POTEMKIN VILLAGE A Novelet by FLETCHER PRATT [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Startling Stories, February 1953. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] I Director Unterbaum of the Intercolonial Office rose from his chair as the pair came in. "I take it you haven't met before?" he said. "Mr. and Mrs. Lanzerotti, this is Ann Starnes, the recording photographer, and Robert Heidekopfer, one of our better writers." There were smiles and acknowledgments. Unterbaum touched a pair of buttons on his desk and two chairs slid out of the walls to make a group of five. "Sit down, please," he said. "Now I'm not going to mince words. The reason you're here is because the Council wants you--three of you, at least--to undertake a mission. Vincent--" he indicated Lanzerotti, who nodded a dark head--"already knows something about it, but for the benefit of Miss Starnes and Mr. Heidekopfer, I will say that we want to send you to Tolstoia." Heidekopfer smiled and said, "Sounds better than that trip to the polar mines on Mars, eh Ann?" "Warmer, anyhow," said the girl, turning a carefully-kept blonde head. "But I thought Tolstoia was closed to visitors." "The patriarch has agreed to let a delegation in for this visit," said Unterbaum, "so we can render a fair and unbiased report on Tolstoia, in word, picture and observation. The point is this; there are some islands about three hundred miles off the coast of Tolstoia, between it and South Bergenland--the Wrightley Islands. They have no resources, but Tolstoia wants to colonize them." He touched buttons again, and a map appeared on the wall showing the almost-round shape of the island nation, with the islands and the tip of South Bergenland at the right. Unterbaum went on: "They're uninhabited, so there isn't any objection from the Demographic Commission, although it's unusual for one of the hermit-states to expand. But there are certain features of the request that make the Council inclined to go slow; or at least to want more information." He stopped, seeming to wait for a question, so Heidekopfer asked it. "What are they?" * * * * * Lanzerotti answered, "To begin with, the place was founded in accordance with the philosophy of Count Leo Tolstoi, a Russian writer of some centuries back. The Russians discovered that a sect of people who believed in his ideas was growing up in their country, and considered it a threat to the organization of their state. They couldn't dispose of the Tolstoians under the genocide laws, so they appealed to the Council and it agreed to expatriate all the Tolstoians the Russians could identify." "Then it was a penal colony, like the Moon mines?" inquired Heidekopfer.