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    Blind Man's Lantern
    Blind Man's Lantern
    Blind Man's Lantern
    Ebook74 pages54 minutes

    Blind Man's Lantern

    By George Luther Schelling and Allen Kim Lang

    3.5/5

    ()

    Read preview
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArchive Classics
    Release dateNov 27, 2013
    Blind Man's Lantern

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    Reviews for Blind Man's Lantern

    3.5/5

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    • 3/5
      Weird story. There are lost colonies, which (inevitably, according to the story) have backslid in technology. So the solution is to send people who are able to work at the tech level they have, and draw them along towards the modern world. Here, we have a farming community - of Hausa. The people chosen to go work with them - are an Amish man and his wife, who are willing to travel in the ship in order to get space for a proper farm. It goes very well until his habit of listening and not asking any questions, just trying to figure out what's expected and what's not, bite him badly - he breaks a major taboo (despite several mentions of the limitation). He then sits down and puzzles it out, with no further information or input - that rings badly, to me, it's too clearly authorial fiat that the problem becomes obvious so quickly. Not bad, not exciting.

    Book preview

    Blind Man's Lantern - George Luther Schelling

    The Project Gutenberg EBook of Blind Man's Lantern, by Allen Kim Lang

    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.net

    Title: Blind Man's Lantern

    Author: Allen Kim Lang

    Illustrator: Schelling

    Release Date: February 10, 2008 [EBook #24567]

    Language: English

    *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BLIND MAN'S LANTERN ***

    Produced by Greg Weeks, Geetu Melwani and the Online

    Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

    Transcriber's note.

    This etext was produced from Analog December 1962. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.

    Blind Man's Lantern

    Successful colonies among the stars require interstellar ships—but they require, also, a very special kind of man. A kind you might not think to look for....

    by

    Allen Kim Lang

    Illustrated by Schelling

    Walking home in the dark from an evening spent in mischief, a young man spied coming toward him down the road a person with a lamp. When the wayfarers drew abreast, the play-boy saw that the other traveler was the Blind Man from his village. Blind Man, the youngster shouted across the road, what a fool you be! Why, old No-Eyes, do you bear a lantern, you whose midnight is no darker than his noonday? The Blind Man lifted his lamp. It is not as a light for myself that I carry this, Boy, he said, it is to warn off you fools with eyes.

    —Hausa proverb

    The Captain shook hands with the black-hatted Amishman while the woman stood aside, not concerning herself with men's business. "It's been a pleasure to have you and Fraa Stoltzfoos aboard, Aaron, the Captain said. Ship's stores are yours, my friend; if there's anything you need, take it and welcome. You're a long way from the corner grocery."

    My Martha and I have all that's needful, Aaron Stoltzfoos said. We have our plow, our seed, our land. Captain, please tell your men, who treated us strangers as honored guests, we thank them from our hearts. We'll not soon forget their kindness.

    I'll tell them, the Captain promised. Stoltzfoos hoisted himself to the wagon seat and reached a hand down to boost his wife up beside him. Martha Stoltzfoos sat, blushing a bit for having displayed an accidental inch of black stocking before the ship's officers. She smoothed down her black skirts and apron, patted the candle-snuffer Kapp into place over her prayer-covering, and tucked the wool cape around her arms and shoulders. The world outside, her husband said, was a cold one.

    Now in the Stoltzfoos wagon was the final lot of homestead goods with which these two Amishers would battle the world of Murna. There was the plow and bags of seed, two crates of nervous chickens; a huge, round tabletop; an alcohol-burning laboratory incubator, bottles of agar-powder, and a pressure cooker that could can vegetables as readily as it could autoclave culture-media. There was a microscope designed to work by lamplight, as the worldly vanity of electric light would ill suit an Old Order bacteriologist like Martha Stoltzfoos. Walled in by all this gear was another passenger due to debark on Murna, snuffling and grunting with impatience. "Sei schtill, Wutzchen, Stoltzfoos crooned. You'll be in your home pen soon enough."

    The Captain raised his hand. The Engineer punched a button to tongue the landing ramp out to Murnan earth. Cold air rammed in from the outside winter. The four horses stomped their hoofs on the floor-plates, their breath spikes of steam. Wutzchen squealed dismay as the chill hit his nose.

    "We're reddi far geh, Captain, Stoltzfoos said. My woman and I invite you and your men to feast at our table when you're back in these parts, five years hence. We'll stuff you fat as sausages with onion soup and Pannhaas, Knepp and Ebbelkuche, shoo-fly pie and scharifer cider, if the folk here grow apples fit for squeezing."

    You'll have to set up planks outdoors to feed the lot I'll be bringing, Aaron, the Captain said. "Come five-years' springtime, when I bring your Amish neighbors out, I'll not forget to have in my pockets a toot of candy for the little

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