Simak, Clifford D - The Cosmic Engineers

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Title: Cosmic enginers

Author: Clifford D. Simak

Original copyright year: 1950

Genre: science fiction

Book price (of scanned edition): US$ 0.50

Comments: To my knowledge, this is the only available e-text of this book.

Source: scanned and OCR-read from a paperback edition with Xerox TextBridge

Pro 9.0, proofread in MS Word 2000.

Date of e-text: August 16, 1999

Prepared by: Anada Sucka

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Cosmic engineers

Clifford D. Simak

"... apart from your assignments, you must always be receptive to, be

prepared for, and act upon all news potential from strange sources though

it may lead you to the end of the solar system - perhaps even to the very

edge of the universe..." From the Interplanetary Newsman's Manual

Chapter One

HERB HARPER snapped on the radio and a voice snarled, billions of miles

away: "Police ship 968. Keep watch for freighter Vulcan on the Earth-Venus

run. Search ship for drugs. Believed to be..."

Herb spun the dial. A lazy voice floated through the ship: "Pleasure yacht

Helen, three hours out of Sandebar. Have you any messages for us?"

He spun the dial again. The voice of Tim Donovan, radio's ace newscaster,

rasped "Tommy Evans will have to wait a few more days before attempting his

flight to Alpha Centauri. The Solar Commerce commission claims to have

found some faults in the construction of his new generators, but Tommy

still insists that those generators will shoot him along at a speed well

over that of light. Nevertheless, he has been ordered to bring his ship

back to Mars so that technicians may check it before he finally takes off.

Tommy is out on Pluto now, all poised for launching off into space beyond

the solar system. At last reports he had made no move to obey the order of

the commission. Tommy's backers, angered by the order, call it high-handed,

charge there are politics back of it..."

Herb shut off the radio and walked to the door separating the living

quarters of the Space Pup from the control room.

"Hear that, Gary?" he asked. "Maybe we'll get to see this guy, Evans, after

all."

Gary Nelson, puffing at his foul, black pipe, scowled savagely at Herb.

"Who wants to see that glory grabber?" he asked.

"What's biting you now?" asked Herb.

"Nothing," said Gary, "except Tommy Evans. Ever since we left Saturn we

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haven't heard a thing out of Donovan except this Tommy Evans."

Herb stared at his lanky partner.

"You sure got a bad case of space fever," he said. "You been like a dog

with a sore head the last few days."

"Who wouldn't get space fever?" snapped Gary. He gestured out through the

vision plate. "Nothing but space," he said. "Blackness with little stars.

Stars that have forgotten how to twinkle. Going hundreds of miles a second

and you wonder if you're moving. No change in scenery. A few square feet of

space to live in. Black space pressing all about you, taunting you, trying

to get in..."

He stopped and sat down limply in the pilot's chair.

"How about a game of chess?" asked Herb.

Gary twisted about and snapped at him:

"Don't mention chess to me again, you sawed-off shrimp. I'll space-walk you

if you do. So help me Hannah if I won't."

"Thought maybe it would quiet you down," said Herb.

Gary leveled his pipestem at Herb.

"If I had the guy who invented three-way chess," he said, "I'd wring his

blasted neck. The old kind was bad enough, but three-dimensional,

twenty-seven man..."

He shook his head dismally.

"He must have been half nuts," he said.

"He did go off his rockers," Herb told him, "but not from inventing

three-way chess. Guy by the name of Konrad Fairbanks. In an asylum back on

Earth now. I took a picture of him once, when he was coming out of the

courtroom. Just after the judge said he was only half there. The cops

chased hell out of me but I got away. The Old Man paid me ten bucks bonus

for the shot."

"I remember that," said Gary. "Best mathematical mind in the whole system.

Worked out equations no one could understand. Went screwy when he proved

that there actually were times when one and one didn't quite make two.

Proved it, you understand. Not just theory or mathematical mumbo-jumbo."

Herb walked across the control room and stood beside Gary, looking out

through the vision plate.

"Everything been going all right?" he asked.

Gary growled deep in his throat.

"What could go wrong out here? Not even any meteors. Nothing to do but sit

and watch. And there really isn't any need of that. The robot navigator

handles everything." The soft purr of the geosectors filled the ship. There

was no other sound. The ship seemed standing still in space. Saturn swung

far down to the right, a golden disk of light with thin, bright rings.

Pluto was a tiny speck of light almost dead ahead, a little to the left.

The Sun, three billion miles astern, was shielded from their sight.

The Space Pup was headed for Pluto at a pace that neared a thousand miles a

second. The geosectors, warping the curvature of space itself, hurled the

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tiny ship through the void at a speed unthought of less than a hundred

years before.

And now Tommy Evans, out on Pluto, was ready, if only the Solar Commerce

commission would stop its interference, to bullet his experimental craft

away from the solar system, out toward the nearest star, 4.29 light-years

distant. Providing his improved electro-gravatic geodesic deflectors lived

up to the boast of their inventors, he would exceed the speed of light,

would vanish into that limbo of impossibility that learned savants only a

few centuries before had declared was unattainable.

"It kind of makes a fellow dizzy," Herb declared.

"What does?"

"Why," said Herb, "this Tommy Evans stunt. The boy is making history. And

maybe we'll be there to see him do it. He's the first to make a try at the

stars - and if he wins, there will be lots of others. Man will go out and

out and still farther out, maybe clear out to where space is still

exploding."

Gary grunted. "They sure will have to hurry some," be said, "because space

is exploding fast."

"Now look here," said Herb. "You can't just sit there and pretend the human

race has made no progress. Take this ship, just for example. We don't rely

on rockets any more except in taking off and landing. Once out in space and

we set the geosectors to going and we warp space and build up speed that no

rocket could ever hope to give you. We got an atmosphere generator that

manufactures air. No more stocking up on oxygen and depending on air

purifiers. Same thing with food. The machine just picks up matter and

energy out of space and transmutes them into steaks and potatoes - or at

least their equivalent in food value. And we send news stories and pictures

across billions of miles of space. You just sit down in front of that

spacewriter and whang away at the keys and in a few hours another machine

back in New York writes what you have written."

Gary yawned. "How you run on," he said, "We haven't even started yet - the

human race hasn't. What we have done isn't anything to what we are going to

do. That is, if the race doesn't get so downright ornery that it kills

itself off first."

The spacewriter in the corner of the room stuttered and gibbered, warming

up under the impulse of the warning signals, flung out hours before and

three billion miles away.

The two men hurried across the room and hung over it.

Slowly, laboriously, the keys began to tap.

NELSON, ABOARD SPACE PUP, NEARING PLUTO. HAVE INFO EVANS MAY TAKE OFF FOR

CENTAURI WITHOUT AUTHORIZATION OF SCC. MAKE ALL POSSIBLE SPEED TO PLUTO.

HANDLE SOONEST. MOST IMPORTANT. RUSH. REGARDS. EVENING ROCKET.

The machine burped to a stop. Herb looked at Gary.

"Maybe that guy Evans has got some guts after all," said Gary. "Maybe he'll

tell the SCC where to stick it. They been asking for it for a long time

now."

Herb grunted. "They won't chase after him, that's sure." Gary sat down

before the sending board and threw the switch. The hum of the electric

generators drowned out the moan of the geosectors as they built up the

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power necessary to hurl a beam of energy across the void to Earth.

"Only one thing wrong with this setup," said Gary. "It takes too long and

it takes too much power. I wish someone would hurry up and figure out a way

to use the cosmics for carriers."

"Doe Kingsley, out on Pluto, has been fooling around with cosmics," said

Herb. "Maybe he'll turn the trick in another year of two."

"Doe Kingsley has been fooling around with a lot of things out there," said

Gary. "If the man would only talk, we'd have more than one story to send

back from Pluto."

The dynamos had settled into a steady hum of power. Gary glanced at the

dials and reached out his fingers. He wrote:

EVENING ROCKET. EARTH. WILL CONTACT EVANS AT ONCE IF STILL ON PLUTO. IF NOT

WILL SEND STORY ON FLIGHT. NOTHING TO REPORT OUT HERE. WEATHER FINE. HERB

DROPPED OUR LAST QUART AND BROKE IT. HOW ABOUT A RAISE.

"That last," he said, "will get 'em."

"You didn't have to put that in about the Scotch," Herb declared. "It just

slipped out of my fingers."

"Sure," said Gary. "It just slipped out of your fingers. Right smack-dab

onto a steel plate and busted all to hell. After this, I handle the liquor.

When you want a drink, you ask me."

"Maybe Kingsley will have some liquor," Herb said hopefully. "Maybe he'll

lend us a bottle."

"If he does," declared Gary, "you keep your paws off of it. Between you

sucking away at it and dropping it, I don't get more than a drink or two

out of each bottle. We still got Uranus and Neptune to do after Pluto and

it looks like a long dry spell."

He got up and walked to the fore part of the ship, gazing out through the

vision plate.

"Only Neptune and Uranus ahead," he said. "And that's enough. If the Old

Man ever thinks up any more screwball stunts, he can find someone else to

do them. When I get back I'm going to ask him to give me back my old beat

at the space terminal and I'm going to settle down there for the rest of my

natural life. I'm going to watch the ships come in and take off and I'm

going to get down on my hands and knees and kiss the ground each time and

be thankful I'm not on them."

"He's paying us good dough," said Herb. "We got bank accounts piling up

back home."

Gary pretended not to hear him.

"Know Your Solar System," he said. "Special articles run every Sunday in

the Evening Rocket. Story by Leary Nelson. Pictures by Herbert Harper.

Intrepid newsmen brave perils of space to bring back true picture of the

solar system's planets. One year alone in a spaceship, bringing to the

readers of the Rocket a detailed account of life in space, of life on the

planets. Remember how the promotion gang busted a gut advertising us. Full

page ads and everything."

He spat.

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"Stuff for kids," he said.

"The kids probably think we're heroes," said Herb. "Probably they read our

stuff and then pester the folks to buy them a spaceship. Want to go out and

see Saturn for themselves."

"The Old Man said it would boost circulation," declared Gary. "Hell, he'd

commit suicide if he thought it would boost circulation. Remember what he

told us. Says he:

'Go out and visit all the planets. Get first-hand information and pictures.

Shoot them back to us. We'll run them every Sunday in the magazine

section.' Just like he was sending us around the corner to cover a fire.

That's all there was to it. Just a little over a year out in space. Living

in a spaceship and a spacesuit. Hurry through Jupiter's moons to get out to

Saturn and then take it on the lam for Pluto. Soft job. Nice vacation for

you. That's what the Old Man said. Nice soft vacation, he said."

His pipe gurgled threateningly and he knocked it out viciously against the

heel of his hand.

"Well," said Herb, "we're almost to Pluto. A few days more and we'll be

there. They got a fueling station and a radio and Doc Kingsley's

laboratories out there. Maybe we can promote us a poker game."

Gary walked to the telescopic screen and switched it on.

"Let's take a look at her," he said.

The great circular screen glowed softly. Within it swam the image of Pluto,

still almost half a billion miles away. A dead planet that shone dully in

the faint light of the far distant Sun. A planet locked in the frigid grip

of naked space, a planet that had been dead long before the first stirring

of life had taken place on Earth.

The vision was blurred and Gary manipulated dials to bring it more sharply

into focus.

"Wait a second," snapped Herb. His lingers reached out and grasped Gary's

wrist.

"Turn it back a ways," he said. "I saw something out there. Something that

looked like a ship. Maybe it's Evans coming back."

Slowly Gary twisted the dial back. A tiny spot of light danced indistinctly

on the screen.

"That's it," breathed Herb. "Easy now. Just a little more."

The spot of light leaped into sharper focus. But it was merely a spot of

light, nothing more, a tiny, shining thing in space. Some metallic body

that was catching and reflecting the light of the Sun.

"Give it more power," said Herb.

Swiftly the spot of light grew, assumed definite shape. Gary stepped the

magnification up until the thing filled the entire screen.

It was a ship - and yet it couldn't be a ship.

"It has no rocket tubes," said Herb in amazement. "Without tubes how could

it get off the ground? You can't use geosectors in taking off. They twist

space all to hell and gone. They'd turn a planet inside out."

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Gary studied it. "It doesn't seem to be moving," he said. "Maybe some

motion, but not enough to detect."

"A derelict," suggested Herb.

Gary shook his head. "Still doesn't explain the lack of tubes," he said.

The two men lifted their eyes from the screen and looked at one another.

"The Old Man said we were to hurry to Pluto," Herb reminded Gary.

Gary wheeled about and strode back to the controls. He lowered his gangling

frame into the pilot's chair and disconnected the robot control. His

lingers reached out, switched off the geosectors, pumped fuel into the

rocket chambers.

"Find something to hang onto," be said, grimly. "We're stopping to see what

this is all about."

Chapter Two

The mysterious space-shell was only a few miles distant. With Herb at the

controls, the Space Pup cruised in an ever-tightening circle around the

glinting thing that hung there just off Pluto's orbit.

It was a spaceship. Of that there could be no doubt despite the fact that

it had no rocket tubes. It was hanging motionless. There was no throb of

power within it, no apparent life, although dim light glowed through the

vision ports in what probably were the living quarters just back of the

control room.

Gary crouched in the airlock of the Space Pup, with the outer valve swung

back. He made sure that his pistols were securely in their holsters and

cautiously tested the spacesuit's miniature propulsion units.

He spoke into his helmet mike.

"All right, Herb," he said, "I'm going. Try to tighten up the circle a bit.

Keep a close watch. That thing out there may be dynamite."

"Keep your nose clean," said Herb's voice in the phones. Gary straightened

and pushed himself out from the lock.

He floated smoothly in space, in a gulf of nothing, a place without

direction, without an up or down, an unsubstantial place with the fiery

eyes of distant stars ringing him around.

His steel-gloved hand dropped to the propulsion mechanism that encircled

his waist. Midget rocket tubes flared with tiny flashes of blue power and

he was jerked forward, heading for the mystery ship. Veering too far to the

right, he gave the right tube a little more fuel and straightened out.

Steadily, under the surging power of the spacesuit tubes, he forged ahead

through space toward the ship. He saw the gleaming lights of the Space Pup

slowly circle in front of him and then pass out of sight.

A quarter of a mile away, he shut off the tubes and glided slowly in to the

drifting shell. He struck its pitted side with the soles of his magnetic

boots and stood upright.

Cautiously he worked his way toward one of the ports from which came the

faint gleam of light. Lying at full length, he peered through the

foot-thick quartz. The light was feeble and he could see but little. There

was no movement of life, no indication that the shell was tenanted. In the

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center of what at one time had been the living quarters, he saw a large

rectangular shape, like a huge box. Aside from this, however, be could make

out nothing.

Working his way back to the lock, he saw that it was tightly closed. He had

expected that. He stamped against the plates with his heavy boots, hoping

to attract attention. But if any living thing were inside, it either did

not hear or disregarded the clangor that he made.

Slowly he moved away from the lock, heading for the control-room vision

plate, hoping from there to get a better view into the shell's interior. As

he moved, his eyes caught a curious irregularity just to the right of the

lock, as if faint lines had been etched into the steel of the hull.

He dropped to one knee and saw that a single line of crude lettering had

been etched into the metal. Brushing at it with his gloved hand, he tried

to make it out. Laboriously, he struggled with it. It was simple, direct,

to the point, a single declaration. When one writes with steel and acid,

one is necessarily brief.

The line read:

Control room vision-plate unlocked.

Amazed, he read the line again, hardly believing what he read. But there it

was. That single line, written with a single purpose. Simple directions for

gaining entrance.

Crouched upon the steel plating, he felt a shiver run through his body.

Someone had etched that line in hope that someone would come. But perhaps

he was too late. The ship had an old look about it. The lines of it, the

way the ports were set into the hull, all were marks of spaceship designing

that had become obsolete centuries before.

He felt the cold chill of mystery and the utter bleakness of outer space

closing in about him. He gazed up over the bulged outline of the shell and

saw the steely glare of remote stars. Stars secure in the depth of many

light-years, jeering at him, jeering at men who held dreams of stellar

conquest.

He shook himself, trying to shake off the probing fingers of half-fear,

glanced around to locate the Space Pup, saw it slowly moving off to his

right.

Swiftly, but carefully, he made his way over the nose of the ship and up to

the vision plate.

Squatting in front of the plate, he peered down into the control cabin. But

it wasn't a control cabin. It was a laboratory. In the tiny room which at

one time must have housed the instruments of navigation, there was now no

trace of control panel or calculator or telescopic screen. Rather, there

were work tables, piled with scientific apparatus, banks and rows of

chemical containers. All the paraphernalia of the scientist's workshop.

The door into the living quarters, where he had seen the large oblong box

was closed. All the apparatus and the bottles in the laboratory were

carefully arranged, neatly put away, as if someone had tidied up before

they walked off and left the place.

He puzzled for a moment. That lack of rocket tubes, the indications that

the ship was centuries old, the scrawled acid-etched line by the lock, the

laboratory in the control room... what did it all add up to? He shook his

head. It didn't make much sense.

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Bracing himself against the curving steel hide of the shell, he pushed at

the vision-plate. But he could exert little effort. Lack of gravity,

inability to brace himself securely, made the task a hard one. Rising to

his feet, he stamped his heavy boots against the glass, but the plate

refused to budge.

As a last desperate effort, he might use his guns, blast his way into the

shell. But that would be long, tedious work... and there would be a certain

danger. There should be, he told himself, an easier and a safer way.

Suddenly the way came to him, but he hesitated, for there lay danger, too.

He could lie down on the plate, turn on the rocket tubes of his suit and

use his body as a battering ram, as a lever, to force the stubborn hinges.

But it would be an easy matter to turn on too much power, so much power

that his body would be pounded to a pulp against the heavy quartz.

Shrugging at the thought, he stretched flat on the plate, hands folded

under him with fingers on the tube controls. Slowly he turned the buttons.

The rockets thrust at his body, jamming him against the quartz. He snapped

the studs shut. It had seemed, for a moment, that the plate had given just

a little.

Drawing in a deep breath, he twisted the studs again. Once more his body

slammed against the plate, driven by the flaming tubes.

Suddenly the plate gave way, swung in and plunged him down into the

laboratory. Savagely he snapped the studs shut. He struck hard against the

floor, cracked his helmet soundly.

Groggily he groped his way to his feet. The thin whine of escaping

atmosphere came to his ears and unsteadily he made his way forward. Leaping

at the plate, he slammed it back into place again. It closed with a thud,

driven deep into its frame by the force of rushing air.

A chair stood beside a table and he swung around, sat down in it, still

dizzy from the fall. He shook his head to clear away the cobwebs.

There was atmosphere here. That meant that an atmosphere generator still

was operating, that the ship had developed no leaks and was still airtight.

He raised his helmet slightly. Fresh pure air swirled into his nostrils,

better air than he had inside his suit. A little highly oxygenated,

perhaps, but that was all. If the atmosphere machine had run for a long

time unattended, it might have gotten out of adjustment slightly, might be

mixing a bit too much oxygen with the air output.

He swung the helmet back and let it dangle on the hinge at the back of the

neck, gulped in great mouthfuls of the atmosphere. His head cleared

rapidly.

He looked around the room. There was little that he had not already seen. A

practical, well-equipped laboratory, but much of the equipment, he now

realized, was old.

Some of it was obsolete and that fitted in with all the rest of it.

A framed document hung above a cabinet and getting to his feet, he walked

across the room to look at it. Bending close, he read it. It was a diploma

from the College of Science at Alkatoon, Mars, one of the most outstanding

of several universities on the Red Planet. The diploma had been issued to

one Caroline Martin.

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Gary read the name a second time. It seemed that he should know it. It

raised some memory in his brain, but just what it was he couldn't say, an

elusive recognition that eluded him by the faintest margin.

He looked around the room.

Caroline Martin.

A girl who had left a diploma in this cabin, a pitiful reminder of many

years ago. He bent again and looked at the date upon the sheep-skin. It was

5976. He whistled softly. A thousand years ago!

A thousand years. And if Caroline Martin had left this diploma here a

thousand years ago, where was Caroline Martin now? What had happened to

her? Dead in what strange corner of the solar system? Dead in this very

ship?

He swung about and strode toward the door that led into the living

quarters. His hand reached out and seized the door and pushed it open. He

took one step across the threshold and then he stopped, halted in his

stride.

In the center of the room was the oblong box that he had seen from the

port. But instead of a box, it was a tank, bolted securely to the floor by

heavy steel brackets.

The tank was filled with a greenish fluid and in the fluid lay a woman, a

woman dressed in metallic robes that sparkled in the light from the single

radium bulb in the ceiling just above the tank.

Breathlessly, Gary moved closer, peered over the edge of the tank, down

through the clear green liquid into the face of the woman. Her eyes were

closed and long, curling black lashes lay against the whiteness of her

cheeks. Her forehead was high and long braids of raven hair were bound

about her head. Slim black eyebrows arched to almost meet above the

delicately modeled nose. Her mouth was a thought too large, a trace of the

patrician in the thin, red lips. Her arms were laid straight along her

sides and the metallic gown swept in flowing curves from chin to ankles.

Beside her right hand, lying in the bottom of the tank, was a hypodermic

syringe, bright and shining despite the green fluid which covered it.

Gary's breath caught in his throat.

She looked alive and yet she couldn't be alive. Still there was a flush of

youth and beauty in her cheeks, as if she merely slept.

Laid out as if for death and still with the lie to death in her very look.

Her face was calm, serene... and something else. Expectancy, perhaps. As if

she only waited for a thing she hoped to happen.

Caroline Martin was the name on the diploma out in the laboratory. Could

this be Caroline Martin? Could this be the girl who had graduated from the

college of science at Alkatoon ten centuries ago?

Gary shook his head uneasily.

He stepped back from the tank and as he did he saw the copper plate affixed

to its metal side. He stooped to read.

Another simple message, etched in copper... a message from the girl who lay

inside the tank.

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I am not dead. I am in suspended animation. Drain the tank by opening the

valve. Use the syringe you find in the medicine cabinet.

Gary glanced across the room, saw a medicine chest on the wall above a

washbowl. He looked back at the tank and mopped his brow with his coat

sleeve.

"It isn't possible," he whispered.

Like a man in a dream, he stumbled to the medicine chest. The syringe was

there. He broke it and saw that it was loaded with a cartridge filled with

a reddish substance. A drug, undoubtedly, to overcome suspended animation.

Replacing the syringe, he went back to the tank and found the valve. It was

stubborn with the years, defying all the strength in his arms. He kicked it

with a heavy boot and jarred it loose. With nervous hands he opened it and

watched the level of the green fluid slowly recede.

Watching, an odd calm came upon him, a steadying calm that made him hard

and machine-like to do the thing that faced him. One little slip might

spoil it. One fumbling move might undo the work of a thousand years. What

if the drug in the hypodermic had lost its strength? There were so many

things that might happen.

But there was only one thing to do. He raised a hand in front of him and

looked at it. It was a steady hand.

He wasted no time in wondering what it was about. This was not the time for

that. Frantic questionings clutched at his thoughts and he shook them off.

Time enough to wonder and to speculate and question when this thing was

done.

When the fluid was level with the girl's body, he waited no longer. He

leaned over the rim of the tank and lifted her in his arms. For a moment he

hesitated, then turned and went to the laboratory and placed her on one of

the work tables. The fluid, dripping off the rustling metallic dress, left

a trail of wet across the floor.

From the medicine chest he took the hypodermic and went back to the girl.

He lifted her left arm and peered closely at it. There were little

punctures, betraying previous use of the needle.

Perspiration stood out on his forehead. If only he knew a little more about

this. If only he had some idea of what he was supposed to do.

Awkwardly he shoved the needle into a vein, depressed the plunger. It was

done and he stepped back.

Nothing happened. He waited.

Minutes passed and she took a shallow breath. He watched in fascination,

saw her come to life again... saw the breath deepen, the eyelids flicker,

the right hand twitch.

Then she was looking at him out of deep blue eyes.

"You are all right?" he asked.

It was, he knew, a rather foolish question.

Her speech was broken. Her tongue and lips refused to work the way they

should, but he understood what she tried to say.

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file:///F|/rah/Clifford%20D.Simak/Cosmic%20Engineers.txtTitle:CosmicenginersAuthor:CliffordD.SimakOriginalcopyrightyear:1950Genre:sciencefictionBookprice(ofscannededition):US$0.50Comments:Tomyknowledge,thisistheonlyavailablee-textofthisbook.Source:scannedandOCR-readfromapaperbackeditionwithXeroxTex...

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Simak, Clifford D - The Cosmic Engineers

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