ear plastic, animated signs, the grass and
flowerbeds of a small park, people walking swiftly or idly. The huge
gyro-stabilized bulk did not move noticeably to the long Pacific
swell. Pelican Station was the colony's "downtown," its shops and
theaters and restaurants, service and entertainment.

Around it the water was indigo blue in the evening light, streaked
with arabesques of foam, and he could hear waves rumble against the
sheer walls. Overhead the sky was tall with a few clouds in the west
turning aureate. The hovering gulls seemed cast in gold. A haziness in
the darkened east betokened the southern California coastline. He
breathed deeply, letting nerves and muscles and viscera relax,
shutting off his mind and turning for a while into an organism that
merely lived and was glad to live.

Dalgetty's view in all directions was cut off by the other stations,
the rising streamlined hulks which were Pacific Colony. A few airy
flex-strung bridges had been completed to link them, but there was
still an extensive boat traffic. To the south he could see a blackness
on the water that was a sea ranch. His trained memory told him, in
answer to a fleeting question, that according to the latest figures
eighteen-point-three percent of the world's food supply was now being
derived from modified strains of seaweed. The percentage would
increase rapidly, he knew.

Elsewhere were mineral-extracting plants, fishery bases, experimental
and pure-research stations. Below the floating city, digging into the
continental shelf, was the underwater settlement--oil wells to
supplement the industrial synthesizing process, mining, exploration in
tanks to find new resources, a slow growth outward as men learned how
to go deeper into cold and darkness and pressure. It was expensive but
an over-crowded world had little choice.

Venus was already visible, low and pure on the dusking horizon.
Dalgetty breathed the wet pungent sea-air into his lungs and thought
with some pity of the men out there--and on the Moon, on Mars, between
worlds. They were doing a huge and heart-breaking job--but he wondered
if it were bigger and more meaningful than this work here in Earth's
oceans.

Or a few pages of scribbled equations, tossed into a desk drawer at
the Institute. Enough. Dalgetty brought his mind to heel like a
harshly trained dog. He was also here to work.

The forces he must encounter seemed monstrous. He was one man, alone
against he knew not w