Worlds Apart Read Free Page A

I'm doing, you won't really have to prohibit atomic power."
    "But it's prohibited in the Constitution."
    "And rightly. Because if we wrote down all we know, and your children and their children worked on the problem, it would be solved one day. We hope it never is.
    "Before you were born, Dick, we even wondered if we should strangle all physical science, as a safeguard. Men can live quite well in a primitive state. They can even build a high culture without physics and chemistry and mathematics.
    "Well, you know we decided against that. But we were quite definite on this -- no atomic energy. Not now or ever. Don't talk about this again, Dick. I understand, but others won't. They'll start talking about the death penalty whenever you mention atomics. They'll mean it, too. Understand?"
    Dick understood. He wasn't a hero. He shivered at the thought of dying, as one or two people had died, for violating the Constitution.
    He talked rapidly of something else.
    About half an hour later, just before the rain, he left the laboratory and went home. He had his own house. His father had died when he was nine, his mother six years earlier. Since their father died, Dick and his sister had lived alone. He should have married a year, possibly two years since, but he had used the fact that he had to look after June, as an excuse not to.
    Lemon was quite a handsome littie township. When they began to build it the founder colonists had had the experience of building New Paris. They knew some of the things not to do, and they knew what a merely functional collection of dwellings would look like. Also, there had been no hurry to build Lemon. The men and women who were building it were still living in New Paris, and only when several families could move to Lemon did New Paris begin to die.
    There was no need for paved or tarred streets. The Mundan rains were so regular, so predictable, that they hardly affected the life of Lemon at all. Everything was hot and dry in the early afternoon; you got under cover about three o'clock and for an hour or two the heavens poured warm, clear water everywhere in a solid sheet. Then abruptly the rain stopped, and by the time the people appeared in the streets again there were dry spots here and there.
    Apart from the rains, Mundis's water was almost all underground. None of the young Mundans had ever seen a lake or even a pool. The idea of a sea was a very difficult thing to get across to them, even with the aid of pictures. That was one of the many gaps of understanding between the founder colonists and their children. There was not one of the old people who could not swim; there was not one of the young people who could.
    The street was hard earth, and as the years went by, the rains wearing it down and the sun baking it, it became harder and harder. Mundan soil was a sort of two-way valve. When there was too much water the soil let it drain straight through, easily and rapidly. But when the rain stopped and drying stared, the soil cracked, became a far better capillary agent than the soil of Earth, and sucked back moisture from the underground springs.
    In laying the street the colonists had simply reversed the procedure of Earth. It wasn't necessary to lay drains to lead the water down or away; instead, they had laid traps to prevent its coming up again. The soil itself was a better drain than they could construct, All they had to do was prevent its drawing the water back again when it dried.
    Few people talked to Dick as he made his way home. They didn't greet him because, sunk in his thoughts, he wasn't likely to notice them. To some extent people were already a little in awe of Dick. He knew more than anyone else of his generation. He was supposed to be brilliant. When he was silent merely because he was shy, he was often given credit for thinking deep thoughts.
    He looked up when he was still some distance from his house and saw Rog Foley at the door. He stopped abruptly and hid in the shadow of the