PRISONERS OF POWER

You pick up the catalog, open it to any page, take a random stab to choose your unexplored world, and take off into the wild blue yonder. Discover a planet, name it after yourself, determine its physical characteristics, do battle with any monsters you might encounter, and establish contact with intelligent beings if there are any. If not, become a Robinson Crusoe.

What for? Well, you'd be thanked and told you've made an enormous contribution, and some prominent experts would summon you for lengthy discussions. The school kids, especially the little ones, would gaze at you in awe. But your old teacher would ask only: "Are you still with the IRU?" Then he'd change the subject and look distressed and guilty because he felt responsible for your inability to outgrow the IRU. And your father would say: "H'mm" and hesitantly offer you a position as a lab assistant. And your mother would say: "Maxie, when you were little you drew rather well." And Pete would say: "How long can this go on? Haven't you disgraced yourself long enough?" And everybody would be right except you. So what do you do? You return to IRU headquarters, pick up the catalog, open it at random and stab blindly.

So that's exactly what Maxim does, and where does he end up? In this mess of a story.

Note: I am simply making this story available, and editing, the original was written by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky in russian, then was translated to English by Helen Saltz Jacobson.