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Beside Still Waters, by Robert Sheckley
The Project Gutenberg EBook of Beside Still Waters, by Robert Sheckley This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net
Title: Beside Still Waters
Author: Robert Sheckley
Illustrator: Virgil Finlay
Release Date: July 18, 2009 [EBook #29446]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
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BESIDE STILL WATERS
BY ROBERT SHECKLEY
When people talk about getting away from it all, they are usually thinking about our great open spaces out west. But to science fiction writers, that would be practically in the heart of Times Square. When a man of the future wants solitude he picks a slab of rock floating in space four light years east of Andromeda. Here is a gentle little story about a man who sought the solitude of such a location. And who did he take along for company? None other than Charles the Robot.
Mark Rogers was a prospector, and he went to the asteroid belt looking for radioactives and rare metals. He searched for years, never finding much, hopping from fragment to fragment. After a time he settled on a slab of rock half a mile thick.
Rogers had been born old, and he didn't age much past a point. His face was white with the pallor of space, and his hands shook a little. He called his slab