Four Possible Futures — Susan Hart

Raymond The Automatic House - A surviving government official after a worldwide upheaval manages to escape a ravaging mob and then stumbles across a self-contained automatic house set in a remote area of woods. Help Wanted - A large mall springs up seemingly overnight in place of an apple orchard and suddenly; the number of stores inside intrigues the townspeople. Two Idiots from Earth - A government official on a planet currently at war with earth, finds two supposed spies at a bar and suspects they are Terran agents. They are pretty ‘dense’ and after grilling them for a period of time, he follows up on a couple of tips they give him and their supposedly real reason for being on the planet. The Pied Piper of Spring - A galactic tinkerer is called to a small settlement on the planet known as Wesson, to take care of the rat population, which has exploded in the Spring. The inhabitants are pacifist vegetarians and when the tinkerer finds out how they have previously taken care of the problem, he is horrified.