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You are one thousand miles
above the surface of Delmak-O.
Switch to automatic pilot, please.
I can land her myself.
Is this a god-world?
It is not a god-world,
but there are some strange things out there.
I’m Betty Jo Berm. Linguist.
You’re either Mr Tallchief or Mr Morley;
everyone else is here already.
I’ll introduce you to everyone.
This elderly gentleman is Bert Kosler, our custodian.
Glad to meet you, Mr Kosler.
I’m glad to meet you, too, Mr Tallchief.
This is Maggie Walsh, our theolgian.
Glad to meet you, Miss Walsh.
I’m glad to meet you, too.
Ignatz Thugg, thermoplastics.
Hi, there.
Dr Milton Babble, the colony’s MD.
Nice to know you, Dr Babble.
Tony Dunkelwelt, our photographer and soil-sample expert.
Nice to meet you.
This gentleman here is Wade Frazer, our psychologist.
Glen Belsnor, our electronics and computer man.
Glad to meet you.
Mr Tallchief,
I am Roberta Rockingham, the sociologist.
It’s nice to meet you.
We’ve all been wondering and wondering about you.
Are you the Roberta Rockingham?
And this is our clerk-typist, Suzie Dumb.
Glad to know you Miss…
Smart. Suzanne Smart.
They think it’s funny to call me Susie Dumb.
Do you want to look around, or just what?
I’d like to know the purpose of the colony.
They didn’t tell me.
Mr Tallchief, they didn’t tell us either.
We’ve asked everyone in turn as he arrives
and no one knows.
There’s no problem.
They put up a slave satellite;
it’s orbiting five times a day and at night
you can see it go past.
When the last person arrive - that’ll be Morley -
we’re instructed to remote activate
the audio-cd transport aboard the satellite,
and from the tape we’ll get our instructions and an explanation
of what we’re doing and why we’re here
and all the rest of that crap;
everything we want to know except
«How do you make the refrig colder
so the beer doesn’t get warm?»
Yeah, maybe they’ll tell us that, too.
At Betelgeuse 4 we had cucumbers,
and we didn’t grow them from moonbeams, the way you hear...
We’ve got a linguist so evidently
there’re sentient organisms here,
but so far our expeditions ave been informal, not scientific.
That’ll change when...
Nothing changes.
Despite Specktowsky’s theory of God entering history
and starting time into motion again.
You can say that again. Mr Tallchief, are you part Indian?
Well, I’m about one-eight Indian.
You mean the name?
If you want to talk about that,
talk to Miss Wlash.
Theological matters don’t interest me.
These buildings are built lousy.
They’re allready ready to fall down.
We can’t get it warm when we need warm;
we can’t cool it when we need cool.
You know what I think?
I thing this place was built to last only a very short time.
Some bug squeaks in the night.
It’ll keep you awake for the first days or so.
By «day» of course I mean 24-hour period...
Listen Tallchief, don’t call Susie «dumb».
If there’s one thing she’s not it’s dumb.
Pretty too.
And do you notice how her...
I noticed, but I don’t think we should discuss it.
What line of work did you say you’re in, Mr Tallchief? Pardon?
You’ll have to speak up, she’s a little deaf.
What I said was...
You’re frightening her.
Don’t stand so close to her.
Can I get a cup of coffee?
Ask Maggie Walsh. She’ll fix one for you.
If I can get the damn pot to shut off when it’s hot...
I don’t see why our coffee pot won’t work.
They perfected them back in the twentieth century.
Think of it as being like Newton’s colour theory...
There is something strange about these people.
What it is?
They seem so... Overly bright.
I think they’re very nervous.
That must be it;
like me, they’re here without knowing why.
I wonder who or what it’s probing for?
Everything about colour that could be know was known by 1800.
And then Land came along with his two-light-scource and intensity theory,
and what had seemed a closed field was busted all over.
You mean there may be things about self-regulating coffee pots
that we don’t know?...
Were the monitoring bugs here when you arrived?
They began to show up after the buildings were erected.
I think they’re probably harmless.
You better trace them back to their source
and see what’s involved.
Not «you» Mr Tallchief. «We».
You’re as much a part of this operation as anyone here.
And you know just as much - and just a little - as we do.
After we get our instructions
we may find that the planners of this operation
want us to - or do not want us to - investigate
the indigenous life forms here.
We’ll see.
You’ve been here how long?
Wade Frazer, our psychologist, arrived first.
That was rougnly two months ago.
The rest of us have been arriving in dribs and drabs.
I hope Morley comes soon.
We’re dying to hear what this is all about.
You’re sure Wade Frazer doesn’t know?
Pardon?
He was the first one here.
Waiting for the rest of you.
Maybe this is a psychological experiment they’ve set up,
and Frazer is running it.
Without telling anyone.
What we’re afraid of is not that.
We have one vast fear, and that is this :
there is no purpose to us being here,
and we’ll never be able to leave here.
Everyone came here by noser : that was mandatory.
Well, a noser can land but it can’t take off.
Without outside help we’d never be able to leave here.
Maybe this is a prison...
we’ve thought of that.
Maybe we’ve all done something,
or anyhow someone thinks we’ve done something.
Have you done anything, Mr Tallchief?
Well, you know how it is.
I mean, you’re not a criminal or anything.
Not that I know of.
You look ordinary.
Thanks.
I mean, you don’t look like a criminal.
How about some Seagram’s VO?
Fine.
This is a second-rate planet.
You know, it’s a funny thing, all of us here together.
Thanks.
Now see, Tallchief, I’ve been here a mouth
and I have yet to fins someone I can talk, really talk to.
Every person here is completely involved with himself
and doesn’t give a damn about others.
Excluding you, of course, B.J.
I’m not offended. It’s true.
I don’t care about you, Babble, or any of the rest.
We have a initial curiosity when someone lands...
as we had about you.
But afterward, after we see the person
and listen to him a little...
No offence meant, Mr Tallchief.
You’ll talk with us for a while
and then you’ll withdraw into...
Take Belsnor.
All he thinks about is the refrigeration unit.
He has a phobia that it’ll stop working,
which you would gather from his panic
would mean the end of us.
He thinks the refregiration unit is keeping us from...
Boiling away.
But he’s harmless.
Oh, we’re all harmless.
Do you know what I do, Mr Tallchief?
I take pills.
I’ll show you.
Look at this.
The blue ones are stelazine,
which I use as an anti-emetic.
You understand :
I use it for that, but that isn’t its basic purpose.
Basically stelazine is a tranquillizer,
in doses of less than twenty milligrams a day.
In greater dose it’s an anti-hallucinogenic agent.
But I don’t take it for that either.
Now, the problem with stelazine
is that it’s a vasodilator.
I sometimes have trouble
standing up after I’ve taken some.
So she also takes a vasoconstrictor.
That’s this little white tablet.
It’s methamphetamine.
Now, this green capsule is...
One day, yours pills are going to hatch,
and some strange birds are going to emerge.
What an odd thing to say.
I meant they look like coloured birds’ egg.
Yes, I realize that.
But it’s still a strange thing to say.
This red cap...
that’s of course pentabarbital, for sleeping.
And then this yellow one, it’s norpramin,
which counterbalances the CNS depressive effect of the mellaril.
Now, this square orange tab, it’s new.
It has five layers on it which time-release on
the so-called «trickle principle».
A very effective CNS stimulant.
Then a...
She takes a central nervous system depressor,
and also a CNS stimulant.
Wouldn’t they cancel each other out?
One might say so, yes.
But they don’t.
I mean subjectively I can feel the difference.
I know they’re helping me.
She read the literature on them all.
She bought a copy of the PDR with her,
with list of side effects, contra-indications, dosage...
She knows as much about her pills as I do.
In fact, as much as the manufacturers know.
If you show her a pill, any pill,
she can tell you what it is,
what it does, what...
I remember a pill that had a side effect
- if you took an overdose - convulsions, coma and then death.
And in the literature, right after it told about
the convulsions, coma and death,
it said, «May Be Habbit Forming».
Which always struck me as an anticlimax.
It’s a strange world. Very strange.
There’s another noser landing.
It must be Morley.
We’d better go.
So at last, we’re finally all here.
Come on, Babble.
And you, Mr Eighth-Part-Indian-Tallchief.