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"I've got this beautiful panoramic three-dimensional painting of Mars based on Martian photos. It's 30 feet wide. You can pick out every pebble on the Martian landscape. And who'd have dreamed you could do that?"
- Arthur C. Clarke
 |
| Claim Beacon | ||
| A electronic device that proclaims that a planet has been claimed by a given party. |
| "This is an outrage, you five-eyed bandit!" the assistant military
attache yelled, thrusting to the fore.
"This planet was discovered by a
Corps scouting vessel! It belongs to
us." "I shall overlook your tone, Major," the Groaci whispered acidly, "induced no doubt by envy at my race's superior optical endowments and simply inquire whether any Terran claim to the world was ever registered with the appropriate tribunals?" "Of course not," Pennyfool snapped. "We didn't want every claim-jumping Tom, Dick and Irving in this end of the Arm swarming in here to see what they could loot."
 (Shilth the Groaci from 'Retief, the Long-Awaited Master' by Keith Laumer) "An unfortunate oversight." "But the Survey boat planted a claim beacon. You must have seen it." "Dear me, now that you mention it I seem to recall my chaps vaporizing some sort of electronic noise-maker which was interfering with radio reception. Too bad that not a trace remains." |
| Technovelgy from Retief, the Long-Awaited Master,
by Keith Laumer. Published by Worlds of IF in 1969 Additional resources -
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'It diverts integers of the data, the fundamental message-units, so that they no longer agree.'
'Clothes are no longer made from dead fibers of fixed color and texture that can approximate only crudely to the vagrant human figure...'
'Books were just a commodity that had to be produced, like jam or bootlaces.'
'...it rears and spreads its fan. It can pick one man out of a crowd.'
'...a new plastic with the characteristics of an avian eggshell.'
'It was a pushpot, which could not possibly be called a jet plane because it could not possibly fly. Only it did.'
