computer when they broke in to arrest him.
"Arrest me? What for?" he asked.
"What for?" the leader of the Little Boys asked. "Treason, of course?'
Stipock looked puzzled. "But, gentlemen, I changed my mind about the revolution. I'm no longer involved."
The Little Boys looked at each other, bewildered. Then they burst out laughing. "Changed his mind," they said as they took him to prison. "No longer involved!" It was hilarious.
As they laughed, Garol knew there was no hope for him. He'd be deported at the very least. Why hadn't he quit the conspiracy sooner? Why had he believed so long that it would do any good?
"Why, God, didn't you tell me sooner?" he asked ironically. But today he wasn't tired, so the only answer he got from God was a low chuckle in his mind. Garol didn't get the joke, but he laughed right along. Whatever the punch line was, when he finally understood it, he knew it would be good. No one could tell a joke like God.
THE STARS THAT BLINK
If the goodman of die house had known in what watch the thief would come, he would have watched, and would not have suffered his house to be broken up.
Therefore be ye also ready: for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of man cometh.
-- Matthew 24:43-44
The Governor owned a telescope, and knew how to use it. It was far from being the most powerful telescope in the colony, but the others were photographic, and the Governor's was the only scope on Answer that one could look through with the naked eye.
And he looked. Other men might relax with liquor and conversation, or in rough games, or with books, or with sex, but the Governor's diversion was looking at the stars.
Answer was only three hundred years old, as a human colony. But it was a good world, and already the original 334 inhabitants had grown to more than five million. Families averaged six children. There were no natural predators, and disease was rare and never killed. Here where somec never reached, of course, lives were still short-- few lived more than a hundred years. But the Governor, who was only forty, could still remember when there hadn't been a building over two stories tall in the world
Now he stood on the top of the government building, watching the sky. He lived, with his wife and the four children who remained at home, in a suite at the top of the building. It was luxurious by the standards of Answer-- a separate room for each of them, and the cooking and eating were not done in the same place. Luxury. Opulence. But not exorbitant-- dozens of rich families on Answer lived better than he.
Indeed, he was Governor not so much because he was the most outstanding man on Answer, but because he was willing to take the job. And he was willing to take it because it did not take all his day or all his mind. It left him hours and thoughts of peace, and paid him a good living, and gave him and his family respect, and besides, he was quite a good governor and he knew it. He was respected, and his judgments and decisions were honored and obeyed without trouble. They hadn't had to call a legislature since he had been elected.
After the day, however, of duty, he came up here.
"Why do you watch the stars so much?" one of his assistants had asked him one day.
"Because," he answered, "they never fall asleep when I talk to them."
But it was a good question, and he wondered at the answer.
He knew that around many of them (and he could name which ones, and point them out, and say how far away they were) orbited the planets of the Empire. Billions and billions of people-- it was difficult for him to comprehend. He knew that if he could count all the stars he could see through his telescope in one year, it would not equal the number of people in the Empire. And yet when he thought of people, he could only think of Answer, where whole continents were still uninhabited, where no city had more than thirty thousand people, where farms were still being carved in virgin land and mines were still discovering untouched metal. The Empire may be large and old, but here mankind was new, was small, was still humbled by the vastness of a planet, even though men had conquered the far greater