Shakespeare's Planet Read Online Free PDF Page B

opportunity to get into tone again. In a few days you can resume normal eating habits.”
    Horton eyed the food. “Where did you get this fare?” he demanded. “Certainly it was not carried from Earth.”
    â€œI forget,” said Nicodemus. “Of course you wouldn’t know. We have on board the most efficient model of a matter converter that had been manufactured up to the time of our departure.”
    â€œYou mean you just shovel in some sand?”
    â€œWell, not exactly that. It isn’t quite that simple. But you have the right idea.”
    â€œNow wait a minute,” said Horton. “There is something very wrong. I don’t remember any matter converters. They were talking about them, of course, and there seemed some hope that one could be put together, but to the best of my recollection …”
    â€œThere are certain things, sir,” said Nicodemus, rather hurriedly, “with which you are not acquainted. One of them is that once you went into cold-sleep, we did not leave immediately.”
    â€œYou mean there was some delay?”
    â€œWell, yes. As a matter of fact, quite a bit of delay.”
    â€œFor Christ’s sake, don’t try to be mysterious about it. How long?”
    â€œWell, fifty years or so.”
    â€œFifty years! Why fifty years? Why put us into cold-sleep and then wait fifty years?”
    â€œThere was no real urgency,” said Nicodemus. “The time span of the project was estimated to run over so long a time, a couple of hundred years or perhaps slightly more before a ship returned with news of habitable planets, that a delay of fifty years did not seem excessive if in that length of time it was possible to develop certain systems that would give a better chance of success.”
    â€œLike a matter converter, for example.”
    â€œYes, that was one of the things. Not absolutely necessary, of course, but convenient and adding a certain margin. There were, more importantly, certain ship engineering features which, if they could be worked out …”
    â€œAnd they were worked out?”
    â€œMost of them,” said Nicodemus.
    â€œThey never told us there would be such delay,” said Horton. “Neither us nor any of the other crews that were in training at the time. If any of the other crews had known, they’d gotten the word to us.”
    â€œThere was,” said Nicodemus, “no need for you to know. There might have been some illogical objection on your part if you had been told. And it was important that the human crews be ready when the ships were set to go. You see, all of you were very special people. Perhaps you remember with what great care you were chosen.”
    â€œGod, yes. We were run through computers for calculations of survival factors. Our psychological profiles were measured time and time again. They damn near wore us out with physical testing. And they implanted that telepathic dingus in our brains so we could talk with Ship, and that was the most bothersome of all. I seem to recall it took months to learn how to use it properly. But why do all this, then rush us to cold storage? We could simply have stood by.”
    â€œThat could have been one approach,” said Nicodemus, “with you growing older by the year. Not exactly youth, but not too great an age, was one of the factors that went into the selection of the crews. There’d be little sense in sending oldsters out. Placed in cold-sleep, you did not age. Time was not a factor to you, for in cold-sleep time is not a factor. Doing it the way it was done, the crews were standing by, their facilities and abilities undimmed by the time it took to get other bugs ironed out. The ships could have gone when you were frozen, but by waiting fifty years, the ships’ chances and your chances were considerably enhanced. The life-support systems for the brains were perfected to a point that would have been thought