Astounding British Edition, Vol. 6, No. 8 — page 51: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

DANCE OF A NEW WORLD By JOHN D. MacDONALD. If you can't find the man who can do the job that has to be done—there’s always one answer! SHANE BRENT sat in the air-conditioned per- sonnel office of the Solaray Plantations near Allada, Venus, and stared sleepily at the brown, powerful man across the table from. him. Shane was an angular blond man, dressed in the pale-gray uniform of Space Control. On his left lapel was the inter- locked C.A. of: Central Assignment and on the right lapel was the small gold question mark of Investigation Section. Shane Brent had the faculty of complete - relaxation, almost an animal stillness. His hair was a cropped golden cap and his eyes a quiet gray. Below the edge of the gray shorts the hair, tight curled on his brown legs, had been burned white by the sun. 4 , The man on the other side of the table was stocky, sullen and powerful. His face was livid with the seamed burns of space radiation before the days of adequate pilot protection. His name was Hiram Lee. The conversation had lasted more than an hour and as yet Shane Brett was no closer to a solution. He had been carefully trained in all the arts of persuasion, of mental and emotional appeals. Hiram Lee had resisted them all. Shane Brett said: “Lee, the whole thing is ridiculous. You're thirty-eight now. At least seven years of piloting ahead of you.” Lee snorted, “Piloting! Tell your boss that I’m unadjusted or something.” “Let’s review the case again. You, at the age of eighteen, were the first third-genera- tion space pilot in history. Your grandfather was John Lee who was an army pilot and who ran out of soup on the second swing around the Moon. As a memorial they left the little silver ship in orbit.” Lee’s expression softened for the first time. “That’s the way he would have wanted it.” “And your father, David Lee, was kicked off the spaceways for getting tight and balancing the old Los Angeles of the Donnovan Lines on its tail fifty feet in the air for ten minutes.” “And he won his bet of fifty bucks, junior. Don’t forget that.” “And that brings us down to you, Hiram Lee. You made eighty-three trips with Space Combo in the VME triangle. Your education cost Central Assignment a lot of time and money. There aren’t enough trained pilots who can stand the respon- sibility.”” : “The monotony, you mean.” Lee stood up suddenly, his fists on his slim waist. “I told you before and I'll tell you again. When I started, it was a fine racket. You took off on manual controls and got your correc- tions en route from Central Astro. You made the corrections manually. You ripped off in those rusty buckets and the accelera- tion nearly tore your guts out. When I started we had a mean time of one five nine days from Earth to Venus. The trip was rugged. As a pilot you were somebody. “Then some bright gent had to invent the Tapeworm. Central Astro plots your entire trip and sends the tape over. You co- ordinate the Tapeworm with takeoff time and feed in the tape. You’ve got a stand-by Tapeworm with a duplicate tape and you’ve got an escape tape which you feed in if any- thing goes too far off. . “The pilot sits there like a stuffed doll and the tape does everything. You don’t even have to worry about meteorites. The Pusher obliques the little ones off and the Change- Scanner gives you an automatic course cor- rection around the big one. It just got too dull, Brent. I’m not a guy who wants to play up to bhiies under the chin and say kitcheekoo. I took three years of rocking chair circuits and then I quit. And I won’t go back.” “What makes the job you’ve got so attrac- tive, Lee? You’re just a foreman and nurse- maid to a bunch of Harids working in your herb patches.” Lee smileg tightly. “I keep ’em working and I tell °em what to do and I try to keep them happy. You know the final psycho report on them. Their culture is much like the culture of ants on Earth—with one ex- ception. They have a high degree of emotional instability. Did you ever see a Harid run berserk? A bunch of them are the rich passengers and tickle the . picking away and all of a sudden one will. stop and start swaying his head from side to side. The others light out for far places. The one who has gone over the edge starts clicking those teeth of his. He lets out a scream that would split your head wide open and comes at you with his arms all coiled to strike. Bullets won’t stop them. You haven't got time to mess with a powerpack and turn SHEO CECOMMICLOO® im