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eBook Category: Science Fiction
eBook Description: Forgotten Rocket. Caster was a typical city of the age. Its people were inoculated every year with U4--a drug which prevented them from asking the questions which ought to be asked. Clint Pearson had worked out a system for missing the inoculation. Only he knew that things were badly wrong. Somehow they had to make a break in the circle and think again about what a community should be like. He found allies in an outlawed, underground group. Wayne Presbon--a massive youth with the Viking spirit and two girls--Kali and Rhoda. But it was a small group to attempt to change a whole country. Until they stumbled on a piece of forgotten space age machinery. Then they could challenge the METIS--that sinister oracle which was the final power in the land. This novel, written in 1974, was never published in its original form. The work instead became used as the basis for 'Phoenix of Megaron' in the Space 1999 series.

eBook Publisher: Golden Apple, Wallasey, Published: UK, 2002
Fictionwise Release Date: August 2004

11 Reader Ratings:

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Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: eReader (PDB) [160 KB] , ePub (EPUB) [155 KB] , Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [140 KB] , Adobe Acrobat (PDF) [1.0 MB] , Palm Doc (PDB) [157 KB] , Microsoft Reader (LIT) [163 KB] , Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [193 KB] , hiebook (KML) [373 KB] , Sony Reader (LRF) [216 KB] , iSilo (PDB) [129 KB] , Mobipocket (PRC) [160 KB] , Kindle Compatible (MOBI) [212 KB] , OEBFF Format (IMP) [211 KB]
Words: 48225
Reading time: 137-192 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
Portable Document Format (PDF) Format:  Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud DISABLED
All Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED
ISBN: 1904073034

"22/9/P/6, Clint Pearson."

A corncrake voice, from a grille in the blank waiting room walls crackled into the silence. A tall, lanky young man, in the blue round-collar tunic of a top-grade citizen, surfaced slowly from the depths of a chair and moved without enthusiasm towards the wall marked RENEWALS. Two paces away the space beneath the notice silently folded back. He went through, without checking his stride, to a small square cubicle containing a seat and a heavily-instrumented table.

He sat down, pulled a dummy hand out of his deep side pocket and set it on a shallow metal tray. The robot mechanism took over. With slow care, the tray informed itself of the exact shape of the hand which lay on it. Below its surfaces a detailed scan of the structure was graphed and coded. A further stage in the machine got the message and adjusted itself with micro-metric accuracy. Then a hollow needle collected serums and slipped a tiny charge into a selected vein.

A brisker voice brought the record up to date and kindly reminded him of his basic data.

"22/9/P/6, Clint Pearson, Administrative grade two, Institute of Primary Education. Domiciled, Flat Seven, Block Nine, West Precinct. Second renewal received. Date as printed."

A white ivorine tablet, the size of a playing card, poked itself out to the left of the tray. He fished it out of its slot and checked the record.

He said, "Correct. Thank you," and removed the hand. Then he pulled a thin silver chain from round his neck and unclipped a similar card from the loop. This he placed in a slot to the right of the desk and hooked on the new one. As he tucked it back into the neck of his tunic, the delivery of the old card dropped a relay and the exit widened silently in the opposite wall. He went out, thoughtfully, into a long tree-lined avenue, avoided the moving walkway and went at his own sauntering pace along the narrow stationary pavement.

So he had got away with it again, That made the fourth time.

Each year, after age eighteen, the citizens of Caster were compelled to attend at the medical centre for inoculations to keep away all the known illnesses of mankind. That was reasonable enough; but at the same time, they were injected with a small dose of the powerful drug U4 which kept them for ever in a tranquil and uncritical frame of mind. Nothing worried them. Clint Pearson believed that some things ought to.

By using the dummy hand to take the injections, he had literally kept his head clear and he did not like all that he saw.

He was, in any event, a slightly off-beat character. In the very top fraction per cent on any intelligence scale, he had a brain like a sponge for facts. History and mathematics were his subjects. History for choice and pleasure; mathematics because his mind had an almost independent life of its own--like a fast computer.

So he had taken deliberate steps to keep his mental freedom. The hand was one of the medical school's best teaching models. Realistic enough to make him feel like some kind of nut; but it deceived the machine every time.

Seeing things as they really were gave a certain private satisfaction. But an instinct for self-preservation warned him to keep quite about his experience; even with his closest associate, Hal Lampon, whose round friendly face and everlasting grin seemed a guarantee to rule out treachery.