That’s why we’ve come to Nowhere Near.”
“There are new planets enough,” I argued patiently, “if you really don’t like Earth.
Virgin worlds, where you can really get back to nature.
Seas that men have never sailed, plains that men have never plowed, creatures never hunted, mountains never climbed.
When Nowhere gets on my nerves, I like to dream of those new worlds—”
“I’ve seen new planets.” The old man blinked.
“I’ve met raw nature, on the fearful world of the Runaway Star.
Monsters in the sea and monsters in the jungle and monsters in the air—dreadful death in every breath we took!”
He gave me a pink, solemn scowl.
“I’m looking for my lost youth.
If I do find it here, with Lilith’s precious aid, I’ll owe all my thanks to the computers that designed her new serum and the automated factories that made it.
I’ll owe no thanks to nature—natural death would have killed me years ago!”
Shuddering massively, he paused to gasp for air.
“I don’t like nature and I don’t trust people.”
His clay-colored eyes shifted belligerently.
“Look at the wicked natural mystery you call Nowhere. Look at Captain Scabbard and his brutal crew. Nature and men—fearful nature and monstrous men!
“Give me machines—like your great station here.
“Machines I understand.
Take nature.
This natural space called Nowhere—so I gather from the miserable men who infest the fringes of it—is a dreadful riddle that the best brains in the Legion have failed to unlock, after endless years of trying.
Take men.
I’ve seen how even the precious innocence of Lilith Adams can awaken unsuspected evil in the worst or best of men.
You take nature and men. I’ll take machines!”
He dropped his smooth baby-hand on the sleek black case of the lock monitor, with an air of familiar affection.
“Machines I know and trust.
I can see how they work and fix ‘em when they don’t.
Machines I love, because they exist to work for men.
Left to herself, nature always kills us—unless our wicked fellow men are quicker to the death.
But I think machines can save my poor old life, with Lil’s precious serum.”
Staring at the two of them, I had to shake my head.
The riddle was growing queerer.
Though I had been amused by old Habibula’s agile loquacity, I couldn’t decide what to believe of his story.
The pink glow of his skin and the vigor of his fight on the Erewhon seemed to argue for a real rejuvenation.
Yet he seemed too cunning, too bold, too eloquent.
I couldn’t believe that any normal man would hate his natural world as heartily as he claimed to, or love machines as much.
Certainly I couldn’t believe that any sane veteran of the Legion would willingly retire to Nowhere Near.
Lilith Adams was even more perplexing.
Though nurses are often beautiful and sometimes virginal, I had never met a nurse—or any girl at all—who looked quite so breathtaking, or seemed so aloofly untouched and untouchable, or who possessed her quiet air of absolute command.
I couldn’t help thinking that she was far more wonderful than any possible machine.
Yet, like Captain Scabbard, I was somehow afraid of her.
I looked at old Habibula.
“If you don’t like nature, why’ve you come here to the edge of Nowhere—which is probably the greatest natural peril in the universe?”
“Because I trust machines,” he droned solemnly.
“If some mortal peril does come out of Nowhere, nature will be no blessed help to us.
Men cannot defend us.
Our precious machines will be our only friends.
I know no better machine than this whole station is, made to keep us snug and cozy here in space, trillions of miles from mobs and weather and dirt—”
The lock phone purred.
The watch officer was calling me.
Captain Scabbard had finished his unloading—except for the two passengers and their baggage.