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Stairway to the Stars, by Larry Shaw
The Project Gutenberg EBook of Stairway to the Stars, by Larry Shaw This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
Title: Stairway to the Stars
Author: Larry Shaw
Release Date: October 24, 2007 [EBook #23159]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK STAIRWAY TO THE STARS ***
Produced by Greg Weeks, LN Yaddanapudi and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+------------------------------------------------+ | Yes, Earth may be a sort of fenced-off area, | | so far as other intelligent races of the | | galaxy are concerned. But not for the | | grandiose reasons that some have imagined.... | +------------------------------------------------+
[Illustration]
STAIRWAY TO THE STARS
By Larry Shaw
+--------------------------------------------------------------+ | It was a stairway leading down, but it also led out into | | space--indirectly. And the situation had the aspects of a | | burlesque on Grand Hotel, but.... | +--------------------------------------------------------------+
John Andrew Farmer scowled at the octopus that sprawled on his living-room couch, rubbed his stubbly jaw with a stubby fist, and said, "I love you."
Farmer was uncomfortable. He was almost always uncomfortable, for various reasons; though it rarely if ever occurred to him, as he considered each individual irritant, that t