Doctor Fortun handed him a rolled, tissue-thin, metallic cylinder for an answer.
"Those are your orders from the Council," she said soberly. "I'm but an agent, as you know. Just one among the scientists who will be in charge upon arrival. Do not read it now. It is final. Take this card, it's a permit to enter a scientific News-Casting Booth and scan all available data for the past year. We know that out of the remaining third, roughly three or four hundred million at best will be transportable. The balance are far too old to withstand the journey—their power potential is negligible, and in any case, they'd much rather die than leave. But it's the three or four hundred million transportables who are highly useful for the particular purpose of the Council, that we must ... or rather," she smiled faintly, "you must convince." She opened a drawer and extracted a gleaming metal disk. "These credits will be ample," she said, extending it to Mark.
Lynn's eyes widened. "Ten thousand credits? I've had to work as many years for that amount!"
Doctor Fortun smiled. "May you live to spend them, Spacer Lynn," she said cryptically. "Greetings!"
Mark Lynn wanted to speak, to ask her social name, anything that would delay his departure from her office. But he knew the interview was at an end even before she turned to the mass of figures and data on her desk.
Spacer Lynn threw a rapid glance around the room. They were still alone, but he knew that the entire interview had been minutely recorded—the august body of scientists of the first order who composed the Council took no chances, especially with Internationals, the adventurers, the pioneers who opened up new worlds for the maddeningly impersonal efficiency of the Council to take over and remold. But Mark didn't care. There was little that they didn't know about him, in detail.
Mark Lynn in common with a few million others was a product of his time and station. One of the immense legion of war orphans that the constant and increasingly destructive warfare of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries had left behind, he was automatically a ward of the Executive Council.
Now that wars had finally been abolished as wasteful and inefficient, the ultimate goal of the social order was "Achievement." It had become a religion. It was instilled into infantile minds with the first toddling steps; it was propagated through a thousand subtle means; it was a constant threat in the background of every living being under the government of Terra. Achievement was the inexorable law. It might mean producing so many tons of vitaminic flora during a span of so many years, or perhaps the production of metallic substances, or the exploration of so many worlds, as in Mark's case. Regardless of the task imposed, its final, successful and unequivocal completion was the "Achievement" for that particular being. And, woe unto him who failed to achieve!
In Mark Lynn's case, having been given over to the International Police for training as an astrogator and having finished his course with brilliant honors, he had been given a first-class exploration rating, and trained in outer space navigation. Years of successful interplanetary and outer space exploration and research had given him an unequaled experience as an explorer. It was his duty to give the Council implicit obedience—and to reserve his thinking for the problems of unexplored worlds and outer space. The Council, Rulers of the World State, frowned on thinking without directives, especially by those beyond control, such as the Internationals, of which Mark Lynn was a great leader.