Paradise Planet

                         By Richard S. Shaver

             It was a nice little world; everything about
          it reminded Steve of Earth--except for the people.
          They looked as human--as steel could make them!...

           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
              Imagination Stories of Science and Fantasy
                              April 1953
         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]


It was a queer looking planet. As his ship approached it, Steve Donay
could see slowly rising and twisting coils of strange smoke, brown
and silver and gold, like great snakes or the tenuous flesh of some
creature of the air. He hated to think of setting down on that world
of surface fires. But what else was there to do? He was at the end
of his supplies, there wasn't fuel enough to look further. Maybe not
enough to land safely. But he had to take a chance.

As he burst down through the coiling layers of strange smoke, the world
beneath was amazingly beautiful. Wild, maybe, no--those were planted
trees, those fields of grass were too regularly curved, too well laid
out. He smiled. That brown stuff, he should have recognized it. It was
weather control particles. He'd read about it somewhere. Magnetized
particles. When you turned on the field, they gathered, shut out
unwanted light. When you reversed, to negative field projection, they
caused rain to condense. When you wanted the sun, they were swept aside
by another repellent field ... he should have recognized them. This was
luck, a really civilized world.

He swept lower, his jets thrumming softly, reassuringly. Still perking,
he could pick a good landing spot. There, beyond that huge tree group.
And what trees they were. That meant an old culture, a good one. The
temples crowning the hills, the peaceful meadows curving between, the
lazy river--he caught his breath! This was a world, some place, indeed!

He set the little ship down near the great trees, and tested the air.
It was normal, as he expected.

Not far away, on the edge of the meadow, was a house. It was a very
nice looking farm house, with a tiny barn, two other small buildings,
and a haystack. There were three cows, and a pen of hogs; a horse was
in the barnyard. He left his ship and walked up the path to the door,
marveling at the rows of flowers beside the path, and the neatness of
the yard. No blade of grass seemed to grow out of place, no flower
bloomed too boisterously. Even the birds in the trees seemed to partake
of the discipline, singing in a soft and careful way, not to disturb
the serene surroundings.

Steve knocked, and almost at once the upper part of the door swung
inward. He stared, for he had not seen a woman in nearly two years. Not
a beautiful woman ... like this! Cinematic, glamorous ... he wondered
if he wasn't in truth a little unbalanced from his long absence from
humankind. No one could be quite that attractive! But when she spoke,
something in his breast shrilled an alarm, and a chill ran up his
spine. There was a brittle, edgy quality in her voice, like a crystal
bell, yes--but a bell with a crack that was about to shatter.

"Vey fanis vu?" she asked.

He shook his head. "I'm from Earth, another planet. We can't understand
each other, I suppose--not until I learn your tongue."

She opened the bottom half of the door, and he walked into a room of
quiet beauty. A large brown tile stove was nearby with a copper pot
simmering, utterly spotless.

       *       *       *       *       *

Pictures were set in the walls, strangely exotic, realistic art work.
Leather chairs, a wide wooden table, unmarred by scratches and nicks,
cabinets of clear crystal behind which glimmered rows of gleaming
dishes and goblets.... It was like something from a Homemakers
catalog--the home of the future. Yet there was a quality of timeless
permanence in it all. It was as if it had been the same, unmoving,
unchanged, and as if this woman had been poised at that door, waiting
to open it for a visitor for endless centuries.

She poured a bowl of steaming broth, and smiling, set brown bread and
yellow butter before him. He sat and ate, wolfishly: he had been on a
capsule concentrate diet for months. She sat by the big tile stove and
took up yarn and needles, went on with the knitting of a garment as he
ate. He turned his eyes away. They were, of course, little booties for
a tiny child.

That alarm in his breast had subsided, and he wondered what kind of
idiot he had become to take alarm where such a home could exist. But
nevertheless there was something, some brittle quality to the whole
that he could not put his finger on. Some cold threat that he sensed
but could not fathom. Yet ... there was nothing but that it was all too
idyllic! Too prosaic--no strange planet could be so much like home.

The weariness of the months of strain claimed him and he nodded in
his chair, waiting. She got up and beckoned to him, and beyond the
first door she opened was a chamber, a bed made on the floor of soft
hand-made quilts, silken and lovely. He fell across the bed in a heap
and she went out, closing the door softly.

       *       *       *       *       *

Hours later he awoke, and darkness had come. He lay there, trying
to remember what _She_ had been wearing, feeling a little pang of
jealously that _She_ must have a man, must be knitting that mate's
child's clothing.... She had worn some kind of clinging trousers,
slacks--something ... and across her perfect bosom had been crossed
two wide bands of white that ended in a girdle around her small waist.
Her throat and the cleft of her breasts had had a sheen like mother
of pearl, and her bare arms soft and lovely as two dreams. Dreams! He
cursed a little. Too many dreams had tormented him, these last starving
months, eking out his dwindling food supply, waiting for something to
come ... some planet to appear in the endless black void where he could
set his fuel-dry ship down and rest.

The door opened, and she came in, carrying a lamp--a primitive thing
with a tiny flame. She set it down and stood smiling at him, and there
was a magic on her, in her eyes and on her bare graceful arms, in the
lovely curves of her body under the clinging garment.

Donay sighed. A man went to the stars seeking perfection, adventure,
magic ... and when he found it, he found it was very like home, only
better. It was like a perfect wife and a perfect farm and peace and
contentment--bucolic magic--why had he left Earth?

As he got to his feet, one foot slipped on the smooth tile floor and
he lurched suddenly against her. His first thought was--"My God, her
condition ..." but his second was a vague horror that began to grow in
his mind. For her body was solid as a rock, unyielding. And the hand
with which she seized his arm and steadied him was like the grasp of a
pair of tongs of heavy steel!

The more he looked at her perfection, the more his mind worried at the
problem--_How can she be so beautiful and yet be made of metal ... yet
be not human, yet be--yet be_.... His mind would not accept it--_yet
be a robot?_ She could not be of flesh and blood like himself, not ...
like that.... He shuddered, inwardly.

The evening meal was a feast of berries and thick cream, fresh bread
and the beautiful yellow butter, slabs of something fried ... fried ...
he remembered, like panhaus, like scrapple--like the Dutch cooked.

He ate and leaned back satisfied. Then she brought a heavy blue wine
from a door he guessed was a cellar way, and he drank. And the wine
opened his lips, and he asked, "How can we understand each other,
strange woman of steel?"

She smiled at the weird sounds of his mouth, and answered, "Ven nu da,
uman. En nu see me."

Somehow he knew what she meant. When he got to Heaven he would
understand life, but not until. That seemed to be what she meant. She
nodded, as if that was close enough. He wondered, that alarm in his
breast tugging at his nerves, setting his eyes to roving for the jaws
of the trap he felt about him.

Days passed, and his wonder increased. It was like living in a mirror,
or in an instant of frozen time. It was idyllic, yet ... nothing
happened! The beautiful creature was alone here, with her few cows and
animals; the garden and the cows produced her living. The cellar was
full of stored food, and she seemed to possess everything one could
want ... _except change_. One day was exactly like another.

No one came. No one left. The smoky sky overhead coiled and uncoiled
those odd clouds; the sun shone ... a large red sun, warm ... but
not too warm. No one came. No one left. There was himself, puzzling,
thinking. There was the calm woman, beautiful as a picture, busy as a
housewife, making everything sweet and clean and comfortable for ...
Steve Donay?

_And Donay couldn't stand it._ Out there sat his ship, unharmed,
unsmashed. All it needed was fuel. And he couldn't pull himself out
onto that meandering road that went over the hill and look for the
civilization behind this little farm house and this perfect ... robot.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was then he gave up trying to learn her language. Gave up waiting
for the neighbors, for contact with intelligent members of her race.
She could not be a living creature, and she could not be even flesh.
She must be some kind of maintenance robot ... and Donay shivered. What
lay over the hill? If even the tiny farms of this world were peopled
with maintenance robots, what wonders lay over the hill?

Then he wondered where were the produce trucks to take away the milk,
the butter, the fruit and vegetables? And even as he wondered, his
feet took him at last out of the clutching beauty and peace and neat
contentment of that little home. His feet led him along that road,
winding over the hill.

Looking back, he saw _Her_ standing in the doorway, the upper part
swung open, her eyes even at this distance seeming blurred with tears.
She waved one hand, a little gesture of farewell, and that snowy apron
she wore over her strange spotless garments came up to her face. She
was weeping!

With a tug at his heart as strange as any emotion he ever knew, he
realized the creature was weeping to see him go! But he made an effort,
and his mind assured him it was but a trick of his own fleshly
emotions, that that woman of the steel-hard lovely form was not able
to weep, or to do anything but tend her cows and weed her garden and
can her fruits and open the door to any knock that came. She must be a
robot, his mind said. But his heart shouted--_She is woman, perfection
in womanhood, and you are leaving your home!_

His feet led on, and he reached the top of the hill and sat down to
look over the view that spread out beneath his eyes. There were other
farmsteads, very like the one he had just left. Dotted here and there
were herds of cattle. The whole land lay dreaming under his eyes, and
he knew the mist of the far horizon only shut off a repetition of the
same thing. But hope led him on, and he rose and went along a little
used trail.

Days, it took, to reach the city. The farmsteads lay dreaming as he
passed, and he knocked on the lovely old wood of the doors sometimes,
and asked for water or food. The upper door would open, and there would
stand a woman. Not the same woman, but very like, too much alike--too
much like his own first woman. She would smile and say: "Vey fanis vu?"

He would shake his head, make a motion of drinking or eating and the
lower door would open. He would enter and sit at the wooden table. The
food was always perfect, sublime taste, simple fruit or milk or garden
greens, or the fried panhaus, or sometimes a thing that looked like
meat but he was sure was not meat for _She_ had never killed anything
or possessed any meat.

Then there were no more of the farmsteads, and he came across a great
empty plain, where the trail was wide and the earth beaten hard as
stone. But nowhere did he see the vehicles that had made that track.
In the distance he could see the tall spires of a city. But there was
no noise of a city. The tall spires seemed silent, and there was none
of that smoke he knew a city should make. Above the spires coiled the
weird spirals of the upper air, like great brown snake forms gestating
and birthing and changing, entwined and unentwining, wreathing over
each other and seeming to peer down at the strange midge crossing their
plain.

Steve Donay was puzzled trying to understand this planet. His feet
plodded on across the grassy plain and he came to the first street of
the city. There were people moving, and he went on eagerly for now he
would learn the truth from real people!

He went up to the first man he saw and asked: "I am a stranger, can you
tell me...."

The man said firmly, "Vey fanis vu?"

Donay shook his head, and the man walked on, not swiftly, not
hurriedly, but with a measured, machine-like step.

       *       *       *       *       *

The city did not seem crowded, and there were some huge freight
vehicles trundling along, not like autos, but like huge wagons with
little motors where a man would ordinarily sit driving a horse. And
there was no man driving them.

"I am beginning to understand," Steve muttered, "this is a world of
madmen, or simpletons, or robots. Why does no one act curious, or
sympathetic, or human?..." He walked on, gloomily.

Near the center of the city, many plodding hours later, he walked into
the base of one of the great towers. There was a door he suspected was
an elevator and he went in and pressed a button. It took him to the
top. He got out and entered the first door he came to.

A woman sat behind a desk. She said. "Vey fanis vu?"

Donay said "Nuts," and slapped her face. She promptly rose from her
seat and knocked him down. When he arose he found a man on either side
of him. They gripped his arms with fingers of steel and led him from
the room, back down the tower and out on the street. He gathered this
was very unusual, for three different people along the way stopped to
glance curiously at him. His face was very sore where the woman had
struck him. She had a hand like a lead pipe.

The men took him into a place just across the square from the tower he
had entered. In and up the elevator and into a great chamber.

Steve saw a very big bed. The person in the bed was very small. Very
old, too. He said, "Vey fanis vu?"

Donay shrugged dispiritedly and answered, "From Earth, and I don't like
this planet of yours a little bit."

The little man in the bed smiled a very human smile and reached out to
a thing beside the bed and turned a knob. A glow came from the box,
and Steve could suddenly hear a thought--"From Earth, eh? I wonder now
where that would be if you could tell me."

Startled, Steve thought where Earth was and the little old creature in
the bed nodded. Then Donay asked, "Why does every one act so odd ...
like robots, or like they were wound up and couldn't stop or change...."

The old man sighed and leaned back. "That is a long story, stranger.
Sit down and I will try to explain...."

Donay sat down and listened. The thought in his head told him of a
great world of people who had become very tired of everything and
wanted to have something new. They did not want to die. They wanted
life to be more satisfying, wanted to be more contented. The old man
smiled sadly. "There arose among them a great scientist who promised
them immortality and contentment. He had devised a treatment...."

The old man leaned back and looked at Donay. His eyes were tragic.
"That's what ails the people, Steve Donay. They're treated ... and the
treatment did everything he said it would. It's really a new factor
introduced into the human metabolism. You know something of chemistry?"

Steve Donay nodded. The old man went on, wearily. "Well, you know
how complicated the protoplasm molecule is, then. This change he
introduced is only a new atom in the basic living molecule. As if,
say, you're making pancakes and put in more shortening ..." the old
man laughed. "When I make pancakes they swell up, like balloons. This
is the opposite effect. The yeasty growth of life is changed, subdued,
altered into a new pattern, by a single new ingredient in the chemical
transversion in the body. The end product, the basic plasm-cule, is
more stable, less affected by adverse conditions, a lot more durable.
But it isn't what I call life! You've noticed?"

Steve nodded. "They act like robots," he observed, sadly. "I'd like to
get some fuel, get back to my own world."

       *       *       *       *       *

The old man scribbled some notes on a pad, nodded. "They will
synthesize your fuel. I'll put through a requisition for it. Now, they
may ask you if you want the treatment. It's tempting, because it gives
you a life cycle, from birth through fecundity to death, of around ten
times the ordinary cycle. Almost immortality you would think. But I
refrained, and now I'm the only one left of the old race. The new race
is not flesh."

"I'll refuse, too." Steve observed. "They pay for their long lives."

The old man nodded sagely. "Things happen ten times as slowly, although
to the eye they move as rapidly as before. The drive toward growth and
progress is lessened by ten, to my eyes. They're satisfied to go on at
the new slow pace."

       *       *       *       *       *

"Stasified, you mean," Steve grinned. The old man smiled. "How come
they made you their ruler?" asked Steve.

"I'm not the ruler. They believe I am the only one capable of
understanding you, a flesh man."

Steve stood up. "What'll I do with myself while I'm waiting for that
fuel order to go through?"

"Look around, take in the sights. You can sleep here, there's an extra
room in this suite. I'm lonesome, you can talk to me when you have
time."

Steve looked into the other rooms of the suite, came back to stand
beside the old man's bed. The old fellow rang a bell, and one of the
beautiful creatures came and looked in the door.

"Our Earth visitor wants to take in the sights," started the old man,
in the "Vey fanis vu?" language, but Steve understood because the
thought augmenter was still switched on. "You get this memorandum onto
a requisition slip and see that they make some fuel for his ship, so he
can go back to his natural world. He doesn't like your new order any
better than I do."

The girl, who looked a brisk, efficient and ripe eighteen, beckoned
to Steve. He followed her from the room. She closed the door softly,
carefully, stood leaning against it, eyeing Steve. She murmured,
"U seen yung to bay," but Steve shook his head, and she went ahead
of him into another room. There was no one there, but one of the
thought machines stood on a pedestal beside several other machines.
She switched on the augmenter and Steve heard her thought, like slow,
perfect music on a thrilling harp.... "You are here too short a time to
judge what you like and dislike. Let me show you what the change has
given us before you refuse a chance to be like us."

Steve shook his head, murmured, "Not interested. Peddle it somewhere
else."

She appeared not to hear him. Her thought went on, inexorable,
beautiful, without a ripple of irritation or haste: "The change was
not brought about in a day, Earthman. Nor are we finished, ever, with
attempts to make life more worth having. Our people hated the change,
at first. Centuries passed before it was fully demonstrated to be a far
more pleasant and satisfying way of life. You cannot judge this thing
with ordinary standards. We accomplish just as much as before, without
the frenetic hub-bub that we once thought necessary."

Steve smiled, as if he owned a secret she could never see. "I'd rather
be dead, than turned into a damned robot."

       *       *       *       *       *

The girl moved toward him, her face pale and perfect as a prize rose.
"Look into my eyes, foolish one ..." she whispered, and her thought
in his mind was a bold invitation. He looked into the deep green-blue
depths and he saw there real emotion, waiting to be borne into a
consuming fire of passion. Her arms went around him, and though they
were strong and hard arms, he did not feel that, for her lips touched
his, and a shock of ecstasy ran through him so that he shook like a
leaf in a breeze.

Her thoughts plunged on--he had to listen--"You think we are dead
robots because you do not see our life. You cannot see it, until you
are one of us. Then it becomes quite clear, our life is more than
before."

Steve's thoughts, unlocked from sad introspection and loneliness,
plunged suddenly into a swirl of desire. He could not help wishing to
see her body without the sleek rippling film of silk. He could not help
wondering if the bodies of these machine-like people were as perfect
as their faces were perfect. She laughed as the machine augmented his
inadvertent wish ... and she zipped down her side, tossed off the one
piece jumper of silken stuff. She stood there, perfect and desirable.

Steve flushed. "That wasn't necessary, baby," he heard himself say,
embarrassed. "I couldn't help wishing."

"More you can never have, while you are made of flesh. My arms would
crush you, my lips burst your soft flesh lips. But if you underwent the
treatment ..." she smiled. Her meaning was unmistakable, too much so
and Steve flushed, guiltily.

He heard his own thought on the augmenter, going on and on inexorably,
against his own will: "There was a woman, the first I knew in this
world. I stayed there too long. She wanted me, but we could not even
speak. Somehow, I feel drawn back to her. And the thing that puzzled
me, that terrified me ... she was knitting baby clothes, yet there was
no man! No man ever came, there was only me. And I never even touched
her, except by chance."

The girl slipped her jumper on, zipped it up. Her face was suddenly
grave, empty, and somehow sorry. Steve stopped thinking, listened to
the augmenter and her thoughts. "Oh, no! I am sorry I intruded."

Steve shook his head. He was trying hard not to understand the meaning
of what he heard. It was like being led by the hand, like a child
trying to break away from his mother's restraining hand.

"What do you mean, you're sorry you intruded?"

She smiled, a very peculiar smile, one of those female smiles that
madden men so much, because they show him that sometimes women know
things that men can never know.

"You will understand one of these days, why I am sorry. I should have
known. If I had looked I would have seen it in you already. It changes
a man ... but you could not understand. It was inevitable. You were
doomed when you set foot on this world." She laughed, and repeated,
"Doomed, doomed," and she went out the door, a silvery laugh like a
glass bell struck with a felt hammer.

       *       *       *       *       *

Steve stood looking at the augmenter. He leaned over it, and his
own thought beat back at him powerfully. "Go back, go back, or you
will never escape! You will be another robot, with flesh like rock,
and never again will the hot blood rush through your veins, never
again...." But all at once he saw behind his own thought, and heard
something deeper in his own mind, saying, "Go back, _she_ is waiting
for you. The garden is waiting, the little house, the fields, the tiny
barn, the tidy rooms, and her sweet perfection to serve you forever."

Steve stood up and pounded his head with his fist, trying to knock out
the sound of his own thinking. There was something here, something
threatening and frightful, and he couldn't understand. He let the
thought augmenter idle on, emptily bouncing his own thought about the
room in magnetic waves of meaningless content, and peered at the other
strange machines. There was one, a cabinet where a person could stand,
with buttons like a shower stall. He stepped in, pushed a button and
waves of force washed over him, set his body to tingling and shaking
with the force of it. But what it was supposed to be doing, he didn't
know. Beside it was upended a bottle with a spigot and a paper cup.
It looked like water, and without thinking he took the cup, filled
it, tasted the "water". It was not water; it tasted like peppermint,
like licorice, like mint leaves and whiskey ... like quite a drink, he
decided and drank it down. He took another cup, and another. His head
suddenly whirled, and he staggered slightly.

"Potent stuff to put in a water cooler," he grunted, putting out a
hand to steady himself. For the stuff had set up a thrumming in his
veins, a pumping in his heart, a rosy pulsation in his vision. If he
wasn't drunk, what would you call it? he wondered. He tried a step,
another, and after minutes his legs obeyed and he walked out the door.
He stopped there, looking back. In this condition he would forget his
own name.... He wondered what he had forgotten. Something he had left
there.... He eased back, sliding his feet, bent over the augmenter
to listen to his thinking. It beat up at him from the orifice like a
strong wind in his face. It said, "You're going back, Steve, you are
going back, to say goodbye properly to your host, the woman who waits
and knits and waits and who wept when you left."

Steve decided he was going back. They would bring the fuel when they
brought it, or they wouldn't. But somehow right now he had to see that
"Vey fanis vu?" female again, to make sure about something that puzzled
him.

Then his thought reminded him. "You forgot to switch off this thing,
that's why you came back in." And he reached down and turned the knob;
the pulse of his own strange deeper thought stopped, and he felt
suddenly lost and his own mind blank. He moved back, turned, went out
the door and heard a silvery laugh down the corridor as he staggered a
little, trying to walk down the center of the corridor.

"Inhuman things," Steve muttered. "They treat me like I was a kid with
no sense, or something," and he went to the elevator, down to the
street level, and so along the street, some sense of direction guiding
his whirling mind. He knew where he was going.

       *       *       *       *       *

One of the driverless wheeled wagons stopped beside him, the
machine-voice of it said, "You may ride, I am going your way."

Steve climbed on the back of the wagon, grumbling. "How'n hell do you
know where I'm going? I don't."

The wagon rolled off, not fast, not slow, its wheels bouncing slightly
with the weight of its bales and boxes of cargo. Along the wide serene
avenues it rolled, quiet, sure, straight as a train on rails. Steve
nodded, closed his eyes, fell asleep.

When he awoke, the wagon had stopped, someone brushed by Steve, took
off one of the boxes. It was dark, the starlight was so vague he could
not see where he was. The wagon started up again, rolled on. Steve
slept, and dreamed that he had been changed into a glass statue, and
placed on a pedestal in the square of his home town, back on Earth.
People stopped and stared at the glass statue, giggling and smirking,
and he hated it, but he could only stand there, his hand on his chest,
smiling idiotically. He could hear the girls giggling, saying to each
other, "Isn't he perfect? He doesn't know, he doesn't know."

Steve stood there in the square and the traffic turned and honked and
braked; the people stood and waited for the traffic lights, and looked
at the glass statue, and smiled, as if he were a joke, a permanent
joke. "He doesn't know," they would laugh, and the light would change,
and the traffic move again.

Hours later a hand touched his arm, but it wasn't a hard hand of steel.
It was a soft human hand, and Steve's heart leaped with the guess:
"Some of these people didn't undergo the change and formed their own
community. So the crystallized people sent me to the natural people,
and now I am among my own kind again!"

The soft pink-tipped fingers grasped his arm, shook him gently, so
gently, and Steve opened his eyes. The face in the darkness was
vaguely familiar, but somehow all these people were nice looking. He
eased himself off the back of the wagon, leaned against the body that
belonged to the hand. A soft body, a woman's real body of flesh ... he
thrilled to the touch, a deep satisfying revelation of humanity, of
love, of natural human life, a home-like feeling.

"So they didn't all change. There is a place here where they live like
people ..." murmured Steve.

"U fanis hane, O tu!" said the voice, a sweet voice, from a
fragrant-scented person, a soft bodied woman-person.... Steve smiled
sleepily. She seemed glad to see him. He followed her up a path, and
into the warm pink light.

A shock went through him. This was the same room! The same pictures
built in the smooth wall, the same brown tile stove, sleek and clean
as a new-washed baby. The same big comfortable leather chairs, and he
grinned. "I'm hungry, Elvie," he said.

"A hane to u, is eat," she laughed, and he knew she had spoken two
words of his own tongue.

He sat down, not weary, but somehow very glad to be back. "The thought
machine," he asked, wishing he could ask her where they could find one;
he wanted her to tell him something.

She switched on a button in the wall, a button he had not seen before.
Her thought came to him then.

"I was so sorry I did not have one when you came. I ordered one, but
they have to be made as there are not many in use. Now it has come, I
can tell you. There is something you could not understand."

"There's a lot of things you could tell me, that's a fact. It's so
puzzling. They take me for granted. No excitement...."

"That is because of prevision."

Steve started. A shiver went through him, or was it a pulse of delight
at the sudden knowledge of what was to come?

"Prevision?" asked Steve, though he suddenly realized he knew the
answer.

"After the change, people came to know by experience that they could
foresee the future, when they willed to see ahead. When you came, I
knew what would come to pass."

"Because they know what's coming, they didn't get excited?" Steve
asked, his eyes on her sweet perfection, on her hands, setting the
flowers straight in the bowl again, then going back to her eternal
knitting.

"That's why we seem like robots to you. Robots don't have to think
about what's coming next. They know. They know because they are
machines. We know ahead, too, not because it's built in us, but because
we can deduce precisely how things are going to turn out. The penalty
of increased mental activity ... see?" Her voice was gentle, but there
was awareness of something in it, something he ought to understand,
something she couldn't say.

       *       *       *       *       *

Suddenly Steve saw it and sat up straight, his heart doing flip-flops.
He could hear his voice and his augmented thought shouting
together--"There's no man! You're alone here!"

Her smile was heavenly, something like music that touched him inside.

"Now you know," she said, and held up the tiny garment she had just
completed. "It's for our first one."

Steve leaned back, his worriment smoothing out into a strange beautiful
prevision of their life, going on and on here.... He couldn't seem to
get excited about Earth any longer. All the dreams of going back seemed
to be dissolving in a warm flood of knowing--_he wasn't going back_!

"This prevision can be fun," mused Steve, looking into her eyes. "You
knew...."

"I knew when your ship sounded overhead! It added up, because ... I
don't know. When I saw you, then I saw the prevision had not been
wishful thinking. It was you, the same man I saw ahead. So I began
making the things...."

"Why didn't you tell me?" Steve asked.

"It wasn't that way. You had to go and see the city, undergo the
change, want to come back. If you hadn't wanted to come back, why then
I had made a mistake. But you came back, so ... but I knew all the
time."

"I knew too, but ... there was your knitting. I thought you must have a
mate, that he must be away."

"In the flesh state, people have prevision, but it isn't as accurate.
Ours is usually accurate. Just a new faculty. One of several new
faculties."

"I suppose they will treat me?" Steve asked, but he knew.

Gently she explained--. "In the city, the change is provided for. It
is in the drinking water. Here, we have to take capsules. If we didn't
we'd revert to the flesh state. No one wants to revert."

Steve stood up. She moved into his arms naturally, and he knew he was
home. He kissed her sweet face ... again. Her laugh tinkled softly, and
the edgy, glass-like quality was gone from it. He was happy and he knew
she was happy. He switched off the thought augmenter.

"Let's pretend it's the first day ..." he said.

She went and stood by the door, and he went out the door. He closed it
and knocked. She opened the door.

"Vey fanis vu?" she asked.

Steve stood, adoring her, his eyes warm. "How can a guy be so dumb, not
to know when he finds his own home?" he asked in English.

"I wondered, Steve," she murmured, in English.

She opened the lower door....