PIONEERS
BY BASIL WELLS
Deception can be good or bad, depending
on how you look at it and on the circumstances.
Dorav and Tzal had the right way of looking at
it, and the circumstances were undoubtedly prime.
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, June 1955.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Gradually he became aware of resilient rubber and plastic supporting him. He lay on his back, heels together and toes lopped outward, elbows crowding uncomfortably into his ribs. His body shifted. The month-long hibernation was over.
A delicious feeling of completeness—of achievement—swept over him. He, Dorav Brink, had escaped from the endless boredom and idleness of Earth's mechanized domes, after all. Here on Sulle II there would be adventure and work in plenty.
His eyes opened. In the soft yellowish light which flooded the small square room, he saw a dozen other couches, similar to that on which he lay. Most of them were occupied. His gaze probed the huddled figures searching for the girl Rea.
He had met her aboard the space lighter enroute to the interstellar liner that was to carry them to Sulle II. Then they had been given their preliminary capsules of iberno and he remembered no more.