Methuselah's Children Read Free

have produced on the art of writing, you’ll find it here. Wonderful discussions of methods, overcoming blocks, writing on spec and to order can be found throughout, as well as expert (and still pertinent) commentary on the business of writing.

    The letters also make for a most excellent “director’s commentary” while reading the stories and novels, and will provide insights and provoke second and third readings to find the good stuff that you may have missed the first go round.

    So what follows in this collection is a passage through the Golden Age of science fiction that is, not coincidentally, the First Golden Age of Robert A. Heinlein. If it wasn’t for the juveniles and adult novels where Heinlein first laid down the themes and methods that defined a Heinlein tale, the mighty philosophical fiction triumvirate of Starship Troopers , Stranger in a Strange Land and The Moon is a Harsh Mistress might well have become lost in the ether. Furthermore, an American literary masterwork, Have Space Suit−Will Travel , would never have existed at all.

PART ONE

1
    "Mary Sperling, you're a fool not to marry him!" Mary Sperling added up her losses and wrote a check before answering, "There's too much difference in age." She passed over her credit voucher. "I shouldn't gamble with you-sometimes I think you're a sensitive."
    "Nonsense! You're just trying to change the subject. You must be nearly thirty . . . and you won't be pretty forever." Mary smiled wryly. "Don't I know it!"
    "Bork Vanning can't be much over forty and he's a plus citizen. You should jump at the chance."
    "You jump at it. I must run now. Service, Ven."
    "Service," Ven answered, then frowned at the door as it contracted after Mary Sperling. She itched to know why Mary would not marry a prime catch like the Honorable Bork Vanning and was almost as curious as to why and where Mary was going, but the custom of privacy stopped her.
    Mary had no intention of letting anyone know where she was going. Outside her friend's apartment she dropped down a bounce tube to the basement, claimed her car from the robopark, guided it up the ramp and set the controls for North Shore. The car waited for a break in the traffic, then dived into the high-speed stream and hurried north. Mary settled back for a nap.
    When its setting was about to run out, the car beeped for instructions; Mary woke up and glanced out. Lake Michigan was a darker band of darkness on her right. She signaled traffic control to let her enter the local traffic lane; it sorted out her car and placed her there, then let her resume manual control. She fumbled in the glove compartment.
    The license number which traffic control automatically photographed as she left the controlways was not the number the car had been wearing.
    She followed a side road uncontrolled for several miles, turned into a narrow dirt road which led down to the shore, and stopped. There she waited, lights out, and listened. South of her the lights of Chicago glowed; a few hundred yards inland the controlways whined, but here there was nothing but the little timid noises of night creatures. She reached into the glove compartment, snapped a switch: the instrument panel glowed, uncovering other dials behind it. She studied these while making adjustments. Satisfied that no radar watched her and that nothing was moving near her, she snapped off the instruments, sealed the window by her and started up again.
    What appeared to be a standard Camden speedster rose quietly up, moved out over the lake, skimming it-dropped into the water and sank. Mary waited until she was a quarter mile off shore in fifty feet of water; then called a station. "Answer," said a voice.
    " 'Life is short-' "
    " '-but the years are long.' "
    " 'Not," Mary responded, " 'while the evil days come not.' "
    "I sometimes wonder," the voice answered conversationally. "Okay, Mary. I've checked you."
    "Tommy?"
    "No-Cecil Hedrick. Are your controls cast loose?"
    "Yes. Take