Imperial Earth

The “Sec was the standard size of all such units, determined by what could fit comfortably in the normal human hand. At a quick glance, it did not differ greatly from one of the small electronic calculators that had started coming into general use in the late twentieth century. It was, however, infinitely more versatile, and Duncan could not imagine how life would be possible without it.

Because of the finite size of clumsy human fingers, it had no more controls than its ancestors of three centuries earlier. There were fifty neat little studs; each, however, had a virtually unlimited number of functions, according to the mode of operation-for the character visible on each stud changed according to the mode. Thus on ALPHANUMERIC, twenty-six of the studs bore the letters of the alphabet, while ten showed the digits zero to nine. On MATH, the letters disappeared from the alphabetical studs and were replaced by X, +, - , —, =, and all the standard mathematical functions.

Another mode was DICTIONARY. The “Sec stored over a hundred thousand words, whose three-line definitions could be displayed on the bright little screen, steadily rolling over page by page if desired. CLOCK

and CALENDAR also used the screen for display, but for dealing with vast amounts of information it was desirable to link the “Sec to the much larger screen of a standard Comsole. This could be done through the unit’s optical interface-a tiny Transmit Receive bull’s-eye operating in the near ultraviolet As long as this lens was in visual range of the corresponding sensor on a Comsole, the two units could happily exchange information at the rate of megabits per second. Thus when the “Sec’s own internal memory was saturated, its contents could be dumped into a larger store for permanent keeping; or, conversely, it could be loaded up through the optical link with any special data required for a particular job.

Duncan was now employing it for its simplest possible use-merely as a speech recorder, which was almost an insult to a machine of such power. But first there was an important matter to settle-the question of security.

An easily remembered word, preferably one that would never be employed in this context, would be the simplest key. Better still, a word that did not even exist-then it could never accidentally trigger the “Sec’s memory.

Suddenly, he had it. There was one name he would never forget; and if he deliberately misspelled it….

He carefully pecked Out KALINDY, followed by the sequence of instructions that would set up the memory. Then he unplugged the tiny radio mike pinned it on his shirt, spoke a test message, and checked that the machine would play it back only after it had been given the correct order.

Duncan had never kept a diary, but he had decided to do so as soon as he arrived on Earth. In a few weeks he would meet more people and visit more places than in the whole of his preceding life, and would certainly have experiences that could never be repeated when he returned to Titan. He was determined to miss nothing that could be helped, for the memories he was storing now would be of inestimable value in the years ahead. How many times in his old age, he wondered,

would he play back these words of his youth … ? 112276 June 12. I’m still adapting to Earth gravity, and don’t think I’ll ever get really used to it. But I can stand for an hour at a time now, without developing too many aches and pains. Yesterday I saw a an actually jumping. I could hardly believe my eyes….

“George, who thinks of everything, has arranged a masseur for me. I don’t know if that’s helped at all, but it’s certainly an interesting experience.”

Duncan stopped recording and contemplated this slight understatement. Such luxuries were rare on Titan, and he had never before had a massage in his life. Bernie Patras, the amiable and uninhibited young man who had visited him, had shown a remarkable (indeed, startling) knowledge of physiology, and had also given Duncan much useful advice. He was a specialist in treating off-worlders, and recommended one sovereign cure for gravitational complaints. “Spend an hour a day floating in a bath-at least for the first month. Don’t let your schedule squeeze this out, no matter how busy you are. If you have to, you can do a lot of work in a tub-reading, dictating, and so forth. Why, the Lunar Ambassador used to hold briefings with just his nose and mouth above water. Said he could think better that way….”

That would certainly be an undiplomatic spectacle, Duncan told himself-unique even in this city, which had probably seen everything.

“I’ve been here three days now, and this is the first time I’ve had the energy-and the inclination-and the opportunity-to put my thoughts in order.