Story ID: Near or far, can't tell

External Since: Jul 10, 2003 Posts: 38

I'm sorry to bother the group with this, but a friend's remembered
a scene from an Asimov short story, and neither of us can place which one
it's from.

It's a straightforward scene: the viewpoint character sees some
completely unrecognizeable thing drifting into view (it's almost certainly
in space), and reflects that s/he has no idea whether it's a small thing
nearby or a huge thing distant, because it doesn't look enough like any
familiar object to guess at the size.

My *thought* is that it might be ``Found!'', in which space worms
discover and help themselves to an orbiting Multivac satellite, but I
can't find a copy offhand to verify, and if it's not that ... there are
a couple jillion other possibilities. I'm rereading ``The Complete
Stories, Volume 2'' right now, but it's not that complete. Can anyone
help, please?

--
Joseph Nebus
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External Since: Jul 08, 2003 Posts: 6

nebusj.DeleteThis@rpi.edu (Joseph Nebus) writes:

  > I'm sorry to bother the group with this, but a friend's remembered
> a scene from an Asimov short story, and neither of us can place which one
> it's from.
>
  > It's a straightforward scene: the viewpoint character sees some
> completely unrecognizeable thing drifting into view (it's almost certainly
> in space), and reflects that s/he has no idea whether it's a small thing
> nearby or a huge thing distant, because it doesn't look enough like any
> familiar object to guess at the size.
>
  > My *thought* is that it might be ``Found!'', in which space worms
> discover and help themselves to an orbiting Multivac satellite, but I
> can't find a copy offhand to verify, and if it's not that ... there are
> a couple jillion other possibilities. I'm rereading ``The Complete
> Stories, Volume 2'' right now, but it's not that complete. Can anyone
> help, please?

It's familiar to me. I don't think it's from "Found!", though. It
seems to me it's about someone who is daydreaming or just waking up.
I thought it might be "The Martian Way" during the space-floating
scenes, but I just skimmed it and it wasn't.

I just looked at "Found!" and here's the passage I think you mistook
for the one you're looking for.

"I made the next discovery. It looked like a stubby pen drifting
through the air. I just caught it out of the corner of my eye and it
registered as a pen.
"In zero gravity, things will drift out of pockets and float off....
"So my mind registered 'Pen' and I groped for it absently and, of
course, my fingers didn't close on it. Just reaching for something
sets up an air current that pushes it away...."

This seems to be of a similar flavor to the scene you describe, but of
course not a match.

Incidentally, I believe Asimov discussed once that he cleverly made
the narrator in "Found!" a woman, but only gave one clue in the text
that she was female...

MINOR SPOILER SPACE (in case you want to go looking for the clue
yourself).

The quote is "I've taken a couple of vacations on Settlement-Rho with
my husband, but I'm not exactly a seasoned hand (at space travel)."

Of course, given the current news in the US (Massachusetts and San
Francisco in particular), the gender of the narrator is not settled
conclusively by this quote anymore.

/
:@-) Scott
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