{"product_id":"a-case-of-conscience-isbn-9780345438355","title":"A Case of Conscience","description":"\u003cb\u003eWinner of the Hugo Award\u003c\/b\u003e • \u003cb\u003eThe future of Earth will rely upon one man’s sense of right and wrong. . . .\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFather Ruiz-Sanchez is a dedicated man—a priest who is also a scientist, and a scientist who is also a human being. He has found no insoluble conflicts in his beliefs or his ethics . . . until he is sent to Lithia. There he comes upon a race of aliens who are admirable in every way except for their total reliance on cold reason; they are incapable of faith or belief.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eConfronted with a profound scientific riddle and ethical quandary, Father Ruiz-Sanchez soon finds himself torn between the teachings of his faith, the teachings of his science, and the inner promptings of his humanity. There is only one solution: He must accept an ancient and unforgivable heresy—and risk the futures of both worlds . . .James Blish served in World War II as a medical technician, joined the Futurians--a group of science fiction writers, fans, editors, and publishers-- wrote more than twenty books, and won the Hugo Award for A Case of Conscience in 1959. He moved to England in 1968 and continued to write until his death in 1975. In later years, James Blish contributed original stories and screenplays to the Star Trek saga.The stone door slammed. It was Cleaver's trade-mark: there had never been\u003cbr\u003ea door too heavy, complex, or cleverly tracked to prevent him from closing\u003cbr\u003eit with a sound like a clap of doom. And no planet in the universe could\u003cbr\u003epossess an air sufficiently thick and curtained with damp to muffle that\u003cbr\u003esound--not even Lithia.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFather Ramon Ruiz-Sanchez, late of Peru, and always Clerk Regular of the\u003cbr\u003eSociety of Jesus, professed father of the four vows, continued to read. It\u003cbr\u003ewould take Paul Cleaver's impatient fingers quite a while to free him from\u003cbr\u003ehis jungle suit, and in the meantime the problem remained. It was a\u003cbr\u003ecentury-old problem, first propounded in 1939, but the Church had never\u003cbr\u003ecracked it. And it was diabolically complex (that adverb was official,\u003cbr\u003eprecisely chosen, and intended to be taken literally.) Even the novel\u003cbr\u003ewhich had proposed the case was on the Index Expurgatorius, and Father\u003cbr\u003eRuiz-Sanchez had spiritual access to it only by virtue of his Order.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe turned the page, scarcely hearing the stamping and muttering in the\u003cbr\u003ehall. On and on the text ran, becoming more tangled, more evil, more\u003cbr\u003einsoluble with every word:\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e. . . Magravius threatens to have Anita molested by Sulla, an orthodox\u003cbr\u003esavage (and leader of a band of twelve mercenaries, the Sullivani,) who\u003cbr\u003edesires to procure Felicia for Gregorius, Leo Vitellius and Macdugalius,\u003cbr\u003efour excavators, if she will not yield to him and also deceive Honuphrius\u003cbr\u003eby rendering conjugal duty when demanded. Anita who claims to have\u003cbr\u003ediscovered incestuous temptations from Jeremias and Eugenius--\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThere now, he was lost again. Jeremias and Eugenius were--? Oh, yes, the\u003cbr\u003e\"philadelphians\" or brotherly lovers (another crime hidden there, no\u003cbr\u003edoubt) at the beginning of the case, consanguineous to the lowest degree\u003cbr\u003ewith both Felicia and Honuphrius--the latter the apparent prime villain and\u003cbr\u003ehusband of Anita. It was Magravius, who seemed to admire Honuphrius, who\u003cbr\u003ehad been urged by the slave Mauritius to solicit Anita, seemingly under\u003cbr\u003ethe aegis of Honuphrius himself. This, however, had come to Anita through\u003cbr\u003eher tirewoman Fortissa, who was or at one time had been the common-law\u003cbr\u003ewife of Mauritius and had borne him children--so that the whole story had\u003cbr\u003eto be weighed with the utmost caution. And that entire initial confession of \u003cbr\u003eHonuphrius had come out under torture--voluntarily consented to, to be sure, \u003cbr\u003ebut still torture. The Fortissa-Mauritius relationship was even more dubious, really \u003cbr\u003eonly a  supposition of the commentator Father Ware--\u003cbr\u003e7\u003cbr\u003e\"Ramon, give me a hand, will you?\" Cleaver shouted suddenly. \"I'm stuck,\u003cbr\u003eand--and I don't feel well.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe Jesuit biologist arose in alarm, putting the novel aside. Such an\u003cbr\u003eadmission from Cleaver was unprecedented.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe physicist was sitting on a pouf of woven rushes, stuffed with a\u003cbr\u003esphagnumlike moss, which was bulging at the equator under his weight. He\u003cbr\u003ewas half-way out of his glass-fiber jungle suit, and his face was white\u003cbr\u003eand beaded with sweat, although his helmet was already off. His uncertain,\u003cbr\u003estubby fingers tore at a jammed zipper.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Paul! Why didn't you say you were ill in the first place? Here, let go of\u003cbr\u003ethat; you're only making things worse. What happened?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Don't know exactly,\" Cleaver said, breathing heavily but relinquishing\u003cbr\u003ethe zipper. Ruiz-Sanchez knelt beside him and began to work it carefully\u003cbr\u003eback onto its tracks. \"Went a ways into the jungle to see if I could spot\u003cbr\u003emore pegmatite lies. It's been in the back of my mind that a pilot-plant\u003cbr\u003efor turning out tritium might locate here eventually--ought to be able to\u003cbr\u003eproduce on a prodigious scale.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"God forbid,\" Ruiz-Sanchez said under his breath.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Hm? Anyhow, I didn't see anything. A few lizards, hoppers, the usual\u003cbr\u003ething. Then I ran up against a plant that looked a little like a\u003cbr\u003epineapple, and one of the spines jabbed right through my suit and nicked\u003cbr\u003eme. Didn't seem serious, but--\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"But we don't have the suits for nothing. Let's look at it. Here, put up\u003cbr\u003eyour feet and we'll haul those boots off. Where did you get the--oh. Well,\u003cbr\u003eit's angry-looking, I'll give it that. Any other symptoms?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"My mouth feels raw,\" Cleaver complained.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Open up,\" the Jesuit commanded. When Cleaver complied, it became evident\u003cbr\u003ethat his complaint had been the understatement of the year. The mucosa\u003cbr\u003einside his mouth was nearly covered with ugly and undoubtedly painful\u003cbr\u003eulcers, their edges as sharply defined as though they had been cut with a\u003cbr\u003ecookie punch.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eRuiz-Sanchez made no comment, however, and deliberately changed his\u003cbr\u003eexpression to one of carefully calculated dismissal. If the physicist\u003cbr\u003eneeded to minimize his ailments, that was all right with Ruiz-Sanchez. An\u003cbr\u003ealien planet is not a good place to strip a man of his inner defenses.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Come into the lab,\" he said. \"You've got some inflammation in there.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCleaver arose, a little unsteadily, and followed the Jesuit into the\u003cbr\u003elaboratory. There Ruiz-Sanchez took smears from several of the ulcers onto\u003cbr\u003emicroscope slides, and Gram-stained them. He filled the time consumed by\u003cbr\u003ethe staining process with the ritual of aiming the microscope's substage\u003cbr\u003emirror out the window at a brilliant white cloud. When the timer's alarm\u003cbr\u003ewent off, he rinsed and flame-dried the first slide and slipped it under\u003cbr\u003ethe clips.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAs he had half-feared, he saw few of the mixed bacilli and spirochetes\u003cbr\u003ewhich would have indicated a case of ordinary, Earthly, Vincent's\u003cbr\u003eangina--\"trench mouth,\" which the clinical picture certainly suggested, and\u003cbr\u003ewhich he could have cured overnight with a spectrosigmin pastille.\u003cbr\u003eCleaver's oral flora were normal, though on the increase because of all\u003cbr\u003ethe exposed tissue.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"I'm going to give you a shot,\" Ruiz-Sanchez said gently. \"And then I\u003cbr\u003ethink you'd better go to bed.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"The hell with that,\" Cleaver said. \"I've got nine times as much work to\u003cbr\u003edo as I can hope to clean up now, without any additional handicaps.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Illness is never convenient,\" Ruiz-Sanchez agreed. \"But why worry about\u003cbr\u003elosing a day or so, since you're in over your head anyhow?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"What have I got?\" Cleaver asked suspiciously.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"You haven't got anything,\" Ruiz-Sanchez said, almost regretfully. \"That\u003cbr\u003eis, you aren't infected. But your 'pineapple' did you a bad turn. Most\u003cbr\u003eplants of that family on Lithia bear thorns or leaves coated with\u003cbr\u003epolysaccharides that are poisonous to us. The particular glucoside you ran\u003cbr\u003eup against today was evidently squill, or something closely related to it.\u003cbr\u003eIt produces symptoms like those of trench mouth, but a lot harder to clear\u003cbr\u003eup.\"Winner of the Hugo Award The future of Earth will rely on one man's sense of right and wrong . . .","brand":"Del Rey","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46302331896037,"sku":"NP9780345438355","price":23.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780345438355.jpg?v=1767720331","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/a-case-of-conscience-isbn-9780345438355","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}