hat Lithia is my first extrasolar planet," Ruiz-Sanchez said. "I think I'd find any new, habitable world fascinating. The infinite mutability of life forms, and the cunning inherent in each of them… It's all amazing, and quite delightful.""Why shouldn't that be sufficient?" Cleaver said. "Why do you have to have the God bit too? It doesn't make sense.""On the contrary, it's what gives everything else meaning,"Ruiz-Sanchez said. "Belief and science aren't mutually exclusive — quite the contrary. But if you place scientific standards first, and exclude belief, admit nothing that's not proven, then what you have is a series of empty gestures. For me, biology is an act of religion, because I know that all creatures are God's — each new planet, with all its manifestations, is an affirmation of God's power.""A dedicated man," Cleaver said. "All right. So am I. To the greater glory of man, that's what I say."He sprawled heavily in his hammock. After a decent interval, Ruiz-Sanchez took the liberty of heaving up after him the foot he seemed to have forgotten. Cleaver didn't notice. The reaction was setting in."Exactly so," Ruiz-Sanchez said. "But that's only half the story. The other half reads, '…and to the greater glory of God.'""Read me no tracts, Father," Cleaver said. Then: "I didn't mean that. I'm sorry… But for a physicist, this place is hell… You'd better get me that aspirin. I'm cold.""Surely, Paul."Ruiz-Sanchez went quickly back into the lab, made up a salicylate-barbiturate paste in one of the Lithians' superb mortars, and pressed it into a set of pills. (Storing such pills was impossible in Lithia's humid atmosphere; they were too hygroscopic.) He wished he could stamp each pill "Bayer" before it set — if Cleaver's p
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