inert dust.

As he relaxed, the comforting solidity of the Sun, the clock-work of
the familiar planets and the Moon rang in on him. Our own solar system
was as charming and as simple as an ancient cuckoo clock filled with
familiar ticking and with reassuring noises. The odd little moons of
Mars swung around their planet like frantic mice, yet their regularity
was itself an assurance that all was well. Far above the plane of the
ecliptic, he could feel half a ton of dust more or less drifting
outside the lanes of human travel.

Here there was nothing to fight, nothing to challenge the mind, to
tear the living soul out of a body with its roots dripping in
effluvium as tangible as blood.

Nothing ever moved in on the Solar System. He could wear the pin-set
forever and be nothing more than a sort of telepathic astronomer, a
man who could feel the hot, warm protection of the Sun throbbing and
burning against his living mind.

* * * * *

Woodley came in.

"Same old ticking world," said Underhill. "Nothing to report. No
wonder they didn't develop the pin-set until they began to planoform.
Down here with the hot Sun around us, it feels so good and so quiet.
You can feel everything spinning and turning. It's nice and sharp and
compact. It's sort of like sitting around home."

Woodley grunted. He was not much given to flights of fantasy.

Undeterred, Underhill went on, "It must have been pretty good to have
been an Ancient Man. I wonder why they burned up their world with war.
They didn't have to planoform. They didn't have to go out to earn
their livings among the stars. They didn't have to dodge the Rats or
play the Game. They couldn't have invented pinlighting because they
didn't have any need of it, did they, Woodley?"

Woodley grunted, "Uh-huh." Woodley was twenty-six years old and due to
retire in one more year. He already had a farm picked out. He had
gotten through ten years of hard work pinlighting with the best of
them. He had kept his sanity by not thinking very much about his job,
meeting the strains of the task whenever he had to meet them and
thinking nothing more about his duties until the next emergency arose.

Woodley never made a point of getting popular among the Partners.
None of the Partners liked him very much. Some of them even resented
him. He was suspected of thinking ugly thoughts of the Partners on
occasion, but since none of the Partners ever thought a complai