The whole desert belonged to David Adam Smith, which showed his political pull. Who else on Earth was allowed a whole room to themselves, even—except maybe the Planetary Salvager, and the heads of the Material Recovery subdivisions and top Government people like that. But David Adam Smith had to have a complete desert. He ruled from the Holiday Probable centers of Reno to the gambling computers of Las Vegas, where the bubble dancer had come from.
I put a single grain of sand on the minima plate and stood clear.
"Press the blue button, Burns."
Burns wasn't even listening.
"Burns," I repeated.
"Hell, Morry, who cares about these damned specimens? How would you like to be expelled? No classification, no chance of a job, spend the rest of your life in a compulsory Holiday Reservation."
"How does he get away with it," muttered Lee, looking around at the open desert and the bare hills on the skyline. "Tomorrow we'll be back in a ten-to-a-room bachelor unit in the Nebraska suburbs, with a fine view of continuous rooftops to the Gulf, the Atlantic and the Great Lakes, and the nearest geological specimen at the bottom of the community hydroponic tanks. And here he is—the only David Adam Smith, the one original—with a desert of his own. It makes me sick."
John Thay shook his head.
"That's just emotional reaction, Lee. We were all busting ourselves to be admitted, to be one of the select three hundred. Just because we're being slung out doesn't mean the whole Desert Institute is no good. You know perfectly well why he has the place reserved."
"I know his excuse. I can just see him, flapping his cloak at the Salvagers and croaking, 'I don't care what you want to do with the ground, gentlemen. I must have open spaces to live in. Am I or am I not the only leading scientist of importance who has retained his sanity and continued to produce discoveries of unique value? Where is Firnivale, Williams, Hutk, Marrpole, and so on and so on? Lost. Missing. Probably in a sodden stupor in one of the South American City-States. I tell you, science cannot produce anything in laboratories. Science must have room to breathe!'"