Margaret St. Clair by The Best of Margaret St. Clair

Author:The Best of Margaret St. Clair [Clair, The Best of Margaret St.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2012-05-31T11:50:21+00:00

Prott

“Read it,” said the spaceman. “You’ll find it interesting —under the circumstan ces. It’s not long. One of the salvage crews found it tied to a signal rocket just outside the Asteroid Belt. It’d been there quite a while.

“I thought of taking it to somebody at the university, a historian or somebody, but I don’t suppose they’d be int erested. They don’t have any more free time than anybody else.”

He handed a metal cylinder to Fox, across the table, and ordered drinks for them both. Fox sipped from h is glass before he opened the tube.

“Sure you want me to read it now?” he asked. “No t much of a way to spend our free time.”

“Sure, go ahead and read it. What difference does it make?”

So Fox spread out the emtex sheets. He began to read.

-

Dating a diary in deep space offers special problems. Philosophic problems, I mean —that i mmense “When is now?” which, vexatious enough within a solar system or even on the surface of a planet, becomes quite insoluble in deep space except empirically or by predicating a sort of super-time, an enormous Present Moment which would extend over eve r ything. And yet a diary entry must be dated, if only for convenience. So I will call today Tuesday and take the date of April 21 from the gauges.

Tuesday it is.

On this Tuesday, then, I am quite well and cheerful, snug and comfortable, in the Ellis. The Ellis is a model of comfort and convenience; a man who couldn’t be comfortable in it couldn’t be comfortable anywhere. As to where I am, I could get the precise data from the calculators, but I think, for the casual purposes of this record, it’s enough to say that I am almost at the edges of the area where the prott are said to abound. And my speed is almost exactly that at which they are supposed to appear.

I said I was well and cheerful. I am. But just under my euphoria, just at the edge of consciou sness, I am aware of an intense loneliness. It’s a normal response to the deep space situation, I think. And I am upborne by the feeling that I stand on the threshold of unique scientific discoveries.

-

Thursday the 26th (my days are more than twenty-fo ur hours long). Today my loneliness is definitely conscious. I am troubled, too, by the fear that perhaps the prott won’t —aren’t going to —put in an appearance. After all, their existence is none too well confirmed. And then what becomes of all my plan s , of my smug confidence of a niche for myself in the hall of fame of good investigators?

It seemed like a brilliant idea when I was on Earth. I know the bursar thought so, too, when I asked for funds for the project. To investigate the life habits of a n on-protoplasmic form of life, with special emphasis on its reproduction —excellent! But now?

-

Saturday, April 30. Still no prott. But I am feeling better.

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