"Good enough. In the final analysis the doing's what counts, I always say, not the thinking."
He leaned over the navigation screen, propping himself on his two stiffly outstretched arms, and Stern knew he was no longer there for Linder, not while the Commander concentrated on the problem of landing the Probe. Stern moved along the catwalk past the open doorway of the Message Center to the curving permaquartz window from which the descent could be studied. As he watched Nodar's features rise toward him, first silver blue, then breaking into broad continents of green and tan and brown with brilliant clusters of metropolitan lights here and there on the night side, he kept wondering about all those meaningless picture signals they had intercepted. On Terra there had been a dangerous cult of non-communication way back in the late twentieth century, at the very time man's greatest era was dawning. But that, everyone realized today, was due to neurotic fear of the grandeur—and responsibilities—ahead. Could a whole planet still go neurotic?
It was a terrible question and he brooded on it, wondering how ruthless the Council's treatment must be to bring this civilization back to normalcy. Certainly it was a question to keep from Linder as long as possible; his tendency toward prompt and decisive action had to be checked as much as possible.
Then they were landing, the anti-gravity jets letting the Probe sink slowly into the waiting cradle until it stood still against the usual manscape of one- and two-hundred story buildings. "Stern to the bridge," Linder called on the intercom. "You'd better be part of the landing delegation—just in case they really are in symbol trouble."
"Thank you, sir!" Stern replied, grateful, and hurried to the bridge.
There were eight men in this first group to leave the craft. They started across the vast and empty checkerboard area leading from the gantry to the sparkling Reception Center building. At least in one respect, despite three decades of increasingly erratic behavior, Nodar was following standard procedure; interstellar spaceports always were laid out in huge black and white squares. From the distance which was emphasized by this linear perspective a solitary figure was coming toward them square by square.
Stern was the first to pinpoint the thing making the official greeter's walk so peculiar. His arms, instead of moving to the rhythm of his advancing body, were swinging back and forth at separate rates of speed. As the figure came closer, the Commander muttered: "It looks as if he's playing some kind of gymnastic game by himself. I don't think he cares whether we're here or not—a fine greeting, I must say!"