Asimov, Isaac Earth Is Room Enough

Odnośniki

[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

couldn't be any bigger than that, and people who had to live in them
had to adjust to the fact.
Even the process of entering his house had its mild
pleasantness. He would enter the community twist place to which he
was assigned (it looked, as did all such, like a rather stumpy obelisk),
and there he would invariably find others waiting to use it. Still more
would arrive before he reached the head of the line. It was a sociable
time.
"How's your planet?" "How's yours?" The usual small talk.
Sometimes someone would be having trouble. Machinery breakdowns
or serious weather that would alter the terrain unfavorably. Not
often.
But it passed the time. Then Rimbro would be at the head of the
line; he would put his key into the slot; the proper combination would
be punched; and he would be twisted into a new probability pattern;
his own particular probability pattern; the one assigned to him when
he married and became a producing citizen; a probability pattern in
which life had never developed on Earth. And twisting to this
particular lifeless Earth, he would walk into his own foyer.
Just like that.
He never worried about being in another probability. Why
should he? He never gave it any thought. There were an infinite
number of possible Earths. Each existed in its own niche; its own
probability pattern. Since on a planet such as Earth there was,
according to calculation, about a fifty-fifty chance of life's developing,
half of all the possible Earths (still infinite, since half of infinity was
infinity) possessed life, and half (still infinite) did not. And living on
about three hundred billion of the unoccupied Earths were three
hundred billion families, each with its own beautiful house, powered
by the sun of that probability, and each securely at peace. The number
of Earths so occupied grew by millions each day.
And then one day, Rimbro came home and Sandra (his wife)
said to him, as he entered, "There's been the most peculiar noise."
a
a
T
T
n
n
s
s
F
F
f
f
o
o
D
D
r
r
P
P
m
m
Y
Y
e
e
Y
Y
r
r
B
B
2
2
.
.
B
B
A
A
Click here to buy
Click here to buy
w
w
m
m
w
w
o
o
w
w
c
c
.
.
.
.
A
A
Y
Y
B
B
Y
Y
B
B
r r
Rimbro's eyebrows shot up and he looked closely at his wife.
Except for a certain restlessness of her thin hands and a pale look
about the corners of her tight mouth, she looked normal.
Rimbro said, still holding his topcoat halfway toward the
servette that waited patiently for it, "Noise? What noise? I don't hear
anything."
"It's stopped now," Sandra said. "Really, it was like a deep
thumping or rumble. You'd hear it a bit. Then it would stop. Then
you'd hear it a bit and so on. I've never heard anything like it."
Rimbro surrendered his coat. "But that's quite impossible."
"I heard it."
"I'll look over the machinery," he mumbled. "Something may be
wrong."
Nothing was, that his accountant's eyes could discover, and,
with a shrug, he went to supper. He listened to the servettes hum
busily about their different chores, watched one sweep up the plates
and cutlery for disposal and recovery, then said, pursing his lips,
"Maybe one of the servettes is out of order. I'll check them."
"It wasn't anything like that, Clarence."
Rimbro went to bed, without further concern over the matter,
and wakened with his wife's hand clutching his shoulder. His hand
went automatically to the contact patch that set the walls glowing.
"What's the matter? What time is it?"
She shook her head. "Listen! Listen!"
Good Lord, thought Rimbro, there is a noise. A definite
rumbling. It came and went.
"Earthquake?" he whispered. It did happen, of course, though,
with all the planet to choose from, they could generally count on
having avoided the faulted areas.
"All day long?" asked Sandra fretfully. "I think it's something
else." And then she voiced the secret terror of every nervous
householder. "I think there's someone on the planet with us. This
Earth is inhabited."
Rimbro did the logical things. When morning came, he took his
wife and children to his wife's mother. He himself took a day off and
hurried to the Sector's Housing Bureau.
He was quite annoyed at all his.
Bill Ching of the Housing Bureau was short, jovial and proud of [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

zanotowane.pl

doc.pisz.pl

pdf.pisz.pl

angamoss.xlx.pl