The Astral Mirror Read Free Page B

it: Starship crews would be forced to think ahead in terms of centuries. They’d never know what would be coming up next, what the next world would hold for them. What an age for adventure!”
    The mathematician chuckles. “And if a star traveler should deposit a few dollars in a savings account, then come back several centuries later, what an age for compound interest!”
    The science fiction writer turns his beaming face to the panel of experts and thanks each one of them in turn.
    “You have certainly answered my problem. I can now write about interstellar ramjets, where the crews are frozen during the travel time from one star to the next. Why—the crew members will become virtually immortal! Who needs Mars? The rest of the universe is going to be much more exciting!”

Free Enterprise
     
    Much has been said and written about the failures of American industry and the successes of the Japanese. Here is a tale that examines an industry I know rather well, publishing, and shows why we may soon be buying our books from Japan, as well as our automobiles and television sets. If any of my friends in the publishing industry take umbrage at this candid appraisal, good !

The Idea
     
    It happened at approximately midnight, late in April, when they both should have been studying for their final exams.
    Mark Moskowitz (a.k.a. “Mark the Monk”) and Mitsui Minimata shared a rented room over one of Berkeley’s shabbier head shops, less than a half-mile from the campus. Mark was going for his doctorate in logic; Mitsui was working doggedly toward his in electrical engineering. The few friends they had, years later, claimed that the idea was probably inspired by the various strange aromas wafting up from the shop below their room.
    Mark’s sobriquet was two-edged: not only did he have the heavy-browed, hairy, shambling appearance of an early homonid; he was, despite his apeish looks, exceedingly shy, bookish, and unsocial to the point of reclusiveness. Mitsui was just the opposite: tiny, constantly smiling, excruciatingly polite, and an accomplished conversationalist. Where Mark sat and pondered, Mitsui flashed around the room like an excited electron.
    He was struggling with a heavy tome on electrical engineering, just barely managing to stagger across the room with it, heading for his reading chair, when he tripped on the threadbare rug and went sprawling face-first. Mark, snapped out of his glassy-eyed introspection by the thud of his roommate’s impact on the floor, spent a moment focusing his far-sighted eyes on the situation. As Mitsui slowly sat up and shook his head groggily, Mark heaved himself up from the sagging sofa which served as his throne, shambled over to his friend, picked the little Japanese up with one hand, the ponderous textbook in the other, and settled them both safely on Mitsui’s reading chair.
    “Thank you ten thousand times,” said Mitsui, after a sharp intake of breath to show that he was unworthy of his friend’s kindness.
    “You ought to pick on books your own size,” Mark replied. For him, that amounted to a sizzling witticism.
    Mitsui shrugged. “There are no books my size. Not in electrical engineering. They all weigh a metric ton.”
    Mark glared down at the weighty tome. “I wonder why they still print books on paper. Wouldn’t electrons be a lot lighter?”
    “Yes, of course. And cheaper, as well.”
    “H’mm,” said Mark.
    “H’mm,” said Mitsui.
    And they never spoke of the idea again. Not to each other, at least. A month later they received their degrees and went their separate ways.

The Presentation
     
    Gene Rockmore blinked several times at the beetle-browed young man sitting in his office. “Mark M. Moskowitz, Ph.D.,” the visitor’s card said. Nothing else. No phone number or address. Rockmore tried to engage the young man in trivial conversation while studying him. He looked like a refugee from a wrestling school, despite his three-piece suit and conservative