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"We follow the scientists around and look over their shoulders. They're watching their feet: provable mistakes are bad for them. We're looking as far ahead as we can, and we don't get penalized for mistakes."
- Larry Niven
 |
| Conveyor | ||
| A great moving belt carrying people between cities. |
| There was a glitter of metal and vita-crystal dwellings that stood four-square to the sun and the winds. A broad ribbon-conveyor hurled its shining length in ceaseless rush down the narrow valley. Human beings—normal homely Earth men with the ordinary number of legs and arms, with honest-to-God faces and warm living flesh, were seated on the conveyor-benches as they flashed by. Hilary could have wept with delight. It was two years since he had seen his own kind; two years since Hurley's tragic misstep through the breach in the air-lock made by a meteor as they were nearing Mars.
Hilary leaped on the slow-moving ramp, skilfully worked his way across the graded speed belts until he was on the express conveyor that led straight on to New York. He sank into a cushioned seat next to an oldish man with iron-gray hair through which the speed of their flight whipped and pulled. |
| From Slaves of Mercury,
by Nat Schachner. Published by Astounding Stories in 1932 Additional resources -
|
Predates the more famous rolling roads from Heinlein's 1940 novella The Roads Must Roll. See also the sidewalk from Fritz Lieber's 1941 Sanity.and the moving roadway from H.G. Wells' 1899 story When the Sleeper Wakes.
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'...lifted themselves to skimming flight upon whirling helicopters."
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I don't need it to go fast, it just needs to amble along.
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'... a sound tape to supply the noise'
'The spotter descends, and we think it searches the vicinity, looking for the victim's face...'
