"Because of a few mice?"

"Because of a few mice. And other creatures. Guinea pigs. Rabbits. Some kinds of birds and lizards. I haven"t taken a census-"

"But they"re the only ones left in all the world. What harm do they do?"

"What good?" demanded Bunting.

Cranwitz said, "The good of being there to look at. There was once a time when-"

Alvarez had heard that before. He said, with as much sympathy as he could pump into his voice (and, to his surprise, with a certain amount of real sympathy, too), "I know. There was once a time! Centuries ago! There were vast numbers of life forms like those you care for. And millions of years before that there were dinosaurs. But we have microfilms of everything. everything. No man need go ignorant of them." No man need go ignorant of them."

"How can you compare microfilms with the real thing?" asked Cranwitz.

Bunting"s lips quirked. "The microfilms don"t smell."

"The zoo was much larger once," said Cranwitz. "Year by year we"ve had to get rid of so many. All the large animals. All the carnivores. The trees. There"s nothing left but small plants, tiny creatures. Let them be."

Alvarez said, "What is there to do with them? No one wants to see them. Mankind is against you."

"Social pressure-"

"We couldn"t persuade people against real resistance. People don"t want to see these life distortions. They"re sickening; they really are. What"s there to do with them?" Alvarez"s voice was insinuating.

Cranwitz sat down now. A certain feverishness heightened the color in his cheeks. "I"ve been thinking. Someday we"ll reach out. Mankind will colonize other worlds. He"ll want animals. He"ll want other species in these new, empty worlds. He"ll start a new ecology of variety. He"ll..."

His words faded under the hostile stare of the other two.

Bunting said, "What other worlds are we going to colonize?"

"We reached the moon in 1969," said Cranwitz.

"Sure, and we established a colony, and we abandoned it. There"s no world in all the solar system capable of supporting human life without prohibitive engineering."

Cranwitz said, "There are worlds circling other stars. Earthlike worlds by the hundred of millions. There must be."

Alvarez shook his head. "Out of reach. We have finally exploited Earth and filled it with the human species. We have made our choice, and it is Earth. There is no margin for the kind of effort needed to build a starship capable of crossing light-years of s.p.a.ce. -Have you been immersing yourself in twentieth-century history?"

"It wasn"t the last century of the open world," said Cranwitz.

"So it was," said Alvarez dryly. "I hope you haven"t over-romanticized it. I"ve studied its madness, too. The world was empty then, only a few billions, and they thought it was crowded-and with "good reason. They spent more than half their substance on war and preparations of war, ran their economy without forethought, wasted and poisoned at will, let pure chance govern the genetic pool, and tolerated the deviants-from-norm of all descriptions. Of course, they dreaded what they called the population explosion, and dreamed of reaching other worlds as a kind of escape. So would we under those conditions.

"I needn"t tell you the combination of events and of scientific advances that changed everything, but just let me remind you briefly in case you are trying to forget. There was the establishment of a world government, the development of fusion power, and the growth of the art of genetic engineering; With planetary peace, plentiful energy, and a placid humanity men could multiply peacefully, and science kept up with the multiplication.

"It was known in advance exactly how many men the Earth could support. So many calories of sunlight reached the Earth, and, using that, only so many tons of carbon dioxide could be fixed by green plants each year, and only so many tons of animal life could be supported by those plants. The Earth could support two trillion tons of animal life-"

Cranwitz finally broke in, "And why shouldn"t all two trillion tons be human?"

"Exactly."

"Even if it meant killing off all other animal life?"

"That"s the way of evolution." said Bunting angrily. "The fit survive."

Alvarez touched the other"s knee again. "Bunting is right, Cranwitz," he said gently. "The toleosts replaced the placoderms, who had replaced the trilobites. The reptiles replaced the amphibians and were in turn replaced by the mammals. Now, at last, evolution has reached its peak. Earth bears its mighty population of fifteen trillion human beings-"

"But how?" demanded Cranwitz. "They live in one vast building over all the face of the dry land, with no plants and no animals beside, except what I have right here. And all the uninhabited ocean has become a plankton soup; no life but plankton. We harvest it endlessly to feed our people; and as endlessly we restore organic matter to feed the plankton."

"We live very well," said Alvarez. "There is no war; there is no crime. Our births are regulated; our deaths are peaceful. Our infants are genetically adjusted and on Earth there are now twenty billion tons of normal brain; the largest conceivable quant.i.ty of the most complex conceivable matter in the universe."

"And all that weight of brain doing what? what?"

Bunting heaved an audible sigh of exasperation but Alvarez, still calm, said, "My good friend, you confuse the journey with the destination. Perhaps it comes from living with your animals. When the Earth was in process of development, it was necessary for life to experiment and take chances. It was even worthwhile to be wasteful. The Earth was empty then. It had infinite room and evolution had to experiment with ten million species or more-till it found the the species. species.

"Even after mankind came, it had to learn the way. While it was learning, it had to take chances, attempt the impossible, be foolish or mad. -But mankind has come home, now. Men have filled the planet and need only to enjoy perfection."

Alvarez paused to let that sink in, then said, "We want want it, Cranwitz. The whole world wants perfection. It is in our generation that perfection has been reached, and we it, Cranwitz. The whole world wants perfection. It is in our generation that perfection has been reached, and we want want the distinction of having reached it. Your animals are in the way ." the distinction of having reached it. Your animals are in the way ."

Cranwitz shook his head stubbornly. "They take up so little room; consume so little energy. If all were wiped out, you might have room for what? For twenty-five more human beings? Twenty-five in fifteen trillion?"

Bunting said, "Twenty-five human beings represent another seventy-five pounds of human brain. With what measure can you evaluate seventy-five pounds of human brain?"

"But you already have billions of tons of it."

"I know," said Alvarez, "but the difference between perfection and not-quite-perfection is that between life and not-quite-life. We are so close now. All Earth is prepared to celebrate this year of 2430 AD. This is the year when the computer tens us that the planet is fun at last; the goal is achieved; all the striving of evolution crowned. Shall we fan short by twenty-five-even out of fifteen trillion. It is such a tiny, tiny flaw, but it is a flaw.

"Think, Cranwitz! Earth has been waiting for five billion years to be fulfilled. Must we wait longer? We cannot and will not force you, but if you yield voluntarily you will be a hero to everyone."

Bunting said, "Yes. In all future time men win say that Cranwitz acted and with that one single act perfection was reached."

And Cranwitz said, imitating the other"s tone of voice, "And men will say that Alvarez and Bunting persuaded him to do so."

"If we succeed!" said Alvarez with no audible annoyance. "But tell me, Cranwitz, can you hold out against the enlightened will of fifteen trillion people forever? Whatever your motives-and I recognize that in your own way I you are an idealist-can you withhold that last bit of perfection from so many?"

Cranwitz looked down in silence and Alvarez"s hand waved gently in Bunting"s direction and Bunting said not a word. The silence remained unbroken while slow minutes crept by.

Then Cranwitz whispered, "Can I have one more day with my animals?"

"And then?"

"And then-I won"t stand between mankind and perfection."

And Alvarez said, "I"ll let the world know. You will be honored." And he and Bunting left.

Over the vast continental buildings some five trillion human beings placidly slept; some two trillion human beings placidly ate; half a trillion carefully made love. Other trillions talked without heat, or tended the computers quietly, or ran the vehicles, or studied the machinery, or organized the microfilm libraries, or amused their fellows. Trillions went to sleep; trillions woke up; and the routine never varied.

The machinery worked, tested itself, repaired itself. The plankton soup of the planetary ocean basked under the sun and the cells divided, and divided, and divided, while dredges endlessly scooped them up and dried them and by the millions of tons transferred them to conveyors and conduits that brought them to every corner of the endless buildings.

And in every corner of the buildings human wastes were gathered and irradiated and dried, and human corpses were ground and treated and dried and endlessly the residue was brought back to the ocean. And for hours, while all this was going on, as it had gone on for decades, and might be doomed to go on for millennia, Cranwitz fed his little creatures a last time, stroked his guinea pig, lifted a tortoise to gaze into its uncomprehending eye, felt a blade of living gra.s.s between his fingers.

He counted them over, all of them-the last living things on Earth that were neither humans nor food for humans-and then he seared the soil in which the plants grew and killed them. He flooded the cages and rooms in which the animals moved with appropriate vapors, and they moved no more and soon they lived no more.

The last of them was gone and now between mankind and perfection there was only Cranwitz, whose thoughts still rebelliously departed from the norm. But for Cranwitz there were also the vapors, and he didn"t want to live.

And, after that, there was really perfection, for over all the Earth, through all its fifteen trillion inhabitants and over all its twenty billion tons of human brain, there was (with Cranwitz gone) not one unsettling thought, not one unusual idea, to disturb the universal placidity that meant that the exquisite nothingness of uniformity had at last been achieved.

Even though 2430 A.D. was published, and had been paid for very generously indeed, it left my neurotic fears unallayed. That story, which had been accepted, was written I while I still lived in Newton. The one which had not been taken was written in New York.

So I took THE GREATEST a.s.sET to John Campbell (we were now in the same city again for the first time in twenty-one years) and told him the story of IBM Magazine. IBM Magazine. I said I was handing him the one that they had rejected, but I wouldn"t if he would scorn to look at a story under those conditions. I said I was handing him the one that they had rejected, but I wouldn"t if he would scorn to look at a story under those conditions.

Good old John shrugged and said, "One editor doesn"t necessarily agree with another."

He read the story and bought it. I hadn"t told him about my crazy worry about being unable to write in New York, because I was ashamed of it and John was still the great man before whom I feared to show myself in my role as jacka.s.s. Still, by taking that story he had added one more favor to the many, many, he had done for me.

(And in case you"re worried, I might as well tell you that my years in New York have so far been even more prolific than the Newton years were. I stayed 57 months in my two-room office and in that period of time published 57 books.) NOTE: The population of Earth In 1970 Is estimated to be 3.68 billion. The present rate of increase doubles that population every 35 years. If this present rate of Increase can be maintained for 460 years then in the year 2430 A.D. the weight of human flesh and blood will be equal to the total weight of animal life now present on Earth. To that extent, the story above is not fiction.

THE GREATEST a.s.sET.

The Earth was one large park. It had been tamed utterly. Lou Tansonia saw it expand under his eyes as he watched somberly from the Lunar Shuttle. His prominent nose split his lean face into inconsiderable halves and each looked sad always-but this time in accurate reflection of his mood.

He had never been away so long-almost a month-and he antic.i.p.ated a none-too-pleasant acclimation period once Earth"s large gravity made its grip fiercely evident.

But that was for later. That was not the sadness of now as he watched Earth grow larger.

As long as the planet was far enough to be a circle of white spirals, glistening in the sun that shone over the ship"s shoulders, it had its primeval beauty. When the occasional patches of pastel browns and greens peeped through the clouds, it might still have been the planet it was at any time since three hundred million years before, when life had first stretched out of the sea arid moved over the dry land to fill the valleys with green.

It was lower, lower-when the ship sank down-that the tameness began to show.

There was no wilderness anywhere. Lou had never seen Earthly wilderness; he had only read of it, or seen it in old films.

The forests stood in rank and file, with each tree carefully ticketed by species and position. The crops grew in their fields in orderly rotation, with intermittent and automated fertilization and weeding. The few domestic animals that still existed were numbered and Lou wryly suspected that the blades of gra.s.s were as well.

Animals were so rarely seen as to be a sensation when glimpsed. Even the insects had faded, and none of the large animals existed anywhere outside the slowly dwindling number of zoos.

The very cats had become few in number, for it was much more patriotic to keep a hamster, if one had to have a pet at all.

Correction! Only Earth"s nonhuman animal population had diminished. Its ma.s.s of animal life was as great as ever, but most of it, about three fourths of its total, was one species only-h.o.m.o sapiens. And, despite everything the Terrestrial Bureau of Ecology could do (or said it could do), that fraction very slowly increased from year to year. And, despite everything the Terrestrial Bureau of Ecology could do (or said it could do), that fraction very slowly increased from year to year.

Lou thought of that, as he always did, with a towering sense of loss. The human presence was un.o.btrusive, to be sure. There was no sign of it from where the shuttle made its final orbits about the planet; and, Lou knew, there would be no sign of it even when they sank much lower.

The sprawling cities of the chaotic pre-Planetary days were gone. The old highways could be traced from the air by the imprint they still left on the vegetation, but they were invisible from close quarters. Individual men themselves rarely troubled the surface, but they were there, underground. All mankind was, in all its billions, with the factories, the food-processing plants, the energies, the vacu-tunnels.

The tame world lived on solar energy and was free of strife, and to Lou it was hateful in consequence.

Yet at the moment he could almost forget, for, after months of failure, he was going to see Adrastus, himself. It had meant the pulling of every available string.

Ino Adrastus was the Secretary General of Ecology. It was not an elective office; it was little-known. It was simply the most important post on Earth, for it controlled everything.

Jan Marley said exactly that, as he sat there, with a sleepy look of absent-minded dishevelment that made one I think he would have been fat if the human diet were so I uncontrolled as to allow of fatness.

He said, "For my-money this is the most important post on Earth, and no one seems to know it. I want to write it up."

Adrastus shrugged. His stocky figure, with its shock of hair, once a light brown and now a brown-flecked gray, his faded blue eyes nested in darkened surrounding tissues, finely wrinkled, had been an un.o.btrusive part of the administrative scene for a generation. He had been Secretary-General of Ecology ever since the regional ecological councils had been combined into the Terrestrial Bureau. Those who knew of him at all found it impossible to think of ecology without him.

He said, "The truth is I hardly ever make a decision truly my own. The directives I sign aren"t mine, really. I sign them because it would be psychologically uncomfortable to have computers sign them. But, you know, it"s only the computers that can do the work.

"The Bureau ingests an incredible quant.i.ty of data each day; data forwarded to it from every part of the globe and dealing not only with human births, deaths, population shifts, production, and consumption, but with all the tangible changes in the plant and animal population as well, to say nothing of the measured state of the major segments of the environment-air, sea, and soil. The information is taken apart, absorbed, and a.s.similated into crossfiled memory indices of staggering complexity, and from that memory comes answers to the questions we ask."

Marley said, with a shrewd, sidelong glance, "Answers to all all questions?" questions?"

Adrastus smiled. "We learn not to bother to ask questions that have no answer."

"And the result," said Marley, "is ecological balance."

"Right, but a special special ecological balance. All through the planet"s history, the balance has been maintained, but always at the cost of catastrophe. After temporary imbalance, the balance is restored by famine, epidemic, drastic climatic change. We maintain it now without catastrophe by daily shifts and changes, by never allowing imbalance to acc.u.mulate dangerously." ecological balance. All through the planet"s history, the balance has been maintained, but always at the cost of catastrophe. After temporary imbalance, the balance is restored by famine, epidemic, drastic climatic change. We maintain it now without catastrophe by daily shifts and changes, by never allowing imbalance to acc.u.mulate dangerously."

Marley said, "There"s what you once said-"Man"s greatest a.s.set is a balanced ecology.""

"So they tell me I said."

"It"s there on the wall behind you."

"Only the first three words," said Adrastus dryly.

There it was on a long Shimmer-plast, the words winking and alive: MAN"S GREATEST a.s.sET...

"You don"t have to complete the statement."

"What else can I tell you?"

"Can I spend some time with you and watch you at your work?"

"You"ll watch a glorified clerk."

"I don"t think so. Do you have appointments at which I may be present?"

"One appointment today; a young fellow named Tansonia; one of our Moon-men. You can sit in."

"Moon-men? You mean-"

"Yes, from the lunar laboratories. Thank heaven for the moon. Otherwise all their experimentation would take place on Earth, and we have enough trouble containing the ecology as it is."

"You mean like nuclear experiments and radiational pollution?"