Robert Silverberg - Men and Machines

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For Walt Cole

Published by arrangement with Meredith Press

Library of Congress Catalog Number: 68-28721

AWARD BOOKS are published by Universal-Award House, Inc., a subsidiary of Cor

235 East Forty-fifth Street New York, N. Y. 10017

TANDEM BOOKS are published by Universal-Tandem Publishing Company Limited

14 Gloucester Road, London SW7, England

Manufactured in the United States of America

Acknowledgments

Reprinted by per-mission of the author's agent, Lurton Blassingame, from Analog.

Reprinted by permis-sion of the author and his agent, Robert P. Mills, from Galaxy Science Fiction.

Reprinted by permission of the author from If.

1952 by Random House, Inc. Reprinted by permission of the author and his agent, Robert P. Mills,

from Astonishing Stories.

agents, Scott Meredith Literary Agency, Inc., from Fantastic Universe.

Reprinted by permission of the author and his agents, Scott Meredith Literary Agency, Inc., from

Infinity.

permission of the author and his agents, Scott Meredith Literary Agency, Inc., from Astounding

Science Fiction.

by permission of the Harold Matson Company, Inc., from Astounding Science Fiction.

Reprinted by permission of the author and his agents, Scott Meredith Literary Agency, Inc., from

Astounding Science Fiction.

Reprinted by permission of the author and his agents, Scott Meredith Literary Agency, Inc., from

Astounding Science Fiction.

Contents

INTRODUCTION ix

COUNTER FOIL 11

George O. Smith

A BAD DAY FOR SALES 37

Fritz Leiber

WITHOUT A THOUGHT 45

Fred Saberhagen

SOLAR PLEXUS 57

James Blish

THE MACAULEY CIRCUIT 71

Robert Silverberg

BUT WHO CAN REPLACE A MAN? 82

Brian W. Aldiss

INSTINCT 93

Lester del Rey

THE TWONKY 109

Lewis Padgett

THE HUNTING LODGE 133

Randall Garrett

WITH FOLDED HANDS 170

Jack Williamson

Introduction

The first man to use a machine was the first of our primitive ancestors who picked up a rock to

hurl at some passing animal or to crack open some edible nut. In the million-plus years since then,

our machines have grown much more complex, but even in our modern era of com-puters, rockets,

and color television, their basic purpose remains the same: to serve man.

Whether our machines truly serve us is a question much debated by science-fiction writers and

other professional speculative philosophers. Does some essential quality go out of human life when

it becomes too easy? Have our automobiles, telephones, typewriters, and elevators sapped our

vigor? Are we speeding into flabby decay because we have made things too easy for ourselves?

And as our machines grow more able, when do they cross the boundary that separates the living

from the un-living? Is it possible that we are building machines that will make humanity obsolete?

Perhaps the day is coming when we ourselves will be rendered unnecessary, and our sleek

successors, creatures of metal and plastic, will inherit the earth.

The relationship between man and his machines is a complex and many-sided one, compounded

by love and hate. Many a bitter attack on the encroachments of the machine age has been produced

by a writer using an electric typewriter in an air-conditioned room, innocently unaware of the inner

contradictions involved. We need our machines, but we fear them; and out of this tension come

ideas best dealt with in the guise of science fiction.

Ten science-fictional explorations of the man-machine re-lationship are offered here. Some are

lighthearted excursions into fantasy, others bleak and forlorn visions of a hopeless future. They

show man as the master and as the slave of his machines, as the victim and the tyrant, as conqueror

and as conquered. No sermons are intended: the purpose of these tales is to entertain, to stimulate,

to suggest possi-bilities. But implicit in them is the awareness that we have only begun to cope with

the problems that our age of fabu-lous machines is creating.

R.S.

COUNTER FOIL

by George O. Smith

We sometimes used to be reminded how dependent we have become on our machines. A

substan-tial part of the northeast United States received such a reminder one November evening

in 1965, when a trifling technical difficulty blotted out lights and power for 30,000,000 people

over a vast area. George O. Smith's story, written before the great power failure, shows the even

more devastating possibilities in a trans-portation breakdown. Of course, the transportation

system he describes is one that doesn't yet happen to be in use—but allow him that one bit of

fantasy and everything else follows with devilishly consistent logic.

George O. Smith has long been well known as a devil-ishly logical character anyway. An

engineer by trade who has been involved in military electronics research, he has been writing s-f

since 1942 and has published over one hundred stories. A good many of them deal with the

technical problems engineers of the future are likely to encounter, and are impressive both for

their insight into technological processes and for the sly, lively wit that makes them favorites even

of nontechnical readers.

It was near the close of a normal day in late July, if a day in late July can properly be called

normal. The tempera-ture and the humidity were tied in the mid-nineties; a reporter from the News

fired the usual egg on the pavement while his photographer snapped the picture that would adorn

tomorrow's front page. There had been three flying saucer sightings reported, and the Loch Ness

monster had made his appearance right on schedule. The cases of heat prostration were running at

par, and nerves in the un-air-conditioned areas were fraying short. Still, the clock dis-played hope as

it crawled on toward the end of the work day and promised freedom from bondage and the right to

pursue both internal and external liquid happiness.

Gertrude, the videophone receptionist, still looked crisp in her office. Her voice as she responded

with the singy-songy, "Tele-por-TRAN-sit," had not lost its lilt. But it was obvious to the caller that

Trudy sat in air-conditioned splendor. And either she loathed the idea of leaving her comfort and

going home, or she despised him who called. For after the lilting greeting, her voice dropped to a

flat, "Oh, it's you again."

Johnny Peters smiled. "Show?"

"No."

"Swim?"

"No."

"Dinner?"

"No."

"Nothing?"

"Nothing!"

"Trudy, I'm not poison, you know."

"Johnny, I know you're not poison. But you're not very ambitious, either."

"Now listen," he said sharply, "I'm only asking for a date. I'm not offering to have you share my

frugal life, bed, and board as a lowly technician. A date I can afford; a wife I can't."

"You could try to get ahead."

"I've made my bid. I asked my illustrious leader for advanced training and an accelerated course

so I could move along faster, and he said that moving too fast was bad for a young man. Shall I quit

now and go elsewhere?"

"Where would you go?"

"That's the trouble, Trudy. I majored in teleportonics, and it's either teleportonics or I go back to

school and start something new. Think the boss-man will move me faster in Greater Chicago? I

doubt it. So I might as well stay right here in Megapolis."

"I suppose you're right."

"All right, let's start over again. Show?"

"Johnny, not tonight. I'm busy."

"Tomorrow?"

"If we're not all cooked by then. Call me, Johnny." "Will do," he said with a growing smile.

Johnny Peters broke the connection and checked his instrument panel. The primary powerline

from Con Edison was running a tenth of a volt low; with bored, routine gesture he twitched a knob,

watched the voltage rise, and then he settled back with little more to do until the end of his shift of

duty.

In the distant reaches of the city, the uneasy slumber of a napping woman was broken by a wave

of pain. A gush of body-warm wetness brought a flash of things to mind that came and went as fast

as thought, far too rapidly to reproduce in any electromechanical medium of expres-sion. She

thought, in turn: It was her firstborn. The doctor said there was little point in predicting the arrival of

a firstborn because they had no record upon which to base an estimate. The women in her family

were prone to deliver in taxicabs and ambulances on the way to the hospital.

A second wave of pain assailed her, interrupting the rapid flow of thought. Then as the pain

subsided, she went on: That was fast!

She struggled to her feet and duckwalked heavily on her heels to the videophone. She pressed the

button for one of the stored-program numbers and immediately a crisp, cool voice responded,

"Tele-port-TRAN-sit," in the lilt with all four clear tones sounding in order.

"Trudy, this is Irma Fellowes. Can you connect me with Joe?"

"Sure thing. Half a mo' and you're on. How's things?"

"Baby's on the way." The simple statement was em-phasized by a smothered groan and the

grimace of pain on Irma Fellowes' face.

Trudy gulped and lost her cool, crisp, composure. "Whoops! I'll give Joe the double-whammy

ring."

The muted wail of a siren came, and almost instantly the scene on the videophone switched to a

man, seated at his desk. His face was still changing to a look of puzzled concern. He barked,

"Where's the emergency and wha .. . oh! Irma. Wh . . . er . . . ?"

"Baby's on the way, Joe."

"Fine," he said. "Have you called Maternity?"

"Not yet."

"Irma, I can't do you any good at all. I appreciate the information, but it could have waited until

you got to the hospital."

"Joe! It's your child!"

"Sure. And you're my wife. Now buzz off here and call the hospital. Get going."

He hung up; reluctantly because he hated the harshness of the act, but deliberately because it was

the only way he could get her to move in the right direction.

Irma Fellowes stared at the videophone as though it should resume operation after a brief

interruption. It didn't. Whatever she started to think at that moment was stopped by another wave of

agony. When it subsided, she pressed another button, one that had been set up for a temporary

emergency. It connected her with the maternity ward of City Hospital; the plate showed an elderly

woman in nurse's uniform, who said, "Maternity, Nurse Wilkins speaking."

"This is Mrs. Fellowes. Baby's on the way."

"Just how frequent are your pains, Mrs. Fellowes?" "Rapid. And coming faster all the time."

Irma was interrupted by another pain, through which, faintly, she heard the muted siren. Nurse

Wilkins read off some detailed instructions from a card, speaking unhur-riedly to someone that

could not be seen on the videophone. When she finished, Nurse Wilkins said to Irma Fellowes,

"Take it easy now, there's a resident doctor, an interne, and a nurse on their way."

Irma closed the circuit, waddled to the kitchen and drank a glass of water, returned to the living

room and paced a bit. Perhaps two minutes passed, then came a rap on the door. She opened it to

admit doctor and nurse, followed by the interne pushing a wheeled stretcher. "Hop on," said the

intern.

"I can't," groaned Irma.

The doctor scooped her up and deposited her on the stretcher. He applied stethoscope, then

palpated her ab-domen gently. "O.K.," he said after a moment. "Let's go. No problem."

Irma said, "But I was born in an ambulance, and—"

The doctor laughed. "Mrs. Fellowes, from what little I know of the process, teleportation flips

you from entry to exit at the speed of light. Now, even if it were from here to Alpha Centauri, your

baby couldn't be born en route simply because at the speed of light all timing processes come to a

quiet standstill. And by `timing processes' I mean things like clocks, and biochemical reactions,

births, aging, and death. O.K.?"

"That's what Joe always says, but—"

"Well, let's find out if he's right."

The corridor was partly cooled from leakage from the air-conditioned apartments, but by contrast

it was stifling enough to make Irma gasp. The interne had used foresight; the elevator door was

blocked open so that no one could call it away and tie it up. He held the "No Stops" button as the

elevator dropped them smoothly to the stage below the first floor. Here the full heat of the city hit

them as they made their way along a short corridor to the teleportransit booth.

The signal light turned green as soon as the interne inserted the credit key in the lock-register. He

pressed the buttons with a practiced hand, then paused to check the number in the address readout

carefully.

"Pays to be careful," be said.

"Ever goof?" asked the nurse.

"Not really bad," he replied turning the credit key. The green light changed to orange, which

started the circuit-computer on its faster-than-lightning task of selecting the route from this entry

station to the address in the read-out panel. The orange turned to red. "Um-m-m. Maternity seems to

have another customer," he said. "We'll be on our way as soon as they get her out of the booth and

close the door." He looked at the number again.

"Worried?" asked the nurse.

"Not really worried," he replied. "But I've been thoughtful ever since I watched a hapless,

well-dressed citizen trying to walk on air back to the diving exit they have over the ocean at Jones

Beach. He was still protest-ing and waving his brief case as he disappeared beneath the billowy

wave."

"I hear you can watch about one per hour on a busy day," chuckled the doctor.

"Yeah," said the interne. He looked at the red light. "All right, all ready. Let's get cutting, huh?"

Two men whose names are legion paused and stood in momentary indecision halfway between

Father's Bar and Grill on Eighth Avenue and the kiosk that led down to the 14th Street Teleportransit

Station. Habit clashed with common sense; there was also the reluctance to part company.

"Fast one?"

"In this heat?"

"Father's is air-conditioned."

"So's my apartment. And there I can have the Little Woman construct me a cool, tall one whilst I

get out of these clothes and into something comfortable. Then I can sit on the terrace in shorts and

have my drink in com-fort."

"You've got a point. No sense in leaving the office early if we don't take advantage of it."

They turned and headed for the kiosk. Down below, where the subway once rumbled, 14th Street

Station was lined with booths, and before each booth was the start of a line-up of people. The big

rush hour hadn't started yet, but there were enough citizens in this area who had the kind of job they

could leave early to avoid the big jam. There were quite a number who didn't have that kind of job,

but they left anyway, hoping their dereliction would either be overlooked or forgotten by Monday

morning.

The legion of citizens who left their jobs early to avoid the rush were not being watched by Big

Brother, but by an impersonal peg-count that drove a dial that indicated the number of completed

transits per minute. Beside the dial was a series of animated graphs that compared the day's traffic

against yesterday's traffic, the same day a year ago, the maximum and minimum for this day any

year, and the grand maximum and minimum for any day any year. All of the statistical graphs

showed a sudden upsurge at the line denoting five o'clock, and the animated graph-line that

displayed today's traffic was approaching a record.

Today's traffic had surpassed yesterday's for the past half hour, but this was not surprising

because the rush-hour and just-before-rush traffic was heavier on Friday afternoons. It would

undoubtedly repeat itself on Monday morning.

But as the moving finger wrote on toward the critical hour, it approached an all-time record. This

would ring no bells nor toot any whistles. It would be duly noted, and a memorandum would be

issued authorizing a survey to determine the possible future expansion of facilities; the probable cost

of such an expansion; and above all, how much more income would pour into the coffers of

Tele-portransit, Incorporated.

Walter Long said, "I appreciate your interest, Harry, but I simply can't go out of line for your

Johnny Peters." "Is it out of line?" asked Harry Warren.

"Yes, and it is also obvious to us in this section. Or, rather, it would be obvious if I did it."

"I should think you'd jump at a chance to reward someone who asked for advancement."

"I would. And I could justify jumping Peters over a number of his seniors if he were outstanding

in just one department. But he isn't outstanding in anything but his ability to lolly-gag with Trudy."

"You make him sound like a washout."

"Oh, Peters is no washout," said Walter Long. "He's just not sufficiently outstanding to warrant

special atten-tion."

"Well, you must admit that maintaining a monitor over a function-panel for a system that's

adjusted and operated by a computer is not a job that provides an opportunity to be outstanding.

There's just so much verve and vigor with which an ambitious man can turn a small knob to twitch

the incoming line voltage by a couple of tenths. This operation gets pretty dull, especially when the

computer will twist the knob itself if the line gets more than about a quarter of a volt off."

"I suppose you've a point."

"I think I do. But why not ask Johnny's boss? Joe knows him better than either of us."

"All right." Walter Long pressed a button; the intercom on his desk came to life.

Trudy, her composure regained, said, "Yes, Mr. Long?" "Trudy, connect me with Joe Fellowes,

will you?" "Mr. Fellowes took off a few minutes ago."

'Where, for the love of Pete?"

"Mrs. Fellowes called and said that her baby was on the way. Joe took off for the maternity ward

right after that. I could call him."

"No, don't bother right now. Just ask him to see me when he gets back. You've no word from the

hospital yet, have you?"

"No, but from the way things looked, we won't have long to wait."

"O.K. Trudy. Keep me informed."

"Yes, sir." She closed the circuit; contact died in the middle of her lilting response,

"Tele-por-TRAN-sit," to some incoming caller.

The clock hit five. The dial registering transits per minute rose sharply, and so did the graphs that

displayed today's traffic compared to statistics. The increased load ran the incoming line down, the

computer compensated for the drop before Johnny Peters could react. Somewhere down in the

power distribution frames, a fuse blew; the local emergency power took over with no interruption

while the blown fuse was replaced by a device that had neither nerves to twitch nor fingers to

fumble.

The first inkling that something was wrong was given to Joe Fellowes.

Down in the computer, Joe's emergency trip from the Teleportransit Building to the maternity

ward of City Hos-pital was racked up by the peg count circuits and added to the statistics being

compiled in the Accounting Depart-ment. The computer also registered the awaiting trip of Mrs.

Fellowes, the doctor, the interne, and the nurse. Being a machine, it did not understand about birth

and life or death, so it can't be blamed for not registering the unborn Fellowes infant, alive and a

passenger though he be.

Machinelike, it awaited the closing of the booth door that exited in the maternity ward, and when

the signal came it promptly processed the party—people, stretcher, and unborn—into the system.

In the maternity ward, Joe Fellowes stared at the door to the teleportransit booth; mentally, he was

urging it to open upon his wife. "What's keeping them?" he asked nervously.

"Heaven only knows," replied Nurse Wilkins, calmly.

"Something's wrong," he said.

"Hardly."

"What makes you think so?" he demanded.

"If anything were wrong, they'd call for help. Or come for it. That booth can't be used when ... er

... how did you get here, young man?" she demanded sharply.

"I'm with Teleportransit," he said bluntly, showing his identification card. "I used the override on

your pre-empt circuit."

"Well, that's—" and she fell silent simply because it was done and neither locking the barn nor

bawling out the stable boy would correct the act.

"Irma's family have their babies fast," he said. "Maybe—?"

Nurse Wilkins shook her head. "Even with delivery underway, they'd bring her back. That's why

we send doctor, interne, and nurse along with everything necessary to handle any contingency. Your

teleport things work so fast we can send a whole team out on a call each time."

"Fine," said Fellowes. "Then where's my wife?"

Nurse Wilkins replied sharply, "Mr. Fellowes, please grant that we know our business and how to

conduct it.

Granting that our hospital and its medical staff are com-petent, it's your teleport machinery that

they're using. Maybe something broke down."

"Well, we can find out about that," he snapped back. "Teleport circuits either work or they don't.

It neither swallows people nor does it go off its electromechanical rocker and run off a squadron of

duplicates. So if it will run with me, it'll run with your medicos and my wife. Me? I think there's

trouble at home and so I'm going to look."

Nurse Wilkins started to tell Joe Fellowes that he couldn't use the maternity ward teleportransit;

but Joe, with a practiced hand, inserted his credit key with one band and plugged in his home

address with the other. He waved as he withdrew the key and he disappeared as the computer

processed him into the system.

The man's disappearance brought an uneasy nervous-ness to Nurse Wilkins. The system must be

working or, by Joe Fellowes' own statement, he couldn't have entered it. Ergo something must have

gone wrong with the team of medical people dispatched to help Mrs. Fellowes. The latter did not

seem likely; despite the urgency of the call and the obviously imminent parturition, it was an

uncom-plicated, routine matter well within the competence of the medical personnel and their

equipment.

Further, the door to the booth remained dormant, its indicating lamp signaling a priority for

incoming traffic. Nurse Wilkins' uneasiness increased as the minutes passed. For now was added

the complication of a second level of puzzlement; granting trouble with the medical team, Joe

Fellowes might well stay home with them and his wife—and baby. On the other hand, they should

have warned the hospital of the emergency. And third, granting that someone goofed and returned

the hospital team to a wrong address, it took but a second to correct any such error.

Nurse Wilkins stared at the door that had, despite the statement of Joe Fellowes to the contrary,

swallowed one doctor, one interne, one nurse, a wagon, and one civilian whose identification card

said that he was an engineer with a degree in teleportonics. And unsaid, she wondered uneasily

whether the door at the other end hadn't maybe swallowed one woman in final labor and her

a-borning child.

The commuting businessman comprises three general types. There is he who leaves early for any

number of reasons, and he who habitually stays overtime either because he is intrigued with his job

or bucking for a raise, or both. The in-between is the myriad who report in slightly before opening

time and leave promptly at zero five zero-zero. When the latter turns up early, he surprises his

family, sometimes in activities that astonish him. When he is late, his family think in terms of

dragging the river, canvassing the hospitals, and sticking hatpins into an effigy of the boss, and when

he turns up the family is likely to smell his breath and inspect his handkerchief for evidence of

dalliance.

Teleportransit, Incorporated, did not change the habits of the commuter. At five o'clock, long

queues of people lined up before the teleport booths that stood awaiting them on old subway

platforms, in the basement of every large building in central Megapolis, and in special build-ings to

serve less densely populated areas. To serve the commuter better, Teleportransit provided a

commuter key with the two terminals coded in the matrix. It worked only at the commuter's home

and office stations, in one and out the other exclusively. For other destinations, the address had to

be spelled out digit by digit.

The upshot of this special commuter's key was rapid transit with capital letters. Step into the

booth, insert the key, turn, restore, and withdraw it. How fast can a person move? With deft

commuters, one teleportransit booth can handle one person every three seconds. Twelve hundred an

hour. Times Square Station has three hundred booths; 34th Street has two fifty. Multiply these

various values by the couple of hundred stations in Megapolis, then add the smaller numbers in the

basement of the prominent build-ings, and the capacity of Teleportransit to handle the four million

daily commuters becomes clear.

The rush hour swung into gear and the transits-per--minute dial in the Teleportransit Building

clicked into an upper register, reading kilotransits.

And at the terminals in Scarsdale, Mountainside, Freehold, and Sea Bright, wives collected in their

station wagons to await their breadwinners. They waited. Then they looked at watches. Some turned

on radios to check be time. Quite a few worried, and an equal number changed their expression

from bored tolerance to knowing accusation of infidelity. Only one thing was glaringly obvious.

Either the teleport system had broken down, or all husbands were delinquent at the same time, if not

at the same place.

Giving the poor devils the benefit of the doubt the thing to do was to ask someone what went on.

And so

"Tele-por-TRAN-sit," sang Trudy, waiting for her date. "Hello," came a female voice, "is

something wrong?"

"Wrong?" asked Trudy.

"Yes. My husband hasn't come home yet."

"Well, I haven't—No, I mean, why ask me?"

"This is the Teleportransit Office, isn't it?"

"Yes, but—"

"Well, miss, it isn't only my husband. None of them have come home."

"I don't understand."

"Neither do I. Every night there're about forty of us waiting here, and our men come home one at

a time over about fifteen minutes. Now we're here a half hour and not a one has come out of your

station."

"Wait a moment. I'll check." Trudy buzzed Walter Long and told him. "There's a woman on the

videophone who thinks the system has broken down."

"It couldn't," said Walter Long, stoutly. "Put her on, Trudy."

The harassed voice, having run through the story once for Trudy, had it better prepared for

Walter Long. When she finished, he assured her, "Madam, we apologize for this inconvenience, and

I personally thank you for bring-ing it to my attention. It's the first I knew of any tie-up. Now, let me

attend to it at once, and we'll have your husband home in a jiffy. And thank you for calling."

"But where is he?" the woman wailed.

"Don't worry, madam," he said calmly. "If he hasn't come out of the exit, he hasn't gone into the

entrance. So there are probably a lot of irate husbands standing angrily in front of an inoperative

teleport booth."

"But they all come from different places," she wailed.

"We'll get them home," repeated Walter Long. He broke the circuit because talking to this anxious

woman was not letting him get to the source of the problem. He buzzed Trudy and heard her sing, "

Tele-por-Tran-sit," with some of the zing gone from her lilt. "Oh! Mr. Long. White Plains and Far

Hills have both reported some sort of trouble."

"Trudy, call the hospital and find out where Joe Fel-lowes is, and how fast can he get back here."

"Yes, sir." Long waited on the circuit while Trudy got Nurse Wilkins, who explained that neither

doctor, interne, nurse, stretcher-wagon, nor Mr. Fellowes had returned, and that they'd been gone

for almost half an hour. When that was finished, Walter Long said, "Trudy, call Joe's home." Once

more he waited on the circuit, but this time it was completely unfinished because the videophone

ring-back burred and burrrred without an answer.

"Something's gone a long way wrong, Trudy," he said solemnly. On the open circuit, Walter

Long could hear the incoming calls beginning to pile up. Trudy's usual singsong diminished until it

became a flat and uninspired, "Tele-portransit," followed by a wait and the terse explanation that a

minor breakdown had occurred, that they were working on it; and no, she was merely the

receptionist and didn't know a three-port circulator from a dithrambic foot. Sorry, but the technical

staff is all busy correcting the fault and can't be interrupted.

"Trudy!" barked Walter Long.

"Yes?"

"Put the lilt back in your voice, and then record that last explanation and switch your board to

automatic re-sponse. Just keep the private company incoming lines open."

"Yes, sir."

"And then come in here."

"Yes, sir. As soon as I finish."

When she entered, Walter Long said, "Trudy, among the things that are wrong is the absence of

Joe Fellowes. That nurse said he went home, but hasn't returned. Maybe something's wrong at the

Fellowes end of that circuit—by which I mean his wife and baby. Will you take a minute to run over

to Fellowes' station and check?"

"Surely."

"And come back immediately. Understand? At once. Don't wait even if they have something vital

that depends on you. Come back here and report. Understand?"

"Yes, Mr. Long. That's a promise."

Trudy used the teleport booth in the main front office. She was ultra-careful, inserting her credit

key and entering each digit in the Fellowes address with deliberation. She checked the read-out digit

by digit before she was satisfied enough to return the key in the lock-register to start the teleport

process.

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Robert Silverberg - Men and Machines

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