The Project Gutenberg EBook of Collector's Item, by Robert F. Young

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Title: Collector's Item

Author: Robert F. Young

Release Date: May 22, 2009 [EBook #28924]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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_We've often wondered what would happen if Robert Young should cease
to be a lyrically intense writer for a story or two, forsaking the
bright, poetic worlds of MISS KATY THREE and THE FIRST SWEET SLEEP
OF NIGHT to become dispassionately analytical on a cosmic scale. Now
we know! He'd chill us to the bone by setting two squixes to
brooding over a never-to-be born Earth, exactly as he has done here.
And thrill us, too--with the liveliest kind of entertainment._

collector's
item

_by ... Robert F. Young_

Very trivial things can go into the weaving
of a nest. The human race, for instance--

The condensation of the histories of ten thousand races into a text
concise enough to fit into a single volume had been a task of
unprecedented proportions. There had been times when the Galactic
Historian had doubted whether even his renowned abilities were up to the
assignment that the Galactic Board of Education had so lightly tossed
his way, times when he had thrown up his hands--all five of them--in
despair. But at last the completed manuscript lay before him on his desk
with nothing but the final reading remaining between it and publication.

The Galactic Historian repeatedly wiped his brows as he turned the
pages. It was a warm night, even for Mixxx Seven. Now and then, a tired
breeze struggled down from the hills and limped across the lowlands to
the Galactic University buildings. It crept into the Galactic
Historian's study via the open door and out again via the open windows,
fingering the manuscript each time it passed but doing nothing
whatsoever about the temperature.

The manuscript was something more than a hammered-down history of
galactic achievement. It was the ultimate document. The two and seventy
thous