"All of this will take several weeks to complete," interjects Jill.

     "Until this work is done," says Olaf, "I have been authorized by the captain to extend to the crew a warm welcome to visit my planet. It's yours to enjoy," he adds. "Take advantage of this holiday. The rivers are save to swim in, and some of the lakes are warm. Also there are no harmful aspects on the planet that I am aware of. You will encounter no dangers to your persons. And please do enjoy the fruits of this land. A friend of mine, named Odessa, will advice you upon arrival, which of the fruits are the best, and where they may be found. So get ready, the first shuttle leaves in an hour. Over and out!"



     Being part of the bridge crew, I stayed on board with Olaf and Jill, and Natalia of course. Our meals now, came by shuttle from Bohr's planet, and to some degree was supplied by the agro plant that had to remain functional. Mahesh also stayed with us, and Cira, and a good portion of the Mission Control Committee. As far as I was concerned, there was no other place in the Universe that I would have rather been at this time, than on this ship. These were exciting times.

     The first shuttle had barely left when the language decoding system was able to do some crude translation of 'O' talk into English. Another system had already cataloged all the various shows we had recorded. Newscasts, of course, were the most profitable for understanding the current situation on the planet. Through it we learned about their structure of government, which appeared to be a form of independent democracies that were linked to one-another via a planet wide sovereign constitution akin to the structure that now governed our ship.

     The planet itself appeared to be a high tech world of fast moving trains, air transportation, immensely huge cities that were often integrated into a single gigantic building in order to escape the effects of the weather. The weather, as far as we could see, was constantly wet and dark. Large indoors agricultural complexes supplied all the foodstuffs. Power was derived from nuclear fusion. Mahesh was delighted about that. He understood the concept, but had never seen it implemented.

     Hardly a day had gone by when Jill jumped off her seat and announced yet another great discovery about "their way of life" that bordered on the miraculous. None-the-less, when all available information was analyzed, we were surprised to learn that the 'O' people were no more advanced in technological development that we had been on Earth.

     "The only difference is," said Jill in one of her reports from the Mission Control Committee, "that the 'O' people have utilized every available technology they have created, in order to increase the productivity of their society, which became greatly enriched thereby. In other words, these people had actually used the technologies they developed, to enrich their common life and culture," said Jill. "She said that their technologies were by and large the same technologies that we on Earth had thrown away for a long time until the economies on earth had collapsed under the weight of the ensuing insanity that became self-imposed poverty. The point is, these 'O' people had done nothing unique that we couldn't have done, that we had actually prevented ourselves from doing."

     Olaf added in his usual dry and coarse voice. "The difference between them and humanity lies in their mental technology that allows their physical technological wonders to become useful to the fullest possible extent." Olaf gave many lectures on these and related subjects.

     Politically, too, the 'O' society appeared like a great puzzle to people, when judged against earthly standards. There appeared to be a central government all right, but one that had no authority over anyone except in a limited scope that pertained to specific areas of business concerned with providing planet wide-services.

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Stories about  Healing from novels by Rolf A. F. Witzsche