Paradox Gained (ebook)

Argumento de Paradox Gained (ebook)

DON'T TRY TO FIGURE A FINAL ANSWER TO THIS ONE. PHILOSOPHERS HAVE TRIED FOR AGES ... AND HAVE FAILED!

Excerpt

The closet in Benjamin Farlan's two-room bachelor apartment wasn't particularly large. In fact, it measured three feet wide by four feet deep. And by no stretch of the imagination could it have held three full-grown men. Not as full-grown as these were.

Besides that, the closet was already chock full of clothes, half a dozen pair of shoes and two suitcases.

It happened about seven-thirty. Ben Farlan had finished an unsatisfactory day at the laboratory, had his dinner at the automat, and picked up a fifth of brandy on the way home. Little Ben Farlan liked brandy. He liked to sit at night in his hundred-and-fifty-dollar chair and read something not too technical, but not too light, and have a snifter glass of brandy on the coffee table next to him.

On nights when he had nothing on his mind he could sit for hours that way, get through a whole book and possibly a third of his bottle before it was time for bed.

This wasn't one of the nights when he had nothing on his mind. Things were getting on the chaotic side at the lab. Already he had enough work on his shoulders for three men, and now the Army was taking young Robertson. Now it was Robertson! They let a man take eight long years of schooling, eight years of work to become a scientist, preparatory to assuming a useful place in society? and then what happens? They slap him into the Infantry for what would probably be an indefinite period, the world situation being what it was.1