The Project Gutenberg EBook of Cubs of the Wolf, by Raymond F. Jones

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Title: Cubs of the Wolf

Author: Raymond F. Jones

Illustrator: Rogers

Release Date: September 6, 2007 [EBook #22526]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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[Illustration: MARKOVIA]

CUBS OF THE WOLF

BY RAYMOND F. JONES

_It may be that there is a weapon that, from the
viewpoint of the one it's used on, is worse than
lethal. You might say that death multiplies you by
zero; what would multiplication by minus one do?_

Illustrated by Rogers

In the spring the cherry blossoms are heavy in the air over the campus
of Solarian Institute of Science and Humanities. On a small slope that
rims the park area, Cameron Wilder lay on his back squinting through the
cloud of pink-white petals to the sky beyond. Beside him, Joyce Farquhar
drew her jacket closer with an irritated gesture. It was still too cold
to be sitting on the grass, but Cameron didn't seem to notice it--or
anything else, Joyce thought.

"If you don't submit a subject for your thesis now," she said, "you'll
take another full six months getting your doctorate. Sometimes I think
you don't really want it!"

Cameron stirred. He shifted his squinting gaze from the sky to Joyce and
finally sat up. But he was staring ahead through the trees again as he
took his pipe from his pocket and began filling it slowly.

"I _don't_ want it if it's not going to mean anything after I get it,"
he said belligerently. "I'm not going to do an investigation of some
silly subject like The Transience of Venusian Immigrants in Relation to
the Martian Polar Ice Cap Cycle. Solarian sociologists are the butt of
enough ridicule now. Do something like that and for the rest of your
life you get knocking of the knees whenever anybody inquires about the
specialty you worked in and threatens to read your thesis."

"Nobody's asking you to do anything you don't want to. But _you_ picked
the field of sociology to work in. Now I don't see why you h