erg. U wil asUm Dat hE iz an Old frend uv yOrz and Dat Dis iz A
sOSal EveniN. Du UZUal penaltEz ar invOkt fOr fAlUr tU komplI."

There was no signature. Lancaster stood for a moment, trying to imagine
what this might be. There was a brief chill of sweat on his skin. Then
he suppressed his emotions. He had nothing to fear. His record was clean
and he wasn't being arrested.

His mind wandered rebelliously off on something that had occurred to him
before. Admittedly the new phonetic orthography was more efficient than
the old, if less esthetic; but since little of the earlier literature
was being re-issued in modern spelling not too many books had actually
been condemned as subversive--only a few works on history, politics,
philosophy, and the like, together with some scientific texts restricted
for security reasons; but one by one, the great old writings were sent
to forgetfulness.

Well, these were critical times. There wasn't material and energy to
spare for irrelevant details. No doubt when complete peace was achieved
there would be a renaissance. Meanwhile he, Lancaster, had his
Euripides and Goethe and whatever else he liked, or knew where to borrow
it.

As for this message, they must want him for something big, maybe
something really interesting.

Nevertheless, his evening was ruined.

* * * * *

The Observatory was like most approved recreation spots--large and
raucous, selling unrationed food and drink and amusement at uncontrolled
prices of which the government took its usual lion's share. The angle in
this place was astronomy. The ceiling was a blue haze a-glitter with
slowly wheeling constellations, and the strippers began with
make-believe spacesuits. There were some rather good murals on the walls
depicting various stages of the conquest of space. Lancaster was amused
at one of them. When he'd been here three years ago, the first landing
on Ganymede had shown a group of men unfurling a German flag. It had
stuck in his mind, because he happened to know that the first expedition
there had actually been Russian. That was all right then, seeing that
Germany was an ally at the time. But now that Europe was growing
increasingly cold to the idea of an American-dominated world, the
Ganymedean pioneers were holding a good safe Stars and Stripes.

Oh, well. You had to keep the masses happy. They couldn't see that their
sacrifices and the occasional short wars were necessary to pr