In Deep by Damon Knight Read Free Book Online Page A

dimness, two sketches of self-created Man.
    They had also put thirty kilometers between themselves and the Federation camp. Standing on the crest of a rise and looking southward across the shallow valley, George could see a faint funereal glow: the mining machines, chewing out metals to feed the fabricators that would spawn a billion ships.
    “We’ll never go back, will we?” said Vivian.
    “No,” said George soberly. “They’ll come to us, in time. We have lots of time. We’re the future.”
    And one thing more, a small thing, but important to George; it marked his sense of accomplishment, of one phase ended and a new one begun. He had finally completed the name of his discovery—not, as it turned out, anything meisterii at all. Spes hominis:
    Man’s hope.

AN EYE FOR A WHAT?
I
    On his way across the wheel one morning, Dr. Walter Alvarez detoured down to C level promenade. A few men were standing, as usual, at the window looking out at the enormous blue-green planet below. They were dressed alike in sheen-gray coveralls, a garment with detachable gauntlets and hood designed to make it convertible into a spacesuit. It was uncomfortable, but regulation: according to the books, a Survey and Propaganda Satellite might find itself under attack at any moment.
    Nothing so interesting had happened to SAPS 3107A, orbiting the seventh planet of a G-type star in Ophiuchus. They had been here for two years and a half, and most of them had not even touched ground yet.
    There it was, drifting by out there, blue-green, fat and juicy—an oxygen planet, two-thirds land, mild climate, soil fairly bursting with minerals and organics.
    Alvarez felt his mouth watering when he looked at it. He had “wheel fever”; they all did. He wanted to get down there, to natural gravity and natural ailments.
    The last month or so, there had been a feeling in the satellite that a break-through was coming. Always coming: it never arrived.
    A plump orthotypist named Lola went by, and a couple of the men turned with automatic whistles. “Listen,” said Olaf Marx conspiratorially, with a hand on Alvarez’s arm, “that reminds me, did you hear what happened at the big banquet yesterday?”
    “No,” said Alvarez, irritably withdrawing his arm. “I didn’t go. Can’t stand banquets. Why?”
    “Well, the way I got it, the Commandant’s wife was sitting right across from George—”
    Alvarez’s interest sharpened. “You mean the gorgon? What did he do?”
    “I’m telling you. See, it looked like he was watching her all through dinner. Then up comes the dessert—lemon meringue. So old George—”
    The shift bell rang. Alvarez started nervously and looked at his thumbwatch. The other men were drifting away. So was Olaf, laughing like a fool. “You’ll die when you hear,” he called back. “Boy, do I wish I’d been there myself! So long, Walt.”
    Alvarez reluctantly went the other way. In B corridor, somebody called after. him, “Hey, Walt? Hear about the banquet?”
    He shook his head. The other man, a baker named Pedro, grinned and waved, disappearing up the curve of the corridor. Alvarez opened the door of Xenology Section and went in.
    During his absence, somebody had put a new chart on the wall. It was ten feet high and there were little rectangles all over it, each connected by lines to other rectangles. When he first saw it, Alvarez thought it was a new table of organisation for the Satellite Service, and he winced: but on closer inspection, the chart was too complex, and besides, it had a peculiar disorganised appearance; Boxes had been white-rubbed out and other boxes drawn on top of them. Some parts were crowded illegibly together and others were spacious. The whole. thing looked desperately confused; and so did Elvis Wemrath, who was en a wheeled ladder erasing the entire top right-hand corner. “ N panga,” he said irritably. “That right?”
    “Yes,” a voice piped unexpectedly. Alvarez looked around, saw nobody. The