The Bronze Axe

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Richard Blade, quite by coincidence, had been reading that very morning in The London Times of the scientific marvels to come. The writer in The Times had labeled his piece: "What's Ahead In Technology." He had been considerate enough to include a tentative time schedule for the miracles he was writing about.

Blade, folding his paper neatly at the place, and heartily enjoying his bacon and eggs, read through it with no look of skepticism on his handsome face. He was a skeptic, but not about science. It was what men did with science that was a cause for concern, and cynicism. Blade had been a top man in British espionage circles for nearly twenty years he had been recruited while still at Oxford and he held no delusions about the human animal.

Thinking of animals, he noted that the year 2000 was given as a probable date when intelligent animals might be used for low-grade labor. He poured himself more tea and pondered. Just what did it mean? A gorilla foreman directing a crew of dogs, mules and horses? While a graduate chimp kept the time and pay sheets? Mutants of some sort, bred especially for the job? Blade's mobile mouth quirked in a smile as he helped himself to more bacon. Cats might be very good at espionage work.

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