The Project Gutenberg EBook of Adaptation, by Dallas McCord Reynolds

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Title: Adaptation

Author: Dallas McCord Reynolds

Illustrator: John Schoenherr

Release Date: March 4, 2008 [EBook #24749]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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[Illustration]

ADAPTATION

By MACK REYNOLDS

Illustrated by Schoenherr

_When a man has a great deal of knowledge, it becomes extremely easy
for him to confuse "knowledge" with "wisdom" ... and forget that the
antonym of "wisdom" is not "ignorance" but "folly."_

FORWARD

_Hardly had man solved his basic problems on the planet of his origin
than he began to fumble into space. Barely a century had elapsed in the
exploration of the Solar System than he began to grope for the stars._

_And suddenly, with an all but religious zeal, mankind conceived its
fantasy dream of populating the galaxy. Never in the history of the race
had fervor reached such a peak and held so long. The question of why was
seemingly ignored. Millions of Earth-type planets beckoned and with a
lemming-like desperation humanity erupted into them._

_But the obstacles were frightening in their magnitude. The planets and
satellites of Sol had proven comparatively tractable and those that were
suited to man-life were quickly brought under his dominion. But there,
of course, he had the advantage of proximity. The time involved in
running back and forth to the home planet was meaningless and all
Earth's resources could be thrown into each problem's solving._

_But a planet a year removed in transportation or even communication?
Ay! this was another thing and more than once a million colonists were
lost before the Earthlings could adapt to new climates, new flora and
fauna, new bacteria--or to factors which the most far out visionary had
never fancied, perhaps the lack of something never before missed._

_So, mad with the lust to seed the universe with his kind, men sought
new methods. To a hundred thousand worlds they