan said, “to assign an officer of your rank to courier duty, but this is an unusual mission.”
All Earth needed was a good stiff dose of common sense, but its rulers preferred to depend on the highly fallible computers instead. As a consequence, interplanetary diplomatic relations were somewhat strained—until a nimble-witted young man from Mars came up with the answer to the “sixty-four dollar” question.
Strumming a harp while floating on a white cloud might be Paradise for some people, but it would bore others stiff. Given an unlimited chance to choose your ideal world, what would you specify—palaces or log cabins?
History was repeating itself; there were moats and nobles in Pennsylvania and vassals in Manhattan and the barbarian hordes were overrunning the land.
You’re all alone in a deserted city. You walk down an empty street, yearning for the sight of one living face—one moving figure. Then you see a man on a corner and you know your terror has only begun.
Child, it was, of the now ancient H-bomb. New. Untested. Would its terrible power sweep the stark Saturnian moon of Titan from space … or miraculously create a flourishing paradise-colony?
I didn’t have to ask whom he meant. “Scrawny neck” would mean only one inmate of our void-perambulating asylum. Lancelot Biggs. Genius and crackpot, scarecrow and sage—and soon to become son-in-law of the skipper.
“This Ilbrahaim, though—he swears our camp’s being haunted. He thinks a weredog, or werewolf, has attached itself to us. Says he woke and saw it prowling about last night.”