DIY History | Transcribe | Hevelin Fanzines | Orb, v. 2, issue 1, 1950

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Orb, v. 2, issue 1, 1950

Page 1

 And Chicken little ran to her mother, crying,

"Mama! The sky is falling!  ......"

We must go and tell the King!"

   He was old and worn with the tread of time. Yet he was still mentally alert, perhaps more so than the younger more active scientists who had superseded him in importance on his virile world. Microcosmology was his chief interest, now in his last years. His newest project was to reveal to him all the mysteries of indefinable smallness. In his youth his experiments would have set him on fire, but the fire that burned in his eyes now was clouded with sadness. He looked out of the window. The sun that warmed his world flamed high and warm. There was no reason to be melancholy. His world was a beautiful world, filled with promise.
   It had struggled out of primitive slimes and at last had achieved an exalted state wherewith machines created all one could wish or dream of. And yet the men of his world continued to dream of vaster conquests. There seemed no limits to what they could want. Now it was the atom and the boundless store of energy it promised. Was there no end at all? That was why he was sad.
   He shuffled from the shaft of  brilliant sunlight back to the comparative gloom of his desk. In the curious script of his people, he wrote:
   "We go on and on and on. And this, then, is progress? We create and build and, who knows, while we are creating and building for ourselves, perhaps we are destroying for -- others . . . "
   He stroked the heavy sheaf of notes which represented his secretmost thoughts, his private dreams. Sometimes, in his more hopeful moods he thought these notes might become one day a credo for his people. For his thoughts were vast thoughts based, not on one small world but on the values and destinies of great universes, great worlds within worlds. In his sadder moods he realized that the younger scientists--, bursting with plans for immediate betterment for their peoples, considered him old and useless and a little mad.
   By the time he finished his super-microscope he realized the time was perilously short. In the cubicle which he was allowed to keep for himself in tribute to the important work he had contributed in his younger days -- and where he was left alone to putter about as he wished, ignored by all the others -- he fulfilled his destiny. The super-microscope revealed what he had suspected.

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And Chicken little ran to her mother, crying, "Mama! The sky is falling! ......" We must go and tell the King!" He was old and worn with the tread of time. Yet he was still mentally alert, perhaps more so than the younger more active scientists who had superseded him in importance on his virile world. Microcosmology was his chief interest, now in his last years. His newest project was to reveal to him all the mysteries of indefinable smallness. In his youth his experiments would have set him on fire, but the fire that burned in his eyes now was clouded with sadness. He looked out of the window. The sun that warmed his world flamed high and warm. There was no reason to be melancholy. His world was a beautiful world, filled with promise. It had struggled out of primitive slimes and at last had achieved an exalted state wherewith machines created all one could wish or dream of. And yet the men of his world continued to dream of vaster conquests. There seemed no limits to what they could want. Now it was the atom and the boundless store of energy it promised. Was there no end at all? That was why he was sad. He shuffled from the shaft of brilliant sunlight back to the comparative gloom of his desk. In the curious script of his people, he wrote: "We go on and on and on. And this, then, is progress? We create and build and, who knows, while we are creating and building for ourselves, perhaps we are destroying for -- others . . . " He stroked the heavy sheaf of notes which represented his secretmost thoughts, his private dreams. Sometimes, in his more hopeful moods he thought these notes might become one day a credo for his people. For his thoughts were vast thoughts based, not on one small world but on the values and destinies of great universes, great worlds within worlds. In his sadder moods he realized that the younger scientists--, bursting with plans for immediate betterment for their peoples, considered him old and useless and a little mad. By the time he finished his super-microscope he realized the time was perilously short. In the cubicle which he was allowed to keep for himself in tribute to the important work he had contributed in his younger days -- and where he was left alone to putter about as he wished, ignored by all the others -- he fulfilled his destiny. The super-microscope revealed what he had suspected.