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.Pfitzner & Sons?No, there was not.Wagoner let the report fall, with a sigh of relief of which he was hardly conscious.That was that.He filed the report, and reached into his "In" basket for the dossier -on Paige Russell, Colonel, Army Space Corps, which had come in from the Pfitzner plant only a week ago.He was tired, and he did not want to perform an act of judgment on another man for the rest of his life-but he had asked for the job, and now he had to work at it.Bliss Wagoner had not been cut out to be a general.As a god he was even more inept.-CHAPTER FIVE: New YorkThe original phenomena which the soul-hypothesis attempted to explain still remain.Homo sapiens does have some differences from other animal species.But when his biological distinctions and their consequences are clearly described, man's 'morality,' his 'soul,' and his 'immortality' all become accessible to a purely naturalistic formulation and understanding,.Man's 'immortality' (in so far as it differs from the immortality of the germ plasm of any other animal species) consists in his time-transcending inter-individually shared values, symbol-systems, languages, and cultures-and in nothing else.-WESTON LA BARREIT TOOK Paige no more than Anne's mandatory ten seconds, during breakfast of the next day in his snuggery at the spaceman's Haven, to decide that he was going back to the Pfitzner plant and apologize.He didn't quite understand why the date had ended as catastrophically as it had, but of one thing he was nearly certain: the fiasco had had something to do with his space-rusty manners, and if it were to be mended, he had to be the one to tool up forit.And now that he came to think of it over his cold egg, it seemed obvious in essence.By his last line of questioning, Paige had broken the delicate shell of the evening and spilled the contents all over the restaurant table.He had left the more or less safe womb of technicalities, and had begun, by implication at least, to call Anne's ethics into question-first by making clear his first reaction to the business about the experimental infants, and then by pressing home her irregular marriage to her firm.In this world called Earth of disintegrating faiths, one didn't call personal ethical codes into question without getting into trouble.Such codes, where they could be found at all, obviously had cost their adherents too much pain to be open for any new probing.Faith had once beenself-evident; now it was desperate.Those who still had it-or had made it, chunk by fragment by shard-wanted nothing but to be allowed to hold it.As for why he wanted to set matters right with Anne Abbott, Paige was less clear.His leave was passing him by rapidly, and thus far he had done little more than stroll while it passed-especially if he measured it against the desperate meter-stick established by his last two leaves, the two after his marriage had shattered and he had been alone again.After the present leave was over, there was a good chance that he would be assigned to the Proserpine station, which was now about finished and which had no competitors for the title of the most forsaken outpost of the solar system.None, at least, until somebody should discover an 11th planet.Nevertheless, he was going to go out to the Pfitzner plant again, out to the scenic Bronx, to revel among research scientists, business executives, government brass, and a frozen-voiced girl with a figure like an ironing-board, to kick up his heels on a reception-room rug in the sight of gay steel engravings of the founders, cheered on by a motto which might or might not be Dionysiac, if he could only read it.Great.Just great.If he played his cards right, he could go on duty at the Proserpine station with fine memories: perhaps the vice-president in charge of export would let Paige call him "Hal," or maybe even "Bubbles."Maybe it was a matter of religion, after all.Like everyone else in the world, Paige thought, he was still looking for something bigger than himself, bigger than family, army, marriage, fatherhood, space itself, or the pub-crawls and tyrannically meaningless sexual spasms of a spaceman's leave.Quite obviously the project at Pfitzner, with its air of mystery and selflessness, had touched that very vulnerable nerve in him once more.Anne Abbott's own dedication was merely the touchstone, the key.No, he hadn't the right word for it yet, but her attitude somehow fitted into an empty, jagged-edge blemish in his own soul like-like.yes, that was it: like a jigsaw-puzzle piece.And besides, he wanted to see that sunburst smile again.Because of the way her desk was placed, she was the first thing he saw as he came into Pfitzner's reception room.Her expression was even stranger than he hadexpected, and she seemed to be making some kind of covert gesture, as though she were flicking dust off the top of her desk toward him with the tips of all her fingers.He took, several slower and slower steps into the room and stopped, finally baffled.Sontçone rose from a chair which he had not been able to see from the door, and quartered down on him.The pad of the steps on the carpet and the odd crouch of the shape in the corner of Paige's eye were unpleasantly stealthy.Paige turned, unconsciously closing his hands."Haven't we seen this officer before, Miss Abbott? What's his business here-or has he any?"The man in the eager semi-crouch was Francis X.MacHinery.When he was not bent over in that absurd position, which was only his prosecutor's stance, Francis X.MacHinery looked every inch the inheritor of an unbroken line of Boston aristocrats, as in fact he was.Though he was not tall, he was very spare, and his hair had been white since he was 26 years old, giving him a look of col4 wisdom which was complemented by his hawk-like nose and high cheekbones.The FBI had come down to him from his grandfather, who had somehow persuaded the then incumbent president-a stimningly popular Man-on-Horseback who dripped charisma but had no brains worth mentioning-that so important a directorship should not be hazarded to the appointments of his successors, but instead ought to be handed on from father to son like a corporate office.Hereditary pasts tend to become nominal with the passage of time, since it takes only one weak scion to destroy the importance of the office; but that had not happened yet to the MacHinery family.The current incumbent could, in fact, have taught his grandfather a thing or two.MacHinery was as full of cunning as a wolverine, and he had managed times without number to land on his feet regardless of what political disasters had been planned for him.And he was, as Paige was now discovering, the man for whom the metaphor "gimlet-eyed" had all unknowingly been invented."Well, Miss Abbott?""Colonel Russell was here yesterday," Anne said."You may have seen him then."The swinging doors opened and Horsefield and Gunncame in.MacHinery paid no attention to them
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