World Of Ptavvs   ::   Нивен Ларри

Somehow he managed it so that the entiregroup went to dinner together, for mutual brain-picking. Things became clearer during dinner. Leeman's ears went up when he heard the phrase "retarder field."

Dinner turned into a party. It was almost two hundred before Leeman could make a phone call. The other man almost hung up. But Leeman knew the words to stop him.

The Lings' first honeymoon had been spent at Reno, Nevada, thirty years ago. Since then Ling Wu had become rich in wholesale pharmaceuticals. Recently the Fertility Board had granted the couple the rare privilege of having more than two children. And here they were.

Here, before the crystal wall of the main dance bubble, looking out and down at a ringed and banded world. They didn't hear the music behind them. It was magic music, the sound of imagination, brought to life by the wild, desert loveliness before them. Soft curves of ice ran out to a horizon like the lip of a nearby cliff; and above the cliff hung a bauble, a decoration, an aesthetic wonder such as no habitable world has ever known.

Ask an amateur astronomer about Saturn. He won't just tell you; he'll drag out his telescope and show you. He'll break your arm to show you.

Ling Dorothy, fourth generation San Franciscan, pushed the palms of her hands against the crystal wall as if half wanting them to go through. "Oh, I hope. I hope," she said, "I hope it never comes for us!"

"What, Dot?" Ling Wu smiled up at her, for she was an inch taller than he was.

"The Golden Circle."

"It's five days late already. I love it here too, but I'd hate to think people died just to let us stay a little longer."

"Haven't you heard, Wu? Mrs. Willing was just telling me that somebody stole the Golden Circle right off the spaceport field!"

"Mrs. Willing is a romantic."

"Givvv me ti', givvv me ti'," Charley mimicked. "First Larrry, then 'Arrnerr. Time is all we get. Do they want the stars all for themselves?"

"I think you underrate them," said the older dolphin.

"Surely there's room for both of us on any world." Charley hadn't been listening. "They practically didn't know we were here until a short time ago. We could be useful, I know we could."

"Why shouldn't they have time? Do you know how much time they themselves needed?"

"What do you mean?"

"The first walker story about a trip to the moon is thousands of years old. They didn't get there until a hundred and fifty years ago. Have a little patience," said the one with the worn teeth and the scarred jaw.

"I don't have thousands of years.