THE CRUCIBLE OF TIME BY JOHN BRUNNER

At which the others simply turned their backs in the most insulting fashion possible. So for some while now she had been sulking, which at least allowed the rest of them to debate the core of the problem.

Drotninch was saying, “I’m coming around to the conclusion that we not only have to deal with the poison per se, but also with its effects on living organisms, including disease germs. You know there’s a theory that the New Star triggered off the latest round of female mimicry, the one which made so many of us too like males to bud anymore. Given what Thilling has told us about the resemblance between what she finds on her image-sheets and what happens when sheets are exposed at high altitude—”

Lesh cut in. “I’ve heard that theory, and to me it smacks of the rankest astrological superstition!”

Byra said heavily, “There’s only one way of settling the matter. We’re going to have to study this poison in vivo. Right now, of course, we only have one subject: Awb. But it’s beyond a doubt that some at least of the same effect must be working in all of us.”

Rousing from her apathy, Phrallet shouted, “What do you want us to do—stay here until we all collapse the way he did? You must be out of your pith! Anyway, I won’t let you treat a budling of mine like a laboratory animal!”

Doing her best to disregard the interruption, Byra went on, “We can extrapolate from cutinates to some extent, of course, and I’ve taken samples from the mount that died, and with luck the rest of them will have been affected—”

“With luck?” Lesh echoed sardonically. “When I need every mount and draftimal I can lay claws on to rescue my expensive equipment from the observatory site? You’re not killing any of my beasts for your researches, I’m afraid! In any case, mounts aren’t enough like us, are they?”

Sighing, Byra admitted as much. “We’ll have to rely on what we can learn by studying Awb, then, and since of course we all hope he’ll make a quick recovery, that may not be very much. Still, we can call for volunteers who’ve been in the area since the project started, and that may help.”

“You can get all the specimens you need,” Phrallet said. “Why haven’t you thought it through? If studying the poison in a living person means saving our lives—I mean Awb’s life—you could just kidnap a few of the natives. They’re worthless for anything else, aren’t they?”

Thilling clenched her mantle in horror. Surely this group of civilized scientists must reject so hideous a notion out of claw? But no! To her infinite dismay she realized they were taking it seriously. Byra said after a pause, “It would certainly be very useful.”

And Lesh chimed in: “We have plenty of nets! I’ll get my staff on the job the moment we return!”

In that moment Thilling realized that she despised Phrallet more completely than anyone she had ever met or even heard of.

And what would Awb say when he learned that his life had been spared at such revolting cost?

But perhaps he would care no more than his budder.

IX

How everything had changed in three-score years! Not least, of course, thanks to the mutated diseases the workers from the abandoned World Observatory had carried away with them. Thilling shivered as she reflected on how vast a mystery those mutations had then seemed, how simple the explanation had proved to be once it was properly attacked…

Why was it that so many people declined to pay attention to such matters? Here in the crowded branchways of Voosla—a city transformed and twice enlarged since she last set pad on her—she knew without needing to be told that anyone she accosted at random would be as likely as not to dismiss her scientific knowledge out of claw, as totally irrelevant to their own concerns.

In the distant past, when there had been religions, it must have been similar for a traveler from afar; how had Jing reacted to those who honestly believed that the Arc of Heaven was the Maker’s Sling, and shed meteors on the world as a warning of divine retribution? And here she was, under orders to confront a teacher whom his followers regarded as fit to be mentioned alongside Jing himself, even though he encouraged them to despise the greatest discoveries and inventions of his own lifetime.

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