（外文电子版资料）Niven, Larry - There is a Tide.doc

There Is a Tide By Larry Niven THEN, THE PLANET had no name. It circles a star which in 2830 lay beyond the fringe of known space, a distance of nearly forty light-years from Sol. The star is a G3, somewhat redder than Sol, somewhat smaller. The planet, swinging eighty million miles from its primary in a reasonably circular orbit, is a trifle cold for human tastes. In the year 2830 one Louis Gridley Wu happened to be passing. The emphasis on accident is intended. In a universe the size of ours almost anything that can happen, will. Take the coincidence of his meeting- But well get to that. Louis Wu was one hundred and eighty years old. As a regular user of boosterspice, he didnt show his years. If he didnt get bored first, or broke, he might reach a thousand. But, he sometimes told himself, not if I have to put up with any more cocktail parties, or Bandersnatch hunts, or painted flatlanders swarming through an anarchy park too small for them by a factor of ten. Not if I have to live through another one-night love affair or another twenty-year marriage or another twenty-minute wait for a transfer booth that blows its zap just as its my turn. And people. Not if I have to live with people, day and night, all those endless centuries. When he started to feel like that, he left. It had happened three times in his life, and now a fourth. Presumably, it would keep happening. In such a state of anomie, of acute anti-everything, he was no good to anyone, especially his friends, most especially himself. So he left. In a small but adequate spacecraft, his own, he left everything and everyone, heading outward for the fringe of known space. He would not return until he was desperate for the sight of a human face, the sound of a human voice. On the second trip he had gritted his teeth and waited until he was desperate for the sight of a Kzinti face. That was a long trip, he remembered. And, because he had only been three and a half months in space on this fourth trip, and