The Human Edge Read Online Free PDF

laugh. He opened his mouth but the academician was before him.
    "It's not what he did," said the academician, "but the fact that he did it. No member of another culture that we know would have even entertained the possibility in their minds. Don't you see—he disregarded, he denied the fact that escape was impossible. That is what makes his kind so fearful, so dangerous. The fact that something is impossible presents no barrier to their seeking minds. That, alone, places them above us on a plane we can never reach."
    "But it's a false premise!" protested the commander. "They cannot contravene natural laws. They are still bound by the physical order of the universe."
    The doctor laughed again. His laugh had a wild quality. The commander looked at him.
    "You're drugged," he said.
    "Yes," choked the doctor. "And I'll be more drugged. I toast the end of our race, our culture, and our order."
    "Hysteria!" said the commander.
    "Hysteria?" echoed the doctor. "No— guilt! Didn't we do it, we three? The legend told us not to touch them, not to set a spark to the explosive mixture of their kind. And we went ahead and did it, you, and you, and I. And now we've sent forth an enemy—safely into the safe hiding place of space, in a ship that can take him across the galaxy, supplied with food to keep him for years, rebuilt into a body that will not die, with star charts and all the keys to understand our culture and locate his home again, using the ability to learn we have encouraged in him."
    "I say," said the commander, doggedly, "he is not that dangerous—yet. So far he has done nothing one of us could not do, had we entertained the notion. He's shown nothing, nothing supernormal."
    "Hasn't he?" said the doctor thickly. "What about the defensive screen—our most dangerous most terrible weapon—that could burn him to nothingness if he touched it?"
    The commander stared at him.
    "But—" said the commander. "The screen was shut off, of course, to let the food carrier out, at the same time the door was opened. I assumed—"
    "I checked," said the doctor, his eyes burning on the commander. "They turned it on again before he could get out."
    "But he did get out! You don't mean . . ." the commander's voice faltered and dropped. The three stood caught in a sudden silence like stone. Slowly, as if drawn by strings controlled by an invisible hand, they turned as one to stare up into the empty sky and space beyond.
    "You mean—" the commander's voice tried again, and died.
    "Exactly!" whispered the doctor.
    * * *
    Halfway across the galaxy, a child of a sensitive race cried out in its sleep and clutched at its mother. "I had a bad dream," it whimpered.
    "Hush," said its mother. "Hush." But she lay still, staring at the ceiling. She, too, had dreamed.
    * * *
    Somewhere, Eldridge was smiling at the stars.
     
     

SLEIGHT OF WIT
From the serious to the not-so. The rough, tough alien, a very unsympathetic one this time, obviously comes from a planet with no equivalent of poker. This is one of a handful of stories Dickson wrote about the somewhat wacky adventures of Hank Shallo, and the title "Sleight of Wit" could have applied to any and all of them. I wish he had stuck around longer, not only to finish his Childe Cycle, but also because he might have let Mr. Shallo do still more interstellar trouble-shooting. And not just because one seldom runs across a hero named Hank. . . .
     
    It was a good world. It was a very good world—well worth a Class A bonus. Hank Shallo wiped his lips with the back of one square, hairy, big-knuckled hand, put his coffee cup down, and threw his ship into orbit around the place. The orbit had a slight drift to it because the gyros needed overhauling; but Hank was used to their anomalies, as he was to the fact that the coffee maker had to be set lower on the thermostat than its directions called for. He made automatic course corrections while he looked the planet over for a place to sit down.
    Hank was a