A self-propelled forty-pound ball of steel impacting at Mach 1 didn’t leave much room for argument. - Dennis E. Taylor

That was Ambassador Gerrold, the delegate from New Zealand, a former Aussie. For whatever reason, he had never liked dealing with me. I was mystified by his animosity, as there didn’t seem to be any reason for an attitude, pro or con.

Some problems simply do not yield to reductionist techniques, particularly those that are dependent on emergent phenomena.

There wasn’t exactly a booming movie industry, of course. Vulcan was very much a frontier planet, and the economy was still bootstrapping through the basic requirements. We’d be another couple of decades before leisure activities became a major market segment.