9 stories adjusted DONT DELETE by Small Changes (epub)

Author:Small Changes (epub)
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2014-12-22T00:00:00+00:00

The slave fell silent, and the superintendent pondered its tale as they drifted on about the Sun. He could not, offhand, think of any adequate punishment for the student whose recklessness had brought about this state of affairs. The mere cruelty of ordering endless crowds of slaves to nearly certain death did not affect him particularly; but the waste of it did, very much. To him the thought of hundreds of lifeless bodies drifting endlessly about the Sun, boiling off a little more of their masses with each perihelion passage until nothing was left but a loose collection of high melting-point pebbles, was a painful picture of economic loss. The fact that the best farm plot in the system had apparently become unattainable was also to be considered, and the driving of at least one slave to the extreme of thinking for himself was not to be ignored.

Of course, everything should be checked before confronting the student with such charges. Only the last, after all, could be considered as yet a matter of objective knowledge.

The overseer moved abruptly away from the slave—Sunward. The dying creature, seeing him depart, called once more for aid, and was silenced instantly and permanently by a slashing beam of ions. For an instant the overseer regretted the impulsive act—not from gratitude for the warning, to which he attached little weight and which was part of a slave’s duty, but simply because it was impulsive rather than reasoned. But then he reflected that the creature could probably not have told much more anyway, even if it had survived until his return.

He was in no hurry. He let the gravity of the central furnace draw him in to the orbit of the Giant Planet, his senses covering the half-billion-mile sphere of space ahead where death was reputed to lurk.

At this range, all seemed innocuous. He watched the inner planets circling rapidly in their paths—even the giant one made most of a revolution during his fall—and noted that the slave had spoken the truth about a companion body to the third planet. But space seemed otherwise empty.

He did not completely abandon caution, however. What had proven fatal to slaves might be inconvenient or even dangerous to a master.

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