Baby Is Three Read Online Free PDF

word.
    “… Gah!” said Judson through a tight glottis.
    “That,” I told him, “was beautifully phrased. Gah, indeed. Reel your eyeballs back in, Jud. We’ll drop your duffel off at the Outbound quarters and—
Judson!”
    Flower had disappeared down the inner ramp. I was aware that Judson had just started to breathe again.
    “What?” he asked me.
    I waddled over and picked up his gear. “Come on,” I said, and steered him by the arm.
    Judson had nothing to say until after we found him a room and started for my sector. “Who is she?”
    “A hardy perennial,” I said. “Came up to Curbstone two years ago. She’s never been certified. She’ll get around to it soon—or never. Are you going right ahead?”
    “Just how do you handle the certification?”
    “Give you some stuff to read. Pound some more knowledge into you for six, seven nights while you sleep. Look over your reflexes, physical and mental. An examination. If everything’s all right, you’re certified.”
    “Then—Out?”
    I shrugged. “If you like. You come to Curbstone strictly on your own. You take your course if and when you like. And after you’vebeen certified, you leave when you want to, with someone or not, and without telling anyone unless you care to.”
    “Man, when you people say ‘voluntary’ you’re not just talking!”
    “There’s no other way to handle a thing like this. And you can bet that we get more people Out this way than we ever would on a compulsory basis. In the long run, I mean, and this is a long-term project … six thousand years long.”
    He walked silently for a time, and I was pretty sure I knew his thoughts. For Outbounders there is no return, and the best possible chance they have of survival is something like fifty-four per cent, a figure which was arrived at after calculations so complex that it might as well be called a guess. You don’t force people Out against those odds. They go by themselves, driven by their own reasoning, or they don’t go at all.
    After a time Judson said, “I always thought Outbounders were assigned a ship and a departure time. With certified people leaving whenever they feel like it, what’s to prevent uncertified ones from doing it?”
    “That I’m about to show you.”
    We passed the Coordination offices and headed out to the launching racks. They were shut off from Top Central Corridor by a massive gate. Over the gate floated three words in glowing letters:
    SPECIES
GROUP
SELF
    Seeing Jud’s eyes on it, I explained, “The three levels of survival. They’re in all of us. You can judge a man by the way he lines them up. The ones who have them in that order are the best. It’s a good thought for Outbounders to take away with them.” I watched his face. “Particularly since it’s always the third item that brings ’em this far.”
    Jud smiled slowly. “Along with all that bumbling you carry a sting, don’t you?”
    “Mine is a peculiar job,” I grinned back. “Come on in.”
    I put my palm on the key-plate. It tingled for a brief moment and then the shining doors slid back. I rolled through, stopping just inside the launching court at Judson’s startled yelp.
    “Well, come on,” I said.
    He stood just inside the doors, straining mightily against nothing at all. “Wh—wh—?” His arms were spread and his feet slipped as if he were trying to force his way through a steel wall.
    Actually he was working on something a good deal stronger than that. “That’s the answer to why uncertified people don’t go Out,” I told him. “The plate outside scanned the whorls and lines of my hand. The door opened and that Gillis-Menton field you’re muscling passed me through. It’ll pass anyone who’s certified, too, but no one else. Now stop pushing or you’ll suddenly fall on your face.”
    I stepped to the left bulkhead and palmed the plate there, then beckoned to Judson. He approached the invisible barrier timidly. It wasn’t there. He came all the way