FOR US THE LIVING BY ROBERT A. HEINLEIN

“Don’t you think that is about enough at one dose?”

“Oh!—Sorry, you surprised me. You’re probably right, but it gets to be a vice.” He snapped off the power. “It’s as hard to put down as a detective story.”

“What’s a detective story?”

“A story about the solution of a crime. These were all the rage in 1939. Half the stories published were murder mysteries.”

“Good Lord! Was murder that common?”

“No, but the stories were primarily puzzles—like a chess game.”

“Oh—. But look, Perry, I called you to see if you would like a swim before lunch. Do you swim?”

“Sure, but where do we swim? Isn’t it too cold?”

“No. You’ll see. Come along.” A door in the end of the room opposite the canyon opened directly outdoors, but instead of a January winter in the High Sierras, it was summer, summer in a tropical garden. The sun shone brightly on masses of flowers and on a patch of green lawn which bordered a little rock pool with clear water over white sand. The pool was just long enough for four or five strokes. Beyond the garden Perry saw winter and snow-capped peaks. Yet the garden and pool were apparently unprotected in any way from the rigors of the mountain climate.

Perry turned back to Diana. “Listen, Dian’, I’ve believed everything else, but this is a dream. Put me out of my misery. How, how is it done?”

Diana smiled in delight. “It is nice, isn’t it? I’ll show you how it’s done. Walk along the path by the pool. When you get close to the edge of the garden put out your hands.”

Perry did as directed. As he reached the edge he stopped suddenly and gave a grunt of surprise. Then he cautiously ran his hand up and down what appeared from his actions to be a wall of thin air.

“Why, it’s glass!”

“Yes, of course.”

“It must have an amazingly low refractive index.”

“I suppose so.”

“Look, Dian’, I can’t see the stuff. Tell me where it is, so I won’t bump into it.”

“You won’t. The garden is laid out to keep you a half meter or so from it and it’s quite high enough overhead. The base of it runs all around here”—she indicated most of a semicircle—”From there it arches up to the house. If you look closely you can see the joint of the seal, and there it runs down the rock wall and back to the ground again. It is shaped like a giant bubble.”

Perry mused. “Hm—I see. And that’s why it doesn’t need supports. But how did it get there in the first place?”

“It was blown in place, just like a bubble. It is a bubble. Look, did children blow bubbles when you were young?”

“Yes.”

“Did you ever wet a dish or a box or a table top and blow a bubble on it and make it follow a shape you wanted?”

“Yes, yes, I begin to see.”

“Well, first they painted the wall and a sheeting on the ground with sticky stuff—bubble mixture, right up to where the bubble is to stop. Then they put their bubble pipe gadget in the middle and commenced to blow. When the bubble just reached the proper size, they stopped.”

“It sounds easy the way you tell it.”

“It’s not very. I watched them do this one and they broke four bubbles before one held up. Then it takes several hours to dry tough, and any little touch can ruin it until it does.”

“I don’t see yet how you can get glass to behave so.”

“It isn’t glass—not silicate glass anyhow, but a synthetic plastic glass. One of the technicians said it had molecules like very long chains.”

“That’s reasonable.”

“I wouldn’t know, but it’s a sticky stuff when they decant it, like a white molasses, but it dries very hard and stiff like glass only it’s tough, instead of brittle. It won’t shatter and it’s very hard to cut or tear.”

“Well, it’s a grand notion in any case. You know we had patios and outdoor living rooms and pools in gardens in my day, but it was generally too hot or too cold or too windy to enjoy them. And there were always insects; flies, or mosquitoes, or both. In my aunt’s patio it was honey bees. It’s very disconcerting when you’re trying to sunbathe to have bees crawling over you and buzzing around your head.”