Time and Again Read Online Free PDF Page A

reached out a hand and picked it up. The butt fitted snugly in his hand. His finger curled around the trigger. He lifted it and sighted at the doorknob.
    It was easy to handle. Almost as if it were a part of him. There was a feel of power within it…of power and mastery. As if he suddenly were stronger and greater…and more dangerous.
    He sighed and laid it down.
    The robot had been right.
    He reached out to the visor, pushed the signal for the lobby desk.
    Ferdinand's face came in.
    "Anyone waiting down there for me, Ferdinand?"
    "Not a soul," said Ferdinand.
    "Anyone asked for me?"
    "No one, Mr. Sutton."
    "No reporters? Or photographers?"
    "No, Mr. Sutton. Were you expecting them?"
    Sutton didn't answer.
    He cut off, feeling very silly.

VI

    M AN WAS SPREAD thin throughout the galaxy. A lone man here, a handful there. Slim blobs of bone and brain and muscle to hold a galaxy in check. Slight shoulders to hold up the cloak of human greatness spread across the light-years.
    For Man had flown too fast, had driven far beyond his physical capacity. Not by strength did he hold his starry outposts, but by something else…by depth of human character, by his colossal conceit, by his ferocious conviction that Man was the greatest living thing the galaxy had spawned. All this in spite of many evidences that he was not…evidence that he took and evaluated and cast aside, scornful of any greatness that was not ruthless and aggressive.
    Too thin, Christopher Adams told himself. Too thin and stretched too far. One man backed by a dozen androids and a hundred robots could hold a solar system. Could hold it until there were more men or until something cracked.
    In time there'd be more men, if the birthrate held. But it would be many centuries before the line would grow much thicker, for Man held only the key points…one planet in an entire system, and not in every system. Man had leap-frogged since there weren't men enough, had set up strategic spheres of influence, had by-passed all but the richest, most influential systems.
    There was room to spread, room for a million years.
    If there were any humans left in a million years.
    If the life on those other planets let the humans live, if there never came a day when they would be willing to pay the terrible price of wiping out the race.
    The price would be high, said Adams, talking to himself. But it would be done, and it would be easy. Just a few hours' job. Humans in the morning, no humans left by night. What if a thousand others died for every human death…or ten thousand, or a hundred thousand? Under certain circumstances, such a price might well be counted cheap.
    There were islands of resistance even now where one walked carefully…or even walked around. Like 61 Cygni, for example.
    It took judgment…and some tolerance…and a great measure of latent brutality, but, most of all, conceit, the absolute, unshakable conviction that Man was sacrosanct, that he could not be touched, that he could scarcely die.
    But five men had died, three humans and two androids, beside a river that flowed on Aldebaran XII, just a few short miles from Andrelon, the planetary capital.
    They had died of violence, of that there was no question.
    Adams' eyes sought out the paragraph of Thorne's latest report:
    Force had been applied from the outside. We found a hole burned through the atomic shielding of the engine. The force must have been controlled or it would have resulted in absolute destruction. The automatics got in their-work and headed off the blast, but the machine went out of control and smashed into the tree. The area was saturated with intensive radiation .
    Good man, Thorne, thought Adams. He won't let a single thing be missed. He had those robots in there before the place was cool.
    But there wasn't much to find…not much that gave an answer. Just a batch of question marks.
    Five men had died and when that was said, that was the end of fact. For they were burned and battered and there were