Firth's World — Edition Insights

That was the beginning of the dream. The seed of the idea grew in John Firth's mind until it over-shadowed everything else. It became an obsession, driving him so that he had no peace.

During the course of a year Firth and the Stranger imported and installed the machinery to make the sphere livable: hydroponic tanks, air machines, gravitators, electric generators and an Atomic Power Core. In the crust of the planetoid they found enough fissionable material to keep Firth's world running for an eternity. They laid out the decorative landscaping, planned the living quarters, the laboratories, the amusement hall and the university.

It is interesting to speculate how much the Stranger contributed to the scheme; and it is an ironic speculation, for as soon as the larger idea took shape in Firth's mind, his only logical course was to murder the Stranger.

Firth could allow no outsider to know of the planetoid. To him it had become far more than a means of personal escape. It was to be an archive for the survival of John Firth's ideas, for the survival of civilization itself. John Firth believed that sincerely.

Firth's world--that magnificent dream which was like a holy crusade--was founded on murder, deception and greed. The reasoning of fanaticism engenders its own kind of ruthlessness. As soon as John Firth had disposed of the Stranger, he began to select his colonists. Men who by his definition, were not fools. He had to make his choice very carefully. If he misjudged his candidate and his proposition was rejected, Firth had given away his secret. Any man who refused him had to die. Murder was Firth's only guarantee of silence.

But he made few mistakes. John Firth was a good judge of men--his kind of men. All of them were wealthy, ambitious, brilliant. Nearly three hundred men and women were recruited.

They came here to escape; the record tells us that until we gag over the repetition. But to escape what? Taxes they resented unanimously, and restrictions on their freedom. They placed a value on the ownership of property that we can no longer understand. But, if you read the record closely, all that becomes superfluous. The thing they wanted to escape was responsibility. Responsibility to their fellow men.

Physically, Firth's world was a paradise. It still is. Yet the dissolution began before the last colonist had arrived. Here they had assembled their wealth--in terms of machines, comforts, books, art treasures, amusements, laboratory equipment. They were entirely free from the burden of taxation. But, somehow, their wealth lost its meaning.

They claimed they had not withdrawn from the world in order to hibernate and decay among their luxuries. They wanted freedom in order to create, to invent, to experiment as they pleased. And they had that in Firth's world: a maximum opportunity for the development of individual initiative. For a short time they turned out a wonderful assortment of new gadgets and new machines, but slowly their industry ground to a stop.

If they had faced the truth then--but they were far too human to admit the failure of the dream. Instead, they found a scapegoat. John Firth has left us a record of a conversation he had with Adam Boetz; it is typical of their thinking at the time.

Boetz, as you may know, was one of the outstanding physicists of his day; he had created and built Atomic Cores, Incorporated, until it was the largest power company in the Confederation.

John Firth met Boetz one morning on the golf course in the recreation cavern.

"Adam!" Firth cried, with his usual, boisterous good-humor. "I never thought I'd find you out here at this time of day."

"Why not?" The physicist shrugged. "I'm tired, Firth. I had to do my four hour shift in the light plant last night. Maybe I'll feel like working in the lab tomorrow--and maybe not. I'm scheduled for a shift in hydroponics then."

"The shifts are short, Adam, and--"

"Still too long for me. I'm not used to so much physical labor." The physicist's lips curled in a sneer. "So very democratic, isn't it, Firth? Back home I hired men to do that kind of work for me."

Firth clapped him heartily on the back. "But we have other compensations, Adam. Four hours out of twenty-four is a small price to pay for freedom."

"Twenty-eight hours a week. Remember the new labor law the Earth government put into effect before we left? It proscribed a maximum work week of twenty-five hours for every man. We came here to escape restrictions, but we've saddled ourselves with more hours of manual labor than the least skilled laborer has to do on Earth. Firth! I'm not a manual laborer; neither is anyone else you've brought here."