At precisely seven o'clock the telaudio on the headboard of Joe's bed turned itself on. Sounds pricked the balloon of his disturbed slumber, tugged his mind out to wakefulness. He rolled over and sat up, listening, rubbing his lanky legs.
Instead of the usual symphonic music, he heard an urgent voice, obviously ad-libbing:
"—be very, very careful. The criminals—the Aarnians—have still not been found. All residents of Ofei and vicinity are warned—this warning cannot be overemphasized—"
Joe reached out and clicked on the screen. The announcer's tunic was wrinkled, his sash was awry. He looked as if he'd been up all night.
"—are advised to stay within the city limi—"
Joe snapped off the telaudio and glanced over at Sarah's bed. She was snoring delicately, one smooth arm pillowing her mass of blue-black hair. Better that she doesn't hear any more about that business, he decided firmly.
Joe liked the simple life. No servants, no flunkies, although he could have afforded a dozen. Five sunshiny rooms on the Great Canal, with a nice view of Mars Memorial Park on the bank opposite. He robed himself against the early morning chill and headed for the kitchen. His head ached faintly and, to judge by what little he could remember of it, he'd had a dilly of a nightmare. Something about ... being chased, or something? Or smothered by a....
Even as he stopped in his tracks to try to pin it down, the memory broke, dissolved as if in flight. Frowning, he pushed through the kitchen door and crossed to the deep-freeze, slid it open and rummaged in it.
The nightmare wasn't important surely, but he mulled it over with interest as he prepared breakfast, for Joe, being rather well adjusted, dreamed rarely, and then mostly about Iowa, back on Earth ... a long-ago picture of a twelve-year-old boy, his first day in college; the boy sitting under his shining Projector, surrounded by a group of thunderstruck Psychologists; the quick death of their initial skepticism, and in its place a growing wonder as it became evident that, although a History spool was whirling in the scanner and the thought-helmet functioning to perfection, the boy's mind was receiving neither spoken text nor images....
"You don't feel anything?" a Psychologist asked skeptically.