Doorways in the Sand

by Roger Zelazny

“Alkaid, Mizar, Alioth,” I murmured, “Megrez, Phecda . . . ” “Merak and Dubhe,” he said, finishing off the Big Dipper

I have always been a firm believer in my right to do anything I cannot be stopped from doing.

Hanging there, some twenty or thirty thousand miles above it, I was in a perfect position to enjoy the event if California were to break loose, slip away and vanish beneath the Pacific. Unfortunately, this did not occur.

My lungs were working like a concertina at a Polish wedding

I know that there is a law of evolution for organizations as stringent and inevitable as anything in life. The longer one exists, the more it grinds out restrictions that slow its own functions.