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Night-hunters came to us covered with livid boils, and from us they bought umbrellas in great number, to keep them safe from the rays of the plague star. When the ship landed, we might have gone. Yet Janeel said stay. She had names for these sicknesses that killed the flyers and night-hunters. She had names for the drugs that would cure these ills. To name a thing is to understand, she thought. We might be healers, gain their brutal trust, and our fortunes would be made. She bought all the medicines that ship carried, and sent for others, and we began to treat these plagues that she had named.
Fantastic Error: even if some Trader between worlds was ignorant, the starship crew would have recognized that all this came from radiation from a nearby Stellar cause, and evacuated them!!
Rica Dawnstar was grinning. “The holds aren’t part of the life-support system,” she said. “No air. No heat. No pressure. No gravity, even.”
Nonsense: this isn't an airplane, where cargo can survive light air pressure & low temp, it's space, where NO pressure & absolute cold of space would wreck cargos
“If,” said Haviland Tuf. “A most difficult word. So short, and so often fraught with disappointment and frustration.”
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“A good piece of your mind might be considered an oxymoron,” said Haviland Tuf. “I think your proposed course of action unwise in the extreme. Our former colleagues must now be considered our rivals. Having just abandoned us to death, they shall undoubtedly be nonplussed to discover us still alive, and might very well take steps to rectify this contradiction.”
The bridge had obviously been designed so that the captain sat in his throne and gave orders, and the other officers—there were nine other work stations on the upper bridge, twelve more in the lower-level control pit—did all the actual programming and punching of buttons. Lacking the foresight to have come aboard with nine flunkies, Rica was forced to move back and forth across the bridge, from one station to another, to try and get the Ark up and running again.
Terrific,” she said dourly. Fill up the ship with forty-plus hungry monsters, any one of them sufficient to lunch on her mother’s favorite daughter. No, this wouldn’t do, not at all.
No doubt his ability to concentrate on the task at hand was, in its own way, commendable. Still, that degree of concentration might be considered a liability when it allowed a seven-meter-tall carnivorous reptile to sneak up on one.
You’re sitting out there in a thing that looks suspiciously like a warship and happens to be about thirty times the size of the largest so-called dreadnaught in our so-called Planetary Defense Flotilla, and you’re making one hell of a lot of people extremely nervous. Half of the groundworms in the big hotels think you’re an alien come to steal our air and eat our children, and the other half are certain that you’re a special effect we’ve thoughtfully provided for their amusement.
“You’re not anti-life, are you?” “Indeed not,” said Haviland Tuf. “Life is infinitely preferable to its alternative. However, in my experience, all good things can be carried to extremes.
we’ll give you a new ship. A brand-new Longhaul Nine, the biggest freighter we make, with fully automated kitchen, passenger quarters for six, gravity grid, two shuttles, cargo bays big enough to hold the largest Avalonian and Kimdissi traders side-by-side, triple redundancy, the latest Smartalec-series computer, voice-activated, and even a weapons capability if you want one.
“Twenty-seven standard years,” she said. “More or less. The date changes constantly, as various factors are altered. We may get a war before we get famine. That’s what some of our experts believe. Or maybe we’ll get war and famine.
The waiters returned, bearing the entrees. Slices of meat were piled high on the platter, still steaming from the oven,
They know he's vegetarian, so why would they present platter of meats at all??
We must evolve, the church says, evolve through higher and higher states of sentience and genius into eventual godhood, and we must achieve that godhood in time to avert the heat-death of the universe. Since evolution operates through the biological mechanism of breeding, we must therefore breed, must ever expand and enrich the gene-pool, must spread our seed to the stars. To restrict birth … we might be interfering with the next step in human evolution,
Faulty: evolution requires breeding AND Death of the undesirable and old to make room for the new.
I came to S’uthlam for certain repairs and alterations. In the event of my success, let this work be performed without cost to me.” Tolly Mune lifted her drink to her mouth to give herself a moment to consider. The ice had turned slushy, but the narcoblaster still had a nice sting to it. “Fifty million standards of free repairs? That’s too damn much.” “Such was my opinion,” said Tuf. She grinned. “The cat,” she said, “may have been yours to start with, but now she’s ours. But I’ll go this far on the repairs, Tuf—I’ll give you credit.”
CREDIT?!?! If his ecological engineering solves an overpopulation problem this big he should earn MORE than the 50million repairs for that service
Then I got to spend a half-hour crawling around on the outside of the Ark, knocking on the hull like a brain-damage case, all the time watching my port go insane with activity. I lost the cat twice and had to chase her down again before she floated off to S’uthlam, and whenever I misjudged an airblast, off we went. Then a puling dreadnaught came heaving up at me. I got to enjoy the suspense of wondering when the hell you’d raise your defense sphere, and got to relish the exciting pyrotechnics when the flotilla decided to test your screens.
“You’re really planning to return?” buy Mune said. “In five years,” said Tuf, “the first payment on the loan will be due. By that time, moreover, we will be able to judge what effect, if any, my small contributions have had upon your food crisis. Perhaps more ecological engineering will be necessary.”
And they've both forgotten that the bet was to extend the repairs on credit if he could fix the problems... it was never said that his fix work was without charge, so he can present the bill in five years and payoff the loan entire!
“Impossible,” said the old man. “The EEC was wiped out a thousand years ago, along with the Federal Empire. None of their seedships remain.” “How distressing,” said Haviland Tuf. “Here I sit in an illusion. No doubt, now that you have told me my ship does not exist, I shall sink right through it and plunge into your atmosphere, where I shall burn up as I fall.”
“Guardian,” said Kefira Qay from the Sunrazor, “these seedships may indeed no longer exist, but I am fast closing on something that my scopes tell me is almost thirty kilometers long. It does not appear to be an illusion.”
Yet, in my own small way, I contrive to muddle through. If Namor would care to avail itself of my services, I have no doubt that I can help you.” “Why?” the slender Guardian asked warily. “Why are you so anxious to help us?”
Nothing said would portray him as anxious to help, and his demeanor has been described as bland and colorless multiple times
every boat we lost was irreplaceable. Namor has no technological base to speak of. In better days, we imported what we needed from Brazelourn and Vale Areen. Our people believed in a simple life. The planet couldn’t support industry anyway. It is poor in heavy metals
Crud! you don't need high tech and heavy metals to make BOATS!
To hunt the drifting fire-balloons they brought forth countless fliers: lashtail mantas, bright red razorwings, flocks of scorn, semi-aquatic howlers, and a terrible pale blue thing—half-plant and half-animal and all but weightless—that drifted with the wind and lurked inside clouds like a living, hungry spiderweb. Tuf called it the-weed-that-weeps-and-whispers, and advised Kefira Qay not to fly through clouds.
Error: flyer could FIGHT the fire balloons in air, but they need to HUNT the balloons, which live in the sea until something flies over, so this isn't appropriate
“Well, another dead dreadnaught was found today. It must have put up quite a battle. Our scientists have been analyzing the contents of its stomachs, and it appears to have fed exclusively on orcas and blue kraken.” Kefira Qay frowned slightly, then shrugged it off.
What did it eat BEFORE? this was neglected
The knights of St. Christopher, whose resort world had been robbed of much of its charm by the depredations of huge flying saurians they called dragons (partly for effect and partly due to a lack of imagination), had been similarly pleased when Tuf had provided them with georges, tiny hairless simians who loved nothing better than to feast on dragon eggs.
“The intelligent and efficient politician is a species virtually unknown in the galaxy,” said Haviland Tuf. “Perhaps I might secure a scraping from Cregor Blaxon for the Ark’s cell library.”
Tuf gave her an entire deck to herself. Hundreds of sleeping berths, computer stations, labs, accessways, sanitary stations, recreation halls, kitchens, and no tenants but her. On S’uthlam, a cityspace this large would have housed a thousand people, in apartments smaller than the Ark’s storage closets.
Error: an ENTIRE DECK is a level 5*30 KM, which would be about 100,000 people, not 1,000!
Why should anyone refrain from birthing—the food problem has been solved, right? The goddamned First Councilor said so. Good times had arrived, right? All the damned zeros had turned out to be puling anti-life alarmists once more, the technocrats had worked another miracle. How could anyone doubt that they’d do it again, and again, and again? Oh, yes. So be a good church member, have more kids, help humanity evolve to godhood and defeat entropy. Hey, why not?” She made a disgusted noise. “Tuf, why are people such puling idiots?”
Because pulling idiots like you and The keep saving the day before letting them have some starvation!
The microorganisms, fungus, and slime-molds will reproduce very quickly in your skies, having no natural enemies. The upper stories of your taller residential towers will be covered with mold and fungus, and more frequent cleaning will be required.
Cleaning?!? they should be edible or able to go into the food factories
displaced by this new aerial ecosystem. Ultimately, the skies themselves will darken, you will receive significantly less sunlight, and your climate will undergo a permanent change.
BAD Error: This would wreck the other solutions he designed, by blocking the sunlight the other plants need to grow! As he's engineering the ENTIRE planet ecology, he wouldn't destroy his other work with this!!
“I would maintain that any human has the right to speak the truth.” “And the right to demand a worldwide all-net newsfeed to speak it on? Where did that puling right come from?”
That right came from the help he provided the first time and the demand that he intervene again!!!
“Consider the word, if you will. Meditate upon its meaning. An ecosystem might be likened to a great biological machine, perhaps. If this analogy is pursued, humanity must be seen as part of the machine. No doubt an important part—an engine, a key circuit—but in no case apart from the mechanism, as is often fallaciously assumed.
“People aren’t old pulse-rings, or blast-tubes to be recalibrated, you know.”
Oh! certainly not: they're to be REPLACED (by the next generation)!!
“I turned their water into blood,” Moses insisted. “Indeed, your agents placed organic chemicals in the City’s water supply.” “I brought down a plague of darkness,” Moses said. His tone had grown quite defensive. “Sir,” said the pillar of fire, “you insult my intelligence with the obvious. You turned out a light.”
“You will find a convenient personal airlock in section nine, just beyond the doors marked Climate Control.” Jaime Kreen frowned. “Airlock? What do you mean?” “Sir,” said Haviland Tuf, “I would think it obvious. I mean airlock, a device by which you may depart the Ark without my valuable atmosphere departing with you.
We’re a goddamned government. We’re allowed to steal the things we want as long as we put a shiny legal gloss over it.”
“It must also be noted that my welcome to S’uthlam was distinctly less cordial than on the occasion of my previous visit, much to my chagrin, and notwithstanding the fact that I have twice placed myself squarely between S’uthlam and mass famine, plague, cannibalism, pestilence, social collapse, and other unpleasant and inconvenient events.
