REFERENT
By BRETT STERLING
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Thrilling Wonder Stories October 1948.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Roby Morrison fidgeted. Walking in the tropical heat he heard the wetthunder of waves on the shore. There was a green silence on OrthopedicIsland.
It was the year 1997, but Roby did not care.
All around him was the garden where he prowled, all ten years of him.This was Meditation Hour. Beyond the garden wall, to the north, werethe High I.Q. Cubicles where he and the other boys slept in specialbeds. With morning they popped up like bottle-corks, dashed intoshowers, gulped food, and were sucked down vacuum-tubes half across theisland to Semantics School. Then to Physiology. After Physiology he wasblown back underground and released through a seal in the great gardenwall to spend this silly hour of meditative frustration, as prescribedby the island Psychologists.
Roby had his opinion of it. "Damned silly."
Today, he was in furious rebellion. He glared at the sea, wishing hehad the sea's freedom to come and go. His eyes were dark, his cheeksflushed, his small hands twitched nervously.
Somewhere in the garden a chime vibrated softly. Fifteen more minutesof meditation. Huh! And then to the Robot Commissary to stuff his deadhunger as taxidermists stuff birds.
And, after the scientifically pure lunch, through the tube again toSociology. Of course, late in the warm green afternoon, games would beplayed in the Main Garden. Games some tremble-brained Psychologist hadevolved from a nightmare haunted sleep. This was the future! You mustlive, my lad, as the people of the past, of the year 1920, 1930 and1942 predicted you would live! Everything fresh, brisk, sanitary, too,too fresh! No nasty old parents about to give one complexes. Everythingcontrolled, dear boy!
Roby should have been in a perfect mood for something unique.
He wasn't.
When the star fell from the sky a moment later he was only moreirritated.
The star was a spheroid. It crashed and rolled to a stop on the hotgreen grass. A small door popped open in it.
Faintly, this incident recalled a dream to the child. A dream whichwith superior stubbornness he had refused to record in his Freud Bookthis morning. The dream-thought was in his mind at the exact instantthat the star-door popped wide and some 'thing' emerged.
Some 'thing'.
Young eyes, seeing an object for the first time, have to make afamiliar thing of it. Roby didn't know what this 'thing' was steppingfrom the sphere. So, scowling, Roby thought of what it mostresembled.
Instantly the 'something' became a certain thing.
Warm air ran cold. Light flickered, form changed, melted, shifted asthe thing evolved into certainty!
Startled, a tall thin pale man stood beside the metal star.
The man had pink, terrified eyes. He trembled.
"Oh, I know you." Roby was disappointed. "You're only theSandman."
"Sand—man?"
The stranger quivered like heat rising from boiling metal. His shakinghands went wildly up to touch his long coppery hair as if he'd neverseen