Clifford D. Simak - The Werewolf principle

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The Werewolf Principle
by
Clifford D. Simak
VERSION 1.0 (Feb 24 00). If you find and correct errors in
the text, please update the version number by 0.1 and
redistribute.
1
The creature halted, crouched low against the ground, staring at the tiny points of light that
lay ahead, burning softly through the darkness.
The creature whimpered, frightened and uneasy.
The world was much too hot and wet and the darkness was too thick, There was too much and too
large vegetation. The atmosphere was in violent motion and the vegetation moaned in agony. Far off
in the distance there were vague flarings and flashings of light, which did nothing to illuminate
the night, and somewhere far away something was complaining in long, low rumblings. And there was
life, far more life than any planet had a right to have - but low and stupid life, some of it
scarcely more than biological stirring, tiny bundles of matter that could do no more than react
feebly to certain stimuli.
Perhaps, the creature told itself, it should not have tried so hard to break away. Perhaps it
should have been content to remain in that nameless place where there had been no being and no
sense nor memory of being, but a knowledge, dredged from somewhere, that there was such a state as
being. That, and occasional snatches of intelligence, disconnected bits of information, which
whetted the struggles to escape, to be a separate agent, to see where it might be and learn why it
was there and by what means it might have got there.
And now?
It crouched and whimpered.
How could there be so much water in any single place? And so much vegetation and such
boisterous agitation of the elements? How could any world be so messy, so flamboyantly un-neat? It
was sacrilegious for so much water to be in evidence, running in a stream below this slope of
ground, standing in pools and puddles on the very ground, And not only that, but present in the
atmosphere, the air filled with driven droplets of it.
What was this fabric which was fastened at its throat and which lay along its back, dragging
on the ground, fluttered by the wind? A protection of some sort? Although that didn't seem too
likely. It had never needed protection of any sort before. Its coat of silver fur was all that it
had needed.
Before? it asked itself. Before what and when? It struggled to think back and there was a dim
impression of a crystal land, with cool, dry air, with a dust of snow and sand, with a sky ablaze
with many stars and the night as bright as day with the soft, golden shine of moons. And there was
a haunting half memory, blurred all around the edges, of a reaching out into the depths of space
to pluck secrets froth the stars.
But was this memory or was it fantasy, born of that faceless place from which it had escaped?
There was no way of knowing.
The creature extruded a pair of arms and gathered up the fabric off the ground and held it
bundled in each arm. The water dripped off it and fell in tiny drops, splashing in the pools of
water that lay upon the ground.
Those points of light ahead? Not stars, for they lay too low against the ground and, in any
case, there were not any stars. And that, in itself, was unthinkable, for there were always stars.
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Cautiously the creature reached out with its mind towards the steady light and there was
something there other than the light, a background sense of mineral. Carefully it traced that
background and became aware that a block of mineral stood there in the dark, too regular in its
shape to be a natural outcrop.
In the distance the mad muttering went on and the flaring of the far-off light ran frightened
up the sky.
Should it go on, it wondered, circling wide around the lights? Or should it move in upon them
to find out what they were? Or should it, perhaps, retrace its steps in an effort to find once
again that emptiness from which it had escaped? Although there was no knowing now where the place
might be. When it had broken free, the place had not been there. And since the time of breaking
free, it had travelled far.
And where were those other two who also had been in that place of nothingness? Had they broken
free as well, or had they stayed behind, sensing, perhaps, the mind-wrenching alienness that lay
outside the place? And if they had not escaped, where might they be now?
And not only where, but who?
Why had they never answered? Or had they never heard the question? Perhaps there were not the
right conditions in that nameless place for a question to be asked. Strange, the creature thought,
to occupy the same space, the same sense of possible existence, with two other beings and never to
be able to communicate with them.
Despite the heat of the night, the creature shivered, deep inside itself.
It could not stay here, it told itself. It could not wander endlessly. It must find a place to
shelter. Although where to look for shelter in a world as mad as this was something it had not
figured out as yet.
It moved forward slowly, uncertain of itself, uncertain where to go, uncertain what to do.
The lights? it wondered. Should it investigate the lights or should it...
The sky exploded. The world was filled to bursting with a brilliant blueness. The creature,
its sight wiped out, all senses cancelled, recoiled, and a scream rose keening in its curdled
brain. Then the scream cut off and the light was gone and it was back, once again, in the place of
nothingness.
2
Rain slapped Andrew Blake across the face and the very earth was trembling with the deadening
crash of thunder, the great masses of riven atmosphere rushing together once again, it seemed,
just above his head. The air was sharp with the smell of ozone and he could feel cold mud
squishing up between his toes.
And how had he got here - out in a storm, with no cover for his head and with his robe so
soaked it dripped, and without his sandals?
He had stepped out after dinner to have a look at a storm that was boiling up across the
western wall of mountains - and here, a second later, he was out in that very storm, or, at least,
he hoped it was that very storm.
The wind was moaning in a clump of trees and from the foot of the slope on which he stood he
could bear the sound of running water and just across the stream light shone out from windows.
His house, perhaps, he thought, befuddled. Although where his house stood there was no slope
and no stream of running water. There were trees, but not so many trees, and there should be other
houses.
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He put up his hand and scrubbed his head in perplexity and the water he squeezed out of his
hair ran down across his face.
The rain, which had slackened for a moment, began beating at him once again with a fresh
enthusiasm and he turned towards the house. Not his house, surely, but it was a house and there'd
be someone there to tell him where he was and...
But tell him where he was! That was insane! A second ago he had been standing on his patio
looking at the storm clouds and there had been no rain.
He must be dreaming. Or suffering a hallucination. But the beating rain was not a dreamlike
rain and the smell of ozone still was in the air - and who had ever found the smell of ozone
reeking through a dream?
He started walking towards the house and as he swung his right foot forward, it came in
contact with something hard and a blaze of pain flared through his foot and leg.
In agony, he lifted the foot and waved it in the air, jigging on one leg. The pain drained
down into the big toe of the lifted foot and it throbbed in agony.
The foot on which he stood slipped in the mud and he sat down suddenly. Mud spattered as his
bottom hit the earth. The ground was wet and cold.
He stayed there. He pulled the foot with the injured toe up into his lap and probed blindly -
and carefully and tenderly - at the toe.
It was no dream, he knew. In a dream a man would not be so stupid as to stub his toe.
Something had happened. Something, in a second's time, had transported him, all unknowing,
perhaps many miles away from where he'd stood on the patio. Had transported him and set him down
in the midst of rain and thunder and in a night so dark there was no seeing anything.
He probed at the toe again and it felt a little better.
Carefully, he picked himself up and tried the injured foot. By walking tensed and slightly
spraddled, with the toe stretched upward, he could use the leg.
Limping and fumbling and slipping in the mud, he made his way down the slope and across the
little stream, which ran ankle deep, then climbed the slope that went up to the house.
Lightning flared along the horizon and for a moment he saw the house silhouetted against the
flare, a massive pile, with heavy chimneys and windows set deep, like eyes, into the stone.
A stone house, he thought. An anachronism! A stone house and someone living in it.
He ran into a fence, but without any hurt, for he was moving slowly. He followed it blindly by
feel and came to a gate. Beyond the gate three little rectangles of light marked what he took to
be the location of a door.
Flat stones lay underneath his feet and he followed them. Near the door he slowed his walk to
a cautious shuffle. There might be steps leading to the door and one stubbed toe was all he cared
to have.
There were steps. He found them with the still tender toe and stood for a moment, stiff and
straight and shuddering, with clenched teeth, until the worst pain ebbed away.
Then he climbed the steps and found the door. He hunted for the signal, but there was no
signal - not even a bell or buzzer. He hunted some more and found the knocker.
A knocker? Of course, he told himself, a house like this would have a knocker. A house so deep
into the past...
A wild fear surged through him. Not space, but time, he wondered. Had he been moved (if he had
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been moved) not in space, but time?
He lifted the knocker and hammered with it. He waited. There was no sign he had been heard. He
hammered once again.
A footstep crunched behind him and a cone of light speared out and caught him. He spun about
and the round eye of light held steady, blinding him. Behind the light he sensed the vague figure
of a man, the faint outline of a deeper shadow against the darkness of the night.
Back of him the door jerked open and light from the inside of the house flooded out and now be
saw the man who held the torch, a kilted figure, with a sheepskin jacket and in his other hand a
glint of metal that Blake took to be a gun.
The man who had opened the door asked sharply, 'What is going on out here?'
'Someone trying to get in, senator,' said the man who held the torch. 'He must have managed to
slip past me.'
'He slipped past you,' said the senator, 'because you were huddled somewhere, hiding from the
rain. If you fellows have to play at being guards, I wish you'd do some guarding.'
'It was dark,' protested the guard, 'and he slipped past...'
'I don't think he slipped past,' said the senator. 'He just walked up and banged the knocker.
If he'd been trying to sneak in, he'd not have used the knocker. He walked in, like any ordinary
citizen, and you didn't see him.'
Blake turned slowly to face the man standing in the door. 'I'm sorry, sir,' he said. 'I didn't
know. I didn't mean to raise a ruckus. I just saw the house...'
'And that's not all, senator,' broke in the guard. 'There've been strange things out tonight.
Just a while ago I saw a wolf...'
'There are no wolves about,' said the senator. 'There are no wolves at all. There haven't been
for a century or more.'
'But I saw one,' wailed the guard. 'There was that big flash of lightning and I saw it, on the
hill across the creek.'
The senator said to Blake, 'I'm sorry to keep you standing with all this bickering. It's no
night to be out.'
'It seems that I am lost,' said Blake, fighting to keep his teeth from chattering. 'If you'll
tell me where I am and point out the way...'
'Turn off that light,' the senator told the guard, 'and get back to your job.'
The torch snapped off.
'Wolves, indeed!' said the senator, incensed.
To Blake, he said, 'If you'd step in, so I could close the door.'
Blake stepped in and the senator closed the door behind him.
Blake looked around him. He stood in a foyer flanked on either side by floor-to-ceiling doors
and in the room beyond a fire burned in a great stone fireplace. The room was crammed with heavy
furniture upholstered in bright prints.
The senator stepped past him and stopped to look at him. 'My name is Andrew Blake,' said
Blake, 'and I am afraid I am messing up your floor.'
Rain dripping from his robe had made puddles on the floor and a line of wet footprints led
from the door 1o where he stood.
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The senator, he saw, was a tall, lean man, with close clipped white hair and a silvery
moustache, beneath which was a firm, straight mouth that had a trap-like quality. He wore a robe
of white, with a purple jigsaw motif worked around its edges.
'You look like a drowning rat,' said the senator, 'if you don't mind my saying so. And you
have lost your sandals.'
He turned and opened one of the flanking doors to reveal a rack of clothing. Reaching in, he
pulled out a thick, brown robe.
'Here,' he said, handing it to Blake. 'This should serve. Real wool. I take it you are cold.'
'Just a bit,' said Blake, jaw aching to keep his teeth from chattering.
'Wool will warm you up,' said the senator. 'You don't see it often. Nothing but synthetics any
more. You can get it from a mad man who lives in the Scottish hills. Thinks much the way I do -
that there still is virtue in staying close to old realities.'
'I am sure you're right,' said Blake.
'Take this house,' said the senator. 'Three centuries old and still as solid as the day that
it was built. Built of honest stone and wood. Built by honest workmen...' He looked sharply at
Blake. 'But here I stand declaiming while you are slowly freezing. Take those stairs off to the
right. The first door to the left. That would be my room. You'll find sandals in the closet and I
suppose your shorts are soaked as well...'
'I'd suppose they are,' said Blake.
'You'll find shorts, anything else that you may need in the dresser. The bath is to the right
as you go in. It wouldn't hurt a bit if you took ten minutes of a hot tub. Meanwhile I'll have
Elaine rustle up some coffee and I'll break out a bottle of good brandy...'
'You must not put yourself out,' said Blake. 'You have done too much...'
'Not a bit of it,' said the senator. 'I'm glad that you dropped in.'
Clutching the woollen robe, Blake climbed the stairs and went in the first door on the left.
Through the door to the right ho saw the white gleam of the tub. That hot bath idea was not too
bad, he told himself.
He walked into the bath, dropped the brown robe on top of a hamper and took off the bedraggled
robe he wore and dropped it to the floor.
In surprise he glanced down at himself. He was as naked as a jaybird. Somewhere, somehow, he
had lost his shorts.
3
The senator was waiting when Blake came back to the big room with the fire. He was sitting in
a chair and on the arm of it perched a dark-haired woman.
'Well,' said the senator, 'here you are, young man. You told me your name, but I am afraid
that it slipped my mind.'
'The name is Andrew Blake.'
'I'm sorry,' said the senator. 'My mind does not seem to have the retentive power that it once
commanded. This is my daughter, Elaine, and I am Chandler Horton. No doubt, from the yammering of
that fool outside, you gathered that I'm a senator.'
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'I am honoured, senator,' said Blake, 'and, Miss Elaine, very pleased to meet you.'
'Blake?' said the girl. 'I have heard the name somewhere. Very recently. Tell me, what are you
famous for?'
'Why, not a thing,' said Blake.
'But it was in all the papers. And you were on dimensino - the live, news part of it. Now I
know! You are the man who came back from the stars...'
'You don't say,' said the senator, heaving himself from the chair. 'How very interesting. Mr
Blake, that chair over there is very comfortable. Place of honour, you might say. Next to the fire
and all.'
'Daddy,' Elaine said to Blake, 'has a tendency to wax baronial, or maybe country-squirish,
when company drops in. You must never mind him.'
'The senator,' said Blake, 'is a very gracious host.'
The senator picked up a decanter and reached for glasses. 'You'll recall,' he said, 'that I
promised you some brandy.'
'And,' said Elaine: 'be careful that you praise it. Even if it gags you. The senator prides
himself as a judge of brandy. And if, a little later, you would like some coffee, we can have
that, too. I punched the autochef...'
'The chef act up again?' asked the senator.
Elaine shook her head. 'Not especially. Got the coffee, just the way I asked - plus fried eggs
and bacon.'
She looked at Blake. 'Want some eggs and bacon? I think they are still warm.'
He shook his head. 'No, thank you very much.'
'The contraption,' said the senator, 'has been on the fritz for years. One spell, no matter
what you dialled, it served up roast beef, rare.'
He handed around the glasses and sat down in his chair. 'That's why I like this place,' he
said. 'Uncomplicated domicile. It was built three hundred years ago by a man who cared for dignity
and had a certain ecological sense that made him build it of native limestone and the timber that
grew upon the tract. He did not impose his house upon the habitat; he made it part of it. And,
except for the autochef, it has not a single gadget.'
'We're old-fashioned,' said Elaine. 'I have always felt that living in a place like this was
akin - well, say, to taking up one's residence in a sod shanty in the twentieth century.'
'Nevertheless,' said Blake, 'it has a certain charm. And a sense of security and solidity.'
'You are right, it has,' said the senator. 'Listen to that wind trying to get in. Listen to
that rain.'
He swirled the brandy in his glass.
'It doesn't fly, of course,' he said, 'and, it won't talk to you. But who wants a house to fly
and...'
'Daddy!' said Elaine.
'You must excuse me, sir,' said the senator. 'I have my enthusiasms and I like to talk about
them and sometimes I let them run away with me - and there are times, I would suspect, when I have
bad manners. My daughter said something about seeing you on dimensino.'
'Of course, Daddy,' said Elaine. 'You never pay attention. You're so wrapped up in the
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bioengineering hearings that you don't pay attention.'
'But, my dear,' said the senator, 'the hearings are important. The human race must decide
before too long what to do with all these planets we are finding. And I tell you that terraforming
them is the solution of a lunatic. Think of all the time that it will take and the money that it
will swallow up.'
'By the way,' said Elaine, 'I forgot. Mother phoned. She won't be home tonight. She heard
about the storm and is staying in New York.'
The senator grunted. 'Fine. Bad night for travelling. How was London? Did she say?'
'She enjoyed the performance.'
'Music hail,' the senator explained to Blake. 'Revival of an ancient entertainment form. Very
primitive, I understand. My wife is taken with it. She is an arty person.'
'What a horrible thing to say,' said Elaine.
'Not at all,' said the senator. 'It's the truth. But to get back to this business of
bioengineering. Perhaps, Mr. Blake, you have some opinions."
'No,' said Blake, 'I can't say that I have. I find myself somewhat out of touch.'
'Out of touch? Oh, yes, I suppose you would be. This business of the stars. I recall the story
now. Encapsulated, as I remember it, and found by some asteroid miners. What system was it, now?'
'Out in the Antares neighbourhood. A small star - just a number, not a name. But I remember
none of that. They waited to revive me until I was brought to Washington.'
'And you remember nothing?'
'Not a thing.' said Blake. 'My life began, so far as I'm concerned, less than a month ago. I
don't know who I am or...'
'But you have a name.'
'A mere convenience,' said Blake. 'One that I picked out. John Smith would have done as well.
It seems a man must have a name.'
'But, as I recall it, you had background knowledge.'
'Yes' - and that is a strange thing. A knowledge of the earth and of its people and of its
ways, but in many ways hopelessly outdated. I am astounded continually. I stumble into customs and
beliefs and words that are unfamiliar to me.'
Elaine said, quietly, 'You don't need to talk about it. We hadn't meant to pry.'
'I don't mind,' Blake told her. 'I've accepted the situation. It's a strange position to be
in, but some day I may know. It may come back to me - who I am and where I came from and when. And
what happened out there. At the moment, as you may understand. I am considerably confused.
Everyone, however, has been considerate. I was given a house to live in. And I've not been
bothered. It's in a little village...'
'This village?' asked the senator. 'Nearby, I presume.'
'I don't actually know,' said Blake. 'Something funny happened to me. I don't know where I am.
The village is called Middleton.'
'That's just down the valley,' said the senator. 'Not five miles from here. It would seem that
we are neighbours.'
'I went out after dinner,' Blake told them. 'I was on the patio, looking towards the
mountains. A storm was coming up. Big black clouds and lightning, but still a good way off. And
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then, suddenly, I was on the hill across the creek from this place and the rain was coming down
and I was soaked...'
He stopped and set down his brandy glass, carefully, on the hearth. He stared from one to the
other of them.
'That's the way it was,' he said. 'I know that it sounds wild.'
'It sounds impossible,' said the senator.
'I am sure it does,' said Blake. 'And there was not only space, but time, as well, involved.
Not only did I find myself some miles away from where I had been standing, but it was night and
when I stepped out on the patio dusk had just begun to fall.'
'I am sorry,' said the senator, 'that the stupid guard threw the light on you. Finding
yourself here must have been shock enough. I don't ask for guards. I don't even want them. But
Geneva insists that all senators must be guarded. I don't know exactly why. There is no one, I am
sure, thirsting for our blood. Finally, after many years, Earth is at least part-way civilized.'
'There is this bioengineering business,' said Elaine. 'Feelings do run high.'
'Nothing is involved,' said the senator, 'except a determination of policy. There is no
reason...'
'But there is,' she said. 'All the Bible Belt fanatics, all the arch conservatives, all the
prissy conventionists are dead set against it.'
She turned towards Blake. 'Wouldn't you know,' she said, 'that the senator, who lives in a
house built three hundred years ago and brags about there being not a single gadget in it...'
'The chef,' said the senator. 'You forget the chef.'
She ignored him. 'And brags about not a single gadget in it, would align himself with the wild-
eyed bunch, with the arch-progressives, with the far-out gang?'
The senator sputtered. 'Not a thing far-out about it. It just makes common sense. It will cost
trillions of dollars to terraform a single planet. At a cost much more reasonable, and in a
fraction of the time required, we can engineer a human race that could live upon that planet.
Instead of changing the planet to fit the man, we change the man to fit the planet...'
'That's exactly the point,' said Elaine. 'That's the point your opponents have been making.
Change the man - that's the thing that sticks fast inside their craws. When you got through, this
thing that would live upon another planet would not be a man.'
'It might not look like one,' said the senator, 'but it still would be a man.'
She said to Blake. 'You understand, of course, that I'm not against the senator. But there are
times when it's terribly hard to make him realize what he's up against.'
'My daughter,' said the senator, 'plays my devil's advocate and at times it is a service. But
in this instance there is no particular need. I know the bitterness of the opposition.'
He lifted the decanter.
Blake shook his head. 'If there is some way I can get back home. It has been quite a night.'
'You could stay the night with us.'
'Thank you, senator, but if there is some way...'
'Certainly,' said the senator. 'One of the guards can take you. We had better use the ground
car. Bad night for a floater.'
'I would appreciate it.'
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'It'll give one of the guards a chance to be of use,' said the senator. 'Driving you home,
they won't be seeing wolves. By the way, when you, were out there, you didn't see a wolf?'
'No,' said Blake, 'I didn't see a wolf.'
4
Michael Daniels stood at the window and watched the ground crew at the Riverside development
across the boulevard bring the houses in. The black foundation blocks gleamed wetly in the night
and the Potomac, a quarter-mile beyond, was a sheet of inky darkness that picked up and reflected
back the gleam of the landing lights.
Slowly, one by one, the houses came lumbering down out of the cloud-fogged sky, to stop above
their assigned foundations, hovering there and moving slowly and deliberately to square their
landing grids with the foundation patterns.
Patients coming in, thought Daniels. Or, perhaps, staff members returning from a holiday.
Although there might be, as well, others who were unconnected with the hospital, either as patient
or as staff. The town was crowded, with the regional bioengineering hearings due to open in a day
or two. Space was at a premium and migrating houses were being squeezed in wherever accommodations
could be found.
Far across the river, somewhere over Old Virginia, its lights dimmed by fog and drizzle, a
ship was coming in, heading for a landing at the spaceport.
Following its flight, Daniels speculated from what far star it might have come. And how long
away from home? He smiled ruefully to himself. These were questions that he always asked - a hold-
over from a boyhood when he had held the hard determination that some day he would travel to the
stars.
But in this, he knew, he was not unusual. Every boy, these days, dreamed of going to the
stars.
Streams of moisture ran in jagged patterns down the smooth glass of the windows and beyond the
windows the houses still came floating in, filling up the few foundations still available. A few
ground cars went sliding smoothly along the boulevard, the cushions of air on which they rode
throwing out a wide spray of water from the dampened surface. It was too foul a night, he told
himself, for many floaters to be out.
He should be getting home, he knew. He should have left long ago. The kids would be in bed by
now, but Cheryl would be waiting up for him.
To the east, almost beyond the angle of his vision, glowing by reflected light, he could see
the ghost-like whiteness of the shaft that rose beside the river in honour of the first
astronauts, who had gone out more than five hundred years ago to circle Earth in space, boosted
there by the raw, brute power of chemical reaction.
Washington, he thought, a town of mouldering buildings, and filled with monuments - a tangle
of marble and of granite, and thick with the moss of old associations, its metal and its stone
veneered with the patina of ancient memories and with the aura of once-great power still hanging
over it. Once the national capital of an old republic, now no more than a seat of provincial
government, it still held an air of greatness draped about it like a cloak.
And it was best, he thought, at a time like this, when a soft, wet night had fallen over it,
creating an illusive background through which old ghosts could move.
The hushed sounds of a hospital at night whispered in the room - the soft padding of a nurse
going down the corridor, the muted rumble of a cart, the low buzzing of a call bell at the station
just across the hail.
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Behind him someone opened the door. Daniels swung around.
'Good evening, Gordy,' he said.
Gordon Barnes, a resident, grinned at him. 'I thought you'd be gone by now,' he said.
'Just about to. I was going over that report.'
He gestured at the table in the centre of the room.
Barnes picked up the file of papers and glanced at it.
'Andrew Blake,' he said. 'An intriguing piece of business.' Daniels shook his head in
puzzlement. 'More than intriguing,' he declared. 'It just isn't possible. How old would you take
Blake to be? By just looking at him.'
'Not more than thirty, Mike. Of course we know he could be a couple of hundred,
chronologically.'
'If he were thirty, you'd expect some deterioration, wouldn't you? The body begins wearing out
early in the twenties. From there it goes progressively downhill, heading towards old age.'
'I know,' said Barnes. 'But not this Blake, I take it.'
'Perfect,' said Daniels. 'A perfect specimen. Youthful. More than youthful. Not a blemish. Not
a weakness.'
'And no evidence of who he really is?'
Daniels shook his head. 'Space Administration has gone through the records with a fine-toothed
comb. He could be any one of thousands of people. Within just the last two centuries, several
dozen ships have simply disappeared. Went out and no more heard of them. He could be any one of
the people who were aboard those ships.'
'Someone froze him,' said Barnes, 'and stuck him in the capsule. Could that be a clue of some
sort?'
'You mean someone who was so important that someone else took a chance at saving him?'
'Something like that.'
'It doesn't make sense,' said Daniels. 'Even if they did, it still is a bit too sticky. Fire a
man out into space and what are the chances he'll be found again? A billion to one? A trillion to
one? I don't know. Space is big and empty.'
'But Blake was found.'
'Yes, I know. His capsule floated into a solar system that had been colonized less than a
hundred years ago and a gang of asteroid miners found him. The capsule had taken up an orbit
around an asteroid and they saw it flashing in the sun and got curious. Too much flash to it. Had
dreams of finding a monstrous diamond or something. A few years longer and he would have crashed
on the asteroid. Try to figure out those odds.'
Barnes laid the folder back on the table and walked over to the window to stand beside
Daniels.
'I agree with you,' he said. 'It makes little sense. The odds keep working for the man. Even
after he was found, someone could have broken open the capsule. They knew there was a man in
there. The capsule was transparent; they could see him. Someone could have got the wild idea of
trying to thaw him out and resuscitating him. It could have been worth their while. Who knows, he
might have some information that it would be worth their having.'
'Fat lot of good it would have done,' said Daniels. 'That's another thing. Blake's mind was
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file:///F|/rah/Clifford%20D.Simak/Simak,%20Cliffard%20D%20-%20Werewolf%2Principle,%20The.txtTheWerewolfPrinciplebyCliffordD.SimakVERSION1.0(Feb2400).Ifyoufindandcorrecterrorsinthetext,pleaseupdatetheversionnumberby0.1andredistribute.1Thecreaturehalted,crouchedlowagainsttheground,staringatthe inyp...

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