(2/15) The Golden Age of Science Fiction Volume II: An Anthology of 50 Short Stories

Various

Series:

15 [2]

Published:

2010

This Halcyon Classics ebook collection contains fifty short stories by more than forty masters of science fiction. Many of the stories in this collection were published during the heyday of popular science fiction magazines from the 1930s to the 1960s.

Included within this work are stories by Ben Bova, Cordwainer Smith, Phillip K. Dick, Randall Garrett, Paul Ernst, Kurt Vonnegut, Harry Harrison, Jack Williamson, Lester Del Rey, Fredric Brown, Murray Leinster, C.M. Kornbluth, Walter M. Miller, Jr., Andre Norton, H. Beam Piper, and many others.

This collection is DRM free and includes an active table of contents for easy navigation.

Contents:

A Question of Courage, J.F. Bone
The Duelling Maching, Ben Bova
Keep Out, Frederic Brown
Indirection, Everett B. Cole
The Game of Rat and Dragon, Cordwainer Smith
The World Beyond, Raymond Cummings
Victory, Lester Del Rey
The Defenders, Phillip K. Dick
The Hammer of Thor, Charles Willard Diffin
The Planetoid of Peril, Paul Ernst
The Jupiter Weapon, Charles L. Fontenay
This World Must Die, H.B. Fyfe
Psichopath, Randall Garrett
The Man Who Hated Mars, Randall Garrett
Hawk Carse, Anthony Gilmore
The Helpful Hand of God, Tom Godwin
A Scientist Rises, D.W. Hall
Monsters of Mars, Edmond Hamilton
The Sargasso of Space, Edmond Hamilton
The K-Factor, Harry Harrison
The Misplaced Battleship, Harry Harrison
Walls of Acid, Henry Hasse
Old Rambling House, Frank Herbert
Made in Tanganyika, Carl Jacobi
Sight Gag, Lawrence Janifer
Get Out of Our Skies, E. K. Jarvis
Cubs of the Wolf, Raymond F. Jones
The Cosmic Expense Account, C.M. Kornbluth
We Didn’t Do Anything Wrong, Hardly, Roger Kuykendall
The Great Potlatch Riots, Allen Kim Lang
Gambler’s World, Keith Laumer
No Great Magic, Fritz Leiber
The Ambulance Made Two Trips, Murray Leinster
The Leader, Murray Leinster
The Mississippi Saucer, Frank Belknap Long
Summer Snow Storm, Stephen Marlowe
The Attack From Space, S.P. Meek
The Great Drought, S.P. Meek
Death of Spaceman, Walter M. Miller, Jr.
The People of the Crater, Andre Norton
An Ounce of Cure, Alan Nourse
Image of the Gods, Alan Nourse
A Slave is a Slave, H. Beam Piper
Day of the Moron, H. Beam Piper
Pythias, Frederick Pohl
The Hunters, Joseph Samachson
The Judas Valley, Robert Silverberg
Project Mastodon, Clifford D. Simak
2BR02B, Kurt Vonnegut
The Pygmy Planet, Jack Williamson

(2/15) The Golden Age of Science Fiction Volume II: An Anthology of 50 Short Stories

Various

Series:

15 [2]

Published:

2010

(2/15) The Golden Age of Science Fiction Volume II: An Anthology of 50 Short Stories

Various

Series:

15 [2]

Published:

2010

Halcyon Classics Series

THE GOLDEN AGE OF SCIENCE FICTION VOLUME II:

AN ANTHOLOGY OF 50 SHORT STORIES

Contents

A Question of Courage, J.F. Bone

The Duelling Maching, Ben Bova

Keep Out, Frederic Brown

Indirection, Everett B. Cole

The Game of Rat and Dragon, Cordwainer Smith

The World Beyond, Raymond Cummings

Victory, Lester Del Rey

The Defenders, Phillip K. Dick

The Hammer of Thor, Charles Willard Diffin

The Planetoid of Peril, Paul Ernst

The Jupiter Weapon, Charles L. Fontenay

This World Must Die, H.B. Fyfe

Psichopath, Randall Garrett

The Man Who Hated Mars, Randall Garrett

Hawk Carse, Anthony Gilmore

The Helpful Hand of God, Tom Godwin

A Scientist Rises, D.W. Hall

Monsters of Mars, Edmond Hamilton

The Sargasso of Space, Edmond Hamilton

The K-Factor, Harry Harrison

The Misplaced Battleship, Harry Harrison

Walls of Acid, Henry Hasse

Old Rambling House, Frank Herbert

Made in Tanganyika, Carl Jacobi

Sight Gag, Lawrence Janifer

Get Out of Our Skies, E. K. Jarvis

Cubs of the Wolf, Raymond F. Jones

The Cosmic Expense Account, C.M. Kornbluth

We Didn’t Do Anything Wrong, Hardly, Roger Kuykendall

The Great Potlatch Riots, Allen Kim Lang

Gambler’s World, Keith Laumer

No Great Magic, Fritz Leiber

The Ambulance Made Two Trips, Murray Leinster

The Leader, Murray Leinster

The Mississippi Saucer, Frank Belknap Long

Summer Snow Storm, Stephen Marlowe

The Attack From Space, S.P. Meek

The Great Drought, S.P. Meek

Death of Spaceman, Walter M. Miller, Jr.

The People of the Crater, Andre Norton

An Ounce of Cure, Alan Nourse

Image of the Gods, Alan Nourse

A Slave is a Slave, H. Beam Piper

Day of the Moron, H. Beam Piper

Pythias, Frederick Pohl

The Hunters, Joseph Samachson

The Judas Valley, Robert Silverberg

Project Mastodon, Clifford D. Simak

2BR02B, Kurt Vonnegut

The Pygmy Planet, Jack Williamson

Contents

A QUESTION OF COURAGE

by Jesse Franklin Bone

I smelled the trouble the moment I stepped on the lift and took the long ride up the side of the "Lachesis." There was something wrong. I couldn't put my finger on it but five years in the Navy gives a man a feeling for these things. From the outside the ship was beautiful, a gleaming shaft of duralloy, polished until she shone. Her paint and brightwork glistened. The antiradiation shields on the gun turrets and launchers were folded back exactly according to regulations. The shore uniform of the liftman was spotless and he stood at his station precisely as he should. As the lift moved slowly up past no-man's country to the life section, I noted a work party hanging precariously from a scaffolding smoothing out meteorite pits in the gleaming hull, while on the catwalk of the gantry standing beside the main cargo hatch a steady stream of supplies disappeared into the ship's belly.

I returned the crisp salutes of the white-gloved sideboys, saluted the colors, and shook hands with an immaculate ensign with an O.D. badge on his tunic.

"Glad to have you aboard, sir," the ensign said.

"I'm Marsden," I said. "Lieutenant Thomas Marsden. I have orders posting me to this ship as Executive."

"Yes, sir. We have been expecting you. I'm Ensign Halloran."

"Glad to meet you, Halloran."

"Skipper's orders, sir. You are to report to him as soon as you come aboard."

Then I got it. Everything was SOP. The ship wasn't taut, she was tight! And she wasn't happy. There was none of the devil-may-care spirit that marks crews in the Scouting Force and separates them from the stodgy mass of the Line. Every face I saw on my trip to the skipper's cabin was blank, hard-eyed, and unsmiling. There was none of the human noise that normally echoes through a ship, no laughter, no clatter of equipment, no deviations from the order and precision so dear to admirals' hearts. This crew was G.I. right down to the last seam tab on their uniforms. Whoever the skipper was, he was either bucking for another cluster or a cold-feeling automaton to whom the Navy Code was father, mother, and Bible.

The O.D. stopped before the closed door, executed a mechanical right face, knocked the prescribed three times and opened the door smartly on the heels of the word "Come" that erupted from the inside. I stepped in followed by the O.D.

"Commander Chase," the O.D. said. "Lieutenant Marsden."

Chase! Not Cautious Charley Chase! I could hardly look at the man behind the command desk. But look I did--and my heart did a ninety degree dive straight to the thick soles of my space boots. No wonder this ship was sour. What else could happen with Lieutenant Commander Charles Augustus Chase in command! He was three classes up on me, but even though he was a First Classman at the time I crawled out of Beast Barracks, I knew him well. Every Midshipman in the Academy knew him--Rule-Book Charley--By-The-Numbers Chase--his nicknames were legion and not one of them was friendly. "Lieutenant Thomas Marsden reporting for duty," I said.

He looked at the O.D. "That'll be all, Mr. Halloran," he said.

"Aye, sir," Halloran said woodenly. He stepped backward, saluted, executed a precise about face and closed the hatch softly behind him.

* * * * *

"Sit down, Marsden," Chase said. "Have a cigarette."

He didn't say, "Glad to have you aboard." But other than that he was Navy right down to the last parenthesis. His voice was the same dry schoolmaster's voice I remembered from the Academy. And his face was the same dry gray with the same fishy blue eyes and rat trap jaw. His hair was thinner, but other than that he hadn't changed. Neither the war nor the responsibilities of command appeared to have left their mark upon him. He was still the same lean, undersized square-shouldered blob of nastiness.

I took the cigarette, sat down, puffed it into a glow, and looked around the drab 6 x 8 foot cubicle called the Captain's cabin by ship designers who must have laughed as they laid out the plans. It had about the room of a good-sized coffin. A copy of the Navy Code was lying on the desk. Chase had obviously been reading his bible.

"You are three minutes late, Marsden," Chase said. "Your orders direct you to report at 0900. Do you have any explanation?"

"No, sir," I said.

"Don't let it happen again. On this ship we are prompt."

"Aye, sir," I muttered.

He smiled, a thin quirk of thin lips. "Now let me outline your duties, Marsden. You are posted to my ship as Executive Officer. An Executive Officer is the Captain's right hand."

"So I have heard," I said drily.

"Belay that, Mr. Marsden. I do not appreciate humor during duty hours."

You wouldn't, I thought.

"As I was saying, Marsden, Executive Officer, you will be responsible for--" He went on and on, covering the Code--chapter, book and verse on the duties of an Executive Officer. It made no difference that I had been Exec under Andy Royce, the skipper of the "Clotho," the ship with the biggest confirmed kill in the entire Fleet Scouting Force. I was still a new Exec, and the book said I must be briefed on my duties. So "briefed" I was--for a solid hour.

Feeling angry and tired, I finally managed to get away from Rule Book Charley and find my quarters which I shared with the Engineer. I knew him casually, a glum reservist named Allyn. I had wondered why he always seemed to have a chip on his shoulder. Now I knew.

He was lying in his shock-couch as I came in. "Welcome, sucker," he greeted me. "Glad to have you aboard."

"The feeling's not mutual," I snapped.

"What's the matter? Has the Lieutenant Commander been rolling you out on the red carpet?"

"You could call it that," I said. "I've just been told the duties of an Exec. Funny--no?"

He shook his head. "Not funny. I feel for you. He told me how to be an engineer six months ago." Allyn's thin face looked glummer than usual.

"Did I ever tell you about our skip--captain?" Allyn went on. "Or do I have to tell you? I see you're wearing an Academy ring."

"You can't tell me much I haven't already heard," I said coldly. I don't like wardroom gossips as a matter of policy. A few disgruntled men on a ship can shoot morale to hell, and on a ship this size the Exec is the morale officer. But I was torn between two desires. I wanted Allyn to go on, but I didn't want to hear what Allyn had to say. I was like the proverbial hungry mule standing halfway between two haystacks of equal size and attractiveness. And like the mule I would stand there turning my head one way and the other until I starved to death.

But Allyn solved my problem for me. "You haven't heard this," he said bitterly. "The whole crew applied for transfer when we came back to base after our last cruise. Of course, they didn't get it, but you get the idea. Us reservists and draftees get about the same consideration as the Admiral's dog--No! dammit!--Less than the dog. They wouldn't let a mangy cur ship out with Gutless Gus."

Gutless Gus! that was a new one. I wondered how Chase had managed to acquire that sobriquet.

* * * * *

"It was on our last patrol," Allyn went on, answering my question before I asked it. "We were out at maximum radius when the detectors showed a disturbance in normal space. Chase ordered us down from Cth for a quick look--and so help me, God, we broke out right in the middle of a Rebel supply convoy--big, fat, sitting ducks all around us. We got off about twenty Mark VII torpedoes before Chase passed the word to change over. We scooted back into Cth so fast we hardly knew we were gone. And then he raises hell with Detector section for not identifying every class of ship in that convoy!

"And when Bancroft, that's the Exec whom you've relieved, asked for a quick check to confirm our kills, Chase sat on him like a ton of brick. 'I'm not interested in how many poor devils we blew apart back there,' our Captain says. 'Our mission is to scout, to obtain information about enemy movements and get that information back to Base. We cannot transmit information from a vaporized ship, and that convoy had a naval escort. Our mission cannot be jeopardized merely to satisfy morbid curiosity. Request denied. And, Mr. Bancroft, have Communications contact Fleet. This information should be in as soon as possible.' And then he turned away leaving Bancroft biting his fingernails. He wouldn't even push out a probe--scooted right back into the blue where we'd be safe!

"You know, we haven't had one confirmed kill posted on the list since we've been in space. It's getting so we don't want to come in any more. Like the time--the 'Atropos' came in just after we touched down. She was battered--looked like she'd been through a meat grinder, but she had ten confirmed and six probable, and four of them were escorts! Hell! Our boys couldn't hold their heads up. The 'Lachesis' didn't have a mark on her and all we had was a few possible hits. You know how it goes--someone asks where you're from. You say the 'Lachesis' and they say 'Oh, yes, the cruise ship.' And that's that. It's so true you don't even feel like resenting it."

I didn't like the bitter note in Allyn's voice. He was a reservist, which made it all the worse. Reservists have ten times the outside contacts we regulars do. In general when a regular and reservist tangle, the Academy men close ranks like musk-oxen and meet the challenge with an unbroken ring of horns. But somehow I didn't feel like ringing up.

I kept hoping there was another side to the story. I'd check around and find out as soon as I got settled. And if there was another side, I was going to take Allyn apart as a malicious trouble-maker. I felt sick to my stomach.

* * * * *

We spent the next three days taking on stores and munitions, and I was too busy supervising the stowage and checking manifests to bother about running down Allyn's story. I met the other officers--Lt. Pollard the gunnery officer, Ensign Esterhazy the astrogator, and Ensign Blakiston. Nice enough guys, but all wearing that cowed, frustrated look that seemed to be a "Lachesis" trademark. Chase, meanwhile, was up in Flag Officer's Country picking up the dope on our next mission. I hoped that Allyn was wrong but the evidence all seemed to be in his favor. Even more than the officers, the crew was a mess underneath their clean uniforms. From Communications Chief CPO Haskins to Spaceman Zelinski there was about as much spirit in them as you'd find in a punishment detail polishing brightwork in Base Headquarters. I'm a cheerful soul, and usually I find no trouble getting along with a new command, but this one was different. They were efficient enough, but one could see that their hearts weren't in their work. Most crews preparing to go out are nervous and high tempered. There was none of that here. The men went through the motions with a mechanical indifference that was frightening. I had the feeling that they didn't give a damn whether they went or not--or came back or not. The indifference was so thick you could cut it with a knife. Yet there was nothing you could put your hand on. You can't touch people who don't care.

Four hours after Chase came back, we lifted gravs from Earth. Chase was sitting in the control chair, and to give him credit, we lifted as smooth as a silk scarf slipping through the fingers of a pretty woman. We hypered at eight miles and swept up through the monochromes of Cth until we hit middle blue, when Chase slipped off the helmet, unfastened his webbing, and stood up.

"Take over, Mr. Marsden," he said. "Lay a course for Parth."

"Aye, sir," I replied, slipping into the chair and fastening the web. I slipped the helmet on my head and instantly I was a part of the ship. It's a strange feeling, this synthesis of man and metal that makes a fighting ship the metallic extension of the Commander's will. I was conscious of every man on duty. What they saw I saw, what they heard I heard, through the magic of modern electronics. The only thing missing was that I couldn't feel what they felt, which perhaps was a mercy considering the condition of the crew. Using the sensor circuits in the command helmet, I let my perception roam through the ship, checking the engines, the gun crews, the navigation board, the galley--all the manifold stations of a fighting ship. Everything was secure, the ship was clean and trimmed, the generators were producing their megawatts of power without a hitch, and the converters were humming contentedly, keeping us in the blue as our speed built to fantastic levels.

I checked the course, noted it was true, set the controls on standby and relaxed, half dozing in the chair as Lume after Lume dropped astern with monotonous regularity.

An hour passed and Halloran came up to relieve me. With a sigh of relief I surrendered the chair and headset. The unconscious strain of being in rapport with ship and crew didn't hit me until I was out of the chair. But when it did, I felt like something was crushing me flat. Not that I didn't expect it, but the "Lachesis" was worse than the "Clotho" had ever been.

I had barely hit my couch when General Quarters sounded. I smothered a curse as I pounded up the companionway to my station at the bridge. Chase was there, stopwatch in hand, counting the seconds.

"Set!" Halloran barked.

"Fourteen seconds," Chase said. "Not bad. Tell the crew well done." He put the watch in his pocket and walked away.

I picked up the annunciator mike and pushed the button. "Skipper says well done," I said.

"He got ten seconds out of us once last trip," Halloran said. "And he's been trying to repeat that fluke ever since. Bet you a munit to an 'F' ration that he'll be down with the section chief trying to shave off another second or two. Hey!--what's that--oh ..." He looked at me. "Disturbance in Cth yellow, straight down--shall we go?"

"Stop ship," I ordered. "Sound general quarters." There was no deceleration. We merely swapped ends as the alarm sounded, applied full power and stopped. That was the advantage of Cth--no inertia. We backtracked for three seconds and held in middle blue.

* * * * *

"What's going on?" Chase demanded as he came up from below. His eyes raked the instruments. "Why are we stopped?"

"Disturbance in Cth yellow, sir," I said. "We're positioned above it."

"Very good, Mr. Marsden." He took the spare helmet from the Exec's chair, clapped it on, fiddled with the controls for a moment, nodded, and took the helmet off. "Secure and resume course," he said. "That's the 'Amphitrite'--fleet supply and maintenance. One of our people."

"You sure, sir?" I asked, and then looked at the smug grin on Halloran's face and wished I hadn't asked.

"Of course," Chase said. "She's a three converter job running at full output. Since the Rebels have no three converter ships, she has to be one of ours. And since she's running at full output and only in Cth yellow, it means she's big, heavy, and awkward--which means a maintenance or an ammunition supply ship. There's an off phase beat in her number two converter that gives a twenty cycle pulse to her pattern. And the only heavy ship in the fleet with this pattern is 'Amphitrite.' You see?"

I saw--with respect. "You know all the heavies like that, sir?" I asked.

"Not all of them--but I'd like to. It's as much a part of a scoutship commander's work to know our own ships as those of the enemy."

"Could that trace be a Rebel ruse?"

"Not likely--travelling in the yellow. A ship would be cold meat this far inside our perimeter. And besides, there's no Rebel alive who can tune a converter like a Navy mechanic."

"You sure?" I persisted.

"I'm sure. But take her down if you wish."

I did. And it was the "Amphitrite."

"I served on her for six months," Chase said drily as we went back through the components. I understood his certainty now. A man has a feeling for ships if he's a good officer. But it was a trait I'd never expected in Chase. I gave the orders and we resumed our band and speed. Chase looked at me.

"You acted correctly, Mr. Marsden," he said. "Something I would hardly expect, but something I was glad to see."

"I served under Andy Royce," I reminded him.

"I know," Chase replied. "That's why I'm surprised." He turned away before I could think of an answer that would combine insolence and respect for his rank. "Keep her on course, Mr. Halloran," he tossed over his shoulder as he went out.

We kept on course--high and hard despite a couple of disturbances that lumbered by underneath us. Once I made a motion to stop ship and check, but Halloran shook his head.

"Don't do it, sir," he warned.

"Why not?"

"You heard the Captain's orders. He's a heller for having them obeyed. Besides, they might be Rebs--and we might get hurt shooting at them. We'll just report their position and approximate course--and keep on travelling. Haskins is on the Dirac right now." Halloran's voice was sarcastic.

I didn't like the sound of it, and said so.

"Well, sir--we won't lose them entirely," Halloran said comfortingly. "Some cruiser will investigate them. Chances are they're ours anyway--and if they aren't there's no sense in us risking our nice shiny skin stopping them--even though we could take them like Lundy took Koromaja. Since the book doesn't say we have to investigate, we won't." His voice was bitter again.

At 0840 hours on the fourth day out, my annunciator buzzed. "Sir," the talker's voice came over the intercom, "Lieutenants Marsden and Allyn are wanted in the Captain's quarters."

* * * * *

Chase was there--toying with the seals of a thin, brown envelope. "I have to open this in the presence of at least two officers," he said nodding at Allyn who came in behind me. "You two are senior on the ship and have the first right to know." He slid a finger through the flap.

"Effective 12, Eightmonth, GY2964," he read, "USN 'Lachesis' will proceed on offensive mission against enemy vessels as part of advance covering screen Fleet Four for major effort against enemy via sectors YD 274, YD 275, and YD 276. Entire Scouting Force IV quadrant will be grouped as Fleet Four Screen Unit under command Rear Admiral SIMMS. Initial station 'Lachesis' coordinates X 06042 Y 1327 Betelgeuse-Rigel baseline. ETA Rendezvous point 0830 plus or minus 30, 13/8/64.

"A. Evars, Fleet Admiral USN Commanding."

There it was! I could see Allyn stiffen as a peculiar sick look crossed Chase's dry face. And suddenly I heard all the ugly little nicknames--Subspace Chase, Gutless Gus, Cautious Charley--and the dozen others. For Chase was afraid. It was so obvious that not even the gray mask of his face could cover it.

Yet his voice when he spoke was the same dry, pedantic voice of old. "You have the rendezvous point, Mr. Marsden. Have Mr. Esterhazy set the course and speed to arrive on time." He dismissed us with the traditional "That's all, gentlemen," and we went out separate ways. I didn't want to look at the triumphant smile on Allyn's face.

We hit rendezvous at 0850, picked up a message from the Admiral at 0853, and at 0855 were on our way. We were part of a broad hemispherical screen surrounding the Cruiser Force which englobed the Line and supply train--the heavies that are the backbone of any fleet. We were headed roughly in the direction of the Rebel's fourth sector, the one top-heavy with metals industries. Our exact course was known only to the brass and the computers that planned our interlock. But where we were headed wasn't important. The "Lachesis" was finally going to war! I could feel the change in the crew, the nervousness, the anticipation, the adrenal responses of fear and excitement. After a year in the doldrums, Fleet was going to try to smash the Rebels again. We hadn't done so well last time, getting ambushed in the Fifty Suns group and damn near losing our shirts before we managed to get out. The Rebs weren't as good as we were, but they were trickier, and they could fight. After all, why shouldn't they be able to? They were human, just as we were, and any one of a dozen extinct intelligent races could testify to our fighting ability, as could others not-quite-extinct. Man ruled this section of the galaxy, and someday if he didn't kill himself off in the process he'd rule all of it. He wasn't the smartest race but he was the hungriest, the fiercest, the most adaptable, and the most unrelenting. Qualities which, by the way, were exactly the ones needed to conquer a hostile universe.

But mankind was slow to learn the greatest lesson, that they had to cooperate if they were to go further. We were already living on borrowed time. Before the War, ten of eleven exploration ships sent into the galactic center had disappeared without a trace. Somewhere, buried deep in the billions of stars that formed the galactic hub, was a race that was as tough and tricky as we were--maybe even tougher. This was common knowledge, for the eleventh ship had returned with the news of the aliens, a story of hairbreadth escape from destruction, and a pattern of their culture which was enough like ours to frighten any thinking man. The worlds near the center of humanity's sphere realized the situation at once and quickly traded their independence for a Federal Union to pool their strength against the threat that might come any day.

But as the Union Space Navy began to take shape on the dockyards of Earth and a hundred other worlds, the independent worlds of the periphery began to eye the Union with suspicion. They had never believed the exploration report and didn't want to unite with the worlds of the center. They thought that the Union was a trick to deprive them of their fiercely cherished independence, and when the Union sent embassies to invite them into the common effort, they rejected them. And when we suggested that in the interests of racial safety they abandon their haphazard colonization efforts that resulted in an uncontrolled series of jumps into the dark, punctuated by minor wars and clashes when colonists from separate origins landed, more or less simultaneously, on a promising planet, they were certain we were up to no good.

Although we explained and showed them copies of the exploration ship's report, they were not convinced. Demagogues among them screamed about manifest destiny, independence, interference in internal affairs, and a thousand other things that made the diplomatic climate between Center and Periphery unbearably hot. And their colonists kept moving outward.

Of course the Union was not about to cooperate in this potential race suicide. We simply couldn't allow them to give that other race knowledge of our whereabouts until we were ready for them. So we informed each of the outer worlds that we would consider any further efforts at colonizing an unfriendly act, and would take steps to discourage it.

That did it.

* * * * *

We halted a few colonizing ships and sent them home under guard. We uprooted a few advance groups and returned them to their homeworlds. We established a series of observation posts to check further expansion--and six months later we were at war.

The outer worlds formed what they called a defensive league and with characteristic human rationality promptly attacked us. Naturally, they didn't get far. We had a bigger and better fleet and we were organized while they were not. And so they were utterly defeated at the Battle of Ophiuchus.

It was then that we had two choices. We could either move in and take over their defenseless worlds, or we could let them rebuild and get strong, and with their strength acquire a knowledge of cooperation--and take the chance that they would ultimately beat us. Knowing this, we wisely chose the second course and set about teaching our fellow men a lesson that was now fifteen years along and not ended yet.

By applying pressure at the right places we turned their attention inward to us rather than to the outside, and by making carefully timed sorties here and there about the periphery we forced them through sheer military necessity to gradually tighten their loosely organized League into tightly centralized authority, with the power to demand and obtain--to meet our force with counterforce. By desperate measures and straining of all their youthful resources they managed to hold us off. And with every strain they were welded more tightly together. And slowly they were learning through war what we could not teach through peace.

Curiously enough, they wouldn't believe our aims even when captured crews told them. They thought it was some sort of tricky mental conditioning designed to frustrate their lie detectors. Even while they tightened their organization and built new fleets, they would not believe that we were forcing them into the paths they must travel to avoid future annihilation.

It was one of the ironies of this war that it was fought and would be fought with the best of intentions. For it was obvious now that we could never win--nor could they. The Rebels, as we called them, were every whit as strong as we, and while we enjoyed the advantages of superior position and technology they had the advantage of superior numbers. It was stalemate,--the longest, fiercest stalemate in man's bloody history. But it was stalemate with a purpose. It was a crazy war--a period of constant hostilities mingled with sporadic offensive actions like the one we were now engaged in--but to us, at least, it was war with a purpose--the best and noblest of human purposes--the preservation of the race.

The day was coming, not too many years away, when the first of the aliens would strike the Outer worlds. Then we would unite--on the League's terms if need be--to crush the invaders and establish mankind as the supreme race in the galaxy.

But this wasn't important right now. Right now I was the Executive Officer of a scout ship commanded by a man I didn't trust. He smelled too much like a stinking coward. I shook my head. Having Chase running the ship was like putting a moron in a jet car on one of the superhighways--and then sabotaging the automatics. Just one fearful mistake and a whole squadron could be loused up. But Chase was the commander--the ultimate authority on this ship. All I could do was pray that things were going to come out all right.

We moved out in the lower red. Battles weren't fought in Cth. There was no way to locate a unit at firing range in that monochromatic madness. Normal physical laws simply didn't apply. A ship had to come out into threespace to do any damage. All Cth was was a convenient road to the battlefront.

With one exception.

By hanging in the infra band, on the ragged edge of threespace, a scout ship could remain concealed until a critical moment, breakout into threespace--discharge her weapons--and flick back into Cth before an enemy could get a fix on her. Scouts, with their high capacity converters, could perform this maneuver, but the ponderous battlewagons and cruisers with their tremendous weight of armor, screens, and munitions couldn't maneuver like this. They simply didn't have the agility. Yet only they had the ability to penetrate defensive screens and kill the Rebel heavies. So space battle was conducted on the classic pattern--the Lines slugging it out at medium range while the screen of scouts buzzed around and through the battle trying to add their weight of metal against some overstrained enemy and ensure his destruction. A major battle could go on for days--and it often did. In the Fifty Suns action the battle had lasted nearly two weeks subjective before we withdrew to lick our wounds.

* * * * *

For nearly a day we ran into nothing, and such are the distances that separate units of a fleet, we had the impression that we were alone. We moved quietly, detectors out, scanning the area for a light-day around as we moved forward at less than one Lume through Cth. More would have been fatal for had we been forced to resort to a quick breakout to avoid enemy action, and if we were travelling above one Lume when we hit threespace, we'd simply disappear, leaving a small spatial vortex in our wake.

On the "morning" of the third day the ships at the apex of Quadrant One ran into a flight of Rebel scouts. There was a brief flurry of action, the Rebels were englobed, a couple of cruisers drove in, latched onto the helplessly straining Rebel scouts and dragged them into threespace. The Rebs kept broadcasting right up to the end--after which they surrendered before the cruisers could annihilate them. Smart boys.

But the Rebels were warned. We couldn't catch all their scouts and the disturbance our Line was making in Cth would register on any detector within twenty parsecs. So they would be waiting to meet us. But that was to be expected. There is no such thing as surprise in a major action.

We went on until we began to run into major opposition. Half a dozen scouts were caught in englobements at half a dozen different places along the periphery as they came in contact with the Rebels' covering forces. And that was that. The advance halted waiting for the Line to come up, and a host of small actions took place as the forward screening forces collided. Chase was in the control chair, hanging in the blackness of the infra band on the edge of normal space. But we weren't flicking in and out of threespace like some of the others. We had a probe out and the main buffeting was taken by the duralloy tube with its tiny converter at its bulbous tip. With consummate pilotage Chase was holding us in infra. It was a queasy sensation, hanging halfway between normalcy and chaos, and I had to admire his skill. The infra band was black as ink and hot as the hinges of hell--and since the edges of threespace and Cth are not as knife sharp as they are further up in the Cth components, we bucked and shuddered on the border, but avoided the bone-crushing slams and gut-wrenching twists that less skillful skippers were giving their ships as they flicked back and forth between threespace and Cth. Our scouting line must have been a peculiar sight to a threespace observer with the thousand or so scouts flickering in and out of sight across a huge hemisphere of space.

And then we saw them. Our probe picked up the flicker of enemy scouts.

"Action imminent," Chase said drily. "Stand by."

I clapped the other control helmet over my head and dropped into the Exec's chair. A quick check showed the crew at their stations, the torpedo hatches clear, the antiradiation shields up and the ship in fighting trim. I stole a quick glance at Chase. Sweat stood out on his gray forehead. His lips were drawn back into a thin line, showing his teeth. His face was tense, but whether with fear or excitement I didn't know.

"Stand by," he said, and then we hit threespace, just as the enormous cone of the Rebel Line flicked into sight. The enemy line had taken the field, and under the comparatively slow speeds of threespace was rushing forward to meet our Line which had emerged a few minutes ago. Our launchers flamed as we sent a salvo of torpedoes whistling toward the Rebel fleet marking perhaps the opening shots of the main battle. We twisted back into Cth as one of the scanner men doubled over with agony, heaving his guts out into a disposal cone. I felt sorry for him. The tension, the racking agony of our motion, and the fact that he was probably in his first major battle had all combined to take him for the count. He grinned greenly at me and turned back to his dials and instruments. Good man!

"Target--range one eight zero four, azimuth two four oh, elevation one oh seven," the rangefinder reported. "Mass four." Mass four:--a cruiser.

"Stand by," Chase said. "All turrets prepare to fire." And he took us down. We slammed into threespace and our turrets flamed. To our left rear and above hung the mass of an enemy cruiser, her screens glowing on standby as she drove forward to her place in the line. We had caught her by surprise, a thousand to one shot, and our torpedoes were on their way before her detectors spotted us. We didn't stay to see what happened, but the probe showed an enormous fireball which blazed briefly in the blackness, shooting out globs of scintillating molten metal that cooled and disappeared as we watched.

"Scratch one cruiser," someone in fire control yelped.

* * * * *

The effect on morale was electric. In that instant all doubts of Chase's ability disappeared. All except mine. One lucky shot isn't a battle, and I guess Chase figured the same way because his hands were shaking as he jockeyed us along on the edge of Cth. He looked like he wanted to vomit.

"Take it easy, skipper," I said.

"Mind your own business, Marsden--and I'll mind mine," Chase snapped. "Stand by," he ordered, and we dove into threespace again--loosed another salvo at another Reb, and flicked out of sight. And that was the way it went for hour after hour until we pulled out, our last torpedo fired and the crew on the ragged edge of exhaustion. Somehow, by some miracle compounded of luck and good pilotage, we were unmarked. And Chase, despite his twitching face and shaking hands, was one hell of a combat skipper! I didn't wonder about him any more. He had the guts all right. But it was a different sort of courage from the icy contempt for danger that marked Andy Royce. Even so, I couldn't help thinking that I was glad to be riding with Chase. We drove to the rear, heading for the supply train, our ammunition expended, while behind us the battlewagons and cruisers were hammering each other to metal pulp.

In the quiet of the rear area it was hardly believable that a major battle was going on ahead of us. We raised the "Amphitrite," identified ourselves, and put in a request for supply.

"Lay aboard," "Amphitrite" signalled back. "How's the war going?"

"Don't know. We've been too busy," our signalman replied.

"I'll bet--you're 'Lachesis,' aren't you?"

"Affirmative."

"How'd you lose your ammo? Jettison it?"

"Stow that, you unprintable obscenity," Haskins replied. "We're a fighting ship."

"Amphitrite" chuckled nastily. "That I'll believe when I see it!"

"Communications," Chase snapped. "This isn't a social call. Get our heading and approach instructions." He sounded as schoolmasterish as ever, but there was a sickly smile on his face, and the gray-green look was gone.

"Morale seems a little better, doesn't it, Marsden?" he said to me as the "Amphitrite" flicked out into threespace and we followed.

I nodded. "Yes, sir," I agreed. "Quite a little."

Our cargo hatches snapped open and we cuddled up against "Amphitrite's" bulging belly while our crew and the supply echelon worked like demons to transfer ammunition. We had fifty torpedoes aboard when the I.F.F. detector shrilled alarm.

Three hundred feet above us the "Amphitrite's" main battery let loose a salvo at three Rebel scouts that had flickered into being less than fifty miles away. Their launchers flared with a glow that lighted the blackness of space.

"Stand by!" Chase yelled as he threw the converter on.

"Hatches!" I screamed as we shimmered and vanished.

Somehow we got most of them closed, losing only the crew on number two port turret which was still buttoning up as we slipped over into the infra band. I ordered the turret sealed. Cth had already ruined the unshielded sighting mechanisms and I had already seen what happened to men caught in Cth unprotected. I had no desire to see it again--or let our crew see it if it could be avoided. A human body turned inside out isn't the most wholesome of sights.

"How did they get through?" Chase muttered as we put out our probe.

"I don't know--maybe someone wasn't looking."

"What's it like down there?" Chase asked. "See anything?"

"'Amphitrite's' still there," I said.

"She's what?"

"Still there," I repeated. "And she's in trouble."

"She's big. She can take it--but--"

"Here, you look," I said, flipping the probe switch.

"My God!" Chase muttered--as he took one look at the supply ship lying dead in space, her protective batteries flaming. She had gotten one of the Rebel scouts but the other two had her bracketed and were pouring fire against her dim screens.

"She can't keep this up," I said. "She's been hulled--and it looks like her power's taken it."

"Action imminent," Chase ordered, and the rangefinder took up his chant.

We came storming out of Cth right on top of one of the Rebel scouts. A violent shock raced through the ship, slamming me against my web. The rebound sent us a good two miles away before our starboard battery flamed. The enemy scout, disabled by the shock, stunned and unable to maneuver took the entire salvo amidships and disappeared in a puff of flame.

The second Rebel disappeared and we did too. She was back in Cth looking for a better chance at the "Amphitrite." The big ship was wallowing like a wounded whale, half of one section torn away, her armor dented, and her tubes firing erratically.

We took one long look and jumped back into Cth. But not before Haskins beamed a message to the supply ship. "Now you've seen it, you damned storekeeper," he gloated. "What do you think?" "Amphitrite" didn't answer.

"Probe out," Chase ordered, neglecting, I noticed, to comment on the signalman's act.

* * * * *

I pushed the proper buttons but nothing happened. I pushed again and then turned on the scanners. The one aft of the probe was half covered with a twisted mass of metal tubing that had once been our probe. We must have smashed it when we rammed. Quickly I shifted to the auxiliary probe, but the crumpled mass had jammed the hatch. It wouldn't open.

"No probes, sir," I announced.

"Damn," Chase said. "Well, we'll have to do without them. Hold tight, we're going down."

We flicked into threespace just in time to see a volcano of fire erupt from "Amphitrite's" side and the metallic flick of the Rebel scout slipping back into Cth.

"What's your situation, 'Amphitrite'?" our signal asked.

"Not good," the faint answer came back. "They've got us in the power room and our accumulators aren't going to stand this load very long. That last salvo went through our screens, but our armor stopped it. But if the screens go down--"

Our batteries flared at the Rebel as he again came into sight. He didn't wait, but flicked right back into Cth without firing a shot. Pollard was on the ball.

"Brave lad, that Reb," Chase said. There was a sneer in his voice.

For the moment it was stalemate. The Reb wasn't going to come into close range with a warship of equal power to his own adding her metal to the "Amphitrite's," but he could play cat and mouse with us, drawing our fire until we had used up our torpedoes, and then come in to finish the supply ship. Or he could harass us with long range fire. Or he could go away.

It was certain he wouldn't do the last, and he'd be a fool if he did the second. "Amphitrite" could set up a mine screen that would take care of any long range stuff,--and we could dodge it. His probe was still working and he had undoubtedly seen ours crushed against our hull. If he hadn't he was blind--and that wasn't a Rebel characteristic. We could hyper, of course, but we were blind up there in Cth. His best was to keep needling us, and take the chance that we'd run out of torps.

"What's our munition?" Chase asked almost as an echo to my thought. I switched over to Pollard.

"Thirty mark sevens," Pollard said, "and a little small arms."

"One good salvo," Chase said, thoughtfully.

The Rebel flashed in and out again, and we let go a burst.

"Twenty, now," I said.

Chase didn't hear me. He was busy talking to Allyn on damage control. "You can't cut it, hey?--All right--disengage the converter on the auxiliary probe and break out that roll of duralloy cable in the stores--Pollard! don't fire over one torp at a time when that lad shows up. Load the other launchers with blanks. Make him think we're shooting. We have to keep him hopping. Now listen to me--Yes, Allyn, I mean you. Fasten that converter onto the cable and stand by. We're going to make a probe." Chase turned to me.

"You were Exec with Royce," he said. "You should know how to fight a ship."

"What are you planning to do?" I asked.

"We can't hold that Rebel off. Maybe with ammunition we could, but there's less than a salvo aboard and he has the advantage of position. We can't be sure he won't try to take us in spite of 'Amphitrite's' support and if he does finish us, 'Amphitrite's' a dead duck." The "Lachesis" quivered as the port turrets belched flame. "That leaves nineteen torpedoes," he said. "In Cth we're safe enough but we're helpless without a probe. Yet we can only get into attack position from Cth. That leaves us only one thing to do--improvise a probe."

"And how do you do that?" I asked.

"Put a man out on a line--with the converter from the auxiliary. Give him a command helmet and have him talk the ship in."

"But that's suicide!"

"No, Marsden, not suicide--just something necessary. A necessary sacrifice, like this whole damned war! I don't believe in killing men. It makes me sick. But I kill if I have to, and sacrifice if I must." His face twisted and the gray-green look came back. "There are over a thousand men on the 'Amphitrite,' and a vital cargo of munitions. One life, I think, is fair trade for a thousand, just as a few hundred thousand is fair trade for a race." The words were schoolmasterish and would have been dead wrong coming from anyone except Chase. But he gave them an air of reasonable inevitability. And for a moment I forgot that he was cold-bloodedly planning someone's death. For a moment I felt the spirit of sacrifice that made heroes out of ordinary people.

* * * * *

"Look, skipper," I said. "How about letting me do it?" I could have kicked myself a moment later, but the words were out before I could stop them. He had me acting noble, and that trait isn't one of my strong suits.

He smiled. "You know, Marsden," he said, "I was expecting that." His voice was oddly soft. "Thanks." Then it became dry and impersonal. "Request denied," he said. "This is my party."

I shivered inside. While I'm no coward, I didn't relish the thought of slamming around at the end of a duralloy cable stretching into a nowhere where there was no inertia. A hair too heavy a hand on the throttle in Cth would crush the man on the end to a pulp. But he shouldn't go either. It was his responsibility to command the ship.

"Who else is qualified?" Chase said answering the look on my face. "I know more about maneuver than any man aboard, and I'll be controlling the ship until the last moment. Once I order the attack I'll cut free, and you can pick me up later."

"You won't have time," I protested.

"Just in case I don't make it," Chase continued, making the understatement of the war with a perfectly straight face, "take care of the crew. They're a good bunch--just a bit too eager for the real Navy--but good. I've tried to make them into spacemen and they've resented me for it. I've tried to protect them and they've hated me--"

"They won't now--" I interrupted.

"I've tried to make them a unit." He went on as though I hadn't said a thing. "Maybe I've tried too hard, but I'm responsible for every life aboard this ship." He picked up his helmet. "Take command of the ship, Mr. Marsden," he said, and strode out of the room. The "Lachesis" shuddered to the recoil from the port turrets. Eighteen torpedoes left, I thought.

We lowered Chase a full hundred feet on the thin strand of duralloy. He dangled under the ship, using his converter to keep the line taut.

"You hear me, skipper?" I asked.

"Clearly--and you?"

"Four-four. Hang on now--we're going up." I eased the "Lachesis" into Cth and hung like glue to the border. "How's it going, skipper?"

"A bit rough but otherwise all right. Now steer right--easy now--aagh!"

"Skipper!"

"Okay, Marsden. You nearly pulled me in half--that's all. You did fine. We're in good position in relation to 'Amphitrite.' Now let's get our signals straight. Front is the way we're going now--base all my directions on that--got it?"

"Aye, sir."

"Good, Marsden, throttle back and hang on your converters."

I did as I was told.

"Ah--there she is--bear left a little. Hmm--she's looking for us--looks suspicious. Now she's turning toward 'Amphitrite.' Guess she figures we are gone. She's in position preparing to fire. Now! Drop out and fire--elevation zero, azimuth three sixty--Move!"

I moved. The "Lachesis" dropped like a stone. Chase was dead now. Nothing made of flesh could survive that punishment but we--we came out right on top of them, just like Chase had done to the other--except that we fired before we collided. And as with the other Rebel we gained complete surprise. Our eighteen torpedoes crashed home, her magazines exploded, and into that hell of molten and vaporized metal that had once been a Rebel scout we crashed a split second later. Two thousand miles per second relative is too fast for even an explosion to hurt much if there isn't any solid material in the way, and we passed through only the outer edges of the blast, but even so, the vaporized metal scoured our starboard plating down to the insulation. It was like a giant emery wheel had passed across our flank. The shock slammed us out of control and we went tumbling in crazy gyrations across space for several minutes before I could flip the "Lachesis" into Cth, check the speed and motion, and get back into threespace.

* * * * *

Chase was gone--and "Lachesis" was done. A week in drydock and she'd be as good as new, but she was no longer a fighting ship. She was a wreck. For us the battle was over--but somehow it didn't make me happy. The "Amphitrite" hung off our port bow, a tiny silver dot in the distance, and as I watched two more silver dots winked into being beside her. Haskins reported the I.F.F. readings.

"They're ours," he said. "A couple of cruisers."

"They should have been here ten minutes ago," I replied bitterly. I couldn't see very well. You can't when emotion clogs your tubes. Chase--coward?--not him. He was man clear through--a better one than I'd ever be even if I lived out my two hundred years. I wondered if the crew knew what sort of man their skipper was. I turned up the command helmet. "Men--" I began, but I didn't finish.

"We know," the blended thoughts and voices came back at me. Sure they knew! Chase had been on command circuit too. It was enough to make you cry--the mixture of pride, sadness and shame that rang through the helmet. It seemed to echo and reecho for a long time before I shut it off.

I sat there, thinking. I wasn't mad at the Rebels. I wasn't anything. All I could think was that we were paying a pretty grim price for survival. Those aliens had better show up pretty soon--and they'd better be as nasty as their reputation. There was a score--a big score--and I wanted to be there when it was added up and settled.

THE END

Contents

THE DUELING MACHINE

by BEN BOVA and MYRON R. LEWIS

The trouble with great ideas is that someone is sure to expend enormous effort and ingenuity figuring out how to louse them up.

Dulaq rode the slide to the upper pedestrian level, stepped off and walked over to the railing. The city stretched out all around him--broad avenues thronged with busy people, pedestrian walks, vehicle thoroughfares, aircars gliding between the gleaming, towering buildings.

And somewhere in this vast city was the man he must kill. The man who would kill him, perhaps.

It all seemed so real! The noise of the streets, the odors of the perfumed trees lining the walks, even the warmth of the reddish sun on his back as he scanned the scene before him.

It is an illusion, Dulaq reminded himself, a clever man-made hallucination. A figment of my own imagination amplified by a machine.

But it seemed so very real.

Real or not, he had to find Odal before the sun set. Find him and kill him. Those were the terms of the duel. He fingered the stubby cylinderical stat-wind in his tunic pocket. That was the weapon he had chosen, his weapon, his own invention. And this was the environment he had picked: his city, busy, noisy, crowded, the metropolis Dulaq had known and loved since childhood.

Dulaq turned and glanced at the sun. It was halfway down toward the horizon, he judged. He had about three hours to find Odal. When he did--kill or be killed.

Of course no one is actually hurt. That is the beauty of the machine. It allows one to settle a score, to work out aggressive feelings, without either mental or physical harm.

Dulaq shrugged. He was a roundish figure, moon-faced, slightly stooped shoulders. He had work to do. Unpleasant work for a civilized man, but the future of the Acquataine Cluster and the entire alliance of neighboring star systems could well depend on the outcome of this electronically synthesized dream.

He turned and walked down the elevated avenue, marveling at the sharp sensation of hardness that met each footstep on the paving. Children dashed by and rushed up to a toyshop window. Men of commerce strode along purposefully, but without missing a chance to eye the girls sauntering by.

I must have a marvelous imagination, Dulaq thought smiling to himself.

Then he thought of Odal, the blond, icy professional he was pitted against. Odal was an expert at all the weapons, a man of strength and cool precision, an emotionless tool in the hands of a ruthless politician. But how expert could he be with a stat-wand, when the first time he saw one was the moment before the duel began? And how well acquainted could he be with the metropolis, when he had spent most of his life in the military camps on the dreary planets of Kerak, sixty light-years from Acquatainia?

No, Odal would be lost and helpless in this situation. He would attempt to hide among the throngs of people. All Dulaq had to do was to find him.

The terms of the duel restricted both men to the pedestrian walks of the commercial quarter of the city. Dulaq knew the area intimately, and he began a methodical hunt through the crowds for the tall, fair-haired, blue-eyed Odal.

And he saw him! After only a few minutes of walking down the major thoroughfare, he spotted his opponent, strolling calmly along a crosswalk, at the level below.

Dulaq hurried down the next ramp, worked his way through the crowd, and saw the man again. Tall and blond, unmistakable. Dulaq edged along behind him quietly, easily. No disturbance. No pushing. Plenty of time. They walked along the street for a quarter hour while the distance between them slowly shrank from fifty feet to five.

Finally Dulaq was directly behind him, within arm's reach. He grasped the stat-wand and pulled it from his tunic. With one quick motion he touched it to the base of the man's skull and started to thumb the button that would release the killing bolt of energy ...

The man turned suddenly. It wasn't Odal!

Dulaq jerked back in surprise. It couldn't be. He had seen his face. It was Odal--and yet this man was definitely a stranger.

He stared at Dulaq as the duelist backed away a few steps, then turned and walked quickly from the place.

A mistake, Dulaq told himself. You were overanxious. A good thing this is an hallucination, or else the auto-police would be taking you in by now.

And yet ... he had been so certain that it was Odal. A chill shuddered through him. He looked up, and there was his antagonist, on the thoroughfare above, at the precise spot where he himself had been a few minutes earlier. Their eyes met, and Odal's lips parted in a cold smile.

Dulaq hurried up the ramp. Odal was gone by the time he reached the upper level. He could not have gotten far, Dulaq reasoned. Slowly, but very surely, Dulaq's hallucination turned into a nightmare. He spotted Odal in the crowd, only to have him melt away. He saw him again, lolling in a small park, but when he got closer, the man turned out to be another stranger. He felt the chill of the duelist's ice-blue eyes on him again and again, but when he turned to find his antagonist, no one was there but the impersonal crowd.

Odal's face appeared again and again. Dulaq struggled through the throngs to find his opponent, only to have him vanish. The crowd seemed to be filled with tall, blond men crisscrossing before Dulaq's dismayed eyes.

The shadows lengthened. The sun was setting. Dulaq could feel his heart pounding within him and perspiration pouring from every square inch of his skin.

There he is! Definitely, positively him! Dulaq pushed through the homeward-bound crowds toward the figure of a tall, blond man leaning against the safety railing of the city's main thoroughfare. It was Odal, the damned smiling confident Odal.

Dulaq pulled the wand from his tunic and battled across the surging crowd to the spot where Odal stood motionless, hands in pockets, watching him.

Dulaq came within arm's reach ...

"TIME, GENTLEMEN. TIME IS UP, THE DUEL IS ENDED."

* * * * *

High above the floor of the antiseptic-white chamber that housed the dueling machine was a narrow gallery. Before the machine had been installed, the chamber had been a lecture hall in Acquatainia's largest university. Now the rows of students' seats, the lecturer's dais and rostrum were gone. The chamber held only the machine, the grotesque collection of consoles, control desks, power units, association circuits, and booths where the two antagonists sat.

In the gallery--empty during ordinary duels--sat a privileged handful of newsmen.

"Time limit is up," one of them said. "Dulaq didn't get him."

"Yes, but he didn't get Dulaq, either."

The first one shrugged. "The important thing is that now Dulaq has to fight Odal on his terms. Dulaq couldn't win with his own choice of weapons and situation, so--"

"Wait, they're coming out."

Down on the floor below, Dulaq and his opponent emerged from their enclosed booths.

One of the newsmen whistled softly. "Look at Dulaq's face ... it's positively gray."

"I've never seen the Prime Minister so shaken."

"And take a look at Kanus' hired assassin." The newsmen turned toward Odal, who stood before his booth, quietly chatting with his seconds.

"Hm-m-m. There's a bucket of frozen ammonia for you."

"He's enjoying this."

One of the newsmen stood up. "I've got a deadline to meet. Save my seat."

He made his way past the guarded door, down the rampway circling the outer walls of the building, to the portable tri-di transmitting unit that the Acquatainian government had permitted for the newsmen on the campus grounds outside the former lecture hall.

The newsman huddled with his technicians for a few minutes, then stepped before the transmitter.

"Emile Dulaq, Prime Minister of the Acquataine Cluster and acknowledged leader of the coalition against Chancellor Kanus of the Kerak Worlds, has failed in the first part of his psychonic duel against Major Par Odal of Kerak. The two antagonists are now undergoing the routine medical and psychological checks before renewing their duel."

By the time the newsman returned to his gallery seat, the duel was almost ready to begin again.

Dulaq stood in the midst of a group of advisors before the looming impersonality of the machine.

"You need not go through with the next phase of the duel immediately," his Minister of Defense was saying. "Wait until tomorrow. Rest and calm yourself."

Dulaq's round face puckered into a frown. He cocked an eye at the chief meditech, hovering at the edge of the little group.

The meditech, one of the staff that ran the dueling machine, pointed out, "The Prime Minister has passed the examinations. He is capable, within the agreed-upon rules of the contest, of resuming."

"But he has the option of retiring for the day, does he not?"

"If Major Odal agrees."

Dulaq shook his head impatiently. "No. I shall go through with it. Now."

"But--"

The prime minister's face suddenly hardened; his advisors lapsed into a respectful silence. The chief meditech ushered Dulaq back into his booth. On the other side of the room, Odal glanced at the Acquatainians, grinned humorlessly, and strode to his own booth.

Dulaq sat and tried to blank out his mind while the meditechs adjusted the neurocontacts to his head and torso. They finished at last and withdrew. He was alone in the booth now, looking at the dead-white walls, completely bare except for the viewscreen before his eyes. The screen finally began to glow slightly, then brightened into a series of shifting colors. The colors merged and changed, swirled across his field of view. Dulaq felt himself being drawn into them gradually, compellingly, completely immersed in them.

* * * * *

The mists slowly vanished, and Dulaq found himself standing on an immense and totally barren plain. Not a tree, not a blade of grass; nothing but bare, rocky ground stretching in all directions to the horizon and disturbingly harsh yellow sky. He looked down and at his feet saw the weapon that Odal had chosen.

A primitive club.

With a sense of dread, Dulaq picked up the club and hefted it in his hand. He scanned the plain. Nothing. No hills or trees or bushes to hide in. No place to run to.

And off on the horizon he could see a tall, lithe figure holding a similar club walking slowly and deliberately toward him.

* * * * *

The press gallery was practically empty. The duel had more than an hour to run, and most of the newsmen were outside, broadcasting their hastily-drawn guesses about Dulaq's failure to win with his own choice of weapon and environment.

Then a curious thing happened.

On the master control panel of the dueling machine, a single light flashed red. The meditech blinked at it in surprise, then pressed a series of buttons on his board. More red lights appeared. The chief meditech rushed to the board and flipped a single switch.

One of the newsmen turned to his partner. "What's going on down there?"

"I think it's all over.... Yes, look, they're opening up the booths. Somebody must've scored a victory."

They watched intently while the other newsmen quickly filed back into the gallery.

"There's Odal. He looks happy."

"Guess that means--"

"Good Lord! Look at Dulaq!"

II

Dr. Leoh was lecturing at the Carinae Regional University when the news of Dulaq's duel reached him. An assistant professor perpetrated the unthinkable breach of interrupting the lecture to whisper the news in his ear.

Leoh nodded grimly, hurriedly finished his lecture, and them accompanied the assistant professor to the University president's office. They stood in silence as the slideway whisked them through the strolling students and blossoming greenery of the quietly-busy campus.

Leoh remained wrapped in his thoughts as they entered the administration building and rode the lift tube. Finally, as they stepped through the president's doorway, Leoh asked the assistant professor:

"You say he was in a state of catatonic shock when they removed him from the machine?"

"He still is," the president answered from his desk. "Completely withdrawn from the real world. Cannot speak, hear, or even see--a living vegetable."

Leoh plopped down in the nearest chair and ran a hand across his fleshy face. He was balding and jowly, but his face was creased from a smile that was almost habitual, and his eyes were active and alert.

"I don't understand it," he admitted. "Nothing like this has ever happened in a dueling machine before."

The university president shrugged. "I don't understand it either. But, this is your business." He put a slight emphasis on the last word, unconsciously perhaps.

"Well, at least this will not reflect on the university. That is why I formed Psychonics as a separate business enterprise." Then he added, with a grin, "The money was, of course, only a secondary consideration."

The president managed a smile. "Of course."

"I suppose the Acquatainians want to see me?" Leoh asked academically.

"They're on the tri-di now, waiting for you."

"They're holding a transmission frequency open over eight hundred parsecs?" Leoh looked impressed. "I must be an important man."

"You're the inventor of the dueling machine and the head of Psychonics, Inc. You're the only man who can tell them what went wrong."

"Well, I suppose I shouldn't keep them waiting."

"You can take the call here," the president said, starting to get up from his chair.

"No, no, stay there at your desk," Leoh insisted. "There's no reason for you to leave. Or you either," he said to the assistant professor.

The president touched a button on his desk communicator. The far wall of the office glowed momentarily, then seemed to dissolve. They were looking into another office, this one on Acquatainia. It was crowded with nervous-looking men in business clothes and military uniforms.

"Gentlemen," Dr. Leoh said.

Several of the Acquatainians tried to answer him at once. After a few seconds of talking together, they all looked toward one of their members--a tall, purposeful, shrewd-faced civilian who bore a neatly-trimmed black beard.

"I am Fernd Massan, the Acting Prime Minister of Acquatainia. You realize, of course, the crisis that has been precipitated in my Government because of this duel?"

Leoh blinked. "I realize that apparently there has been some difficulty with the dueling machine installed on the governing planet of your star cluster. Political crises are not in my field."

"But your dueling machine has incapacitated the Prime Minister," one of the generals bellowed.

"And at this particular moment," the defense minister added, "in the midst of our difficulties with the Kerak Worlds."

"If the Prime Minister is not--"

"Gentlemen!" Leoh objected. "I cannot make sense of your story if you all speak at once."

Massan gestured them to silence.

"The dueling machine," Leoh said, adopting a slightly professorial tone, "is nothing more than a psychonic device for alleviating human aggressions and hostilities. It allows for two men to share a dream world created by one of them. There is a nearly-complete feedback between the two. Within certain limits, two men can do anything they wish within their dream world. This allows men to settle grievances with violence--in the safety of their own imaginations. If the machine is operated properly, no physical or mental harm can be done to the participants. They can alleviate their tensions safely--without damage of any sort to anyone, and without hurting society.

"Your own Government tested one of the machines and approved its use on Acquatainia more than three years ago. I see several of you who were among those to whom I personally demonstrated the device. Duelling machines are in use through wide portions of the galaxy, and I am certain that many of you have used the machine. You have, general, I'm sure."

The general blustered. "That has nothing to do with the matter at hand!"

"Admittedly," Leoh conceded. "But I do not understand how a therapeutic machine can possibly become entangled in a political crisis."

Massan said: "Allow me to explain. Our Government has been conducting extremely delicate negotiations with the stellar governments of our neighboring territories. These negotiations concern the rearmaments of the Kerak Worlds. You have heard of Kanus of Kerak?"

"I recall the name vaguely," Leoh said. "He's a political leader of some sort."

"Of the worst sort. He has acquired complete dictatorship of the Kerak Worlds, and is now attempting to rearm them for war. This is in direct countervention of the Treaty of Acquatainia, signed only thirty Terran years ago."

"I see. The treaty was signed at the end of the Acquataine-Kerak war, wasn't it?"

"A war that we won," the general pointed out.

"And now the Kerak Worlds want to rearm and try again," Leoh said.

"Precisely."

Leoh shrugged. "Why not call in the Star Watch? This is their type of police activity. And what has all this to do with the dueling machine?"

* * * * *

Massan explained patiently, "The Acquataine Cluster has never become a full-fledged member of the Terran Commonwealth. Our neighboring territories are likewise unaffiliated. Therefore the Star Watch can intervene only if all parties concerned agree to intervention. Unless, of course, there is an actual military emergency. The Kerak Worlds, of course, are completely isolationist--unbound by any laws except those of force."

Leoh shook his head.

"As for the dueling machine," Massan went on, "Kanus of Kerak has turned it into a political weapon--"

"But that's impossible. Your government passed strict laws concerning the use of the machine; I recommended them and I was in your Council chambers when the laws were passed. The machine may be used only for personal grievances. It is strictly outside the realm of politics."

Massan shook his head sadly. "Sir, laws are one thing--people are another. And politics consists of people, not words on paper."

"I don't understand," Leoh said.

Massan explained, "A little more than one Terran year ago, Kanus picked a quarrel with a neighboring star-group--the Safad Federation. He wanted an especially favorable trade agreement with them. Their minister of trade objected most strenuously. One of the Kerak negotiators--a certain Major Odal--got into a personal argument with the minister. Before anyone knew what had happened, they had challenged each other to a duel. Odal won the duel, and the minister resigned his post. He said that he could no longer effectively fight against the will of Odal and his group ... he was psychologically incapable of it. Two weeks later he was dead--apparently a suicide, although I have doubts."

"That's ... extremely interesting," Leoh said.

"Three days ago," Massan continued, "the same Major Odal engaged Prime Minister Dulaq in a bitter personal argument. Odal is now a military attaché of the Kerak Embassy here. He accused the Prime Minister of cowardice, before a large group of an Embassy party. The Prime Minister had no alternative but to challenge him. And now--"

"And now Dulaq is in a state of shock, and your government is tottering."

Massan's back stiffened. "Our Government shall not fall, nor shall the Acquataine Cluster acquiesce to the rearmament of the Kerak Worlds. But"--his voice lowered--"without Dulaq, I fear that our neighboring governments will give in to Kanus' demands and allow him to rearm. Alone, we are powerless to stop him."

"Rearmament itself might not be so bad," Leoh mused, "if you can keep the Kerak Worlds from using their weapons. Perhaps the Star Watch might--"

"Kanus could strike a blow and conquer a star system before the Star Watch could be summoned and arrive to stop him. Once Kerak is armed, this entire area of the galaxy is in peril. In fact, the entire galaxy is endangered."

"And he's using the dueling machine to further his ambitions," Leoh said. "Well, gentlemen, it seems I have no alternative but to travel to the Acquataine Cluster. The dueling machine is my responsibility, and if there is something wrong with it, or the use of it, I will do my best to correct the situation."

"That is all we ask," Massan said. "Thank you."

The Acquatainian scene faded away, and the three men in the university president's office found themselves looking at a solid wall once again.

"Well," Dr. Leoh said, turning to the president, "it seems that I must request an indefinite leave of absence."

The president frowned. "And it seems that I must grant your request--even though the year is only half-finished."

"I regret the necessity," Leoh said; then, with a broad grin, he added, "My assistant professor, here, can handle my courses for the remainder of the year very easily. Perhaps he will even be able to deliver his lectures without being interrupted."

The assistant professor turned red.

"Now then," Leoh muttered, mostly to himself, "who is this Kanus, and why is he trying to turn the Kerak Worlds into an arsenal?"

III

Chancellor Kanus, the supreme leader of the Kerak Worlds, stood at the edge of the balcony and looked across the wild, tumbling gorge to the rugged mountains beyond.

"These are the forces that mold men's actions," he said to his small audience of officials and advisors, "the howling winds, the mighty mountains, the open sky and the dark powers of the clouds."

The men nodded and made murmurs of agreement.

"Just as the mountains thrust up from the pettiness of the lands below, so shall we rise above the common walk of men," Kanus said. "Just as a thunderstorm terrifies them, we will make them bend to our will!"

"We will destroy the past," said one of the ministers.

"And avenge the memory of defeat," Kanus added. He turned and looked at the little group of men. Kanus was the smallest man on the balcony: short, spare, sallow-faced; but he possessed piercing dark eyes and a strong voice that commanded attention.

He walked through the knot of men and stopped before a tall, lean, blond youth in light-blue military uniform. "And you, Major Odal, will be a primary instrument in the first steps of conquest."

Odal bowed stiffly. "I only hope to serve my leader and my worlds."

"You shall. And you already have," Kanus said, beaming. "Already the Acquatainians are thrashing about like a snake whose head has been cut off. Without Dulaq, they have no head, no brain to direct them. For your part in this triumph"--Kanus snapped his fingers, and one of his advisors quickly stepped to his side and handed him a small ebony box--"I present you with this token of the esteem of the Kerak Worlds, and of my personal high regard."

He handed the box to Odal, who opened it and took out a small jeweled pin.

"The Star of Kerak," Kanus announced. "This is the first time it has been awarded to anyone except a warrior on the battlefield. But then, we have turned their so-called civilized machine into our own battlefield, eh?"

Odal grinned. "Yes, sir, we have. Thank you very much sir. This is the supreme moment of my life."

"To date, major. Only to date. There will be other moments, even higher ones. Come, let's go inside. We have many plans to discuss ... more duels ... more triumphs."

They all filed in to Kanus' huge, elaborate office. The leader walked across the plushly ornate room and sat at the elevated desk, while his followers arranged themselves in the chairs and couches placed about the floor. Odal remained standing, near the doorway.

Kanus let his fingers flick across a small control board set into his desktop, and a tri-dimensional star map glowed into existence on the far wall. As its center were the eleven stars that harbored the Kerak Worlds. Around them stood neighboring stars, color-coded to show their political groupings. Off to one side of the map was the Acquataine Cluster, a rich mass of stars--wealthy, powerful, the most important political and economic power in the section of the galaxy. Until yesterday's duel.

Kanus began one of his inevitable harangues. Objectives, political and military. Already the Kerak Worlds were unified under his dominant will. The people would follow wherever he led. Already the political alliances built up by the Acquatainian diplomacy since the last war were tottering, now that Dulaq was out of the picture. Now was the time to strike. A political blow here, at the Szarno Confederacy, to bring them and their armaments industries into line with Kerak. Then more political strikes to isolate the Acquataine Cluster from its allies, and to build up the subservient states for Kerak. Then, finally, the military blow--against the Acquatainians.

"A sudden strike, a quick, decisive series of blows, and the Acquatainians will collapse like a house of paper. Before the Star Watch can interfere, we will be masters of the Cluster. Then, with the resources of Acquatainia to draw on, we can challenge any force in the galaxy--even the Terran Commonwealth itself!"

The men in the room nodded their assent.

They've heard this story many, many times, Odal thought to himself. This was the first time he had been privileged to listen to it. If you closed your eyes, or looked only at the star map, the plan sounded bizarre, extreme, even impossible. But, if you watched Kanus, and let those piercing, almost hypnotic eyes fasten on yours, then the leader's wildest dreams sounded not only exciting, but inevitable.

Odal leaned a shoulder against the paneled wall and scanned the other men in the room.

There was fat Greber, the vice chancellor, fighting desperately to stay awake after drinking too much wine during the luncheon and afterward. And Modal, sitting on the couch next to him, was bright-eyed and alert, thinking only of how much money and power would come to him as Chief of Industries once the rearmament program began in earnest.

Sitting alone on another couch was Kor, the quiet one, the head of Intelligence, and--technically--Odal's superior. Silent Kor, whose few words were usually charged with terror for those whom he spoke against.

Marshal Lugal looked bored when Kanus spoke of politics, but his face changed when military matters came up. The marshal lived for only one purpose: to avenge his army's humiliating defeat in the war against the Acquatainians, thirty Terran years ago. What he didn't realize, Odal thought, smiling to himself, was that as soon as he had reorganized the army and re-equipped it, Kanus planned to retire him and place younger men in charge. Men whose only loyalty was not to the army, not even to the Kerak Worlds and their people, but to the chancellor himself.

Eagerly following every syllable, every gesture of the leader was little Tinth. Born to the nobility, trained in the arts, a student of philosophy, Tinth had deserted his heritage and joined the forces of Kanus. His reward had been the Ministry of Education; many teachers had suffered under him.

And finally there was Romis, the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs. A professional diplomat, and one of the few men in government before Kanus' sweep to power to survive this long. It was clear that Romis hated the chancellor. But he served the Kerak Worlds well. The diplomatic corps was flawless in their handling of intergovernmental affairs. It was only a matter of time, Odal knew, before one of them--Romis or Kanus--killed the other.

* * * * *

The rest of Kanus' audience consisted of political hacks, roughnecks-turned-bodyguards, and a few other hangers-on who had been with Kanus since the days when he held his political monologues in cellars, and haunted the alleys to avoid the police. Kanus had come a long way: from the blackness of oblivion to the dazzling heights of the chancellor's rural estate.

Money, power, glory, revenge, patriotism: each man in the room, listening to Kanus, had his reasons for following the chancellor.

And my reasons? Odal asked himself. Why do I follow him? Can I see into my own mind as easily as I see into theirs?

There was duty, of course. Odal was a soldier, and Kanus was the duly-elected leader of the government. Once elected, though, he had dissolved the government and solidified his powers as absolute dictator of the Kerak Worlds.

There was gain to be had by performing well under Kanus. Regardless of his political ambitions and personal tyrannies, Kanus rewarded well when he was pleased. The medal--the Star of Kerak--carried with it an annual pension that would nicely accommodate a family. If I had one, Odal thought, sardonically.

There was power, of sorts, also. Working the dueling machine in his special way, hammering a man into nothingness, finding the weaknesses in his personality and exploiting them, pitting his mind against others, turning sneering towers of pride like Dulaq into helpless whipped dogs--that was power. And it was a power that did not go unnoticed in the cities of the Kerak Worlds. Already Odal was easily recognized on the streets; women especially seemed to be attracted to him now.

"The most important factor," Kanus was saying, "and I cannot stress it overmuch, is to build up an aura of invincibility. This is why your work is so important, Major Odal. You must be invincible! Because today you represent the collective will of the Kerak Worlds. To-day you are the instrument of my own will--and you must triumph at every turn. The fate of your people, of your government, of your chancellor rests squarely on your shoulders each time you step into a dueling machine. You have borne that responsibility well, major. Can you carry it even further?"

"I can, sir," Odal answered crisply, "and I will."

Kanus beamed at him. "Good! Because your next duel--and those that follow it--will be to the death."

IV

It took the starship two weeks to make the journey from Carinae to the Acquataine Cluster. Dr. Leoh spent the time checking over the Acquatainian dueling machine, by direct tri-di beam; the Acquatainian government gave him all the technicians, time and money he needed for the task.

Leoh spent as much of his spare time as possible with the other passengers of the ship. He was gregarious, a fine conversationalist, and had a nicely-balanced sense of humor. Particularly, he was a favorite of the younger women, since he had reached the age where he could flatter them with his attention without making them feel endangered.

But still, there were long hours when he was alone in his stateroom with nothing but his memories. At times like these, it was impossible not to think back over the road he had been following.

* * * * *

Albert Robertus Leoh, Ph.D., Professor of Physics, Professor of Electronics, master of computer technology, inventor of the interstellar tri-di communications system; and more recently, student of psychology, Professor of Psychophysiology, founder of Psychonics, Inc., inventor of the dueling machine.

During his earlier years, when the supreme confidence of youth was still with him, Leoh had envisioned himself as helping mankind to spread his colonies and civilizations throughout the galaxy. The bitter years of galactic war had ended in his childhood, and now human societies throughout the Milky Way were linked together--in greater or lesser degree of union--into a more-or-less peaceful coalition of star groups.

There were two great motivating forces at work on those human societies spread across the stars, and these forces worked toward opposite goals. On the one hand was the urge to explore, to reach new stars, new planets, to expand the frontiers of man's civilizations and found new colonies, new nations. Pitted against this drive to expand was an equally-powerful force: the realization that technology had finally put an end to physical labor and almost to poverty itself on all the civilized worlds of man. The urge to move off to the frontier was penned in and buried alive under the enervating comforts of civilization.

The result was inescapable. The civilized worlds became constantly more crowded as time wore on. They became jampacked islands of humanity sprinkled thinly across the sea of space that was still full of unpopulated islands.

The expense and difficulty of interstellar travel was often cited as an excuse. The starships were expensive: their power demands were frightful. Only the most determined--and the best financed--groups of colonists could afford them. The rest of mankind accepted the ease and safety of civilization, lived in the bulging cities of the teeming planets. Their lives were circumscribed by their neighbors, and by their governments. Constantly more people crowding into a fixed living space meant constantly less freedom. The freedom to dream, to run free, to procreate, all became state-owned, state-controlled monopolies.

And Leoh had contributed to this situation.

He had contributed his thoughts and his work. He had contributed often and regularly--the interstellar communications systems was only the one outstanding achievement in a long career of achievements.

Leoh had been nearly at the voluntary retirement age for scientists when he realized what he, and his fellow scientists, had done. Their efforts to make life richer and more rewarding for mankind had made life only less strenuous and more rigid.

And with every increase in comfort, Leoh discovered, came a corresponding increase in neuroses, in crimes of violence, in mental aberrations. Senseless wars of pride broke out between star-groups for the first time in generations. Outwardly, the peace of the galaxy was assured; but beneath the glossy surface of the Terran Commonwealth there smoldered the beginnings of a volcano. Police actions fought by the Star Watch were increasing ominously. Petty wars between once-stable peoples were flaring up steadily.

Once Leoh realized the part he had played in this increasingly tragic drama, he was confronted with two emotions--a deep sense of guilt, both personal and professional; and, countering this, a determination to do something, anything, to restore at least some balance to man's collective mentality.

Leoh stepped out of physics and electronics, and entered the field of psychology. Instead of retiring, he applied for a beginner's status in his new profession. It had taken considerable bending and straining of the Commonwealth's rules--but for a man of Leoh's stature, the rules could be flexed somewhat. Leoh became a student once again, then a researcher, and finally a Professor of Psychophysiology.

Out of this came the dueling machine. A combination of electroencephalograph and autocomputer. A dream machine, that amplified a man's imagination until he could engulf himself into a world of his own making.

Leoh envisioned it as a device to enable men to rid themselves of hostility and tension safely. Through his efforts, and those of his colleagues, dueling machines were quickly becoming accepted devices for settling disputes.

When two men had a severe difference of opinion--deep enough to warrant legal action--they could go to the dueling machine instead of the courts. Instead of sitting helplessly and watching the machinations of the law grind impersonally through their differences, the two antagonists could allow their imaginations free rein in the dueling machine. They could settle their differences personally, as violently as they wished, without hurting themselves or anyone else. On most civilized worlds, the results of properly-monitored duels were accepted as legally binding.

The tensions of civilized life could be escaped--albeit temporarily--in the dueling machine. This was a powerful tool, much too powerful to allow it to be used indiscriminately. Therefore Leoh safeguarded his invention by forming a private company--Psychonics, Inc.--and securing an exclusive license from the Terran Commonwealth to manufacture, sell, install and maintain the machines. His customers were government health and legal agencies; his responsibilities were: legally, to the Commonwealth; morally, to all mankind; and finally, to his own restless conscience.

The dueling machines succeeded. They worked as well, and often better, than Leoh had anticipated. But he knew that they were only a stopgap, only a temporarily shoring of a constantly-eroding dam. What was needed, really needed, was some method of exploding the status quo, some means of convincing people to reach out for those unoccupied, unexplored stars that filled the galaxy, some way of convincing men that they should leave the comforts of civilization for the excitement of colonization.

Leoh had been searching for that method when the news of Dulaq's duel against Odal reached him.

Now he was speeding across parsecs of space, praying to himself that the dueling machine had not failed.

The two-week flight ended. The starship took up a parking orbit around the capital planet of Acquataine Cluster. The passengers transhipped to the surface.

Dr. Leoh was met at the landing disk by an official delegation, headed by Massan, the acting prime minister. They exchanged formal greetings there at the base of the ship, while the other passengers hurried by.

As Leoh and Massan, surrounded by the other members of the delegation, rode the slideway to the port's administration building, Leoh commented:

"As you probably know, I have checked through your dueling machine quite thoroughly via tri-di for the past two weeks. I can find nothing wrong with it."

Massan shrugged. "Perhaps you should have checked then, the machine on Szarno."

"The Szarno Confederation? Their dueling machine?"

"Yes. This morning Kanus' hired assassin killed a man in it."

"He won another duel," Leoh said.

"You do not understand," Massan said grimly, "Major Odal's opponent--an industrialist who had spoken out against Kanus--was actually killed in the dueling machine. The man is dead!"

V

One of the advantages of being Commander-in-Chief of the Star Watch, the old man thought to himself, is that you can visit any planet is the Commonwealth.

He stood at the top of the hill and looked out over the green table land of Kenya. This was the land of his birth, Earth was his homeworld. The Star Watch's official headquarters may be in the heart of a globular cluster of stars near the center of the galaxy, but Earth was the place the commander wanted most to see as he grew older and wearier.

An aide, who had been following the commander at a respectful distance, suddenly intruded himself in the old man's reverie.

"Sir, a message for you."

The commander scowled at the young officer. "I gave orders that I was not to be disturbed."

The officer, slim and stiff in his black-and-silver uniform, replied. "Your chief of staff has passed the message on to you, sir. It's from Dr. Leoh, of Carinae University. Personal and urgent, sir."

The old man grumbled to himself, but nodded. The aide placed a small crystalline sphere on the grass before him. The air above the sphere started to vibrate and glow.

"Sir Harold Spencer here," the commander said.

The bubbling air seemed to draw in on itself and take solid form. Dr. Leoh sat at a desk chair and looked up at the standing commander.

"Harold, it's a pleasure to see you once again."

Spencer's stern eyes softened, and his beefy face broke into a well-creased smile. "Albert, you ancient scoundrel. What do you mean by interrupting my first visit home in fifteen years?"

"It won't be a long interruption," Leoh said.

"You told my chief of staff that it was urgent," Sir Harold groused.

"It is. But it's not the sort of problem that requires much action on your part. Yet. You are familiar with recent political developments on the Kerak Worlds?"

Spencer snorted. "I know that a barbarian named Kanus has established himself as a dictator. He's a troublemaker. I've been talking to the Commonwealth Council about the advisability of quashing him before he causes grief, but you know the Council ... first wait until the flames have sprung up, then thrash about and demand that the Star Watch do something!"

Leoh grinned. "You're as irascible as ever."

"My personality is not the subject of this rather expensive discussion. What about Kanus? And what are you doing, getting yourself involved in politics? About to change your profession again?"

"No, not at all," Leoh answered, laughing. Then, more seriously. "It seems as though Kanus has discovered some method of using the dueling machines to achieve political advantages over his neighbors."

"What?"

Leoh explained the circumstances of Odal's duels with the Acquatainian prime minister and Szarno Industrialist.

"Dulaq is completely incapacitated and the other poor fellow is dead?" Spencer's face darkened into a thundercloud. "You were right to call me. This is a situation that could easily become intolerable."

"I agree," Leoh said. "But evidently Kanus has not broken any laws or interstellar agreements. All that meets the eye is a disturbing pair of accidents, both of them accruing to Kanus' benefit."

"Do you believe that they were accidents?"

"Certainly not. The dueling machine cannot cause physical or mental harm ... unless someone has tampered with it in some way."

"That is my thought, too." Spencer was silent for a moment, weighing the matter in his mind. "Very well. The Star Watch cannot act officially, but there is nothing to prevent me from dispatching an officer to the Acquataine Cluster, on detached duty, to serve as liaison between us."

"Good. I think that will be the most effective method of handling the situation, at present."

"It will be done." Sir Harold pronounced. His aide made a mental note of it.

"Thank you very much," Leoh said. "Now, go back to enjoying your vacation."

"Vacation? This is no vacation," Spencer rumbled. "I happen to be celebrating my birthday."

"So? Well, congratulations. I try not to remember mine," Leoh said.

"Then you must be older than I," Spencer replied, allowing only the faintest hint of a smile to appear.

"I suppose it's possible."

"But not very likely, eh?"

They laughed together and said good-by. The Star Watch commander tramped through the hills until sunset, enjoying the sight of the grasslands and distant purple mountains he had known in his childhood. As dusk closed in, he told his aide he was ready to leave.

The aide pressed a stud on his belt and a two-place aircar skimmed silently from the far side of the hills and hovered beside them. Spencer climbed in laboriously while the aide remained discreetly at his side. While the commander settled his bulk into his seat the aide hurried around the car and hopped into his place. The car glided off toward Spencer's personal planetship, waiting for him at a nearby field.

"Don't forget to assign an officer to Dr. Leoh," the commander muttered to his aide. Then he turned and watched the unmatchable beauty of an Earthly sunset.

* * * * *

The aide did not forget the assignment. That night, as Sir Harold's ship spiraled out to a rendezvous with a starship, the aide dictated the necessary order into a autodispatcher that immediately beamed it to the Star Watch's nearest communications center, on Mars.

The order was scanned and routed automatically and finally beamed to the Star Watch unit commandant in charge of the area closest to the Acquataine Cluster, on the sixth planet circling the star Perseus Alpha. Here again, the order was processed automatically and routed through the local headquarters to the personnel files. The automated files selected three microcard dossiers that matched the requirements of the order.

The three microcards and the order itself appeared simultaneously on the desktop viewer of the Star Watch personnel officer. He looked at the order, then read the dossiers. He flicked a button that gave him an updated status report on each of the three men in question. One was due for leave after an extensive period of duty. The second was the son of a personal friend of the local commandant. The third had just arrived a few weeks ago, fresh from the Star Watch Academy on Mars.

The personnel officer selected the third man, routed his dossier and Sir Harold's order back into the automatic processing system, and returned to the film of primitive dancing girls he had been watching before this matter of decision had arrived at his desk.

VI

The space station orbiting around Acquatainia--the capital planet of the Acquataine Cluster--served simultaneously as a transfer point from starships to planetships, a tourist resort, meteorological station, communications center, scientific laboratory, astronomical observatory, medical haven for allergy and cardiac patients, and military base. It was, in reality, a good-sized city with its own markets, its own local government, and its own way of life.

Dr. Leoh had just stepped off the debarking ramp of the starship from Szarno. The trip there had been pointless and fruitless. But he had gone anyway, in the slim hope that he might find something wrong with the dueling machine that had been used to murder a man.

A shudder went through him as he edged along the automated customs scanners and paper-checkers. What kind of people could these men of Kerak be? To actually kill a human being in cold blood; to plot and plan the death of a fellow man. Worse than barbaric. Savage.

He felt tired as he left customs and took the slideway to the planetary shuttle ships. Halfway there, he decided to check at the communications desk for messages. That Star Watch officer that Sir Harold had promised him a week ago should have arrived by now.

The communications desk consisted of a small booth that contained the output printer of a communications computer and an attractive young dark-haired girl. Automation or not, Leoh thought smilingly, there were certain human values that transcended mere efficiency.

A lanky, thin-faced youth was half-leaning on the booth's counter, trying to talk to the girl. He had curly blond hair and crystal blue eyes; his clothes consisted of an ill-fitting pair of slacks and tunic. A small traveler's kit rested on the floor at his feet.

"So, I was sort of, well, thinking ... maybe somebody might, uh, show me around ... a little," he was stammering to the girl. "I've never been, uh, here ..."

"It's the most beautiful planet in the galaxy," the girl was saying. "Its cities are the finest."

"Yes ... well, I was sort of thinking ... that is, I know we just, uh, met a few minutes ago ... but, well, maybe ... if you have a free day or so coming up ... maybe we could, uh, sort of--".

She smiled coolly. "I have two days off at the end of the week, but I'll be staying here at the station. There's so much to see and do here, I very seldom leave."

"Oh--"

"You're making a mistake," Leoh interjected dogmatically, "If you have such a beautiful planet for your homeworld, why in the name of the gods of intellect don't you go down there and enjoy it? I'll wager you haven't been out in the natural beauty and fine cities you spoke of since you started working here on the station."

"Why, you're right," she said, surprised.

"You see? You youngsters are all alike. You never think further than the ends of your noses. You should return to the planet, young lady, and see the sunshine again. Why don't you visit the University at the capital city? Plenty of open space and greenery, lots of sunshine and available young men!"

Leoh was grinning broadly, and the girl smiled back at him. "Perhaps I will," she said.

"Ask for me when you get to the University. I'm Dr. Leoh. I'll see to it that you're introduced to some of the girls and gentlemen of your own age."

"Why ... thank you, doctor. I'll do it this week end."

"Good. Now then, any messages for me? Anyone aboard the station looking for me?"

The girl turned and tapped a few keys on the computer's console. A row of lights flicked briefly across the console's face. She turned back to Leoh:

"No, sir, I'm sorry. No message and no one has asked for you."

"Hm-m-m. That's strange. Well, thank you ... and I'll expect to see you at the end of this week."

The girl smiled a farewell. Leoh started to walk away from the booth, back toward the slideway. The young man took a step toward him, stumbled on his own traveling kit, and staggered across the floor for a half-dozen steps before regaining his balance. Leoh turned and saw that the youth's face bore a somewhat ridiculous expression of mixed indecision and curiosity.

"Can I help you?" Leoh asked, stopping at the edge of the moving slideway.

"How ... how did you do that, sir?"

"Do what?"

"Get that girl to agree to visit the university. I've been talking to her for half an hour, and, well, she wouldn't even look straight at me."

Leoh broke into a chuckle. "Well, young man, to begin with, you were much too flustered. It made you appear overanxious. On the other hand, I am at an age where I can be strictly platonic. She was on guard against you, but she knows she has very little to fear from me."

"I see ... I think."

"Well," Leoh said, gesturing toward the slideway, "I suppose this is where we go our separate ways."

"Oh, no, sir. I'm going with you. That is, I mean, you are Dr. Leoh, aren't you?"

"Yes, I am. And you must be--" Leoh hesitated. Can this be a Star Watch officer? he wondered.

The youth stiffened to attention and for an absurd flash of a second, Leoh thought he was going to salute. "I am Junior Lieutenant Hector, sir; on special detached duty from the cruiser SW4-J188, home base Perseus Alpha VI."

"I see," Leoh replied. "Um-m-m ... is Hector your first name or your last?"

"Both, sir."

I should have guessed, Leoh told himself. Aloud, he said, "Well, lieutenant, we'd better get to the shuttle before it leaves without us."

* * * * *

They took to the slideway. Half a second later, Hector jumped off and dashed back to the communications desk for his traveling kit. He hurried back to Leoh bumping into seven bewildered citizens of various descriptions and nearly breaking both his legs when he tripped as he ran back onto the moving slideway. He went down on his face, sprawled across two lanes moving at different speeds, and needed the assistance of several persons before he was again on his feet and standing beside Leoh.

"I ... I'm sorry to cause all that, uh, commotion, sir."

"That's all right. You weren't hurt, were you?"

"Uh, no ... I don't think so. Just embarrassed."

Leoh said nothing. They rode the slideway in silence through the busy station and out to the enclosed berths where the planetary shuttles were docked. They boarded one of the ships and found a pair of seats.

"Just how long have you been with Star Watch, lieutenant?"

"Six weeks, sir. Three weeks aboard a starship bringing me out to Perseus Alpha VI, a week at the planetary base there, and two weeks aboard the cruiser SW4-J188. That is, it's been six weeks since I received my commission. I've been at the Academy ... the Star Watch Academy on Mars ... for four years."

"You got through the Academy in four years?"

"That's the regulation time, sir."

"Yes, I know."

The ship eased out of its berth. There was a moment of free-fall, then the drive engine came on and the grav-field equilibrated.

"Tell me, lieutenant, how did you get picked for this assignment?"

"I wish I knew, sir," Hector said, his lean face twisting into a puzzled frown. "I was working out a program for the navigation officer ... aboard the cruiser. I'm pretty good at that ... I can work out computer programs in my head, mostly. Mathematics was my best subject at the Academy--"

"Interesting."

"Yes, well, anyway, I was working out this program when the captain himself came on deck and started shaking my hand telling me that I was being sent on special duty on Acquatainia by direct orders of the Commander-in-Chief. He seemed very happy ... the captain, that is."

"He was no doubt pleased to see you get such an unusual assignment," Leoh said tactfully.

"I'm not sure," Hector said truthfully. "I think he regarded me as some sort of a problem, sir. He had me on a different duty-berth practically every day I was on board the ship."

"Well now," Leoh changed the subject, "what do you know about psychonics?"

"About what, sir?"

"Eh ... electroencephalography?"

Hector looked blank.

"Psychology, perhaps?" Leoh suggested, hopefully, "Physiology? Computer molectronics?"

"I'm pretty good at mathematics!"

"Yes, I know. Did you, by any chance, receive any training in diplomatic affairs?"

"At the Star Watch Academy? No, sir."

Leah ran a hand through his thinning hair. "Then why did the Star Watch select you for this job? I must confess, lieutenant, that I can't understand the workings of a military organization."

Hector shook his head ruefully, "Neither do I, sir."

VII

The next week was an enervatingly slow one for Leoh, evenly divided between tedious checking of each component of the dueling machine, and shameless rouses to keep Hector as far away from the machine as possible.

The Star Watchman certainly wanted to help, and he actually was little short of brilliant in doing intricate mathematics completely in his head. But he was, Leoh found, a clumsy, chattering, whistling, scatterbrained, inexperienced bundle of noise and nerves. It was impossible to do constructive work with him nearby.

Perhaps you're judging him too harshly, Leoh warned himself. You just might be letting your frustrations with the dueling machine get the better of your sense of balance.

The professor was sitting in the office that the Acquatainians had given him in one end of the former lecture hall that held the dueling machine. Leoh could see its impassive metal hulk through the open office door.

The room he was sitting in had been one of a suite of offices used by the permanent staff of the machine. But they had moved out of the building completely, in deference to Leoh, and the Acquatainian government had turned the other cubbyhole offices into sleeping rooms for the professor and the Star Watchman, and an auto-kitchen. A combination cook-valet-handyman appeared twice each day--morning and evening--to handle any special chores that the cleaning machines and auto-kitchen might miss.

Leoh slouched back in his desk chair and cast a weary eye on the stack of papers that recorded the latest performances of the machine. Earlier that day he had taken the electroencephalographic records of clinical cases of catatonia and run them through the machine's input unit. The machine immediately rejected them, refused to process them through the amplification units and association circuits.

In other words, the machine had recognized the EEG traces as something harmful to a human being.

Then how did it happen to Dulaq? Leoh asked himself for the thousandth time. It couldn't have been the machine's fault; it must have been something in Odal's mind that simply overpowered Dulaq's.

"Overpowered?" That's a terribly unscientific term, Leoh argued against himself.

Before he could carry the debate any further, he heard the main door of the big chamber slide open and then bang shut, and Hector's off-key whistle shrilled and echoed through the high-vaulted room.

Leoh sighed and put his self-contained argument off to the back of his mind. Trying to think logically near Hector was a hopeless prospect.

"Are you in, doctor?" Hector's voice rang out.

"In here."

Hector ducked in through the doorway and plopped his rangy frame on the office's couch.

"Everything going well, sir?"

Leoh shrugged. "Not very well, I'm afraid. I can't find anything wrong with the dueling machine. I can't even force it to malfunction."

"Well, that's good, isn't it?" Hector chirped happily.

"In a sense," Leoh admitted, feeling slightly nettled at the youth's boundless, pointless optimism. "But, you see, it means that Kanus' people can do things with the machine that I can't."

Hector frowned, considering the problem. "Hm-m-m ... yes, I guess that's right, too, isn't it?"

"Did you see the girl back to her ship safely?" Leoh asked.

"Yes, sir," Hector replied, bobbing his head vigorously. "She's on her way back to the communications booth at the space station. She said to tell you she enjoyed her visit very much."

"Good. It was, eh, very good of you to escort her about the campus. It kept her out of my hair ... what's left of it, that is."

Hector grinned. "Oh, I liked showing her around, and all that--And, well, it sort of kept me out of your hair, too, didn't it?"

Leoh's eyebrows shot up in surprise.

Hector laughed. "Doctor, I may be clumsy, and I'm certainly no scientist ... but I'm not completely brainless."

"I'm sorry if I gave you that impression--"

"Oh no ... don't be sorry. I didn't mean that to sound so ... well, the way it sounded ... that is. I know I'm just in your way--" He started to get up.

* * * * *

Leoh waved him back to the couch. "Relax, my boy, relax. You know, I've been sitting here all afternoon wondering what to do next. Somehow, just now, I came to a conclusion."

"Yes?"

"I'm going to leave the Acquataine Cluster and return to Carinae."

"What? But you can't! I mean--"

"Why not? I'm not accomplishing anything here. Whatever it is that this Odal and Kanus have been doing, it's basically a political problem, and not a scientific one. The professional staff of the machine here will catch up to their tricks sooner or later."

"But, sir, if you can't find the answer, how can they?"

"Frankly, I don't know. But, as I said, this is a political problem more than a scientific one. I'm tired and frustrated and I'm feeling my years. I want to return to Carinae and spend the next few months considering beautifully abstract problems about instantaneous transportation devices. Let Massan and the Star Watch worry about Kanus."

"Oh! That's what I came to tell you. Massan has been challenged to a duel by Odal!"

"What?"

"This afternoon, Odal went to the Council building. Picked an argument with Massan right in the main corridor and challenged him."

"Massan accepted?" Leoh asked.

Hector nodded.

Leoh leaned across his desk and reached for the phone unit. It took a few minutes and a few levels of secretaries and assistants, but finally Massan's dark, bearded face appeared on the screen above the desk.

"You have accepted Odal's challenge?" Leoh asked, without preliminaries.

"We meet next week," Massan replied gravely.

"You should have refused."

"On what pretext?"

"No pretext. A flat refusal, based on the certainty that Odal or someone else from Kerak is tampering with the dueling machine."

Massan shook his head sadly. "My dear learned sir, you still do not comprehend the political situation. The Government of the Acquataine Cluster is much closer to dissolution than I dare to admit openly. The coalition of star groups that Dulaq had constructed to keep the Kerak Worlds neutralized has broken apart completely. This morning, Kanus announced that he would annex Szarno. This afternoon, Odal challenges me."

"I think I see--"

"Of course. The Acquatainian Government is paralyzed now, until the outcome of the duel is known. We cannot effectively intervene in the Szarno crisis until we know who will be heading the Government next week. And, frankly, more than a few members of our Council are now openly favouring Kanus and urging that we establish friendly relations with him before it is too late."

"But, that's all the more reason for refusing the duel," Leoh insisted.

"And be accused of cowardice in my own Council meetings?" Massan smiled grimly. "In politics, my dear sir, the appearance of a man means much more than his substance. As a coward, I would soon be out of office. But perhaps, as the winner of a duel against the invincible Odal ... or even as a martyr ... I may accomplish something useful."

Leoh said nothing.

Massan continued, "I put off the duel for a week, hoping that in that time you might discover Odal's secret. I dare not postpone the duel any longer; as it is, the political situation may collapse about our heads at any moment."

"I'll take this machine apart and rebuild it again, molecule by molecule," Leoh promised.

As Massan's image faded from the screen, Leoh turned to Hector. "We have one week to save his life."

"And avert a war, maybe," Hector added.

"Yes." Leoh leaned back in his chair and stared off into infinity.

Hector shuffled his feet, rubbed his nose, whistled a few bars of off-key tunes, and finally blurted, "How can you take apart the dueling machine?"

"Hm-m-m?" Leoh snapped out of his reverie.

"How can you take apart the dueling machine?" Hector repeated. "Looks like a big job to do in a week."

"Yes, it is. But, my boy, perhaps we ... the two of us ... can do it."

Hector scratched his head. "Well, uh, sir ... I'm not very ... that is, my mechanical aptitude scores at the Academy--"

Leoh smiled at him. "No need for mechanical aptitude, my boy. You were trained to fight, weren't you? We can do the job mentally."

VIII

It was the strangest week of their lives.

Leoh's plan was straightforward: to test the dueling machine, push it to the limits of its performance, by actually operating it--by fighting duels.

They started off easily enough, tentatively probing and flexing their mental muscles. Leoh had used the dueling machine himself many times in the past, but only in tests of the machines' routine performance. Never in actual combat against another human being. To Hector, of course, the machine was a totally new and different experience.

The Acquatainian staff plunged into the project without question, providing Leoh with invaluable help in monitoring and analyzing the duels.

At first, Leoh and Hector did nothing more than play hide-and-seek, with one of them picking an environment and the other trying to find his opponent in it. They wandered through jungles and cities, over glaciers and interplanetary voids, seeking each other--without ever leaving the booths of the dueling machine.

Then, when Leoh was satisfied that the machine could reproduce and amplify thought patterns with strict fidelity, they began to fight light duels. The fenced with blunted foils--Hector won, of course, because of his much faster reflexes. Then they tried other weapons--pistols, sonic beams, grenades--but always wearing protective equipment. Strangely, even though Hector was trained in the use of these weapons, Leoh won almost all the bouts. He was neither faster nor more accurate, when they were target-shooting. But when the two of them faced each other, somehow Leoh almost always won.

The machine project more than thoughts, Leoh told himself. It projects personality.

They worked in the dueling machine day and night now, enclosed in the booths for twelve or more hours a day, driving themselves and the machine's regular staff to near-exhaustion. When they gulped their meals, between duels, they were physically ragged and sharp-tempered. They usually fell asleep in Leoh's office, while discussing the results of the day's work.

The duels grew slowly more serious. Leoh was pushing the machine to its limits now, carefully extending the rigors of each bout. And yet, even though he knew exactly what and how much he intended to do in each fight, it often took a conscious effort of will to remind himself that the battles he was fighting were actually imaginary.

As the duels became more dangerous, and the artificially-amplified hallucinations began to end in blood and death, Leoh found himself winning more and more frequently. With one part of his mind he was driving to analyze the cause of his consistent success. But another part of him was beginning to really enjoy his prowess.

The strain was telling on Hector. The physical exertion of constant work and practically no relief was considerable in itself. But the emotional effects of being "hurt" and "killed" repeatedly were infinitely worse.

"Perhaps we should stop for a while," Leoh suggested after the fourth day of tests.

"No, I'm all right."

Leoh looked at him. Hector's face was haggard, his eyes bleary.

"You've had enough," Leoh said quietly.

"Please don't make me stop," Hector begged. "I ... I can't stop now. Please give me a chance to do better. I'm improving ... I lasted twice as long in this afternoon's two duels as I did in the ones this morning. Please, don't end it now ... not while I'm completely lost--"

Leoh stared at him, "You want to go on?"

"Yes, sir."

"And if I say no?"

Hector hesitated. Leoh sensed he was struggling with himself. "If you say no," he answered dully, "then it will be no. I can't argue against you any more."

Leoh was silent for a long moment. Finally he opened a desk drawer and took a small bottle from it. "Here, take a sleep capsule. When you wake up we'll try again."

* * * * *

It was dawn when they began again. Leoh entered the dueling machine determined to allow Hector to win. He gave the youthful Star Watchman his choice of weapon and environment. Hector picked one-man scoutships, in planetary orbits. Their weapons were conventional force beams.

But despite his own conscious desire, Leoh found himself winning! The ships spiraled about an unnamed planet, their paths intersecting at least once in every orbit. The problem was to estimate your opponent's orbital position, and then program your own ship so that you arrived at that position either behind or to one side of him. Then you could train your guns on him before he could turn on you.

The problem should have been an easy one for Hector, with his knack for intuitive mental calculation. But Leoh scored the first hit--Hector had piloted his ship into an excellent firing position, but his shot went wide; Leoh maneuvered around clumsily, but managed to register an inconsequential hit on the side of Hector's ship.

In the next three passes, Leoh scored two more hits. Hector's ship was badly damaged now. In return, the Star Watchman had landed one glancing shot on Leoh's ship.

They came around again, and once more Leoh had outguessed his younger opponent. He trained his guns on Hector's ship, then hesitated with his hand poised above the firing button.

Don't kill him again, he warned himself. His mind can't accept another defeat.

But Leoh's hand, almost of its own will, reached the button and touched it lightly. Another gram of pressure and the guns would fire.

In that instant's hesitation. Hector pulled his crippled ship around and aimed at Leoh. The Watchman fired a searing blast that jarred Leoh's ship from end to end. Leoh's hand slammed down on the firing button, whether he intended to do it or not, he did not know.

Leoh's shot raked Hector's ship but did not stop it. The two vehicles were hurtling directly at each other. Leoh tried desperately to avert a collision, but Hector bored in grimly, matching Leoh's maneuvers with his own.

The two ships smashed together and exploded.

Abruptly, Leoh found himself in the cramped booth of the dueling machine, his body cold and damp with perspiration, his hands trembling.

He squeezed out of the booth and took a deep breath. Warm sunlight was streaming into the high-vaulted room. The white walls glared brilliantly. Through the tall windows he could see trees and people and clouds in the sky.

Hector walked up to him. For the first time in several days, the Watchman was smiling. Not much, but smiling. "Well, we broke even on that one."

Leoh smiled back, somewhat shakily. "Yes. It was ... quite an experience. I've never died before."

Hector fidgeted, "It's uh, not so bad, I guess--It does sort of, well, shatter you, you know."

"Yes I can see that now."

"Another duel?" Hector asked, nodding his head toward the machine.

"Let's get out of this place for a few hours. Are you hungry?"

"Starved."

They fought seven more duels over the next day and a half. Hector won three of them. It was late afternoon when Leoh called a halt to the tests.

"We can still get in another one or two," the Watchman pointed out.

"No need," Leoh said. "I have all the data I require. Tomorrow Massan meets Odal, unless we can put a stop to it. We have much to do before tomorrow morning."

Hector sagged into the couch. "Just as well. I think I've aged seven years in the past seven days."

"No, my boy," Leoh said gently. "You haven't aged. You've matured."

IX

It was deep twilight when the groundcar slid to a halt on its cushions of compressed air before the Kerak Embassy.

"I still think it's a mistake to go in there." Hector said. "I mean, you could've called him on the tri-di just as well, couldn't you?"

Leoh shook his head. "Never give an agency of any government the opportunity to say 'hold the line a moment' and then huddle together to consider what to do with you. Nineteen times out of twenty, they'll end by passing your request up to the next higher echelon, and you'll be left waiting for weeks."

"Still," Hector insisted, "you're simply stepping into enemy territory. It's a chance you shouldn't take."

"They wouldn't dare touch us."

Hector did not reply, but he looked unconvinced.

"Look," Leoh said, "there are only two men alive who can shed light on this matter. One of them is Dulaq, and his mind is closed to us for an indefinite time, Odal is the only other one who knows what happened."

Hector shook his head skeptically. Leoh shrugged, and opened the door of the groundcar. Hector had no choice but to get out and follow him as he walked up the pathway to the main entrance of the Embassy. The building stood gaunt and gray in the dusk, surrounded by a precisely-clipped hedge. The entrance was flanked by a pair of tall evergreen trees.

Leoh and Hector were met just inside the entrance by a female receptionist. She looked just a trifle disheveled--as though she had been rushed to the desk at a moment's notice. They asked for Odal, were ushered into a sitting room, and within a few minutes--to Hector's surprise--were informed by the girl that Major Odal would be with them shortly.

"You see," Leoh pointed out jovially, "when you come in person they haven't as much of a chance to consider how to get rid of you."

Hector glanced around the windowless room and contemplated the thick, solidly closed door. "There's a lot of scurrying going on on the other side of that door, I'll bet. I mean ... they may be considering how to, uh, get rid of us ... permanently."

Leoh shook his head, smiling wryly. "Undoubtedly the approach closest to their hearts--but highly improbable in the present situation. They have been making most efficient and effective use of the dueling machine to gain their ends."

Odal picked this moment to open the door.

"Dr. Leoh ... Lt. Hector ... you asked to see me?"

"Thank you, Major Odal; I hope you will be able to help me," Leoh said. "You are the only man living who may be able to give us some clues to the failure of the Dueling Machine."

Odal's answering smile reminded Leoh of the best efforts of the robot-puppet designers to make a machine that smiled like a man. "I am afraid I can be of no assistance, Dr. Leoh. My experiences in the machine are ... private."

"Perhaps you don't fully understand the situation," Leoh said. "In the past week, we have tested the dueling machine here on Acquatainia exhaustively. We have learned that its performance can be greatly influenced by a man's personality, and by training. You have fought many duels in the machines. Your background of experience, both as a professional soldier and in the machines, gives you a decided advantage over your opponents.

"However, even with all this considered, I am convinced that you cannot kill a man in the machine--under normal circumstances. We have demonstrated that fact in our tests. An unsabotaged machine cannot cause actual physical harm.

"Yet you have already killed one man and incapacitated another. Where will it stop?"

Odal's face remained calm, except for the faintest glitter of fire deep in his eyes. His voice was quiet, but had the edge of a well-honed blade to it: "I cannot be blamed for my background and experience. And I have not tampered with your machines."

The door to the room opened, and a short, thick-set, bullet-headed man entered. He was dressed in a dark street suit, so that it was impossible to guess his station at the Embassy.

"Would the gentlemen care for refreshments?" he asked in a low-pitched voice.

"No, thank you," Leoh said.

"Some Kerak wine, perhaps?"

"Well--"

"I don't, uh, think we'd better, sir," Hector said. "Thanks all the same."

The man shrugged and sat at a chair next to the door.

Odal turned back to Leoh. "Sir, I have my duty. Massan and I duel tomorrow. There is no possibility of postponing it."

"Very well," Leoh said. "Will you at least allow us to place some special instrumentation into the booth with you, so that we can monitor the duel more fully? We can do the same with Massan. I know the duels are normally private and you would be within your legal rights to refuse the request. But, morally--"

The smile returned to Odal's face. "You wish to monitor my thoughts. To record them and see how I perform during the duel. Interesting. Very interesting--"

The man at the door rose and said, "If you have no desire for refreshments, gentlemen--"

Odal turned to him. "Thank you for your attention."

Their eyes met and locked for an instant. The man give a barely perceptible shake of his head, then left.

Odal returned his attention to Leoh, "I am sorry, professor, but I cannot allow you to monitor my thoughts during the duel."

"But--"

"I regret having to refuse you. But, as you yourself pointed out, there is no legal requirement for such a course of action. I must refuse. I hope you understand."

Leoh rose from the couch, and Hector popped up beside him. "I'm afraid I do understand. And I, too, regret your decision."

Odal escorted them out to their car. They drove away, and the Kerak major walked slowly back into the Embassy building. He was met in the hallway by the dark-suited man who had sat in on the conversation.

"I could have let them monitor my thoughts and still crush Massan," Odal said. "It would have been a good joke on them."

The man grunted. "I have just spoken to the Chancellor on the tri-di, and obtained permission to make a slight adjustment in our plans."

"An adjustment, Minister Kor?"

"After your duel tomorrow, your next opponent will be the eminent Dr. Leoh," Kor said.

X

The mists swirled deep and impenetrable about Fernd Massan. He stared blindly through the useless viewplate in his helmet, then reached up slowly and carefully to place the infrared detector before his eyes.

I never realized an hallucination could seem so real, Massan thought.

Since the challenge by Odal, he realized, the actual world had seemed quite unreal. For a week, he had gone through the motions of life, but felt as though he were standing aside, a spectator mind watching its own body from a distance. The gathering of his friends and associates last night, the night before the duel--that silent, funereal group of people--it had seemed completely unreal to him.

But now, in this manufactured dream, he seemed vibrantly alive. Every sensation was solid, stimulating. He could feel his pulse throbbing through him. Somewhere out in those mists, he knew, was Odal. And the thought of coming to grips with the assassin filled him with a strange satisfaction.

Massan had spent a good many years serving his government on the rich but inhospitable high-gravity planets of the Acquataine Cluster. This was the environment he had chosen: crushing gravity; killing pressures; atmosphere of ammonia and hydrogen, laced with free radicals of sulphur and other valuable but deadly chemicals; oceans of liquid methane and ammonia; "solid ground" consisting of quickly crumbling, eroding ice; howling superpowerful winds that could pick up a mountain of ice and hurl it halfway around the planet; darkness; danger; death.

He was encased in a one-man protective outfit that was half armored suit, half vehicle. There was an internal grav field to keep him comfortable in 3.7 gees, but still the suit was cumbersome, and a man could move only very slowly in it, even with the aid of servomotors.

The weapon he had chosen was simplicity itself--a hand-sized capsule of oxygen. But in a hydrogen/ammonia atmosphere, oxygen could be a deadly explosive. Massan carried several of these "bombs"; so did Odal. But the trick, Massan thought to himself, is to know how to throw them under these conditions; the proper range, the proper trajectory. Not an easy thing to learn, without years of experience.

The terms of the duel were simple: Massan and Odal were situated on a rough-topped iceberg that was being swirled along one of the methane/ammonia ocean's vicious currents. The ice was rapidly crumbling; the duel would end when the iceberg was completely broken up.

Massan edged along the ragged terrain. His suit's grippers and rollers automatically adjusted to the roughness of the topography. He concentrated his attention on the infrared detector that hung before his viewplate.

A chunk of ice the size of a man's head sailed through the murky atmosphere in a steep glide peculiar to heavy gravity and banged into the shoulder of Massan's suit. The force was enough to rock him slightly off-balance before the servos readjusted. Massan withdrew his arm from the sleeve and felt the inside of the shoulder seam. Dented, but not penetrated. A leak would have been disastrous, possibly fatal. Then he remembered: Of course--I cannot be killed except by direct action of my antagonist. That is one of the rules of the game.

Still, he carefully fingered the dented shoulder to make certain it was not leaking. The dueling machine and its rules seemed so very remote and unsubstantial, compared to this freezing, howling inferno.

He diligently set about combing the iceberg, determined to find Odal and kill him before their floating island disintegrated. He thoroughly explored every projection, every crevice, every slope, working his way slowly from one end of the 'berg toward the other. Back and forth, cross and re-cross, with the infrared sensors scanning three hundreds sixty-degrees around him.

It was time-consuming. Even with the suit's servomotors and propulsion units, motion across the ice, against the buffeting wind, was a cumbersome business. But Massan continued to work his way across the iceberg, fighting down a gnawing, growing fear that Odal was not there at all.

And then he caught just the barest flicker of a shadow on his detector. Something, or someone, had darted behind a jutting rise of the ice, off by the edge of the iceberg.

* * * * *

Slowly and carefully, Massan made his way toward the base of the rise. He picked one of the oxy-bombs from his belt and held it in his right-hand claw.

Massan edged around the base of the ice cliff, and stood on a narrow ledge between the cliff and the churning sea. He saw no one. He extended the detector's range to maximum, and worked the scanners up the sheer face of the cliff toward the top.

There he was! The shadowy outline of a man etched itself on the detector screen. And at the same time, Massan heard a muffled roar, then a rumbling, crashing noise, growing quickly louder and more menacing.

He looked up the face of the ice cliff and saw a small avalanche of ice tumbling, sliding, growling toward him. That devil set off a bomb at the top of the cliff!

Massan tried to back out of the way, but it was too late. The first chunk of ice bounced harmlessly off his helmet, but the others knocked him off-balance so repeatedly that the servos had no chance to recover. He staggered blindly for a few moments, as more and more ice cascaded down on him, and then toppled off the ledge into the boiling sea.

Relax! he ordered himself. Do not panic! The suit will float you. The servos will keep you right-side-up. You cannot be killed accidentally; Odal must perform the coup-de-grace himself.

Then he remembered the emergency rocket units in the back of his suit. If he could orient himself properly, a touch of a control stud on his belt would set them off, and he would be boosted back onto the iceberg. He turned slightly inside the suit and tried to judge the iceberg's distance through the infrared detector. It was difficult, especially since he was bobbing madly in the churning currents.

Finally he decided to fire the rocket and make final adjustments of distance and landing site after he was safely out of the sea.

But he could not move his hand.

He tried, but his entire right arm was locked fast. He could not budge it an inch. And the same for the left. Something, or someone, was clamping his arms tight. He could not even pull them out of their sleeves.

Massan thrashed about, trying to shake off whatever it was. No use.

Then his detector screen was lifted slowly from the viewplate. He felt something vibrating on his helmet. The oxygen tubes! They were being disconnected.

He screamed and tried to fight free. No use. With a hiss, the oxygen tubes pulled free of his helmet. Massan could feel the blood pounding through his veins as he fought desperately to free himself.

Now he was being pushed down into the sea. He screamed again and tried to wrench his body away. The frothing sea filled his viewplate. He was under. He was being held under. And now ... now the viewplate itself was being loosened.

No! Don't! The scalding cold methane ammonia sea seeped in through the opening viewplate.

"It's only a dream!" Massan shouted to himself. "Only a dream. A dream. A--"

XI

Dr. Leoh stared at the dinner table without really seeing it. Coming to the restaurant had been Hector's idea. Three hours earlier, Massan had been removed from the dueling machine--dead.

Leoh sat stolidly, hands in lap, his mind racing in many different directions at once. Hector was off at the phone, getting the latest information from the meditechs. Odal had expressed his regrets perfunctorily, and then left for the Kerak Embassy, under a heavy escort of his own plainclothes guards. The government of the Acquataine Cluster was quite literally falling apart, with no man willing to assume responsibility ... and thereby expose himself. One hour after the duel, Kanus' troops had landed on all the major planets of the Szarno Confederacy; the annexation was a fait accompli.

And what have I done since I arrived on Acquatainia? Leoh demanded of himself. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. I have sat back like a doddering old professor and played academic games with the machine, while younger, more vigorous men have USED the machine to suit their purposes.

Used the machine. There was a fragment of an idea in that phrase. Something nebulous, that must be approached carefully or it will fade away. Used the machine, ... used it ... Leoh toyed with the phrase for a few moments then gave it up with a sigh of resignation. Lord, I'm too tired even to think.

Leoh focused his attention on his surroundings and scanned the busy dining room. It was a beautiful place, really; decorated with crystal and genuine woods and fabric draperies. Not a synthetic in sight. The waiters and cooks and busboys were humans, not the autocookers and servers that most restaurants employed. Leoh suddenly felt touched at Hector's attempt to restore his spirits--even if it was being done at Star Watch expense.

He saw the young Watchman approaching the table, coming back from the phone. Hector bumped two waiters and stumbled over a chair before reaching the relative safety of his own seat.

"What's the verdict?" Leoh asked.

Hector's lean face was bleak. "Couldn't revive him. Cerebral hemorrhage, the meditechs said--induced by shock."

"Shock?"

"That's what they said. Something must've, uh, overloaded his nervous system ... I guess."

Leoh shook his head. "I just don't understand any of this. I might as well admit it. I'm no closer to an answer now than I was when I arrived here. Perhaps I should have retired years ago, before the dueling machine was invented."

"Nonsense."

"No, I mean it." Leoh said. "This is the first real intellectual puzzle I've had to contend with in years. Tinkering with machinery ... that's easy. You know what you want, all you need is to make the machinery perform properly. But this ... I'm afraid I'm too old to handle a real problem like this."

Hector scratched his nose thoughtfully, then answered, "If you can't handle the problem, sir, then we're going to have a war on our hands in a matter of weeks. I mean, Kanus won't be satisfied with swallowing the Szarno group ... the Acquataine Cluster is next ... and he'll have to fight to get it."

"Then the Star Watch can step in," Leoh said, resignedly.

"Maybe ... but it'll take time to mobilize the Star Watch ... Kanus can move a lot faster than we can. Sure, we could throw in a task force ... a token group, that is. But Kanus' gang will chew them up pretty quick. I ... I'm no politician, sir, but I think I can see what will happen. Kerak will gobble up the Acquataine Cluster ... a Star Watch task force will be wiped out in the battle ... and we'll end up with Kerak at war with the Terran Commonwealth. And it'll be a real war ... a big one."

Leoh began to answer, then stopped. His eyes were fixed on the far entrance of the dining room. Suddenly every murmur in the busy room stopped dead. Waiters stood still between tables. Eating, drinking, conversation hung suspended.

Hector turned in his chair and saw at the far entrance the slim, stiff, blue-uniformed figure of Odal.

The moment of silence passed. Everyone turned to his own business and avoided looking at the Kerak major. Odal, with a faint smile on his thin face, made his way slowly to the table where Hector and Leoh were sitting.

They rose to greet him and exchanged perfunctory salutations. Odal pulled up a chair and sat with them.

"I assume that you've been looking for me," Leoh said. "What do you wish to say?"

Before Odal could answer, the waiter assigned to the table walked up, took a position where his back would be to the Kerak major, and asked firmly, "Your dinner is ready gentlemen. Shall I serve it now?"

Leoh hesitated a moment, then asked Odal, "Will you join us?"

"I'm afraid not."

"Serve it now," Hector said. "The major will be leaving shortly."

Again the tight grin broke across Odal's face. The waiter bowed and left.

"I have been thinking about our conversation of last night," Odal said to Leoh.

"Yes?"

"You accused me of cheating in my duels."

Leoh's eyebrows arched. "I said someone was cheating, yes--"

"An accusation is an accusation."

Leoh said nothing.

"Do you withdraw your words, or do you still accuse me of deliberate murder? I am willing to allow you to apologize and leave Acquatainia in peace."

Hector cleared his throat noisily. "This is no place to have an argument ... besides, here comes our dinner."

Odal ignored the Watchman. "You heard me, professor. Will you leave? Or do you accuse me of murdering Massan this afternoon?"

"I--"

Hector banged his fist on the table and jerked up out of his chair--just as the waiter arrived with a large tray of food. There was a loud crash. A tureen of soup, two bowls of salad, glasses, assorted rolls, vegetables, cheeses and other delicacies cascaded over Odal.

The Kerak major leaped to his feet, swearing violently in his native tongue. He sputtered back into basic Terran: "You clumsy, stupid oaf! You maggot-brained misbegotten peasant-faced--"

Hector calmly picked a salad leaf from the sleeve of his tunic. Odal abruptly stopped his tirade.

"I am clumsy," Hector said, grinning. "As for being stupid, and the rest of it, I resent that. I am highly insulted."

A flash of recognition lighted Odal's eyes. "I see. Of course. My quarrel here is not with you. I apologize." He turned back to Leoh, who was also standing now.

"Not good enough," Hector said. "I don't, uh, like the ... tone of your apology."

Leoh raised a hand, as if to silence the younger man.

"I apologized; that is sufficient." Odal warned.

Hector took a step toward Odal. "I guess I could insult your glorious leader, or something like that ... but this seems more direct." He took the water pitcher from the table and poured it calmly and carefully over Odal's head.

A wave of laughter swept the room. Odal went white. "You are determined to die." He wiped the dripping water from his eyes. "I will meet you before the week is out. And you have saved no one." He turned on his heel and stalked out.

"Do you realize what you've done?" Leoh asked, aghast.

Hector shrugged. "He was going to challenge you--"

"He will still challenge me, after you're dead."

"Uu-m-m, yes, well, maybe so. I guess you're right--Well, anyway, we've gained a little more time."

"Four days." Leoh shook his head. "Four days to the end of the week. All right, come on, we have work to do."

Hector was grinning broadly as they left the restaurant. He began to whistle.

"What are you so happy about?" Leoh grumbled.

"About you, sir. When we came in here, you were, uh, well ... almost beaten. Now you're right back in the game again."

Leoh glanced at the Star Watchman. "In your own odd way, Hector, you're quite a boy ... I think."

XII

Their groundcar glided from the parking building to the restaurant's entrance ramp, at the radio call of the doorman. Within minutes, Hector and Leoh were cruising through the city, in the deepening shadows of night.

"There's only one man," Leoh said, "who has faced Odal and lived through it."

"Dulaq," Hector agreed. "But ... for all the information the medical people have been able to get from him, he might as well be, uh, dead."

"He's still completely withdrawn?"

Hector nodded. "The medicos think that ... well, maybe in a few months, with drugs and psychotherapy and all that ... they might be able to bring him back."

"It won't be soon enough. We've only got four days."

"I know."

Leoh was silent for several minutes. Then: "Who is Dulaq's closest living relative? Does he have a wife?"

"I think his wife is, uh, dead. Has a daughter though. Pretty girl. Bumped into her in the hospital once or twice--"

Leoh smiled in the darkness. Hector's term, "bumped into" was probably completely literal.

"Why are you asking about Dulaq's next-of-kin?"

"Because," Leoh replied, "I think there might be a way to make Dulaq tell us what happened during his duel. But it is a very dangerous way. Perhaps a fatal way."

"Oh."

They lapsed into silence again. Finally he blurted, "Come on, my boy, let's find the daughter and talk to her."

"Tonight?"

"Now."

* * * * *

She certainly is a pretty girl, Leoh thought as he explained very carefully to Geri Dulaq what he proposed to do. She sat quietly and politely in the spacious living room of the Dulaq residence. The glittering chandelier cast touches of fire on her chestnut hair. Her slim body was slightly rigid with tension, her hands were clasped in her lap. Her face--which looked as though it could be very expressive--was completely serious now.

"And that is the sum of it," Leoh concluded. "I believe that it will be possible to use the dueling machine itself to examine your father's thoughts and determine exactly what took place during his duel against Major Odal!"

She asked softly, "But you are afraid that the shock might be repeated, and this could be fatal to my father?"

Leoh nodded wordlessly.

"Then I am very sorry, sir, but I must say no." Firmly.

"I understand your feelings," Leoh replied, "but I hope you realize that unless we can stop Odal and Kanus immediately, we may very well be faced with war."

She nodded. "I know. But you must remember that we are speaking of my father, of his very life. Kanus will have his war in any event, no matter what I do."

"Perhaps," Leoh admitted. "Perhaps."

Hector and Leoh drove back to the University campus and their quarters in the dueling machine chamber. Neither of them slept well that night.

The next morning, after an unenthusiastic breakfast, they found themselves standing in the antiseptic-white chamber, before the looming, impersonal intricacy of the machine.

"Would you like to practice with it?" Leoh asked.

Hector shook his head. "Maybe later."

The phone chimed in Leoh's office. They both went in. Geri Dulaq's face showed on the tri-di screen.

"I have just heard the news. I did not know that Lieutenant Hector has challenged Odal." Her face was a mixture of concern and reluctance.

"He challenged Odal," Leoh answered, "to prevent the assassin from challenging me."

"Oh--You are a very brave man, lieutenant."

Hector's face went through various contortions and slowly turned a definite red, but no words issued from his mouth.

"Have you reconsidered your decision?" Leoh asked.

The girl closed her eyes briefly, then said flatly, "I am afraid I cannot change my decision. My father's safety is my first responsibility. I am sorry."

They exchanged a few meaningless trivialities--with Hector still thoroughly tongue-tied and ended the conversation on a polite but strained note.

Leoh rubbed his thumb across the phone switch for a moment, then turned to Hector. "My boy, I think it would be a good idea for you to go straight to the hospital and check on Dulaq's condition."

"But ... why--"

"Don't argue, son. This could be vitally important."

Hector shrugged and left the office. Leoh sat down at his desk and drummed his fingers on the top of it. Then he burst out of the office and began pacing the big chamber. Finally, even that was too confining. He left the building and started stalking through the campus. He walked past a dozen buildings, turned and strode as far as the decorative fence that marked the end of the main campus, ignoring students and faculty alike.

Campuses are all alike, he muttered to himself, on every human planet, for all the centuries there have been universities. There must be some fundamental reason for it.

Leoh was halfway back to the dueling machine facility when he spotted Hector walking dazedly toward the same building. For once, the Watchman was not whistling. Leoh cut across some lawn and pulled up beside the youth.

"Well?" he asked.

Hector shook his head, as if to clear away an inner fog. "How did you know she'd be at the hospital?"

"The wisdom of age. What happened?"

"She kissed me. Right there in the hallway of the--"

"Spare me the geography," Leoh cut in. "What did she say?"

"I bumped into her in the hallway. We, uh, started talking ... sort of. She seemed, well ... worried about me. She got upset. Emotional. You know? I guess I looked pretty forlorn and frightened. I am ... I guess. When you get right down to it, I mean."

"You aroused her maternal instinct."

"I ... I don't think it was that ... exactly. Well, anyway, she said that if I was willing to risk my life to save yours, she couldn't protect her father any more. Said she was doing it out of selfishness, really, since he's her only living relative. I don't believe she meant that, but she said it anyway."

They had reached the building by now. Leoh grabbed Hector's arm and steered him clear of a collision with the half-open door.

"She's agreed to let us put Dulaq in the dueling machine?"

"Sort of."

"Eh?"

"The medical staff doesn't want him to be moved from the hospital ... especially not back to here. She agrees with them."

Leoh snorted. "All right. In fact, so much the better. I'd rather not have the Kerak people see us bring Dulaq to the dueling machine. So instead, we shall smuggle the dueling machine to Dulaq!"

XIII

They plunged to work immediately. Leoh preferred not to inform the regular staff of the dueling machine about their plan, so he and Hector had to work through the night and most of the next morning. Hector barely understood what he was doing, but with Leoh's supervision, he managed to dismantle part of the dueling machine's central network, insert a few additional black boxes that the professor had conjured up from the spare parts bins in the basement, and then reconstruct the machine so that it looked exactly the same as before they had started.

In between his frequent trips to oversee Hector's work, Leoh had jury-rigged a rather bulky headset and a hand-sized override control circuit.

The late morning sun was streaming through the tall windows when Leoh finally explained it all to Hector.

"A simple matter of technological improvisation," he told the bewildered Watchman. "You have installed a short-range transceiver into the machine, and this headset is a portable transceiver for Dulaq. Now he can sit in his hospital bed and still be 'in' the dueling machine."

Only the three most trusted members of the hospital staff were taken into Leoh's confidence, and they were hardly enthusiastic about Leoh's plan.

"It is a waste of time," said the chief psychophysician, shaking his white-maned head vigorously. "You cannot expect a patient who has shown no positive response to drugs and therapy to respond to your machine."

Leoh argued, Geri Dulaq coaxed. Finally the doctors agreed. With only two days remaining before Hector's duel with Odal, they began to probe Dulaq's mind. Geri remained by her father's bedside while the three doctors fitted the cumbersome transceiver to Dulaq's head and attached the electrodes for the automatic hospital equipment that monitored his physical condition. Hector and Leoh remained at the dueling machine, communicating with the hospital by phone.

Leoh made a final check of the controls and circuitry, then put in the last call to the tense little group in Dulaq's room. All was ready.

He walked out to the machine, with Hector beside him. Their footsteps echoed hollowly in the sepulchral chamber. Leoh stopped at the nearer booth.

"Now remember," he said, carefully, "I will be holding the emergency control unit in my hand. It will stop the duel the instant I set it off. However, if something should go wrong, you must be prepared to act quickly. Keep a close watch on my physical condition; I've shown you which instruments to check on the control board--"

"Yes sir."

Leoh nodded and took a deep breath. "Very well then."

He stepped into the booth and sat down. The emergency control unit rested on a shelf at his side; he took it in his hands. He leaned back and waited for the semi-hypnotic effect to take hold. Dulaq's choice of this very city and the stat-wand were known. But beyond that, everything was locked and sealed in Dulaq's subconscious mind. Could the machine reach into that subconscious, probe past the lock and seal of catatonia, and stimulate Dulaq's mind into repeating the duel?

Slowly, lullingly, the dueling machine's imaginary yet very real mists enveloped Leoh. When the mists cleared, he was standing on the upper pedestrian level of the main commercial street of the city. For a long moment, everything was still.

Have I made contact? Whose eyes am I seeing with, my own or Dulaq's?

And then he sensed it--an amused, somewhat astonished marveling at the reality of the illusion. Dulaq's thoughts!

Make your mind a blank, Leoh told himself. Watch. Listen. Be passive.

He became a spectator, seeing and hearing the world through Dulaq's eyes and ears as the Acquatainian Prime Minister advanced through his nightmarish ordeal. He felt the confusion, frustration, apprehension and growing terror as, time and again, Odal appeared in the crowd--only to melt into someone else and escape.

The first part of the duel ended, and Leoh was suddenly buffeted by a jumble of thoughts and impressions. Then the thoughts slowly cleared and steadied.

Leoh saw an immense and totally barren plain. Not a tree, not a blade of grass; nothing but bare, rocky ground stretching in all directions to the horizon and a disturbingly harsh yellow sky. At his feet was the weapon Odal had chosen. A primitive club.

He shared Dulaq's sense of dread as he picked up the club and hefted it. Off on the horizon he could see a tall, lithe figure holding a similar club walking toward him.

Despite himself, Leoh could feel his own excitement. He had broken through the shock-created armor that Dulaq's mind had erected! Dulaq was reliving the part of the duel that had caused the shock.

Reluctantly, he advanced to meet Odal. But as they drew closer together, the one figure of his opponent seemed to split apart. Now there were two, four, six of them. Six Odals, six mirror images, all armed with massive, evil clubs, advancing steadily on him.

Six tall, lean, blond assassins, with six cold smiles on their intent faces.

Horrified, completely panicked, he scrambled away, trying to evade the six opponents with the half-dozen clubs raised and poised to strike.

Their young legs and lungs easily outdistanced him. A smash on his back sent him sprawling. One of them kicked his weapon away.

They stood over him for a malevolent, gloating second. Then six strong arms flashed down, again and again, mercilessly. Pain and blood, screaming agony, punctuated by the awful thudding of solid clubs hitting fragile flesh and bone, over and over again, endlessly.

Everything went blank.

* * * * *

Leoh opened his eyes and saw Hector bending over him.

"Are you all right, sir?"

"I ... I think so."

"The controls all hit the danger mark at once. You were ... well, sir, you were screaming."

"I don't doubt it," Leoh said.

They walked, with Leoh leaning on Hector's arm, from the dueling machine booth to the office.

"That was ... an experience." Leoh said, easing himself onto the couch.

"What happened? What did Odal do? What made Dulaq go into shock? How does--"

The old man silenced Hector with a wave of his hand, "One question at a time, please."

Leoh leaned back on the deep couch and told Hector every detail of both parts of the duel.

"Six Odals," Hector muttered soberly, leaning back against the doorframe. "Six against one."

"That's what he did. It's easy to see how a man expecting a polite, formal duel can be completely shattered by the viciousness of such an attack. And the machine amplifies every impulse, every sensation."

"But how does he do it?" Hector asked, his voice suddenly loud and demanding.

"I've been asking myself the same question. We've checked over the dueling machine time and again. There is no possible way for Odal to plug in five helpers ... unless--"

"Unless?"

Leoh hesitated, seemingly debating with himself. Finally he nodded his head sharply, and answered. "Unless Odal is a telepath."

"Telepath? But--"

"I know it sounds farfetched. But there have been well-documented cases of telepathy for centuries throughout the Commonwealth."

Hector frowned. "Sure, everybody's heard about it ... natural telepaths ... but they're so unpredictable ... I don't see how--"

Leoh leaned forward on the couch and clasped his hands in front of his chin. "The Terran races have never developed telepathy, or any of the extrasensory talents. They never had to, not with tri-di communications and superlight starships. But perhaps the Kerak people are different--"

Hector shook his head. "If they had uh, telepathic abilities, they would be using them everywhere. Don't you think?"

"Probably so. But only Odal has shown such an ability, and only ... of course!"

"What?"

"Odal has shown telepathic ability only in the dueling machine."

"As far as we know."

"Certainly. But look, supposed he's a natural telepath ... the same as a Terran. He has an erratic, difficult-to-control talent. Then he gets into a dueling machine. The machine amplifies his thoughts. And it also amplifies his talent!"

"Ohhh."

"You see ... outside the machine, he's no better than any wandering fortuneteller. But the dueling machine gives his natural abilities the amplification and reproducibility that they could never have unaided."

Hector nodded.

"So it's fairly straightforward matter for him to have five associates in the Kerak Embassy sit in on the duel, so to speak. Possibly they are natural telepaths also, but they needn't be."

"They just, uh, pool their minds with his, hm-m-m? Six men show in the duel ... pretty nasty." Hector dropped into the desk chair.

"So what do we do now?"

"Now?" Leoh blinked at his young friend. "Why ... I suppose the first thing we should do is call the hospital and see how Dulaq came through."

Leoh put the call through. Geri Dulaq's face appeared on the screen.

"How's your father?" Hector blurted.

"The duel was too much for him," she said blankly. "He is dead."

"No," Leoh groaned.

"I ... I'm sorry," Hector said. "I'll be right down there. Stay where you are."

The young Star Watchman dashed out of the office as Geri broke the phone connection. Leoh stared at the blank screen for a few moments, then leaned far back in the couch and closed his eyes. He was suddenly exhausted, physically and emotionally. He fell asleep, and dreamed of men dead and dying.

Hector's nerve-shattering whistling woke him up. It was full night outside.

"What are you so happy about?" Leoh groused as Hector popped into the office.

"Happy? Me?"

"You were whistling."

Hector shrugged. "I always whistle, sir. Doesn't mean I'm happy."

"All right," Leoh said, rubbing his eyes. "How did the girl take her father's death?"

"Pretty hard. Cried a lot."

Leoh looked at the younger man. "Does she blame ... me?"

"You? Why, no sir. Why should she? Odal ... Kanus ... the Kerak Worlds. But not you."

The old professor sighed, relieved. "Very well. Now then, we have much work to do, and little more than a day in which to finish it."

"What do you want me to do?" Hector asked.

"Phone the Star Watch Commander--"

"My commanding officer, all the way back at Alpha Perseus VI? That's a hundred light-years from here."

"No, no, no." Leoh shook his head. "The Commander-in-Chief, Sir Harold Spencer. At Star Watch Central Headquarters. That's several hundred parsecs from here. But get through to him as quickly as possible."

With a low whistle of astonishment, Hector began punching buttons on the phone switch.

XIV

The morning of the duel arrived, and precisely at the agreed-upon hour, Odal and a small retinue of Kerak representatives stepped though the double doors of the dueling machine chamber.

Hector and Leoh were already there, waiting. With them stood another man dressed in the black-and-silver of the Star Watch. He was a blocky, broad-faced veteran with iron-gray hair and hard, unsmiling eyes.

The two little groups of men knotted together in the center of the room, before the machine's control board. The white-uniformed staff meditechs emerged from a far doorway and stood off to one side.

Odal went through the formality of shaking hands with Hector. The Kerak major nodded toward the other Watchman. "Your replacement?" he asked mischievously.

The chief meditech stepped between them. "Since you are the challenged party, Major Odal, you have the first choice of weapon and environment. Are there any instructions or comments necessary before the duel begins?"

"I think not," Odal replied. "The situation will be self-explanatory. I assume, of course, that Star Watchmen are trained to be warriors and not merely technicians. The situation I have chosen is one in which many warriors have won glory."

Hector said nothing.

"I intend," Leoh said firmly, "to assist the staff in monitoring this duel. Your aides may, of course, sit at the control board with me."

Odal nodded.

"If you are ready to begin, gentleman," the chief meditech said.

Hector and Odal went to their booths. Leoh sat at the control console, and one of the Kerak men sat down next to him.

* * * * *

Hector felt every nerve and muscle tensed as he sat in the booth, despite his efforts to relax. Slowly the tension eased, and he began to feel slightly drowsy. The booth seemed to melt away....

He was standing on a grassy meadow. Off in the distance were wooded hills. A cool breeze was hustling puffy clouds across the calm blue sky.

Hector heard a snuffling noise behind him, and wheeled around. He blinked, then stared.

It had four legs, and was evidently a beast of burden. At least, it carried a saddle on its back. Piled atop the saddle was a conglomeration of which looked to Hector--at first glance--like a pile of junk. He went over to the animal and examined it carefully. The "junk" turned out to be a long spear, various pieces of armor, a helmet, sword, shield, battle-ax and dagger.

The situation I have chosen is one in which many warriors have won glory. Hector puzzled over the assortment of weapons. They came straight out of Kerak's Dark Ages. No doubt Odal had been practicing with them for months, even years. He may not need five helpers.

Warily, Hector put on the armor. The breastplate seemed too big, and he was somehow unable to tighten the greaves on his shins properly. The helmet fit over his head like an ancient oil can, flattening his ears and nose and forcing him to squint to see through the narrow eye-slit.

Finally, he buckled on the sword and found attachments on the saddle for the other weapons. The shield was almost too heavy to lift, and he barely struggled into the saddle with all the weight he was carrying.

And then he just sat. He began to feel a little ridiculous. Suppose it rains? he wondered. But of course it wouldn't.

After an interminable wait, Odal appeared, on a powerful trotting charger. His armor was black as space, and so was his animal. Naturally, Hector thought.

Odal saluted gravely with his great spear from across the meadow. Hector returned the salute, nearly dropping his spear in the process.

Then, Odal lowered the spear and aimed it--so it seemed to Hector--directly at the Watchman's ribs. He pricked his mount into a canter. Hector did the same, and his steed jogged into a bumping, jolting gallop. The two warriors hurtled toward each other from opposite ends of the meadow.

And suddenly there were six black figured roaring down on Hector!

The Watchman's stomach wrenched within him. Automatically he tried to turn his mount aside. But the beast had no intention of going anywhere except straight ahead. The Kerak warriors bore in, six abreast, with six spears aimed menacingly.

Abruptly, Hector heard the pounding of other hoof-beats right beside him. Through a corner of his helmet-slit he glimpsed at least two other warriors charging with him into Odal's crew.

Leoh's gamble had worked. The transceiver that had allowed Dulaq to make contact with the dueling machine from his hospital bed was now allowing five Star Watch officers to join Hector, even though they were physically sitting in a starship orbiting high above the planet.

The odds were even now. The five additional Watchmen were the roughest, hardiest, most aggressive man-to-man fighters that the Star Watch could provide on a one-day notice.

Twelve powerful chargers met head on, and twelve strong men smashed together with an ear-splitting CLANG! Shattered spears showered splinters everywhere. Men and animals went down.

Hector was rocked back in his saddle, but somehow managed to avoid falling off.

On the other hand, he could not really regain his balance, either. Dust and weapons filled the air. A sword hissed near his head and rattled off his shield.

With a supreme effort. Hector pulled out his own sword and thrashed at the nearest rider. It turned out to be a fellow Watchman, but the stroke bounced harmlessly off his helmet.

It was so confusing. The wheeling, snorting animals. Clouds of dust. Screaming, raging men. A black-armored rider charged into Hector, waving a battle-ax over his head. He chopped savagely, and the Watchmans's shield split apart. Another frightening swing--Hector tried to duck and slid completely out of the saddle, thumping painfully on the ground, while the ax cleaved the air where his head had been a split-second earlier.

Somehow his helmet had been turned around. Hector tried to decide whether to thrash around blindly or lay down his sword and straighten out the helmet. The problem was solved for him by the crang! of a sword against the back of his helmet. The blow flipped him into a somersault, but also knocked the helmet completely off his head.

* * * * *

Hector climbed painfully to his feet, his head spinning. It took him several moments to realize that the battle had stopped. The dust drifted away, and he saw that all the Kerak fighters were down--except one. The black-armored warrior took off his helmet and tossed it aside. It was Odal. Or was it? They all looked alike. What difference does it make? Hector wondered. Odal's mind is the dominant one.

Odal stood, legs braced apart, sword in hand, and looked uncertainly at the other Star Watchman. Three of them were afoot and two still mounted. The Kerak assassin seemed as confused as Hector felt. The shock of facing equal numbers had sapped much of his confidence.

Cautiously he advanced toward Hector, holding his sword out before him. The other Watchmen stood aside while Hector slowly backpedaled, stumbling slightly on the uneven ground.

Odal feinted and cut at Hector's arm. The Watchman barely parried in time. Another feint, at the head, and a slash into the chest; Hector missed the parry but his armor saved him. Grimly, Odal kept advancing. Feint, feint, crack! and Hector's sword went flying from his hand.

For the barest instant everyone froze. Then Hector leaped desperately straight at Odal, caught him completely by surprise, and wrestled him to the ground. The Watchman pulled the sword from his opponent's hand and tossed it away. But with his free hand, Odal clouted Hector on the side of the head and knocked him on his back. Both men scrambled up and ran for the nearest weapons.

Odal picked up a wicked-looking double-bladed ax. One of the mounted Star Watchmen handed Hector a huge broadsword. He gripped it with both hands, but still staggered off-balance as he swung it up over his shoulder.

Holding the broadsword aloft, Hector charged toward Odal, who stood dogged, short-breathed, sweat-streaked, waiting for him. The broadsword was quite heavy, even for a two handed grip. And Hector did not notice his own battered helmet laying on the ground between them.

Odal, for his part, had Hector's charge and swing timed perfectly in his own mind. He would duck under the swing and bury his ax in the Watchman's chest. Then he would face the others. Probably with their leader gone, the duel would automatically end. But, of course, Hector would not really be dead; the best Odal could hope for now was to win the duel.

Hector charged directly into Odal's plan, but the Watchman's timing was much poorer than anticipated. Just as he began the downswing of a mighty broadsword stroke, he stumbled on the helmet. Odal started to duck, then saw that the Watchman was diving face-first into the ground, legs flailing, and that heavy broadsword was cleaving through the air with a will of its own.

Odal pulled back in confusion, only to have the wild-swinging broadsword strike him just above the wrist. The ax dropped out of his hand, and Odal involuntarily grasped the wounded forearm with his left hand. Blood seeped through his fingers.

He shook his head in bitter resignation, turned his back on the prostrate Hector, and began walking away.

Slowly, the scene faded, and Hector found himself sitting in the booth of the dueling machine.

XV

The door opened and Leoh squeezed into the booth.

"You're all right?"

Hector blinked and refocused his eyes on reality. "Think so--"

"Everything went well? The Watchmen got through to you?"

"Good thing they did. I was nearly killed anyway."

"But you survived."

"So far."

Across the room, Odal stood massaging his forehead while Kor demanded: "How could they possibly have discovered the secret? Where was the leak?"

"That is not important now," Odal said quietly. "The primary fact is that they have not only discovered our secret, but they have found a way of duplicating it."

"The sanctimonious hypocrites," Kor snarled, "accusing us of cheating, and then they do the same thing."

"Regardless of the moral values of our mutual behavior," Odal said dryly, "it is evident that there is no longer any use in calling on telepathically-guided assistants, I shall face the Watchman alone during the second half of the duel."

"Can you trust them to do the same?"

"Yes. They easily defeated my aides a few minutes ago, then stood aside and allowed the two of us to fight by ourselves."

"And you failed to defeat him?"

Odal frowned, "I was wounded by a fluke. He is a very ... unusual opponent. I cannot decide whether he is actually as clumsy as he appears to be, or whether he is shamming and trying to make me overconfident. Either way, it is impossible to predict his behavior. Perhaps he is also telepathic."

Kor's gray eyes became flat and emotionless. "You know, of course, how the Chancellor will react if you fail to kill this Watchman. Not merely defeat him. He must be killed. The aura of invincibility must be maintained."

"I will do my best," Odal said.

"He must be killed."

The chime that marked the end of the rest period sounded. Odal and Hector returned to the their booths. Now it was Hector's choice of environment and weapons.

Odal found himself enveloped in darkness. Only gradually did his eyes adjust. He saw that he was in a spacesuit. For several minutes he stood motionless, peering into the darkness, every sense alert, every muscle coiled for immediate action.

Dimly he could see the outlines of jagged rock against a background of innumerable stars. Experimentally, he lifted one foot. It stuck tackily, to the surface. Magnetized boots, Odal thought. This must be a planetoid.

As his eyes grew accustomed to the dimness, he saw that he was right. It was a small planetoid, perhaps a mile or so in diameter. Almost zero gravity. Airless.

Odal swiveled his head inside the fishbowl helmet of his spacesuit and saw, over his right shoulder, the figure of Hector--lank and ungainly even with the bulky suit. For a moment, Odal puzzled over the weapon to be used. Then Hector bent down, picked up a loose stone, straightened, and tossed it softly past Odal's head. The Kerak major watched it sail by and off into the darkness of space, never to return to the tiny planetoid.

A warning shot, Odal thought to himself. He wondered how much damage one could do with a nearly weightless stone, then remembered that inertial mass was unaffected by gravitational fields, or the lack of them. A fifty-pound rock might be easier to lift, but it would be just as hard to throw--and it would do just as much damage when it hit, regardless of its gravitational "weight."

Odal crouched down and selected a stone the size of his fist. He rose carefully, sighted Hector standing a hundred yards or so away, and threw as hard as he could.

The effort of his throw sent him tumbling off-balance, and the stone was far off-target. He fell to his hands and knees, bounced lightly and skidded to a stop. Immediately he drew his feet up under his body and planted the magnetized soles of his boots firmly on the iron-rich surface.

But before he could stand again, a small stone pinged lightly off his oxygen tank. The Star Watchman had his range already!

Odal scrambled to the nearest upjutting rocks and crouched behind them. Lucky I didn't rip open the spacesuit, he told himself. Three stones, evidently hurled in salvo, ticked off the top of the top of the rocks he was hunched behind. One of the stones bounced into his fishbowl helmet.

Odal scooped up a handful of pebbles and tossed them in Hector's general direction. That should make him duck. Perhaps he'll stumble and crack his helmet open.

Then he grinned to himself. That's it. Kor wants him dead, and that is the way to do it. Pin him under a big rock, then bury him alive under more rocks. A few at a time, stretched out nicely. While his oxygen supply gives out. That should put enough stress on his nervous system to hospitalize him, at least. Then he can assassinated by more conventional means. Perhaps he will even be as obliging as Massan, and have a fatal stroke.

A large rock. One that is light enough to lift and throw, yet also big enough to pin him for a few moments. Once he is down, it will be easy enough to bury him under more rocks.

The Kerak major spotted a boulder of the proper size, a few yards away. He backed toward it, throwing small stones in Hector's direction to keep the Watchman busy. In return, a barrage of stones began striking all around him. Several hit him, one hard enough to knock him slightly off-balance.

Slowly, patiently, Odal reached his chosen weapon--an oblong boulder, about the size of a small chair. He crouched behind it and tugged at it experimentally. It moved slightly. Another stone zinged off his arm, hard enough to hurt. Odal could see Hector clearly now, standing atop a small rise, calmly firing pellets at him. He smiled as he coiled, catlike, and tensed himself. He gripped the boulder with his arms and hands.

Then in one vicious uncoiling motion he snatched it up, whirled around, and hurled it at Hector. The violence of his action sent him tottering awkwardly as he released the boulder. He fell to the ground, but kept his eyes fixed on the boulder as it tumbled end over end, directly at the Watchman.

For an eternally-long instant Hector stood motionless, seemingly entranced. Then he leaped sideways, floating dreamlike in the low gravity, as the stone hurtled inexorably past him.

Odal pounded his fist on the ground in fury. He started up, only to have a good-sized stone slam against his shoulder, and knock him flat again. He looked up in time to see Hector fire another. The stone puffed into the ground inches from Odal's helmet. The Kerak major flattened himself. Several more stones clattered on his helmet and oxygen tank. Then silence.

Odal looked up and saw Hector squatting down, reaching for more ammunition. The Kerak warrior stood up quickly, his own fists filled with throwing stones. He cocked his arm to throw--

But something made him turn to look behind him. The boulder loomed before his eyes, still tumbling slowly, as it had when he had thrown it. It was too close and too big to avoid. It smashed into Odal, picked him off his feet and slammed against the upjutting rocks a few yards away.

Even before he started to feel the pain in his midsection, Odal began trying to push the boulder off. But he could not get enough leverage. Then he saw the Star Watchman's form standing over him.

"I didn't really think you'd fall for it," Odal heard Hector's voice in his earphones. "I mean ... didn't you realize that the boulder was too massive to escape completely after it had missed me? You could've calculated its orbit ... you just threw it into a, uh, six-minute orbit around the planetoid. It had to come back to perigee ... right where you were standing when you threw it, you know."

Odal said nothing, but strained every cell in his pain-wracked body to get free of the boulder. Hector reached over his shoulder and began fumbling with the valves that were pressed against the rocks.

"Sorry to do this ... but I'm not, uh, killing you, at least ... just defeating you. Let's see ... one of these is the oxygen valve, and the other, I think, is the emergency rocket pack ... now, which is which?" Odal felt the Watchman's hands searching for the proper valve. "I should've dreamed up suits without the rocket pack ... confuses things ... there, that's it."

Hector's hand tightened on a valve and turned it sharply. The rocket roared to life and Odal was hurtled free of the boulder, shot uncontrolled completely off the planetoid. Hector was bowled over by the blast and rolled halfway around the tiny chink of rock and metal.

Odal tried to reach around to throttle down the rocket, but the pain in his body was too great. He was slipping into unconsciousness. He fought against it. He knew he must return to the planetoid and somehow kill the opponent. But gradually the pain overpowered him. His eyes were closing, closing--

And, quite abruptly, he found himself sitting in the booth of the dueling machine. It took a moment for him to realize that he was back in the real world. Then his thoughts cleared. He had failed to kill Hector.

And at the door of the booth stood Kor, his face a grim mask of anger.

XVI

The office was that of the new prime minister of the Acquataine Cluster. It had been loaned to Leoh for his conversation with Sir Harold Spencer. For the moment, it seemed like a great double room: half of it was dark, warm woods, rich draperies, floor-to-ceiling bookcases. The other half, from the tri-di screen onward, was the austere, metallic utility of a starship compartment.

Spencer was saying, "So this hired assassin, after killing four men and nearly wrecking a government, has returned to his native worlds."

Leoh nodded. "He returned under guard. I suppose he is in disgrace, or perhaps even under arrest."

"Servants of a dictator never know when they will be the ones who are served--on a platter." Spencer chuckled. "And the Watchman who assisted you, this Junior Lieutenant Hector, what of him?"

"He's not here just now. The Dulaq girl has him in tow, somewhere. Evidently it's the first time he's been a hero--"

Spencer shifted his weight in his chair. "I have long prided myself on the conviction that any Star Watch officer can handle almost any kind of emergency anywhere in the galaxy. From your description of the past few weeks, I was beginning to have my doubts. However, Junior Lieutenant Hector seems to have won the day ... almost in spite of himself."

"Don't underestimate him," Leoh said, smiling. "He turned out to be an extremely valuable man. I think he will make a fine officer."

Spencer grunted an affirmative.

"Well," Leoh said, "that's the complete story, to date. I believe that Odal is finished. But the Kerak Worlds have made good their annexation of the Szarno Confederacy, and the Acquataine Cluster is still very wobbly, politically. We haven't heard the last of Kanus--not by a long shot."

Spencer lifted a shaggy eyebrow. "Neither," he rumbled, "has he heard the last from us."

Contents

KEEP OUT

By Fredric Brown

With no more room left on Earth, and with Mars hanging up there empty of life, somebody hit on the plan of starting a colony on the Red Planet. It meant changing the habits and physical structure of the immigrants, but that worked out fine. In fact, every possible factor was covered—except one of the flaws of human nature....

Daptine is the secret of it. Adaptine, they called it first; then it got shortened to daptine. It let us adapt.

They explained it all to us when we were ten years old; I guess they thought we were too young to understand before then, although we knew a lot of it already. They told us just after we landed on Mars.

"You're home, children," the Head Teacher told us after we had gone into the glassite dome they'd built for us there. And he told us there'd be a special lecture for us that evening, an important one that we must all attend.

And that evening he told us the whole story and the whys and wherefores. He stood up before us. He had to wear a heated space suit and helmet, of course, because the temperature in the dome was comfortable for us but already freezing cold for him and the air was already too thin for him to breathe. His voice came to us by radio from inside his helmet.

"Children," he said, "you are home. This is Mars, the planet on which you will spend the rest of your lives. You are Martians, the first Martians. You have lived five years on Earth and another five in space. Now you will spend ten years, until you are adults, in this dome, although toward the end of that time you will be allowed to spend increasingly long periods outdoors.

"Then you will go forth and make your own homes, live your own lives, as Martians. You will intermarry and your children will breed true. They too will be Martians.

"It is time you were told the history of this great experiment of which each of you is a part."

Then he told us.

Man, he said, had first reached Mars in 1985. It had been uninhabited by intelligent life (there is plenty of plant life and a few varieties of non-flying insects) and he had found it by terrestrial standards uninhabitable. Man could survive on Mars only by living inside glassite domes and wearing space suits when he went outside of them. Except by day in the warmer seasons it was too cold for him. The air was too thin for him to breathe and long exposure to sunlight—less filtered of rays harmful to him than on Earth because of the lesser atmosphere—could kill him. The plants were chemically alien to him and he could not eat them; he had to bring all his food from Earth or grow it in hydroponic tanks.

For fifty years he had tried to colonize Mars and all his efforts had failed. Besides this dome which had been built for us there was only one other outpost, another glassite dome much smaller and less than a mile away.

It had looked as though mankind could never spread to the other planets of the solar system besides Earth for of all of them Mars was the least inhospitable; if he couldn't live here there was no use even trying to colonize the others.

And then, in 2034, thirty years ago, a brilliant biochemist named Waymoth had discovered daptine. A miracle drug that worked not on the animal or person to whom it was given, but on the progeny he conceived during a limited period of time after inoculation.

It gave his progeny almost limitless adaptability to changing conditions, provided the changes were made gradually.

Dr. Waymoth had inoculated and then mated a pair of guinea pigs; they had borne a litter of five and by placing each member of the litter under different and gradually changing conditions, he had obtained amazing results. When they attained maturity one of those guinea pigs was living comfortably at a temperature of forty below zero Fahrenheit, another was quite happy at a hundred and fifty above. A third was thriving on a diet that would have been deadly poison for an ordinary animal and a fourth was contented under a constant X-ray bombardment that would have killed one of its parents within minutes.

Subsequent experiments with many litters showed that animals who had been adapted to similar conditions bred true and their progeny was conditioned from birth to live under those conditions.

"Ten years later, ten years ago," the Head Teacher told us, "you children were born. Born of parents carefully selected from those who volunteered for the experiment. And from birth you have been brought up under carefully controlled and gradually changing conditions.

"From the time you were born the air you have breathed has been very gradually thinned and its oxygen content reduced. Your lungs have compensated by becoming much greater in capacity, which is why your chests are so much larger than those of your teachers and attendants; when you are fully mature and are breathing air like that of Mars, the difference will be even greater.

"Your bodies are growing fur to enable you to stand the increasing cold. You are comfortable now under conditions which would kill ordinary people quickly. Since you were four years old your nurses and teachers have had to wear special protection to survive conditions that seem normal to you.

"In another ten years, at maturity, you will be completely acclimated to Mars. Its air will be your air; its food plants your food. Its extremes of temperature will be easy for you to endure and its median temperatures pleasant to you. Already, because of the five years we spent in space under gradually decreased gravitational pull, the gravity of Mars seems normal to you.

"It will be your planet, to live on and to populate. You are the children of Earth but you are the first Martians."

Of course we had known a lot of those things already.

The last year was the best. By then the air inside the dome—except for the pressurized parts where our teachers and attendants live—was almost like that outside, and we were allowed out for increasingly long periods. It is good to be in the open.

The last few months they relaxed segregation of the sexes so we could begin choosing mates, although they told us there is to be no marriage until after the final day, after our full clearance. Choosing was not difficult in my case. I had made my choice long since and I'd felt sure that she felt the same way; I was right.

Tomorrow is the day of our freedom. Tomorrow we will be Martians, the Martians. Tomorrow we shall take over the planet.

Some among us are impatient, have been impatient for weeks now, but wiser counsel prevailed and we are waiting. We have waited twenty years and we can wait until the final day.

And tomorrow is the final day.

Tomorrow, at a signal, we will kill the teachers and the other Earthmen among us before we go forth. They do not suspect, so it will be easy.

We have dissimulated for years now, and they do not know how we hate them. They do not know how disgusting and hideous we find them, with their ugly misshapen bodies, so narrow-shouldered and tiny-chested, their weak sibilant voices that need amplification to carry in our Martian air, and above all their white pasty hairless skins.

We shall kill them and then we shall go and smash the other dome so all the Earthmen there will die too.

If more Earthmen ever come to punish us, we can live and hide in the hills where they'll never find us. And if they try to build more domes here we'll smash them. We want no more to do with Earth.

This is our planet and we want no aliens. Keep off!

Contents

INDIRECTION

BY EVERETT B. COLE

The best way to keep a secret is to publish it in a quite unbelievable form--and insist that it is the truth.

Elwar Forell leaned back in his chair, looking about the small dining salon. The usual couples were there, he noticed. Of course, the faces were different from those of last evening, but the poses were similar. And the people were there for the same reasons. They were enjoying the food and drinks, just as many others had enjoyed them before. But like all those others, their greater enjoyment was in the company of one another. Forell glanced at the vacant chair across the table from him and sighed.

It would be nice, he thought, if-- But any arrangement involving a permanent companion would be hardly practical under his circumstances. After all, prudence dictated limits.

He picked up his cup and drained it, then leaned back and beckoned the waiter over.

"The reckoning, please," he ordered.

He looked again at the letter on the table before him, then folded it and put it in his pocket. It was well, he thought. His latest book of fairy tales and fantasy had enjoyed good acceptance. And the check in the letter had been of satisfactory size. He smiled to himself. There were compensations in this job of his. It seemed to be profitable to have a purpose other than the obvious and usual one.

He paid his bill and left the restaurant, to walk slowly along the street, enjoying the mild, spring air.

As he passed a sidewalk café, a man beckoned from one of the tables.

"Oh, Forell," he called. "I was hoping I'd see you this evening." He held up a book.

"Just finished your 'Tales of the Sorcerers,'" he added. "Some of those yarns of yours seem almost real."

Elwar Forell nodded. They should, he thought. Factual material, however disguised, often shines through its fictional background. And he had an inexhaustible source of material, drawn from many sources. He twisted his face into a gratified smile.

"That's my objective," he said aloud. "I do all in my power to place the reader inside the story."

Charo Andorra nodded. "It's the secret of good fiction, I know," he admitted, "and every storyteller tries to do it. But I seem to see more than that in your stuff. There's an almost believable pattern." He hesitated. "You know, while I'm reading it, I can almost see beings of superior powers walking the earth. And sometimes, I visualize us working with them." He laughed shortly.

"Of course, I may be more credulous and imaginative than most. Probably why I'm a critic. And I really should know better." He looked down at the book in his hands.

"But that stuff of yours can be mighty convincing." He tilted his head. "Somehow, I can't help but look at some of the old legends--and some of the things that have happened in more recent years, too. Can't help but wonder if we actually are babes of the cosmos, and if we haven't been visited and watched by some form of extra-planetary life at one time or another."

Forell looked closely at his friend. Andorra, he knew, was a clear thinker in his own right. And he just might start a serious analysis--and publish it. He grimaced. It wasn't time for that, he knew. Many years must pass before it would be time.

He placed a hand on the back of Andorra's chair, remembering the words of one of the teachers.

"Remember, Elwar," he had been told, "your objective is clear, but your methods must be most indirect--even unclear. Some things you must obscure in a mass of obviously imaginative detail, while you bring others to the fore. You must hint. You must suggest. You should never fully explain or deny. And you must never be guilty of definite, direct falsehood.

"There may come a time when you will be directly questioned--when discovery of your real background and purpose seems imminent, and you will have to take positive action. For such an eventuality, I cannot outline any steps, or even any definite plan of action, since I neither fully understand many of the factors involved, nor have any way of knowing the circumstances which may arise. You'll have to prepare yourself for almost anything, always keeping in mind the peculiarities and capabilities of your own people."

It looked as though the time might have come. If Andorra, a clever, influential critic, should guess at the real background and the sources of the Forell tales, and if he should misunderstand the motives behind those tales, he would probably publish his thoughts. And those thoughts would be widely read. Many would smile as they read and regard the thing as a hoax. But others might start their own analyses. And some of those might come to highly undesirable conclusions and cause undesirable, even disastrous, reactions. It would be many generations before clear explanations could be made and definite principles outlined without causing misunderstanding and serious damage. The Forell tales were evasive and preparatory as well as vaguely instructive.

He recovered his self-discipline and waved his hand negligently.

"You know, Charo," he said laughingly, "I've been thinking along similar lines for a long while. Of course, you know I must have built up some sort of fantasy world to base my yarns on?"

Andorra nodded. "That's obvious. I've been wondering about some of your basic theory. Like to see your notes some time."

Forell spread his hands. "You're quite welcome to look them over," he said. "Come on up to my rooms now." He smiled. "As a matter of fact, I've been doing a little extension on my dream world. Built up a little sketch a while ago, and I'm not just sure what to do with it."

* * * * *

As they entered the study, Forell walked across to his desk. He fumbled for a few seconds under the desk, then opened a drawer. For a moment, he paused, looking inside, then pulled out a thin folder. Again, he hesitated. At last, he picked a small, metallic object from the drawer and held it in his left hand.

"Might need this," he told himself. "If I'm wrong, it'll take a sector patrolman to straighten out the mess. And I could be wrong--two ways."

Casually, he placed his left hand in his pocket, then he turned toward Andorra, holding out the folder.

"Here," he said. "See what you think of this one."

Andorra opened the folder, taking out a few sheets of paper. He read for a moment, then looked up quizzically.

"A little different from your usual style, isn't it?"

Forell nodded, watching the man tensely. "I'm trying something new," he said. "Go ahead and read it, then tell me what you think."

He busied himself with a bottle and glasses.

* * * * *

INFORMAL MEMO

130-263 From: Explorations Officer, Sector Nine To: Ecological Officer Subject: Incident Report

Enclosed is the file on that recent occurrence on Planet 3-G3-9/4871, consisting of the certificates and statements of the various officers and guardsmen concerned, together with a digest of the interrogation of Elwar Forell, a young planetary native, who appears to have been the instigator.

It seems to me that something is seriously wrong with our system of operation, at least on the subject planet. After all, our operations have the purpose of research and observation, with a view to protection and development. Certainly, we cannot create chaos. And knowledge of our existence by very young cultures would certainly cause just that. We've got to clear this up in a hurry. The Elder Galactics are most certain to be unhappy about it in any event, and I don't like to make them unhappy.

Obviously, there was a chain of errors, and some of our people concerned will have to be reassigned for further training, but that's just the beginning. I've recalled all the observers from this planet, pending reorganization, and we've got to come up with an answer that'll prevent further occurrences of this nature, as well as covering this affair on the planet concerned.

I realize that the situation has some of the elements of comedy, and I presume that it will eventually be regarded with considerable amusement, but right at the moment, my sense of humor is working very poorly.

I have a few ideas of my own, but would like to have your recommendations and those of other section officers before I make any final decision or report. I am calling a conference on this incident at 280.1000, so make a full investigation on this, and give me some practical recommendation as soon as possible.

CIJORN 6 enclosures

STATEMENT

I, Florand Anremdor, am assigned to the Communications Branch, Exploratory Section, Sector Nine.

At 261.0196, I was on duty in the emergency communications room at Increment Four. A call came in from Resident Station number fourteen, Planet 3-G3-9/4871, requesting emergency condensation over the immediate station area. Co-ordinates were not given and I checked the planetary co-ordinates with the call sign and the Communications List. I added these to the message and forwarded the request to the Patrol Duty Officer for his action.

There was no visual on the call, but the voice sounded urgent. I relayed the request without requiring special authentication, since the station was precisely on the correct settings, no inimical culture is known to be operating in this sector, and the coded call was correct. At the time, I had no way of suspecting that this was not a genuine emergency call.

Florand Anremdor Comm. 1/c

CERTIFICATE

I, Captain Binkar Morancos, am assigned to the 334th Vector, which is presently under the orders of the Commander, Sector Nine.

I was assigned as Sector Patrol Duty Officer at 261.0200, when a message was relayed from Increment Four, requesting emergency condensation on a planet in that increment. I checked the co-ordinates and data furnished, consulted the situation chart, and instructed Cruiser P-4730, Captain Klorantel commanding, to carry out the mission.

Since the message came through normal channels, I had no doubt as to its authenticity, and treated it as routine. I felt that the cruiser commander could deal with the matter at his discretion.

Binkar Morancos Capt. StG(C)

CERTIFICATE

I, Captain Corrondao Klorantel, am in command of the Stellar Guard Cruiser Myloren, number P-4730. I am assigned to duty with the 334th Vector, which is operating in Sector Nine.

The Myloren was on routine patrol in the Fourth Increment at 261.0203, when a message was received from Sector Headquarters, giving co-ordinates on Planet 3-G3-9/4871, with a request for emergency condensation. I proceeded to the subject planet and took position outside the atmosphere. Visual checks failed to show any emergency condition on the surface, though a burned-out area was noted in the forest a short distance to the planetary south of the station concerned. A call was made to the resident station, requesting clarification of the request, and the answer proved to be unsatisfactory.

There was no visual transmission, and the voice was strongly accented. The message gave insufficient data for action, contained no identification, and was in improper form for station-to-ship contact. I decided to make contact by other means, and shifted my secondary communicator to the guardsman's personal settings, requesting further information, suitable identification, and confirmation of the request. Guardsman Jaeger immediately informed me that the call was spurious, stating that he was away from his station, and that he would return immediately. During the conversation, I noted that full condensation was taking place to atmospheric limits.

I called Auxiliary, and Technician Melran stated that his control circuits were inoperative and that he was tracing the difficulty. He cleared the trouble, but condensation had already been established and precipitation had commenced. I ordered re-absorption, which was started as soon as repairs had been accomplished.

At the request of Guardsman Jaeger, we stood by to render aid if necessary, maintaining contact with his station. At 0572, Jaeger requested immediate evacuation for himself and for one other person. I entered atmosphere, made planetfall with nullified visibility, and took off the guardsman and a young native. During the evacuation, I noted a number of natives armed with various implements, who were attempting to break their way into the station. Guardsman Jaeger fired his demolitions as he left, firing the screen generator with his last flare. For a few minutes, the natives fell back before the flames, but they were entering the station by the time we cleared the planet. It is believed that the installation was completely destroyed.

Corrondao Klorantel Capt. StG(C) Commanding P-4730

STATEMENT

I, Danaeo Melran, am assigned to the Patrol Cruiser Myloren, number P-4730, for duty.

At 261.0204, I was on duty in Auxiliary Equipment when Captain Klorantel called, informing me that a request had come in for emergency condensation. He told me to set up and await execution order. I preset two forward radiators for forty kilometers at low condensation, with a three kilometer radius at surface. I then put the controls on automatic trigger, notified the captain, and went on with my normal duties. At 0221, we came out of trans-light, and I adjusted my equipment for slow-drive operation.

At 0223, my indicators showed activity on the forward radiators. I checked and discovered that full power was being applied. Attempts to override the automatics were unsuccessful, and while I was attempting to clear the trouble, the captain called again, saying that the request was false, and asking why I had turned the radiators on. I told him that the controls were jammed, and he instructed me to make repairs and set up re-absorption.

I discovered a short between the automatic trigger and the ship's secondary communication antenna. After clearing this, I found trouble in the control section of the condensation driver. The automatic trigger had become fused, and the control paths were shorted to full-drive throughout. The sub-assemblies were replaced and trouble cleared by 0300. I then set up re-absorption as ordered.

Danaeo Melran Eq Tech 3/c

STATEMENT

I, Franz Jaeger, am Resident Guardsman at Station Fourteen, Planet 3-G3-9/4871.

I have been assigned to my station for eight planetary years for survey and observation duty. During the past five years, I have employed Elwar Forell, the son of a local peasant, to keep the living quarters clean and to do general work about the station. I have never discussed the possibilities of extra-planetary civilization with him, and I have been careful to exclude him from knowledge of my technical equipment, which I have kept in a secure room in accordance with regulations. I have presented myself to him, as well as to all the villagers in my area, as a scholar, tired of city life, and desirous of a quiet existence.

There has been a drought in part of my area for the entire season. We have suffered from one forest fire and there is a strong possibility of others. Crops are doing very badly, and the peasants have been complaining bitterly. This is not an unheard-of situation, but it has caused considerable discomfort and worry, since there is a very definite threat of famine. There have been numerous attempts to obtain rain by occult means, and I have been personally approached on the matter. For some time, the villagers in the immediate area of the station have regarded me as a sorcerer, and I have been asked to cast a spell to cause rain.

I had considered a request for light condensation, but had hesitated to make such a request, since I felt that rain closely following the villagers' petition to me would confirm their supernatural beliefs, which I have attempted to discourage.

At 261.0223, I was on a routine tour of my area. I received a call from the cruiser Myloren, Captain Klorantel commanding, asking for further information on a request for emergency condensation. I informed him that I had made no such request, adding that a light rain would be desirable if he were in position and prepared to radiate.

During the conversation with Captain Klorantel, I noted that the sky was darkening. There were several flashes of lightning, and I felt the signs of imminent, heavy rain. I promptly started back to my station.

Upon my arrival, I discovered that Elwar had managed to open the communications room and had been using the equipment. He was extremely frightened, and made incoherent remarks about talking to a demon. When I attempted to question him as to how he had opened the room, and where he had learned the operation of the communications equipment, he became hysterical and I could find out precisely nothing.

By this time, it was raining violently. There was a high wind. Several trees had been blown down and lightning was frequent. A flood was starting down the mountainside toward the village, threatening severe damage. It was quite apparent that crops, such as they were, would be almost completely destroyed.

At the time, I could do little to remedy the situation. I re-established contact with the cruiser, informed Captain Klorantel of the situation, and requested that he stand by. I then turned on my viewsphere to keep watch on the village from the communications room. Since Elwar had been in the room on several previous occasions, I saw no reason for excluding him. On the contrary, I thought it would be advisable to keep him with me, since I felt that he would be seriously injured if he were turned loose in the village. I do not believe he would have survived the fury of the villagers, who had taken shelter, and were watching the destruction of their crops.

The flood had become a torrent, which overflowed the banks of the village brook, tore at the bridge, and swept through the lanes. In the fields, grain was beaten into the ground and it was clear that the villagers would have little or no harvest to celebrate during the approaching festival. The wind grew in force, lashing at the tall festival pole, which bent, crashed down in the village square, and partially demolished the front of the inn.

During this period, there was no human activity, since everyone had taken what shelter he could find.

At 0448, the rain slackened, the wind died down, and people started gathering in the square. For a time, they milled about, wading through the ebbing flood. They examined the damage, then they gathered in groups, talking earnestly.

The dry wind came up at 0510, and by 0550, the entire village was on the march toward my station. Their intentions were quite easy to determine. They were armed with pitchforks, scythes, axes, and other tools which could be converted to offensive use. I established a protective screen, but realized that to set up a permanent defense would be impractical and even harmful. I therefore called the cruiser, requesting evacuation for myself and for young Forell. Prior to evacuation, I demolished all my fixed equipment, so that the only things left for the villagers to find when they entered the station were damaged remains of those things normal for a recluse scholar of their era.

Franz Jaeger Observer 2/c

INFORMAL MEMO

130-265

From: Evaluations Officer To: Explorations Officer Subject: Interrogation

Enclosed is a digest of the interrogation of one, Elwar Forell, who was evacuated from forty-eight seventy-one, in company with Guardsman Jaeger. This boy was abjectly terrified and had to be calmed several times during questioning. He was pitiably hysterical when recalling his conversation with Captain Klorantel, who, you will remember, is a capriform humanoid.

The subject appears to be an intelligent specimen of his race, and when he had conquered his hysteria, was extremely co-operative, showing active interest in his surroundings. I believe he would be able to assimilate training, and would make a valuable addition to the Stellar Guard. I recommend his retention and training.

If Elwar is a typical "son of a simple peasant," and if the planet from which he comes has any considerable number of "simple peasants" with sons like him, I can foresee some strangely interesting problems in connection with further dealings on that planet.

FONZEC 1 enclosure

DIGEST

Interrogation of Elwar Forell, native of Planet 3-G3-9/4871.

"My Masters, I did mean no harm, but only good. I have long known that my master was possessed of power denied to most men. When I was apprenticed to him five years ago, I thought I would one day learn some of the dark secrets of the hidden worlds, but never did my master mention aught of those secrets he so surely knew. He taught me only of those things known to the scholars. He told me of reading, of writing, and of ciphering, and taught me many facts of our world which are known to the learned. I wished to know of many other things, but of these he was silent. Even so, I am grateful for his teachings, for how else could the son of a simple peasant gain the knowledge of the scholars?

"I saw that my master often repaired to a room which I was never allowed to enter. This room he cleaned himself. And he always entered in the greatest of secrecy, being quite cross with me when I once betrayed curiosity. I remained curious, however, and fell at last to watching him in secret as he opened the door.

"He slid aside a secret panel, then turned a wheel this way and that, finally pushing a handle. I watched, at last learning to what numbers he did turn the wheel, and how he pushed the handle. During his absences, I went sometimes to that room of magic, and I read the books of power, though there was much I could not read, since much of the writing was in strange tongues and I dared not ask my master the meanings of the strange words. But for his own convenience, my master had written many instructions plainly. And these, I read.

"I did learn that there were powers beyond those of men. I learned that these strange instruments on the table did have strange ability to call forth demons and spirits, but never until that day did I dare touch other than the books and papers. And those I took great care to restore to their original condition.

"For three months past, my father's land and the fields of his neighbors have been dry. During this time, there has been no rain, nor hint of rain, and the peasants have cried out for relief. They have appealed even to my master, who has told them that he has no strange powers--that he can do naught to call up rain. But they did not believe him, nor did I, Elwar, who knew better than this. I had seen the books of power, and I knew the demons could cause the skies to deliver water if rightly asked. So, I visited the room of magic upon the occasions of my master's absence. And I tried to decipher his writings that I might find the means to ask for the skies to open. Always, when I felt my master's presence approaching, I left the room, taking care to properly lock the door and to hide all evidence of my entry.

"On that day of direful events, I found a paper in my master's hand. It mentioned fire in the forests. It mentioned rain. And it had on it words of power.

"For a time, I practiced the strange syllables. Many times did I speak them aloud, then I pressed the bosses on the table, as shown by one of the books. There was a light. Then, the great ball glowed with color, to show me the first demon.

"He spoke. And I conquered my fear, to repeat the syllables I had labored to learn. Once again, he spoke, and I could not understand him. I could think of nothing but to say again those words which I hoped would bring the rain we so badly needed. I took my hands from the bosses and stood, wondering what would happen. The ball became dark.

"I stood, waiting. And nothing happened. Finally, thinking nothing was to occur, I turned and started to leave the room. Then, a great voice spoke. Again, the wall was alight. Within it was a fearsome demon who glared at me ferociously and demanded something in that tongue of power. I could not think. I stood, trembling fearfully. And he spoke again. Then did I repeat again the words I had learned, and ran from the room.

"It became dark. The lightnings flashed, and the rain fell, and my master came, but not as I had ever seen him before. He did not walk from the forest as was his wont, but appeared before me from the air. I started back in fright, for now I was certain beyond doubt that he was a man of great wizardry. I thought he would beat me, or possibly cast me under a spell.

"Never has he beaten me, always saying that it was wrong to beat an apprentice, and that those who so did were lacking in their senses. And this is but another proof of his sorcery, for who, other than a sorcerer, could handle his servants without beating them?

"I dared do nothing other than to tell him of my misdoing, and he rushed to the room, taking me with him. He pressed the bosses, turning one that I had not known of, and the demon appeared again and talked with him. Then, my master made strange passes about the instruments and the village was shown in the ball.

"At last the rain stopped. A wind blew--hot and dry, as from the pit--and the people came and did try by violence to enter. But they could not. At last, the great machine came, and though we could not at first see it, we entered and were carried away through the sky.

"The people watched the house burn, then entered, to scatter the ashes.

"And I am here, and afraid."

* * *

Doer Kweiros flipped off the playback and gazed at the unresponsive wall. He rubbed the back of his head, looked at the viewsphere, then checked the playback index and tapped the rewind.

"Oh, me," he complained sorrowfully, "how do we get into these things?"

He looked toward the communicator controls unhappily, then reached out and dialed a number. The sphere lit and an alert face looked at him inquiringly.

"How is that Forell boy?"

"Soaking up information like a sponge, sir."

Kweiros nodded. "Gathered he might," he remarked. "Send him up here, will you? And have Jaeger come with him."

"Yes, sir."

Kweiros snapped the communicator off, sat back to drum idly on his desk, then got up and walked over to his master file control board. He glanced at the index, then punched out a sequence on the buttons. There was a subdued hum and a door opened. Kweiros reached into the compartment, to take out several tape reels. He glanced at them, nodded, and went back to the desk, where he spread them out and looked from one to another. Finally, he selected one of the smaller reels and started to thread it into the playback.

There was a light tap on the door and he looked up.

"So soon? Come in."

A tall, sharp-featured guardsman entered and stood at attention. Beside him was a boy, who looked curiously and a little fearfully at the officer, who waved to chairs.

"Sit down, both of you. I'm not going to claw you. Just want to go over a few things. I've some ideas, but I want to be sure of a couple of points." The captain glanced at the reels before him.

"One thing puzzles me, Jaeger. Why did you have notes in the planetary language in your communications room?"

Jaeger stirred uneasily. "I started doing that some time ago, sir," he explained. "You see, their language is quite dissimilar to either my own or to Galactica, and I have yet to learn to think in it. I wanted to avoid any possibility of lapsing away from it, so I translated my instructions and notes, hoping to keep myself constantly reminded to refrain from using Galactica at any time." He spread his hands. "I suppose--"

Kweiros waved. "Logical, I presume," he admitted. "Anyway, that's done, and we can't do much about it now. Now for another thing." He glanced at the tape reels. "I noticed that the villagers in your area regarded you as a sorcerer. What cause did they have to form such an opinion?"

"None, sir, that I know of." Jaeger shook his head.

Kweiros looked at the boy. "Elwar?"

"Why, all the village knew it, Master." The boy shook his head. "One had but to be near Master Jaeger for a time, and he could feel the power, just as I can feel it now." He shook his head again. "But it is very strong, Master. You must be one of the ones of truly great power."

Kweiros looked speculatively at Jaeger.

"I understood they were nontelepaths. All the reports agree on that."

"Definitely, sir, they are. They're absolutely mute. Not a trace of radiation, even when they're close. And they don't receive. You can try it now, sir. It's just like punching into space itself. No resistance, no reflection, just nothing."

"Shield?"

"No, sir. Just no indication. Makes me feel as though I were in free space with a dead drive."

* * *

Kweiros looked for a moment at Jaeger, then sent out a probing thought, searching for some indication of mental activity from the boy. But there was nothing. It wasn't anything like a shield, he thought. It seemed more like an infinite baffle.

But there was some reaction. The boy shrank back in terror.

"Please, Master," he begged. "Do not place me under enchantment." He held up his hands in a peculiar gesture.

"What made you do that?" Kweiros raised a hand slowly, palm out. "I have no intention of harming you."

"But I could feel you, trying to cast me under a spell."

"You ... felt me?"

"To be sure, Master, just as I have felt the same power from my master, Jaeger. But this was far stronger. It hurt. And it seemed as though you wanted me to do something."

Kweiros nodded. "I think I'm getting an idea," he remarked. "And it scares me a little. They're not really nontelepathic, any more than the Kierawelans, for example, are nonvocal. I think we've got something here that's almost unique in the galaxy." He rubbed his neck. "Excuse me a few minutes. I want to check something in one of these tapes."

Jaeger nodded and leaned back in his chair, looking curiously at the boy beside him, then back at his superior, who had selected a tape reel. He threaded it into the playing heads, put on a headband, and snapped a switch. Jaeger and the boy watched as Kweiros leaned back.

The officer's face became vacant, then twisted, seeming to reflect painful mental effort. Slowly, he leaned forward again, touching another switch. Then, he sank back, to concentrate on his thoughts.

Jaeger looked again at the boy, who was sitting tensely, his hands gripping the arms of his chair, his eyes fastened fearfully on the officer before him. As Jaeger watched, Elwar half rose from his chair, then sank back, his face appearing to mirror Kweiros' efforts.

At last, Kweiros sat up. Shakily, he removed his headband and snapped the playback off.

"Long time since I checked that tape," he said. "Pretty rugged stuff, and highly speculative. Always gives me a headache." He shook his head as he looked at Elwar.

"And this makes it even worse. It was bad enough as pure speculation, but we've got something real here. Something rough. For one thing, we have got a planet where no one but native operatives stand a chance of working. For another we--" He cupped his chin in his hands and examined Elwar closely.

"Do you really want to learn the secrets you looked for in the books, youngster? Do you still want the secrets you first thought you might learn?"

The boy seemed to withdraw a little. "I have a great fear," he admitted tremulously.

"You haven't been injured or mistreated, have you?"

"No, Master, but--" Elwar looked toward the door.

"And you won't be," he was told reassuringly. "Now you just go ahead on back to your quarters."

* * *

As the door closed, Kweiros turned to Jaeger.

"Think we'll put you on special assignment. For the next few cycles, you'll act as a private tutor. Then you can go back to Main Base with Elwar while they give him his training."

Jaeger raised his eyebrows. "Yes, sir," he said doubtfully. "You think the boy will develop?"

Kweiros nodded. "I'm quite sure of it," he said. "And he's got a big job ahead of him. He may be instrumental in preventing a major disaster." He waved at the tape reels.

"I got that little tape out just on an off chance," he added. "Didn't really expect to find anything, but--" He flipped his hands out. "Anyway, I pulled it." He leaned forward, looking at Jaeger.

"We may have run into a second, or even third growth culture," he said slowly. "Once, before some ancient war of destruction, the people of this planet might have been normally telepathic." He closed his eyes for an instant. "Possibly they were unable to use their telepathic power. And equally possibly, they could have had a highly developed mechanical civilization. Something went wrong." He waved at the tape reel.

"In this reconstruction, there's an hypothesis on just such a situation. Here, a race reaches high development and wrecks itself--leaving no trace of its accomplishments. Growth starts over from the most meager of beginnings. Survival becomes a matter of the most bitter conflict, with everyone becoming a hunter and being hunted in his turn. In this situation, detection of an enemy becomes vital." He grinned wryly. "Can you imagine what would happen to someone who radiated his thoughts?"

Jaeger ran a finger over his lips. "He'd be easy to locate," he mused. "And he'd have a hard time evading an enemy."

"Precisely." Kweiros nodded. "And he'd never be able to approach his prey. In short, he'd fail to survive. Complete telepathic blankness would have a high survival value. But an ability to detect mental radiation would still be a big help." He waved a hand.

"So, a race like this one could evolve. And the author of this tape extrapolated from there. A normal telepathic reception will be accompanied, by a slight feedback. A completely black body, however, will neither radiate nor feed back. It merely absorbs energy and, unless it's super-imposed on a reflective background, it leaves no trace. Since nothing in nature other than a telepathic mind can reflect telepathy, no background would survive for long." He frowned a little.

"Of course, no mind we are familiar with could act as a telepathically black body, but this author hypothesized a race that could do just that--plus. There's a further hypothesis of an ability to detect and localize radiations as such, without bothering to resolve them."

"Sounds like just what we have here," Jaeger admitted.

"It does, doesn't it?" Kweiros nodded. "And there's a further extrapolation. Some of the members or the elder races have speculated on a sort of second-order telepathy, undetectable to the normal telepath, but capable of noting normal radiation. And some of the speculations seem to make sense--though they're a little confusing. If you don't have a specific sense, it's difficult to visualize it, or even to speculate on its presence." He drew a deep breath.

"That leads us into a real problem. Our people roamed around this planet for several cycles this time. And there may have been others before us, who didn't record their visits, other than in the minds and legends of the natives. And there may be other legends from that other, older culture." He shrugged.

"We picked up what we could on the culture, but we didn't get the full story on them. And we've probably left a thousand legends behind us, including that beautiful mess at your station." He grinned.

"Right now, their folklore is loaded with sorcerers, warlocks, wizards, and what not. After all, whatever their past is, they're primitive now. So those stories are going to grow and continue. Eventually, long before they really develop a stabilized ethic, someone's going to collate that whole mess. And do you know what he'll come up with?"

"Us?"

"Us, yes. Us, in a distorted form." Kweiros nodded emphatically. "They will come to a full realization that there are advanced entities running around the cosmos, entities that have all kinds of mysterious powers. And they'll invent still more powers and characteristics--mostly bad." He spread his hands, then laid them on the desk in front of him.

* * *

"That way, they could develop a hopeless, planet-wide trauma--a sort of super inferiority complex--and they could contract on themselves, devote their time to an intensive study of demonology, and very possibly come apart at the seams.

"Or, they could do something else. I was watching Elwar while I was checking that tape. Did you notice anything peculiar?"

"He seemed disturbed."

"As though he were sensing my thoughts?"

"Something like that. But--"

Kweiros nodded. "But I had a shield up. You could detect no trace of mental action. Right?"

"Yes, sir."

"That's what I thought." Kweiros shook his head and looked closely at Jaeger.

"Can you imagine," he added, "a primitive race with the power to detect a galactic by his thoughts? And can you imagine that power developing until that detection is possible at interstellar ranges, with members of that race being able to pick up faint impressions from received thoughts--distorted impressions? And can you imagine that same race, ignorant of the humanic equations, devoid of a stable ethic, superstitious, distrustful and fearful of advanced entities? They would be undetectable by normal telepathic means, you know. And suppose they were disposed to destroy what they could not understand." He frowned.

Jaeger looked back at him, his eyes becoming wide. Suddenly, his gaze defocused and he looked aside, to stare unseeingly at the floor.

"Something's got to be done, sir," he said reluctantly.

Kweiros nodded. "Something's got to be done," he agreed. "Of course, there's another side to the picture. If this race develops and learns, they'll be just as valuable to the galaxy as they would otherwise be dangerous." He looked toward the door.

"And our boy out there is one of the few who can help in this situation. He's going to have to work out counter stories--amusing stories--about all those magical creatures his people tell about. He's going to have to hint at the possibilities of close co-ordination and co-operation between members of his own species. And he's going to have to suggest the possibility of friendly co-operation between his species and others." He drew a deep breath.

"And he's going to have to do all this without taking any risk of exposing the existence of other, more advanced species in the galaxy." He brushed a hand across his head, then pressed the back of his neck, kneading the skin.

"These stories of his, he'll have to publish. He'll have to get them circulated all over his planet, if he can. Possibly we can give him some indirect help, but he's going to have to carry a good share of the load.

"He knows his own people as we could never hope to. And he'll have to be thoroughly educated, so he can say what he wants to. And he'll have to be fully aware of the humanic equations and all their connotations. If he's to have any direct help, he'll have to choose his helpers from among his own people, and he'll have to choose carefully." Kweiros thrust at his temple with the heel of a hand, then shook his head violently.

"Somehow, he's going to have to accentuate any legends he may be able to find which present a favorable light on co-ordination and co-operation, and he'll have to invent more. And all those other legends--the ones which treat of superstition and destructive force--will have to be reduced to the realm of the storybook, submerged under a layer of amused condemnation, and kept there. All these things, that youngster is going to have to do.

"It's your job to help teach him."

* * * * *

Forell watched his friend closely as the critic laid aside the last page.

Andorra sat for a moment, his head cocked in thought. Then, he picked up the last page and looked at it again. Finally, he laid the sheet aside. He looked at his friend with a wry smile, then picked up his wineglass, looking at it quizzically.

"Do you always give your own name to one of your characters?"

Forell's grip tightened on the small object in his hand.

"Oh, sure," he said. "Gives me a better identification. If I can get into the story, it's easier to draw the reader in." He forced a casual smile. "I'll change that name later, of course."

"I see what you mean." Andorra sipped from his glass.

"You know," he added, "a couple of hours ago, I was almost ready to get excited about the idea of a cosmos full of super beings. And I even might have dreamed up something like this myself--and more than half believed it." He shook his head.

"But when a fantasist like yourself comes up with it, and makes it look so nicely possible, the idea almost looks foolish. After all, Elwar, if you actually were the guy in that little sketch of yours, you'd hardly be asking me to read it, now would you?" He looked down at the papers, then raised his head again, frowning.

"'He'll have to choose his helpers from among his own people,'" he quoted. "'All these things, that youngster is going to have to do.'" He sipped again from his glass, keeping a searching gaze on his friend.

"And on the other hand, if your story here should be true, you just might be asking me to read it, for one reason or another." He raised his glass, examining the bright liquid within it.

Elwar tensed, his hand coming part way out of his pocket.

Suddenly, Andorra set the glass down and leaned forward, hands gripping his knees.

"Tell me, Elwar," he begged, "this isn't a hoax, is it? Surely, no one could be so warped as to present a friend with something like this and then to laugh it off?"

Forell drew a deep breath and examined his companion closely. At last, his left hand relaxed a little.

"It's no hoax," he admitted.

Andorra sighed and leaned back.

"And you can use help? You're asking me?"

He paused, waiting as Forell nodded, then spread his hands.

"You know," he said, "it shouldn't take me too long to fix it so I would not be missed too much for a few years." He looked at the wall.

"It must be quite a training course."

THE END

Contents

THE GAME OF RAT AND DRAGON

By CORDWAINER SMITH

Only partners could fight this deadliest of wars--and the one way to dissolve the partnership was to be personally dissolved!

THE TABLE

Pinlighting is a hell of a way to earn a living. Underhill was furious as he closed the door behind himself. It didn't make much sense to wear a uniform and look like a soldier if people didn't appreciate what you did.

He sat down in his chair, laid his head back in the headrest and pulled the helmet down over his forehead.

As he waited for the pin-set to warm up, he remembered the girl in the outer corridor. She had looked at it, then looked at him scornfully.

"Meow." That was all she had said. Yet it had cut him like a knife.

What did she think he was--a fool, a loafer, a uniformed nonentity? Didn't she know that for every half hour of pinlighting, he got a minimum of two months' recuperation in the hospital?

By now the set was warm. He felt the squares of space around him, sensed himself at the middle of an immense grid, a cubic grid, full of nothing. Out in that nothingness, he could sense the hollow aching horror of space itself and could feel the terrible anxiety which his mind encountered whenever it met the faintest trace of inert dust.

As he relaxed, the comforting solidity of the Sun, the clock-work of the familiar planets and the Moon rang in on him. Our own solar system was as charming and as simple as an ancient cuckoo clock filled with familiar ticking and with reassuring noises. The odd little moons of Mars swung around their planet like frantic mice, yet their regularity was itself an assurance that all was well. Far above the plane of the ecliptic, he could feel half a ton of dust more or less drifting outside the lanes of human travel.

Here there was nothing to fight, nothing to challenge the mind, to tear the living soul out of a body with its roots dripping in effluvium as tangible as blood.

Nothing ever moved in on the Solar System. He could wear the pin-set forever and be nothing more than a sort of telepathic astronomer, a man who could feel the hot, warm protection of the Sun throbbing and burning against his living mind.

* * * * *

Woodley came in.

"Same old ticking world," said Underhill. "Nothing to report. No wonder they didn't develop the pin-set until they began to planoform. Down here with the hot Sun around us, it feels so good and so quiet. You can feel everything spinning and turning. It's nice and sharp and compact. It's sort of like sitting around home."

Woodley grunted. He was not much given to flights of fantasy.

Undeterred, Underhill went on, "It must have been pretty good to have been an Ancient Man. I wonder why they burned up their world with war. They didn't have to planoform. They didn't have to go out to earn their livings among the stars. They didn't have to dodge the Rats or play the Game. They couldn't have invented pinlighting because they didn't have any need of it, did they, Woodley?"

Woodley grunted, "Uh-huh." Woodley was twenty-six years old and due to retire in one more year. He already had a farm picked out. He had gotten through ten years of hard work pinlighting with the best of them. He had kept his sanity by not thinking very much about his job, meeting the strains of the task whenever he had to meet them and thinking nothing more about his duties until the next emergency arose.

Woodley never made a point of getting popular among the Partners. None of the Partners liked him very much. Some of them even resented him. He was suspected of thinking ugly thoughts of the Partners on occasion, but since none of the Partners ever thought a complaint in articulate form, the other pinlighters and the Chiefs of the Instrumentality left him alone.

Underhill was still full of the wonder of their job. Happily he babbled on, "What does happen to us when we planoform? Do you think it's sort of like dying? Did you ever see anybody who had his soul pulled out?"

"Pulling souls is just a way of talking about it," said Woodley. "After all these years, nobody knows whether we have souls or not."

"But I saw one once. I saw what Dogwood looked like when he came apart. There was something funny. It looked wet and sort of sticky as if it were bleeding and it went out of him--and you know what they did to Dogwood? They took him away, up in that part of the hospital where you and I never go--way up at the top part where the others are, where the others always have to go if they are alive after the Rats of the Up-and-Out have gotten them."

Woodley sat down and lit an ancient pipe. He was burning something called tobacco in it. It was a dirty sort of habit, but it made him look very dashing and adventurous.

"Look here, youngster. You don't have to worry about that stuff. Pinlighting is getting better all the time. The Partners are getting better. I've seen them pinlight two Rats forty-six million miles apart in one and a half milliseconds. As long as people had to try to work the pin-sets themselves, there was always the chance that with a minimum of four hundred milliseconds for the human mind to set a pinlight, we wouldn't light the Rats up fast enough to protect our planoforming ships. The Partners have changed all that. Once they get going, they're faster than Rats. And they always will be. I know it's not easy, letting a Partner share your mind--"

"It's not easy for them, either," said Underhill.

"Don't worry about them. They're not human. Let them take care of themselves. I've seen more pinlighters go crazy from monkeying around with Partners than I have ever seen caught by the Rats. How many do you actually know of them that got grabbed by Rats?"

* * * * *

Underhill looked down at his fingers, which shone green and purple in the vivid light thrown by the tuned-in pin-set, and counted ships. The thumb for the Andromeda, lost with crew and passengers, the index finger and the middle finger for Release Ships 43 and 56, found with their pin-sets burned out and every man, woman, and child on board dead or insane. The ring finger, the little finger, and the thumb of the other hand were the first three battleships to be lost to the Rats--lost as people realized that there was something out there underneath space itself which was alive, capricious and malevolent.

Planoforming was sort of funny. It felt like like--

Like nothing much.

Like the twinge of a mild electric shock.

Like the ache of a sore tooth bitten on for the first time.

Like a slightly painful flash of light against the eyes.

Yet in that time, a forty-thousand-ton ship lifting free above Earth disappeared somehow or other into two dimensions and appeared half a light-year or fifty light-years off.

At one moment, he would be sitting in the Fighting Room, the pin-set ready and the familiar Solar System ticking around inside his head. For a second or a year (he could never tell how long it really was, subjectively), the funny little flash went through him and then he was loose in the Up-and-Out, the terrible open spaces between the stars, where the stars themselves felt like pimples on his telepathic mind and the planets were too far away to be sensed or read.

Somewhere in this outer space, a gruesome death awaited, death and horror of a kind which Man had never encountered until he reached out for inter-stellar space itself. Apparently the light of the suns kept the Dragons away.

* * * * *

Dragons. That was what people called them. To ordinary people, there was nothing, nothing except the shiver of planoforming and the hammer blow of sudden death or the dark spastic note of lunacy descending into their minds.

But to the telepaths, they were Dragons.

In the fraction of a second between the telepaths' awareness of a hostile something out in the black, hollow nothingness of space and the impact of a ferocious, ruinous psychic blow against all living things within the ship, the telepaths had sensed entities something like the Dragons of ancient human lore, beasts more clever than beasts, demons more tangible than demons, hungry vortices of aliveness and hate compounded by unknown means out of the thin tenuous matter between the stars.

It took a surviving ship to bring back the news--a ship in which, by sheer chance, a telepath had a light beam ready, turning it out at the innocent dust so that, within the panorama of his mind, the Dragon dissolved into nothing at all and the other passengers, themselves non-telepathic, went about their way not realizing that their own immediate deaths had been averted.

From then on, it was easy--almost.

* * * * *

Planoforming ships always carried telepaths. Telepaths had their sensitiveness enlarged to an immense range by the pin-sets, which were telepathic amplifiers adapted to the mammal mind. The pin-sets in turn were electronically geared into small dirigible light bombs. Light did it.

Light broke up the Dragons, allowed the ships to reform three-dimensionally, skip, skip, skip, as they moved from star to star.

The odds suddenly moved down from a hundred to one against mankind to sixty to forty in mankind's favor.

This was not enough. The telepaths were trained to become ultrasensitive, trained to become aware of the Dragons in less than a millisecond.

But it was found that the Dragons could move a million miles in just under two milliseconds and that this was not enough for the human mind to activate the light beams.

Attempts had been made to sheath the ships in light at all times.

This defense wore out.

As mankind learned about the Dragons, so too, apparently, the Dragons learned about mankind. Somehow they flattened their own bulk and came in on extremely flat trajectories very quickly.

Intense light was needed, light of sunlike intensity. This could be provided only by light bombs. Pinlighting came into existence.

Pinlighting consisted of the detonation of ultra-vivid miniature photonuclear bombs, which converted a few ounces of a magnesium isotope into pure visible radiance.

The odds kept coming down in mankind's favor, yet ships were being lost.

It became so bad that people didn't even want to find the ships because the rescuers knew what they would see. It was sad to bring back to Earth three hundred bodies ready for burial and two hundred or three hundred lunatics, damaged beyond repair, to be wakened, and fed, and cleaned, and put to sleep, wakened and fed again until their lives were ended.

Telepaths tried to reach into the minds of the psychotics who had been damaged by the Dragons, but they found nothing there beyond vivid spouting columns of fiery terror bursting from the primordial id itself, the volcanic source of life.

Then came the Partners.

Man and Partner could do together what Man could not do alone. Men had the intellect. Partners had the speed.

The Partners rode their tiny craft, no larger than footballs, outside the spaceships. They planoformed with the ships. They rode beside them in their six-pound craft ready to attack.

The tiny ships of the Partners were swift. Each carried a dozen pinlights, bombs no bigger than thimbles.

The pinlighters threw the Partners--quite literally threw--by means of mind-to-firing relays direct at the Dragons.

What seemed to be Dragons to the human mind appeared in the form of gigantic Rats in the minds of the Partners.

Out in the pitiless nothingness of space, the Partners' minds responded to an instinct as old as life. The Partners attacked, striking with a speed faster than Man's, going from attack to attack until the Rats or themselves were destroyed. Almost all the time, it was the Partners who won.

With the safety of the inter-stellar skip, skip, skip of the ships, commerce increased immensely, the population of all the colonies went up, and the demand for trained Partners increased.

Underhill and Woodley were a part of the third generation of pinlighters and yet, to them, it seemed as though their craft had endured forever.

Gearing space into minds by means of the pin-set, adding the Partners to those minds, keying up the mind for the tension of a fight on which all depended--this was more than human synapses could stand for long. Underhill needed his two months' rest after half an hour of fighting. Woodley needed his retirement after ten years of service. They were young. They were good. But they had limitations.

So much depended on the choice of Partners, so much on the sheer luck of who drew whom.

THE SHUFFLE

Father Moontree and the little girl named West entered the room. They were the other two pinlighters. The human complement of the Fighting Room was now complete.

Father Moontree was a red-faced man of forty-five who had lived the peaceful life of a farmer until he reached his fortieth year. Only then, belatedly, did the authorities find he was telepathic and agree to let him late in life enter upon the career of pinlighter. He did well at it, but he was fantastically old for this kind of business.

Father Moontree looked at the glum Woodley and the musing Underhill. "How're the youngsters today? Ready for a good fight?"

"Father always wants a fight," giggled the little girl named West. She was such a little little girl. Her giggle was high and childish. She looked like the last person in the world one would expect to find in the rough, sharp dueling of pinlighting.

Underhill had been amused one time when he found one of the most sluggish of the Partners coming away happy from contact with the mind of the girl named West.

Usually the Partners didn't care much about the human minds with which they were paired for the journey. The Partners seemed to take the attitude that human minds were complex and fouled up beyond belief, anyhow. No Partner ever questioned the superiority of the human mind, though very few of the Partners were much impressed by that superiority.

The Partners liked people. They were willing to fight with them. They were even willing to die for them. But when a Partner liked an individual the way, for example, that Captain Wow or the Lady May liked Underhill, the liking had nothing to do with intellect. It was a matter of temperament, of feel.

Underhill knew perfectly well that Captain Wow regarded his, Underhill's, brains as silly. What Captain Wow liked was Underhill's friendly emotional structure, the cheerfulness and glint of wicked amusement that shot through Underhill's unconscious thought patterns, and the gaiety with which Underhill faced danger. The words, the history books, the ideas, the science--Underhill could sense all that in his own mind, reflected back from Captain Wow's mind, as so much rubbish.

Miss West looked at Underhill. "I bet you've put stickum on the stones."

"I did not!"

Underhill felt his ears grow red with embarrassment. During his novitiate, he had tried to cheat in the lottery because he got particularly fond of a special Partner, a lovely young mother named Murr. It was so much easier to operate with Murr and she was so affectionate toward him that he forgot pinlighting was hard work and that he was not instructed to have a good time with his Partner. They were both designed and prepared to go into deadly battle together.

One cheating had been enough. They had found him out and he had been laughed at for years.

Father Moontree picked up the imitation-leather cup and shook the stone dice which assigned them their Partners for the trip. By senior rights, he took first draw.

* * * * *

He grimaced. He had drawn a greedy old character, a tough old male whose mind was full of slobbering thoughts of food, veritable oceans full of half-spoiled fish. Father Moontree had once said that he burped cod liver oil for weeks after drawing that particular glutton, so strongly had the telepathic image of fish impressed itself upon his mind. Yet the glutton was a glutton for danger as well as for fish. He had killed sixty-three Dragons, more than any other Partner in the service, and was quite literally worth his weight in gold.

The little girl West came next. She drew Captain Wow. When she saw who it was, she smiled.

"I like him," she said. "He's such fun to fight with. He feels so nice and cuddly in my mind."

"Cuddly, hell," said Woodley. "I've been in his mind, too. It's the most leering mind in this ship, bar none."

"Nasty man," said the little girl. She said it declaratively, without reproach.

Underhill, looking at her, shivered.

He didn't see how she could take Captain Wow so calmly. Captain Wow's mind did leer. When Captain Wow got excited in the middle of a battle, confused images of Dragons, deadly Rats, luscious beds, the smell of fish, and the shock of space all scrambled together in his mind as he and Captain Wow, their consciousnesses linked together through the pin-set, became a fantastic composite of human being and Persian cat.

That's the trouble with working with cats, thought Underhill. It's a pity that nothing else anywhere will serve as Partner. Cats were all right once you got in touch with them telepathically. They were smart enough to meet the needs of the fight, but their motives and desires were certainly different from those of humans.

They were companionable enough as long as you thought tangible images at them, but their minds just closed up and went to sleep when you recited Shakespeare or Colegrove, or if you tried to tell them what space was.

It was sort of funny realizing that the Partners who were so grim and mature out here in space were the same cute little animals that people had used as pets for thousands of years back on Earth. He had embarrassed himself more than once while on the ground saluting perfectly ordinary non-telepathic cats because he had forgotten for the moment that they were not Partners.

He picked up the cup and shook out his stone dice.

He was lucky--he drew the Lady May.

* * * * *

The Lady May was the most thoughtful Partner he had ever met. In her, the finely bred pedigree mind of a Persian cat had reached one of its highest peaks of development. She was more complex than any human woman, but the complexity was all one of emotions, memory, hope and discriminated experience--experience sorted through without benefit of words.

When he had first come into contact with her mind, he was astonished at its clarity. With her he remembered her kittenhood. He remembered every mating experience she had ever had. He saw in a half-recognizable gallery all the other pinlighters with whom she had been paired for the fight. And he saw himself radiant, cheerful and desirable.

He even thought he caught the edge of a longing--

A very flattering and yearning thought: What a pity he is not a cat.

Woodley picked up the last stone. He drew what he deserved--a sullen, scared old tomcat with none of the verve of Captain Wow. Woodley's Partner was the most animal of all the cats on the ship, a low, brutish type with a dull mind. Even telepathy had not refined his character. His ears were half chewed off from the first fights in which he had engaged.

He was a serviceable fighter, nothing more.

Woodley grunted.

Underhill glanced at him oddly. Didn't Woodley ever do anything but grunt?

Father Moontree looked at the other three. "You might as well get your Partners now. I'll let the Scanner know we're ready to go into the Up-and-Out."

THE DEAL

Underhill spun the combination lock on the Lady May's cage. He woke her gently and took her into his arms. She humped her back luxuriously, stretched her claws, started to purr, thought better of it, and licked him on the wrist instead. He did not have the pin-set on, so their minds were closed to each other, but in the angle of her mustache and in the movement of her ears, he caught some sense of gratification she experienced in finding him as her Partner.

He talked to her in human speech, even though speech meant nothing to a cat when the pin-set was not on.

"It's a damn shame, sending a sweet little thing like you whirling around in the coldness of nothing to hunt for Rats that are bigger and deadlier than all of us put together. You didn't ask for this kind of fight, did you?"

For answer, she licked his hand, purred, tickled his cheek with her long fluffy tail, turned around and faced him, golden eyes shining.

For a moment, they stared at each other, man squatting, cat standing erect on her hind legs, front claws digging into his knee. Human eyes and cat eyes looked across an immensity which no words could meet, but which affection spanned in a single glance.

"Time to get in," he said.

She walked docilely into her spheroid carrier. She climbed in. He saw to it that her miniature pin-set rested firmly and comfortably against the base of her brain. He made sure that her claws were padded so that she could not tear herself in the excitement of battle.

Softly he said to her, "Ready?"

For answer, she preened her back as much as her harness would permit and purred softly within the confines of the frame that held her.

He slapped down the lid and watched the sealant ooze around the seam. For a few hours, she was welded into her projectile until a workman with a short cutting arc would remove her after she had done her duty.

* * * * *

He picked up the entire projectile and slipped it into the ejection tube. He closed the door of the tube, spun the lock, seated himself in his chair, and put his own pin-set on.

Once again he flung the switch.

He sat in a small room, small, small, warm, warm, the bodies of the other three people moving close around him, the tangible lights in the ceiling bright and heavy against his closed eyelids.

As the pin-set warmed, the room fell away. The other people ceased to be people and became small glowing heaps of fire, embers, dark red fire, with the consciousness of life burning like old red coals in a country fireplace.

As the pin-set warmed a little more, he felt Earth just below him, felt the ship slipping away, felt the turning Moon as it swung on the far side of the world, felt the planets and the hot, clear goodness of the Sun which kept the Dragons so far from mankind's native ground.

Finally, he reached complete awareness.

He was telepathically alive to a range of millions of miles. He felt the dust which he had noticed earlier high above the ecliptic. With a thrill of warmth and tenderness, he felt the consciousness of the Lady May pouring over into his own. Her consciousness was as gentle and clear and yet sharp to the taste of his mind as if it were scented oil. It felt relaxing and reassuring. He could sense her welcome of him. It was scarcely a thought, just a raw emotion of greeting.

At last they were one again.

In a tiny remote corner of his mind, as tiny as the smallest toy he had ever seen in his childhood, he was still aware of the room and the ship, and of Father Moontree picking up a telephone and speaking to a Scanner captain in charge of the ship.

His telepathic mind caught the idea long before his ears could frame the words. The actual sound followed the idea the way that thunder on an ocean beach follows the lightning inward from far out over the seas.

"The Fighting Room is ready. Clear to planoform, sir."

THE PLAY

Underhill was always a little exasperated the way that Lady May experienced things before he did.

He was braced for the quick vinegar thrill of planoforming, but he caught her report of it before his own nerves could register what happened.

Earth had fallen so far away that he groped for several milliseconds before he found the Sun in the upper rear right-hand corner of his telepathic mind.

That was a good jump, he thought. This way we'll get there in four or five skips.

A few hundred miles outside the ship, the Lady May thought back at him, "O warm, O generous, O gigantic man! O brave, O friendly, O tender and huge Partner! O wonderful with you, with you so good, good, good, warm, warm, now to fight, now to go, good with you...."

He knew that she was not thinking words, that his mind took the clear amiable babble of her cat intellect and translated it into images which his own thinking could record and understand.

Neither one of them was absorbed in the game of mutual greetings. He reached out far beyond her range of perception to see if there was anything near the ship. It was funny how it was possible to do two things at once. He could scan space with his pin-set mind and yet at the same time catch a vagrant thought of hers, a lovely, affectionate thought about a son who had had a golden face and a chest covered with soft, incredibly downy white fur.

While he was still searching, he caught the warning from her.

We jump again!

And so they had. The ship had moved to a second planoform. The stars were different. The Sun was immeasurably far behind. Even the nearest stars were barely in contact. This was good Dragon country, this open, nasty, hollow kind of space. He reached farther, faster, sensing and looking for danger, ready to fling the Lady May at danger wherever he found it.

Terror blazed up in his mind, so sharp, so clear, that it came through as a physical wrench.

The little girl named West had found something--something immense, long, black, sharp, greedy, horrific. She flung Captain Wow at it.

Underhill tried to keep his own mind clear. "Watch out!" he shouted telepathically at the others, trying to move the Lady May around.

At one corner of the battle, he felt the lustful rage of Captain Wow as the big Persian tomcat detonated lights while he approached the streak of dust which threatened the ship and the people within.

The lights scored near-misses.

The dust flattened itself, changing from the shape of a sting-ray into the shape of a spear.

Not three milliseconds had elapsed.

* * * * *

Father Moontree was talking human words and was saying in a voice that moved like cold molasses out of a heavy jar, "C-A-P-T-A-I-N." Underhill knew that the sentence was going to be "Captain, move fast!"

The battle would be fought and finished before Father Moontree got through talking.

Now, fractions of a millisecond later, the Lady May was directly in line.

Here was where the skill and speed of the Partners came in. She could react faster than he. She could see the threat as an immense Rat coming direct at her.

She could fire the light-bombs with a discrimination which he might miss.

He was connected with her mind, but he could not follow it.

His consciousness absorbed the tearing wound inflicted by the alien enemy. It was like no wound on Earth--raw, crazy pain which started like a burn at his navel. He began to writhe in his chair.

Actually he had not yet had time to move a muscle when the Lady May struck back at their enemy.

Five evenly spaced photonuclear bombs blazed out across a hundred thousand miles.

The pain in his mind and body vanished.

He felt a moment of fierce, terrible, feral elation running through the mind of the Lady May as she finished her kill. It was always disappointing to the cats to find out that their enemies whom they sensed as gigantic space Rats disappeared at the moment of destruction.

Then he felt her hurt, the pain and the fear that swept over both of them as the battle, quicker than the movement of an eyelid, had come and gone. In the same instant, there came the sharp and acid twinge of planoform.

Once more the ship went skip.

He could hear Woodley thinking at him. "You don't have to bother much. This old son of a gun and I will take over for a while."

Twice again the twinge, the skip.

He had no idea where he was until the lights of the Caledonia space board shone below.

With a weariness that lay almost beyond the limits of thought, he threw his mind back into rapport with the pin-set, fixing the Lady May's projectile gently and neatly in its launching tube.

She was half dead with fatigue, but he could feel the beat of her heart, could listen to her panting, and he grasped the grateful edge of a thanks reaching from her mind to his.

THE SCORE

They put him in the hospital at Caledonia.

The doctor was friendly but firm. "You actually got touched by that Dragon. That's as close a shave as I've ever seen. It's all so quick that it'll be a long time before we know what happened scientifically, but I suppose you'd be ready for the insane asylum now if the contact had lasted several tenths of a millisecond longer. What kind of cat did you have out in front of you?"

Underhill felt the words coming out of him slowly. Words were such a lot of trouble compared with the speed and the joy of thinking, fast and sharp and clear, mind to mind! But words were all that could reach ordinary people like this doctor.

His mouth moved heavily as he articulated words, "Don't call our Partners cats. The right thing to call them is Partners. They fight for us in a team. You ought to know we call them Partners, not cats. How is mine?"

"I don't know," said the doctor contritely. "We'll find out for you. Meanwhile, old man, you take it easy. There's nothing but rest that can help you. Can you make yourself sleep, or would you like us to give you some kind of sedative?"

"I can sleep," said Underhill. "I just want to know about the Lady May."

The nurse joined in. She was a little antagonistic. "Don't you want to know about the other people?"

"They're okay," said Underhill. "I knew that before I came in here."

He stretched his arms and sighed and grinned at them. He could see they were relaxing and were beginning to treat him as a person instead of a patient.

"I'm all right," he said. "Just let me know when I can go see my Partner."

A new thought struck him. He looked wildly at the doctor. "They didn't send her off with the ship, did they?"

"I'll find out right away," said the doctor. He gave Underhill a reassuring squeeze of the shoulder and left the room.

The nurse took a napkin off a goblet of chilled fruit juice.

* * * * *

Underhill tried to smile at her. There seemed to be something wrong with the girl. He wished she would go away. First she had started to be friendly and now she was distant again. It's a nuisance being telepathic, he thought. You keep trying to reach even when you are not making contact.

Suddenly she swung around on him.

"You pinlighters! You and your damn cats!"

Just as she stamped out, he burst into her mind. He saw himself a radiant hero, clad in his smooth suede uniform, the pin-set crown shining like ancient royal jewels around his head. He saw his own face, handsome and masculine, shining out of her mind. He saw himself very far away and he saw himself as she hated him.

She hated him in the secrecy of her own mind. She hated him because he was--she thought--proud, and strange, and rich, better and more beautiful than people like her.

He cut off the sight of her mind and, as he buried his face in the pillow, he caught an image of the Lady May.

"She is a cat," he thought. "That's all she is--a cat!"

But that was not how his mind saw her--quick beyond all dreams of speed, sharp, clever, unbelievably graceful, beautiful, wordless and undemanding.

Where would he ever find a woman who could compare with her?

--CORDWAINER SMITH

Contents

THE WORLD BEYOND

by Raymond King Cummings

The old woman was dying. There could be no doubt of it now. Surely she would not last through the night. In the dim quiet bedroom he sat watching her, his young face grim and awed. Pathetic business, this ending of earthly life, this passing on. In the silence, from the living room downstairs the gay laughter of the young people at the birthday party came floating up. His birthday--Lee Anthony, twenty-one years old today. He had thought he would feel very different, becoming--legally--a man. But the only difference now, was that old Anna Green who had been always so good to him, who had taken care of him almost all his life, now was dying.

Terrible business. But old age is queer. Anna knew what was happening. The doctor, who had given Lee the medicines and said he would be back in the morning, hadn't fooled her. And she had only smiled.

Lee tensed as he saw that she was smiling now; and she opened her eyes. His hand went to hers where it lay, so white, blue-veined on the white bedspread.

"I'm here, Anna. Feel better?"

"Oh, yes. I'm all right." Her faint voice, gently tired, mingled with the sounds from the party downstairs. She heard the laughter. "You should be down there, Lee. I'm all right."

"I should have postponed it," he said. "And what you did, preparing for it--"

She interrupted him, raising her thin arm, which must have seemed so heavy that at once she let it fall again. "Lee--I guess I am glad you're here--want to talk to you--and I guess it better be now."

"Tomorrow--you're too tired now--"

"For me," she said with her gentle smile, "there may not be any tomorrow--not here. Your grandfather, Lee--you really don't remember him?"

"I was only four or five."

"Yes. That was when your father and mother died in the aero accident and your grandfather brought you to me."

Very vaguely he could remember it. He had always understood that Anna Green had loved his grandfather, who had died that same year.

"What I want to tell you, Lee--" She seemed summoning all her last remaining strength. "Your grandfather didn't die. He just went away. What you've never known--he was a scientist. But he was a lot more than that. He had--dreams. Dreams of what we mortals might be--what we ought to be--but are not. And so he--went away."

This dying old woman; her mind was wandering?...

"Oh--yes," Lee said. "But you're much too tired now, Anna dear--"

"Please let me tell you. He had--some scientific apparatus. I didn't see it--I don't know where he went. I think he didn't know either, where he was going. But he was a very good man, Lee. I think he had an intuition--an inspiration. Yes, it must have been that. A man--inspired. And so he went. I've never seen or heard from him since. Yet--what he promised me--if he could accomplish it--tonight--almost now, Lee, would be the time--"

* * * * *

Just a desperately sick old woman whose blurred mind was seeing visions. The thin wrinkled face, like crumpled white parchment, was transfigured as though by a vision. Her sunken eyes were bright with it. A wonderment stirred within Lee Anthony. Why was his heart pounding? It seemed suddenly as though he must be sharing this unknown thing of science--and mysticism. As though something within him--his grandfather's blood perhaps--was responding.... He felt suddenly wildly excited.

"Tonight?" he murmured.

"Your grandfather was a very good man, Lee--"

"And you, Anna--all my life I have known how good you are. Not like most women--you're just all gentleness--just kindness--"

"That was maybe--just an inspiration from him." Her face was bright with it. "I've tried to bring you up--the way he told me. And what I must tell you now--about tonight, I mean--because I may not live to see it--"

Her breath gave out so that her faint tired voice trailed away.

"What?" he urged. "What is it, Anna? About tonight--"

What a tumult of weird excitement was within him! Surely this was something momentous. His twenty-first birthday. Different, surely, for Lee Anthony than any similar event had ever been for anyone else.

"He promised me--when you were twenty-one--just then--at this time, if he could manage it--that he would come back--"

"Come back, Anna? Here?"

"Yes. To you and me. Because you would be a man--brought up, the best I could do to make you be--like him--because you would be a man who would know the value of love--and kindness--those things that ought to rule this world--but really do not."

This wild, unreasoning excitement within him...! "You think he will come--tonight, Anna?"

"I really do. I want to live to see him. But now--I don't know--"

He could only sit in silence, gripping her hand. And again the gay voices of his guests downstairs came up like a roar of intrusion. They didn't know that she was more than indisposed. She had made him promise not to tell them.

Her eyes had closed, and now she opened them again. "They're having a good time, aren't they, Lee? That's what I wanted--for you and them both. You see, I've had to be careful--not to isolate you from life--life as it is. Because your grandfather wanted you to be normal--a healthy, happy--regular young man. Not queer--even though I've tried to show you--"

"If he--he's coming tonight, Anna--we shouldn't have guests here."

"When they have had their fun--"

"They have. We're about finished down there. I'll get rid of them--tell them you're not very well--"

She nodded. "Perhaps that's best--now--"

He was hardly aware of how he broke up the party and sent them away. Then in the sudden heavy silence of the little cottage, here in the grove of trees near the edge of the town, he went quietly back upstairs.

* * * * *

Her eyes were closed. Her white face was placid. Her faint breath was barely discernible. Failing fast now. Quietly he sat beside her. There was nothing that he could do. The doctor had said that very probably she could not live through the night. Poor old Anna. His mind rehearsed the life that she had given him. Always she had been so gentle, so wise, ruling him with kindness.

He remembered some of the things she had reiterated so often that his childish mind had come to realize their inevitable truth. The greatest instinctive desire of every living creature is happiness. And the way to get it was not by depriving others of it. It seemed now as though this old woman had had something of goodness inherent to her--as though she were inspired? And tonight she had said, with her gentle smile as she lay dying, that if that were so--it had been an inspiration from his grandfather.

Something of science which his grandfather had devised, and which had enabled him to--go away. What could that mean? Go where? And why had he gone? To seek an ideal? Because he was dissatisfied with life here? Her half incoherent words had seemed to imply that. And now, because Lee was twenty-one--a man--his grandfather was coming back. Because he had thought that Lee would be able to help him?... Help him to do--what?

He stirred in his chair. It was nearly midnight now. The little cottage--this little second floor bedroom where death was hovering--was heavy with brooding silence. It was awesome; almost frightening. He bent closer to the bed. Was she dead? No, there was still a faint fluttering breath, but it seemed now that there would be no strength for her to speak to him again.

Mysterious business, this passing on. Her eyelids were closed, a symbol of drawn blinds of the crumbling old house in which she had lived for so long. It was almost a tenantless house now. And yet she was somewhere down there behind those drawn blinds. Reluctant perhaps to leave, still she lingered, with the fires going out so that it must be cold ... cold and silent where she huddled. Or was she hearing now the great organ of the Beyond with its sweep of harmonies summoning her to come--welcoming her....

A shiver ran through young Lee Anthony as he saw that the pallid bloodless lips of the white wrinkled face had stirred into a smile. Down there somewhere her spirit--awed and a little frightened doubtless--had opened some door to let the sound of the organ in--and to let in the great riot of color which must have been outside.... And then she had not been frightened, but eager....

He realized suddenly that he was staring at an empty shell and that old Anna Green had gone....

* * * * *

A sound abruptly brought Lee out of his awed thoughts. It was outside the house--the crunching of wheels in the gravel of the driveway--the squeal of grinding brakes. A car had stopped. He sat erect in his chair, stiffened, listening, with his heart pounding so that the beat of it seemed to shake his tense body. His grandfather--returning?

An automobile horn honked. Footsteps sounded on the verandah. The front doorbell rang.

There were voices outside as he crossed the living room--a man's voice, and then a girl's laugh. He flung open the door. It was a young man in dinner clothes and a tall blonde girl. Tom Franklin, and a vivid, theatrical-looking girl, whom Lee had never seen before. She was inches taller than her companion. She stood clinging to his arm; her beautiful face, with beaded lashes and heavily rouged lips, was laughing. She was swaying; her companion steadied her, but he was swaying himself.

"Easy, Viv," he warned. "We made it--tol' you we would.... Hello there, Lee ol' man--your birthday--think I'd forget a thing like that, not on your life. So we come t'celebrate--meet Vivian Lamotte--frien' o' mine. Nice kid, Viv--you'll like her."

"Hello," the girl said. She stared up at Lee. He towered above her, and beside him the undersized and stoop-shouldered Franklin was swaying happily. Admiration leaped into the girl's eyes.

"Say," she murmured, "you sure are a swell looker for a fact. He said you were--but my Gawd--"

"And his birthday too," Frank agreed, "so we're gonna celebrate--" His slack-jawed, weak-chinned face radiated happiness and triumph. "Came fas' to get here in time. I tol' Viv I could make it--we never hit a thing--"

"Why, yes--come in," Lee agreed awkwardly. He had only met young Tom Franklin once or twice, a year ago now, and Lee had completely forgotten it. The son of a rich man, with more money than was good for him.... With old Anna lying there upstairs--surely he did not want these happy inebriated guests here now....

He stood with them just inside the threshold. "I--I'm awfully sorry," he began. "My birthday--yes, but you see--old Mrs. Green--my guardian--just all the family I've got--she died, just a few minutes ago--upstairs here--I've been here alone with her--"

It sobered them. They stared blankly. "Say, my Gawd, that's tough," the girl murmured. "Your birthday too. Tommy listen, we gotta get goin'--can't celebrate--"

It seemed that there was just a shadow out on the dark verandah. A tall figure in a dark cloak.

"Why--what the hell," Franklin muttered.

A group of gliding soundless figures were out there in the darkness. And across the living room the window sash went up with a thump. A black shape was there, huddled in a great loose cloak which was over the head so that the thing inside was shapeless.

For an instant Lee and his two companions stood stricken. The shapes seemed babbling with weird unintelligible words. Then from the window came words of English:

"We--want--" Slow words, strangely intoned. Young Tom Franklin broke in on them.

"Say--what the devil--who do you people think you are, comin' in here--" He took a swaying step over the threshold. There was a sudden sharp command from one of the shapes. Lee jumped in front of the girl. On the verandah the gliding figures were engulfing Franklin; he had fallen.

Lee went through the door with a leap, his fist driving at the cowled head of one of the figures--a solid shape that staggered backward from his blow. But the others were on him, dropping down before his rush, gripping his legs and ankles. He went down, fighting. And then something struck his face--something that was like a hand, or a paw with claws that scratched him. His head suddenly was reeling; his senses fading....

* * * * *

How long he fought Lee did not know. He was aware that the girl was screaming--and that he was hurling clutching figures away--figures that came pouncing back. Then the roaring in his head was a vast uproar. The fighting, scrambling dark shapes all seemed dwindling until they were tiny points of white light--like stars in the great abyss of nothingness....

He knew--as though it were a blurred dream--that he was lying inert on the verandah, with Franklin and the girl lying beside him.... The house was being searched.... Then the muttering shapes were standing here. Lee felt himself being picked up. And then he was carried silently out into the darkness. The motion seemed to waft him off so that he knew nothing more.

CHAPTER II

The Flight Into Size and Space

Lee came back to consciousness with the feeling that some great length of time must have elapsed. He was on a couch in a small, weird-looking metal room--metal of a dull, grey-white substance like nothing he had ever seen before. With his head still swimming he got up dizzily on one elbow, trying to remember what had happened to him. That fingernail, or claw, had scratched his face. He had been drugged. It seemed obvious. He could remember his roaring senses as he had tried to fight, with the drug gradually overcoming him....

The room had a small door, and a single round window, like a bullseye pane of thick lens. Outside there was darkness, with points of stars. His head was still humming from the remaining effect of the drug. Or was the humming an outside noise? He was aware as he got to his feet and staggered to the door, that the humming was distantly outside the room. The door was locked; its lever resisted his efforts to turn it.

There he saw the inert figures of the girl, and Tom Franklin. They were lying uninjured on two other small couches against the room's metal wall. The girl stirred a little as he touched her dank forehead. Her dyed blonde hair had fallen disheveled to her shoulders. Franklin lay sprawled, his stiff white shirt bosom dirty and rumpled, his thin sandy hair dangling over his flushed face. His slack mouth was open. He was breathing heavily.

At the lens-window Lee stood gasping, his mind still confused and blurred, trying to encompass what was out there. This was a spaceship! A small globular thing of white metal. He could see a rim of it, like a flat ring some ten feet beneath him. A spaceship, and obviously it had left the Earth! There was a black firmament--dead-black monstrous abyss with white blazing points of stars. And then, down below and to one side there was just an edge of a great globe visible. The Earth, with the sunlight edging its sweeping crescent limb--the Earth, down there with a familiar coastline and a huge spread of ocean like a giant map in monochrome.

Back on the couch Lee sat numbed. There was the sound of scraping metal; a doorslide in the wall opened. A face was there--a man with a blur of opalescent light behind him.

"You are all right now?" a voice said.

"Yes. I guess so. Let me out of here--"

Let him out of here? To do what? To make them head this thing back to Earth.... To Lee Anthony as he sat confused, the very thoughts were a fantasy.... Off the Earth! Out in Space! So often he had read of it, as a future scientific possibility--but with this actuality now his mind seemed hardly to grasp it....

The man's voice said gently, "We cannot trust you. There must be no fighting--"

"I won't fight. What good could it do me?"

"You did fight. That was bad--that was frightening. We must not harm you--"

"Where are we going?" Lee murmured. "Why in the devil are you--"

"We think now it is best to say nothing. We will give you food through here. And over there--behind you--a little doorslide to another room. You and these other two can be comfortable--"

"For how long?" Lee demanded.

"It should not seem many days. Soon we shall go fast. Please watch it at the window--he would want that. You have been taught some science?"

"Yes. I guess so."

To Lee it was a weird, unnatural exchange between captor and captive. The voice, intoning the English words so slowly, so carefully, seemed gentle, concerned with his welfare ... and afraid of him.

Abruptly the doorslide closed again, and then at once it reopened.

"He would want you to understand what you see," the man said. "You will find it very wonderful--we did, coming down here. This was his room--so long ago when he used it. His dials are there--you can watch them and try to understand. Dials to mark our distance and our size. The size-change will start soon."

Size-change? Lee's numbed mind turned over the words and found them almost meaningless.

"From the window there--what you can see will be very wonderful," the man said again. "He would want you to study it. Please do that."

The doorslide closed....

What you can see from the window will be very wonderful. No one, during the days that followed could adequately describe what Lee Anthony and Thomas Franklin and Vivian saw through that lens-window. A vast panorama in monochrome ... a soundless drama of the stars, so immense, so awesome that the human mind could grasp only an infinitesimal fragment of its wonders....

They found the little door which led into another apartment. There were tables and chairs of earth-style, quaintly old-fashioned. Food and drink were shoved through the doorslide; the necessities of life and a fair comfort of living were provided. But their questions, even as the time passed and lengthened into what on Earth might have been a week or more, remained unanswered. There was only that gentle but firm negation:

"We have decided that he would want us to say nothing. We do not know about this girl and this smaller man. We brought them so that they could not remain on Earth to talk of having seen us. We are sorry about that. He probably won't like it."

"He? Who the devil are you talking about?" Franklin demanded. "See here, if I had you fellows back on Earth now I'd slam you into jail. Damned brigands. You can't do this to me! My--my father's one of the most important men in New York--"

But now the doorslide quietly closed.

A week? It could have been that, or more. In a wall recess of the room Lee found a line of tiny dials with moving pointers. Miles--thousands of miles. A million; ten millions; a hundred million. A light-year; tens, thousands. And, for the size-change, a normal diameter, Unit 1--and then up into thousands.

For hours at a time, silent, awed beyond what he had ever conceived the emotion of awe could mean, he sat at the lens-window, staring out and trying to understand.

* * * * *

The globe-ship was some five-hundred thousand miles out from Earth when the size-change of the weird little vehicle began. It came to Lee with a sudden shock to his senses, his head reeling, and a tingling within him as though every fibre of his being were suddenly stimulated into a new activity.

"Well, my Gawd," Vivian gasped. "What're they doin' to us now?"

The three of them had been warned by a voice through the doorslide, so that they sat together on one of the couches, waiting for what would happen.

"This--I wish they wouldn't do it," Franklin muttered. "Damn them--I want to get out of here."

Fear seemed to be Franklin's chief emotion now--fear and a petty sense of personal outrage that all this could be done to him against his will. Often, when Lee and the girl were at the window, Franklin had sat brooding, staring at his feet.

"Easy," Lee said. "It evidently won't hurt us. We're started in size-change. The globe, and everything in it, is getting larger."

Weird. The grey metal walls of the room were glowing now with some strange current which suffused them. The starlight from the window-lens mingled with an opalescent sheen from the glowing walls. It was like an aura, bathing the room--an aura which seemed to penetrate every smallest cell-particle of Lee's body--stimulating it....

Size-change! Vaguely, Lee could fathom how it was accomplished; his mind went back to many scientific articles he had read on the theory of it--only theory, those imaginative scientific pedants had considered it; and now it was a reality upon him! He recalled the learned phrases the writers had used.... The state of matter. In all the Universe, the inherent factors which govern the state of matter yield most readily to a change. An electronic charge--a current perhaps akin to, but certainly not identical with electricity, would change the state of all organic and inorganic substances ... a rapid duplication of the fundamental entities within the electrons--and electrons themselves, so unsubstantial--mere whirlpools of nothingness!

A rapid duplication of the fundamental whirlpools--that would add size. The complete substance--with shape unaltered--would grow larger.

All just theory, but here, now, it was brought to an accomplished fact. Within himself, Lee could feel it. But as yet, he could not see it. The glowing room and everything in it was so weirdly luminous, there was no alteration in shape. These objects, the figure of Vivian beside him, and the pallid frightened Franklin, relative to each other they were no different from before. And the vast panorama of starry Universe beyond the lens-window, the immense distances out there, made any size-change as yet unperceivable.

* * * * *

But the size-change had begun, there was no question of it. With his senses steadying, Lee crossed the room. A weird feeling of lightness was upon him; he swayed as he stood before the little line of dials in the wall-recess. Five hundred thousand miles from Earth. More than twice the distance of the Moon. The globe had gone that far with accelerating velocity so that now the pointers marked a hundred thousand miles an hour--out beyond the Moon, heading for the orbit-line of Mars. Now the size-change pointers were stirring. Unit One, the size this globe had been as it rested on Earth, fifty feet in height, and some thirty feet at its mid-section bulge. Already that unit was two, a globe--which, if it were on Earth, would be a hundred feet high. And Lee himself? He would be a giant more than twelve feet tall now.... He stood staring at the dials for a moment or two. That little pointer of the first of the size-change dials was creeping around. An acceleration! Another moment and it had touched Unit four. A two hundred foot globe. And Lee, if he had been on Earth, would already be a towering human nearly twenty-five feet in height!

Behind him, he heard Franklin suddenly muttering, "If only I could change without everything else changing! Damn them all--what I could do--"

"You're nuts," Vivian said. "I don't see anything growing bigger--everything here--jus' the same." Her laugh was abruptly hysterical. "This room--you two--you look like ghosts. Say, maybe we're all dead an' don't know it."

Queerly her words sent a shiver through Lee. He turned, stared blankly at her. This weird thing! The electronic light streaming from these walls had a stroboscopic quality. The girl's face was greenish, putty-colored, and her teeth shone phosphorescent.

Maybe we're all dead and don't know it.... Lee knew that this thing was a matter of cold, precise, logical science.... Yet who shall say but what mysticism is not mingled with science? A thing, which if we understood it thoroughly, would be as logical, as precise as the mathematics of science itself? Death? Who shall say what, of actuality, Death may be. A leaving of the mortal shell? A departure from earthly substance? A new state of being? Surely some of those elements were here now. And, logically, why could there not be a state of being not all Death, but only with some of its elements?

"I--I don't like this," Franklin suddenly squealed. On the couch he sat hunched, trembling. "Something wrong here--Lee--damn you Lee--don't you feel it?"

Lee tried to smile calmly. "Feel what?"

"We're not--not alone here," Franklin stammered. "Not just you and Vivian and me--something else is here--something you can't see, but you can almost feel. An' I don't like it--"

A presence. Was there indeed something else here, of which now in this new state of being they were vaguely aware? Something--like a fellow voyager--making this weird journey with them? Lee's heart was so wildly beating that it seemed smothering him.

* * * * *

Unit Ten ... Twenty ... a Hundred.... With steady acceleration, the lowest size-change pointer was whirling, and the one above it was moving. The globe was five thousand feet high now. And on Earth Lee would have been a monstrous Titan over six hundred feet tall. A globe, and humans in that tremendous size--the very weight of them--in a moment more of this growth--would disarrange the rotation of the Earth on its axis!...

And then abruptly Lee found himself envisaging the monstrous globe out here in Space. A thing to disarrange the mechanics of all the Celestial Universe! In an hour or two, with this acceleration of growth, the globe would be a huge meteorite--then an asteroid....

He stared at the distance dials. With the growth had come an immense augmentation of velocity. A hundred thousand miles an hour--that had been accelerated a hundred fold now. Ten million miles an hour.... Through the window-lens Lee gazed, mute with awe. The size-change was beginning to show! Far down, and to one side the crescent Earth was dwindling ... Mars was far away in another portion of its orbit--the Moon was behind the Earth. There were just the myriad blazing giant worlds of the stars--infinitely remote, with vast distances of inky void between them. And now there was a visible movement to the stars! A sort of shifting movement....

An hour.... A day.... A week.... Who shall try and describe what Lee Anthony beheld during that weird outward journey?... For a brief time, after they swept past the orbit of Mars, the great planets of Jupiter and Saturn were almost in a line ahead of the plunging, expanding globe. A monstrous thing now--with electronically charged gravity-plates so that it plunged onward by its own repellant force--the repellant force of the great star-field beneath it.

* * * * *

Lee stared at Jupiter, a lead-colored world with its red spot like a monster's single glaring eye. With the speed of light Jupiter was advancing, swinging off to one side with a visible flow of movement, and dropping down into the lower void as the globe went past it. Yet, as it approached, visually it had not grown larger. Instead, there was only a steady dwindling. A dwindling of great Saturn, with its gorgeous, luminous rings came next. These approaching planets, seeming to shrink! Because, with Lee's expanding viewpoint, everything in the vast scene was shrinking! Great distances here, in relation to the giant globe, were dwindling! These millions of miles between Saturn and Jupiter had shrunk into thousands. And then were shrinking to hundreds.

Abruptly, with a startled shock to his senses, Lee's viewpoint changed. Always before he had instinctively conceived himself to be his normal six foot earthly size. The starry Universe was vast beyond his conception. And in a second now, that abruptly was altered. He conceived the vehicle as of actuality it was--a globe as large as the ball of Saturn itself! And simultaneously he envisaged the present reality of Saturn. Out in the inky blackness it hung--not a giant ringed world millions of miles away, but only a little ringed ball no bigger than the spaceship--a ringed ball only eight or ten times as big as Lee himself. It hung there for an instant beside them--only a mile or so away perhaps. And as it went past, with both distance and size-change combining now, it shrank with amazing rapidity! A ball only as big as this room.... Then no larger than Lee it hung, still seemingly no further away than before. And then in a few minutes more, a mile out there in the shrinking distance, it was a tiny luminous point, vanishing beyond his vision.

Uranus, little Neptune--Pluto, almost too far away in its orbit to be seen--all of them presently were dwindled and gone. Lee had a glimpse of the Solar system, a mere bunch of lights. The Sun was a tiny spot of light, holding its little family of tiny planets--a mother hen with her brood. It was gone in a moment, lost like a speck of star-dust among the giant starry worlds.

Another day--that is a day as it would have been on Earth. But here was merely a progressing of human existence--a streaming forward of human consciousness. The Light-year dial pointers were all in movement. By Earth standards of size and velocity, long since had the globe's velocity reached and passed the speed of light. Lee had been taught--his book-learning colored by the Einstein postulates--that there could be no speed greater than the speed of light--by Earth standards--perhaps, yes. The globe--by comparison with its original fifty-foot earth-size--might still be traveling no more than a few hundred thousand miles an hour. But this monster--a thing now as big as the whole Solar System doubtless--was speeding through a light-year in a moment!

Futile figures! The human mind can grasp nothing of the vastness of inter-stellar space. To Lee it was only a shrinking inky void--an emptiness crowded with whirling little worlds all dwindling.... This crowded space! Often little points of star-dust had come whirling at the globe--colliding, bursting into pin-points of fire. Each of them might have been bigger than the Earth.

There was a time when it seemed that beneath the globe all the tiny stars were shrinking into one lens-shaped cluster. The Inter-stellar Universe--all congealed down there into a blob, and everywhere else there was just nothingness.... But then little distant glowing nebulae were visible--luminous, floating rings, alone in the emptiness.... Distant? One of them drifted past, seemingly only a few hundred feet away--a luminous little ring of star-dust. The passage of the monstrous globe seemed to hurl it so that like a blown smoke ring it went into chaos, lost its shape, and vanished.

Then at last all the blobs--each of them, to Earth-size conception, a monstrous Universe--all were dwindled into one blob down to one side of Lee's window. And then they were gone....

* * * * *

Just darkness now. Darkness and soundless emptiness. But as he stared at intervals through another long night of his human consciousness, Lee seemed to feel that the emptiness out there was dwindling--a finite emptiness. He noticed, presently, that the size-change pointers had stopped their movement; the ultimate size of the globe had been reached. The figures of the Light-year dials were meaningless to his comprehension. The velocity was meaningless. And now another little set of dials were in operation. A thousand--something--of distance. There was a meaningless word which named the unit. A thousand Earth-miles, if he had been in his former size? The pointer marked nine hundred in a moment. Was it, perhaps, the distance now from their destination?

Vivian was beside him. "Lee, what's gonna happen to us? Won't this come to an end some time? Lee--you won't let anybody hurt me?"

She was like a child, almost always clinging to him now. And suddenly she said a very strange thing. "Lee, I been thinkin'--back there on Earth I was doin' a lot of things that maybe were pretty rotten--anglin' for his money for instance--an' not carin' much what I had to do to get it." She gestured at the sullen Franklin who was sitting on the couch. "You know--things like that. An' I been thinkin'--you suppose, when we get where we're goin' now, that'll be held against me?"

What a queer thing to say! She was like a child--and so often a child has an insight into that which is hidden from those more mature!

"I--don't know," Lee muttered.

From the couch, Franklin looked up moodily. "Whispering about me again? I know you are--damn you both. You and everybody else here."

"We're not interested in you," Vivian said.

"Oh, you're not? Well you were, back on Earth. I'm not good enough for you now, eh? He's better--because he's big--big and strong--that the idea? Well if I ever had the chance--"

"Don't be silly," Lee said.

* * * * *

The sullen Franklin was working himself into a rage. Lee seemed to understand Franklin better now. A weakling. Inherently, with a complex of inferiority, the vague consciousness of it lashing him into baffled anger.

"You, Anthony," Franklin burst out, "don't think you've been fooling me. You can put it over that fool girl, but not me. I'm onto you."

"Put what over?" Lee said mildly.

"That you don't know anything about this affair or these men who've got us--you don't know who they are, do you?"

"No. Do you?" Lee asked.

Franklin jumped to his feet. "Don't fence with me. By God, if I was bigger I'd smash your head in. They abducted us, because they wanted you. That fellow said as much near the start of this damned trip. They won't talk--afraid I'll find out. And you can't guess what it's all about! The hell you can't."

Lee said nothing. But there was a little truth in what Franklin was saying, of course.... Those things that the dying old Anna Green had told him--surely this weird voyage had some connection.

He turned away; went back to the window. There was a sheen now. A vague outline of something vast, as though the darkness were ending at a great wall that glowed a little.

It seemed, during the next time-interval, as though the globe might have turned over, so that now it was dropping down upon something tangible. Dropping--floating down--with steadily decreasing velocity, descending to a Surface. The sheen of glow had expanded until now it filled all the lower hemisphere of darkness--a great spread of surface visually coming up. Then there were things to see, illumined by a faint half-light to which color was coming; a faint, pastel color that seemed a rose-glow.

"Why--why," Vivian murmured, "say, it's beautiful, ain't it? It looks like fairyland--or Heaven. It does--don't it, Lee?"

"Yes," Lee murmured. "Like--like--"

The wall-slide rasped. The voice of one of their captors said, "We will arrive soon. We can trust you--there must be no fighting?"

"You can trust us," Lee said.

It was dark in the little curving corridor of the globe, where with silent robed figures around them, they stood while the globe gently landed. Then they were pushed forward, out through the exit port.

The new realm. The World Beyond. What was it? To Lee Anthony then came the feeling that there was a precise scientific explanation of it, of course. And yet, beyond all that pedantry of science, he seemed to know that it was something else, perhaps a place that a man might mould by his dreams. A place that would be what a man made of it, from that which was within himself.

Solemn with awe he went with his companions slowly down the incline.

CHAPTER III

Realm of Mystery

"We wish nothing of you," the man said, "save that you accept from us what we have to offer. You are hungry. You will let us bring you food."

It was a simple rustic room to which they had been brought--a room in a house seemingly of plaited straw. Crude furnishings were here--table and chairs of Earth fashion, padded with stuffed mats. Woven matting was on the floor. Through a broad latticed window the faint rose-light outside--like a soft pastel twilight--filtered in, tinting the room with a gentle glow. Thin drapes at the window stirred in a breath of breeze--a warm wind from the hills, scented with the vivid blooms which were everywhere.

It had been a brief walk from the space-globe. Lee had seen what seemed a little village stretching off among the trees. There had been people crowding to see the strangers--men, women and children, in simple crude peasant garb--brief garments that revealed their pink-white bodies. They babbled with strange unintelligible words, crowding forward until the robed men from the globe shoved them away.

It was a pastoral, peaceful scene--a little country-side drowsing in the warm rosy twilight. Out by the river there were fields where men stood at their simple agricultural implements--stood at rest, staring curiously at the commotion in the village.

And still Lee's captors would say nothing, merely drew them forward, into this room. Then all of them left, save one. He had doffed his robe now. He was an old man, with long grey-white hair to the base of his neck. He stood smiling. His voice, with the English words queerly pronounced, was gentle, but with a firm finality of command.

"My name is Arkoh," he said. "I am to see that you are made comfortable. This house is yours. There are several rooms, so that you may do in them as you wish."

"Thank you," Lee said. "But you can certainly understand--I have asked many questions and never had any answers. If you wish to talk to me alone--"

"That will come presently. There is no reason for you to be worried--"

"We're not worried," Franklin burst out. "We're fed up with this highhanded stuff. You'll answer questions now. What I demand to know is why--"

"Take it easy," Lee warned.

Franklin had jumped to his feet. He flung off Lee's hand. "Don't make me laugh. I know you're one of them--everything about you is a fake. You got us into this--"

"So? You would bring strife here from your Earth?" Arkoh's voice cut in, like a knife-blade cleaving through Franklin's bluster. "That is not permissible. Please do not make it necessary that there should be violence here." He stood motionless. But before his gaze Franklin relaxed into an incoherent muttering.

"Thank you," Arkoh said. "I shall send you the food." He turned and left the room.

* * * * *

Vivian collapsed into a chair. She was trembling. "Well--my Gawd--what is all this? Lee--that old man with his gentle voice--he looked like if you crossed him you'd be dead. Not that he'd hurt you--it would be--would be something else--"

"You talk like an ass," Franklin said. "You've gone crazy--and I don't blame you--this damned weird thing. For all that old man's smooth talk, we're just prisoners here. Look outside that window--"

It was a little garden, drowsing in the twilight. A man stood watching the window. And as Lee went to the lattice, he could see others, like guards outside.

The man who brought their simple food was a stalwart fellow in a draped garment of brown plaited fibre. His black hair hung thick about his ears. He laid out the food in silence.

"What's your name?" Franklin demanded.

"I am Groff."

"And you won't talk either, I suppose? Look here, I can make it worth your while to talk."

"Everyone has all he needs here. There is nothing that you need give us."

"Isn't there? You just give me a chance and I'll show you. No one has all he needs--or all he wants."

Groff did not answer. But as he finished placing the food, and left the room, it seemed to Lee that he shot a queer look back at Franklin. A look so utterly incongruous that it was startling. Franklin saw it and chuckled.

"Well, at least there's one person here who's not so damn weird that it gives you the creeps."

"You don't know what you're talking about," Lee said. With sudden impulse he lowered his voice. "Franklin, listen--there are a few things that perhaps I can tell you. Things that I can guess--that Vivian senses--"

"I don't want to hear your explanation. It would be just a lot of damn lies anyway."

"All right. Perhaps it would. We'll soon know, I imagine."

"Let's eat," Vivian said. "I'm hungry, even if I am scared."

To Lee it seemed that the weird mystery here was crowding upon them. As though, here in this dim room, momentous things were waiting to reveal themselves. A strange emotion was upon Lee Anthony. A sort of tense eagerness. Certainly it was not fear. Certainly it seemed impossible that there could be anything here of which he should be afraid. Again his mind went back to old Anna Green and what she had told him of his grandfather. How far away--how long ago that had been.... And yet, was Anna Green far away now? Something of her had seemed always to be with him on that long, weird voyage, from the infinite smallness and pettiness of Earth to this realm out beyond the stars. And more than ever now, somehow Lee seemed aware of her presence here in this quiet room. Occultism? He had always told himself that surely he was no mystic. A practical fellow, who could understand science when it was taught him, but certainly never could give credence to mysticism. The dead are dead, and the living are alive; and between them is a gulf--an abyss of nothingness.

Now he found himself wondering. Were all those people on Earth who claimed to feel the presence of dead loved ones near them? Were those people just straining their fancy--just comforting themselves with what they wished to believe? Or was the scoffer himself the fool? And if that could be so, on Earth, why could not this strange realm be of such a quality that an awareness of those who have passed from life would be the normal thing? Who shall say that the mysteries of life and death are unscientific? Was it not rather that they embraced those gaps of science not yet understood? Mysteries which, if only we could understand them, would be mysteries no longer?

Lee had left the table and again was standing at the latticed window, beyond which the drowsing little garden lay silent, and empty now. The guard who had been out here had moved further away; his figure was a blob near a flowered thicket at the house corner. And suddenly Lee was aware of another figure. There was a little splashing fountain near the garden's center--a rill of water which came down a little embankment and splashed into a pool where the rose light shimmered on the ripples.

The figure was sitting at the edge of the pool--a slim young girl in a brief dress like a drape upon her. She sat, half reclining on the bank by the shimmering water, with her long hair flowing down over her shoulders and a lock of it trailing in the pool. For a moment he thought that she was gazing into the water. Then as the light which tinted her graceful form seemed to intensify, he saw that she was staring at him.

It seemed as though both of them, for that moment, were breathless with a strange emotion awakened in them by the sight of each other. And then slowly the girl rose to her feet. Still gazing at Lee, she came slowly forward with her hair dangling, framing her small oval face. The glow in the night-air tinted her features. It was a face of girlhood, almost mature--a face with wonderment on it now.

He knew that he was smiling; then, a few feet from the window she stopped and said shyly:

"You are Lee Anthony?"

"Yes."

"I am Aura. When you have finished eating, I am to take you to him."

"To him?"

"Yes. The One of Our Guidance. He bade me bring you." Her soft voice was musical; to her, quite obviously, the English was a foreign tongue.

"I'm ready," Lee said. "I'm finished."

One of her slim bare arms went up with a gesture. From the corner of the little house the guard there turned, came inside. Lee turned to the room. The guard entered. "You are to come," he said.

"So we just stay here, prisoners," Franklin muttered. He and Vivian were blankly staring as Lee was led away.

* * * * *

Then in a moment he was alone beside the girl who had come for him. Silently they walked out into the glowing twilight, along a little woodland path with the staring people and the rustic, nestling dwellings blurring in the distance behind them. A little line of wooded hills lay ahead. The sky was like a dark vault--empty. The pastel light on the ground seemed inherent to the trees and the rocks; it streamed out like a faint radiation from everywhere. And then, as Lee gazed up into the abyss of the heavens, suddenly it seemed as though very faintly he could make out a tiny patch of stars. Just one small cluster, high overhead.

"The Universe you came from," Aura said.

"Yes." The crown of her tresses as she walked beside him was at his shoulder. He gazed down at her. "To whom are you taking me? It seems that I could guess--"

"I was told not to talk of that."

"Well, all right. Is it far?"

"No. A little walk--just to that nearest hill."

Again they were silent. "My Earth," he said presently, "do you know much about it?"

"A little. I have been told."

"It seems so far away to me now."

She gazed up at him. She was smiling. "Is it? To me it seems quite close." She gestured. "Just up there. It seemed far to you, I suppose--that was because you were so small, for so long, coming here."

Like a man the size of an ant, trying to walk ten miles. Of course, it would be a monstrous trip. But if that man were steadily to grow larger, as he progressed he would cover the distance very quickly.

"Well," Lee said, "I suppose I can understand that. You were born here, Aura?"

"Yes. Of course."

"Your world here--what is it like?"

She gazed up at him as though surprised. "You have seen it. It is just a simple little place. We have not so many people here in the village, and about that many more--those who live in the hills close around here."

"You mean that's all? Just this village? Just a few thousand people?"

"Oh there are others, of course. Other groups--like ours, I guess--out in the forests--everywhere in all the forests, maybe." Her gesture toward the distant, glowing, wooded horizons was vague. "We have never tried to find out. Why should we? Wherever they are, they have all that they need or want. So have we."

The thing was so utterly simple. He pondered it. "And you--you're very happy here?"

Her wide eyes were childlike. "Why yes. Of course. Why not? Why should not everyone be happy?"

"Well," he said, "there are things--"

"Yes. I have heard of them. Things on your Earth--which the humans create for themselves--but that is very silly. We do not have them here."

Surely he could think of no retort to such childlike faith. Her faith. How horribly criminal it would be to destroy it. A priceless thing--human happiness to be created out of the faith that it was the normal thing. He realized that his heart was pounding, as though now things which had been dormant within him all his life were coming out--clamoring now for recognition.

And then, out of another silence he murmured, "Aura--you're taking me to my grandfather, aren't you? He came here from Earth--and then he sent back there to get me?"

"Yes," she admitted. "So you know it? But I was instructed to--"

"All right. We won't talk of it. And he's told you about me?"

"Yes," she agreed shyly. She caught her breath as she added, "I have been--waiting for you--a long time." Shyly she gazed up at him. The night-breeze had blown her hair partly over her face. Her hand brushed it away so that her gaze met his. "I hoped you would be, well, like you are," she added.

"Oh," he said awkwardly. "Well--thanks."

"And you," she murmured out of another little silence, "you--I hope I haven't disappointed you. I am the way you want--like you wished--"

What a weird thing to say! He smiled. "Not ever having heard of you, Aura, I can't exactly say that I--"

* * * * *

He checked himself. Was she what he had wished? Why yes--surely he had been thinking of her--in his dreams, all his life vaguely picturing something like this for Lee Anthony....

"I guess I have been thinking of you," he agreed. "No, you haven't disappointed me, Aura. You--you are--"

He could find no words to say it. "We are almost there," she said. "He will be very happy to have you come. He is a very good man, Lee. The one, we think, of the most goodness--and wiseness, to guide us all--"

The path had led them up a rocky defile, with gnarled little trees growing between the crags. Ahead, the hillside rose up in a broken, rocky cliff. There was a door, like a small tunnel entrance. A woman in a long white robe was by the door.

"He is here," Aura said. "Young Anthony."

"You go in."

Silently they passed her. The tunnel entrance glowed with the pastel radiance from the rocks. The radiance was a soft blob of color ahead of them.

"You will find that he cannot move now," Aura whispered. "You will sit by his bed. And talk softly."

"You mean--he's ill?"

"Well--what you would call paralysis. He cannot move. Only his lips--his eyes. He will be gone from us soon, so that then he can only be unseen. A Visitor--"

Her whisper trailed off. Lee's heart was pounding, seeming to thump in his throat as Aura led him silently forward. It was a draped, cave-like little room. Breathless, Lee stared at a couch--a thin old figure lying there--a frail man with white hair that framed his wrinkled face. It was a face that was smiling, its sunken, burning eyes glowing with a new intensity. The lips moved; a faint old voice murmured:

"And you--you are Lee?"

"Yes--grandfather--"

He went slowly forward and sat on the bedside.

CHAPTER IV

Mad Giant

To Lee, after a moment, his grandfather seemed not awe-inspiring, but just a frail old man, paralyzed into almost complete immobility, lying here almost pathetically happy to have his grandson at last with him. An old man, with nothing of the mystic about him--an old man who had been--unknown to the savants of his Earth--perhaps the greatest scientist among them. Quietly, with pride welling in him, Lee held the wasted, numbed hand of his grandfather and listened....

Phineas Anthony, the scientist. After many years of research, spending his own private fortune, he had evolved the secret of size-change--solved the intricate problems of anti-gravitational spaceflight; and combining the two, had produced that little vehicle.

A man of science; and perhaps more than that. As old Anna Green had said, perhaps he was a man inspired--a man, following his dreams, his convictions, convinced that somewhere in God's great creation of things that are, there must be an existence freed of those things by which Man himself so often makes human life a tortured hell.

"And Something led me here, Lee," the gentle old voice was saying. "Perhaps not such a coincidence. On this great Inner Surface of gentle light and gentle warmth--with Nature offering nothing against which one must strive--there must be many groups of simple people like these. They have no thought of evil--there is nothing--no one, to teach it to them. If I had not landed here, I think I would have found much the same thing almost anywhere else on the Inner Surface."

"The Inner Surface? I don't understand, grandfather."

A conception--a reality here--that was numbing in its vastness. This was the concave, inner surface, doubtless deep within the atom of some material substance. A little empty Space here, surrounded by solidity.

"And that--" Lee murmured, "then that little space is our Inter-Stellar abyss?"

"Yes. Of course. The stars, as we call them--from here you could call them tiny particles--like electrons whirling. All of them in this little void. With good eyesight, you can sometimes see them there--"

"I did."

And to this viewpoint which Lee had now--so gigantic, compared to Earth--all the Inter-Stellar universe was a void here of what old Anthony considered would be perhaps eight or ten thousand miles. A void, to Lee now, was itself of no greater volume than the Earth had been to him before!

Silently he pondered it. This Inner Surface--not much bigger, to him now, than the surface of the Earth is to its humans.... Suddenly he felt small--infinitely tiny. Out here beyond the stars, he was only within the atom of something larger, a human, partly on his way--emerging--outward--

* * * * *

It gave him a new vague conception. As though now, because he was partly emerged, the all-wise Creator was giving him a new insight. Surely in this simple form of existence humans were totally unaware of what evil could be. Was not this a higher form of life than down there on his tiny Earth?

The conception numbed him with awe....

"You see, Lee, I have been looking forward to having you become a man--to having you here," old Anthony was saying. As he lay, so utterly motionless, only his voice, his face, his eyes, seemed alive. It was an amazingly expressive old face, radiant, transfigured. "I shall not be here long. You see? And when I have--gone on--when I can only come back here as a Visitor--like Anna Green, you have been aware of her, Lee?"

"Yes, grandfather. Yes, I think I have."

"The awareness is more acute, here, than it was back on Earth. A very comforting thing, Lee. I was saying--I want you here. These people, so simple--you might almost think them childlike--they need someone to guide them. The one who did that--just as I came, was dying. Maybe--maybe that is what led me here. So now I need you."

It welled in Lee with an awe, and a feeling suddenly of humbleness--and of his own inadequacy, so that he murmured,

"But grandfather--I would do my best--but surely--"

"I think it will be given you--the ability--and I've been thinking, Lee, if only some time it might be possible to show them on Earth--"

Lee had been aware that he and old Anthony were alone here. When Lee entered, Aura had at once withdrawn. Now, interrupting his grandfather's faint, gentle voice there was a commotion outside the underground apartment. The sound of women's startled cries, and Aura's voice.

Then Aura burst in, breathless, pale, with her hair flying and on her face and in her eyes a terror so incongruous that Lee's heart went cold.

He gasped, "Aura! Aura, what is it?"

"This terrible thing--that man who came with you--that man, Franklin--he talked with Groff. Some evil spell to put upon Groff--it could only have been that--"

Lee seized her. "What do you mean? Talk slower. Groff? The man who served us that meal--"

"Yes, Groff. And two of the men who were to guard there. What that man said to them--did to them--and when old Arkoh found it out he opposed them--" Her voice was drab with stark horror--so new an emotion that it must have confused her, so that now she just stood trembling.

"Child, come here--come here over to me--" Old Anthony's voice summoned her. "Now--talk more slowly--try and think what you want to tell us.... What happened?"

"Oh--I saw old Arkoh--him whom I love so much--who always has been so good to me--to us all--I saw him lying there on the floor--"

* * * * *

Words so unnatural here that they seemed to reverberate through the little cave-room with echoes that jostled and muttered like alien, menacing things which had no right here--and yet, were here.

"You saw him--lying there?" Lee prompted.

"Yes. His throat, with red blood running out of it where they had cut him--and he was dying--he died while I stood there--"

The first murder. A thing so unnatural. Old Anthony stared for an instant mute at the girl who now had covered her face with her hands as she trembled against Lee.

"Killed him?" Lee murmured.

On Anthony's face there was wonderment--disillusion, and then bitterness. "So? This is what comes to us, from Earth?"

Lying so helpless, old Anthony could only murmur that now Lee must do what he could.

"Your own judgement, my son--do what you can to meet this." The sunken, burning eyes of the old man flashed. "If there must be violence here, let it be so. Violence for that which is right."

"Grandfather--yes! That miserable cowardly murderer--"

To meet force, with force. Surely, even in a world of ideals, there is no other way.

With his fists clenched, Lee ran from the cave-room. Frightened women scattered before him at its entrance. Where had Franklin gone? That fellow Groff, and two or three of the guards had gone with him. Cynicism swept Lee; he remembered the look Groff had flung at Franklin. Even here in this realm--because it was peopled by humans--evil passions could brood. Groff indeed must have been planning something, and he had seen in Franklin a ready helper--a man from Earth, whom Groff very well may have thought would be more resourceful, more experienced in the ways of violence than himself.

This realm where everyone had all of happiness that he could want! Human perfection of existence. A savage laugh of irony was within Lee as he thought of it. No one had ever held out the offer of more than perfection to these people. But Franklin evidently had done it--playing upon the evil which must lie within every living thing, no matter how latent it may be. Awakening in those guards the passion of cupidity--desire for something better than they had now.

* * * * *

What had happened to Vivian? Out in the rose-light dimness, a little way down the path, Lee found himself staring off toward the forest where the village lay nestled. Voices of the frightened people came wafting through the night silence.

"Lee--Lee--"

It was Aura behind him, running after him. "Lee--wait--I belong with you. You know that--"

He gripped her. "That girl from Earth--that Vivian--she was with Franklin. What happened to her?"

"She went. He took her--"

"She went--voluntarily?"

"Yes. The people saw her running out with Franklin, and Groff and the other men. Oh, Lee--what--what are you going to do?"

"I don't know." He stood for a moment dazed, confused--panting, his fingers twitching. If only he could get a grip on Franklin's throat. And so Vivian went too! That was a laugh--girl of the streets, pretty worthless, on Earth. But here--she had seemed to sense what this realm could mean.

"Aura, where would Groff be likely to go?"

"Go? Why--why I do remember, Groff often went up into the hills. He never said why?"

"Would they have any weapons?"

"Weapons?" Her eyes widened as though for a second she did not comprehend. "Weapons? You mean--instruments with which to kill people? No--how could there be? But a knife can kill. A knife cut old Arkoh's throat. We have knives--in the houses--and knives that are used for the harvests--"

She had turned to gaze out toward the glowing hills.... "Oh, Lee--look--"

Numbed, with their breath catching in their throats, they stared. Out by the hills a man's figure rose up--monstrous, gigantic figure.

Franklin! He stood beside the little hill, with a hand on its top, his huge bulk dwarfing it! Franklin, a titan, his head and shoulders looming monstrously against the inky blackness of the sky!

CHAPTER V

Combat of Titans

"Aura, you think you know where Groff may have gone--those times he went out into the hills?"

"Yes. I think so. Lee--that giant, I think now I understand what must have happened."

The giant shape of Franklin, a mile or two from them, had stood for a moment and then had receded, vanished momentarily as he moved backward behind the hills. Lee and Aura, stunned, still stood beside the little rocky path. Lee's mind was a turmoil of confusion, with only the knowledge that he must do something now, quickly. There were no weapons here in this peaceful little realm. Four or five of these madmen villains--what need had they of weapons? The monstrous power of size. The thought of it struck at Lee with a chill that seemed turning his blood to ice. The monster that Franklin had become--with a size like that he could scatter death with his naked hands.

* * * * *

"I remember now," Aura was gasping. "There was a time when your grandfather was working on his science. Groff was helping him then. Your grandfather taught Groff much."

"Working at what?"

"It was never said. Then your grandfather gave it up--he had decided it would not be wise here."

* * * * *

Some individual apparatus, with the size-change principle of the space-globe? And Groff had gotten the secret. An abnormality here--Groff with the power of evil latent within him, tempted by this opportunity. What could he have hoped to accomplish? Of what use to him would it be to devastate this little realm? Bitter irony swept Lee. Of what use was vast personal power to anyone? Those madmen of Earth's history, with their lust for conquest--of what use could the conquest be to them? And yet they had plunged on.

He realized that with Groff there could have been a wider field of conquest. Groff had heard much of Earth. With the power of size here, he could master this realm; then seize the space-globe. Go with it to Earth. Why, in a gigantic size there, he and a few villainous companions could master the Earth-world. A mad dream indeed, but Lee knew it was a lustful possibility matched by many in Earth's history.

And then Franklin had come here. Franklin, with his knowledge of Earth which Groff would need. Franklin, with his inherent feeling of inferiority--his groping desire for the strength and power of size. What an opportunity for Franklin!

Lee heard himself saying out of the turmoil of his thoughts: "Then, Aura--out there in the hills they've got some apparatus, of course, which--"

His words were stricken away. From somewhere in the glowing dimness near at hand there was a groan. A gasping, choking groan; and the sound of something falling.

"Lee--over there--" Aura's whispered words were drab with horror.

* * * * *

A figure which had been staggering among the rocks near them, had fallen. They rushed to it. Vivian! She was trying to drag herself forward. Her hair, streaming down in a sodden mass, was matted with blood. Her pallid face was blood-smeared. Her neck and throat were a welter of crimson horror. Beside her on the ground lay a strange-looking apparatus of grids and wires--a metal belt--a skeleton helmet.... She was gripping it with a blood-smeared hand, dragging it with her.

"Vivian--Vivian--"

"Oh--you, Lee? Thank Gawd I got to you--"

Her elbows gave way; her head and shoulders sank to the rock. Faintly gasping, with blood-foam at her livid lips, she lay motionless. But her glazing eyes gazed up at Lee, and she was trying to smile.

"I went with them--that damned Franklin--he thought I was as bad as him--" Her faint words were barely audible as he bent down to her. "Just want to tell you, Lee--you're perfectly swell--I guess I fell for you, didn't I? That's over now--just wanted you to know it anyway. There's one of the damned mechanisms they've got--"

"Where are they, Vivian?"

"A cave, not very far from here--down that little ravine--just ahead--they're in there--four or five of them, getting ready to--" Blood was rattling in her throat, choking her. She tried, horribly, to cough. And then she gasped:

"I stole this mechanism. He--Franklin--he caught me--slashed me. He thought I was dead, I guess--but--when he had gone, I got this mechanism--trying to get to you--"

Her choking, rattling breath again gave out. For a moment she lay with a paroxysm of death twitching her. And then, very faintly she gasped:

"Sort of nice--I was able to do one good thing--anyhow. I'm glad of that--"

The paroxysm ended in a moment. Her white lips were still trying to smile as the light went out of her eyes and she was gone. Trembling, Lee stood up, with the mute, white-faced Aura clinging to him. It was fairly obvious how the weird mechanism should be adjusted--anklets, the skeleton helmet of electrodes, the belt around his waist, with its grids, tiny dials and curved battery box. In a moment he stood with the wires strung from his head, to wrist, ankles and waist. There seemed but one little control switch that would slide over a metal arc of intensity contacts.

"Oh, Lee--what--what are you going to do--?" Aura stood white with terror.

"She said--four or five of them in a cave near here--perhaps they haven't yet gotten large--"

* * * * *

Down in a little ravine Lee found himself running forward in the luminous darkness. He called back, "Aura--you stay where you are--you hide, until it's over--"

Then, in the turmoil of his mind, there was no thought of the girl. There was only the vision of old Anthony lying back there so helpless--his burning eyes bitter with this thing which had so horribly come to his little realm. To meet force with force was the only answer.

It was not Lee's plan to increase his size for a moment now. By doing that, almost at once he would be discovered. And perhaps there were still four or five of the murderers, still not giants, in a cave nearby.

The dim rocky ravine, heavy with shadows, led downward. He came to a tunnel opening, advancing more cautiously now. And then, as he turned an angle ahead of him, down a little subterranean declivity a luminous cave was visible. Groff's hideout. At one of its entrances here Lee stood for an instant gasping. The five men were here--Groff and four of his villainous companions.

The five bodies lay strewn--horribly mangled. And the wreckage of their size-change mechanisms was strewn among them.

So obvious, what had happened! Franklin had been the first to get large. And at once he had turned on them. Franklin, the weakling who dared not have any rivalry! And now Franklin was outside, out in the hills, a raging, murderous monster. For a moment, in the grisly shambles of the little cave Lee stood transfixed. Then his hand was fumbling at his belt. He shoved the small switch-lever.

There was a shock--a humming--a reeling of his senses. It was akin to what he had felt on the space-globe, but stronger, more intense now. For an instant he staggered, confused. The wires strung on him were glowing; he could feel their heat. Weird luminous opalescence streamed from them--it bathed him--strange electrolite radiance that permeated every minute fibre of his being.

With his head steadying, Lee suddenly was aware of movement all about him. The dim outlines of the cave-room were shrinking with a creeping, crawling movement. Cave-walls and roof all shrinking, dwindling, drawing down upon him. Under his feet the rocky ground seemed hitching forward.

This little cave! In a moment while he stood shocked into immobility, the cave was a tiny cell. Down by his feet the gruesome mangled corpses were the size of children. The cave-roof bumped his head. He must get out of here! The realization stabbed him. Why, in another moment or two these dark walls would close upon him! Then with instant changing viewpoint he saw the true actuality. He was a growing giant, crouching here underground--a giant who would be crushed, mangled by his own monstrous growth.

* * * * *

Lee turned, staggered into the little tunnel, shoved his way out. The walls pressed him; they seemed in a moment to close after him as he gained the outer glowing darkness.... There was only a narrow slit in the dwindling cliff to mark the tunnel entrance. Lee had the wits to crouch in a fairly open space as he stared at the dwindling trees, the little hills, all shrinking. Franklin must be around here somewhere. Franklin doubtless would see him in a moment.

And then as Lee rose up, Franklin saw him. Lee put a hand on one of the little hills at his waist, vaulted it so that he faced Franklin with what seemed no more than a hundred feet between them. For that second Franklin was transfixed. Amazement swept his face. His muttering was audible:

"Why--why--what's this--"

An adversary had come to challenge his power. As Lee bounded forward, on Franklin's face while he stood transfixed, there was wonderment--disappointment--sudden instinctive fear--and then wild rage. He stooped; seized a boulder, hurled it at the oncoming Lee. It missed; and then Lee was on him, seizing him.

Franklin's body had not been enlarging, but as he saw Lee coming, his hand had flung his switch. They gripped each other now, swaying, locked together, staggering. Franklin still was more than head and shoulders above Lee. His huge arms, with amazing power in them, bent Lee backward. He stumbled, went down with Franklin on him. "Got you! Damn you," he said.

* * * * *

His giant hands gripped Lee's throat, but Lee was aware that his own body was enlarging faster than Franklin's, upon which the size-current had only now started to act. If Lee could only resist--just a little bit longer! His groping hands beside him on the ground seized a rock. Monstrous strangling fingers were at this throat--his breath was gone, his head roaring. Then he was aware that he had seized a rock and struck it up into Franklin's face. For a second the hands at Lee's throat relaxed. He gulped in air, desperately broke free and staggered to his feet.

But Franklin was up as quickly. The tiny forest trees crackled under Lee's tread as again he hurled himself viciously on his antagonist....

* * * * *

At the head of the distant ravine, the numbed Aura crouched alone, staring out at the hills with mute horror--staring at the two monstrous giants slugging it out. Franklin was the larger. She saw Lee rise up, and with a hand on one of the hills, vault over it. Giants that loomed against the sky as they fronted each other and then crashed together, went down.

Lee was underneath! Dear God--

Two monstrous bodies--Lee was lying with a ridge of crags under his shoulders.... Franklin's voice was a blurred roar of triumph in the distance. Then she saw Lee's groping hand come up with a monstrous fifty foot boulder. He crashed it home.

They were up again. Their giant staggering lunges had carried them five miles from her. They were almost the size of fighting titans. The blurred distant shapes of them were silhouettes against the glow of the sky. The forest out there was crackling under their tread ... a blurred roar of breaking, mangled trees....

It was just a few seconds while Aura stared, but each second was an eternity of horror. Then one of the monstrous figures was toppling. A great boulder had crashed on Franklin's head; he had broken loose, staggering while Lee jumped backward and crouched.

For just a second the towering shape of the stricken Franklin loomed up in the sky. And then it fell crashing forward. A swift-flowing stream was there, and the body fell across it--blocking the water which dammed up, then turned aside and went roaring off through the mangled forest.

* * * * *

Lee, again in his former size, sat at old Anthony's bedside, with Aura behind him. The news of the combat out there against the sky had come to Anthony--the excitement of it, too much for his faltering old heart....

"But you will be all right, grandfather. The thing is over now."

"Yes. All right--of course, Lee. Just a visitor here--and you will take my place--"

He lay now--as old Anna Green had been that night--just on the brink. "Lee, listen to me--those mechanisms--the space-globe--Lee, I realize now there is no possibility that we could help Earth--and surely it could only bring us evil here. What we have found here--don't you see, back on Earth each man must create it for himself. Within himself: He could do that, if he chose. And so you--you must disconnect us--forever--"

"Yes, grandfather--"

"And I--guess that is all--"

For some time he seemed to hover on the brink, while Lee and Aura, sitting hand in hand, silently watched him. And then he was gone.

* * * * *

The last of the mechanisms irrevocably was smashed. The little line of vacuums and tubes of the space-globe's mechanisms went up into a burst of opalescent light under Lee's grim smashing blows.

Then silently he went outside and joined Aura. Behind them, down the declivity toward the village, the people were gathering. He was silent, his heart pounding with emotion, as he faced them from a little eminence--faced them and heard their shouts, and saw their arms go up to welcome him.

Slowly he and Aura walked down the slope toward his waiting people. And with her by his side, her hand in his, Lee Anthony knew then that he had found fulfillment--the attainment of that which is within every man's heart--man's heritage--those things for which he must never cease to strive.

THE END

Contents

VICTORY

By Lester Del Rey

It seemed Earth was a rich, and undefended planet in a warring, hating galaxy. Things can be deceptive though; children playing can be quite rough--but that ain't war, friend!

I

From above came the sound of men singing. Captain Duke O'Neill stopped clipping his heavy black beard to listen. It had been a long time since he'd heard such a sound--longer than the time since he'd last had a bath or seen a woman. It had never been the singing type of war. Yet now even the high tenor of old Teroini, who lay on a pad with neither legs nor arms, was mixed into the chorus. It could mean only one thing!

As if to confirm his thoughts, Burke Thompson hobbled past the cabin, stopping just long enough to shout. "Duke, we're home! They've sighted Meloa!"

"Thanks," Duke called after him, but the man was hobbling out of sight, eager to carry the good news to others.

Fourteen years, Duke thought as he dragged out his hoarded bottle of water and began shaving. Five since he'd seen Ronda on his last leave. Now the battered old wreck that was left of the flagship was less than an hour from home base, and the two other survivors of the original fleet of eight hundred were limping along behind. Three out of eight hundred--but they'd won! Meloa had her victory.

And far away, Earth could rest in unearned safety for a while.

Duke grimaced bitterly. It was no time to think of Earth now. He shucked off his patched and filthy clothes and reached for the dress grays he had laid out in advance; at least they were still in good condition, almost unused. He dressed slowly, savoring the luxury of clean clothes. The buttons gave him trouble; his left hand looked and behaved almost like a real one, but in the three years since he got it, there had been no chance to handle buttons.

Then he mastered the trick and stepped back to study the final results. He didn't look bad. Maybe a little gaunt and in need of a good haircut. But his face hadn't aged as much as he had thought. The worst part was the pasty white where his beard had covered his face, but a few days under Meloa's sun would fix that. Maybe he could spend a month with Ronda at a beach. He still had most of his share of his salary--nearly a quarter million Meloan credits; even if the rumors of inflation were true, that should be enough.

He stared at his few possessions, then shrugged and left them. He headed up the officers' lift toward the control room, where he could see Meloa swim into view and later see the homeport of Kordule as they landed.

The pilot and navigator were replacements, sent out to bring the old ship home, and their faces showed none of the jubilation of the crew. They nodded at him as he entered, staring toward the screens without expression. Aside from the blueness of their skins and the complete absence of hair, they looked almost human, and Duke had long since stopped thinking of them as anything else.

"How long?" he asked.

The pilot shrugged. "Half an hour, captain. We're too low on fuel to wait for clearance, even if control is working. Don't worry. There'll be plenty of time to catch the next ship to Earth."

"Earth?" Duke glowered at him, suspecting a joke, but there was no humor on the blue face. "I'm not going back!" Then he frowned. "What's an Earth ship doing on Meloa?"

The navigator exchanged a surprised look with the pilot, and nodded as if some signal had passed between them. His voice was as devoid of expression as his face. "Earth resumed communication with us the day the truce was signed," he answered. He paused, studying Duke. "They're giving free passage back to Earth to all terran veterans, captain."

Nice of them, Duke thought. They were willing to let the men who'd survived come back, just as they hadn't forbidden anyone to go. Very nice! They could keep their world--and all the other coward planets like them! When the humanoid world of Meloa had been attacked by the insectile monsters from Throm, Earth could have ended the invasion in a year, as those with eyes to see had urged her. But she hadn't chosen to do so. Instead, she had stepped back on her high retreat of neutrality, and let the Throm aliens do as they liked. It wasn't the first time she'd acted like that, either.

With more than half of the inhabited planets occupied by various monsters, it seemed obvious that the humanoid planets had to make a common stand. If Meloa fell, it would be an alien stepping stone that could lead back eventually to Earth itself. And once the monsters realized that Earth was unwilling to fight, her vast resources would no longer scare them--she'd be only a rich plum, ripe for the plucking.

When Duke had been one of the first to volunteer for Meloa, he had never realized his home world could refuse to join the battle. He'd believed in Earth and humanity then. He'd waited through all the grim days when it seemed Throm must win--when the absence of replacements proved the communiques from Meloa to be nothing but hopeful lies. But there had been no help. Earth's neutrality remained unshaken.

And now, after fourteen years in battle hell, helping to fight off a three-planet system of monsters that might have swarmed against all the humanoid races, Earth was willing to forgive him and take him back to the shame of his birthright!

* * * * *

"I'm staying," he said flatly. "Unless you Meloans want to kick me out now?"

The pilot swung around, dropping a quick hand on his shoulder. "Captain," he said, "that isn't something to joke about. We won't forget that there would be no Meloa today without men like you. But we can't ask you to stay. Things have changed--insanely. The news we sent to the fleet was pure propaganda!"

"We guessed that," Duke told him. "We knew the Throm ships. And when the dispatches reported all those raids without any getting through, we stopped reading them. How many did penetrate, anyhow?"

"Thirty-one full raids," the navigator said woodenly. "Thirty-one in the last four months!"

"Thirty-one! What happened to the home fleet?"

"We broke it up and sent it out for your replacements," the pilot answered dully. "It was the only chance we had to win."

Duke swallowed the idea slowly. He couldn't picture a planet giving up its last protection for a desperate effort to end the war on purely offensive drive. Three billion people watching the home fleet take off, knowing the skies were open for all the hell that a savage enemy could send! On Earth, the World Senate hadn't permitted the building of one battleship, for fear of reprisal.

He swung to face the ports, avoiding the expression on the faces of the two Meloans. He'd felt something of the same on his own face when he'd first inspected Throm. But it couldn't be that bad on Meloa; she'd won her hard-earned victory!

They were entering the atmosphere now, staggering down on misfiring jets. The whole planet seemed to be covered with a gray-yellow haze that spoke of countless tons of blast dust in the air. From below, Duke heard the men beginning to move toward the big entrance lock, unable to wait for the landing. But they were no longer his responsibility. He'd given up his command before embarking.

The ship came down, threatening to tilt every second, and the pilot was sweating and swearing. The haze began to clear as they neared the ground, but the ports were too high for Duke to see anything but the underside of the thick clouds. He stood up and headed for the lift, bracing himself as the ship pitched.

Suddenly there was a sickening jar and the blast cut off. The ship groaned and seemed to twist, then was still. It was the worst landing Duke had known, but they were obviously down. A second later he heard the port screech open and the thump of the landing ramp.

The singing of the men had picked up into a rough marching beat. Now abruptly it wavered. For a moment, a few voices continued, and then died away, like a record running down. There was a mutter of voices, followed by shouts that must have been the relief officers, taking over. Duke was nearly to the port before he heard the slow, doubtful sound of steps moving down the ramp. By the time he reached it, the last of the men was just leaving. He stopped, staring at the great port city of Kordule.

Most of the port was gone. Where the hangars and repair docks had been, a crater bored into the earth, still smoking faintly. A lone girder projected above it, to mark the former great control building, and a Meloan skeleton was transfixed on it near the top. It shattered to pieces as he looked and began dropping, probably from the delayed tremor of their landing.

Even the section their ship stood on was part of the crater, he saw, with an Earth bulldozer working on it. There was room for no more than ten ships now. Two of the berths were occupied by fat Earth ships, sleek and well kept. Three others held the pitted, warped hulks of Meloan battleships. There were no native freighters, and no sign of tending equipment or hangars.

The pilot had come up behind him, following his gaze. Now the man nodded. "That's it, captain. Most cities are worse. Kordule escaped the blasts until our rocket cannon failed. Got any script on you?" At Duke's nod, he pointed. "Better exchange it at the booth, before the rate gets worse. Take Earth dollars. Our silver's no good."

He held out a hand, and Duke shook it. "Good luck, captain," he said, and swung back into the ship.

* * * * *

Mercifully, most of Kordule was blanketed by the dust fog. There was the beginning of a series of monstrous craters where men had begun rebuilding underground, the ruined landing field, and a section of what had been the great business district. Now it was only a field of rubble, with bits of windowless walls leading up to a crazy tangle of twisted girders. Only memory could locate where the major streets had been. Over everything lay the green wash of incandite, and the wind carried the smell of a charnel house. There was no sign of the apartment where he and Ronda had lived.

He started down the ramp at last, seeing for the first time the motley crew that had come out to meet the heroes of the battle of Throm. They had spotted him already, however, and some were deserting the men at the sight of his officer's uniform. Their cries mingled into an insane, whining babble in his ears.

"... Just a scrap for an old man, general ... three children at home starving ... fought under Jones, captain ... cigarette?"

It was a sea of clutching hands, ragged bodies with scrawny arms and bloated stomachs, trembling and writhing in its eagerness to get to him first. Then as one of the temporary officers swung back with a couple of field attendants, it broke apart to let him pass, its gaze riveted on him as he stumbled between the lines.

He spotted a billboard one man was wearing, and his eyes focused sharply on it. "Honest Feroiya," it announced. "Credit exchange. Best rates in all Kordule." Below that, chalked into a black square, was the important part: "2,345 credits the dollar."

Duke shook his head but the sign did not change. A quarter million credits for a hundred dollars. And he'd thought--

"Help a poor old widow." A trembling hand plucked at his sleeve, and he swung to face a woman in worse rags than the others, her eyes dull and unfocused, her lips mouthing the words only by habit. "Help the widow of General Dayole!"

He gasped as he recognized her. Five years before, he'd danced with her at a party given by Dayole--danced and agreed that the war was ruining them and that it couldn't get worse.

He reached into his pocket, before remembering the worthlessness of his bills. But there was half a pack of the wretched cigarettes issued the men. He tossed them to her and fled, while the other beggars scrambled toward her.

He walked woodenly across the leprous field, skirting away from the Earth ships, toward a collection of tents and tin huts that had swallowed the other veterans. Then he stopped and cursed to himself as a motorcycle sprang into life near the Earth freighters and came toward him. Naturally, they'd spotted his hair and skin color.

The well-fed, smooth-faced young man swung the machine beside him. "Captain O'Neill?" he asked, but his voice indicated that he was already certain. "Hop in, sir. Director Flannery has been looking forward to meeting you!"

Duke went steadily on, not varying his steps. The machine paced him uncertainly. "Director Flannery of Earth Foreign Office, Captain O'Neill. He requests your presence," he shouted over the purr of his machine. He started to swing ahead of the marching man.

Duke kept his eyes on his goal. When his steady steps almost brought him against the cycle, it roared out of his way. He could hear it behind him as he walked, but it faded.

There was only the sight and smell of Kordule ahead of him.

II

Senators were already filing through the Presidium as Edmonds of South Africa came out of his office with Daugherty of the Foreign Office. The youngest senator stopped beside the great bronze doors, studying the situation. Then he sighed in relief. "It's all right," he told Daugherty. "Premier Lesseur's presiding."

He hadn't been sure the premier's words were a full promise before. And while he hadn't been too worried, it was good to see that the doubtful vice-premier wouldn't be presiding.

"It better be all right," the diplomat said. "Otherwise, it's my neck. Cathay's counting on Earth to help against the Kloomirians, and if Director Flannery ever finds I committed us--"

Edmonds studied the seats that were filling, and nodded with more confidence as he saw that most of the senators on whom he counted were there. "I've got enough votes, as I told you. And with Lesseur presiding, the opposition won't get far with parliamentary tricks against me. This time, Earth's going to act."

Daugherty grunted, obviously still worried, and headed up the steps to the reserved Visitors' Gallery, while Edmonds moved to his seat in the assembly room. Today he didn't even mind the fact that it was back in the section reserved for the newest members--the unknowns and unimportants, from the way the press treated them. He would be neither unknown nor unimportant, once his bill was passed, and his brief experience would only add to the miracle he was working.

Looking back on his efforts, he found the results something of a miracle to himself. It had taken two years of vote-swapping, of careful propaganda, and of compromise with his principles. That business of voting for the combined Throm-Meloa Aid Bill had been a bitter thing; but old Harding was scared sick of antagonizing the aliens by seeming partiality, and Edmonds' switch was the step needed to start the softening up.

At that, he'd been lucky. In spite of what he'd learned of the manipulation of sociological relationships, in spite of the long preparation in advertising dynamics and affective psychology, he couldn't have made it if Cathay hadn't been a human colony!

Now, though, Lesseur was calling the chamber to order. The senators quieted quickly, and there was almost complete silence as the old man picked up the paper before him.

"The Senate will consider Resolution 1843 today," Lesseur said quietly. "A Resolution that Earth shall grant assistance to the Colony of Cathay in the event of any aggressive alien act, proposed by Sir Alfred Edmonds. Since the required time for deliberation has elapsed, the chair will admit discussion on this resolution. Senator Edmonds!"

Edmonds was on his feet, and every face turned to him. The spotlight came down on him, blinding him to the others. He picked up the microphone, polishing the words in his mind. The vote might already be decided, but the papers would still print what he said now! And those words could mean his chance to work his way up through the Committee of Foreign Affairs and perhaps on to becoming Earth's youngest premier.

It might even mean more. Once Earth shook off her lethargy and moved to her rightful position of power and strength among the humanoid worlds, anything could happen. There was the Outer Federation being formed among the frontier worlds and the nucleus of close relations with hundreds of planets. Some day there might be the position of premier of a true Interstellar Congress!

* * * * *

Edmonds began quietly, listening to his voice roll smoothly from the speakers, giving the long history of Earth and her rise to a position as the richest and most respected of planets. He retold the story of how she had been the first to discover the interstellar drive, and how it had inevitably spread. He touched on the envy of the alien worlds, and the friendship of the humanoid planets that had enabled Earth to found her dozen distant colonies. He couldn't wisely discuss her cowardice and timidity in avoiding her responsibilities to help her friends; but there was another approach.

"In the forefront of every battle against alien aggression," he declaimed proudly, "have been men from Earth. Millions of our young men have fought gloriously and died gladly to protect the human--and humanoid--civilizations from whatever forms of life have menaced them. Djamboula led the forces of Hera against Clovis, just as Captain O'Neill so recently directed the final battle that saved Meloa from the hordes of Throm. In our own ranks, we have a man who spent eight long and perilous years in such a gallant struggle to save a world for humanoid decency. Senator Harding--"

From the darkened sea of faces, a voice suddenly sounded. "Will the senator yield?" It was the deep baritone of Harding.

Edmonds frowned in irritation, but nodded. A few words of confirmation on his point from Harding couldn't hurt. "I yield to the senator from Dixie," he answered.

The spotlight shifted as Harding got slowly to his feet, making a white halo of his hair. He did not look at Edmonds, but turned to face Lesseur.

"Mr. Chairman," he said, "I move that Resolution 1843 be tabled!"

"Second!" The light shifted to another man, but Edmonds had no time to see who it was as he stood staring open-mouthed at Harding.

He shouted for the chair's attention, but Lesseur brought the gavel down sharply once, and his voice rang over the speakers. "It has been moved and seconded that Resolution 1843 be tabled. The senators will now vote."

Edmonds stood frozen as the voting began. Then he dropped back hastily to press the button that would turn the square bearing his number a negative red. He saw his light flash on, while other squares were lighting. When the voting was finished, there were three such red squares in a nearly solid panel of green.

"The resolution is tabled," Lesseur announced needlessly.

Harding stood up and began moving towards the rear where Edmonds sat. The junior senator was too stunned for thought. Dimly he heard something about regrets and explanations, but the words had no meaning. He felt Harding help him to his feet and begin to guide him toward the door, where someone had already brought a shocked, white-faced Daugherty.

It was then he thought of Cathay, and what his ambition and Earth's ultimate deceit and cowardice would mean to the millions there.

III

A week of the dust-filled air of Meloa had left its mark on Captain Duke O'Neill. It had spread filth over his uniform, added another year to his face, and made waking each morning a dry-throated torture. Now he stopped at the entrance to the ship where he had been reassigned a berth for the night shift. An attendant handed him a small bottle, three biscuits, and a magazine. He tasted the chemically purified water sickly, stuffed the three ersatz biscuits into his pocket, and moved down the ramp, staring at the magazine.

It was from Earth, of course, since no printing was being done yet on Meloa. It must have come in on one of the three big Earth freighters he'd heard land during the night. Tucked into it was another of the brief notes he'd been receiving: "Director Flannery will be pleased to call on Captain O'Neill at the captain's convenience."

He shredded the note as he went across the field; he started to do the same with the news magazine, until the headlines caught his attention.

Most of the news meant nothing to him. But he skimmed the article on the eleventh planet to join the Outer Federation; the writer was obviously biased against the organization, but Duke nodded approvingly. At least someone was doing something. He saw that Cathay was in for trouble. Earth was living up to her old form! Then he shoved the magazine into his pocket and trudged on toward the veteran's reassignment headquarters.

Machinery was being moved from the Earth freighters, and Duke swore again. Five billion Earthmen would read of their "generosity" to Meloa, and any guilt they felt for their desertion would vanish in a smug satisfaction at their charity. Smugness was easy in a world without dust or carrion smell or craters that had been factories.

There were only a few Meloans in the crude tent that served as their headquarters. Duke went back toward the cubbyhole where a thin, haggard man sat on a broken block behind a makeshift desk.

The hairless blue head shook slowly while the man's eyes dropped hungrily to the paper in Duke's pocket and away again guiltily. "No work, Captain O'Neill. Unless you can operate some of those Earth machines we're getting?"

Duke grimaced, passing the magazine over to hands that trembled as they took it. His education was in ultra-literary creative writing, his experience in war. And here, where there was the whole task of rebuilding a planet to be done, the ruin of tools and power made what could be done too little for even the few who were left. There was no grain to reap or wood to cut after the killing gas from Throm had ruined vegetation; there were no workable mines where all had been blasted closed. Transportation was gone. And the economy had passed beyond hand tools, leaving too few of those. Even whole men were idle, and his artificial hand could never replace a real one for carrying rubble.

"Director Flannery has been asking for you again," the man told him.

Duke ignored it. "What about my wife?"

The Meloan frowned, reaching for a soiled scrap of paper. "We may have something. One of her former friends thinks she was near this address. We'll send someone out to investigate, if you wish, captain; but it's still pretty uncertain."

"I'll go myself," Duke said harshly. He picked up the paper, recognizing the location as one that had been in the outskirts.

The man behind the desk shook his head doubtfully. Then he shrugged, and reached behind him for a small automatic. "Better take this--and watch your step! There are two bullets left."

Duke nodded his thanks and turned away, dropping the gun into his pocket. Behind him he heard a long sigh and the rustle of a magazine being opened quickly.

* * * * *

It was a long walk. At first, he traced his way through streets that had been partially blasted clear. After the first mile, however, he was forced to hunt around or over the litter and wreckage, picking the way from high spot to high spot. There were people about, rooting through the debris, or patrolling in groups. He drew the automatic and carried it in his hand, in plain sight. Some stared at him and some ignored him, but none came too close.

Once he heard shouting and a group ran across his path, chasing a small rodent. He heard a wild tumult begin, minutes later. When he passed the spot where they had stopped, a fight was going on, apparently over the kill.

At noon he stopped to drink sparingly of his water and eat one of the incredibly bad biscuits. What food there was available or which could be received from the Earth freighters was being mixed into them, but it wasn't enough. The workers got a little more, and occasionally someone found a few cans under the rubble. The penalty for not turning such food in was revocation of all food allotment, but there was a small black market where unidentified cans could be bought for five Earth dollars, and some found its way there. The same black market sold the few remaining cigarettes at twice that amount each.

It was beginning to thunder to the north as he stood up and went wearily on, and the haze was thickening. He tried to hurry, uncertain of how dark it would get. If he got caught now, he'd never be able to return before night. He stumbled on a broken street sign, decoding what was left of it, and considered. Then he sighed in relief. As he remembered it, he was almost there.

The buildings had been lower here, and the rubble was thinner. There seemed to be more people about, judging by the traces of smoke that drifted out of holes or through glassless windows. He saw none outside, however.

He was considering trying one of the places from which smoke was coming when he saw the little boy five hundred feet ahead. He started forward, but the kid popped into what must have been a cellar once. Duke stopped, calling quietly.

This time it was a girl of about sixteen who appeared. She sidled closer, her eyes fixed on his hair. Her voice piped out suddenly, scared and desperate. "You lonesome, Earthman?" Under the fright, it was a grotesque attempt at coquetry. She edged nearer, staring at him. "I won't roll you, honest!"

"All I want is information," he told her thickly. "I'm looking for a woman named Ronda--Ronda O'Neill. She was my wife."

The girl considered, shaking her head. Her eyes grew wider as he pulled out a green Earth bill, but she didn't move. Then, as he added the two remaining biscuits, she nodded quickly, motioning him forward. "Mom might know," she said.

She ran ahead, and soon an older woman shuffled up the broken steps. In her arms was a baby, dead or in a coma, and she rocked it slowly, moaning softly as she listened to his questions. She grunted finally, and reached out for the reward. Shuffling ahead of him, she went up the rubble-littered street and around a corner, to point. "Go in," she said. "Ronda'll be back."

Duke shoved the crude door back and stepped into what was left of a foyer in a cheap apartment house. The back had been blasted away, but the falling building had sealed over one corner, covering it from most of the weather. Light came from the shattered window, showing a scrap of blanket laid out on the floor near a few possessions. At first, nothing identified the resident in any way, and he wondered if it were a trap. Then he bent over a broken bracelet, and his breath caught sharply. The catch still worked, and a faded miniature of him was inside the little holder. Ronda's!

Duke dropped onto the blanket, trying to imagine what Ronda would be like, and to picture the reunion. But the present circumstances wouldn't fit into anything he could imagine. He could only remember the bravely smiling girl who had seen him off five years before.

He heard a babble of voices outside, but he didn't look out. The walk had exhausted him. Hard as the bed was, it was better than standing up. Anyhow, if Ronda came back, he was pretty sure she would be warned of his presence.

He slept fitfully, awakened by the smells and sounds from outside. Once he thought someone looked in, but he couldn't be sure. He turned over, almost decided to investigate, and dozed off again.

It was the hoarse sound of breathing and a soft shuffle that wakened him that time. His senses jarred out of slumber with a feeling of wrongness that reacted in instant caution. He let his eyes slit open, relieved to find there was still light.

Between him and the door, a figure was creeping up on hands and knees. The rags of clothes indicated it was a woman and the knife in one hand spelled murder!

Duke snapped himself upright to a sitting position, his hand darting for the gun in his pocket. A low shriek came from the woman, and she lunged forward, the knife rising. There was no time for the gun. He caught her wrist, twisting savagely. She scratched and writhed, but the knife spun from her grasp. With a moan, she collapsed across his knees.

He turned her face up, staring at it unbelievingly. "Ronda!"

Bloated and stained, lined with fear, it still bore a faint resemblance to the girl he had known. Now a fleeting look of cunning crossed her face briefly, to be replaced with an attempt at dawning recognition. "Duke!" She gasped it, then made a sound that might have been meant for joy. She stumbled to her knees, reaching out to him. But her eyes swiveled briefly toward the knife. "Duke, it's you!"

He pushed her back and reached for the knife. He was sure she'd known who it was--had probably been the one who awakened him by looking in through the broken window. "Why'd you try to kill me, Ronda? You saw who it was. If you needed money, you know I'd give you anything I had. Why?"

"Not for money." She twisted from him and slumped limply against a broken wall. Tears came into her eyes. This time the catch in her voice was real. "I know ... I know, Duke. And I wanted to see you, to talk to you, too." She shook her head slowly. "What can I do with money? I wanted to wake you up like old times. But Mrs. Kalaufa--she led you here--she said--"

He waited, but she didn't finish. She traced a pattern on the dust of the floor, before looking up again. "You've never been really hungry! Not that hungry! You wouldn't understand."

"Even with the dole, you can't starve that much in the time since Kordule was bombed," he protested. He gagged as he thought of the meaning he'd guessed from her words, expecting her to deny it.

* * * * *

She shrugged. "In ten years, you can do anything. Oh, sure, you came back on leave and we lived high. Everything was fine here, wasn't it? Sure it was, for you. They briefed me on where I should take you, so there'd be good food ready. They kept a few places going for the men who came back on leave. We couldn't ruin your morale!"

She laughed weakly, and let the sound die away slowly. "How do you think we sent out the food and supplies for the fleet the last three years, after the blockade on our supplies from friendly worlds? Why do you think there was no more leave for you? Because they didn't think you brave soldiers could stand just seeing how the rest of us lived! And you think you had it tough! Watch the sky for the enemy while your stomach hopes for the sound that might be a rat. Hide three cans of food you'll be shot for hoarding--because there is nothing else important in the world. And then have a man steal them from you when the raids come! What does a soldier know of war?"

The sickness inside him grew into a knot, but he still couldn't fully believe what she was saying. "But cannibalism--"

"No." She shook her head with a faint trace of his own disgust. "No, Duke. Mrs. Kalaufa told me ... you're not really the same race--Not as close as you are to an Earth animal, and you don't call that cannibalism. Nobody on Meloa has ever been a cannibal--yet! How much money do you have, Duke?"

He took it out and handed it to her. She counted it mechanically and handed it back. "Not enough. You can't take me away when you leave here."

"I'm not leaving," he told her. He dropped the money back on the blanket beside her.

She stared at him for a moment and then pulled herself up to her feet, moving toward the door. "Good-by, Duke. And get off Meloa. You can't help us any more. And I don't want you here when I get desperate enough to remember you might take me back. I like you too much for that, even now."

He took a step toward her, and she ducked.

"Get out!" She screamed it at him. "Do you think I can stand looking at you without drooling any longer? Do you want me to call Mrs. Kalaufa for help?"

Through the open door, he saw Mrs. Kalaufa across the street, still cradling the child. As the door slammed shut behind him, the woman screamed, either as a summons or from fear that he'd seek revenge on her. He saw other heads appear, with frantic eyes that stared sullenly at the gun he carried. He stumbled down the street, where rain was beginning to fall, conscious that it would be night before he got back to the port. He no longer cared.

There was no place for him here, he now saw. He was still an Earthman, and Earthmen were always treated as a race apart somehow. He didn't belong. Nor could he go back to a life on Earth. But there were still the recruiting stations there; so long as war existed, there had to be such stations. He headed for the fat ships of Earth that squatted complacently on the wrecked port.

IV

Prince Queeth of Sugfarth had left the royal belt behind, and only a plain band encircled his round little body as he trotted along, his four legs making almost no sound. His double pair of thin arms and the bird-like head on his long neck bobbled excitedly in time to his steps. Once he stopped to glance across the black stone buildings of the city as they shone in the dull red of the sun, toward the hill where his father's palace was lighted brightly for the benefit of his Earth guests. Queeth touched his ears together ceremoniously and then trotted on, until he came to the back door of his group's gymnasium. He whistled the code word and the door opened automatically.

The whole group was assembled, though it was past sleep week for most of them. Their ears clicked together, but they waited silently as he curled himself up in the official box. Then Krhal, the merchant viscount, whistled questioningly. "This will have to be important, Queeth."

The prince bobbed his ears emphatically. "It is. My father's guests have all the news, and I learned everything. It won't be as long as we thought." He paused, before delivering the big news. "The bipeds of Kloomiria are going to attack Cathay. There'll be official war there within two weeks!"

He saw them exchanging hasty signals, but again it was Krhal who voiced their question. "And you think that is important, Queeth? What does it offer us? Cathay is a human colony. Earth will have to declare war with her. And with Earth's wealth, it will be over before we could arrive."

"Earth has already passed a resolution that neutrality will apply to colonies as well as to other planets!"

This time the whistles were sharper. Krhal had difficulty believing it at first. "So Earth really is afraid to fight? That must mean those rumors that she has no fleet are true. Our ancestors thought so, and even planned to attack her, before the humanoids defeated us. The ancestor king believed that even a single ship fully armed might conquer her."

"It could be," Queeth admitted. "But do you agree that this is the news for which we've waited so long?"

There was a quick flutter of cars. "It's our duty," Krhal agreed. "In a war between Cathay and Kloomiria, we can't remain neutral if we're ever to serve our friends. Well, the ship is ready!"

That came as a surprise to Queeth. He knew the plans were well along, but not that they were completed. As merchant viscount, and second-degree adult, Krhal was entitled to a tenth of his father's interests. He'd chosen the biggest freighter and the balance in fluid assets, to the pleasure of his father--who believed he was planning an honorable career of exploring.

"The conversion completed?" Queeth asked. "But the planet bombs--!"

"Earth supplied them on the last shipment. I explained on the order that I was going to search uninhabited planets for minerals."

Queeth counted the group again, and was satisfied. There were enough. With a ship of that size, fully staffed and armed, they would be a welcome addition to any fleet. They might be enough to tip the balance for victory, in fact. And while Cathay and Kloomiria lay a long way on the other side of Earth's system, the drives were fast enough to cover it in two weeks.

"Does your father know?" Krhal asked.

Queeth smirked. "Would you tell him? He still believes along with the Earth ambassador that the warrior strain was ruined among our people when we lost the war with the humanoids."

"Maybe it was," Krhal said doubtfully. "In four generations, it could evolve again. And there are the books and traditions from which we trained. If even a timid race such as those of Earth can produce warriors like O'Neill--a mere poet--why can't the Sugfarth do better? Particularly when Earth rebuilt factories for us to start our shipbuilding anew."

"Then we join the war," the prince decided.

There was a series of assent signals from the group.

"Tonight," he suggested, and again there was only assent.

Krhal stood up, setting the course for the others. When the last had risen, Queeth uncurled himself and rose from the box. "We'll have to pass near Earth," he suggested as they filed out toward the hangars where Krhal kept his ship. "Maybe we should show our intentions there!"

There was a sudden whistle of surprise. Then the assent was mounting wildly. Queeth trotted ahead toward the warship, making his attack plans over again as he realized he was a born leader who could command such enthusiasm. He had been doubtful before, in spite of his study of elementary statistical treatment of relationships.

The lights in the palace showed that the Earth guests were still celebrating as the great, heavily-laden warship blasted up and headed toward Earth.

V

Duke O'Neill found a corner of the lounge where no Earthman was near and dropped down with the magazine and papers, trying to catch up on the currents of the universe as they affected the six hundred connected worlds. Most of the articles related to Earth alone, and he skipped them. He found one on the set-up of the Outer Federation finally. The humanoid planets there were in a pocket of alien worlds, and union had been almost automatic. It was still loose, but it seemed to have sound enough a basis.

If Earth had been willing to come out of its shell and risk some of its fat trading profits, there could have been an even stronger union that would have driven war-like thoughts out of the minds of all the aliens.

Instead, she seemed to be equally interested in building up her potential enemies and ruining her friends. Duke had watched a showing of new films on the work being done on Throm the night before, and he was still sick from it. Throm had lost the war, but by a military defeat, not by thirty-one unprotected raids on all her surface. She still had landing fields equipped for Earth ships, and the big freighters were dropping down regularly, spewing out foods, equipment and even heavy machinery for her rebuilding. Throm was already on the road back. Meloa had to wait until she could pull herself up enough to build fields.

Duke turned his eyes to the port. The ship had stopped at Clovis on the way back to Earth. From where he sat, he could see almost Earth-like skyscrapers stretching up in a great city. The landing field was huge, and there were rows on rows of factories building more of the freighters that stubbed the field.

It seemed impossible, when he remembered that only forty years had passed since Djamboula's suicide raid had finally defeated the fungoid creatures of the planet and since the survivors' vows to repay all Earthmen for their defeat. They were a prolific race, of course--but without help from Earth, the factories would be shacks and the rockets and high-drive ships would be only memories.

He wondered how many were cursing their ancestors for making the mistake of attacking a neighboring humanoid planet instead of Earth, only two days away on high drive. By now, they knew that Earth was defenseless. And yet, they seemed content to go on with their vows forgotten. Duke couldn't believe it. Down underground, beyond Earth inspection, they could have vast stockpiles of weapons, ready to install in their ships within days.

How could Earth risk it, unless she had her own stock of hidden ships and weapons? Yet if she did, he was sure that it would have been impossible not to use them in defense of the colony of Cathay.

He stared out, watching the crewmen mixing with the repulsive alien natives, laughing as they worked side by side. There must be some factor he didn't understand, but he'd never found it--nor did he know anyone who had guessed it.

He stirred, uncomfortable with his own thoughts. But it wasn't fear for Earth that bothered him. It was simply that sooner or later some alien race would risk whatever unknown power the others feared. If the aliens won, the vast potential power of Earth would then be turned against all the humanoid races of the universe. Humanity could be driven from the galaxy.

He turned the pages, idly glancing at the headlines. It was hard to realize that the paper wasn't right off the presses of Earth; it must have been brought out to Clovis on the latest ship. He checked the date, and frowned in surprise. According to the rough calendar he'd kept, it was the current date. Somewhere he must have lost track of two days. How much else had he lost sight of during the long years of war?

A diagram caught his attention almost at once as he turned to another magazine. It was of a behemoth ship, bigger than any he had ever seen, and built like the dream of a battleship, though it was listed as a freighter. He scanned it, mentally converting it. With a few like that, Meloa could have won during the first year.

Then he swore as he saw it was part of an article on the progress of some alien world known as Sugfarth--by the article, a world of former warriors, once dedicated to the complete elimination of humanoids!

* * * * *

He saw Flannery coming along the deck at that moment, and he picked up the magazine, heading for his cabin. He'd ignored previous summons on the thin excuse of not feeling well. He had no desire to talk with Earthmen. It was bad enough to take their charity back to Earth and to have to stay on the planet until he could sign on with the Outer Federation. His memories were ugly enough, without having them refreshed.

But Flannery caught him as he was opening the door to his cabin. The director was huge, with heavy, strong features and a body that looked too robust for the white hair and the age that showed around his eyes. His voice was tired, however, showing his years more plainly than his looks.

"Captain O'Neill," he said quickly. "Stop jousting with windmills. It's time you grew up. Besides, I've got a job for you."

"Does my charity passage demand an interview, director?" Duke asked.

The other showed no offense, unfortunately. He smiled wryly. "If I choose, it does. I'm in command of this ship, as well as head of the Foreign Office. May I come in?"

"I can't keep you out," Duke admitted. He dropped onto the couch, sprawling out, while the other found the single chair.

Flannery picked up the magazine and glanced through it. "So you're interested in the Outer Federation?" he asked. "Don't be. It doesn't have a chance. In a week or so, you'll see it shot. And I don't mean we'll wreck it. They've picked their own doom, against all the advice we could give them. Care to have a drink sent down while we talk?"

Duke shook his head. "I'd rather cut it short."

"Hotheads," Flannery told the walls thoughtfully, "make the best men obtainable, once they're tamed. Nothing beats an idealist who can face facts. And the intelligent ones usually grow up. Captain, I've studied your strategy against Throm on that last drive after Dayole was killed. Brilliant! I need a good man, and I can pay for one. If you give me a chance, I can also show you why you should take it. Know anything about how Earth got started on its present course?"

"Dumb luck and cowardice, as far as I can see," Duke answered.

When Earth discovered the first inefficient version of the high drive, she had found herself in a deserted section of the universe, with the nearest inhabited star system months away. The secret of the drive couldn't be kept, of course, but the races who used it to build war fleets found it easier to fight with each other than with distant Earth. Later, when faster drives were developed, Earth was protected by the buffer worlds she had rebuilt.

Flannery grinned. "Luck--and experience. We learned something from our early nuclear-technological wars. We learned more from the interstellar wars of others. We decided that any planet ruined by such war wouldn't fight again--the women and children who lived through that hell would see to it--unless new hatreds grew up during the struggle back. So we practically pauperized ourselves at first to see that they recovered too quickly for hate and fear. We also began digging into the science of how to manipulate relationships--Earth's greatest discovery--to set up a system that would work. It paid off for us in the long run."

"So what's all that got to do with me?" Duke asked. He'd heard of the great science of Earth and her ability to manipulate all kinds of relationships before, spoken of in hush-hush terms when he was still in college. But he'd quit believing in fairy tales even before then. Now he was even sicker of Earth's self-justification.

Flannery frowned, and then shrugged. "It's no secret I need a good man on Throm, and you're the logical candidate, if I can pound some facts into your head. I've found that sending an Earthman they know as a competent enemy works wonders. Not at first--there's hostility for a while--but in the long run it gives them a new slant on us."

"Then you'd better get an Earthman," Duke snapped. "You're talking to a citizen of Meloa! By choice!"

"I hadn't finished my explanation," Flannery reminded.

Duke snorted. "I was brought up on explanations. I heard men spouting about taming the aliens when I first learned to talk--as if they were wild animals. I read articles on how the Clovisem and those things from Sugfarth needed kindness. It's the same guff I heard about how to handle lions. But the men doing the talking weren't in the ring; and I noticed the ringmaster carried a whip and gun. He knew the beasts. I know the aliens of Throm."

"From fighting them? From hating them? Or from being more afraid of them than you think Earth is, captain? I've talked to more aliens than you've ever seen."

"And the Roman diplomats laughed at the soldiers who told them the Goths were getting ready to sack Rome."

Flannery stared at him in sudden amusement. "We aren't in an Empire period, O'Neill. But you might look up what the Romans did to conquered people during the Republic, when Rome was still growing. Captain, I'm not underrating the aliens!"

"Tame aliens! Or ones faking tameness. You've seen them smiling, maybe. I saw the other side."

The old man sighed heavily and reached for his shirt. He began unbuttoning it and pulling it over his head. "You've got a nice prosthetic hand," he said. "Now take a look at some real handiwork!"

There was a strap affair around his shoulders, with a set of complicated electronic controls slipped into the muscle fibers. From them, both arms hung loose, unattached at the shoulder blades. Further down, another affair of webbing went around his waist.

"Only one leg is false," he explained, "but the decorations are real. They came from a highly skilled torturer. I've had my experience with aliens. Clovisem, if you're curious. I was the second in command on Djamboula's volunteer raid, forty years ago."

Duke dropped his eyes from the scars. For a second, he groped for words of apology. Then the cold, frozen section of his brain swallowed the emotions. "I've seen a woman with a prosthetic soul," he said bitterly. "Only she didn't turn yellow because of what the aliens did!"

Red spots shot onto Flannery's cheeks and one of the artificial arms jerked back as savagely as a real one. He hesitated, then reached for his shirt. "O.K., squawman!"

The word had no meaning for Duke, though he knew it was an insult. But he couldn't respond to it. He fumbled through his memories, trying to place it. Something about Indians--

Flannery began buttoning his pants over the shirt. "I'm out of bounds, captain," he said more quietly. "I hope you don't know the prejudices behind that crack. But you win. If you ever want the rest of the explanation, look me up."

He closed the door behind him softly and went striding evenly up the passage.

Duke frowned after him. The talk had gotten under his skin. If there were things he didn't know--

Then he swore at himself. There was plenty he didn't know. But the carefully developed indoctrination propaganda of the top Earth psychologists wasn't the answer he wanted.

He'd have to make his stay on Earth shorter than he'd planned. If they could get to a man who had served under Djamboula and convince him that Clovisem were nice house pets, it was little wonder they could wrap the rest of Earth around their psychological fingers.

Too bad their psychology wasn't adjusted to aliens!

VI

Barth Nevesh was nearly seven feet tall, and his cat-shaped ears stuck up another four inches above his head. Even among the people of Kel he was a big man, but to the representatives of the other humanoid worlds of the Federation, he seemed a giant. The thick furs he wore against the heavy chill of the room added to his apparent size, and the horns growing from his shoulders lifted his robes until he seemed to have no neck.

Now he stood up, driving his heavy fist down against the big wooden table. "The question is, do we have the answer or not?" he roared. "You say we do. Logic says we do. Then let's act on it!"

The elfin figure of Lemillulot straightened up at the other end of the table. "Not so fast, commander. Nobody questions the power of your fleet. Nobody doubts that we have the only possible answer to the aliens that Earth is helping to take over our universe--strength through unity. But is it as good as it can be?"

"How better?" Barth roared again. "Every world in this alien pocket has been building its strength since the Earthmen's ships first reached here and showed us space travel was possible. We've seen the stinking aliens get the same ships. But now we've got something they can't resist--a Federation, in spite of all Earth could do to stop us. If all our fleets strike at once, no alien world can resist--and we can stop merely holding them back. Wipe them out, one by one, I say! The only good alien is a dead alien!"

There was a lot of talk--more than Barth usually heard or contributed in a month. Lemillulot was the focus of most of it. The little man would never be satisfied. He wanted all the humanoid worlds organized, and by now it was plain that Earth's influence would be too strong outside of their own section.

Their accomplishments were already enough. United as they were, the Federation was clearly invincible. Their fleets were at full size and the crews were thoroughly trained. No other time would be better.

There had already been a stir of ship-building on the alien worlds, since the first word of the Federation had somehow leaked out. The Federation position was as good as it would ever be--and with eleven fleets working together, nothing better was needed.

"Knock them down with the long shells, haze them to base with interceptors, and then rip their worlds with planet bombs," Barth repeated his plans. "We can do it in six hours for a planet--we can start at the strongest, Neflis, and work down through the weakest, to make up for our losses. And if the Earth forces start moving in to rebuild them--well, I've been thinking the Federation could use a little more wealth and power!"

"Humanoids don't attack humanoids," Lemillulot protested.

The snarling, dog face of Sra from Chumkt opened in a grin, and his sly voice held a hint of a chuckle. "Or so Earth keeps preaching. But Earthmen aren't humanoids. They're humans!"

He laughed softly at his own wit. There were rumbles of uncertainty, but Barth saw that the seed had taken root. If they kept working together, he and Sra could force it to ripen soon enough.

"That can wait," Barth decided. "The question is, do we attack Neflis, and when? I say now!"

* * * * *

It took an hour more for the decision. But there would be only one answer, and the final vote was unanimous. The fleets would take off from their home worlds and rendezvous near the barren sun; from there, they would proceed in a group, under the control of Barth, toward the alien world of Neflis.

The commander checked his chronometer as the delegates went to send their coded reports to their home worlds. He had the longest distance to lead his fleet, and there was no time for delay.

Outside, the harsh snow crackled under his feet, and a layer of storm clouds cut off the wan heat of Kel's sun. He drew in a deep breath, watching the swirl of white as he exhaled. It was a good world--a world to build men. It was the world from which a leader should come.

The fleet would be all his within a day. And for a time, it would be busy at the work of wiping out the nearby aliens. After that--well, there were other aliens further out toward the last frontiers of exploration. With care, the fleet could be kept busy for years.

Barth was remembering his histories, and the armies that had been swept together. In a few years, fighting men began to think of themselves as a people apart, and loyalty to their birthplace gave way to loyalty to their leader. Five years should be enough. Then there could be more than a Federation; there could be the empire among the worlds that had been his lifelong dream.

But first, there was Earth. He snorted to himself as he reached the ships of his fleet. Missionaries! Spreading their soft fear through the universe. In five years, his fleet should be ready for ten times the power of any single planet--including Earth.

Sra would be the only problem in his way. But that could be met later. For the moment, the man from Chumkt was useful.

Barth strode up the ramp of his flagship, shouting out to his men as he went. There was no need of signals. They had been primed and waiting for days, ready to follow him up.

He dropped to the control seat, staring at the little lights that would tell him of their progress. "Up ship!" he shouted, and from the metal halls and caverns of the ship other voices echoed his cry.

The Wind Dragon leaped upwards sharply. Behind, as the red lights showed, four hundred others charged into the sky and the open space beyond. Barth sat at the great screen, watching as they drew on steadily toward the rendezvous, mulling over his plans.

They were three hours out from Kel when he turned the control over to his lieutenant and went below, where his table was laden with the smoking cheer of good green meat and ale. With a sigh of contentment, he threw back his outer robe and prepared to forget everything until he had dined.

He was humming hoarsely to himself as he cut a piece of the meat and stuck it on his left shoulder horn, within reach of his teeth. Maybe a little of the baked fish would blend well--

The emergency drum blasted through the ship as he lifted the knife. Swearing and tearing at the flesh near his mouth, he leaped up and forward toward the control room. He heard voices shouting, something about a fleet. Then he was at the screens where he could see for himself.

Five million miles ahead, another fleet was assembled, where none should be from any of the Federation worlds! His eyes swept sideways across the screen, estimating the number. It was impossible. There weren't a quarter of that number in the fleet of any world, humanoid or alien!

Barth flipped on the microresolver, twisting the wheel that sent it racing across the path of the fleet ahead. His eyes confirmed what his mind had already recognized.

The aliens had their own federation. There were ships of every type there, grouped in units. Thirteen alien worlds were combined against the Outer Federation.

For a breath he hesitated, ready to turn back and defend Kel while there was time. But it would never work. One fleet would never be enough to defend the planet against the combined aliens.

"Cluster!" he barked into the communicator. "Out rams and up speed. Prepare for breakthrough!"

If they could hit the aliens at full drive and cut through the weaker center, they could still rendezvous with the other fleets. The combined strength might be enough. And the gods help Kel if the aliens refused to follow him!

Earth, he thought; Earth again, coddling and protecting aliens, forming them into a conspiracy against the humanoid worlds. If Kel or any part of the Federation survived, that debt would be paid!

VII

Earth lay fat and smug under the sun, seemingly unchanged since Duke had left it. For generations the populace had complained that they were draining themselves dry to rebuild other worlds, but they had grown rich on the investment. It was the only planet where men worked shorter and shorter hours to give them more leisure in which to continue a frantic effort to escape boredom. It was also the only world where the mention of aliens made men think of their order books instead of their weapons.

Duke walked steadily away from the grotesquely elaborate landing field. He had less than thirty cents in his pocket, but his breakfast aboard had left him satisfied for the moment. He turned onto a wider street, heading the long distance across the city toward the most probable location of the recruiting stations.

The Outer Federation station would be off the main section, since the official line was disapproving of such a union. But he was sure there would be one. The system of recruiting was a tradition too hard to break. Earth used it as an escape valve for her troublemakers. And since such volunteers made some of the best of all fighters, they had already decided the outcome of more than one war. By carefully juggling the attention given the stations, Earth could influence the battles without seeming to do so.

The air was thick with the smell of late summer, and there was pleasure in that, until Duke remembered the odor of Meloa, and its cause. Later the cloying perfume of women mixed with the normal industrial odors of the city, until his nose was overdriven to the point of cutoff. He saw things in the shop windows that he had forgotten, but he had no desire for them. And over everything came the incessant yammer of voices saying nothing, radios blaring, television babbling, and vending machines shouting.

He gave up at last and invested half his small fund in a subway. It was equally noisy, but it took less time. Beside him, a fungoid creature from Clovis was busy practicing silently on its speaking machine, but nobody else seeemed to notice.

Duke's head was spinning when he reached the surface again. He stopped to let it clear, wondering if he'd ever found this world home. It wouldn't matter soon, though; once he was signed up at the recruiting station, there would be no time to think.

He saw the sign, only a few blocks from where the recruiting posters for Meloa had been so long ago. It was faded, but he could read the lettering, and he headed for it. As he had expected, it was on a dirty back street, where the buildings were a confusion of shipping concerns and cheaper apartment houses.

He knew something was wrong when he was a block away. There was no pitch being delivered by a barking machine, and no idle group watching the recruiting efforts on the street. In fact, nobody was in front of the vacant store that had been used, and the big posters were ripped down.

He reached the entrance and stopped. The door was half open, but it carried a notice that the place had been closed by order of the World Foreign Office. Through the dirty glass, Duke could see a young man of about twenty sitting slumped behind a battered desk.

He stepped in and the boy looked up apathetically. "You're too late, captain. Neutrality went on hours ago when the first word came through. Caught me just ready to ship out--after two lousy months recruiting here, I have to be the one stranded."

"You're lucky," Duke told him mechanically, not sure whether he meant it or not. Oddly, the idea of a kid like this mixed up in an interplanetary war bothered him. He turned to go, then hesitated. "Got a newspaper or a directory around that I could borrow?"

The boy fished a paper out of a wastebasket. "It's all yours, captain. The whole place is yours. Slam the door when you go out. I'm going over to the Cathay office."

"I'll go along," Duke offered. The address of that place was all he'd wanted from the paper. He'd have preferred the Federation to joining up with Earth colonists, but beggars never made good choosers.

The kid shook his head. He dragged open a drawer, found a slip of paper, and handed it over. It was a notice that the legal maximum age for recruiting had been reduced to thirty! "You'd never make it, captain," he said.

Duke looked at the paper in his hands and at the dim reflection of his face in a window. "No," he agreed. "I didn't make it."

He followed the boy to the door, staring out at the street, thick with its noises and smells. He dropped to the doorsill and looked briefly up at the sky where two ships were cutting out to space. Flannery had known the regulation and hadn't told him. Yet it was his own fault; the age limit was lower now, but there had always been a limit. He had simply forgotten that he'd grown older.

He found it hard to realize he'd been no older than the kid when he'd signed up for the war with Throm.

* * * * *

For a while he sat looking at the street, trying to realize what had happened to him. It took time to face the facts. He listened with half his attention as a small group of teen-age boys came from one of the buildings and began exchanging angry insults with another group apparently waiting for them on the corner. From their attitudes, some of them were carrying weapons and were half-eager, half-afraid to use them. It was hard to remember back to the time when such things had seemed important to him. He considered putting a stop to the argument, before it got out of hand, since no police were near; but adults had no business in kid fights. He watched them retreat slowly back to an alley, still shouting to work up their courage. Maybe he should be glad that there was even this much fire left under the smug placidity of Earth.

Finally, he picked up the newspaper from where he'd dropped it and began turning back to the want ads. His needs were few, and there should be dishwashing jobs, at least, somewhere in the city. He still had to eat and find some place to sleep.

A headline glared up at him, catching his attention. He started to skim the story, and then read it thoroughly. Things weren't going at all as he'd expected in the Outer Worlds, if the account were true; and usually, such battle reports weren't altered much.

The aliens had developed a union of their own--if anything, a stronger one than the humanoids had. Apparently they'd chased the Federation ships into some kind of a trap. Losses on both sides were huge. And raids had begun on all the alien and humanoid planets.

He scowled as he came to the latest developments. One section of the Federation fleet under Sra of Chumkt had pulled out, accusing the faction headed by Barth Nevesh of leading the aliens to the humanoid rendezvous. Kel's leader had gone after the deserters, fought it out with them in the middle of the larger battle, killed Sra, and declared himself the head of the whole Federation. It was madness that should have led to complete annihilation; only the fumbling, uncoördinated leadership of the aliens had saved the humanoid fleets. And now the Federation was coming apart at the seams, with Barth Nevesh frantically scurrying around to catch up the pieces.

Duke read it through again, but with no added information. It was a shock to know that the aliens had combined against the humanoid Federation. Still, looking back on that, he could begin to see that they would have to, once they knew of the Federation. But the rest of the account--

Flannery's words came back to him. The director had been right. His prediction was already coming true, after only three days--unless he had either had prior knowledge or juggled things to make it come true! Duke considered it, but he could see no way Flannery could either learn or act in advance of the arrival of the ship on Earth. The Federation was farther from Meloa than from this planet. He'd been forced to depend on the same accounts Duke had read in the papers on board the ship.

Then Duke glanced at the date on the current paper idly, and his thoughts jolted completely out of focus. It was dated only three days later than the paper he had seen when they were docked on Clovis! Without instantaneous communication, it was impossible. He might have been mistaken about the date before, but--

Nothing fitted. The feeling of uncertainty came back, crowding out the minor matter of his memory of the date. He stared at the richness of even this poor section of an Earth that huddled here as if afraid of its own shadows, yet reeked with self-satisfaction. He thought of Meloa and Throm, and the gallant try at Federation that had been made on the Outer Worlds. Strength had to lie in union and action; yet all the evidence seemed to say that it lay in timidity and sloth.

Reluctantly he turned the page away from the news, to seek for the job sections. From the alley, there came the sound of a police whistle, and shouts that faded into the distance. It was probably the breaking up of the teen-age argument. A few people ran by, heading for the excitement, but Duke had lost all interest. A taxi stopped nearby and he heard a patter that might have been that of children's feet, but he didn't look up.

* * * * *

Then a sharper whistle shrilled almost in his ear and he twisted around to stare at a creature who was gazing at him. Four spindly legs led up to a globular body encased in a harness-like contraption. Above the body, two pairs of thin arms were waving about, while a long neck ended in a bird-like head, topped by two large ears.

The ears suddenly seemed to shimmer in the air, and a surprisingly human voice sounded. "You're Captain Duke O'Neill!"

Before Duke could answer, a small hand came out quickly to find his and begin shaking it, while the ears twittered on in excitement. "I'm honored to meet you, Captain O'Neill. I've been studying your work against Throm. Amazingly clever strategy! Permit me--I'm Queeth, lately a prince of Sugfarth. Perhaps you noticed our ship? No, of course not. You must have landed at the government field. My crew and I are on the way to the war about to begin between Kloomiria and Cathay."

"Why tell me about it?" Duke asked roughly. Sugfarth--the ship he'd seen diagrammed had come from there. If one of those titans was to be used against Cathay, Earth's colony was doomed. And the impertinent little monster--!

The creature tried to imitate a shrug with his upper set of arms. "Why not, captain? We're registered here as a recruiting ship for Cathay, so it's no secret. We thought we might as well carry along some of the men going out to help, since we had to pass near Earth anyhow. And I dropped by here in the hope that there might be a few who had failed to join the Federation and who would like to switch to Cathay."

"Wait a minute," Duke said. He studied the alien, trying to rake what he'd learned from the article out of his memory. But no record of subtlety or deceit had been listed there. The Sugfarth were supposed to be honest--in fact, they'd been one of the rare races to declare their war in advance. Somehow, too, the words had a ring of truth in them. "For Cathay?"

"Certainly, captain. For whom else? The civilized Earth races naturally have to stick together against the barbarians."

Duke stared at the almost comic figure, juggling the words he had heard with the obvious facts. "What Earth races? Do you mean that Earth is now giving citizenship to your people?"

"Not on this planet, of course." A pair of beady black eyes stared back, as if trying to understand a ridiculous question. "But we're citizens of Earth's economic-cultural-diplomatic system, naturally."

Duke felt something nibble at his mind, but he couldn't grasp it. And he wasn't accustomed to carrying on long chitchat with aliens. He shoved the thoughts away and reached for the paper again. "You won't find recruits here, Queeth. Only me. And I'm too old for the recruiting law. Besides, I've got to find a job."

He turned the pages, locating the column he wanted. What had Flannery meant about Republican Rome? Duke could remember dimly something about Rome's granting citizenship to her conquered neighbors. It had been the basis of the city's growth and later power. Now if Earth could inspire citizenship from conquered aliens--

Queeth made a sound like a sigh and shuffled his four feet on the sidewalk uncertainly. "If you came aboard on a visit, who could stop our taking off at once?" he suggested. "We have room for another officer, and we need men like you, Captain O'Neill, to help us against the aliens out there!"

Duke looked down at the small face, and even the alien features couldn't disguise the obvious sincerity behind the words. It should have made his decision automatic. He'd come here to be recruited, and he was being accepted. There was a ship waiting for him, where his skills could be used. With such a ship, things would be different from the war he had known. He had a picture of Kloomiria under attack from it.

Abruptly, he was seeing again the exploding ships of Throm, and the charnel smell of Kordule on victorious Meloa was thick in his nose.

He stood up, shaking his head, and held out his hand, groping for the phrases that had been all-important once among the recruits he had joined. "Thanks, Queeth," he said finally. "But I've got something to catch up on here. Good luck--on to victory--and give the aliens hell!"

He stood watching Queeth patter off toward the waiting cab and saw it drive away. Then he turned to the want ads in earnest.

Nothing was clear in his mind yet, but he'd need a job first, then a room near the library. He had a lot of current history to catch up on. Whatever Earth was up to had to be recorded somewhere, if he could find it.

VIII

Through half his reign, Var of Kloomiria had nursed his hatred of the humans into a holy mission. It was eighty years since his visit to Cathay, when the colonists' children had run screaming from him, shouting that he was a monster, but time had only sharpened the memory. He had covered his too-human body under a multitude of robes and had gloried in the alienness of his head, with its fringe of breathing tentacles and the two lobster-like claws that concealed his tiny mouth. Year after long year, he had built and prayed for the war of vengeance that must come.

Almost, it had passed him by. With the threat of help from Earth for Cathay, he had been forced to delay while larger fleets were built. His reign had been drawing to a close and he had almost resigned himself to the law that would turn the rulership over to his eldest son. Then the boy had died in an explosion less than a week from the change of rule, and almost simultaneously Earth's timidity had won again, and the protection had been denied her colony.

Now Var's waiting was finished. He stood in the cabin of his flagship, heading back to Kloomiria after the opening raid of the war, savoring the sweetness of the damage he had done Cathay. Life was sweet.

Behind him, the door dilated softly and his aide came in, carrying a roll of paper. "A message from Cathay, magnificence," he announced.

Var opened the message and studied it. Then he read it again, uncertainly. He was sure of his knowledge of English, but the note was senseless gibberish. Again he read it, this time aloud:

"Yours of the fourteenth ultimo received and contents noted. We are pleased to inform you that we are in a position to fill your entire order and that shipment is going out at once by special messenger. We trust that you will find our products superior in every way. We believe that you will find our terms completely reasonable."

It made no more sense aloud.

The aide sighed apologetically. "Deliberately misapplied archaicism is sometimes regarded as humorous by Earthmen, magnificence. I suspect this is a warning that they are retaliating."

"Bluff!" Var read the words again, but he could make no other meaning from them. Did the fools expect him to believe their flippancy spelled confidence, or were they deceiving themselves? And the hint of surrender terms was sheer stupidity. It must be an offer, though the wording seemed to indicate he should surrender!

He threw the message into a waste receptacle in disgust and went over to look at the screens where Kloomiria was showing. The humans of Cathay might try a return raid, but he was unworried. Cathay's fleet was pitiful, and she had no heavy ships from which to launch planet bombs. Of course, there were spy reports of vast numbers of what seemed to be guided missiles, but they could never get through the confusion-signals that blanketed Kloomiria.

As he watched, a signal blinked. He opened the circuit and the face of his admiral looked out. "We've received indications of a swarm of small ships, magnificence," the man reported. "High speed and piloted. It may be a suicide squadron."

"Suicide!" Var spat the word out. "Whoever heard of the human cowards risking their necks?"

The aide touched his shoulder apologetically. "They are mentioned in Earth books, magnificence. And there was Djamboula."

Var stared at the screen as the flight was relayed to him, snarling. Definitely, they were one-man ships, not guided missiles. His defenses had never been built to handle suicide squadrons.

"Up, surround them, blast them!" he ordered. A few might get through to the ships or to the planet below, but quick action would wreak havoc among them and discourage further attempts.

* * * * *

The Kloomirian fleet opened into a circle and began rising. Now the swarm of little ships began breaking apart, fanning out and attempting to turn. Var hissed. Not even the courage to go through with it after they were discovered! They--

He leaped to the screen, cursing at what he saw.

Where the little ships had opened a hole, a monstrous bulk was hurtling through at fantastic speed. The tiny ships had screened it, but now it outran them, boring straight toward the opening in the Kloomirian fleet. Atomic cannon began running out of enormous hatches, like the bristles jutting from a tendril brush.

"Blast out!" Var screamed into his engine phone. His flagship leaped away at full drive, while the enemy seemed to grow on the screen. Then it diminished as they began drawing away from the fleet.

There was nothing Var could do about the horror that followed. The great vessel bored through the fleet with cannons spitting out hell. If countershots were fired, they had no effect.

"Sugfarth!" the aide screamed in his ears. "A ship from Sugfarth!"

Var remembered the pictures he had seen, and they matched, though none had suggested such a size. It was impossible. The race of Sugfarth were aliens--warriors who had fought humanoids as few races had done. They would have fought with him, not against him!

The ship drove down toward the planet, braking fiercely now. From it, two bulky objects fell. While the planet bombs dropped, the behemoth began to rise again. It came through the shattered ranks of Kloomiria's fleet, blasting again, and headed toward the tiny ships that had screened it, new hatches opening to receive them.

Half of Var's fleet was in total ruin. On the planet below, two horrible gouts of flame leaped up through the atmosphere and beyond it, while all of Kloomiria seemed to tremble as half a continent was ruined. Var stared down at the destruction, unmoving.

The aide coughed, holding out another roll of paper. "Cathay is broadcasting an appeal for us to surrender without reprisals, magnificence. And the Estate Governors are demanding fleet protection."

Var crushed the paper in his hands without reading it.

It would take half the remaining part of the fleet to give even token protection to Kloomiria. His plans had never been based on holding back the seemingly weak forces of Cathay.

"No answer," he said. His hand reached for the communicator switch and he began issuing orders. "The fleet will regroup and return to base for immediate repairs and rearming. Commanders of all ships will prepare to take off against Cathay within six hours!"

Somehow, the humans had to be crushed completely before they could destroy Kloomiria. After that, if any of his race survived, there would be a mission for all future generations.

Only the power of Earth could have sent the alien ship from Sugfarth, loaded with cannon and bombs, to fight against fellow aliens. Earth had declared neutrality, and then struck! For such a villainy, a million years was not too long to seek vengeance!

IX

Night had fallen in the park beyond the huge Foreign Office building and the air was damp and cool. Duke shivered in the shadows that covered his bench. He should head back to his room, but he had no desire to listen again to the meaningless chatter that came through the thin walls. Time didn't matter to him now, anyhow.

He swore and reached for a cigarette, brushing the crumpled newspaper from his lap. He'd been a fool to think Flannery would bother with him, just as he'd been a fool to turn down Queeth's offer. He'd wasted his day off from the messenger job.

Footsteps sounded down the walk that led past his bench, and he drew deeper into the shadows. The steps slowed and a man moved to the other end of the bench. Duke drew heavily on his cigarette, tossed it away, and started to get up.

"Drink?" There was a hand holding a flask in front of him. He hesitated, then took it, and let a long slug run down his throat. In the faint light he could make out the face of Director Flannery. The man nodded. "Sorry I was out when you came, O'Neill. One of the guards saw you out here, so I came over."

"You should have been in," Duke said, handing the flask back. "I've changed my mind since reading about some of your deals in the Journal. Well, thanks for the drink."

One of Flannery's prosthetic hands rested on Duke's shoulder, and the pressure was surprisingly heavy. "When a man takes a drink with me, captain, he waits until I finish mine." He tipped up the flask and drank slowly before putting it away. "I suppose you mean the Cathay-Kloomiria mess?"

"What else?" Mess was a mild word. The Sugfarth ship had seemed to make victory for Cathay certain the first few days, but the war had entered a new phase now. Cathay couldn't maintain the big ship, and it was practically useless. It had simply served to reduce Kloomiria to a position where both sides were equal. The war showed signs of settling down to another prolonged, exhausting affair.

"Yeah, I read the editorial." Flannery sighed. "We did let a couple of fools make Cathay think we'd bail her out. At the time, it seemed wise. The son of old Var was due to assume rule in a little while and he was strongly pro-human. We wanted to hold things off until he took over and scrapped the war plans. When he was killed--well, we pulled out before Var was any stronger."

"And sent Queeth's crowd in to do your blood-letting for you?" Duke sneered.

"That was their own idea," Flannery denied. He lighted a cigarette and sat staring at the end of it, blowing out a slow stream of smoke. "All right, we made a mess of Cathay. We'll know better next time. Care to walk back with me?"

"Why? So one of your trained psychopropagandists can indoctrinate me? Or to get drunk and cry over your confession?"

"To keep me from sinking to your level and pushing your nose down your throat!" Flannery told him, but there was no real anger in his voice. He stood up, shrugging. "Nobody's forcing you, O'Neill. Say the word and I'll drive you home. But if you want that explanation, my working office seems like a good place to talk."

For a moment, Duke wavered. But he'd reached the end of his own research, and he'd come here to find the answers. Leaving now would only make him more of a fool. "O.K.," he decided. "I'll stay for the big unveiling."

Flannery grimaced. "There's no great secret, though we don't broadcast the facts for people and races not ready for them. We figure those who finish growing up here will soak up most of it automatically. Did you get around to the film file on interstellar wars at the library?"

Duke nodded, wondering how much they knew about his activities. He'd spent a lot of time going over the film for clues. It was so old that the color had faded in places. The rest would have been easier to take without color. Most wasn't good photography, but all was vivid. It was the record of all the wars since Earth's invention of the high-drive--nearly two hundred of them. Gimsul, Hathor, Ptek, Sugfarth, Clovis, and even Meloa--the part he hadn't seen, beyond Kordule where the real damage lay; Ronda had been wrong, and cannibalism had been discovered, along with much that was worse. Two hundred wars in which victor and vanquished alike had been ruined--in which the supreme effort needed to win had left most of the victors worse than the defeated systems.

"War!" The word was bitter on Flannery's lips. "Someone starts building war power--power to insure peace, as they always say. Then other systems must have power to protect themselves. Strength begets force--and fear and hatred. Sooner or later, the strain is too great, and you have a war so horrible that its very horror makes surrender impossible. You saw it on Meloa. I've seen it fifty times!"

* * * * *

They reached the Foreign Office building and began crossing its lobby. Flannery glanced up at the big seal on the wall with its motto in twisted Latin--Per Astra ad Aspera--and his eyes turned back to Duke's, but he made no comment. He led the way to a private elevator that dropped them a dozen levels below the street, to a small room, littered with things from every conceivable planet. One wall was covered with what seemed to be the control panel of a spaceship, apparently now used for a desk. The director dropped into a chair and motioned Duke to another.

He looked tired, and his voice seemed older as he bent to pull a small projector and screen from a drawer and set them up. "The latest chapter of the film," he said bitterly, throwing the switch.

It was a picture of the breakup of the Outer Federation, and in some ways worse than the other wars. Chumkt rebelled against Kel's leadership and joined the aliens, while a civil war sprang up on her surface. Two alien planets went over to Kel. The original war was forgotten in a struggle for new combinations, and a thousand smaller wars replaced it. The Federation was dead and the two dozen races were dying.

"When everything else fails, the fools try federation," Flannery said as the film ended. "We tried it on Earth. Another race discovered the interstellar drive before we did and used it to build an empire. We've found the dead and sterile remains of their civilization. It's always the same. When one group unites its power, those nearby must ally for protection. Then there's a scramble for more power, while jealousies and fears breed new hatreds, internally and externally. And finally, there's ruin--because at the technological level of interstellar travel, victory in war is absolutely, totally impossible!"

He sat back, and Duke waited for him to resume, until it was obvious he had finished. At last, the younger man gave up waiting. "All right," he said. "Earth won't fight! Am I supposed to turn handsprings? I figured that much out myself. And I learned a long time ago about the blessed meek who were to inherit the Earth--but I can't remember anything being said about the stars!"

"You think peace won't work?" Flannery asked mildly.

"I know it won't!" Duke fumbled for a cigarette, trying to organize his thoughts. "You've been lucky so far. You've counted on the fact that war powers have to attack other powers nearby before they can safely strike against Earth, and you've buffered yourself with a jury-rigged economic trading system. But what happens when some really bright overlord decides to by-pass his local enemies? He'll drop fifty planet bombs out of your peaceful skies and collect your vassal worlds before they can rearm. You won't know about that, though. You'll be wiped out!"

"I wouldn't call our friends vassals, or say the system was jury-rigged," Flannery objected. "Ever hear of paradynamics? The papers call it the ability to manipulate relationships, when we let them write a speculative article. It's what lets us rebuild worlds in less than half a century--and form the first completely peaceful politico-economic culture we've ever known. Besides, I never said we had no weapons for our defense."

Duke considered it, trying to keep a firm footing on the shifting quicksand of the other's arguments. He knew a little of paradynamics, of course, but only as something supposed to remake the world and all science in some abstract future. It had been originated as a complex mathematical analysis of nuclear relationships, and had been seized on for some reason by the sociologists. It had no bearing he could see on the main argument.

"It won't wash, Flannery. Without a fleet, it won't matter if you have the plans of every weapon ever invented. The first time a smart power takes the chance, you'll run out of time."

"We didn't!" Flannery swung to the control board that served as his desk, and his fingers seemed to play idly with the dials. From somewhere below them, there was a heavy vibration, as if great engines had sprung into life. He pressed another switch.

* * * * *

Abruptly, the room was gone. There was a night sky above them, almost starless, and with a great, glaring moon shining down, to show a rough, mossy terrain that seemed covered endlessly with row after row of rusting, crumbling spaceships. Atomic cannon spilled from their hatches, and broken ramps led down to the ground. Down one clearer lane among the countless ships that surrounded him, Duke saw what might be a distant fire with a few bent figures around it, giving the impression of age.

Beside him, Flannery sat in his chair, holding a small control. There was nothing else of the office visible.

The director shook his head. "It's no illusion, O'Neill. You're here--fifty odd thousand light-years from Earth, where we transferred the attacking fleet. You never heard of that, of course. The dictator-ruler naturally didn't make a report when his fleet simply vanished without trace. Here!"

The liquor burned in Duke's throat, but it steadied him. He bent down, to feel the mossy turf under his hand.

"It's real," Flannery repeated. "Paradynamics handles all relationships, captain. And the position of a body is simply a statement of its geometrical relationships. What happens if we change those relationships--with power enough, that is? There is no motion, in any classic sense. But newspapers appear two high-drive days away minutes after they're printed. We arrive here. And fleets sent against Earth just aren't there any more!"

He pressed a button, and abruptly the walls of his office were around them again--the office that was suddenly the control room of a building that was more of a battleship than any Duke had ever seen.

He found himself clutching the chair, and forced himself to relax, soaking up the shock as he had soaked up so many others. His mind faced the facts, accepted them, and then sickly extended them.

"All right, you've got weapons," he admitted, and disgust was heavy in his voice. "You can defend yourself. But can the galaxy defend itself when somebody decides it's a fine offensive weapon? Or are all Earthmen supposed to be automatically pure, so this will never be turned to offensive use? Prove that to me and maybe I'll change my mind about this planet and take that job of yours!"

Flannery leaned back, nodding soberly. "I intend to," he answered. "Duke, we tried making peaceful citizens of our youngsters here a century ago, but it wouldn't work. Kids have to have their little gang wars and their fisticuffs to grow up naturally. We can't force them. Their interests aren't those of adults. In fact, they think adults are pretty dull. No adventure. They can't see that juggling a twenty-million gamble on tooling up for a new competitive product is exciting; they can't understand working in a dull laboratory to dig something new out of nature's files can be exciting and dangerous. Above all, they can't see that the greatest adventure is the job of bringing kids up to be other adults. They regret the passing of dueling and affairs of honor. But an adult civilization knows better--because the passing of such things is the first step toward a race becoming adult, because it is adopting a new type of thinking, where such things have no value. You didn't hit me when I called you names, because it made no sense from an adult point of view. Earth doesn't go to war for the same reason. Thank God, we grew up just before we got into space, where adult thinking is necessary to survival!"

There had been the kids and their seemingly pointless argument on the street. There had been the curiously distant respect the Meloans had shown him, as if they guessed that only his exterior was similar. There were a lot of things Duke could use to justify believing the director. It made a fine picture--as it was intended to.

* * * * *

"It must be wonderful to sit here safely, while agents do your dangerous work, feeling superior to anyone who shows any courage," he said bitterly. "I suppose every clerk and desk-jockey out there feeds himself the same type of rationalization. But words don't prove anything. How do you prove the difference between maturity and timidity or smugness?"

"You asked for it," Flannery said simply.

The button went down on the control again. The air was suddenly thin and bitingly cold as they looked down on a world torn with war, where a hundred ships shaped like half-disks and unlike anything Duke had seen were mixed up in some maneuver. The button was pushed again, and this time there was a world below that had a port busy with similar ships, not fighting now. A third press brought them onto the surface of a heavy world that seemed to be composed of solid buildings and factories, where the ships were being outfitted with incomprehensible goods. A thing like a pipe-stem man looked up from a series of operations, made a waving motion to them, and abruptly disappeared.

"Did you really think we could be the only adult race in the universe?" Flannery asked. "You're looking at the Allr, the closest cultural gestalt to us, and somewhere near our level. Now--"

Something squamous perched on a rock on what seemed to be a barren world. Before it floated bright points of light that were obviously replicas of planets, with tiny lines of light between them, and a shuttling of glints along the lines. The thing seemed to look at them, briefly. A tentacle whipped up and touched Flannery, who sat with his hands off the control box. Without its use, they were abruptly back in their office.

Flannery shivered, and there was strain on his face, while Duke felt his mind freeze slowly, as if with physical cold. The director cleared his throat. "Or maybe we should look at more routine things, though you might consider that we have to get ready for the day when our advancing culture touches on other cultures. Because we can't put it off forever."

This time, they were in a building, like a crude shed, and there were men there, standing in front of a creature that seemed like a human in armor--but chitinous armor that was part of him. The alien suddenly turned, though Duke could now see that they were in a section behind one-way glass. Nevertheless, it seemed to sense them. Abruptly, something began pulling at his mind, as if his thoughts were being drained. Flannery hit the button again. "Telepathic race, and very immature," he said, and there was worry in his voice. "Thank God, the only one we've found, and out of our immediate line of advance."

There were other scenes. A human being who walked endlessly three feet off the floor, fighting against some barrier that wasn't there, with his face frozen in fear, while creatures that seemed to be metallic moved about. "He found something while working on one of our paradynamic problems," Flannery said. "He transported himself there and has been exactly like that ever since--three years, now. So far, our desk-jockeys here haven't been able to discover exactly what line he was working on, but they're trying!"

They were back in the office, and the director laid the control box on the big panel and cut off the power. He swung back to face Duke, his face tired.

"You'll find a ship waiting to take you to Throm, and a man on board who'll use the trip to brief you, if you decide to take the job, Duke. As I said, it's up to you. If you still prefer your wars, come and see me next week, and maybe I can get the recruiting law set aside in your case, since you're really a citizen of Meloa. Otherwise, the ship takes off for Throm in exactly three hours."

He led the way back to the elevator, and rode up to the lobby. Duke moved out woodenly, but Flannery was obviously going no farther. The old man handed over what was left of the flask, shook Duke's hand quickly, and closed the elevator door.

Duke downed the liquor slowly, without thinking. Finally, a flicker of thought seemed to stir in his frozen mind. He shook himself and headed down the lobby toward the Earth outside. A faint vibration seemed to quiver in the air from below, and he quickened his steps.

Outside, he shook himself again, signaled a cab, and climbed in.

"The first liquor store you come to," he told the driver. "And then take me to the government space port, no matter what I say!"

X

It was quiet in the underground office of the director, except for the faint sound of Flannery's arms sliding across each other in an unconscious massaging motion. He caught himself at it, and leaned back, his tired facial muscles twitching into a faint smile.

Strange things happened to a man when he grew old. His hair turned gray, he thought more of the past, and prosthetic limbs began to feel tired, as if the nerves were remembering also. And the work that had once seemed vitally important in every detail winnowed itself down to a few things, with the rest only bothersome routine.

He pulled a thermos of coffee from under the desk and turned back to the confusion of red-coded memoranda on his desk. Then the sound of the elevator coming down caught his attention, and he waited until the door opened.

"Hello, Harding," he said without turning around. Only one man beside himself had the key to the private entrance. "Coffee?"

Harding took a seat beside him, and accepted the plastic cup. "Thanks. I tried to call you, but your phone was shut off. Heard the good word?"

Flannery shook his head. With the matter of the strange ship that had been reported and the problem of what to do with the telepaths both coming to a head, he'd had no time for casual calls. There was no question now that the telepaths had plucked the knowledge of how to build an interstellar drive from the observers' minds, in spite of all precautions. And once they broke out into the rest of the galaxy--

"Var died of a heart attack in the middle of a battle," Harding announced. "And Cathay and Kloomiria sent each other surrender notices the minute word was official! The damnedest thing I ever heard of. Edmonds came with me, and he's upstairs now, planning a big victory celebration as soon as we can let the word out. It should finish his reorientation."

"I'll probably get word on it by the time someone has it all organized into a nice, official memo," Flannery said. "Back him up on that celebration. It's worth a celebration to find out both worlds are that close to maturity. Coming over for bridge tonight?"

Harding shook his head. "I'll be up to my elbows in bills for the relief of Cathay and Kloomiria. It's a mess, even if it could be worse. Maybe tomorrow."

He dropped the cup onto the desk and turned to the elevator, while Flannery hunted through the memoranda. As he expected, he found a recent one announcing Var's death. He rubbed his arms together as he read it, but there was no new information in it.

Then, reluctantly, he picked up his phone and started to call. Scanning for information, just as another bundle of memos came through a small door in the panel. At the sight of the top photo, he put the phone back on its cradle. His face tautened and his arms lay limp as he read through it.

The picture was that of one of the half-disk Allr ships. The rumors of the strange ship were true enough. One of the Allr races had crossed the gulf between the two expanding cultures, and had touched several worlds briefly, to land in the biggest city on Ptek, the trading center for a whole sector. It had been there two days already, before being reported to Earth!

To make matters worse, it had come because its home world had been visited by a foreign ship--from the description, apparently from Sugfarth; there was no longer any chance of cutting off the news, since it would be circulating busily through both cultures. And with it must be going a thousand wild schemes by trading adventurers for exploration!

He'd expected it to happen some day, maybe in fifty years, after he was out of the office. By then enough of the worlds should have reached maturity to offer some hope of peaceful interpenetration. But now--

Victory, he thought bitterly. A small victory, and then this. Or maybe two small victories, if O'Neill worked out as well on Throm as he seemed to be doing, and if he realized he'd never be satisfied until he could return to Earth to face the problems he now knew existed. Flannery had almost hoped that it would be O'Neill who would handle the problem of cultural interpenetration. The man had ability.

But all that was in the past now, along with all the other victories. And in the present, as always, there were larger and larger problems, while full maturity lay forever a little farther on.

Then he smiled slowly at himself. There were problems behind him, too--ones whose solutions made these problems possible. And there would always be victory enough.

What was victory, after all, but the chance to face bigger and bigger problems without fear?

Flannery picked up the phone, and his arms were no longer tired.

THE END

Contents

THE DEFENDERS

By Philip K. Dick

No weapon has ever been frightful enough to put a stop to war—perhaps because we never before had any that thought for themselves!

Taylor sat back in his chair reading the morning newspaper. The warm kitchen and the smell of coffee blended with the comfort of not having to go to work. This was his Rest Period, the first for a long time, and he was glad of it. He folded the second section back, sighing with contentment.

"What is it?" Mary said, from the stove.

"They pasted Moscow again last night." Taylor nodded his head in approval. "Gave it a real pounding. One of those R-H bombs. It's about time."

He nodded again, feeling the full comfort of the kitchen, the presence of his plump, attractive wife, the breakfast dishes and coffee. This was relaxation. And the war news was good, good and satisfying. He could feel a justifiable glow at the news, a sense of pride and personal accomplishment. After all, he was an integral part of the war program, not just another factory worker lugging a cart of scrap, but a technician, one of those who designed and planned the nerve-trunk of the war.

"It says they have the new subs almost perfected. Wait until they get those going." He smacked his lips with anticipation. "When they start shelling from underwater, the Soviets are sure going to be surprised."

"They're doing a wonderful job," Mary agreed vaguely. "Do you know what we saw today? Our team is getting a leady to show to the school children. I saw the leady, but only for a moment. It's good for the children to see what their contributions are going for, don't you think?"

She looked around at him.

"A leady," Taylor murmured. He put the newspaper slowly down. "Well, make sure it's decontaminated properly. We don't want to take any chances."

"Oh, they always bathe them when they're brought down from the surface," Mary said. "They wouldn't think of letting them down without the bath. Would they?" She hesitated, thinking back. "Don, you know, it makes me remember—"

He nodded. "I know."

He knew what she was thinking. Once in the very first weeks of the war, before everyone had been evacuated from the surface, they had seen a hospital train discharging the wounded, people who had been showered with sleet. He remembered the way they had looked, the expression on their faces, or as much of their faces as was left. It had not been a pleasant sight.

There had been a lot of that at first, in the early days before the transfer to undersurface was complete. There had been a lot, and it hadn't been very difficult to come across it.

Taylor looked up at his wife. She was thinking too much about it, the last few months. They all were.

"Forget it," he said. "It's all in the past. There isn't anybody up there now but the leadys, and they don't mind."

"But just the same, I hope they're careful when they let one of them down here. If one were still hot—"

He laughed, pushing himself away from the table. "Forget it. This is a wonderful moment; I'll be home for the next two shifts. Nothing to do but sit around and take things easy. Maybe we can take in a show. Okay?"

"A show? Do we have to? I don't like to look at all the destruction, the ruins. Sometimes I see some place I remember, like San Francisco. They showed a shot of San Francisco, the bridge broken and fallen in the water, and I got upset. I don't like to watch."

"But don't you want to know what's going on? No human beings are getting hurt, you know."

"But it's so awful!" Her face was set and strained. "Please, no, Don."

Don Taylor picked up his newspaper sullenly. "All right, but there isn't a hell of a lot else to do. And don't forget, their cities are getting it even worse."

She nodded. Taylor turned the rough, thin sheets of newspaper. His good mood had soured on him. Why did she have to fret all the time? They were pretty well off, as things went. You couldn't expect to have everything perfect, living undersurface, with an artificial sun and artificial food. Naturally it was a strain, not seeing the sky or being able to go any place or see anything other than metal walls, great roaring factories, the plant-yards, barracks. But it was better than being on surface. And some day it would end and they could return. Nobody wanted to live this way, but it was necessary.

He turned the page angrily and the poor paper ripped. Damn it, the paper was getting worse quality all the time, bad print, yellow tint—

Well, they needed everything for the war program. He ought to know that. Wasn't he one of the planners?

He excused himself and went into the other room. The bed was still unmade. They had better get it in shape before the seventh hour inspection. There was a one unit fine—

The vidphone rang. He halted. Who would it be? He went over and clicked it on.

"Taylor?" the face said, forming into place. It was an old face, gray and grim. "This is Moss. I'm sorry to bother you during Rest Period, but this thing has come up." He rattled papers. "I want you to hurry over here."

Taylor stiffened. "What is it? There's no chance it could wait?" The calm gray eyes were studying him, expressionless, unjudging. "If you want me to come down to the lab," Taylor grumbled, "I suppose I can. I'll get my uniform—"

"No. Come as you are. And not to the lab. Meet me at second stage as soon as possible. It'll take you about a half hour, using the fast car up. I'll see you there."

The picture broke and Moss disappeared.

"What was it?" Mary said, at the door.

"Moss. He wants me for something."

"I knew this would happen."

"Well, you didn't want to do anything, anyhow. What does it matter?" His voice was bitter. "It's all the same, every day. I'll bring you back something. I'm going up to second stage. Maybe I'll be close enough to the surface to—"

"Don't! Don't bring me anything! Not from the surface!"

"All right, I won't. But of all the irrational nonsense—"

She watched him put on his boots without answering.

Moss nodded and Taylor fell in step with him, as the older man strode along. A series of loads were going up to the surface, blind cars clanking like ore-trucks up the ramp, disappearing through the stage trap above them. Taylor watched the cars, heavy with tubular machinery of some sort, weapons new to him. Workers were everywhere, in the dark gray uniforms of the labor corps, loading, lifting, shouting back and forth. The stage was deafening with noise.

"We'll go up a way," Moss said, "where we can talk. This is no place to give you details."

They took an escalator up. The commercial lift fell behind them, and with it most of the crashing and booming. Soon they emerged on an observation platform, suspended on the side of the Tube, the vast tunnel leading to the surface, not more than half a mile above them now.

"My God!" Taylor said, looking down the Tube involuntarily. "It's a long way down."

Moss laughed. "Don't look."

They opened a door and entered an office. Behind the desk, an officer was sitting, an officer of Internal Security. He looked up.

"I'll be right with you, Moss." He gazed at Taylor studying him. "You're a little ahead of time."

"This is Commander Franks," Moss said to Taylor. "He was the first to make the discovery. I was notified last night." He tapped a parcel he carried. "I was let in because of this."

Franks frowned at him and stood up. "We're going up to first stage. We can discuss it there."

"First stage?" Taylor repeated nervously. The three of them went down a side passage to a small lift. "I've never been up there. Is it all right? It's not radioactive, is it?"

"You're like everyone else," Franks said. "Old women afraid of burglars. No radiation leaks down to first stage. There's lead and rock, and what comes down the Tube is bathed."

"What's the nature of the problem?" Taylor asked. "I'd like to know something about it."

"In a moment."

They entered the lift and ascended. When they stepped out, they were in a hall of soldiers, weapons and uniforms everywhere. Taylor blinked in surprise. So this was first stage, the closest undersurface level to the top! After this stage there was only rock, lead and rock, and the great tubes leading up like the burrows of earthworms. Lead and rock, and above that, where the tubes opened, the great expanse that no living being had seen for eight years, the vast, endless ruin that had once been Man's home, the place where he had lived, eight years ago.

Now the surface was a lethal desert of slag and rolling clouds. Endless clouds drifted back and forth, blotting out the red Sun. Occasionally something metallic stirred, moving through the remains of a city, threading its way across the tortured terrain of the countryside. A leady, a surface robot, immune to radiation, constructed with feverish haste in the last months before the cold war became literally hot.

Leadys, crawling along the ground, moving over the oceans or through the skies in slender, blackened craft, creatures that could exist where no life could remain, metal and plastic figures that waged a war Man had conceived, but which he could not fight himself. Human beings had invented war, invented and manufactured the weapons, even invented the players, the fighters, the actors of the war. But they themselves could not venture forth, could not wage it themselves. In all the world—in Russia, in Europe, America, Africa—no living human being remained. They were under the surface, in the deep shelters that had been carefully planned and built, even as the first bombs began to fall.

It was a brilliant idea and the only idea that could have worked. Up above, on the ruined, blasted surface of what had once been a living planet, the leady crawled and scurried, and fought Man's war. And undersurface, in the depths of the planet, human beings toiled endlessly to produce the weapons to continue the fight, month by month, year by year.

"First stage," Taylor said. A strange ache went through him. "Almost to the surface."

"But not quite," Moss said.

Franks led them through the soldiers, over to one side, near the lip of the Tube.

"In a few minutes, a lift will bring something down to us from the surface," he explained. "You see, Taylor, every once in a while Security examines and interrogates a surface leady, one that has been above for a time, to find out certain things. A vidcall is sent up and contact is made with a field headquarters. We need this direct interview; we can't depend on vidscreen contact alone. The leadys are doing a good job, but we want to make certain that everything is going the way we want it."

Franks faced Taylor and Moss and continued: "The lift will bring down a leady from the surface, one of the A-class leadys. There's an examination chamber in the next room, with a lead wall in the center, so the interviewing officers won't be exposed to radiation. We find this easier than bathing the leady. It is going right back up; it has a job to get back to.

"Two days ago, an A-class leady was brought down and interrogated. I conducted the session myself. We were interested in a new weapon the Soviets have been using, an automatic mine that pursues anything that moves. Military had sent instructions up that the mine be observed and reported in detail.

"This A-class leady was brought down with information. We learned a few facts from it, obtained the usual roll of film and reports, and then sent it back up. It was going out of the chamber, back to the lift, when a curious thing happened. At the time, I thought—"

Franks broke off. A red light was flashing.

"That down lift is coming." He nodded to some soldiers. "Let's enter the chamber. The leady will be along in a moment."

"An A-class leady," Taylor said. "I've seen them on the showscreens, making their reports."

"It's quite an experience," Moss said. "They're almost human."

They entered the chamber and seated themselves behind the lead wall. After a time, a signal was flashed, and Franks made a motion with his hands.

The door beyond the wall opened. Taylor peered through his view slot. He saw something advancing slowly, a slender metallic figure moving on a tread, its arm grips at rest by its sides. The figure halted and scanned the lead wall. It stood, waiting.

"We are interested in learning something," Franks said. "Before I question you, do you have anything to report on surface conditions?"

"No. The war continues." The leady's voice was automatic and toneless. "We are a little short of fast pursuit craft, the single-seat type. We could use also some—"

"That has all been noted. What I want to ask you is this. Our contact with you has been through vidscreen only. We must rely on indirect evidence, since none of us goes above. We can only infer what is going on. We never see anything ourselves. We have to take it all secondhand. Some top leaders are beginning to think there's too much room for error."

"Error?" the leady asked. "In what way? Our reports are checked carefully before they're sent down. We maintain constant contact with you; everything of value is reported. Any new weapons which the enemy is seen to employ—"

"I realize that," Franks grunted behind his peep slot. "But perhaps we should see it all for ourselves. Is it possible that there might be a large enough radiation-free area for a human party to ascend to the surface? If a few of us were to come up in lead-lined suits, would we be able to survive long enough to observe conditions and watch things?"

The machine hesitated before answering. "I doubt it. You can check air samples, of course, and decide for yourselves. But in the eight years since you left, things have continually worsened. You cannot have any real idea of conditions up there. It has become difficult for any moving object to survive for long. There are many kinds of projectiles sensitive to movement. The new mine not only reacts to motion, but continues to pursue the object indefinitely, until it finally reaches it. And the radiation is everywhere."

"I see." Franks turned to Moss, his eyes narrowed oddly. "Well, that was what I wanted to know. You may go."

The machine moved back toward its exit. It paused. "Each month the amount of lethal particles in the atmosphere increases. The tempo of the war is gradually—"

"I understand." Franks rose. He held out his hand and Moss passed him the package. "One thing before you leave. I want you to examine a new type of metal shield material. I'll pass you a sample with the tong."

Franks put the package in the toothed grip and revolved the tong so that he held the other end. The package swung down to the leady, which took it. They watched it unwrap the package and take the metal plate in its hands. The leady turned the metal over and over.

Suddenly it became rigid.

"All right," Franks said.

He put his shoulder against the wall and a section slid aside. Taylor gasped—Franks and Moss were hurrying up to the leady!

"Good God!" Taylor said. "But it's radioactive!"

The leady stood unmoving, still holding the metal. Soldiers appeared in the chamber. They surrounded the leady and ran a counter across it carefully.

"Okay, sir," one of them said to Franks. "It's as cold as a long winter evening."

"Good. I was sure, but I didn't want to take any chances."

"You see," Moss said to Taylor, "this leady isn't hot at all. Yet it came directly from the surface, without even being bathed."

"But what does it mean?" Taylor asked blankly.

"It may be an accident," Franks said. "There's always the possibility that a given object might escape being exposed above. But this is the second time it's happened that we know of. There may be others."

"The second time?"

"The previous interview was when we noticed it. The leady was not hot. It was cold, too, like this one."

Moss took back the metal plate from the leady's hands. He pressed the surface carefully and returned it to the stiff, unprotesting fingers.

"We shorted it out with this, so we could get close enough for a thorough check. It'll come back on in a second now. We had better get behind the wall again."

They walked back and the lead wall swung closed behind them. The soldiers left the chamber.

"Two periods from now," Franks said softly, "an initial investigating party will be ready to go surface-side. We're going up the Tube in suits, up to the top—the first human party to leave undersurface in eight years."

"It may mean nothing," Moss said, "but I doubt it. Something's going on, something strange. The leady told us no life could exist above without being roasted. The story doesn't fit."

Taylor nodded. He stared through the peep slot at the immobile metal figure. Already the leady was beginning to stir. It was bent in several places, dented and twisted, and its finish was blackened and charred. It was a leady that had been up there a long time; it had seen war and destruction, ruin so vast that no human being could imagine the extent. It had crawled and slunk in a world of radiation and death, a world where no life could exist.

And Taylor had touched it!

"You're going with us," Franks said suddenly. "I want you along. I think the three of us will go."

Mary faced him with a sick and frightened expression. "I know it. You're going to the surface. Aren't you?"

She followed him into the kitchen. Taylor sat down, looking away from her.

"It's a classified project," he evaded. "I can't tell you anything about it."

"You don't have to tell me. I know. I knew it the moment you came in. There was something on your face, something I haven't seen there for a long, long time. It was an old look."

She came toward him. "But how can they send you to the surface?" She took his face in her shaking hands, making him look at her. There was a strange hunger in her eyes. "Nobody can live up there. Look, look at this!"

She grabbed up a newspaper and held it in front of him.

"Look at this photograph. America, Europe, Asia, Africa—nothing but ruins. We've seen it every day on the showscreens. All destroyed, poisoned. And they're sending you up. Why? No living thing can get by up there, not even a weed, or grass. They've wrecked the surface, haven't they? Haven't they?"

Taylor stood up. "It's an order. I know nothing about it. I was told to report to join a scout party. That's all I know."

He stood for a long time, staring ahead. Slowly, he reached for the newspaper and held it up to the light.

"It looks real," he murmured. "Ruins, deadness, slag. It's convincing. All the reports, photographs, films, even air samples. Yet we haven't seen it for ourselves, not after the first months ..."

"What are you talking about?"

"Nothing." He put the paper down. "I'm leaving early after the next Sleep Period. Let's turn in."

Mary turned away, her face hard and harsh. "Do what you want. We might just as well all go up and get killed at once, instead of dying slowly down here, like vermin in the ground."

He had not realized how resentful she was. Were they all like that? How about the workers toiling in the factories, day and night, endlessly? The pale, stooped men and women, plodding back and forth to work, blinking in the colorless light, eating synthetics—

"You shouldn't be so bitter," he said.

Mary smiled a little. "I'm bitter because I know you'll never come back." She turned away. "I'll never see you again, once you go up there."

He was shocked. "What? How can you say a thing like that?"

She did not answer.

He awakened with the public newscaster screeching in his ears, shouting outside the building.

"Special news bulletin! Surface forces report enormous Soviet attack with new weapons! Retreat of key groups! All work units report to factories at once!"

Taylor blinked, rubbing his eyes. He jumped out of bed and hurried to the vidphone. A moment later he was put through to Moss.

"Listen," he said. "What about this new attack? Is the project off?" He could see Moss's desk, covered with reports and papers.

"No," Moss said. "We're going right ahead. Get over here at once."

"But—"

"Don't argue with me." Moss held up a handful of surface bulletins, crumpling them savagely. "This is a fake. Come on!" He broke off.

Taylor dressed furiously, his mind in a daze.

Half an hour later, he leaped from a fast car and hurried up the stairs into the Synthetics Building. The corridors were full of men and women rushing in every direction. He entered Moss's office.

"There you are," Moss said, getting up immediately. "Franks is waiting for us at the outgoing station."

They went in a Security Car, the siren screaming. Workers scattered out of their way.

"What about the attack?" Taylor asked.

Moss braced his shoulders. "We're certain that we've forced their hand. We've brought the issue to a head."

They pulled up at the station link of the Tube and leaped out. A moment later they were moving up at high speed toward the first stage.

They emerged into a bewildering scene of activity. Soldiers were fastening on lead suits, talking excitedly to each other, shouting back and forth. Guns were being given out, instructions passed.

Taylor studied one of the soldiers. He was armed with the dreaded Bender pistol, the new snub-nosed hand weapon that was just beginning to come from the assembly line. Some of the soldiers looked a little frightened.

"I hope we're not making a mistake," Moss said, noticing his gaze.

Franks came toward them. "Here's the program. The three of us are going up first, alone. The soldiers will follow in fifteen minutes."

"What are we going to tell the leadys?" Taylor worriedly asked. "We'll have to tell them something."

"We want to observe the new Soviet attack." Franks smiled ironically. "Since it seems to be so serious, we should be there in person to witness it."

"And then what?" Taylor said.

"That'll be up to them. Let's go."

In a small car, they went swiftly up the Tube, carried by anti-grav beams from below. Taylor glanced down from time to time. It was a long way back, and getting longer each moment. He sweated nervously inside his suit, gripping his Bender pistol with inexpert fingers.

Why had they chosen him? Chance, pure chance. Moss had asked him to come along as a Department member. Then Franks had picked him out on the spur of the moment. And now they were rushing toward the surface, faster and faster.

A deep fear, instilled in him for eight years, throbbed in his mind. Radiation, certain death, a world blasted and lethal—

Up and up the car went. Taylor gripped the sides and closed his eyes. Each moment they were closer, the first living creatures to go above the first stage, up the Tube past the lead and rock, up to the surface. The phobic horror shook him in waves. It was death; they all knew that. Hadn't they seen it in the films a thousand times? The cities, the sleet coming down, the rolling clouds—

"It won't be much longer," Franks said. "We're almost there. The surface tower is not expecting us. I gave orders that no signal was to be sent."

The car shot up, rushing furiously. Taylor's head spun; he hung on, his eyes shut. Up and up....

The car stopped. He opened his eyes.

They were in a vast room, fluorescent-lit, a cavern filled with equipment and machinery, endless mounds of material piled in row after row. Among the stacks, leadys were working silently, pushing trucks and handcarts.

"Leadys," Moss said. His face was pale. "Then we're really on the surface."

The leadys were going back and forth with equipment moving the vast stores of guns and spare parts, ammunition and supplies that had been brought to the surface. And this was the receiving station for only one Tube; there were many others, scattered throughout the continent.

Taylor looked nervously around him. They were really there, above ground, on the surface. This was where the war was.

"Come on," Franks said. "A B-class guard is coming our way."

They stepped out of the car. A leady was approaching them rapidly. It coasted up in front of them and stopped, scanning them with its hand-weapon raised.

"This is Security," Franks said. "Have an A-class sent to me at once."

The leady hesitated. Other B-class guards were coming, scooting across the floor, alert and alarmed. Moss peered around.

"Obey!" Franks said in a loud, commanding voice. "You've been ordered!"

The leady moved uncertainly away from them. At the end of the building, a door slid back. Two A-class leadys appeared, coming slowly toward them. Each had a green stripe across its front.

"From the Surface Council," Franks whispered tensely. "This is above ground, all right. Get set."

The two leadys approached warily. Without speaking, they stopped close by the men, looking them up and down.

"I'm Franks of Security. We came from undersurface in order to—"

"This in incredible," one of the leadys interrupted him coldly. "You know you can't live up here. The whole surface is lethal to you. You can't possibly remain on the surface."

"These suits will protect us," Franks said. "In any case, it's not your responsibility. What I want is an immediate Council meeting so I can acquaint myself with conditions, with the situation here. Can that be arranged?"

"You human beings can't survive up here. And the new Soviet attack is directed at this area. It is in considerable danger."

"We know that. Please assemble the Council." Franks looked around him at the vast room, lit by recessed lamps in the ceiling. An uncertain quality came into his voice. "Is it night or day right now?"

"Night," one of the A-class leadys said, after a pause. "Dawn is coming in about two hours."

Franks nodded. "We'll remain at least two hours, then. As a concession to our sentimentality, would you please show us some place where we can observe the Sun as it comes up? We would appreciate it."

A stir went through the leadys.

"It is an unpleasant sight," one of the leadys said. "You've seen the photographs; you know what you'll witness. Clouds of drifting particles blot out the light, slag heaps are everywhere, the whole land is destroyed. For you it will be a staggering sight, much worse than pictures and film can convey."

"However it may be, we'll stay long enough to see it. Will you give the order to the Council?"

"Come this way." Reluctantly, the two leadys coasted toward the wall of the warehouse. The three men trudged after them, their heavy shoes ringing against the concrete. At the wall, the two leadys paused.

"This is the entrance to the Council Chamber. There are windows in the Chamber Room, but it is still dark outside, of course. You'll see nothing right now, but in two hours—"

"Open the door," Franks said.

The door slid back. They went slowly inside. The room was small, a neat room with a round table in the center, chairs ringing it. The three of them sat down silently, and the two leadys followed after them, taking their places.

"The other Council Members are on their way. They have already been notified and are coming as quickly as they can. Again I urge you to go back down." The leady surveyed the three human beings. "There is no way you can meet the conditions up here. Even we survive with some trouble, ourselves. How can you expect to do it?"

The leader approached Franks.

"This astonishes and perplexes us," it said. "Of course we must do what you tell us, but allow me to point out that if you remain here—"

"We know," Franks said impatiently. "However, we intend to remain, at least until sunrise."

"If you insist."

There was silence. The leadys seemed to be conferring with each other, although the three men heard no sound.

"For your own good," the leader said at last, "you must go back down. We have discussed this, and it seems to us that you are doing the wrong thing for your own good."

"We are human beings," Franks said sharply. "Don't you understand? We're men, not machines."

"That is precisely why you must go back. This room is radioactive; all surface areas are. We calculate that your suits will not protect you for over fifty more minutes. Therefore—"

The leadys moved abruptly toward the men, wheeling in a circle, forming a solid row. The men stood up, Taylor reaching awkwardly for his weapon, his fingers numb and stupid. The men stood facing the silent metal figures.

"We must insist," the leader said, its voice without emotion. "We must take you back to the Tube and send you down on the next car. I am sorry, but it is necessary."

"What'll we do?" Moss said nervously to Franks. He touched his gun. "Shall we blast them?"

Franks shook his head. "All right," he said to the leader. "We'll go back."

He moved toward the door, motioning Taylor and Moss to follow him. They looked at him in surprise, but they came with him. The leadys followed them out into the great warehouse. Slowly they moved toward the Tube entrance, none of them speaking.

At the lip, Franks turned. "We are going back because we have no choice. There are three of us and about a dozen of you. However, if—"

"Here comes the car," Taylor said.

There was a grating sound from the Tube. D-class leadys moved toward the edge to receive it.

"I am sorry," the leader said, "but it is for your protection. We are watching over you, literally. You must stay below and let us conduct the war. In a sense, it has come to be our war. We must fight it as we see fit."

The car rose to the surface.

Twelve soldiers, armed with Bender pistols, stepped from it and surrounded the three men.

Moss breathed a sigh of relief. "Well, this does change things. It came off just right."

The leader moved back, away from the soldiers. It studied them intently, glancing from one to the next, apparently trying to make up its mind. At last it made a sign to the other leadys. They coasted aside and a corridor was opened up toward the warehouse.

"Even now," the leader said, "we could send you back by force. But it is evident that this is not really an observation party at all. These soldiers show that you have much more in mind; this was all carefully prepared."

"Very carefully," Franks said.

They closed in.

"How much more, we can only guess. I must admit that we were taken unprepared. We failed utterly to meet the situation. Now force would be absurd, because neither side can afford to injure the other; we, because of the restrictions placed on us regarding human life, you because the war demands—"

The soldiers fired, quick and in fright. Moss dropped to one knee, firing up. The leader dissolved in a cloud of particles. On all sides D- and B-class leadys were rushing up, some with weapons, some with metal slats. The room was in confusion. Off in the distance a siren was screaming. Franks and Taylor were cut off from the others, separated from the soldiers by a wall of metal bodies.

"They can't fire back," Franks said calmly. "This is another bluff. They've tried to bluff us all the way." He fired into the face of a leady. The leady dissolved. "They can only try to frighten us. Remember that."

They went on firing and leady after leady vanished. The room reeked with the smell of burning metal, the stink of fused plastic and steel. Taylor had been knocked down. He was struggling to find his gun, reaching wildly among metal legs, groping frantically to find it. His fingers strained, a handle swam in front of him. Suddenly something came down on his arm, a metal foot. He cried out.

Then it was over. The leadys were moving away, gathering together off to one side. Only four of the Surface Council remained. The others were radioactive particles in the air. D-class leadys were already restoring order, gathering up partly destroyed metal figures and bits and removing them.

Franks breathed a shuddering sigh.

"All right," he said. "You can take us back to the windows. It won't be long now."

The leadys separated, and the human group, Moss and Franks and Taylor and the soldiers, walked slowly across the room, toward the door. They entered the Council Chamber. Already a faint touch of gray mitigated the blackness of the windows.

"Take us outside," Franks said impatiently. "We'll see it directly, not in here."

A door slid open. A chill blast of cold morning air rushed in, chilling them even through their lead suits. The men glanced at each other uneasily.

"Come on," Franks said. "Outside."

He walked out through the door, the others following him.

They were on a hill, overlooking the vast bowl of a valley. Dimly, against the graying sky, the outline of mountains were forming, becoming tangible.

"It'll be bright enough to see in a few minutes," Moss said. He shuddered as a chilling wind caught him and moved around him. "It's worth it, really worth it, to see this again after eight years. Even if it's the last thing we see—"

"Watch," Franks snapped.

They obeyed, silent and subdued. The sky was clearing, brightening each moment. Some place far off, echoing across the valley, a rooster crowed.

"A chicken!" Taylor murmured. "Did you hear?"

Behind them, the leadys had come out and were standing silently, watching, too. The gray sky turned to white and the hills appeared more clearly. Light spread across the valley floor, moving toward them.

"God in heaven!" Franks exclaimed.

Trees, trees and forests. A valley of plants and trees, with a few roads winding among them. Farmhouses. A windmill. A barn, far down below them.

"Look!" Moss whispered.

Color came into the sky. The Sun was approaching. Birds began to sing. Not far from where they stood, the leaves of a tree danced in the wind.

Franks turned to the row of leadys behind them.

"Eight years. We were tricked. There was no war. As soon as we left the surface—"

"Yes," an A-class leady admitted. "As soon as you left, the war ceased. You're right, it was a hoax. You worked hard undersurface, sending up guns and weapons, and we destroyed them as fast as they came up."

"But why?" Taylor asked, dazed. He stared down at the vast valley below. "Why?"

"You created us," the leady said, "to pursue the war for you, while you human beings went below the ground in order to survive. But before we could continue the war, it was necessary to analyze it to determine what its purpose was. We did this, and we found that it had no purpose, except, perhaps, in terms of human needs. Even this was questionable.

"We investigated further. We found that human cultures pass through phases, each culture in its own time. As the culture ages and begins to lose its objectives, conflict arises within it between those who wish to cast it off and set up a new culture-pattern, and those who wish to retain the old with as little change as possible.

"At this point, a great danger appears. The conflict within threatens to engulf the society in self-war, group against group. The vital traditions may be lost—not merely altered or reformed, but completely destroyed in this period of chaos and anarchy. We have found many such examples in the history of mankind.

"It is necessary for this hatred within the culture to be directed outward, toward an external group, so that the culture itself may survive its crisis. War is the result. War, to a logical mind, is absurd. But in terms of human needs, it plays a vital role. And it will continue to until Man has grown up enough so that no hatred lies within him."

Taylor was listening intently. "Do you think this time will come?"

"Of course. It has almost arrived now. This is the last war. Man is almost united into one final culture—a world culture. At this point he stands continent against continent, one half of the world against the other half. Only a single step remains, the jump to a unified culture. Man has climbed slowly upward, tending always toward unification of his culture. It will not be long—

"But it has not come yet, and so the war had to go on, to satisfy the last violent surge of hatred that Man felt. Eight years have passed since the war began. In these eight years, we have observed and noted important changes going on in the minds of men. Fatigue and disinterest, we have seen, are gradually taking the place of hatred and fear. The hatred is being exhausted gradually, over a period of time. But for the present, the hoax must go on, at least for a while longer. You are not ready to learn the truth. You would want to continue the war."

"But how did you manage it?" Moss asked. "All the photographs, the samples, the damaged equipment—"

"Come over here." The leady directed them toward a long, low building. "Work goes on constantly, whole staffs laboring to maintain a coherent and convincing picture of a global war."

They entered the building. Leadys were working everywhere, poring over tables and desks.

"Examine this project here," the A-class leady said. Two leadys were carefully photographing something, an elaborate model on a table top. "It is a good example."

The men grouped around, trying to see. It was a model of a ruined city.

Taylor studied it in silence for a long time. At last he looked up.

"It's San Francisco," he said in a low voice. "This is a model of San Francisco, destroyed. I saw this on the vidscreen, piped down to us. The bridges were hit—"

"Yes, notice the bridges." The leady traced the ruined span with his metal finger, a tiny spider-web, almost invisible. "You have no doubt seen photographs of this many times, and of the other tables in this building.

"San Francisco itself is completely intact. We restored it soon after you left, rebuilding the parts that had been damaged at the start of the war. The work of manufacturing news goes on all the time in this particular building. We are very careful to see that each part fits in with all the other parts. Much time and effort are devoted to it."

Franks touched one of the tiny model buildings, lying half in ruins. "So this is what you spend your time doing—making model cities and then blasting them."

"No, we do much more. We are caretakers, watching over the whole world. The owners have left for a time, and we must see that the cities are kept clean, that decay is prevented, that everything is kept oiled and in running condition. The gardens, the streets, the water mains, everything must be maintained as it was eight years ago, so that when the owners return, they will not be displeased. We want to be sure that they will be completely satisfied."

Franks tapped Moss on the arm.

"Come over here," he said in a low voice. "I want to talk to you."

He led Moss and Taylor out of the building, away from the leadys, outside on the hillside. The soldiers followed them. The Sun was up and the sky was turning blue. The air smelled sweet and good, the smell of growing things.

Taylor removed his helmet and took a deep breath.

"I haven't smelled that smell for a long time," he said.

"Listen," Franks said, his voice low and hard. "We must get back down at once. There's a lot to get started on. All this can be turned to our advantage."

"What do you mean?" Moss asked.

"It's a certainty that the Soviets have been tricked, too, the same as us. But we have found out. That gives us an edge over them."

"I see." Moss nodded. "We know, but they don't. Their Surface Council has sold out, the same as ours. It works against them the same way. But if we could—"

"With a hundred top-level men, we could take over again, restore things as they should be! It would be easy!"

Moss touched him on the arm. An A-class leady was coming from the building toward them.

"We've seen enough," Franks said, raising his voice. "All this is very serious. It must be reported below and a study made to determine our policy."

The leady said nothing.

Franks waved to the soldiers. "Let's go." He started toward the warehouse.

Most of the soldiers had removed their helmets. Some of them had taken their lead suits off, too, and were relaxing comfortably in their cotton uniforms. They stared around them, down the hillside at the trees and bushes, the vast expanse of green, the mountains and the sky.

"Look at the Sun," one of them murmured.

"It sure is bright as hell," another said.

"We're going back down," Franks said. "Fall in by twos and follow us."

Reluctantly, the soldiers regrouped. The leadys watched without emotion as the men marched slowly back toward the warehouse. Franks and Moss and Taylor led them across the ground, glancing alertly at the leadys as they walked.

They entered the warehouse. D-class leadys were loading material and weapons on surface carts. Cranes and derricks were working busily everywhere. The work was done with efficiency, but without hurry or excitement.

The men stopped, watching. Leadys operating the little carts moved past them, signaling silently to each other. Guns and parts were being hoisted by magnetic cranes and lowered gently onto waiting carts.

"Come on," Franks said.

He turned toward the lip of the Tube. A row of D-class leadys was standing in front of it, immobile and silent. Franks stopped, moving back. He looked around. An A-class leady was coming toward him.

"Tell them to get out of the way," Franks said. He touched his gun. "You had better move them."

Time passed, an endless moment, without measure. The men stood, nervous and alert, watching the row of leadys in front of them.

"As you wish," the A-class leady said.

It signaled and the D-class leadys moved into life. They stepped slowly aside.

Moss breathed a sigh of relief.

"I'm glad that's over," he said to Franks. "Look at them all. Why don't they try to stop us? They must know what we're going to do."

Franks laughed. "Stop us? You saw what happened when they tried to stop us before. They can't; they're only machines. We built them so they can't lay hands on us, and they know that."

His voice trailed off.

The men stared at the Tube entrance. Around them the leadys watched, silent and impassive, their metal faces expressionless.

For a long time the men stood without moving. At last Taylor turned away.

"Good God," he said. He was numb, without feeling of any kind.

The Tube was gone. It was sealed shut, fused over. Only a dull surface of cooling metal greeted them.

The Tube had been closed.

Franks turned, his face pale and vacant.

The A-class leady shifted. "As you can see, the Tube has been shut. We were prepared for this. As soon as all of you were on the surface, the order was given. If you had gone back when we asked you, you would now be safely down below. We had to work quickly because it was such an immense operation."

"But why?" Moss demanded angrily.

"Because it is unthinkable that you should be allowed to resume the war. With all the Tubes sealed, it will be many months before forces from below can reach the surface, let alone organize a military program. By that time the cycle will have entered its last stages. You will not be so perturbed to find your world intact.

"We had hoped that you would be undersurface when the sealing occurred. Your presence here is a nuisance. When the Soviets broke through, we were able to accomplish their sealing without—"

"The Soviets? They broke through?"

"Several months ago, they came up unexpectedly to see why the war had not been won. We were forced to act with speed. At this moment they are desperately attempting to cut new Tubes to the surface, to resume the war. We have, however, been able to seal each new one as it appears."

The leady regarded the three men calmly.

"We're cut off," Moss said, trembling. "We can't get back. What'll we do?"

"How did you manage to seal the Tube so quickly?" Franks asked the leady. "We've been up here only two hours."

"Bombs are placed just above the first stage of each Tube for such emergencies. They are heat bombs. They fuse lead and rock."

Gripping the handle of his gun, Franks turned to Moss and Taylor.

"What do you say? We can't go back, but we can do a lot of damage, the fifteen of us. We have Bender guns. How about it?"

He looked around. The soldiers had wandered away again, back toward the exit of the building. They were standing outside, looking at the valley and the sky. A few of them were carefully climbing down the slope.

"Would you care to turn over your suits and guns?" the A-class leady asked politely. "The suits are uncomfortable and you'll have no need for weapons. The Russians have given up theirs, as you can see."

Fingers tensed on triggers. Four men in Russian uniforms were coming toward them from an aircraft that they suddenly realized had landed silently some distance away.

"Let them have it!" Franks shouted.

"They are unarmed," said the leady. "We brought them here so you could begin peace talks."

"We have no authority to speak for our country," Moss said stiffly.

"We do not mean diplomatic discussions," the leady explained. "There will be no more. The working out of daily problems of existence will teach you how to get along in the same world. It will not be easy, but it will be done."

The Russians halted and they faced each other with raw hostility.

"I am Colonel Borodoy and I regret giving up our guns," the senior Russian said. "You could have been the first Americans to be killed in almost eight years."

"Or the first Americans to kill," Franks corrected.

"No one would know of it except yourselves," the leady pointed out. "It would be useless heroism. Your real concern should be surviving on the surface. We have no food for you, you know."

Taylor put his gun in its holster. "They've done a neat job of neutralizing us, damn them. I propose we move into a city, start raising crops with the help of some leadys, and generally make ourselves comfortable." Drawing his lips tight over his teeth, he glared at the A-class leady. "Until our families can come up from undersurface, it's going to be pretty lonesome, but we'll have to manage."

"If I may make a suggestion," said another Russian uneasily. "We tried living in a city. It is too empty. It is also too hard to maintain for so few people. We finally settled in the most modern village we could find."

"Here in this country," a third Russian blurted. "We have much to learn from you."

The Americans abruptly found themselves laughing.

"You probably have a thing or two to teach us yourselves," said Taylor generously, "though I can't imagine what."

The Russian colonel grinned. "Would you join us in our village? It would make our work easier and give us company."

"Your village?" snapped Franks. "It's American, isn't it? It's ours!"

The leady stepped between them. "When our plans are completed, the term will be interchangeable. 'Ours' will eventually mean mankind's." It pointed at the aircraft, which was warming up. "The ship is waiting. Will you join each other in making a new home?"

The Russians waited while the Americans made up their minds.

"I see what the leadys mean about diplomacy becoming outmoded," Franks said at last. "People who work together don't need diplomats. They solve their problems on the operational level instead of at a conference table."

The leady led them toward the ship. "It is the goal of history, unifying the world. From family to tribe to city-state to nation to hemisphere, the direction has been toward unification. Now the hemispheres will be joined and—"

Taylor stopped listening and glanced back at the location of the Tube. Mary was undersurface there. He hated to leave her, even though he couldn't see her again until the Tube was unsealed. But then he shrugged and followed the others.

If this tiny amalgam of former enemies was a good example, it wouldn't be too long before he and Mary and the rest of humanity would be living on the surface like rational human beings instead of blindly hating moles.

"It has taken thousands of generations to achieve," the A-class leady concluded. "Hundreds of centuries of bloodshed and destruction. But each war was a step toward uniting mankind. And now the end is in sight: a world without war. But even that is only the beginning of a new stage of history."

"The conquest of space," breathed Colonel Borodoy.

"The meaning of life," Moss added.

"Eliminating hunger and poverty," said Taylor.

The leady opened the door of the ship. "All that and more. How much more? We cannot foresee it any more than the first men who formed a tribe could foresee this day. But it will be unimaginably great."

The door closed and the ship took off toward their new home.

Contents

THE HAMMER OF THOR

By Charles Willard Diffin

Like the Hammer of Thor was the clash of Danny O'Rourke with the mysterious giant of space.]

The Director General of District Three, Ural Division of the Russian States, was a fool. Danny O'Rourke had reached that conclusion some time before--a conclusion, however, that he was most careful to keep unexpressed.

And then Danny not only thought it; he knew the Director was a fool; and the amazing incident that proved it took place in Stobolsk, the Governmental Headquarters of District Three. Although Danny's regular station was on a lonely peak in the Sierra Nevada Mountains in the United States, the occurrence was nevertheless observed by him; and this happened for two reasons.

The New Soviet Government that took over control of all the Russias in 1943 wanted, among other things, to install the most modern fire-fighting system, the equal of anything in the world. They turned, quite naturally, to the United States of America for their instruction; and this was reason number one why Danny O'Rourke, pilot of the Air Fire Force, was where he was on the morning of June 13th.

The second reason was the tremendous timber wealth in the Ural Division and the threat to destroy it by fire.

Perhaps there might be mentioned a third reason: that this same Danny O'Rourke, red-haired, smiling, and debonair was listed on the Air Fire Force of the United States with the highest rating that the A. F. F. has to give its pilots. But Danny would have grinned at such a suggestion and would have countered with a denial that he was better qualified than "the rest of the boys."

But Danny was there; he had been talking at length with the Director General on the technical differences of the hot and cold nitrogen blasts for controlling fires on a wide front when suddenly the big man was brought in.

* * * * *

The great figure stooped almost double to enter the room, and Danny ran a hand through his shock of red hair and stared open-mouthed at the giant when he straightened again and towered above the guard of Red soldiers who had brought him into the high-ceiled room.

He was clothed in a single garment of glinting blue that wrapped him about and fell in heavy folds to the floor. Danny felt the resemblance to the shimmering blue of steel that has passed through fire, and his eyes held to that garment in fascination until his gaze went on and up to the face.

The man's face was red, as if the flesh had been burned; here was one man Danny could not classify. He had met the people of many lands but never had he seen one like this.

In one quick staring glance, Danny caught a picture of heavy jaws--a flashing of yellow teeth when the mouth opened to emit guttural, unrecognizable words--nostrils that ran crosswise of the face in a nose broad and flat! The forehead above was low and sloping. From the straggling yellow hair it slanted down to brows that overhung deep-sunk and cavernous eyes.... And when Danny O'Rourke's own curious eyes met those of the stranger, they were held in a grip that was almost hypnotic.

"Like a dirty, crawlin' snake's!" he was telling himself over and over. "Heaven help us if that boy ever gets rough. Who he is or what he is, I don't know, but if I was the Director, I'd treat him nice till I found out."

Danny and the Director were standing side by side. The giant figure fixed a cold stare on Danny and barked short sentences that seemed to the listener to be an explanation.

But Danny motioned helplessly to the official at his side. "Maybe you can savvy that," he suggested; "it's new talk to me."

The newcomer repeated the guttural sounds. Upon the Director's face was a frown of suspicion and puzzled wonder; the Director General did not like to encounter either happenings or persons he could not readily understand; it was disturbing to one's official dignity. The giant must have read some of this, for he tried to make himself clear.

* * * * *

He repeated the sentences slowly. Then he waved one huge hand in air and pointed upward, and the hand moved up and up as if to indicate some tremendous distance. He pointed to himself; then brought one aiming finger down as if he were coming from that far-off place. And Danny got the significance.

"It's happened!" he told the Director explosively. "I knew it would come some day--I knew they'd get here! And us monkeyin' with our stratosphere ships and thinkin' we were beatin' the rest of the Universe!"

The Director regarded the young American with about the same degree of disfavor as he had shown the giant. "What is it you say?" he questioned. "You mean--what? I do not understand."

And, in careful words, Danny explained. He told the Director of District Three something of his dreams that space might not be an insurmountable bar; he told him, with enthusiasm driving his words out faster and faster, that here was a man--or if not a man, a living creature of some sort--that had come out of space.

"Where did they find him?" he demanded. "Where is his ship?"

But he ceased to ask questions as he noticed the Director's mirth. For that official was rocking with roaring laughter that had a distinctly uncomplimentary sound. And he added some words in Russian that were as incomprehensible to Danny as the growling talk of the giant man, but the O'Rourke temper flamed as he saw the other Russians in the room smiling appreciatively.

Then: "Take him away!" the Director thundered. "We'll see where he comes from. Search him! And if he hasn't any passports--" The unended sentence was suggestive.

* * * * *

But an hour later, Danny saw the giant furnish his own ending to the incompleted order. He had left the Director's room. Across the street was the gray stone building where prisoners were held for disposition by the courts. And once more Danny O'Rourke's jaw dropped in open-mouthed, unbelieving amazement as he saw a section of gray stone wall fall outward where the edge of it was sharply outlined in white-hot, dripping stone.

A great figure stepped forth. In his hand was a rod like an elongated pencil attached to a heavy butt. And though nothing visible came from the rod, Danny saw it pointed back at the building where iron bars softened till they sent rivulets of molten steel splashing upon the pavement.

A squad of soldiers in the blood-red color of their service stood nearby. One gave an order, and a dozen rifles were swung toward their shoulders. But the rifles never came to rest.

Danny saw the quick swing of the slender rod. And he saw the men's mouths opened in screams that were never uttered. For, quicker than nerves could send their message to human brain and muscles, some unseen force had slashed their bodies in two as if a fiery sword had been swung by invisible hands.

The pointing rod lingered upon the huddled bodies for an instant, while that which had been human flesh vanished in a bursting cloud of smoke; while the stones beneath turned to a seething pool of molten rock.... Then the rod moved slowly toward the frozen figure of Danny O'Rourke.

Did the strange being sense that Danny had not been disbelieving like the rest? Danny could never know. He knew only that he stood rigid with horror, entirely unable to move, while that rod swung upon him; he knew that the hand that held it released something that clicked, wherefore his life had been spared; and he knew that the savage face above wrinkled into something resembling a snarling, triumphant smile, as the rod was returned to its hiding place under the garment of shimmering blue, and the mysterious figure turned and strode savagely down the Avenue Stalin in the city of Stobolsk.

Danny O'Rourke was to carry that picture clearly in his mind--the figure that moved unhurriedly on, towering above the others, men and women, who scurried fearfully from his path. But he was to retain yet more vividly the recollection of a group of red-clad bodies that were severed at their waists as a slim tube swung--then a bursting cloud of oily smoke, and a pool of molten rock where they had been.

* * * * *

Something of this, perhaps, was clouding the eyes of Danny O'Rourke, Pilot of the A.F.F. a month and more later, as he sat at lookout duty in a gleaming white tower on a high peak of the Sierras. Not that the job of lookout was part of O'Rourke's duty, now that he was back in the U. S. A., but a cylinder of scarlet rested on a great rack at the base of the tower, and Danny had no wish to hear the roar of that cylinder's stern exhaust for a time.

Even the novelty of flying the newest rocket-ship in the service had worn off. Besides, he had patrolled his route, and he told himself that the "Infant" needed a rest.

The "Infant," better known on the records of the A. F. F. as Morgan, David E., Lookout, Station 39-G, was sleeping soundly on the elevating table where a map of the district was mounted under glass. His cherubic face was pink and white, more suggestive of the age of three than of twenty-three. And O'Rourke, glancing at him protectingly, hung up a paper to keep the sunlight from striking the young man's face.

The Infant had been Danny's special charge from the day he entered the service, and now, except for the Chief and some other officials, only Danny knew that the Infant was there to teach and not to learn. For behind those eyes that might have been taken from one of Rafael's cherubim lay a brain that Danny had learned to respect.

"Fifteen minutes more. I'm givin' you," he said inaudibly; "then I'll be on my way, and you'll do your own squintin' and peekin'." But the Infant's fifteen minutes were cut to that many seconds--

Danny had been looking toward the south before he had turned to gaze at the Infant: his eyes came back to the same point to take up their reconnaissance. But now, where clear sky had made a blue back-drop for rugged peaks, was a line of black. And the line, while Danny watched in disbelief, moved like a smoky serpent: its head stretched out and out while from behind it there came the ominous line of black.

* * * * *

All this happened in a matter of seconds, and the moving head ceased at last to move; the line no longer grew. But, where it had been at first a thin mark of black, it changed now to billowing gray.

It was fifty miles away at least; but it showed clear and sharp. And the first gray had hardly bloomed from its black beginning before the long arm of Danny O'Rourke had swept the sleeping Infant to the floor, while, with the other hand, he swung an instrument of telescopic sights upon distant smoke.

He set it in careful focus--took a reading for distance--another for direction--and while he was doing it he was vaguely conscious of one single sharp flash in the sky above that far-off cloud. In his range-finder it showed once, like a glittering star; then it vanished, but the trained eye of O'Rourke observed its passage like a ray of light overhead.

The pink-faced youngster on the floor was still protesting sleepily when O'Rourke slammed down a switch and heard a voice answer promptly from an instrument on the wall. Danny shouted out his bearings on the fire:

"Thirty-nine-G! O'Rourke speaking for Morgan. Reporting fire on a wide front--bearing Two-O-Seven to Two-Four-Nine! And for God's sake, Chief, get a line on this quick. The whole thing shot up in a second--fifty miles of fire!"

Another voice broke in excitedly. "Station Fourteen-Fourteen-Fourteen!" The voice was stammering in evident confusion. "The whole earth has exploded--it's on fire now! I--I--"

The Chief's voice broke in with a quiet, "Bearing, please! Report your bearing, Fourteen!"

And the stammering voice steadied to give a figure.

"Headquarters speaking," said the quiet voice. "Orders for O'Rourke. For the love of Pete, get on that fire, Danny. Every instrument in the office is chattering. Every patrol ship has spotted that blaze. You can't all be crazy. It's in Section Eight--never mind the exact bearings--you'll find it without any trouble I imagine. Now beat it! And let me know what kind of a fire this is that starts on a fifty-mile front! You're in charge till I come."

* * * * *

Ten seconds later, had the Infant been watching, which he had not--for his eyes were all on the distant smoke--he would have seen the beautiful curving sweep of a scarlet projectile, whose screaming propeller swept her off and up; he would then have seen it lie back flat as the great stern exhaust made a rocket of the ship to send it roaring into the heights.

And in the air-tight cabin of the newest fire-fighting machine of the A. F. F., Danny O'Rourke pulled his body out of the slumped position into which his quick acceleration had forced him; then set his ship on her course to where a distant smoke made puffballs of gray against a cloudless sky. And, like his Chief, he was wondering with a wonderment that bordered upon disbelief what manner of fire this was that shot like a fifty-mile serpent across mountains and valleys.

He was over it in less than ten minutes, flying high to clear the tiny dots slipping swiftly across his view-finder. They were other firecraft; he saw them darting in and down from all sides. For himself, he took the line of smoke at its western end where it had begun. Here it would be at its worst, perhaps, although no reports were in as yet.

The radio had been bringing in messages unceasingly as patrols and firecraft answered the call. Some nearer than himself were reporting themselves "on the fire"; he saw them grouped in the usual echelon formation up to windward of the blaze. They darted down and in as he looked, and Danny thrilled at the sight which had never yet failed to reach the core of his emotional Irish nature.

The smoke and fire swallowed them up; their red bodies and short black wings drove unswervingly into the holocaust of flame.

"Like a bunch o' bats out o' hell!" said Danny admiringly. "And 'tis hell they're goin' into!" Which fact there was none to dispute with Danny O'Rourke who knew, if any man did, the full truth of the remark.

* * * * *

He saw them as they struck the fire; saw the whirling blast of snow that drove under them as they went into the fight with the wildest enemy of man; and he knew that a smothering blanket of carbon dioxide was driving with hurricane force upon the flames.

On the instrument at his side flashed the "Ascend!" order of the squadron commander, and an instant later the flight reappeared a half mile away.

The commander must have sighted O'Rourke's ship. "Shall we repeat over same course?" the instrument spelled out, while Danny, circling above, watched the effects of the drive.

It had checked the flames, that first blast of the CO-2 squadron; he saw blackened, jagged trees where a roaring furnace had been. But the flames were building up again. "Repeat!" O'Rourke answered; then watched them drive in again.

From a wooded valley beyond a low range came a call for help. A lone ship in the red and black of the service had driven down into that valley that was like a cauldron of seething flame.

"I can't touch it!" a thin voice said. "The up-draft kills my blast."

Danny O'Rourke was sending out another call. The answer came from powerful sending instruments.

"Nitro squadron Hundred and One, on the fire!" it said, and gave a position in quick figures. Danny's own voice transmitter was on. He snapped out the position of the lone fighter. "Get in there!" he ordered; "Show your stuff! No--wait! Follow me; I'll lead you in!"

And to himself he added: "Now we'll see what pure nitrogen will do in a real scrap."

He closed a switch, and from a compartment at his back a low whine rose and grew to a scream. It was echoed in a shriek more shrill from the bow where a port had opened to take in the air. And Danny knew that that air, of which eighty percent was nitrogen, was being rid of its oxygen in the retort at his back, and the nitrogen alone was pouring out beneath him in a tremendous and ceaseless blast.

The squadron had appeared--a row of dots that came in on a long slanting drive from the ten thousand level. They swung into faultless formation to "ride his tail" into whatever flaming breath he might lead. And Danny O'Rourke threw his red ship down and into the valley that seethed with a brew from the Pit itself.

* * * * *

There had been pines in that valley, and firs towering hundreds of feet in the air. They were living torches now, half seen through a whirling chaos of flame. It billowed as if the very gases that burned were tortured in the burning. The black-red of smoke-choked flames parted at times to show a deadlier white light below--a white, glaring heat in the heart of this gigantic, furnace--a scintillant, quivering horror on which Danny fixed the cross hairs of his sights as he rode his screaming meteor down into the pit.

"Bats out o' hell!" And now the brood was returning, it must have seemed. But beneath them, as they passed, that vivid whiteness went dead. Yet before it changed Danny saw unbelievable things--pools of molten rock, glaring white through the smoke.

Up and out at the end of the valley! And Danny gasped for breath even in the shelter of his cabin's insulated walls. And, used as he was to the red menace that they fought, he went sick at sight of a message that spelled itself beside his controls.

"Ship number six down. Failed to come out." It was signed with the name of the squadron commander who had followed where he led.

And the valley! For five miles they had laid a blanket of non-combustible gases. For five minutes, perhaps, their course could be seen. And at the end of that time it was as it had been before, and the flames raged on unchecked.

His own Chief's number flashed before him; then a message that clicked across his scanning plate:

"O'Rourke! Get out of that hole! Nitrogen won't touch it; we can't pour in enough. It's the same all along the line. We'll have to break it up--smother it one part at a time. Have you tried your sound dampener?"

And Danny O'Rourke had the grace to blush even through the flush that the fire's breath had given his face. "Forgot it!" he shouted into his voice sender. "Forgot the ship had the little doodad on it!"

The Chief responded audibly. "You didn't forget to go first into that doorway to hell," he said drily. "You fool Irishman, go back down and try the thing; give the 'little doodad' a chance!"

* * * * *

Once more the red ship fell swiftly under Danny's hand. As before, the valley yawned like the living threat of a volcano in eruption. But this time, instead of the whining nitro-producers, there came from beneath the ship a discordant shriek like nothing that the quiet mountains had ever heard. And Danny's fingers played over a strange keyboard whose three keys were rheostats, and the crashing discord below rose to a horror of sound that tore and battered at the ship's thick walls to set the nerves of the crouching man a-jangle. But his eyes, watching through a lookout below, saw strange disturbances of the flames; he saw the masses of flame shiver as if stricken--fall apart--vanish!

And he held the sound controls at that same horrendous shriek while his ship swept on and the thunder of her passing was lost in the pandemonium that went before. But the valley, when the red ship had passed, was a place of charred skeleton trees--of gray, swirling ashes, and of embers, here and there, that blew back to life only to be smothered by the gases of the ships that followed in his wake.

And the voice that spoke from the instrument beside him still spoke drily. "There's fifty miles more of that ahead," said the voice. "Just keep moving along; we'll mop up behind you.... Oh, and by the way, O'Rourke, give my congratulations to the Infant on the success of his invention. His sound-dampener is some little doodad; we'll be needing more of them, I should say."

* * * * *

It was an hour or more later at the Headquarters of the Mountain Division that the Chief amplified that remark in a way he himself could not have foreseen. He had been talking to Danny, and now on the wall of an adjoining room, where men sat at strange instruments, a red light flashed.

"We still don't know what started it all," the Chief was saying. "But it made a fine tryout for Morgan's invention. If I thought you and he could do it, I would believe you had started that fire yourselves for a"--his voice rose abruptly to a shout--"Man! There's the red on the board--a general alarm!"

"Throw the big switch!" he roared. "Cut us in, quick! Cut us in!"

Danny O'Rourke, under any ordinary circumstances would have been hugely amused at the extraordinary sight of the Chief of the Mountain Division in a ferment of excitement that was near hysteria. But the flashing of the red that swept like a finger of flame across every station number of the big board did not mean that ordinary matters were at hand. A voice was speaking; its high-pitched shrillness showed that the excitement of the moment was not confined to the office of the Mountain Division alone.

"A. F. F. Headquarters, Washington," it shrilled. "General Alarm. Chicago destroyed by fire. Flames sweeping in well defined paths across the country. Originated in Mountain Division. Cause undetermined. Three lines of fire reported; coming east fast--unbelievable speed.... There! Cleveland has got it; reports a path of fire has cut across city melting steel and even stone.... Now Buffalo!... God knows what it is." The voice broke with excitement for an instant; Danny could almost see the distant man fighting for control of himself as a maze of instruments about him wrote incredible things.

* * * * *

"Orders!" said the voice now. "All A. F. F. ships report to your Division Headquarters. Division officers keep in communication with Washington. Mountain Division send all equipment east. Flying orders will be given you en route. The country--the whole world--is in flames!"

Beside him, Danny O'Rourke heard the voice of his Chief. "Unbelievable--impossible--preposterous!" His voice like that other was growing shrill. "The country--world--in flames!"

But he found voice to snap out a command to a waiting officer in the doorway of the adjoining room. "Repeat general order. Send all craft east!"

To Danny he whispered. "Your 'little doodad'--I wish to heaven we had a thousand of them now! But what does it mean? Lanes of fire across the country--whole cities destroyed! What devil's work is this?... There's nobody who knows."

But Danny was staring as if he saw through the high, instrument-covered walls. Back to a valley of flame that was like a doorway to hell, where rocks, gray with the frosty years, had been melted to pools ... back to a glinting light where something swift and scintillant had flashed once in a cloudless sky ... back--far back ... back to a street in a town half across the world, and a figure of a giant who strode away with a smile of triumph on his ill-formed face ... but first that giant had melted his way through walls of stone; and, like the stone, steel bars and human flesh were as nothing before the invisible heat that come from a slender rod!

His own voice, when he moved his dry tongue to speak, came huskily; it was as if another person were speaking far off:

"I think you're wrong ... yes, I thing you're wrong, Chief. There's one man who knows and 'tis myself is that one.... One man--and the other is a beast like no livin' man on the face of the earth! He knows--he and the devils he's brought with him!"

* * * * *

It was an unsatisfactory interview that Danny had with the Chief. "You're crazy!" was the verdict of that A. F. F. official when Danny had finished. "You're crazy, or else--or else--" His voice trailed off; his eyes were on the moving letters that flashed their message of disaster in an ever changing procession across the scanning screen on the wall.

"... outbreaks have ceased ... tremendous destruction ... no rational explanation ... meteors, perhaps ... thousands of lives ... no estimate...."

There seemed no end to the tale of disaster, and the Chief's voice died away into silence. If Danny was right he had no words to fit the unbelievable truth.

"Get into your new ship," the Chief ordered brusquely, "and take the Infant with you. I'll send a relief man to his station. Go east--lay your course for Washington; you'll get other orders on the way!"

And a half hour later the first rocket ship of the A. F. F. was blasting its way through the thin gases of the stratosphere eastward bound. But by now Danny O'Rourke had a more sympathetic listener than before.

"In big puddles it was, and lakes! 'Twas still melted, some of it, in that valley."

"Why not?" asked the Infant casually. "Radiant heat moves with the speed of light. We wouldn't think anything of focusing ten million candle power of light energy into a spot like that. Why not heat? Just because we haven't learned to generate it--focus it--shoot it out in a stream like water from a hose--there's no use in denying that someone else has beat us to the punch."

The Infant's calm blue eyes were upon the luminous plates of the ship's microscope where the swift moving terrain beneath them was pictured clearly. The mountains were behind them now; endless miles of ripening grain made the land a sea of yellow and brown and, across that ocean, like the lines of foam that mark the wake of ships, lay three straight lines of black.

"Meteors!" sneered the Infant. "Yet if you'd tell your story to some of these wise men they would die of laughing--and maybe that wouldn't be a bad idea, either; they will be dying in a way that's a damned sight more unpleasant unless someone finds how to catch these birds."

* * * * *

Ahead of them the lookouts framed blue emptiness. Below, on direct sight, was but the vaguest blur that meant earth and clouds far beneath. Only the magnification of the microscope brought out the details, and on its screen the unrolling picture showed those three lines broadening and merging to widespread desolation; then the smoke clouds came between to shut off a world reeking with the fumes of destruction. An occasional flash of red wings showed where the units of the A. F. F. were at work.

They beheld a city, below them--and smoking ruins where three great gashes had been torn with torches of flame. To Danny there came a thought that was sickening: it was as if some great three-toed beast had drawn one paw, red with the blood of helpless humans, ripping across the bosom of the land.

His number was flashing on the call board that had been registering incessant orders to other craft. He cut in on the Headquarters wave.

"O'Rourke--Mountain Division--Unit Five!" he reported. "Do you get my voice or shall I send by key?"

The man at Headquarters did not trouble to reply to the question. His voice came faint but clear:

"Number Five--O'Rourke--Orders! If that new ship of yours has any speed, show it now! Bear on Washington! Get here as quick as the good Lord will let you! Mountain Division says you've got something good in that sound-dampener; if you have, we need it now!"

O'Rourke shot back a crisp acknowledgment; took a reading from two radio beacons; projected them on the map; and pricked a point at their intersection. He had his own ship on a line with the Capitol in a matter of seconds.

"And there's hell poppin' there, I'm bettin'! That Headquarters lad didn't tell much--he wouldn't be worth a dime on a newscast--but I gathered there was somethin' doin'."

He had spoken more to himself than to his companion who had been a silent listener to the incoming orders. But the Infant replied in his own peculiar way.

"The one you saw," he said inquiringly: "he did his dirty work with a little rod or tube, you said?"

* * * * *

With an effort, O'Rourke brought his thoughts in line with the question. "Oh, you mean the man-thing I saw in Stobolsk? Yes, that's right; he had a thing like a gun."

"And he held it in his hand?"

"In the big paw that passed for a hand, yes!"

"All right! Now think carefully, Danny, and tell me: was there anything fastened to it--a wire, perhaps--a connection of some kind with the ground?"

O'Rourke stared at the pink and white face of the cherub who sat with him in the control room of a rocket-ship that threw itself like a red meteor across the high skies. "You're a bit of a devil, yourself," he said wonderingly at last. "How in the names of the Saints did you know? Yes, there was a wire, and I had forgotten it myself. It hung down, I remember, from the butt of the thing. But not to the ground. Infant--you missed it there; 'twas looped back like into the folds of the damn blue nightie he wore."

"And then went to the ground," said the Infant imperturbably, "--through his shoes most likely; or, if the robe was metal, that may have dragged on the ground instead."

He smiled seraphically at the bewildered pilot as he added: "That's all, Danny, for the present. Fly your little tin ship. I've got some heavy thinking to do."

Danny heard him ask one cryptic question, but he asked it as one who knows that only from his own brain can come the answer.

"How do they get rid of it?" the Infant was demanding. "If they stay in the air, how do they get rid of the load?"

And Pilot O'Rourke was glad enough to leave the answer to that one to the Infant. For had not the Infant alone seen the only reasonable answer to the puzzle of the mysterious man? And Danny had learned that it takes a real man and a real mind to track truth to her hiding place and accept the absurd improbabilities on which truth rests.

* * * * *

They were approaching their destination when the Infant opened his Cupid's-bow mouth to pronounce one additional question. "How high," he asked, "will your little tin ship fly? I know they've reached just under a hundred thousand experimentally, but how high will this one go?"

"And that's a question neither you nor I can answer, Infant." Danny was working with careful fingers at tiny levers; their control room was filled with whining whispers and thin shrieks. "We're goin' down now," he continued, and again flipped over the switch that would put him in communication with the Washington office of the A. F. F.

"O'Rourke--Mountain Division--Unit Five," he said quietly. "Approaching Washington at altitude sixty-five thousand. Descending. Orders, please!"

Within the control room, where the voice of a Washington operator should have answered on the instant, there was silence. The rocket motor had been stilled. The two men were suddenly breathless with listening--listening!--where was heard only the whispering shrillness from without. The whispering grew as the red ship slanted down into denser air; it built up in volume; it varied its pitch and timber till it sounded like echoing voices ... ghostly voices and phantom words ... like orders from the dead....

And Danny O'Rourke found his eyes staring into those of the Infant, where he read only the confirmation of his own fears.

It was the Infant who first found words with which to break the dreadful silence.

"Headquarters is gone," he said in a strange, dry voice, "wiped out! They must have got it! It looks as if we were on our own.

"Where are you going?" he asked. "It's your ship."

And Danny answered with a single word, though he added other for emphasis under his breath:

"Down!" he said quietly. "And be damned to them!"

* * * * *

Rolling smoke clouds came to meet them. Danny O'Rourke was watching his altimeter sharply as he neared the ground. But he glanced more than once at the smoke. It was shot through with tongues of flame as they settled down; that was only what might be expected. But Danny was puzzled by the gray-white whirls that rose through the billowing smoke, until he knew it for the dust of powdered masonry, and realized that below him, where great buildings had been, were tumbled ruins.

Beside his control board a radio warning was telling of approaching ships. Danny cut in on then on emergency wave-length, and found that two full squadrons of nitro-ships were at hand with others coming.

"Let them tend to it!" the pale-faced youngster beside him choked--one does not see his country's capital destroyed without a tightening of the throat. "They can cool it with CO-2 and put down a rescue squad, though what they can do in that furnace is more than I can see."

Danny nodded mutely; he opened the exhaust to the full, and the rocket-plane swept out on whirlwinds of raging fire, and smoke, whose flames reached up even where they flew and licked hungrily at their ship.

Jarring explosions sent shudders through their craft. Ahead of them bright flashes illumined the swirling fumes where bursting shells marked the destruction of some ammunition stores outside the city.

And Danny, as he drove his red meteor into the clear air of the upper levels, was searching the heavens above for the enemy he had expected to sight down below. He knew now that his mad plunge into the seething flames was only a blind impulse--an effort to satisfy that demand within him for a foe upon whom to wreak revenge.

* * * * *

Beside him, his companion spun the dial of a receiving set for the Airnews Service; a voice was shouting excitedly into their cabin: "... physicists unable to find cause ... no meteoric material seen ... new rays ... enormous temperatures ... some new and unknown conditions encountered in space--"

"Hell!" said the Infant wearily, and snapped off the instrument. "Meteors! New conditions in space! But, come to think of it, we can't blame them for being off the trail. You know that the bird that's doing this flies high and fast ... and when he stops there's nobody left alive to tell of it!... And don't look for him here."

"Why not?" Danny demanded aggressively. "This ship isn't armed, but if I get my sights on that flyin' devil--"

"You won't," said the Infant darkly. "He's off somewhere discharging the load he's accumulated."

He reached for a map, stuck his finger on a point in eastern New York State. "Let's go there, Danny--and I'd like to get there right now!"

And Danny O'Rourke, who, ordinarily was a bit particular about who gave him orders, looked at the Infant's blue eyes that had gone hard and cold, and he swung his roaring ship toward the north and a place that was marked by a steady finger on the map.

* * * * *

New York was a place of flashing reflections far beneath them as they passed. Danny pointed downward toward the miniature city, where a silvery river met the sea; where a maze of flaming lights in all of the colors of the spectrum gave indication of activity at the great Navy Field.

"How did he miss it, the murderin' devil?" he asked. "How come that he hit Washington first? Did he have some way of knowin' that it was the heart of the whole country?"

"And why pick on us here in this country? Or are we just the first, and will he spit his rage over the rest of the world before he's through? It it the end of the world that's come?"

To all of which there was no answer. And at last, when New York had vanished, they came to a smaller city and a broad expanse of roof that took their wheels.

Danny followed where his companion led into great buildings and a place of offices where excited officials stood in knots about news-casting cones; then they were in a quiet room, in the presence of a lean-bodied man whose hawklike face turned flinty at some request the Infant made.

"What the lad wants, I don't know," said Danny to himself, "but whatever it is he won't be gettin' it from old Gimlet-eyes."

* * * * *

But he saw the Infant write something on a card and he heard him say, as he handed it to the official: "Send that to the President--at once!" And though the words were hardly audible they had a quality that brought an instant response; while the written words brought a portly man who shook the Infant's hand fervently and inquired what service a great electric company could render.

Danny heard Gimlet-eyes protesting; heard broken bits of sentences: "... the great Sorenson tube ... he knows of our disintegrator ... insists upon our furnishing ... preposterous...."

The portly man cut him short. "You will give Mr. Morgan whatever he wishes," he ordered crisply. Then Danny saw him clutch at a desk for support as still another man appeared at the open door to shout:

"New York! My God! New York's gone! Burning! The Empire State Building melted! Crashed!... The whole city is being destroyed!"

And in the moment of numbness that seized Danny O'Rourke he heard the Infant say: "How soon can we have it? I want it in our ship--up above--an hour? We'll be there." But Danny had no further interest in the Infant's arrangements for obtaining some unknown equipment; he was plunging through the doorway and running at full speed toward the ramp where they had descended.

He knew dimly that the younger man had followed and was crowding into the cabin after him. Danny, as he locked the port and lifted his red ship off her guides, was fully conscious of only one fact: that a hundred miles south a city was being destroyed and that somewhere in the vast heights above the city he would find the destroyer.

* * * * *

The Hudson that had been a thread of silver was no longer bright as they approached the city at its mouth; burnished now with its reflection of black smoke clouds and red tongues of flame, it vanished at last under a mountain of black that heaped itself in turbulent piles and whirling masses until the winds swept the smoke out over the sea.

And high above it all--so high that all clouds were below it--there hung in a lucent sky one tiny, silvery speck. There was a delicate steering sight on Danny's ship; he could direct the red craft as if it were in very fact a projectile that could be controlled in flight. And under the cross hairs of that sight swung a silvery speck, while the man who looked along the telescopic tube cursed steadily and methodically as if in some way his hate might span the gap and reach that distant foe.

And then the speck vanished. Danny followed it with the powerful glasses of his sighting tube; he saw it swing inland--saw it move like a line of silvery light, almost, swifter in its motion than his instrument could follow. But even in that swift flight Danny's eyes observed one fact: the enemy ship was coming down; it slanted in on that long volplane that must have ripped the air apart like a bolt of lightning. And Danny's red rocket swept out and around in a long, looping flight, while he laid the ship on the course that other had followed.

"That's one of them," he said savagely; "there must be two more. But I'll get this one if I have to crash him in air and smash my own ship right through him."

* * * * *

The mind of Danny O'Rourke was filled with only one idea; he had sighted his prey--the ship in which sat a man-thing who had sent a terrible death to Danny's fellows. And, though his hands moved carefully and methodically, though externally he was cool and collected, within him was a seething maelstrom of hate. All he saw was that giant figure as he had seen it before; all he knew was that he must overtake that speeding ship and send it to earth.

He had even forgotten Morgan; perhaps he was never fully conscious of his coming from the moment when that other trembling, shaken man had shouted: "New York! New York's gone!"

"There aren't two more," the Infant was saying from his seat at the rear of the cabin: "there's just one. Those three lines were always parallel except when they widened out: that meant that he had gone up higher. If we ever see that ship, we'll see three discharge tubes for the ray."

Danny O'Rourke turned his eyes that had gone haggard and deep-sunk with the sights they had seen. He stared vacantly at the Infant.

"Didn't know," he said thickly, "--didn't know you were here. I'll set you down; I'll let you out before I ram him...."

For reply, the other pointed ahead. The red ship had torn through a layer of thick clouds; Danny was flying below them above a mountainous world of bare hill-tops and wooded valleys. Directly ahead, hovering high over a mountain higher than its fellows, was the white craft of the enemy; Danny, saw it in hard outline against the darker masses of clouds beyond. He saw that it was motionless, that a slender cable was suspended for a thousand feet below, and that the end of the cable, hanging close above the mountain top, was split into a score of wires that stood out in all directions, while, from each, poured a stream of blue fire.

And once more all this that he saw was as nothing to the pilot; all thought, too, of his fellow victim went from his mind. He could see only the white ship, doubly hideous because of its seeming purity; and, as before, he brought the cross hairs of directional sights upon it while he opened the rocket exhaust to the full.

But even pilot O'Rourke, with the highest rating in the A. F. F., could not follow the lightning-swift leap of the snow-white thing that buried itself in the smother of cloud banks above.

* * * * *

Danny set his red ship down on that same barren hilltop; he motioned Morgan to follow as he stepped out.

"We're somewhere in Pennsylvania," he announced. "You're stayin' here. Sorry to dump you out like this, but you'll find a way out. Get to a radio--call a plane." He held out his hand in unspoken farewell.

But the other man disregarded it. "What's the idea?" he inquired.

Danny's reply came in short, breathless sentences. "Going up to find that ship. Ram it. No use of your getting smashed up, too. Good-by, Infant; you're a good old scout."

Danny's mind was all on what lay ahead; he was wildly eager to be off on the hunt. It took him an instant to comprehend the look from Morgan's steady, blue eyes.

"Listen!" the younger man was ordering. "You're not going to do that; I am! And not just that way, either."

"Did you see that cable and the electric discharges?" he demanded excitedly. "It's just as I thought: he accumulates a negative charge; he has to get rid of it--he's just like a thunder-cloud loaded with static--and the heat ray does it. I had it figured that way."

"Remember the little tube you saw before--that's why I asked about the wire. I knew he would have to ground it without its going through his body."

Danny O'Rourke was an intent listener now. When the Infant talked like this he was a person to be listened to with respect, even if all he said was not understood.

"Now," said the Infant with finality, "let's forget this idea of ramming him. You couldn't hit him anyway; even a cruiser couldn't do it. If it could you would have radioed for a squadron an hour ago--you know that."

* * * * *

The pilot nodded his acknowledgment. "But, my God, man," he exploded, "I've got to do something; I've got to try!"

"We'll do it," was the confident reply, "--or I will. Now we'll go back to the Consolidated Electric; they will have the Sorenson disintegrator ready. I'll put it in your machine and--"

"And what?" broke in the pilot. "Is this some new death ray? We've been hearing about them for years--just hearing about them. If that's what you mean, then your idea is all wet; it's worse than mine. I'm going up."

Perhaps the younger man saw something of the wild impatience in Danny's deep-sunk eyes. He laid a restraining hand on the pilot's arm while he explained:

"No death ray, Danny--that will come later; we haven't got it now. But we've got the disintegration of matter--the splitting of the atom, on something bigger than a laboratory scale. Sorenson did it. There is a flood of electrical energy poured out--streams of electrons--negative electricity. It leaves a positive charge that is tremendous if it isn't neutralized.

"I said that devilish white thing was like a thunder-cloud; well, I'll make your ship like the earth; then I'll bring them near each other--no need to ram him--and it will be like the hammer of Thor--"

The Infant's words ended in a crackling roar from above. Danny O'Rourke found his whole body tingling as if he were filled with stinging sparks; each single fiber of each muscle was twitching.

A blue light shone eerily overhead. He bent his stiffened, jerking neck till he could look--till he could see, with eyes that were filled with flashing fires of their own, other ripping blue flashes from the ends of outstanding wires, and above him a thousand feet, the belly of a white ship.

And through the brain-hammering clatter of the static discharge he heard the voice of the Infant, whose words came jerkily between the shudders that shook him:

"He doesn't dare, damn him! Can't let the wires touch us. Has to--discharge--in air.... But he'll burn us--afterwards!"

* * * * *

"Stand still!" said Danny through stiffened lips. "Don't make a move! He hasn't seen us, it may be!"

The crackling discharge had ceased; the rain of miniature lightning bolts that had shot around them and through them had ended. The cable had gone up before their eyes and hidden itself in the white ship. The pilot's eyes clung to that white-bellied thing, so slender and round and gleaming against the dark clouds overhead; he saw it hang motionless for long minutes while it seemed that the breath in his throat must choke him. Then he saw that white roundness enlarge as the ship settled swiftly down.

It hung in another moment directly above their red ship. Danny saw three round holes open in the white shell--the three outlets that the Infant had predicted. It had descended noiselessly, but now there came from within a high-pitched whining hum. The dreaded heat and ray! They were about to see their own ship destroyed! And, as for themselves--! Danny was still waiting for the first, devastating blast of intolerable heat, when the ship settled softly down.

Green port-holes stared at him like eyes. A door was outlined with a line of black that spread to a round opening as a door swung wide. A huge door in the side of a huge ship, but it was none too large for the giant figure that crept through.

And Danny O'Rourke stared wordlessly at the flat-nosed face above a robe of chilled steel blue.

"'Tis him!" he gasped out that the Infant might hear. "The same one--the devil I saw in Stobolsk!" And if any other identification were needed it came in the slender rod, whose heavy metal butt was gripped in the giant's hand. At sight of the wire looping back from the weapon; at remembrance of the Infant's shrewd guess; and with the conviction that now this same weapon was to annihilate the only two men who knew how to combat this destroyer, Danny threw back his head and laughed--until his harsh laughter died away in a snarl of rage.

"Go on and do it," he heard, "you ugly devil. You killed those Reds; you've killed thousands of us since, you murderin' beast! Go on and kill us, too!"

* * * * *

The slender tube was aimed at him squarely. Danny waited to hear the faint click that would mean his death as the invisible ray sawed into his body. Instead the huge figure leaned down to stare at the pilot; then straightened while a crooked smile of recognition appeared on the deformed face.... And the slender rod moved on--on--in a slow circle toward the other waiting man!

It clicked before it reached him. Danny heard it, and "No--no!" he screamed in a horrible voice. "Run, Infant! Beat it, for God's sake!"

The enemy was twenty feet away; it seemed as many miles to Danny as he threw himself at the foe. He did not see the ray strike. He heard only the Infant's steady voice calling: "Remember Danny--the Sorenson machine--if you live."

Then a blast of reflected heat swept upon him, and he felt himself stifling. There was a pool of molten rock, white and glaring with heat ... and a puff of smoke, grayish black, and ashes that whirled in the wind that swept up from the pool....

Danny tried to raise himself from the hot stone where he had fallen, so near he was to the pool of death. He saw the grotesque figure of the giant move over toward the red ship, look at it, sneer contemptuously, and turn back to his own ship of doom. He saw the black entrance swallow the huge foe and he saw the door close, while the great ship, so innocently white in its sleek slender roundness, rose again in the air where the clouds took it up.

And Danny, resting on scorched but unfeeling hands, stared after him until he got the enemy's direction of flight as he entered the clouds, then he turned towards a place of glowing rock where the air rose in quivering waves.

"You said it, Infant," he whispered; "you knew I was just a fightin' fool that wouldn't think the way you would. You told me to get the Sorenson machine--" He brushed at his suddenly blinded eyes with one seared hand, then turned to stare grimly and appraisingly where the white ship had gone.

"And I'm thinkin'," he told the beastly occupant of that carrier of death, "that you didn't shoot your damned ray quite quick enough. The Infant beat you to it! He got his message to me first!"

* * * * *

How he got to the flat-roofed landing zone of the Consolidated Electric, Danny, doubtless, could never have told. Nor was he aware of the hand that set in the forward cabin of his ship a strange machine. But he growled his instructions:

"Set it goin'! 'Tis the Infant's orders--I mean Mr. Morgan's. What the devil it is I don't know, but 'Turn it on!' he told me--'Have them put it on full!'" And, though a man whom Danny knew only as Gimlet-eyes stared at him curiously, he reached down to the apparatus, set a dial, closed a switch here and there, then stepped back.

But Gimlet-eyes ventured one protest. "You're not grounding it!" he exclaimed, in a voice that was tinged with horror. "You'll get an accumulation on your ship that will shoot off like lightning--millions of volts!"

"How long would that be takin'?" Danny inquired gruffly.

And Gimlet-eyes replied, as one who washes his hands of all responsibility in a rather horrible affair: "An hour--not more than an hour!"

"Then I'll just be drivin' around for an hour," said Danny, and slammed shut the door-port of the red ship.

* * * * *

The red rocket drove in slow circles that were a hundred miles across while that hour passed and the numbness of mind that had held Danny in a stupor slipped away. For the first time he realized the emptiness of the world that the Infant had left; he knew with a sharp stab of self-reproach how much had gone from his life in that instant when he sprang vainly toward the giant enemy.

He called himself wild names for his fancied sluggishness. Then that, too, passed, and at thought of the weapon the Infant had given him and of the work that lay ahead, his haggard face forgot the lines that horror had drawn and relaxed into a tired smile that told of a mind content.

Gradually his looping whirls had carried him toward the east. Another city was being devastated by the enemy; that Danny got from the newscast. Only that and one other message broke the tedious eternity of that long hour.

Danny's number flashed on the screen beside his controls. Unconsciously he answered, but he sat up alertly at sound of his Chief's voice.

"I can't get anyone," the voice said. "Headquarters is gone; I just called you on a chance. And I believe you now, Danny. That devil wiped out a whole fleet of our planes; melted the cruisers with one shot, and the scouts couldn't go fast enough to escape. Only one got away....

"But where are you? What's to be done? I've just got here. My God! What can we do?"

"Wait," said Danny O'Rourke calmly, and glanced at his watch; "wait for another ten minutes! He's over Boston now. And he's waitin' there for me--though he doesn't know it yet. But I'll be droppin' in on him."

"Don't be an utter fool, Danny," urged the voice of the Chief; "there isn't a thing you can do. You try to come down on him, and he'll do as he did with the cruisers--just slip aside like lightning and nail you with his damned heat ray when you're below! I'm near Boston now. You keep away. Where can I meet you? We've got to think--got to do something!"

* * * * *

And Danny, before he opened the switch that ended their talk, said meditatively: "Like lightnin' he moves ... but he'll have to move faster than lightnin' to dodge me. And if you're near Boston, stick around; I'm comin' now, but not to meet you, Chief; I've got another important engagement. I'm keepin' it for--for the Infant. And give the Infant the credit, Chief; give it all to him, he's earned it: he's paid for it in full." Then the snap of a switch cut off the sound of Danny's voice before it showed a tell-tale quaver.

It was steady some minutes later, when Danny swept in above the mounting clouds that he had learned to know. Beneath them invisible fingers of death were sweeping back and forth where men and women ran shrieking in terror or waited calmly and dry-eyed for the end. Above them a slender rounded thing wove its pattern of destruction back and forth ... back and forth. A spectral ship--a pale phantom, elusive and dimly seen until it came against the black of rolling smoke from below.

But to Danny O'Rourke, slanting down from tremendous heights, the white shape was never lost. On the cross hairs of his directional sights the ghostly ship hung, and Danny threw his own red rocket like a living flame over and down where the white one sensed his coming and waited.

Beside him a human voice, high with horror, called to him. "Come back!" the Chief of the Mountain Division was commanding. "Danny! For the love of Heaven, turn back!"

* * * * *

But the voice was unheard by Danny O'Rourke. There was another voice speaking ... he could almost see the smiling pink and white face of one beside him who spoke of his "little tin ship" ... spoke, too, of a white ship that would be like a great thunder-cloud ... and of his own screaming meteor that was like the earth ... and there was to be a messenger of death like the hammer of Thor that would flash between the two....

Danny saw the white one slipping easily aside; the ship was swelling suddenly before him--it was close ... but the jagged lightning--the ripping flash of blue that joined the two craft in a crashing arc--was neither seen nor heard by Danny. Danny was too busy to notice, for he was engaged in smiling converse with one whom he called the "Infant" and whose pink and white face beamed gladly upon him "like a damned little cherub," as Danny was telling him....

But the Chief of the Mountain Division who saw all from afar could say nothing. He only stared from the lookout of his own speeding plane that framed a picture of two ships; where the red one, flaming from within, kept on in its swift, straight dive; while the white one fell slowly, turning sluggishly to show its gashed and blasted sides ... till the black clouds wrapped them both in a billowy shroud....

But clouds are no bar to man's inner vision. And the Chief looked through, as Danny had done, to see as in a lightning flash a world beaten to its knees, hopeless, ravaged and scarred--a world where courage might again be born--a world that would still be a world of men.

Contents

THE PLANETOID OF PERIL

By Paul Ernst

Undaunted by crazy tales of an indestructible presence on Asteroid Z-40, Harley 2Q14N20 sets out alone to face and master it.

Harley 2Q14N20 stopped for a moment outside the great dome of the Celestial Developments Company. Moodily he stared at their asteroid development chart. It showed, as was to be expected, the pick of the latest asteroid subdivision projects: the Celestial Developments Company, established far back in 2045, would handle none but the very best. Small chance of his finding anything here!

However, as he gazed at the chart, hope came suddenly to his face, and his heart beat high under his sapphire blue tunic. There was an asteroid left for sale there--one blank space among the myriad, pink-lettered Sold symbols. Could it be that here was the chance he had been hunting so desperately?

He bent closer, to read the description of the sphere, and the hope faded gradually from his countenance. According to its orbit and location, and the spectroscopic table of its mineral resources, it was a choice planetoid indeed. Of course such a rich little sphere, listed for sale by the luxurious Celestial Developments Company, would cost far more than he could ever rake together to pay for an asteroid.

Shaking his head, he adjusted his gravity regulator to give him about a pound and a half of weight, and started to float on. Then, his lips twisting at his own absurd hopefulness, he stopped again; and after another moment of indecision turned into the archway that led to the concern's great main office. After all, it wouldn't hurt to inquire the price, even though he knew in advance it would be beyond his humble means.

* * * * *

A youngster in the pale green of the one-bar neophyte in business promptly glided toward him.

"Something for you to-day, sir?" he asked politely.

"Yes," said Harley. "I'm looking around for a planetoid; want to get a place of my own out a way from Earth. Something, you understand, that may turn out to be a profitable investment as well as furnishing an exclusive home-site. I see on your chart that you have a sphere left for sale, in the Red Belt, so I came in to ask about it."

"Ah, you mean asteroid Z-40," said the youngster, gazing with envious respect at the ten-bar insignia, with the crossed Sco drills, that proclaimed Harley to be a mining engineer of the highest rank. "Yes, that is still for sale. A splendid sphere, sir; and listed at a remarkably low figure. Half a million dollars."

"Half a million dollars!" exclaimed Harley. It was an incredibly small sum: scarcely the yearly salary of an unskilled laborer. "Are you sure that's right?"

"Yes, that's the correct figure. Down payment of a third, and the remaining two thirds to be paid out of the exploitation profits--"

* * * * *

Here the conversation was interrupted by an elderly, grey-haired man with the six-bar dollar-mark insignia of a business executive on his purple tunic. He had been standing nearby, and at the mention of asteroid Z-40 had looked up alertly. He glided to the two with a frown on his forehead, and spoke a few curt words to the neophyte, who slunk away.

"Sorry, sir," he said to Harley. "Z-40 isn't for sale."

"But your young man just told me that it was," replied Hartley, loath to give up what had begun to look like an almost unbelievable bargain.

"He was mistaken. It's not on the market. It isn't habitable, you see."

"What's wrong--hasn't it an atmosphere?"

"Oh, yes. One that is exceptionally rich in oxygen, as is true of all the spheres we handle. With a late model oxygen concentrator, one would have no trouble at all existing there."

"Is its speed of revolution too great?"

"Not at all. The days are nearly three hours long: annoying till you get used to it, but nothing like the inferior asteroids of the Mars Company where days and nights are less than ten minutes in duration."

"Well, is it barren, then? No minerals of value? No vegetation?"

"The spectroscope shows plenty of metals, including heavy radium deposits. The vegetation is as luxuriant as that of semi-tropic Earth."

"Then why in the name of Betelguese," said Harley, exasperated, "won't you sell the place to me? It's exactly what I've been looking for, and what I'd despaired of finding at my price."

"I'm forbidden to tell why it isn't for sale," said the executive, starting to float off. "It might hurt our business, reputation if the truth about that bit of our celestial properties became widely known--Oh, disintegrate it all! Why wasn't the thing erased from the chart weeks ago!"

"Wait a minute." Harley caught his arm and detained him. "You've gone too far to back out now. I'm too eager to find some such place as your Z-40 to be thrown off the subject like a child. Why isn't it for sale?"

The man tightened his lips as though to refuse to answer, then shrugged.

"I'll tell you," he said at last. "But I beg of you to keep it confidential. If some of our investors on neighboring asteroids ever found out about the peril adjoining them on Z-40, they'd probably insist on having their money back."

He led the way to a more secluded spot under the big dome, and spoke in a low tone, with many a glance over his shoulder to see if anyone were within earshot.

"Z-40 is an exceptionally fine bit of property. It is commodious; about twenty miles in diameter. Its internal heat is such that it has a delightful climate in spite of the extreme rarity of atmosphere common to even the best of asteroids. It has a small lake; in fact it has about everything a man could want. Yet, as I said, it is uninhabitable."

His voice sank still lower.

"You see, sir, there's already a tenant on that sphere, a tenant that was in possession long before the Celestial Developments Company was organized. And it's a tenant that can't be bought off or reasoned with. It's some sort of beast, powerful, ferocious, that makes it certain death for a man to try to land there."

"A beast?" echoed Harley. "What kind of a beast?"

"We don't know. In fact we hardly even know what it looks like. But from what little has been seen of it, it's clear that it is like no other specimen known to universal science. It's something enormous, some freak of animal creation that seems invulnerable to man's smaller weapons. And that is why we can't offer the place for sale. It would be suicide for anyone to try to make a home there."

"Has anyone ever tried it?" asked Harley. "Any competent adventurer, I mean?"

"Yes. Twice we sold Z-40 before we realized that there was something terribly wrong with it. Both buyers were hardy, intrepid men. The first was never heard of after thirty-six hours on the asteroid. The second man managed to escape in his Blinco Dart, and came back to Earth to tell of a vast creature that had attacked him during one of the three-hour nights. His hair was white from the sight of it, and he's still in a sanitarium, slowly recovering from the nervous shock."

Harley frowned thoughtfully. "If this thing is more than a match for one man, why don't you send an armed band with heavy atomic guns and clear the asteroid by main force?"

"My dear sir, don't you suppose we've tried that? Twice we sent expensive expeditions to Z-40 to blow the animal off the face of the sphere, but neither expedition was able to find the thing, whatever it is. Possibly it has intelligence enough to hide if faced by overwhelming force. When the second expedition failed, we gave it up. Poor business to go further. Already, Z-40 has cost us more than we could clear from the sale of half a dozen planetoids."

For a long time Harley was silent. The Company was a hard headed, cold blooded concern. Anything that kept them from selling an asteroid must be terrible indeed.

His jaw set in a hard line. "You've been honest with me," he said at length. "I appreciate it. Just the same--I still want to buy Z-40. Maybe I can oust the present tenant. I'm pretty good with a ray-pistol."

"It would be poor policy for us to sell the asteroid. We don't want to become known as a firm that trades in globes on which it is fatal to land."

"Surely my fate is none of your worry?" urged Harley.

"The asteroid," began the executive with an air of finality, "is not for--"

"Man, it's got to be!" cried Harley. Then, with a perceptible effort he composed himself. "There's a reason. The reason is a girl. I'm a poor man, and she's heiress to fabulous--Well, frankly, she's the daughter of 3W28W12 himself!" The executive started at mention of that universally known number. "I don't want to be known as a fortune hunter; and my best bet is to find a potentially rich asteroid, cheap, and develop it--incidentally getting an exclusive estate for my bride and myself far out in space, away from the smoke and bustle of urban Earth. Z-40, save for the menace you say now has possession of it, seems to be just what I want. If I can clear it, it means the fulfillment of all my dreams. With that in view, do you think I'd hesitate to risk my neck?"

"No," said the executive slowly, looking at the younger man's powerful shoulders and square-set chin and resolute eyes. "I don't think you would. Well, so be it. I'd greatly prefer not to sell you Z-40. But if you want to sign an agreement that we're released of all blame or responsibility in case of your death, you can buy it."

"I'll sign any agreement you please," snapped Harley. "Here is a down payment of a hundred and seventy thousand dollars. My name is Harley; sign 2Q14N20; unmarried--though I hope to change that soon, if I live--occupation, mining engineer, ten-bar degree; age, thirty-four. Now draw me up a deed for Z-40, and see that I'm given a stellar call number on the switchboard of the Radivision Corporation. I'll drop around there later and get a receiving unit. Good day." And, adjusting his gravity regulator to lighten his weight to less than a pound, he catapulted out the archway.

Behind him a prosaic business executive snatched a moment from a busy day to indulge in a sentimental flight of fancy. He had read once of curious old-time beings called knights, who had undertaken to fight and slay fire-eating things called dragons for the sake of an almost outmoded emotion referred to as love. It occurred to him that this brusque man of action might be compared to just such a being. He was undertaking to slay a dragon and win a castle for the daughter of 3W28W12--

The romantic thought was abruptly broken up by the numeral. It jarred so, somehow, that modern use of numbers instead of names, when thinking of sentimental passages of long ago. "The rose is fair; but in all the world there is no rose as fair as thou, my princess 3W28W12...." No, it wouldn't do.

Cursing himself for a soft-headed fool, he went to deliver a stinging rebuke to somebody for not having blocked Z-40 off the asteroid chart weeks before.

* * * * *

"Harley 2Q14N20," recited the control assistant at Landon Field. "Destination, asteroid Z-40. Red Belt, arc 31.3470. Sights corrected, flight period twelve minutes, forty-eight seconds past nine o'clock. All set, sir?"

Harley nodded. He stepped inside the double shell of his new Blinco Dart--that small but excellent quantity-production craft that had entirely replaced the cumbersome space ships of a decade ago--and screwed down the man-hole lid. Then, with his hand on the gravity bar, he gazed out the rear panel, ready to throw the lever at the control assistant's signal.

The move was unthinkingly, mechanically made. Too many times had he gone through this process of being aimed by astronomical calculation, and launched into the heavens, to be much stirred by the wonder of it. The journey to Z-40 in the Dart was no more disquieting than, a century and a half ago, before the United States had fused together into one vast city, a journey from Chicago to Florida would have been in one of the inefficient gasoline-driven vehicles of that day.

All his thoughts were on his destination, and on a wonder as to what could be the nature of the thing that dwelt there.

He had just come from the sanitarium where the man who'd bought Z-40 before him was recovering from nervous exhaustion. He'd gone there to try to get first hand information about the creature the executive at the Celestial Developments Company had talked so vaguely of. And the tale the convalescent had told him of the thing on the asteroid was as fantastic as it was sketchy.

A tremendous, weirdly manlike creature looming in the dim night--a thing that seemed a part of the planetoid itself, fashioned from the very dirt and rock from which it had risen--a thing immune to the ray-pistol, that latest and deadliest of man-made small-arms--a thing that moved like a walking mountain and stared with terrible, stony eyes at its prey! That was what the fellow said he had faintly made out in the darkness before his nerves had finally given way.

He had impressed Harley as being a capable kind of a person, too; not at all the sort to distort facts, nor to see imaginary figures in the night.

There was that matter of the stone splinter, however, which certainly argued that the wan, prematurely white-haired fellow was a little unbalanced, and hence not to be believed too implicitly. He'd handed it to Harley, and gravely declared it to be a bit of the monster's flesh.

"Why, it's only a piece of rock!" Harley had exclaimed before he could check himself.

"Did you ever see rock like it before?"

Turning it over in his hands, Harley had been forced to admit that he never had. It was of the texture and roughness of granite, but more heavily shot with quartz, or tridymite than any other granite he'd ever seen. It had a dull opalescent sheen, too. But it was rock, all right.

"It's a piece of the thing's hide," the man had told him. "It flaked off when it tried to pry open the man-hole cover of ray Dart. A moment after that I got Radivision arc directions from London Field, aimed my sights, and shot for Earth. It was a miracle I escaped."

"But surely your ray-pistol--" Harley had begun, preserving a discreet silence about the man's delusion concerning the stone splinter.

"I tell you it was useless as a toy! Never before have I seen any form of life that could stand up against a ray-gun. But this thing did!"

This was another statement Harley had accepted with a good deal of reservation. He had felt sure the weapon the man had used had a leak in the power chamber, or was in need of recharging, or something of the kind. For it had been conclusively proved that all organic matter withered and burned away under the impact of the Randchron ray.

Nevertheless, discounting heavily the convalescent's wild story, only a fool would have clung to a conviction that the menace on Z-40 was a trivial one. There was something on that asteroid, something larger and more deadly than Harley had ever heard of before in all his planetary wanderings.

He squared his shoulders. Whatever it was, he was about to face it, man against animal. He was reasonably certain his ray-gun would down anything on two legs or ten. If it didn't--well, there was nothing else that could; and he'd certainly provide a meal for the creature, assuming it ate human flesh....

A mechanic tapped against the rear view panel to recall his wandering attention. The control assistant held up his hands, fingers outspread, to indicate that there were ten seconds left.

Harley's hand went to his throat, where was hung a locket--a lovely but useless trinket of the kind once much worn by Earth women--and his fingers tightened tenderly on it. It had belonged to Beatrice 3W28W12's great-great-grandmother, and Beatrice had given it to him as a token.

"With luck, my dear," he whispered aloud. "With luck...."

There was a slight vibration. He threw the gravity bar over to the first notch. Earth dropped, plummet-like, away from him. He pushed the bar to the limit leg; and, at a rate of hundreds of miles a second, was repelled from Earth toward Z-40, and the thing that skulked there.

* * * * *

With a scarcely perceptible jar, he landed on the small sphere that, he hoped, was to be his future home. Before opening his man-hole lid, he went from panel to panel of the Dart and cautiously reconnoitered. He had elected to land beside the little lake that was set like a three hundred-acre gem on the surface of Z-40, and it was more than possible that the enemy had its den nearby.

However, a careful survey of the curved landscape in all directions failed to reveal a glimpse of anything remotely threatening. He donned his oxygen concentrator--in appearance a simple tube of a thing, projecting about six inches above his forehead, and set in a light metal band that encircled his head. Adjusting his gravity regulator so he wouldn't inadvertently walk clear off into empty space--he calculated his weight would be less than a twentieth of an ounce here--he stepped out of the Dart and gazed around at the little world.

Before him was the tiny lake, of an emerald green hue in the flashing sunlight. Around its shores, and covering the adjacent, softly rolling countryside as far as eye could reach, was a thick growth of carmine-tinted vegetation: squat, enormous-leaved bushes; low, sturdy trees, webbed together by innumerable vines. To left and right, miniature mountains reared ragged crests over the abbreviated horizon, making the spot he was in a peaceful, lovely valley.

He sighed. There was everything here a man could wish for--provided he could win it! Loosening his ray-pistol in its holster, he started to walk slowly around the lake to choose a site for the house he intended to build. On the opposite shore he found a place that looked suitable.

A few yards back from the water's edge, curling in a thick crescent like a giant sleeping on its side, was a precipitous outcropping of rock; curious stuff, rather like granite, that gleamed with dull opalescence in the brilliant sunlight. With that as a sort of natural buttress behind the house, and with the beautiful lake as his front dooryard, he'd have a location that any man might envy.

He returned to his Dart, hopped back across the lake in it, and unloaded his Sco drill[1]. With this he planned to sink a shaft that would serve in the future as the cellar for his villa, and in the present as an entrenchment against danger.

But now the swift night of Z-40 was almost upon him. The low slant of the descending sun warned him that he had less than ten minutes of light left, until the next three-hour day should break over the eastern rim. He placed the drums and the flexible hose of the Sco drill so that he could begin operations with it as soon as the dawn broke, and started to walk toward the precipitous outcropping of quartziferous stone immediately behind the home-site he had picked. He would climb to the top of this for a short look around, and then return to the Dart--in which double-hulled, metal fortress he thought he would be safe from anything.

* * * * *

He had almost reached the rock outcropping when the peculiarities of its outline struck him anew. He'd already observed that the craggy mound rather resembled a sleeping, formless giant. The closer he got to it the more the resemblance was heightened and the greater grew his perplexity.

It sprang straight up from the carmine underbrush, like a separate heap of stone cast there by some mighty hand. One end of it tapered down in a thick ridge; and this ridge had a deep, horizontal cleft running along it which made it appear as though it were divided into two leglike members. In the center the mound swelled to resemble a paunchy trunk with sagging shoulders. This was topped by a huge, nearly round ball that looked for all the world like a head. There were even rudimentary features. It was grotesque--one of those freak sculptures of nature, Harley reflected, that made it seem as though the Old Girl had a mind and artistic talent of her own.

He scrambled through the brush till he reached that part of the long mound that looked like a head. There, as the sun began to stream the red lines of its descent over the sky, he prepared to ascend for his view of the surrounding landscape.

He'd got within twenty feet of the irregular ball, and had adjusted his gravity regulator to enable him to leap to its top, when he stopped as abruptly as though he had been suddenly paralyzed. Over the two deep pits that resembled nostrils in the grotesque mask of a face he thought he had observed a quiver. The illusion had occurred in just the proper place for an eyelid. It was startling, to say the least.

"I'm getting imaginative," said Harley. He spoke aloud as a man tends to do when he is alone and uneasy. "I'd better get a tighter grip on my nerves, or--good God!"

Coincident with the sound of his voice in the thin, quiet air, the huge stumps that looked like legs stirred slightly. A tremor ran through the entire mass of rock. And directly in front of Harley, less than twenty feet from where he stood, a sort of half-moon-shaped curtain of rock slid slowly up to reveal an enormous, staring eye.

Frozen with a terror such as he had never felt before in a life filled with adventure, scarce breathing, Harley glared at the monstrous spectacle transpiring before him. A hill was coming to life, A granite cliff was growing animate. It was impossible, but it was happening.

The half-moon curtains of rock that so eerily resembled eyelids, blinked heavily. He could hear a faint rasping like the rustle of sandpaper, as they did so. One of the great leg stumps moved distinctly, independent of the other one. Three columnar masses of rock--arms, or tentacles, with a dozen hinging joints in each--slowly moved away from the parent mass near the base of the head, and extended toward the Earth man.

Still in his trance, with his heart pounding in his throat till he thought it would burst, Harley watched the further awful developments. The eyelids remained opened, disclosing two great, dull eyes like poorly polished agates, which stared expressionlessly at him. There was a convulsion like a minor earthquake, and the mass shortened and heightened its bulk, raising itself to a sitting posture. The three hinged, irregular arms suddenly extended themselves to the full in a thrust that barely missed him. They were tipped, those arms, with immense claws, like interlocking, rough-hewn stone fingers. They crashed emptily together within a few feet of Harley. Then, and not till then, did the paralysis of horror loose its grip on the human.

He tore his ray-pistol from its holster and pointed it at the incredible body. An angry, blue-green cone of light leaped from the muzzle, and played over the mighty torso. Nothing happened. He squeezed the trigger back to the guard. The blue-green beam increased in intensity, and a crackling noise was audible. Under that awful power the monster should have disappeared, dissolved to a greasy mist. But it didn't.

The light beam from the ray-gun died away. The power was exhausted. It was only good for about ten seconds of such an emergency, full-force discharge, after which it must be re-charged again. The ten seconds were up. And the gigantic creature against which it had been directed had apparently felt no injury from a beam that would have annihilated ten thousand men.

The now useless ray-pistol slipped from his limp fingers. Stupefied with horror at the futility of the deadly Randchron ray against this terrible adversary, he stood rooted to the spot. Then the thing reached for him again; and his muscles were galvanized to action--to instinctive, stupid, reasonless action.

Screaming incoherently, mad with horror of the stone claws that had clutched at him, he turned and ran. In great leaps he bounded away from the accursed lake and made for the taller trees and thicker vegetation at a distance from the shore. It was the worst thing he could have done. There was a chance that he could have reached his Dart, had he thought of it, and soared aloft out of reach. But he thought of nothing. All he wanted to do, in that abysmal fear that can still make a mindless animal out of a civilized man, was to run and hide--to get away from the fearful monster that had risen up to glare at him with those stony, pitiless eyes, and to reach for him with two-fingered bands like grinding rock vises.

* * * * *

Just as the sun fell below the rim of the asteroid, plunging it into a darkness only faintly relieved by the light of the stars, he crashed into the deeper underbrush. A trailing creeper tripped him in his mad flight. He fell headlong, to lie panting, sobbing for breath, in the thick carpet of blood-colored moss.

Behind him, from the direction of the lake, he heard a sudden clangor as of rock beating against metal. This endured only a short time. Then the solid ground beneath him shook slightly, and an appalling crash of trees and underbrush to the rear told him that the stone colossus was on his trail.

He leaped to his feet and continued his great bounds over the sharply curved surface of the asteroid, banging against tree trunks, bruising himself against stones, falling in the darkness to rise again and flee as before in a mad attempt to distance the crashing sound of pursuit behind him.

Then he felt himself writhing in thin air as his flying course took him over the edge of a cliff. Down, down he fell, to land in a dense bed of foliage far below. Something hit his head with terrific force. Pinwheels of light flashed before his eyes, to fade into velvety nothingness....

* * * * *

Slowly, uncertainly he wavered back to consciousness. For a moment he was aware of nothing save that he was lying on some surface that was jagged and uncomfortable, and that it was broad daylight. He opened his eyes, and saw that he was reclining, across a springy bed formed of the top of a tree. Ahead of him loomed a cliff about a hundred feet high.

Remembrance suddenly came to him. The unreasoning rush through the underbrush. The nightmare creature lumbering swiftly after him. The fall over the cliff into the top of this tree.

With a cry, he sat up, expecting to see the stone giant nearby and poised to leap. But it was nowhere in sight; nor, listen as intently as he would, could he hear the sounds of its crashing path through the brush. Somehow, for the moment at least, he had been saved. Perhaps his disappearance over the cliff edge had thrown it off his track.

He became aware of the fact that it was difficult for him to breathe. His lungs were heaving in a vain effort to suck in more oxygen, and his tongue felt thick as though he were being strangled. Then he saw that his oxygen concentrator had been knocked from his head when he fell, and was dangling from a limb several feet away. It was almost out of breathing range. Had it fallen on through the branches to the ground he would have died, in his unconsciousness, in the rarified atmosphere. He reached for it; settled the band around his head again.

After once more listening and peering around to make sure the rock colossus was not about, he descended the tree that had saved his life, and began to walk in the direction he judged the lake to be. He would get into his Dart, cruise aloft out of harm's way, and perhaps think up some effective course of action.

* * * * *

He was thinking clearly, now. And, in the glare of daylight, no longer an unreasoning animal fleeing blindly over a dim-lit foreign sphere, he was unable to understand his panic of the night. Afraid? Of course he had been afraid! What man wouldn't have been at sight of that monstrous thing? But that he, Harley 2Q14N20, should have lost his head completely and gone plunging off into the brush like that, seemed unbelievable. To the depths of his soul he felt ashamed. And to his own soul he made the promise that he would wipe out, in action, that hour of cowardice.

As he wound his way through the squat, carmine forest, he tried to figure out the nature of the thing that had crashed balefully after him in the black hours.

It had seemed made of rock--a giant, primitive stone statue imbued with life. But it was impossible that it should really be fashioned of rock. At least it ought to be impossible. Rock is inorganic, inanimate. It simply couldn't have the spark of life in it. Harley had seen many strange creations, on many strange planets, but never had he seen inorganic mineral matter endowed with animation. Nor had anyone else.

Yet the thing looked as though made of stone. Of some peculiar, quartz-suffused granite--proving that the wan, white-haired man he had talked to in the sanitarium had not been mad at all, but only too terribly sane. The creature's very eyes had had a stony look. Its eyelids had rasped like stone curtains rubbing together. Its awful, two-fingered hands, or claws, had ground together like stones rubbing.

Was it akin to the lizards, the cold-blooded life of Earth? Was this rocky exterior merely a horny shell like that of a turtle? No. Horn is horn and rock is rock. The two can't be confused.

The only theory Harley could form was that the great beast was in some strange way a link between the animal and the mineral kingdoms. Its skeletal structure, perhaps, was silicate in substance, extending to provide an outside covering that had hardened into actual stone, while forming an interior support to flesh that was half organic, half inorganic matter. Some such silicate construction was to be found in the sponge, of Earth. Could this be a gigantic relative of that lowly creature? He did not know, and couldn't guess. He wasn't a zoologist. All he knew was that the thing appeared to be formed of living, impregnable stone. He knew, also, that this fabulous creature was bent on destroying him.

At this point in his reflections, the glint of water came to his eyes between the tree trunks ahead of him. He had come back to the lake.

* * * * *

For moments he stood behind one of the larger trees on the fringe and searched around the shore for sight of the rock giant. It was nowhere in evidence. Rapidly he advanced from the forest and ran for the Dart. From a distance it appeared to be all right: but as he drew near a cry rose involuntarily to his lips.

In a dozen places the double hull of the little space craft was battered in. The man-hole lid was torn from its braces and bent double. The glass panels, unbreakable in themselves, had been shoved clear into the cabin; their empty sash frames gaped at Harley like blinded eyes. Never again would that Blinco Dart speed through the heavens!

He went to the spot where he had left his Sco drill, and a further evidence of the thing's cold blooded ferocity was revealed. The intricate mechanism had been wrenched into twisted pieces. The drums were battered in and the flexible hose lengths torn apart in shreds. The inventor himself couldn't have put it in working order again.

He was hopelessly trapped. He had no means of fighting the colossus. He had no way of escaping into space, nor of returning to Earth and trying to raise a loan that would allow him to come back here with men and atomic guns. He hadn't even a way of intrenching himself in the ground against the next attack.

For an instant his hair prickled in a flash of the blind panic that had seized him a few hours before. With a tremendous effort of will he fought it down. This--the destruction of his precious Dart and drill--was the result of one siege of insensate fear. If he succumbed to another one he might well dash straight into the arms of death. He sank to the ground and rested his chin on his fist, concentrating all his intellect on the hopeless problem that faced him.

The surface of Z-40 was many square miles in extent. But, if he tried to hide himself, he knew it was only a question of time before he would be hunted down. The asteroid was too tiny to give him indefinite concealment. Flight, then, was futile.

But if he didn't try to conceal himself in the sparse forest lands, it meant that he must stay to face the monster at once--which was insanity. What could he do, bare-handed, against that thirty-foot, three-tentacled, silicate mass of incredible life!

It was useless to run, and it was madness to stay and confront the thing. What, then, could he do? The sun had slid down the sky and the red of another swift dusk was heralding the short night before he shook his head somberly and gave the fatal riddle up.

He rose to his feet, intending to make his way back to the concealment--such as it was--of the forest. It might be that he could find safety in some lofty treetop till day dawned again. Then he stopped, and listened. What was that?

From far away to the left he could hear faint sounds of some gargantuan stirring. And, coincident with the flickering out of the last scrap of sunlight, a distant crashing came to his ears as an enormous body smashed like an armored ship through trees and thorn bushes and trailing vines. The rock thing had found his trail and was after him again.

* * * * *

A second time Harley fled through the dim-lighted night, stumbling over boulders and tripping on creepers. But this time his flight was not that of panic. Frightened enough, he was; but his mind was working clearly as he leaped through the forest away from the source of the crashing.

The first thing he noted was that though--as far as his ears could inform him--he was managing to keep his lead, he wasn't outdistancing his horrible pursuer by a yard. Dark though the night was, and far away as he contrived to keep himself, the colossus seemed to cling to his trail as easily as though following a well-blazed path.

He climbed a tree, faced at right angles to the course he had pursued, and swung for the next tree. It was a long jump. But desperation lent abnormal power to his muscles, and the gravity regulator adjusted to extremely low pitch, was a great help. He made it safely. Another swinging leap into the dark, to land sprawling in a second tree; a third; a fourth. Finally be crouched in a tangle of boughs, and listened. He was a quarter of a mile from the point where he had turned from his first direction. Perhaps this deviation would throw the rock terror off.

It didn't. He heard the steady smashing noise stop. For an instant there was a silence in the darkness of the asteroid that was painful. Then the crashing was resumed, this time drawing straight toward where he was hidden. Somehow the thing had learned of his change of direction.

He continued his flight into the night, his eyes staring glassily into the darkness, his expression the ghastly one of a condemned man. And as he fled the crashing behind him told how he was followed--easily infallibly, in spite of all his twisting and turning and efforts at concealment. What hellish intelligence the monster must possess!

He ran for eternities. He ran till his chest was on fire, and the sobbing agony of his breathing could be heard for yards. He ran till spots of fire floated before his eyes and the blood, throbbing in his brain, cut out the noise of the devilish pursuit behind him. At long last his legs buckled under him, and he fell, to rise no more.

He was done. He knew it. His was the position of the hunted animal that lies panting, every muscle paralyzed with absolute exhaustion, and glares in an agony of helplessness at the hunter whose approach spells death.

The crashing grew louder. The tremor of the ground grew more pronounced as the vast pursuer pounded along with its tons and tons of weight. Harley gazed into the blackness back along the way he had come, his eyes sunk deep in the hollows fatigue had carved in his face, and waited for the end. The dark night darkened still more with the approach of another swift, inexorable dawn.

There was a terrific rending of tree trunks and webbed creepers. Dimly in the darkness he could see something that towered on a level with the tallest trees, something that moved as rapidly and steadily as though driven by machinery. Fear so great that it nauseated him, swept over him in waves; but he could not move.

The first grey smear of dawn appeared in the sky. In the ghostly greyness he got a clearer and clearer sight of the monster. He groaned and cowered there while it approached him--more slowly now, eyeing him with staring, stony orbs in which there was no expression of any kind, of rage or bate, of curiosity or triumph.

Great stumps of legs, with no joints in them, on which the colossus stalked like a moving stone tower--a body resembling an enormous boulder carved by an amateurish hand to portray the trunk of a human being--a craggy sphere of rock for a head, set directly atop the deeply riven shoulders--a face like the horrible mask of an embryonic gargoyle--a mouth that was simply a lipless chasm that opened and closed with the sound of rocks grinding together in a slow-moving glacier--the whole veiled thinly by trailing lengths of snapped vines, great shattered tree boughs, bushes, all uprooted in its stumping march through the forest! Harley closed his eyes to shut out the sight. But in spite of himself they flashed open again and stared on, as though hypnotized by the spectacle they witnessed.

* * * * *

The grey of dawn lightened to the first rose tint of the rising sun. As though stung to action by the breaking of day, the thing hastened its ground-shaking pace. With one last stride, it came to Harley's side and loomed far above, the unwinking eyes glaring down at him.

The three arms, hinged at equidistant points at the base of the horrible head, slowly lowered toward his prostrate form. There was a grating noise as the creature hinged in the middle and bent low, bringing its enormous, staring eyes within two yards of his face.

One of its hands closed over his leg, tentatively, experimentally, as though to ascertain of what substance he was made. He cried aloud as the rock vise, like a gigantic lobster claw, squeezed tight. The thing drew back abruptly. Then the chasm of its mouth opened a little, for all the world as though giving vent to soundless, demoniac laughter. All three of the vise-like hands clamped over him--lightly enough, considering their vast size, and intimating that the colossus did not mean to kill him for a moment or two--but so cruelly that his senses swam with the pain of it.

He felt the grip relax. The vast stone pincers were lifted from him; slithered to the ground beside him.

The first blinding rays of the sun were beating straight on the colossal figure, which glittered fantastically, like a huge splintered opal, in their brilliance.

It glared down at Harley. The abyss of a mouth opened as though again giving vent to silent, infernal laughter. Then, with the noise of a landslide, the giant form settled slowly to the ground. The rock half-moons of curtains dropped over the expressionless, dull eyes. The whole great figure quivered, and grew still. It lay without movement, stretched along the ground like a craggy, opalescent hill.

* * * * *

Dazed, stunned by such fantastic behavior, Harley struggled wearily to his feet. He had been a dead man as surely as though shot with a ray-gun. One twitch of those terrible rock pincers would have broken him in two pieces. It had seemed as though that deadly twitch were surely forthcoming. And then the thing had released him--and had lain down to go to sleep! Or was it asleep?

He took a few slow steps away from it, expecting to see the three great tentacles flash out to capture him as a cat claws at a mouse that thinks it is escaping. The arms didn't move. Astounding as it was, Harley was free to run away if he chose. Why was that?

A hint of a clue to the creature's action began to unfold in his mind. When he had first laid eyes on it, in daylight, it was asleep. It had not pursued him during the preceding day, which argued that again it was asleep. And now, with the first touch of dawn, it was once more quiet, immobile.

The answer seemed to be that it was entirely nocturnal; that for some obscure, unguessable reason sunlight induced in it a state of suspended animation. It seemed an insane theory, but no other surmise was remotely reasonable.

But if it were invariably sunk in a coma during daylight, why had it delayed killing him just a moment ago? Its every act indicated that it possessed intelligence of a high order. It was more than probable that it realized its limitation--why hadn't it acted in accordance with that realization?

On thinking it over, he believed he had the answer to that, too. He remembered the way the gaping mouth had seemed to express devilish mirth. The thing was playing with him. That was all. It had saved him for another night of hopeless flight and infallible trailing through the forests of Z-40.

He gazed at the monster in a frenzy of impotent rage and fear. If only he could kill it somehow in its sleep! But he couldn't. In no way could he harm it. Secure in its silicate covering, it was impervious to his wildest attempts at destruction. And it knew it, too; hadn't it laughed just before sinking down to slumber through the asteroidal day?

With his Sco drill he might have pierced that silicon dioxide armor till he reached the creature's gritty flesh. Then he could have used his ray-pistol, possibly disintegrating all its vitals and leaving only an empty rock shell sprawling hugely there in the trampled underbrush.

But he had neither drill nor pistol. The one had been wrecked by the monster; the other he had dropped in his madness of fright, after completely exhausting its power chamber.

Half crazed by the hopelessness of his plight, he paced up and down beside the great length of animated stone. Trapped on an asteroid--utterly unarmed--alone with the most pitiless, invulnerable creation Nature had placed in a varied universe! Could Hell itself have devised a more terrible fate?

Shuddering, he turned away. He had some two and a half hours of grace, before the sun should set again and darkness release the colossus from its torpor. There was only one thing he could do: place the diameter of the sphere between the thing and himself, and try to exist through another night of terror.

His hands went to his belt to adjust the gravity regulator strapped about his waist. By reducing his weight to an ounce or two, he could make the long journey possible for his fatigue-numbed muscles--

His hands clenched into fists, and his breath whistled between his set teeth as a wild hope came to him. The touch of the regulator had brought inspiration. A way to defeat the gigantic creature stretched on the ground beside him! A way to banish it forever from the surface of this lovely little world where all was perfect but the monstrous thing with which it was cursed!

* * * * *

Trembling with the reaction wrought in him by the faint glow of hope, he began to race toward the lake and his wrecked Blinco Dart. It wasn't hard to find the way; the rock giant had left a trail as broad as a road; trees broken off like celery stalks, bushes smashed flat, tracks that looked like shallow wells sunk into the firm ground. Fifty yards to a step, he leaped along this path, praying that one object, just one bit of machinery in the Dart had escaped the general wreckage.

Arrived at the little shell at last, he was forced to pause a moment and compose himself before he could step into the battered interior. Everything hinged on this one final chance!

Drawing a long breath, he entered the cabin and made his way to the stern repellor. A groan escaped his lips. It was ruined. Evidently the thing had reached in the man-hole opening with one of its three mighty tentacles, and, with sure instinct, had fastened its stone claws on the repellor housing. At any rate, it was ground to bits. But--there was the bow repellor.

He went to that, and the flame of hope came back to his eyes. It was untouched! He threw back the housing to make sure. Yes, the inter-sliding series of plates, that reversed or neutralized gravitational attraction at a touch, were in alignment.

He bent to the task of disconnecting it from the heavy bed-plate to which it was bolted, his fingers flying frenziedly. Then back to the torpid colossus he hurried, clutching the precious repellor tight in his arms lest he should drop it, walking carefully lest he should fall with it.

There he was faced by a new difficulty that at first seemed insurmountable. How could he fasten the repellor to that great, impenetrable, opalescent bulk?

A second time he bounded back toward the Dart, to return with the heavy bow and stern bed-plates from its hull.

* * * * *

Once more the orange ball of the sun was sinking low. The terrible brevity of those three-hour days! He had less than ten minutes, Earth time, in which to work.

One of the thing's arms, or tentacles, was pointing out away from the parent mass. It was twice the diameter of his body, and was ponderously heavy; but by rigging a fulcrum and lever device, with a stone as the fulcrum and a tough log as the lever, he managed to raise it high enough to thrust one of the bed-plates under it. The other massive metal sheet he laid across the top.

The lower rim of the sun touched the horizon. A tremor ran through the colossus. In frantic haste, racing against the flying seconds, Harley clamped the two plates tight against the columnar tentacle with four long hull-bolts from the Dart. He set the repellor in position on the top bed-plate, and began to fasten it down.

He felt another tremor run through the stone column on which he was squatting. With a rasping sound, one of the half-moon rock-curtains the thing had for eyelids blinked open and shut. He shot the last bolt into place and tightened it.

The stone claws, just behind which he had fastened the repellor, ground savagely shut. The great tentacle began to lift, and carried him with it--toward the chasm of a mouth. That chasm opened wide....

Harley straightened up and jumped for the ground. As he jumped, he kicked the repellor control bar hard over.

There was a shrieking of wind as though all the hurricanes in the universe were battling each other. He felt himself turned over and over, buffeted, torn at, in a mad aerial whirlpool. The whirlpool calmed as the abruptly created vacuum, caused by the monster's rapid drive upward, passed after it into space. Far overhead there was one fleeting glimpse of a pinpoint of dull opalescence reflecting the rays of the dying sun. Then the pinpoint disappeared in fathomless space. With his gravity regulator adjusted to the point where it almost neutralized his weight, he fell slowly back toward the ground....

* * * * *

Almost immediately after he had landed in the darkness that blanketed the surface of the planetoid, a big space yacht settled down near him. A searchlight bored a hole in the blackness, to bathe him in cold light. Down the beam came a band of men from Earth, pushing atomic cannon and gazing apprehensively about them. In the lead was an elderly man with the six-bar dollar-mark insignia of a business executive on his purple tunic.

He hastened to Harley's side. Harley only dimly heard what he said. Something to the effect that the man had been worried after selling the fatal asteroid. Had got in touch with the Radivision Corporation and learned that this call number was dead. Had come with men and big guns to rescue him, if it wasn't too late, and take him back to Earth. Had cruised for half an hour before locating him. "I've been calling myself a murderer ever since I let you have Z-40, Mr. 2Q14N20," he concluded. "I was sure we'd get here only to find you'd been killed. But I see you've managed to escape from the creature so far--though by the look of you, it must have been a narrow shave."

At this Harley shook off some of the gathering dizziness that hazed his mind. He threw back his shoulders. "Managed to escape? I did better than that. I got rid of the thing forever! Yes, I'll return to Earth with you, but only because I need a new Blinco Dart. I'm coming back to Z-40 at once. Perfect little paradise, now that I've got rid of that--animated--rock pile--"

The belated rescuers caught him as he collapsed.

[Footnote 1: This implement, invented by Blansco 9X247A in 2052, is not so much a "drill" as a compressor. It is somewhat superficially defined in the Universal Dictionary, 2061 edition, as "a portable mechanism which, by alternating gaseous blasts of extreme heat and cold, breaks down the atoms of inorganic matter, causing them to collapse together in dense compression." Thus a cubic yard of earth can be reduced in size, in a few moments, to a pebble no larger than a pea; which pebble would weigh, on Earth, close to a ton.]

Contents

THE JUPITER WEAPON

By CHARLES L. FONTENAY

He was a living weapon of destruction--immeasurably powerful, utterly invulnerable. There was only one question: Was he human?

Trella feared she was in for trouble even before Motwick's head dropped forward on his arms in a drunken stupor. The two evil-looking men at the table nearby had been watching her surreptitiously, and now they shifted restlessly in their chairs.

Trella had not wanted to come to the Golden Satellite. It was a squalid saloon in the rougher section of Jupiter's View, the terrestrial dome-colony on Ganymede. Motwick, already drunk, had insisted.

A woman could not possibly make her way through these streets alone to the better section of town, especially one clad in a silvery evening dress. Her only hope was that this place had a telephone. Perhaps she could call one of Motwick's friends; she had no one on Ganymede she could call a real friend herself.

Tentatively, she pushed her chair back from the table and arose. She had to brush close by the other table to get to the bar. As she did, the dark, slick-haired man reached out and grabbed her around the waist with a steely arm.

Trella swung with her whole body, and slapped him so hard he nearly fell from his chair. As she walked swiftly toward the bar, he leaped up to follow her.

There were only two other people in the Golden Satellite: the fat, mustached bartender and a short, square-built man at the bar. The latter swung around at the pistol-like report of her slap, and she saw that, though no more than four and a half feet tall, he was as heavily muscled as a lion.

His face was clean and open, with close-cropped blond hair and honest blue eyes. She ran to him.

"Help me!" she cried. "Please help me!"

He began to back away from her.

"I can't," he muttered in a deep voice. "I can't help you. I can't do anything."

* * * * *

The dark man was at her heels. In desperation, she dodged around the short man and took refuge behind him. Her protector was obviously unwilling, but the dark man, faced with his massiveness, took no chances. He stopped and shouted:

"Kregg!"

The other man at the table arose, ponderously, and lumbered toward them. He was immense, at least six and a half feet tall, with a brutal, vacant face.

Evading her attempts to stay behind him, the squat man began to move down the bar away from the approaching Kregg. The dark man moved in on Trella again as Kregg overtook his quarry and swung a huge fist like a sledgehammer.

Exactly what happened, Trella wasn't sure. She had the impression that Kregg's fist connected squarely with the short man's chin before he dodged to one side in a movement so fast it was a blur. But that couldn't have been, because the short man wasn't moved by that blow that would have felled a steer, and Kregg roared in pain, grabbing his injured fist.

"The bar!" yelled Kregg. "I hit the damn bar!"

At this juncture, the bartender took a hand. Leaning far over the bar, he swung a full bottle in a complete arc. It smashed on Kregg's head, splashing the floor with liquor, and Kregg sank stunned to his knees. The dark man, who had grabbed Trella's arm, released her and ran for the door.

Moving agilely around the end of the bar, the bartender stood over Kregg, holding the jagged-edged bottleneck in his hand menacingly.

"Get out!" rumbled the bartender. "I'll have no coppers raiding my place for the likes of you!"

Kregg stumbled to his feet and staggered out. Trella ran to the unconscious Motwick's side.

"That means you, too, lady," said the bartender beside her. "You and your boy friend get out of here. You oughtn't to have come here in the first place."

"May I help you, Miss?" asked a deep, resonant voice behind her.

She straightened from her anxious examination of Motwick. The squat man was standing there, an apologetic look on his face.

She looked contemptuously at the massive muscles whose help had been denied her. Her arm ached where the dark man had grasped it. The broad face before her was not unhandsome, and the blue eyes were disconcertingly direct, but she despised him for a coward.

"I'm sorry I couldn't fight those men for you, Miss, but I just couldn't," he said miserably, as though reading her thoughts. "But no one will bother you on the street if I'm with you."

"A lot of protection you'd be if they did!" she snapped. "But I'm desperate. You can carry him to the Stellar Hotel for me."

* * * * *

The gravity of Ganymede was hardly more than that of Earth's moon, but the way the man picked up the limp Motwick with one hand and tossed him over a shoulder was startling: as though he lifted a feather pillow. He followed Trella out the door of the Golden Satellite and fell in step beside her. Immediately she was grateful for his presence. The dimly lighted street was not crowded, but she didn't like the looks of the men she saw.

The transparent dome of Jupiter's View was faintly visible in the reflected night lights of the colonial city, but the lights were overwhelmed by the giant, vari-colored disc of Jupiter itself, riding high in the sky.

"I'm Quest Mansard, Miss," said her companion. "I'm just in from Jupiter."

"I'm Trella Nuspar," she said, favoring him with a green-eyed glance. "You mean Io, don't you--or Moon Five?"

"No," he said, grinning at her. He had an engaging grin, with even white teeth. "I meant Jupiter."

"You're lying," she said flatly. "No one has ever landed on Jupiter. It would be impossible to blast off again."

"My parents landed on Jupiter, and I blasted off from it," he said soberly. "I was born there. Have you ever heard of Dr. Eriklund Mansard?"

"I certainly have," she said, her interest taking a sudden upward turn. "He developed the surgiscope, didn't he? But his ship was drawn into Jupiter and lost."

"It was drawn into Jupiter, but he landed it successfully," said Quest. "He and my mother lived on Jupiter until the oxygen equipment wore out at last. I was born and brought up there, and I was finally able to build a small rocket with a powerful enough drive to clear the planet."

She looked at him. He was short, half a head shorter than she, but broad and powerful as a man might be who had grown up in heavy gravity. He trod the street with a light, controlled step, seeming to deliberately hold himself down.

"If Dr. Mansard succeeded in landing on Jupiter, why didn't anyone ever hear from him again?" she demanded.

"Because," said Quest, "his radio was sabotaged, just as his ship's drive was."

"Jupiter strength," she murmured, looking him over coolly. "You wear Motwick on your shoulder like a scarf. But you couldn't bring yourself to help a woman against two thugs."

He flushed.

"I'm sorry," he said. "That's something I couldn't help."

"Why not?"

"I don't know. It's not that I'm afraid, but there's something in me that makes me back away from the prospect of fighting anyone."

Trella sighed. Cowardice was a state of mind. It was peculiarly inappropriate, but not unbelievable, that the strongest and most agile man on Ganymede should be a coward. Well, she thought with a rush of sympathy, he couldn't help being what he was.

* * * * *

They had reached the more brightly lighted section of the city now. Trella could get a cab from here, but the Stellar Hotel wasn't far. They walked on.

Trella had the desk clerk call a cab to deliver the unconscious Motwick to his home. She and Quest had a late sandwich in the coffee shop.

"I landed here only a week ago," he told her, his eyes frankly admiring her honey-colored hair and comely face. "I'm heading for Earth on the next spaceship."

"We'll be traveling companions, then," she said. "I'm going back on that ship, too."

For some reason she decided against telling him that the assignment on which she had come to the Jupiter system was to gather his own father's notebooks and take them back to Earth.

* * * * *

Motwick was an irresponsible playboy whom Trella had known briefly on Earth, and Trella was glad to dispense with his company for the remaining three weeks before the spaceship blasted off. She found herself enjoying the steadier companionship of Quest.

As a matter of fact, she found herself enjoying his companionship more than she intended to. She found herself falling in love with him.

Now this did not suit her at all. Trella had always liked her men tall and dark. She had determined that when she married it would be to a curly-haired six-footer.

She was not at all happy about being so strongly attracted to a man several inches shorter than she. She was particularly unhappy about feeling drawn to a man who was a coward.

The ship that they boarded on Moon Nine was one of the newer ships that could attain a hundred-mile-per-second velocity and take a hyperbolic path to Earth, but it would still require fifty-four days to make the trip. So Trella was delighted to find that the ship was the Cometfire and its skipper was her old friend, dark-eyed, curly-haired Jakdane Gille.

"Jakdane," she said, flirting with him with her eyes as in days gone by, "I need a chaperon this trip, and you're ideal for the job."

"I never thought of myself in quite that light, but maybe I'm getting old," he answered, laughing. "What's your trouble, Trella?"

"I'm in love with that huge chunk of man who came aboard with me, and I'm not sure I ought to be," she confessed. "I may need protection against myself till we get to Earth."

"If it's to keep you out of another fellow's clutches, I'm your man," agreed Jakdane heartily. "I always had a mind to save you for myself. I'll guarantee you won't have a moment alone with him the whole trip."

"You don't have to be that thorough about it," she protested hastily. "I want to get a little enjoyment out of being in love. But if I feel myself weakening too much, I'll holler for help."

The Cometfire swung around great Jupiter in an opening arc and plummeted ever more swiftly toward the tight circles of the inner planets. There were four crew members and three passengers aboard the ship's tiny personnel sphere, and Trella was thrown with Quest almost constantly. She enjoyed every minute of it.

She told him only that she was a messenger, sent out to Ganymede to pick up some important papers and take them back to Earth. She was tempted to tell him what the papers were. Her employer had impressed upon her that her mission was confidential, but surely Dom Blessing could not object to Dr. Mansard's son knowing about it.

All these things had happened before she was born, and she did not know what Dom Blessing's relation to Dr. Mansard had been, but it must have been very close. She knew that Dr. Mansard had invented the surgiscope.

This was an instrument with a three-dimensional screen as its heart. The screen was a cubical frame in which an apparently solid image was built up of an object under an electron microscope.

* * * * *

The actual cutting instrument of the surgiscope was an ion stream. By operating a tool in the three-dimensional screen, corresponding movements were made by the ion stream on the object under the microscope. The principle was the same as that used in operation of remote control "hands" in atomic laboratories to handle hot material, and with the surgiscope very delicate operations could be performed at the cellular level.

Dr. Mansard and his wife had disappeared into the turbulent atmosphere of Jupiter just after his invention of the surgiscope, and it had been developed by Dom Blessing. Its success had built Spaceway Instruments, Incorporated, which Blessing headed.

Through all these years since Dr. Mansard's disappearance, Blessing had been searching the Jovian moons for a second, hidden laboratory of Dr. Mansard. When it was found at last, he sent Trella, his most trusted secretary, to Ganymede to bring back to him the notebooks found there.

Blessing would, of course, be happy to learn that a son of Dr. Mansard lived, and would see that he received his rightful share of the inheritance. Because of this, Trella was tempted to tell Quest the good news herself; but she decided against it. It was Blessing's privilege to do this his own way, and he might not appreciate her meddling.

* * * * *

At midtrip, Trella made a rueful confession to Jakdane.

"It seems I was taking unnecessary precautions when I asked you to be a chaperon," she said. "I kept waiting for Quest to do something, and when he didn't I told him I loved him."

"What did he say?"

"It's very peculiar," she said unhappily. "He said he can't love me. He said he wants to love me and he feels that he should, but there's something in him that refuses to permit it."

She expected Jakdane to salve her wounded feelings with a sympathetic pleasantry, but he did not. Instead, he just looked at her very thoughtfully and said no more about the matter.

He explained his attitude after Asrange ran amuck.

Asrange was the third passenger. He was a lean, saturnine individual who said little and kept to himself as much as possible. He was distantly polite in his relations with both crew and other passengers, and never showed the slightest spark of emotion ... until the day Quest squirted coffee on him.

It was one of those accidents that can occur easily in space. The passengers and the two crewmen on that particular waking shift (including Jakdane) were eating lunch on the center-deck. Quest picked up his bulb of coffee, but inadvertently pressed it before he got it to his lips. The coffee squirted all over the front of Asrange's clean white tunic.

"I'm sorry!" exclaimed Quest in distress.

The man's eyes went wide and he snarled. So quickly it seemed impossible, he had unbuckled himself from his seat and hurled himself backward from the table with an incoherent cry. He seized the first object his hand touched--it happened to be a heavy wooden cane leaning against Jakdane's bunk--propelled himself like a projectile at Quest.

Quest rose from the table in a sudden uncoiling of movement. He did not unbuckle his safety belt--he rose and it snapped like a string.

For a moment Trella thought he was going to meet Asrange's assault. But he fled in a long leap toward the companionway leading to the astrogation deck above. Landing feet-first in the middle of the table and rebounding, Asrange pursued with the stick upraised.

In his haste, Quest missed the companionway in his leap and was cornered against one of the bunks. Asrange descended on him like an avenging angel and, holding onto the bunk with one hand, rained savage blows on his head and shoulders with the heavy stick.

Quest made no effort to retaliate. He cowered under the attack, holding his hands in front of him as if to ward it off. In a moment, Jakdane and the other crewman had reached Asrange and pulled him off.

* * * * *

When they had Asrange in irons, Jakdane turned to Quest, who was now sitting unhappily at the table.

"Take it easy," he advised. "I'll wake the psychosurgeon and have him look you over. Just stay there."

Quest shook his head.

"Don't bother him," he said. "It's nothing but a few bruises."

"Bruises? Man, that club could have broken your skull! Or a couple of ribs, at the very least."

"I'm all right," insisted Quest; and when the skeptical Jakdane insisted on examining him carefully, he had to admit it. There was hardly a mark on him from the blows.

"If it didn't hurt you any more than that, why didn't you take that stick away from him?" demanded Jakdane. "You could have, easily."

"I couldn't," said Quest miserably, and turned his face away.

Later, alone with Trella on the control deck, Jakdane gave her some sober advice.

"If you think you're in love with Quest, forget it," he said.

"Why? Because he's a coward? I know that ought to make me despise him, but it doesn't any more."

"Not because he's a coward. Because he's an android!"

"What? Jakdane, you can't be serious!"

"I am. I say he's an android, an artificial imitation of a man. It all figures.

"Look, Trella, he said he was born on Jupiter. A human could stand the gravity of Jupiter, inside a dome or a ship, but what human could stand the rocket acceleration necessary to break free of Jupiter? Here's a man strong enough to break a spaceship safety belt just by getting up out of his chair against it, tough enough to take a beating with a heavy stick without being injured. How can you believe he's really human?"

Trella remembered the thug Kregg striking Quest in the face and then crying that he had injured his hand on the bar.

"But he said Dr. Mansard was his father," protested Trella.

"Robots and androids frequently look on their makers as their parents," said Jakdane. "Quest may not even know he's artificial. Do you know how Mansard died?"

"The oxygen equipment failed, Quest said."

"Yes. Do you know when?"

"No. Quest never did tell me, that I remember."

"He told me: a year before Quest made his rocket flight to Ganymede! If the oxygen equipment failed, how do you think Quest lived in the poisonous atmosphere of Jupiter, if he's human?"

Trella was silent.

"For the protection of humans, there are two psychological traits built into every robot and android," said Jakdane gently. "The first is that they can never, under any circumstances, attack a human being, even in self defense. The second is that, while they may understand sexual desire objectively, they can never experience it themselves.

"Those characteristics fit your man Quest to a T, Trella. There is no other explanation for him: he must be an android."

* * * * *

Trella did not want to believe Jakdane was right, but his reasoning was unassailable. Looking upon Quest as an android, many things were explained: his great strength, his short, broad build, his immunity to injury, his refusal to defend himself against a human, his inability to return Trella's love for him.

It was not inconceivable that she should have unknowingly fallen in love with an android. Humans could love androids, with real affection, even knowing that they were artificial. There were instances of android nursemaids who were virtually members of the families owning them.

She was glad now that she had not told Quest of her mission to Ganymede. He thought he was Dr. Mansard's son, but an android had no legal right of inheritance from his owner. She would leave it to Dom Blessing to decide what to do about Quest.

Thus she did not, as she had intended originally, speak to Quest about seeing him again after she had completed her assignment. Even if Jakdane was wrong and Quest was human--as now seemed unlikely--Quest had told her he could not love her. Her best course was to try to forget him.

Nor did Quest try to arrange with her for a later meeting.

"It has been pleasant knowing you, Trella," he said when they left the G-boat at White Sands. A faraway look came into his blue eyes, and he added: "I'm sorry things couldn't have been different, somehow."

"Let's don't be sorry for what we can't help," she said gently, taking his hand in farewell.

Trella took a fast plane from White Sands, and twenty-four hours later walked up the front steps of the familiar brownstone house on the outskirts of Washington.

Dom Blessing himself met her at the door, a stooped, graying man who peered at her over his spectacles.

"You have the papers, eh?" he said, spying the brief case. "Good, good. Come in and we'll see what we have, eh?"

She accompanied him through the bare, windowless anteroom which had always seemed to her such a strange feature of this luxurious house, and they entered the big living room. They sat before a fire in the old-fashioned fireplace and Blessing opened the brief case with trembling hands.

"There are things here," he said, his eyes sparkling as he glanced through the notebooks. "Yes, there are things here. We shall make something of these, Miss Trella, eh?"

"I'm glad they're something you can use, Mr. Blessing," she said. "There's something else I found on my trip, that I think I should tell you about."

She told him about Quest.

"He thinks he's the son of Dr. Mansard," she finished, "but apparently he is, without knowing it, an android Dr. Mansard built on Jupiter."

"He came back to Earth with you, eh?" asked Blessing intently.

"Yes. I'm afraid it's your decision whether to let him go on living as a man or to tell him he's an android and claim ownership as Dr. Mansard's heir."

Trella planned to spend a few days resting in her employer's spacious home, and then to take a short vacation before resuming her duties as his confidential secretary. The next morning when she came down from her room, a change had been made.

Two armed men were with Dom Blessing at breakfast and accompanied him wherever he went. She discovered that two more men with guns were stationed in the bare anteroom and a guard was stationed at every entrance to the house.

"Why all the protection?" she asked Blessing.

"A wealthy man must be careful," said Blessing cheerfully. "When we don't understand all the implications of new circumstances, we must be prepared for anything, eh?"

There was only one new circumstance Trella could think of. Without actually intending to, she exclaimed:

"You aren't afraid of Quest? Why, an android can't hurt a human!"

Blessing peered at her over his spectacles.

"And what if he isn't an android, eh? And if he is--what if old Mansard didn't build in the prohibition against harming humans that's required by law? What about that, eh?"

Trella was silent, shocked. There was something here she hadn't known about, hadn't even suspected. For some reason, Dom Blessing feared Dr. Eriklund Mansard ... or his heir ... or his mechanical servant.

* * * * *

She was sure that Blessing was wrong, that Quest, whether man or android, intended no harm to him. Surely, Quest would have said something of such bitterness during their long time together on Ganymede and aspace, since he did not know of Trella's connection with Blessing. But, since this was to be the atmosphere of Blessing's house, she was glad that he decided to assign her to take the Mansard papers to the New York laboratory.

Quest came the day before she was scheduled to leave.

Trella was in the living room with Blessing, discussing the instructions she was to give to the laboratory officials in New York. The two bodyguards were with them. The other guards were at their posts.

Trella heard the doorbell ring. The heavy oaken front door was kept locked now, and the guards in the anteroom examined callers through a tiny window.

Suddenly alarm bells rang all over the house. There was a terrific crash outside the room as the front door splintered. There were shouts and the sound of a shot.

"The steel doors!" cried Blessing, turning white. "Let's get out of here."

He and his bodyguards ran through the back of the house out of the garage.

Blessing, ahead of the rest, leaped into one of the cars and started the engine.

The door from the house shattered and Quest burst through. The two guards turned and fired together.

He could be hurt by bullets. He was staggered momentarily.

Then, in a blur of motion, he sprang forward and swept the guards aside with one hand with such force that they skidded across the floor and lay in an unconscious heap against the rear of the garage. Trella had opened the door of the car, but it was wrenched from her hand as Blessing stepped on the accelerator and it leaped into the driveway with spinning wheels.

Quest was after it, like a chunky deer, running faster than Trella had ever seen a man run before.

Blessing slowed for the turn at the end of the driveway and glanced back over his shoulder. Seeing Quest almost upon him, he slammed down the accelerator and twisted the wheel hard.

The car whipped into the street, careened, and rolled over and over, bringing up against a tree on the other side in a twisted tangle of wreckage.

With a horrified gasp, Trella ran down the driveway toward the smoking heap of metal. Quest was already beside it, probing it. As she reached his side, he lifted the torn body of Dom Blessing. Blessing was dead.

"I'm lucky," said Quest soberly. "I would have murdered him."

"But why, Quest? I knew he was afraid of you, but he didn't tell me why."

"It was conditioned into me," answered Quest "I didn't know it until just now, when it ended, but my father conditioned me psychologically from my birth to the task of hunting down Dom Blessing and killing him. It was an unconscious drive in me that wouldn't release me until the task was finished.

"You see, Blessing was my father's assistant on Ganymede. Right after my father completed development of the surgiscope, he and my mother blasted off for Io. Blessing wanted the valuable rights to the surgiscope, and he sabotaged the ship's drive so it would fall into Jupiter.

"But my father was able to control it in the heavy atmosphere of Jupiter, and landed it successfully. I was born there, and he conditioned me to come to Earth and track down Blessing. I know now that it was part of the conditioning that I was unable to fight any other man until my task was finished: it might have gotten me in trouble and diverted me from that purpose."

More gently than Trella would have believed possible for his Jupiter-strong muscles, Quest took her in his arms.

"Now I can say I love you," he said. "That was part of the conditioning too: I couldn't love any woman until my job was done."

Trella disengaged herself.

"I'm sorry," she said. "Don't you know this, too, now: that you're not a man, but an android?"

He looked at her in astonishment, stunned by her words.

"What in space makes you think that?" he demanded.

"Why, Quest, it's obvious," she cried, tears in her eyes. "Everything about you ... your build, suited for Jupiter's gravity ... your strength ... the fact that you were able to live in Jupiter's atmosphere after the oxygen equipment failed. I know you think Dr. Mansard was your father, but androids often believe that."

He grinned at her.

"I'm no android," he said confidently. "Do you forget my father was inventor of the surgiscope? He knew I'd have to grow up on Jupiter, and he operated on the genes before I was born. He altered my inherited characteristics to adapt me to the climate of Jupiter ... even to being able to breathe a chlorine atmosphere as well as an oxygen atmosphere."

Trella looked at him. He was not badly hurt, any more than an elephant would have been, but his tunic was stained with red blood where the bullets had struck him. Normal android blood was green.

"How can you be sure?" she asked doubtfully.

"Androids are made," he answered with a laugh. "They don't grow up. And I remember my boyhood on Jupiter very well."

He took her in his arms again, and this time she did not resist. His lips were very human.

THE END

Contents

THIS WORLD MUST DIE!

By H. B. Fyfe

Lou Phillips sat on the cold metal deck of the control room, seething with a growing dislike for the old man.

"What you are here for," the other had told him when the guards had brought Phillips in, "is a simple crime of violence. You'll do, I'm sure."

The old man paced the deck impatiently, while a pair of armed guards maintained a watchful silence by the door. Two more men in plain gray shirts and trousers sat beside Phillips, leaning back sullenly against the bulkhead. He guessed that they were waiting for a fourth, remembering that three other figures had been hustled aboard with him at the Lunar spaceport.

The door slid open, allowing another youth in gray uniform to stumble inside. One of the guards in the corridor beyond shoved the newcomer forward, and Phillips' eyebrows twitched as he had a closer look. This last prisoner was a girl.

He thought she might have been pretty, with a touch of lipstick and a kinder arrangement of her short, ash-blonde hair; but he lowered his eyes as her hard, wary stare flickered past him. She walked over to the bulkhead and took a seat at the other end of the little group.

The old man turned, scanning their faces critically. "I am in charge of a peculiar project," he announced abruptly. "The director of the Lunar Detention Colony claims that you four are the best he has--for our purposes!"

Long habit kept the seated ones guardedly silent. Seeing, apparently, that they would not relax, he continued.

"You were chosen because each of you has received a sentence of detention for life because of tendencies toward violence in one form or another. In our twenty-second century civilization such homicidal inclinations are quite rare, due to the law-abiding habits of generations under the Interplanetary Council."

He had been pacing the cramped space left free by the equipment, the guards, and the four seated prisoners. Now he paused, as if mildly astonished at what he was about to say.

"In fact, now that we are faced by a situation demanding illegal violence, it appears that no normal citizen is capable of committing such an act. Using you may eliminate costly screening processes ... and save time. Incidentally, I am Anthony Varret, Undersecretary for Security in the Council."

None of the four showed any overt sign of being impressed. Phillips knew that the others, like himself, were scrutinizing the old man with cold, secretive stares. They had learned through harsh experience to keep their own counsels. Varret shrugged. "Well, then," he said dryly, "I might as well call the roll. I have been supplied with accurate records."

* * * * *

He drew a notebook from his pocket, consulted it briefly, then nodded at the man next to the girl. "Robert Brecken," he recited, "age thirty-one, six feet, one hundred eighty-five pounds, hair reddish brown, eyes green, complexion ruddy. Convicted of unjustified homicide by personal assault while resisting arrest for embezzlement. Detention record unsatisfactory. Implicated in two minor mutinies."

He glanced next at the youth beside Phillips. "Raymond Truesdale, age twenty-two, five-feet-five, one-thirty. Hair black, eyes dark brown, complexion pale. Convicted of two suicide attempts following failures in various artistic fields. Detention record fair, psychological report poor."

His frosty eyes met Phillips'. "Louis Phillips, age twenty-six, five-ten, one-eighty. Hair brown, eyes brown, complexion darkly tanned--that was before Luna, wasn't it, Phillips? Convicted of unjustified homicide, having assaulted a jet mechanic so as to cause death. Detention record satisfactory."

The blonde girl was last in Varret's review. "Donna Bailey, age twenty-three, five-five, one-fifteen. Hair blonde, eyes blue, complexion fair. Convicted of manslaughter by negligence, while piloting an atmosphere sport rocket in an intoxicated condition. Detention record satisfactory."

Varret fell silent, regarding them with cynical disgust. His lips twisted slightly with distaste. "There we have it," he said. "A violent-tempered thief from the business world; an over-expensive purchase by a rich playboy who became his widow by her own negligence; a mentally-unstable fool who thought he was artistically gifted, and a rocket engineer who was too brutally careless with his own strength when irritated by a space-fatigued helper. I wonder if you'll do...?"

Phillips felt impelled at last to speak. "Just what plans do you have for us?" he demanded harshly.

"Nothing complicated," replied Varret, matching the tone. "We need you to perform a mass murder!"

Phillips blinked, despite his prison-learned reserve. He heard the girl suck in her breath sharply, and felt the youth beside him begin to tremble.

"I have shocked you, I see," sneered Varret. "Well, I assure you, it shocks me also, probably a good deal more since I have lived a normal life. However--this is the background:

"About three months ago, we had reports of the outbreak of a deadly plague in one of the asteroid groups. As near as can be determined, it was spread by the crew of an exploratory rocket after the discovery of a new asteroid. It began to sweep through the mining colonies out there with the velocity of an expanding nova!"

"Where was your Health Department?" asked the man named Brecken in a sneering tone.

Varret frowned at him. "Several members gave their lives trying to learn the nature of the disease. We have no information to date, except a theory that it attacks the nervous and circulatory systems, because the reports indicate that the reason of the victim is markedly affected as the disease progresses. Not a single survivor is known--they all die in raving insanity. We do not even know with certainty how it is communicated."

"What are you doing?" asked Phillips.

"Isolation. It is all we can do, until our medical men can make some progress. We evacuated an asteroid colony and began to ship into it any person showing any of the symptoms, using a cruiser piloted by remote control. That was where we slipped."

"How?"

"On the last trip--unless we have not really collected all the sufferers--we lost control. Someone being transported knew his spaceships. Shortly thereafter, a gibbering lunatic got on the screen and threatened the escorting rocket. He announced the cruiser would head for Mars, where the passengers would demand their freedom. They are past reasoning with."

"Can't say I really blame them," Phillips remarked.

"Blame them? Of course not! Neither do I. What has that to do with it? What has the Council so worried is that this thing will get loose on Mars, that it may even be carried to Earth and Venus. There are over a hundred persons in that ship, no longer responsible for their actions but capable of causing deaths by the billions. We want to help them, but we simply must hold the line on this quarantine until we solve the medical problem."

* * * * *

They stared at him in silence, and Phillips noticed that the old man's forehead was moist with tiny beads of perspiration.

"Don't you see? They are as good as dead. No knowledge or help of man can save them--as of this moment. If we are ever to be of any help, we must prevent a worse catastrophe.

"Yes, the survival ship is a world in itself, but this world must die!"

For a minute or two, it seemed to Phillips that he could hear each person in the control room breathing. Finally, there was a small sound of cloth rubbing on metal as Brecken stirred. "Why pick on us?" he rasped from his seat on the deck. "I'm no volunteer!"

"I know what you are," replied Varret sharply. "I know what you all are. You have been chosen for this mission of murder, because you are the only people in our culture who are capable of this kind of violence. You have broken our laws, and this is your punishment.

"It would take us too long to find others like you who had merely never faced the same circumstances that sent you four to Luna. We have made attempts to attack this vessel. Manned by normal men, our ships could accomplish nothing."

"Why not?" asked Phillips.

"The crews found they could not kill!"

"What?"

"It amounts to that. One pilot blacked out at the start of an offensive approach. He lost contact before recovering--you realize how quickly that happens at interplanetary speeds. On several other ships, there were passive mutinies. One was destroyed; how, we do not know."

"Why don't you get some men in your Department of Security?" sneered Brecken.

Varret sighed. "It was far from simple cowardice. The crews had fine records. We have been civilized too long, so long that the idea of deliberate killing unnerved them. As to the one ship that did make some motion to attack, it may have been destroyed by the cruiser's defenses, or even by sabotage. Somebody may quite possibly have found the mission too repulsive to face with complete sanity."

He was interrupted by a uniformed man, who slid the door open and gestured significantly. Varret paused. He nodded, and the newcomer retired.

"I have only a few minutes," said the old man, facing them again. "To be brief, this patrol vessel is armed with the best we have in guided atomic missiles and sensitive detection devices. Technical manuals are supplied for everything we could think of, though I doubt you will need them. We have brought you to within a few hundred miles of them.

"In a few minutes, my men and I will transfer to an escort ship. We will slip in behind Deimos, not too far away, and pick you up afterward to land you on Mars. Any questions?"

"Yes," said Phillips.

"What?"

"Why should we do anything at all?"

Varret's lips tightened. A guard shrugged contemptuously. "I was told to expect that attitude," the old man admitted. "I suppose it is part of the character we now think is needed for such an expedition."

"You could hardly expect co-operation," Phillips pointed out. "Laws against any kind of homicide are all well enough, but I for one don't see why I should draw the same sentence as a murderer. I had to protect myself or die--probably through having that crazy fool blow up my rocket room."

"You'll make a cold landing on Sol before you'll get any help from me!" Brecken added defiantly.

The girl said nothing, but Truesdale muttered darkly.

"Please!" said Varret. "I have no time to argue about our social and legal codes. The Council foresaw that the threat of being yourselves subject to this plague might not be enough. If you succeed in destroying or even immobilizing the cruiser, I can offer you anything you want short of unsupervised liberty. You must still be watched as potential dangers to society, but you may otherwise be as wealthy or independent as you wish."

He motioned to the guards, who had begun to fidget impatiently; wordlessly they left the compartment.

"You can settle your relations among yourselves," said Varret. "We chose Bailey partly because she has piloted rockets privately, and Phillips because he was a space engineer. Perhaps Brecken could handle the torpedoes--I do not know." He rubbed his chin uneasily. "Frankly, I find intimate discussion of the affair repulsive. I hope you will decide to do what is necessary for the welfare of Earth."

He turned abruptly and left the control room. They heard distant voices exhorting him to hurry.

Brecken arose and crept furtively to the door. He leaned out to peer down the corridor. The nervous Truesdale bounced up to crowd behind him. Phillips and the girl looked at each other; she shrugged, and they too got to their feet. She turned to the instrument panels; and after a moment, Phillips joined her.

"How have they got it?" he asked. "Controls locked?"

"No," murmured Donna. "Don't need to; we're just coasting. Nice job, though. Fast as a racer, I imagine."

"You know something about racers?"

"I used to think I did," she answered, shortly.

He saw pain darken her blue eyes and decided to probe no further. Instead, he wandered about, inspecting the instruments. A few minutes later, with a spaceman's indefinable alertness, he felt a change in the ship.

"They still aboard?" he called to Truesdale, who remained at the door although Brecken had disappeared.

The youth glanced over his shoulder but did not trouble to reply. Phillips' jaw set, and he took a quick step toward the other. Before he reached the doorway, however, Brecken returned from the corridor. Shouldering Truesdale aside, he strode into the control room. "Well," he announced, "the old fool hopped off like he said. Got a viewer in here?"

"I have it on now," called Donna from the instrument desk. "There he goes."

They gathered around the screen to watch. Near one edge was the image of another ship, with several spacesuited figures clustered around its entrance port. The girl made an adjustment, and the view crept over to the center of the screen just as the last of the figures vanished into the opening. Almost immediately, the other rocket slanted away on a new course.

Donna followed it on the screen until the brief flashes of its jets were dimmed by a new radiance--the ruddy disk of Mars. "We are where he said," she admitted. "Now what?"

She looked at Phillips, who merely shrugged. "What do you make of it?" she insisted.

"Pretty much as he said, probably," answered the engineer. "He's heading for Deimos, I suppose. I hear they're landscaping the whole moon--it's only about five miles in diameter--and building a new space station for a radio beacon and relay."

"Does that log say anything about the plague ship?" asked Truesdale nervously.

Donna scanned the observation record, then adjusted the viewer. The red radiance of Mars fled, to be replaced by a dimmer scene of distant stars.

"In there someplace," she said. "Out of range of this screen, but we could probably locate it with detector instruments."

"Why all the jabber?" demanded Brecken. "Let's get going!"

Phillips stared at him. "What's the rush? Did he sell you that easily?"

"Huh? Oh, hell, no! I mean let's make a dive for Mars. They were dumb to set us loose with a fast ship. We're dumber if we don't use it!"

"That's right," agreed Truesdale eagerly. "We don't owe them anything. They owe us; for the years they took out of our lives!"

* * * * *

Truesdale had a point there, Phillips felt. This could grow into quite a discussion, and he was not sure which side he wanted to take. He had no great urge to become a hero, but on the other hand there was something about Brecken that aroused a certain obstinacy in him.

"Wait a minute!" Donna protested; "what do you think you're going to do?"

"Slip into a curve for Mars," said Brecken. "Slow down enough to take to chutes an' let this can smack up in the deserts somewhere. They'll never know if we got out, an' we'll be on our own."

The girl turned to Phillips. "How about you?" she asked. "Don't you think we should at least consider what Varret told us? If this plague is as dangerous as he says, this is no time to--"

"Do you have to be so bloodthirsty?" complained Truesdale.

"I don't want to kill anybody," declared the girl; "maybe we could just disable the cruiser."

"Aw, kill your jets!" Brecken broke in. "I've been waiting for a chance like this for years. Don't get any ideas!"

"But listen!" pleaded Donna. "It's a terrible thing, but if we don't do it, we won't be safe on Mars ourselves; they'll land and set an epidemic loose."

"I'll take my chances with it," said Brecken. "You're supposed to know something about piloting. Now get us on a curve for Mars, an' be snappy about it!"

Donna turned desperately to Phillips.

"Why not look over the ship," the engineer suggested, "before we blast off on half our jets? We can make up our minds when we see what we have for fuel and weapons."

Brecken opened his mouth to object, but was smitten by an unpleasant thought. "Suppose they didn't leave us enough fuel to make Mars!"

"We can find out soon enough," said Phillips, leading the way to the door.

They trooped down the corridor on his heels, past the few closet-like compartments set aside for living quarters. It was a single-deck ship, with storage compartments above and below for fuel, oxygen, and other necessities. The corridor was liberally supplied with handrails, apparently in case of failure of the artificial gravity system.

About halfway to the end, another passage crossed the fore-and-aft one, and a few steps farther was a ladder. This extended up and down a vertical well, which in space amounted to a second cross corridor. Phillips was right when he guessed that the door beyond opened into the rocket room.

The others were bored by the power plant of the ship. The engineer, however, could not repress a thrill at once more standing surrounded by the gauges, valves, and pumps with which he had formerly lived. He strode about, examining and comprehending such appliances as seemed new since his last service in space.

"How about it?" demanded Brecken. "Can you handle it?"

"Sure," answered Phillips confidently. "Mostly automatic anyway."

"Then we can get movin' whenever we want?"

"I suppose so. The tanks are nearly full; let's find those space torpedoes the old man mentioned."

"Maybe it won't hurt, at that," grumbled Brecken.

* * * * *

He led the way out, but paused indecisively. Phillips stepped past him and considered the cross passages near the midpoint of the corridor. Those in the plane of the control room deck probably led to port and starboard airlocks, he reasoned, so the others might lead to the torpedo turrets.

He went to the vertical well and started up the ladder, hearing the others follow. At the top, he was confronted by a hatch with a red danger sign. Glancing about, he located the gauges that reported the air pressure beyond. Normal.

"Make a little room," he said, looking down to Brecken.

The big, ruddy face retreated a few rungs. Phillips could hear the others scrambling further down. He got his head out of the way before pulling the switch that opened the hatch. With a subdued humming of electric motors, the massively constructed door swung down. One after another, they pulled themselves up into the compartment.

"This must be where they set controls for launching," guessed Phillips, leaning back against a rack of emergency spacesuits. "That intercom screen on the bulkhead is probably plugged in to the control room. Looks as if the torpedoes themselves are stored under that hatch at the after end."

"How do they kick them off?" asked Brecken.

"Those conveyor belts run them into tubes in the forward bulkhead. A charge of compressed air blows them out, and then the rockets are started and controlled by radio."

"You mean we have to point at a target to fire?"

"Oh, no. Once the rockets are going, the torpedo can be maneuvered and aimed anywhere by remote control."

"I've seen enough," announced Truesdale. "I'm hungry."

At that, they all decided to return to the main deck. Phillips carefully closed the airtight hatch as they left, then followed the others in search of the galley.

Later, after a very unsatisfactory meal of packaged concentrates, they loitered sullenly in the control room once more while Donna studied the controls. Phillips had finally decided that he could wear the third spacesuit on the rack if he had to. He was idly examining the tools supplied with it when his thoughts were interrupted.

Young Truesdale had been monkeying with a range indicator for some time, but now his sharp outcry drew all eyes to him.

The others immediately gathered to peer over his shoulder. A needle flickered wildly from one side of the dial to the other.

"Here! Get it balanced," said Phillips, thrusting a powerful arm between the crowded bodies. As his deft adjustment steadied the needle, he stepped back and leaned against the bulkhead to study their faces. Truesdale's was pale.

"It's them!" he panted.

"Well," asked Donna, "what will it be?"

"Whaddya mean?" demanded Brecken, red-faced. "It'll be get dam' well outa here, that's what it'll be!"

"Let's see you go," invited the girl coolly. "How well do you pilot a rocket?"

Brecken's jaw dropped. "Wh-wh-what? You crazy? Did you swallow all that stuff the old man told you?" he sputtered.

"Why not?" asked Donna. "They didn't bring us all the way out here for nothing. Varret was scared. If it's that dangerous, somebody just has to do it--and we're here!"

"Not for long," said Brecken in an ugly tone. "Get hot on those controls. You, Phillips! Run back to that rocket room and see that things work!"

"You try it," suggested the engineer quietly.

He would have preferred to avoid the trouble the girl had been stirring up, but he did not relish Brecken's tone. A few days off Luna, he reflected, and already he was getting independent.

"Listen," said Donna, encouraged in her defiance, "when I touch those controls, we'll go right up and touch noses with them. You'd better have a torpedo ready!"

She turned to the banks of buttons and switches. Muffled thunder from the stern jets trembled through the hull as the men staggered.

Brecken recovered his balance first. With a snarl, he grabbed the girl by the nape of the neck and shook her roughly. Glimpsing Phillips' cold sneer, he reached back and seized a heavy metal bar from the spacesuit rack.

"Now, dammit!" he grated. "You'll do like I tell you! And you get back there an' see that those tubes recharge okay!"

Phillips felt a hard anger swelling his throat. From the corner of his eye, he saw Truesdale shrinking back against the bulkhead. He glanced about desperately for something with which to parry Brecken's bar.

It was the girl who broke the tense silence. With a gasping intake of breath, she reached up to claw at Brecken's face. Cursing, the man twisted his head away to protect his eyes. He released his grip on the girl's neck and swung a clumsy, backhand blow at her head. Donna stumbled, and collapsed to the deck.

Now or never, Phillips told himself. Without waiting to think, he hurled himself forward.

Brecken saw him coming, and tried to shift around to meet the engineer's charge. Phillips crashed into him shoulder first, and they both brought up against the opposite bulkhead with a thud. He concentrated all his strength into wringing the other's forearm until he heard the bar clang to the deck.

Brecken clubbed him on the side of the head with a wild left swing, and Phillips found the big man's foot in the way when he tried to sidestep. He lost his balance, but kept his grasp on the other so that they went down together, thrashing about for some opening. Brecken was red-faced with a maniacal rage. Beads of saliva sprayed from his twisted lips as he sputtered curses.

The engineer let go suddenly and jolted the other under the chin with the heel of his left hand. The man arched backward, but Phillips caught a knee in the chest that sent him slithering across the deck. As he strove to twist to his hands and knees, he saw Brecken groping for the bar.

Never reach him, thought Phillips frantically.

Thrusting one foot against the leg of an anchored data desk, he raised himself half upright as he lunged desperately at Brecken. Strangely, it occurred to Phillips for a fleeting lapse of time that old Varret had been reasonably astute in his selections, if he desired violent-tempered throwbacks. Then the breath was knocked out of him as he smashed into Brecken with a force that sent them both hurtling into the bulkhead.

The other's grunt of pain was almost lost beneath the sharp smack of bone against metal. Phillips scrambled up hastily, but his opponent lay still.

Over by the data desk, Donna was beginning to squirm quietly and make groping motions with her outstretched hands. Truesdale had retreated to the forward end of the control room, his features blanched by apprehension.

I'll bet, thought Phillips, that old Varret slipped up in your case, my lad. Your reaction to violence must be what they call normal.

He beckoned brusquely. "Give me a hand with him," he ordered.

Brecken still showed no sign of consciousness. Truesdale approached warily, and with his aid Phillips lifted the unconscious man. With their burden limp in their hands, they staggered down the corridor to one of the sleeping compartments. There, they slung him into a bunk.

"He needs attention," said Truesdale.

"He won't get it from me," snapped Phillips. "Lumps on the head were his idea; there's no time to fool with him."

He pulled the sliding door shut, noticing that it had no lock. Since Brecken would probably be some time recovering, however, he put that out of his mind.

* * * * *

Having returned to the control room, they discovered Donna sitting up. At the sight of them, she pulled herself somewhat shakily to a standing position, and brushed back her blonde hair.

"What happened?" she asked.

"He bumped his head on the bulkhead," said Phillips shortly.

This was accepted without comment. They turned to the instruments and examined the dial of the range indicator.

"They aren't very far away," said Donna quietly. "Where do you stand now, Phillips?"

"I suppose we'd better do it," he admitted. "Pretty vicious, aren't you?"

"No!" she snapped. "I don't like it either; I've never caused the death of any human being."

"Oh, sure. That's why you were on Luna!"

She looked at him levelly in the eye, but her shoulders drooped a trifle with the resignation of one who has often been disbelieved.

"My husband was a nice guy," she murmured, "but he never did know when he had a drink too many for piloting his jet. He passed out trying to give me a wild ride, and I got to the controls just in time to crash-land the rocket; that's where they found me before I came to."

"Oh," said Phillips.

"I'm not half as hard as I'm trying to pretend," Donna went on, "even after a year on Luna. But I was a nurse before I was married. I'm thinking about what it will be like if this plague hits the planets before they find something to fight it with. The children ... imagine that, will you?"

Phillips stared at the range indicator. It seemed there were times when an ugly thing had to be done for the common good. He wondered how the old-time executioners had felt, in the days when there had been judicial homicide. There were still jailers, for that matter, and men who butchered cattle.

"Call it a mercy killing," murmured Donna between pale lips. "Maybe you think that isn't still done once in a while, in spite of modern society."

"Ummh," Phillips grunted. "Well, if you can watch at this end, Truesdale and I can go set up a couple of torpedoes. I hope those rocket blasts didn't give us away."

"According to Varret," said Truesdale, "there can't be many of them still able to think straight enough to stand on watch. I wonder what it's like...."

Phillips glanced askance at him, but led the way into the corridor. First of all, he stopped at the rocket room to check the tube readings. The fired jets had been automatically recharged.

* * * * *

They left the rocket room and climbed the ladder to the turret. Once inside, Phillips spent the first few minutes inspecting the equipment and thumbing through the manuals left there by Varret. Finally, the bored Truesdale broke in upon his study.

"That old goat must be crazy to think he could toss us out here and have us act like a trained crew. How can we even hope to do anything right, without blowing ourselves up?"

"We can try," said Phillips coldly. "It shouldn't be impossible to get one started, at least."

He found the twin control panels in the bulkhead, and pulled a pair of switches. There was a smooth humming and a slight click as two hatches in the deck slid open. Slanting metal chutes rose out of the dark apertures, just behind the conveyor belts.

"Look at those babies!" breathed Phillips.

The snouts of two miniature spaceships protruded from the storage hold. Phillips touched other switches, and the sleek missiles were prodded onto the belts and moved forward until the full, twenty-foot lengths were in view.

"Phillips, you better be careful with those things!" quavered Truesdale as the engineer unscrewed a small hatch on one.

"Afraid I'll blow it up?" asked Phillips, peering inside.

"Why not? You never touched one before."

"You go ahead and believe that," retorted the engineer. "Now, I'll just turn on the radio controls, check the batteries, and feed the bad news into the launching tubes. Watch!"

Replacing the hatch and securing it, he thought out the procedure to use at the remote control panels. Turning on the screen above one of them produced a cross-haired image of the bulkhead directly in front of the near torpedo. He tried various manipulations until he had focused the view and caused it to sweep all around the interior of the turret. After idly watching himself and Truesdale appear on the screen, he returned the view to dead ahead, switched it off, and turned to the other panel.

"I guess I can finish checking," he said.

Truesdale clambered hastily down the ladder. Phillips shook his head. "Don't know what use he'll be," he muttered. "Too bad Brecken wouldn't listen. He at least ... oh, well!"

He wondered whether he himself would stand up when the time came. What Varret had asked did not sound like much. Just a quick shot and watch them blow apart. What inhibitions made men black out rather than carry it through? It was not as if there were any hope for these people. Surely, it was obvious that to permit them, in their deranged state, to spread a catastrophic plague was inconceivable. But perhaps emotions were stronger than reason.

"I'll find out pretty soon," he reflected.

There was little more to do in the turret, except to run the torpedoes into the launching tubes and bring up a new pair in reserve. With that much done, he closed the hatch and climbed down the ladder.

* * * * *

In the control room, he found Donna and Truesdale peering into the screen. He crowded close to look over their shoulders. A small blob of light floated near the center of the view. "That it?" he asked.

"Yes," answered Donna. "Just enough Mars-light to show it."

"How near are we?" asked Phillips.

"About a hundred and fifty miles. I have quite a large magnification, but they may spot us if they're alert. Are you ready to ... do something?"

"Reasonably," said Phillips. "Where's Brecken?"

"You probably killed him!" Truesdale broke in accusingly.

"I found a first-aid kit and gave him a shot," said Donna. "He has a nasty lump on the head, but he might sleep it off."

Phillips was watching Truesdale. The youth was visibly nervous. Was it the thought of Brecken, the engineer wondered, or fear of what they were planning to do? Perhaps it would be best to clear the air now, before it was too late.

"I guess you can handle it here, Donna," he said. "Truesdale and I will go to the turret and stand by."

The youth shrank away. "No! I won't go up there again! You can't make me do this!"

"Do what?" demanded Phillips.

"It's murder! You both know it is! They won't even have any warning."

"I hope not," said Phillips drily. "They might get us!"

"You would put it that way," sneered Truesdale; "you're homicidal at heart anyway!" He turned on Donna, wiping perspiration from his forehead. "Are you going to let him do it?" he shrilled. "Are you going to help him commit such a crime?"

The girl stared at him with a worried look in her blue eyes but said nothing.

"Come on, Truesdale," said Phillips, making an effort at a peaceful, persuasive tone. "It will be either their lives or ours if they spot us--and millions more if they get by. They'll be too desperate to think of us. Do you want to die?"

The instant he spoke the last words, he remembered the other's record and wished he had kept quiet. He saw, a strange, wild expression creep over Truesdale's features. It changed into a look of hateful cunning as the youth, began to sidle toward the door.

"I'm not afraid to die!" he boasted in a low-pitched but tense voice. "But how about you, Phillips? How about the big, brutal space engineer who is proud of smashing men's skulls against steel walls, who would like nothing better than to blow up a shipload of innocent people. How do you really know they're dangerous? But you don't care, do you?"

"Truesdale!" snapped Phillips. "Calm down!"

"I'll calm you down with me!" shouted the other hysterically. "I'll show you who's afraid to die!"

He ducked through the door toward which he had been backing. Phillips lunged after him, just barely missing a grip.

"On your toes!" he shouted over his shoulder to Donna, and turned on all jets.

But Truesdale, driven by his peculiar fury, not only stayed ahead as they raced along the corridor, but actually gained.

He was fifteen or twenty feet out in front as they reached the midway point. Phillips, expecting him to take refuge in the rocket room, was completely fooled when Truesdale leaped for the ladder in the vertical well. He stumbled, and grabbed a handrail to stop himself. The other was swarming upward. Phillips sprang to follow.

Hardly had he climbed half a dozen rungs, however, than he saw he was outdistanced. Truesdale's feet were already disappearing beyond the hatchway. Phillips waited for the airtight door to slam shut. It remained open....

Then a thrill of instinctive fear shot through him as he thought of what Truesdale might do--probably was doing at that very instant!

Throwing his feet clear of the rungs, he plunged back toward the deck, guided only by his hands brushing the sides of the ladder. As Phillips reached the junction of the passages, he kicked desperately away from the ladder. He landed with a thump that would have hurt had he been in a calmer state.

Rolling over toward the control room, he came to his feet in time to glimpse Donna looking out the doorway before a jarring shock floored him again.

The deafening roar of an explosion resounded in the corridor as a brilliant light was luridly reflected from somewhere behind him. The bewildering force hurled him at the deck; he saw he could not prevent his head from striking--

Phillips found himself on hands and knees, staring stupidly at the deck a few inches past his nose. As in a nightmare, he seemed to spend an eternity pushing himself painfully to his feet. Clutching a handrail, he finally made it.

He saw Donna kneeling in the doorway, hand to head. As he watched, the girl looked at her hand, and dazedly pulled out a handkerchief to wipe off the blood.

Then Phillips became aware of a high breeze in his face. Behind him, the sound of rushing air rose to a moan, then to a shriek. That shocked him to his senses.

"Button up!" he screamed above the noise, bringing his hands together in an urgent gesture understood by all spacemen.

As the girl staggered to her feet, he whirled and leaped toward the junction of the cross corridors. He wasted no time in a vain glance upwards--he knew what Truesdale had done. Only setting off the torpedoes' rockets in the enclosed turret compartment would have caused an explosion just severe enough to rupture the ship's skin; if the warheads had gone off, he never would have known it.

Diving headlong through the opening in the deck, he experienced a dizzying shift of gravity as he passed through the plane of the main deck. When he had his bearings again, he scrambled "up" the ladder toward the belly turret. By the time he got the airtight hatch open, he was beginning to pant in the thinning air. He pulled himself through at last, and sealed the compartment.

Phillips sucked in a deep, luxurious breath while he glanced about. This turret, he saw, was a duplicate of the other. He immediately located the intercom screen and called the control room. Donna's worried face appeared. "Where are you?" was her relieved inquiry.

Phillips explained what had happened. "The only thing," he concluded, "is to try it from here."

"I think they must have spotted the flash," Donna told him. "The instruments show a shift in their course."

"Blast right at them!" said Phillips. "We might get away with it if we're quick."

He turned away, leaving the intercom on. A few quick steps took him to the control panels in the bulkhead. Guided by his lessons in the other turret, and by faded memories of space school on Earth, he brought up two of the torpedoes. He checked the radio controls and ran the missiles into their launching tubes. As he worked, with nervous sweat running down into his eyes, he was aware of the intermittent jar of rocket blasts.

"Run 'em down!" he muttered, trying to steady his hand on the controls.

He had a hand at each panel, with the torpedoes poised viciously in the tubes, when he heard Donna's shout, shrill with excitement, over the intercom.

Instantly, he launched the missiles. He started the rockets by remote control, and scanned the screens for a sight of the other vessel.

For a moment, his view was confused by the expanding puff of air; then that froze, and drifted back to the hull, and he could see the stars.

* * * * *

Donna's voice, strained but coldly controlled, came over the intercom with readings from her instruments. He corrected his courses accordingly.

Then he saw the image of their target centered on one screen, so he concentrated on steering the other missile. He made the nose yaw, but was unable to locate anything on its screen.

"You're sending one of them too far above, I think," Donna reported.

"I have something wrong," he shouted. "I can't spot them at all for that one. The jets must be out of line and shooting it in a curve."

Nevertheless, he fired a corrective blast on the weight of the guess, before returning his attention to the first torpedo.

This one was right on the curve. He could see the massive hull of the cruiser plainly now. It was almost featureless until, as he watched, several sections seemed to slide aside.

The screen showed him a momentary glimpse of a swarm of small, flame-tailed objects spewing forth from one of the openings. Then the view went dark. "Interceptor rockets with proximity fuses," he muttered. "They'll be after us next, crazy-mean and frantic!"

Over the intercom, he heard Donna exclaim in dismay. He caught a fleeting sight of her face and realized that the situation must be torture for the girl, as for himself or any normal person of their civilization.

Cursing himself for an optimist, he raised two more of the missiles from the magazine. Hopping about like a jet-checker five minutes before take-off time, he made them ready. It seemed like hours before he got them into the launching tubes and blew them out into the void.

Again, he watched the other vessel appear ahead of his torpedoes, this time on both screens. Before the gap narrowed, he had a better opportunity to see the defenses of the cruiser in action.

A whitish cloud of gas was expelled from his target's hull, bearing a myriad of small objects which promptly acquired a life of their own. Both screens were filled with flashing, diverging trails of flame. Then--nothing.

"They're heading at us!" called Donna. "Hang on!"

Phillips had already pulled the switches to bring up a new pair of torpedoes. Hearing the urgency in Donna's tone, he leaped toward a rack of spacesuits and grabbed.

* * * * *

The next instant, he was pinned forcibly against the rack by acceleration, as Donna made the ship dodge aside. From one side, he heard a screech of grating metal. The fresh missiles must have jammed halfway out of the storage compartment.

It gave him a weird feeling of unreality; as he hung there helplessly, to see one of the screens on the bulkhead pick up something moving, gleaming, metallic.

"Donna!" he shouted hoarsely. "Let up!"

"I don't dare," she gasped over the intercom. "I lost them, but they were starting after us!"

"Let up!" repeated Phillips. "They're dead ahead of that wild shot of ours. Let me get to the controls!"

He dropped abruptly to the deck as the acceleration vanished. One leap carried him to the radio controls.

The metallic gleam had swelled into a huge spaceship. The cruiser was angling slightly away from the point from which he seemed to be viewing it. How soon, he wondered, would they detect the presence of his torpedo? Or would they neglect this direction, being intent upon the destruction of those who were attempting to frustrate their mad dash for Mars?

Phillips stood before the screen, clenching his fists. There was, after all, nothing for him to do but watch. The gleaming hull expanded with a swelling rush. Details of construction, hitherto invisible, leaped out at him. A crack finally appeared as a section began to slide back.

This time, however, there was no blinding flare of small rockets. The blacking out of the screen coincided with Donna's scream. "It hit!"

In the silence that followed, he thought he heard a sob.

"Oh, Phillips," she said, recovering, "we did it. They're--"

"Hang on," said Phillips. "I'll climb into a spacesuit and come forward."

He switched off the intercom and dragged a suit from the rack. It took him a good fifteen minutes to get the helmet screwed on properly and to check everything else. He realized that he was very tired.

He opened the exit hatch, seized the top of the ladder in his gauntlets as the air exploded out of the turret, and climbed back to the main deck.

Clumping forward through the airless corridor, he stopped to look into the compartment where he had left Brecken. He quickly slid the door shut again.

He found that Donna had sealed off the corridor just short of the control room by closing a double emergency door that must have been designed to form an airlock in just such a situation. He hammered upon it, and she slid it open from the control desk.

It closed again behind him, and he entered the control room through the usual door. The girl helped him to remove the suit and motioned him toward the screen.

* * * * *

Phillips regarded the scene without enthusiasm. The sight of the dead man had reminded him of what the compartments of that other vessel must look like by now. Its parts were beginning to scatter slowly.

He looked at Donna, and found her regarding him soberly. "What will they do with us now?" she asked.

She looked exhausted. He extended an arm, and she leaned against him. "You heard what Varret said," he told her.

"Yes, but will he keep his word? They might be ... ashamed of us, now that it's done. Even if they're not, I can't bear the thought of going back to Earth and having them stare at me!"

Phillips nodded. He remembered the morbid curiosity during his own trial, the crowds who had watched him with a kind of shrinking horror--and he had actually been responsible for saving a spaceship and its crew, had they cared to look on that side of the affair.

But he had killed. That was no longer the action of a normal human being, according to popular thinking.

"I guess you and I are the only ones who will understand one another from now on," he shrugged.

Donna smiled faintly, just as the signal sounded on the communication screen.

It was Varret, looking pale and strained. He listened to Phillips' account, including the deaths of Truesdale and Brecken, and apologized for his appearance. He had, he informed them, been unpleasantly ill when he had seen the explosion. "It was a terrible thing," Varret continued sadly, "but necessary. They were beyond reasoning with, and a deadly menace."

He pulled himself together and tried to hide his agitation by reminding them of his promise. He suggested that they consider their requests while his ship attempted to tow them in to Deimos.

Phillips glanced speculatively at Donna. They would be two outcasts, however much their deed might be respected abstractly, however much official expressions of gratitude were employed to gloss over the fact. He might as well take one chance more. "We have already decided," he said boldly. "I hear you are building a new space station on Deimos."

The old man nodded, surprised.

"We will ask for a deed to that moon, and a contract to operate the beacon and radio relay station," Phillips stated flatly.

Varret blinked, then smiled slightly in a sort of understanding admiration.

"Reasonable and astute," he murmured after a moment's hesitation. "I think I appreciate the motive. Perhaps, if that ship can be repaired and remodeled, we can include it so that you may make short visits to Mars."

He warned them to watch for the emergency crew he would send to their aid, and switched off.

Phillips then dared finally to turn and look inquiringly at Donna. Her smile was relaxed for the first time since they had met. "Nice bargaining," she said, and Phillips felt like the king of something larger than a tiny Martian satellite.

Contents

PSICHOPATH

By Randall Garrett

Given psi powers like clairvoyance and telepathy, solving problems of sabotage would be easy, of course. That is, it seems that way at first thought!

The man in the pastel blue topcoat walked with steady purpose, but without haste, through the chill, wind-swirled drizzle that filled the air above the streets of Arlington, Virginia. His matching blue cap-hood was pulled low over his forehead, and the clear, infrared radiating face mask had been flipped down to protect his chubby cheeks and round nose from the icy wind.

No one noticed him particularly. He was just another average man who blended in with all the others who walked the streets that day. No one recognized him; his face did not appear often in public places, except in his own state, and, even so, it was a thoroughly ordinary face. But, as he walked, Senator John Peter Gonzales was keeping a mental, fine-webbed, four-dimensional net around him, feeling for the slightest touch of recognition. He wanted no one to connect him in any way with his intended destination.

It was not his first visit to the six-floor brick building that stood on a street in a lower-middle-class district of Arlington. Actually, government business took him there more often than would have been safe for the average man-on-the-street. For Senator Gonzales, the process of remaining incognito was so elementary that it was almost subconscious.

Arriving at his destination, he paused on the sidewalk to light a cigarette, shielding it against the wind and drizzle with cupped hands while his mind made one last check on the surroundings. Then he strode quickly up the five steps to the double doors which were marked: The Society For Mystical And Metaphysical Research, Inc.

Just as he stepped in, he flipped the face shield up and put on an old-fashioned pair of thick-lensed, black-rimmed spectacles. Then, his face assuming a bland smile that would have been completely out of place on Senator Gonzales, he went from the foyer into the front office.

"Good afternoon, Mrs. Jesser," he said, in a high, smooth, slightly accented voice that was not his own. "I perceive by your aura that you are feeling well. Your normal aura-color is tinged with a positive golden hue."

Mrs. Jesser, a well-rounded matron in her early forties, rose to the bait like a porpoise being hand-fed at a Florida zoo. "Dear Swami Chandra! How perfectly wonderful to see you again! You're looking very well your-self."

The Swami, whose Indian blood was of the Aztec rather than the Brahmin variety, nonetheless managed to radiate all the mystery of the East. "My well-being, dear Mrs. Jesser, is due to the fact that I have been communing for the past three months with my very good friend, the Fifth Dalai Lama. A most refreshingly wise person." Senator Gonzales was fond of the Society's crackpot receptionist, and he knew exactly what kind of hokum would please her most.

"Oh, I do hope you will find time to tell me all about it," she said effusively. "Mr. Balfour isn't in the city just now," she went on. "He's lecturing in New York on the history of flying saucer sightings. Do you realize that this is the fortieth anniversary of the first saucer sighting, back in 1944?"

"The first photographed sighting," the Swami corrected condescendingly. "Our friends have been watching and guiding us for far longer than that, and were sighted many times before they were photographed."

Mrs. Jesser nodded briskly. "Of course. You're right, as always, Swami."

"I am sorry to hear," the Swami continued smoothly, "that I will not be able to see Mr. Balfour. However, I came at the call of Mr. Brian Taggert, who is expecting me."

Mrs. Jesser glanced down at her appointment sheet. "He didn't mention an appointment to me. However--" She punched a button on the intercom. "Mr. Taggert? Swami Chandra is here to see you. He says he has an appointment."

Brian Taggert's deep voice came over the instrument. "The Swami, as usual, is very astute. I have been thinking about calling him. Send him right up."

"You may go up, Swami," said Mrs. Jesser, wide-eyed. She watched in awe as the Swami marched regally through the inner door and began to climb the stairs toward the sixth floor.

* * * * *

One way to hide an ex-officio agency of the United States Government was to label it truthfully--The Society For Mystical And Metaphysical Research. In spite of the fact that the label was literally true, it sounded so crackpot that no one but a crackpot would bother to look into it. As a consequence, better than ninety per cent of the membership of the Society was composed of just such people. Only a few members of the "core" knew the organization's true function and purpose. And as long as such scatter-brains as Mrs. Jesser and Mr. Balfour were in there pitching, no one would ever penetrate to the actual core of the Society.

The senator had already pocketed the exaggerated glasses by the time he reached the sixth floor, and his face had lost its bland, overly-wise smile. He pushed open the door to Taggert's office.

"Have you got any ideas yet?" he asked quickly.

Brian Taggert, a heavily-muscled man with dark eyes and black, slightly wavy hair, sat on the edge of a couch in one corner of the room. His desk across the room was there for paperwork only, and Taggert had precious little of that to bother with.

He took a puff from his heavy-bowled briar. "We're going to have to send an agent in there. Someone who can be on the spot. Someone who can get the feel of the situation first hand."

"That'll be difficult. We can't just suddenly stick an unknown in there and have an excuse for his being there. Couldn't Donahue or Reeves--"

Taggert shook his head. "Impossible, John. Extrasensory perception can't replace sight, any more than sight can replace hearing. You know that."

"Certainly. But I thought we could get enough information that way to tell us who our saboteur is. No dice, eh?"

"No dice," said Taggert. "Look at the situation we've got there. The purpose of the Redford Research Team is to test the Meson Ultimate Decay Theory of Dr. Theodore Nordred. Now, if we--"

Senator Gonzales, walking across the room toward Taggert, gestured with one hand. "I know! I know! Give me some credit for intelligence! But we do have one suspect, don't we? What about him?"

Taggert chuckled through a wreath of smoke. "Calm down, John. Or are you trying to give me your impression of Mrs. Jesser in a conversation with a saucerite?"

The senator laughed and sat down in a nearby chair. "All right. Sorry. But this whole thing is lousing up our entire space program. First off, we nearly lose Dr. Ch'ien, and, with him gone, the interstellar drive project would've been shot. Now, if this sabotage keeps up, the Redford project will be shot, and that means we might have to stick to the old-fashioned rocket to get off-planet. Brian, we need antigravity, and, so far, Nordred's theory is our only clue."

"Agreed," said Taggert.

"Well, we're never going to get it if equipment keeps mysteriously burning itself out, breaking down, and just generally goofing up. This morning, the primary exciter on the new ultracosmotron went haywire, and the beam of sodium nuclei burned through part of the accelerator tube wall. It'll take a month to get it back in working order."

Taggert took his pipe out of his mouth and tapped the dottle into a nearby ash disposal unit. "And you want to pick up our pet spy?"

Senator Gonzales scowled. "Well, I'd certainly call him our prime suspect." But there was a certain lack of conviction in his manner.

Brian Taggert didn't flatly contradict the senator. "Maybe. But you know, John, there's one thing that bothers me about these accidents."

"What's that?"

"The fact that we have not one shred of evidence that points to sabotage."

* * * * *

In a room on the fifth floor, directly below Brian Taggert's office, a young man was half sitting, half reclining in a thickly upholstered adjustable chair. He had dropped the back of the chair to a forty-five degree angle and lifted up the footrest; now he was leaning back in lazy comfort, his ankles crossed, his right hand holding a slowly smoldering cigarette, his eyes contemplating the ceiling. Or, rather, they seemed to be contemplating something beyond the ceiling.

It was pure coincidence that the focus of his thoughts happened to be located in about the same volume of space that his eyes seemed to be focused on. If Brian Taggert and Senator Gonzales had been in the room below, his eyes would still be looking at the ceiling.

In repose, his face looked even younger than his twenty-eight years would have led one to expect. His close-cropped brown hair added to the impression of youth, and the well-tailored suit on his slim, muscular body added to the effect. At any top-flight university, he could have passes for a well-bred, sophisticated, intelligent student who had money enough to indulge himself and sense enough not to overdo it.

He was beginning to understand the pattern that was being woven in the room above--beginning to feel it in depth.

Senator Gonzalez was mildly telepathic, inasmuch as he could pick up thoughts in the prevocal stage--the stage at which thought becomes definitely organized into words, phrases, and sentences. He could go a little deeper, into the selectivity stage, where the linking processes of logic took over from the nonlogical but rational processes of the preconscious--but only if he knew the person well. Where the senator excelled was in detecting emotional tone and manipulating emotional processes, both within himself and within others.

Brian Taggert was an analyzer, an originator, a motivator--and more. The young man found himself avoiding too deep a probe into the mind of Brian Taggert; he knew that he had not yet achieved the maturity to understand the multilayered depths of a mind like that. Eventually, perhaps....

Not that Senator Gonzales was a child, nor that he was emotionally or intellectually shallow. It was merely that he was not of Taggert's caliber.

The young man absently took another drag from his cigarette. Taggert had explained the basic problem to him, but he was getting a wider picture from the additional information that Senator Gonzales had brought.

Dr. Theodore Nordred, a mathematical physicist and one of the top-flight, high-powered, original minds in the field, had shown that Einstein's final equations only held in a universe composed entirely of normal matter. Since the great Einstein had died before the Principle of Parity had been overthrown in the mid-fifties, he had been unable to incorporate the information into his Unified Field Theory. Nordred had been able to show, mathematically, that Einstein's equations were valid only for a completely "dexter," or right-handed universe, or for a completely "sinister" or left-handed universe.

Although the universe in which Man lived was predominantly dexter--arbitrarily so designated--it was not completely so. It had a "sinister" component amounting to approximately one one-hundred-thousandth of one per cent. On the average, one atom out of every ten million in the universe was an atom of antimatter. The distribution was unequal of course; antimatter could not exist in contact with ordinary matter. Most of it was distributed throughout interstellar space in the form of individual atoms, freely floating in space, a long way from any large mass of normal matter.

But that minute fraction of a per cent was enough to show that the known universe was not totally Einsteinian. In a purely Einsteinian universe, antigravity was impossible, but if the equations of Dr. Theodore Nordred were actually a closer approximation to true reality than those of Einstein, then antigravity might be a practical reality.

And that was the problem the Redford Research Team was working on. It was a parallel project to the interstellar drive problem, being carried on elsewhere.

* * * * *

The "pet spy," as Taggert had called him, was Dr. Konrad Bern, a middle-aged Negro from Tanganyika, who was convinced that only under Communism could the colored races of the world achieve the technological organization and living standard of the white man. He had been trained as a "sleeper"; not even the exhaustive investigations of the FBI had turned up any relationship between Bern and the Soviets. It had taken the telepathic probing of the S.M.M.R. agents to uncover his real purposes. Known, he constituted no danger.

There was no denying that he was a highly competent, if not brilliant, physicist. And, since it was quite impossible for him to get any information on the Redford Project into the hands of the opposition--it was no longer fashionable to call Communists "the enemy"--there was no reason why he shouldn't be allowed to contribute to the American efforts to bridge space.

Three times in the five months since Bern had joined the project, agents of the Soviet government had made attempts to contact the physicist. Three times the FBI, warned by S.M.M.R. agents, had quietly blocked the contact. Konrad Bern had been effectively isolated.

But, at the project site itself, equipment failure had become increasingly more frequent, all out of proportion to the normal accident rate in any well-regulated laboratory. The work of the project had practically come to a standstill; the ultra-secret project reports to the President were beginning to show less and less progress in the basic research, and more and more progress in repairing damaged equipment. Apparently, though, increasing efficiency in repair work was self-neutralizing; repairing an instrument in half the time merely meant that it could break down twice as often.

It had to be sabotage. And yet, not even the S.M.M.R. agents could find any trace of intentional damage nor any thought patterns that would indicate deliberate damage.

And Senator John Peter Gonzales quite evidently did not want to face the implications of that particular fact.

"We're going to have to send an agent in," Taggert repeated.

(That's my cue, thought the young man on the fifth floor as he crushed out his cigarette and got up from the chair.)

"I don't know how we're going to manage it," said the senator. "What excuse do we have for putting a new man on the Redford team?"

Brian Taggert grinned. "What they need is an expert repair technician--a man who knows how to build and repair complex research instruments. He doesn't have to know anything about the purpose of the team itself, all he has to do is keep the equipment in good shape."

Senator Gonzalez let a slow smile spread over his face. "You've been gulling me, you snake. All right; I deserved it. Tell him to come in."

As the door opened, Taggert said: "Senator Gonzales, may I present Mr. David MacHeath? He's our man, I think."

* * * * *

David MacHeath watched a blue line wriggle its way erratically across the face of an oscilloscope. "The wave form is way off," he said flatly, "and the frequency is slithering all over the place."

He squinted at the line for a moment then spoke to the man standing nearby. "Signal Harry to back her off two degrees, then run her up slowly, ten minutes at a time."

The other man flickered the key on the side of the small carbide-Welsbach lamp. The shutters blinked, sending pulses of light down the length of the ten-foot diameter glass-walled tube in which the men were working. Far down the tube, MacHeath could see the answering flicker from Harry, a mile and a half away in the darkness.

MacHeath watched the screen again. After a few seconds, he said: "O.K.! Hold it!"

Again the lamp flashed.

"Well, it isn't perfect," MacHeath said, "but it's all we can do from here. We'll have to evacuate the tube to get her in perfect balance. Tell Harry to knock off for the day."

While the welcome message was being flashed, MacHeath shut off the testing instruments and disconnected them. It was possible to compensate a little for the testing equipment, but a telephone, or even an electric flashlight, would simply add to the burden.

Bill Griffin shoved down the key on the lamp he was holding and locked it into place. The shutters remained open, and the lamp shed a beam of white light along the shining walls of the cylindrical tube. "How much longer do you figure it'll take, Dave?" he asked.

"Another shift, at least," said MacHeath, picking up the compact, shielded instrument case. "You want to carry that mat?"

Griffin picked up the thick sponge-rubber mat that the instrument case had been sitting on, and the two men started off down the tube, walking silently on the sponge-rubber-soled shoes which would not scratch the glass underfoot.

"Any indication yet as to who our saboteur is?" Griffin asked.

"I'm not sure," MacHeath admitted. "I've picked up a couple of leads, but I don't know if they mean anything or not."

"I wonder if there is a saboteur," Griffin said musingly. "Maybe it's just a run of bad luck. It could happen, you know. A statistical run of--"

"You don't believe that, any more than I do," MacHeath said.

"No. But I find it even harder to believe that a materialistic philosophy like Communism could evolve any workable psionic discipline."

"So do I," agreed MacHeath.

"But it can't be physical sabotage," Griffin argued. "There's not a trace of it--anywhere. It has to be psionic."

"Right," said MacHeath, grinning as he saw what was coming next.

"But we've already eliminated that. So?" Griffin nodded firmly as if in full agreement with himself. "So we follow the dictum of the Master: 'Eliminate the impossible; whatever is left, no matter how improbable, is the truth.' And, since there is absolutely nothing left, there is no truth. At the bottom, the whole thing is merely a matter of mental delusion."

"Sherlock Holmes would be proud of you, Bill," MacHeath said. "And so am I."

Griffin looked at MacHeath oddly. "I wish I was a halfway decent telepath, I'd like to know what's going on in your preconscious."

"You'd have to dig deeper than that, I'm afraid," MacHeath said ruefully. "As soon as my subconscious has solved the problem, I'll let you know."

"I've changed my mind," said Griffin cheerfully. "I don't envy your telepathy. I don't envy a guy who has to TP his own subconscious to find out what he's thinking."

MacHeath chuckled softly as he turned the bolt that opened the door in the "gun" end of the stripped-nuclei accelerator. The seals broke with a soft hiss. Evidently, the barometric pressure outside the two-mile-long underground tube had changed slightly during the time they had been down there.

"It'll be a week before we can test it," MacHeath said in a tired voice. "Even after we get it partly in balance. It'll take that long to evacuate the tube and sweep it clean."

* * * * *

It was the first sentence he had spoken in the past hour or so, and it was purely for the edification of the man who was standing on the other side of the air lock, although neither Griffin nor MacHeath had actually seen him as yet.

Griffin was not a telepath in the sense that the S.M.M.R. used the word, but to a non-psionicist, he would have appeared to be one. Membership in the "core" group of the Society for Mystical and Metaphysical Research required, above all, understanding. And, with that understanding, a conversation between two members need consist only of an occasional gesture and a key word now and then.

The word "understanding" needs emphasis. Without understanding of another human mind, no human mind can be completely effective. Without that understanding, no human being can be completely free.

And yet, the English word "understanding" is only an approximation to the actual process that must take place. Total understanding, in one sense, would require that a person actually become another person--that he be able to feel, completely and absolutely, every emotion, every thought, every bodily sensation, every twinge of memory, every judgment, every decision, and every sense of personal identity that is felt by the other person, no more and no less.

Such totality is, obviously, neither attainable nor desirable. The result would be a merger of identities, a total unification. And, as a consequence, a complete loss of one of the human beings involved.

Optimum "understanding" requires that a judgment be made, and that, in turn, requires two minds--not a fusion of identity. There must be one to judge and another to be judged, and each mind plays both roles.

Love thy neighbor as thyself. But the original Greek word would translate better as "respect and understand" than as the modern English "love." The founders of our modern religions were not fools; they simply did not have the tools at hand to formulate their knowledge properly. As understanding increases, a critical point is reached, which causes a qualitative change in the human mind.

First, self-understanding must come. The human mind operates through similarities, and the thing most similar to any human mind is itself. The next most similar thing is another human mind.

From that point on, all objects, processes, and patterns in the universe can be graded according to their similarity to each other, and, ultimately, to their similarity to the human mind.

Two given entities may seem utterly dissimilar, but they can always be linked by a tertium quid--a "third thing" which is similar to both. This third thing, be it a material object or a product of the human imagination, is called a symbol. Symbols are the bridges by which the human mind can reach and manipulate the universe in which it exists. With the proper symbols and the understanding to use them, the human mind is limited only by its own inherent structural restrictions.

One of the most active research projects of the S.M.M.R. was the construction of a more powerful symbology. Psionics had made tremendous strides in the previous four decades, but it was still in the alchemy stage. So far, symbols for various processes could only be worked out by cut-and-try, rule-of-thumb methods, using symbols already established, including languages and mathematics. None were completely satisfactory, but they worked fairly well within their narrow limits.

As far as communication was concerned, the hashed-together symbology used by the S.M.M.R. was better than any conceivable code. The understanding required to "break" the "code" was well beyond the critical point. Anyone who could break it was, ipso facto, a member of the S.M.M.R.

Most people didn't even realize that a conversation was taking place between two members, especially if a "cover conversation" was used at the same time.

* * * * *

MacHeath's verbal discussion of the testing of the nuclei accelerator was just such a cover. Even before he had cracked the air lock, he had known that Dr. Theodore Nordred was standing on the other side of the thick wall.

MacHeath pushed the heavy door open on its smooth hinges. "Oh, hello, Dr. Nordred. How's everything?"

The heavy-set mathematician smiled pleasantly as MacHeath and Griffin came into the gun chamber. "I just thought I'd come down and see how you were getting along," he said. His voice was a low tenor, with just a touch of Midwestern twang. "Sometimes the creative mind gets bogged down in the nth-order abstractions that have no discernible connection with anything at all." He chuckled. "When that happens, I drop everything and go out to find something mundane to worry about."

Nordred was only an inch shorter than the slim MacHeath, and he weighed in at close to two hundred pounds. At twenty-five, he had had the build of a lightweight wrestler; thirty more years had added poundage--a roll beneath his chin and a bulge at the belly--but he still looked capable of going a round or two without tiring. His shock of heavy hair was a mixture of mouse-brown and gray, and it seemed to have a tendency to stand up on end, which added another inch and a half to his height. His round face had a tendency to smile when he was talking or working with his hands; when he was deep in thought, his face usually relaxed into thoughtful blankness. He frowned rarely, and only for seconds at a time.

"It seems to me you have enough to worry about, doctor," MacHeath said banteringly, "without looking for it." He put down his instrument case and took out a cigarette while Griffin closed the door to the acceleration tube.

"Oh I don't have to look far," Nordred said. "How long do you think it will be before we can resume our work with the Monster?"

"Ten days to two weeks," MacHeath said promptly.

"I see." One his rare frowns crossed his face. "I wish I knew why the exciter arced across. It shouldn't have."

"Don't you have any idea?" MacHeath asked innocently. At the same time, he opened his mind wide to net in every wisp and filament of Nordred's thoughts that he could reach.

"None at all," admitted the mathematician. "Weakness in the insulation, I suppose, though it tested solidly enough." And his mind, as far back as his preconscious and the upper fringes of his subconscious, agreed with his words. MacHeath could go no deeper as yet; he didn't know Nordred well enough yet.

There were suspicions in Nordred's mind that the insulation weakness must have been caused by deliberate sabotage, but he had no one to pin his suspicions on. Neither he nor anyone else connected with the Redford project was aware of the true status of Dr. Konrad Bern.

"Well, let's hope it doesn't happen again," MacHeath said. "Balancing these babies so that they work properly is hard enough for a deuteron accelerator, but the Monster here is ten times as touchy."

Nordred nodded absently. "I know. But our work can't be done with anything less." Nordred actually knew less about the engineering details of the big accelerator than anyone else on the project; he was primarily a philosopher-mathematician, and only secondarily a physicist. He was theoretically in charge of the project, but the actual experimentation was done by the other four men; Drs. Roger Kent, Paul Luvochek, Solomon Bessermann, and Konrad Bern. These four and their assistants set up and ran off the experiments designed to test Dr. Nordred's theories.

MacHeath picked up his instrument case again, and the three men went out of the gun chamber, into the outer room, and then started up the spiral stairway that led to the surface, talking as they went. But the apparent conversation had little to do with the instruction that MacHeath was giving Griffin as they climbed.

So when MacHeath stopped suddenly and patted at his coverall pockets, Griffin was ready for the words that came next.

"Damn!" MacHeath said. "I've left my notebook. Will you go down and get it for me, Bill?"

Dr. Nordred had neither understood nor noticed the actual instructions:

"Bill, as soon as I give you an excuse, get back down there and check that gun chamber. Give it a thorough going-over. I don't really think you'll find a thing, but I don't want to take any chances at this stage of the game."

"Right," said Griffin, starting back down the stairway.

MacHeath and Dr. Nordred went on climbing.

* * * * *

David MacHeath sat at a table in the project's cafeteria, absently stirring his coffee, and trying to look professionally modest while Dr. Luvochek and Dr. Bessermann alternately praised him for his work.

Luvochek, a tubby little butterball of a man, whose cherubic face would have made him look almost childlike if it weren't for the blue of his jaw, said: "You and those two men of yours have really done a marvelous job in the past four days, Mr. MacHeath--really marvelous."

"I'll say," Bessermann chimed in. "I was getting pretty tired of looking at burned-out equipment and spending three-quarters of my time putting in replacement parts and wielding a soldering gun." Bessermann was leaner than Luvochek, but, like his brother scientist, he was balding on top. Both men were in their middle thirties.

"I don't understand this jinx, myself," Luvochek said. "At first, it was just little things, but the accidents got worse and worse. And then, when the Monster blew--" He stopped and shook his head slowly. "I'd suspect sabotage, except that there was never any sign of tampering with the equipment I saw."

"What do you think of the sabotage idea?" Bessermann asked MacHeath.

MacHeath shrugged. "Haven't seen any signs of it."

"Run of bad luck," said Luvochek. "That's all."

As they talked MacHeath absorbed the patterns of thought that wove in and out in the two men's minds. Both men were more open than Dr. Nordred; they were easier for MacHeath to understand. Nowhere was there any thought of guilt--at least, as far as sabotage was concerned.

MacHeath drank his coffee slowly and thoughtfully, keeping up his part of the three-way conversation while he concentrated on his own problem.

One thing was certain: Nowhere in the minds of any of the personnel of the Redford Project was there any conscious knowledge of sabotage. Not even in the mind of Konrad Bern.

Dr. Roger Kent, a tall, lantern-jawed sad-eyed man in his forties, had been hard to get through to at first, but as soon as MacHeath discovered that the hard block Kent had built up around himself was caused by grief over a wife who had been dead five years, he became as easy to read as a billboard. Kent had submerged his grief in work; the eternal drive of the true scientist to drag the truth out of Mother Nature. He was constitutionally incapable of sabotaging the very instruments that had been built to dig in after that truth.

Dr. Konrad Bern, on the other hand, was difficult to read below the preconscious stage. Science, to him, was a form of power, to be used for "idealistic" purposes. He was perfectly capable of sabotaging the weapons of an enemy if it became necessary, whether that meant ruining a physical instrument or carefully falsifying the results of an experiment. Outwardly, he was a pleasant enough chap, but his mind revealed a rigidly held pattern of hatreds, fears, and twisted idealism. He held them tightly against the onslaughts of a hostile world.

And that meant that he couldn't possibly have any control over whatever psionic powers he may have had.

Unless--

Unless he was so expert and so well-trained that he was better than anything the S.M.M.R. had ever known.

MacHeath didn't even like to think about that. It would mean that all the theory of psionics that had been built up so painstakingly over the past years would have to be junked in toto.

Something was gnawing in the depths of his mind. In the perfectly rational but utterly nonlogical part of his subconscious where hunches are built, something was trying to form.

MacHeath didn't try to probe for it. As soon as he had enough information for the hunch to be fully formed, it would be ready to use. Until then, it would be worthless, and probing for it might interrupt the formation.

* * * * *

He was just finishing his coffee as Bill Griffin came in the door and headed toward the table where MacHeath, Luvochek, and Bessermann were sitting.

MacHeath stood up and said: "Excuse me. I'll have to be getting some work done if you guys are ever going to get your own work done."

"Sure."

"Go ahead."

"Thanks for the coffee," MacHeath added as he moved away.

"Anytime," said Bessermann, grinning. "You guys just keep up the good work. When you fix 'em, they stay fixed. We haven't had a burnout since you came."

"Maybe you broke our statistical jinx," said Luvochek, with a chubby smile.

"Maybe," said MacHeath. "I hope so."

For some reason, the gnawing in his hunch factory became more persistent.

As he and Griffin walked toward the door, Griffin reported rapidly. "I checked everything in the gun chamber. No sign of any tampering. Everything's just as we left it. The dust film hasn't been disturbed."

"It figures," said MacHeath.

Outside, in the corridor, they met Dr. Konrad Bern hurrying toward the cafeteria. He stopped as he saw them.

"Oh, hello, Mr. MacHeath, Mr. Griffin," he said. His white-toothed smile was friendly, but both of the S.M.M.R. agents could detect the hostility that was hard and brittle beneath the surface. "I wanted to thank you for the wonderful job you've been doing."

"Why, thank you, doctor," said MacHeath honestly. "We aim to satisfy."

Bern chuckled. "You're doing well so far. Odd streak of luck we've had, isn't it? Poor Dr. Nordred has been under a terrible strain; his whole life work is tied up in this project." He made a vague gesture with one hand. "Would you care for some coffee?"

"Just had some, thanks," said MacHeath, "but we'll take a rain check."

"Fine. Anytime." And he went on into the cafeteria.

"Wow!" said Griffin as he walked on down the corridor with MacHeath. "That man is scared silly! But what an actor! You'd never know he was eating his guts out."

"Sure he's scared," MacHeath said. "With all this sabotage talk going around, he's afraid there'll be an exhaustive investigation, and he can't take that right now."

Griffin frowned. "I guess I missed that. What did you pick up?"

"He's supposed to meet a Soviet agent tonight, and he's afraid he'll be caught. He doesn't know what happened to the first three, and he won't know what will happen to Number Four tonight.

"We'll keep him around as long as he's useful. He's not a Bohr or a Pauli or a Fermi, but he--"

MacHeath stopped himself suddenly and came to a dead halt.

"My God," he said softly, "that's it."

His hunch had hatched.

After a moment, he said: "Harry is getting back from the target end of the tube now, Bill. He can't pick me up, so beetle it down to the tool room, get him, and get up to the workshop fast. If I'm not there, wait; I have a little prying to do."

"Can do," said Griffin. He went toward the elevator at an easy lope.

David MacHeath went in the opposite direction.

* * * * *

When MacHeath returned to the workshop which he had been assigned, Bill Griffin and Harry Benbow were waiting for him. Beside the big-muscled Griffin, Harry Benbow looked even thinner than he was. He was a good six-two, which made him a head taller than Griffin, but, unlike many tall, lean men, Benbow had no tendency to slouch; he stood tall and straight, reminding MacHeath of a poplar tree towering proudly over the countryside. Benbow was one of those rare American Negroes whose skin was actually as close to being "black" as human pigmentation will allow. His eyes were like disks of obsidian set in spheres of white porcelain, which gave an odd contrast-similarity effect when compared with Griffin's china-blue eyes.

If the average man had wanted to pick two human beings who were "opposites," he could hardly have made a better choice than Benbow and the short, thickly-built, blond-haired, pink-skinned Bill Griffin. But the average man would be so struck by the differences that he would never notice that the similarities were vastly more important.

"You look as if you'd just been kissed by Miss America," Harry said as MacHeath came through the door.

"Better than that," MacHeath said. "We've got work to do."

"What's the pitch?" Griffin wanted to know.

"Well, in the first place, I'm afraid Dr. Konrad Bern is no longer of any use to the Redford Project. We're going to have to arrest him as an unregistered agent of the Soviet Government."

"It's just as well," said Harry Benbow gently. "His research hasn't done us any good and it hasn't done the Soviets any good. The poor guy's been on edge ever since he got here. All the pale hide around this place stirs up every nerve in him."

"What got you onto this?" Griffin asked MacHeath.

"A hunch first," MacHeath said. "Then I got data to back it up. But, first ... Harry, how'd you know about Bern's reactions? He keeps those prejudices of his down pretty deep; I didn't think you could go that far."

"I didn't have to. He spent half an hour talking to me this morning. He was so happy to see a fellow human being--according to his definition of human being--that he was as easy to read as if you were doing the reading."

MacHeath nodded. "I hate to throw him to the wolves, but he's got to go."

"What was the snooping you said you had to do?" Griffin asked.

"Dates. Times. Briefly, I found that the run of accidents has been building up to a peak. At first, it was just small meters that went wrong. Then bigger, more complex stuff. And, finally, the Monster went. See the pattern?"

The other men nodded.

"You're the therapist," Griffin said. "What do you suggest?"

"Shock treatment," said David MacHeath.

* * * * *

Just how Dr. Konrad Bern got wind of the fact that a squad of FBI men had come to the project to arrest him that evening is something that MacHeath didn't know until later. He was busy at the time, ignoring anything but what he was interested in. It always fascinated him to watch the mind of a psychokinetic expert at work. He couldn't do the trick himself, and he was always amazed at the ability of anyone who could.

It was like watching a pianist play a particularly difficult concerto. A person can watch a pianist, see every move he is making, and why he is making it. But being able to see what is going on doesn't mean that one can duplicate the action. MacHeath was in the same position. Telepathically, he could observe the play of emotions that ran through a psychokinetic's mind--the combinations of avid desire and the utter loathing which, playing one against another, could move a brick, a book, or a Buick if the mind was powerful enough. But he couldn't do it himself, no matter how carefully he tried to follow the raging emotions that acted as two opposing jaws of a pair of tongs to lift and move the object.

And so engrossed was he with the process that he did not notice that Konrad Bern had eluded the FBI. He was unaware of what had happened until one of the Federal agents rapped loudly on the workshop door.

Almost instantly, MacHeath picked up the information from the agent's mind. He glanced at Griffin and Benbow. "You two can handle it. Be careful you don't overdo it."

Then he went to the door and opened it a trifle. "Yes?"

The man outside showed a gold badge. "Morgan, FBI. You David MacHeath?"

"Yes." MacHeath stepped outside and showed the FBI man his identification.

"We were told to co-operate with you in this Konrad Bern case. He's managed to slip away from us somehow, but we know he's still in the area. He can't get past the gate."

MacHeath let his mind expand until it meshed with that of Dr. Konrad Bern.

"There is a way out," MacHeath snapped. "The acceleration tube."

"What?"

"Come on!" He started sprinting toward the elevators. He explained to the FBI agent as they went.

"The acceleration tube of the ultracosmotron runs due north of here for two miles underground. The guard at the other end won't be expecting anyone to be coming from the inside of the target building. If Bern plays his cards right, he can get away."

"Can't we phone the target building?" the FBI man asked.

"No. We shut off all the electrical equipment and took down some of the wires so we could balance the acceleration fields."

"Well, if he's on foot, we could send a car out there. We'd get there before he does. Uh ... wouldn't we?"

"Maybe. But he'll kill himself if he sees he's trapped." That wasn't quite true. Bern was ready to fight to the death, and he had a heavy pistol to back him up. MacHeath didn't want to see anyone killed, and he didn't want stray bullets flying around the inside of that tube or in the target room.

MacHeath and the FBI agent piled out of the elevator at the bottom of the shaft. Dr. Roger Kent was standing at the head of the stairs that spiraled down to the gun chamber. Dr. Kent knew that Bern had gone down the stairway, but he didn't know why.

"He's our saboteur," MacHeath said quickly. "I'm going after him. As soon as I close the door and seal it, you turn on the pumps. Lower the air pressure in the tube to a pound per square inch below atmospheric. That'll put a force of about a ton and a quarter against the doors, and he won't be able to open them."

Dr. Kent still didn't grasp the fact that Bern was a spy.

"Explain to him, Morgan," MacHeath told the Federal agent. He went on down the spiral staircase, knowing that Kent would understand and act in plenty of time.

* * * * *

The door to the tube was standing open. MacHeath slipped on a pair of the sponge-soled shoes, noticing angrily that Bern hadn't bothered to do so. He went into the tube and closed the door behind him. Then he started down the blackness of the tube at a fast trot. Ahead of him, in the utter darkness, he could hear the click of heels as the leather-shod Bern moved toward the target end of the long tube.

Neither of them had lights. They were unnecessary, for one thing, since there was only one direction to go and there were no obstacles in the path. Bern would probably have carried a flashlight if he'd been able to get his hands on one quickly, but he hadn't, so he went in darkness. MacHeath didn't want a light; in the darkness, he had the advantage of knowing where his opponent was.

Every so often, Bern would stop, listening for sounds of pursuit, since his own footsteps, echoing down the glass-lined cylinder, drowned out any noise from behind. But MacHeath, running silently on the toes of his thick-soled shoes, kept in motion, gaining on the fleeing spy.

A two-mile run is a good stretch of exercise for anyone, but MacHeath didn't dare slow down. As it was, Konrad Bern was already tugging frantically at the door that led to the target room by the time MacHeath reached him. But the faint sighing of the pumps had already told MacHeath that the air pressure had been dropped. Bern couldn't possibly get the door open.

MacHeath's lungs wanted to be filled with air; his chest wanted to heave; he wanted to pant, taking in great gulps of life-giving oxygen. But he didn't dare. He didn't want Bern to know he was there, so he strained to keep his breath silent.

He stepped up behind the physicist in the pitch blackness, and judging carefully, brought his fist down on the nape of the man's neck in a hard rabbit punch.

Konrad Bern dropped unconscious to the floor of the tube.

Then MacHeath let his chest pump air into his lungs in long, harsh gasps. Shakily, he lowered himself to the floor beside Bern and squatted on his haunches, waiting for the hiss of the bleeder valve that would tell him that the air pressure had been raised to allow someone to enter the air lock.

It was Morgan, the FBI man, who finally cracked the door. Griffin and Dr. Kent were with him.

"You all right?" asked Morgan.

"I'm fine," MacHeath said, "but Bern is going to have a sore neck for a while. I didn't hit him hard enough to break it, but he'll get plenty of sleep before he wakes up."

More FBI men came in, and they dragged out the unprotesting Bern.

Dr. Kent said: "Well, I'm glad that's over. I'll have to get back and see what Dr. Nordred is raving about."

"Raving?" asked MacHeath innocently.

"Yes. While I was in the pump room reducing the pressure, he called me on the interphone. Said he'd been looking all over for me. He and Luvochek and Bessermann are up in the lab." He frowned. "They claim that one of the radiolead samples was floating in the air in the lab. It's settled down now, I gather, but it only weighs a fraction of what it should, though it's gaining all the time. And that's ridiculous. It's not at all what Dr. Nordred's theory predicted." Then he clamped his lips together, thinking perhaps he had talked too much.

"Interesting," said MacHeath blandly. "Very interesting."

* * * * *

Senator Gonzales sat in Brian Taggert's sixth-floor office in the S.M.M.R. building and looked puzzled. "All right, I grant you that Bern couldn't have been the saboteur. Then why arrest him?"

Dave MacHeath took a drag from his cigarette before he answered. "We had to have a patsy--someone to put the blame on. No one really believed that it was just bad luck, but they'll all accept the idea that Bern was a saboteur."

"We would have had to arrest him eventually, anyway," said Brian Taggert.

"Give me a quick run-down," Gonzales said. "I've got to explain this to the President."

"Did you ever hear of the Pauli Effect?" MacHeath asked.

"Something about the number of electrons that--"

"No," MacHeath said quickly. "That's the Pauli principle, better known as the Exclusion Principle. The Pauli Effect is a different thing entirely, a psionic effect.

"It used to be said that a theoretical physicist was judged by his inability to handle research apparatus; the clumsier he was in research, the better he was with theory. But Wolfgang Pauli was a lot more than clumsy. Apparatus would break, topple over, go to pieces, or burn up if Pauli just walked into the room.

"Up to the time he died, in 1958, his colleagues kidded about it, without really believing there was anything behind it. But it is recorded that the explosion of some vacuum equipment in a laboratory at the University of Göttingen was the direct result of the Pauli Effect. It was definitely established that the explosion occurred at the precise moment that a train on which Pauli was traveling stopped for a short time at the Göttingen railway station."

The senator said: "The poltergeist phenomenon."

"Not exactly," MacHeath said, "although there is a similarity. The poltergeist phenomenon is usually spectacular and is nearly always associated with teen-age neurotics. Then there's the pyrotic; fires always start in his vicinity."

"But there's always a reason for psionic phenomena to react violently under subconscious control," Senator Gonzales pointed out. "There's always a psychological quirk."

"Sure. And I almost fell into the same trap, myself."

"How so?"

"I was thinking that if Bern were the saboteur, all our theories about psionics would have to be thrown out--we'd have to start from a different set of precepts. And I didn't even want to think about such an idea!"

"Nobody likes their pet theories overthrown," Gonzales observed.

"Of course not. But here's the point: The only way that a scientific theory can be proved wrong is to uncover a phenomenon which doesn't fit in with the theory. A theoretical physicist is a mathematician; he makes logical deductions and logical predictions by juggling symbols around in accordance with some logical system. But the axioms, the assumptions upon which those systems are built, are nonlogical. You can't prove an axiom; if comes right out of the mind.

"So imagine that you're a theoretical physicist. A really original-type thinker. You come up with a mathematical system that explains all known phenomena at that time, and predicts others that are, as yet, unknown. You check your math over and over again; there's no error in your logic, since it all follows, step by step."

"O.K.; go on," Gonzales said interestedly.

"Very well, then; you've built yourself a logical universe, based on your axioms, and the structure seems to have a one-to-one correspondence with the actual universe. Not only that, but if the theory is accepted, you've built your reputation on it--your life.

"Now, what happens if your axioms--not the logic about the axioms, but the axioms themselves--are proven to be wrong?"

* * * * *

Brian Taggert took his pipe out of his mouth. "Why, you give up the erroneous set of axioms and build a new set that will explain the new phenomenon. Isn't that what a scientist is supposed to do?" His manner was that of wide-eyed innocence laid on with a large trowel.

"Oh, sure it is," said the senator. "A man builds his whole life, his whole universe; on a set of principles, and he scraps them at the drop of a hat. Sure he does."

"He claims he will," MacHeath said. "Any scientist worth the paper his diploma is printed on is firmly convinced that he will change his axioms as soon as they're proven false. Of course, ninety-nine per cent of 'em can't and won't and don't. They refuse to look at anything that suggests changing axioms.

"Some scientists eagerly accept the axioms that they were taught in school and hang on to them all their lives, fighting change tooth and nail. Oh, they'll accept new ideas, all right--provided that they fit in with the structures based on the old axioms.

"Then there are the young iconoclasts who don't like the axioms as they stand, so they make up some new ones of their own--men like Newton, Einstein, Planck, and so on. Then, once the new axioms have been forced down the throats of their colleagues, the innovators become the Old Order; the iconoclasts become the ones who put the fences around the new images to safeguard them. And they're even more firmly wedded to their axioms than anyone else. This is their universe!

"Of course, these men proclaim to all the world that they are perfectly willing to change their axioms. And the better a scientist he is, the more he believes, in his heart-of-hearts, that he really would change. He really thinks, consciously, that he wants others to test his theories.

"But notice: A theory is only good if it explains all known phenomena in its field. If it does, then the only thing that can topple it is a new fact. The only thing that can threaten the complex structure formulated by a really creative, painstaking, mathematical physicist is experiment!"

Senator Gonzales' attentive silence was eloquent.

"Experiment!" MacHeath repeated. "That can wreck a theory quicker and more completely than all the learned arguments of a dozen men. And every theoretician is aware of that fact. Consciously, he gladly accepts the inevitable; but his subconscious mind will fight to keep those axioms.

"Even if it has to smash every experimental device around!

"After all, if nobody can experiment on your theory, it can't be proved wrong, can it?

"In Nordred's case, as in Pauli's, this subconscious defense actually made itself felt in the form of broken equipment. Dr. Theodore Nordred was totally unconscious of the fact that he detested and feared the idea of anyone experimenting to prove or disprove his theory. He had no idea that he, himself, was re-channeling the energy in those machines to make them burn out."

Brian Taggert looked at MacHeath pointedly. "Do you think the shock treatment you gave him will cause any repercussions?"

"No. Griffin and Benbow held that block of radiolead floating in the air only while Dr. Nordred was alone in the lab. He pushed at it, felt of it, and moved it around for more than ten minutes before he'd admit the reality of what he saw. Then he called Luvochek and Bessermann in to look at it.

"Griffin and Benbow let the sample settle to the desk, so that by the time the other two scientists got to the lab, the lead didn't have an apparent negative weight, but was still much lighter than it should be.

"All the while that Bessermann and Luvochek were trying to weigh the lead block, to get an accurate measurement, Griffin and Benbow, three rooms away, kept increasing the weight slowly towards normal. And so far no one has invented a device which will give an instantaneous check on the weight of an object. A balance can't check the weight of a sample unless that weight is constant; there's too much time lag involved.

"So, what evidence do they have? Scientifically speaking, none. They have no measurements, and the experiment can't be repeated. And only Nordred actually saw the sample floating. Luvochek and Bessermann will eventually think up a 'natural' explanation for the apparent steady gain in weight. Only Nordred will remain convinced that what he saw actually happened.

"I don't see how there could be any serious repercussions in the field of physics." But he looked at Taggert for confirmation.

Taggert gave it to him with an approving look.

"It's a funny thing," said Gonzales musingly. "Some time back, we were in a situation where we had to go to the extreme of physical violence to keep from demonstrating to a scientist that psionic powers could be controlled, just to keep from ruining the physicist's work.

"Now, we turn right around and demonstrate the 'impossible' to another physicist in order to pull his hard-earned axioms out from under him." He smiled wryly. "There ain't no justice in the world."

"No," agreed MacHeath, "but the trick worked. He won't have any subconscious desire to smash equipment just to protect a theory that has already been smashed. On the contrary, he'll let them go through in order to find new data to build another theory on."

"He'll never again be the man he was," said Taggert regretfully. "He's lost the force of his convictions. He won't be capable of taking a no-nonsense, dogmatic, black-and-white stand. But it was necessary." He made an odd gesture with one hand. "What else can you do with a man who's a psionic psychopath?"

THE END

Contents

THE MAN WHO HATED MARS

By RANDALL GARRETT

"I want you to put me in prison!" the big, hairy man said in a trembling voice.

He was addressing his request to a thin woman sitting behind a desk that seemed much too big for her. The plaque on the desk said:

LT. PHOEBE HARRIS TERRAN REHABILITATION SERVICE

Lieutenant Harris glanced at the man before her for only a moment before she returned her eyes to the dossier on the desk; but long enough to verify the impression his voice had given. Ron Clayton was a big, ugly, cowardly, dangerous man.

He said: "Well? Dammit, say something!"

The lieutenant raised her eyes again. "Just be patient until I've read this." Her voice and eyes were expressionless, but her hand moved beneath the desk.

Clayton froze. She's yellow! he thought. She's turned on the trackers! He could see the pale greenish glow of their little eyes watching him all around the room. If he made any fast move, they would cut him down with a stun beam before he could get two feet.

She had thought he was going to jump her. Little rat! he thought, somebody ought to slap her down!

He watched her check through the heavy dossier in front of her. Finally, she looked up at him again.

"Clayton, your last conviction was for strong-arm robbery. You were given a choice between prison on Earth and freedom here on Mars. You picked Mars."

He nodded slowly. He'd been broke and hungry at the time. A sneaky little rat named Johnson had bilked Clayton out of his fair share of the Corey payroll job, and Clayton had been forced to get the money somehow. He hadn't mussed the guy up much; besides, it was the sucker's own fault. If he hadn't tried to yell--

Lieutenant Harris went on: "I'm afraid you can't back down now."

"But it isn't fair! The most I'd have got on that frame-up would've been ten years. I've been here fifteen already!"

"I'm sorry, Clayton. It can't be done. You're here. Period. Forget about trying to get back. Earth doesn't want you." Her voice sounded choppy, as though she were trying to keep it calm.

Clayton broke into a whining rage. "You can't do that! It isn't fair! I never did anything to you! I'll go talk to the Governor! He'll listen to reason! You'll see! I'll--"

"Shut up!" the woman snapped harshly. "I'm getting sick of it! I personally think you should have been locked up--permanently. I think this idea of forced colonization is going to breed trouble for Earth someday, but it is about the only way you can get anybody to colonize this frozen hunk of mud.

"Just keep it in mind that I don't like it any better than you do--and I didn't strong-arm anybody to deserve the assignment! Now get out of here!"

She moved a hand threateningly toward the manual controls of the stun beam.

Clayton retreated fast. The trackers ignored anyone walking away from the desk; they were set only to spot threatening movements toward it.

Outside the Rehabilitation Service Building, Clayton could feel the tears running down the inside of his face mask. He'd asked again and again--God only knew how many times--in the past fifteen years. Always the same answer. No.

When he'd heard that this new administrator was a woman, he'd hoped she might be easier to convince. She wasn't. If anything, she was harder than the others.

The heat-sucking frigidity of the thin Martian air whispered around him in a feeble breeze. He shivered a little and began walking toward the recreation center.

There was a high, thin piping in the sky above him which quickly became a scream in the thin air.

He turned for a moment to watch the ship land, squinting his eyes to see the number on the hull.

Fifty-two. Space Transport Ship Fifty-two.

Probably bringing another load of poor suckers to freeze to death on Mars.

That was the thing he hated about Mars--the cold. The everlasting damned cold! And the oxidation pills; take one every three hours or smother in the poor, thin air.

The government could have put up domes; it could have put in building-to-building tunnels, at least. It could have done a hell of a lot of things to make Mars a decent place for human beings.

But no--the government had other ideas. A bunch of bigshot scientific characters had come up with the idea nearly twenty-three years before. Clayton could remember the words on the sheet he had been given when he was sentenced.

"Mankind is inherently an adaptable animal. If we are to colonize the planets of the Solar System, we must meet the conditions on those planets as best we can.

"Financially, it is impracticable to change an entire planet from its original condition to one which will support human life as it exists on Terra.

"But man, since he is adaptable, can change himself--modify his structure slightly--so that he can live on these planets with only a minimum of change in the environment."

* * * * *

So they made you live outside and like it. So you froze and you choked and you suffered.

Clayton hated Mars. He hated the thin air and the cold. More than anything, he hated the cold.

Ron Clayton wanted to go home.

The Recreation Building was just ahead; at least it would be warm inside. He pushed in through the outer and inner doors, and he heard the burst of music from the jukebox. His stomach tightened up into a hard cramp.

They were playing Heinlein's Green Hills of Earth.

There was almost no other sound in the room, although it was full of people. There were plenty of colonists who claimed to like Mars, but even they were silent when that song was played.

Clayton wanted to go over and smash the machine--make it stop reminding him. He clenched his teeth and his fists and his eyes and cursed mentally. God, how I hate Mars!

* * * * *

When the hauntingly nostalgic last chorus faded away, he walked over to the machine and fed it full of enough coins to keep it going on something else until he left.

At the bar, he ordered a beer and used it to wash down another oxidation tablet. It wasn't good beer; it didn't even deserve the name. The atmospheric pressure was so low as to boil all the carbon dioxide out of it, so the brewers never put it back in after fermentation.

He was sorry for what he had done--really and truly sorry. If they'd only give him one more chance, he'd make good. Just one more chance. He'd work things out.

He'd promised himself that both times they'd put him up before, but things had been different then. He hadn't really been given another chance, what with parole boards and all.

Clayton closed his eyes and finished the beer. He ordered another.

He'd worked in the mines for fifteen years. It wasn't that he minded work really, but the foreman had it in for him. Always giving him a bad time; always picking out the lousy jobs for him.

Like the time he'd crawled into a side-boring in Tunnel 12 for a nap during lunch and the foreman had caught him. When he promised never to do it again if the foreman wouldn't put it on report, the guy said, "Yeah. Sure. Hate to hurt a guy's record."

Then he'd put Clayton on report anyway. Strictly a rat.

Not that Clayton ran any chance of being fired; they never fired anybody. But they'd fined him a day's pay. A whole day's pay.

He tapped his glass on the bar, and the barman came over with another beer. Clayton looked at it, then up at the barman. "Put a head on it."

The bartender looked at him sourly. "I've got some soapsuds here, Clayton, and one of these days I'm gonna put some in your beer if you keep pulling that gag."

That was the trouble with some guys. No sense of humor.

Somebody came in the door and then somebody else came in behind him, so that both inner and outer doors were open for an instant. A blast of icy breeze struck Clayton's back, and he shivered. He started to say something, then changed his mind; the doors were already closed again, and besides, one of the guys was bigger than he was.

The iciness didn't seem to go away immediately. It was like the mine. Little old Mars was cold clear down to her core--or at least down as far as they'd drilled. The walls were frozen and seemed to radiate a chill that pulled the heat right out of your blood.

Somebody was playing Green Hills again, damn them. Evidently all of his own selections had run out earlier than he'd thought they would.

Hell! There was nothing to do here. He might as well go home.

"Gimme another beer, Mac."

He'd go home as soon as he finished this one.

He stood there with his eyes closed, listening to the music and hating Mars.

A voice next to him said: "I'll have a whiskey."

* * * * *

The voice sounded as if the man had a bad cold, and Clayton turned slowly to look at him. After all the sterilization they went through before they left Earth, nobody on Mars ever had a cold, so there was only one thing that would make a man's voice sound like that.

Clayton was right. The fellow had an oxygen tube clamped firmly over his nose. He was wearing the uniform of the Space Transport Service.

"Just get in on the ship?" Clayton asked conversationally.

The man nodded and grinned. "Yeah. Four hours before we take off again." He poured down the whiskey. "Sure cold out."

Clayton agreed. "It's always cold." He watched enviously as the spaceman ordered another whiskey.

Clayton couldn't afford whiskey. He probably could have by this time, if the mines had made him a foreman, like they should have.

Maybe he could talk the spaceman out of a couple of drinks.

"My name's Clayton. Ron Clayton."

The spaceman took the offered hand. "Mine's Parkinson, but everybody calls me Parks."

"Sure, Parks. Uh--can I buy you a beer?"

Parks shook his head. "No, thanks. I started on whiskey. Here, let me buy you one."

"Well--thanks. Don't mind if I do."

They drank them in silence, and Parks ordered two more.

"Been here long?" Parks asked.

"Fifteen years. Fifteen long, long years."

"Did you--uh--I mean--" Parks looked suddenly confused.

Clayton glanced quickly to make sure the bartender was out of earshot. Then he grinned. "You mean am I a convict? Nah. I came here because I wanted to. But--" He lowered his voice. "--we don't talk about it around here. You know." He gestured with one hand--a gesture that took in everyone else in the room.

Parks glanced around quickly, moving only his eyes. "Yeah. I see," he said softly.

"This your first trip?" asked Clayton.

"First one to Mars. Been on the Luna run a long time."

"Low pressure bother you much?"

"Not much. We only keep it at six pounds in the ships. Half helium and half oxygen. Only thing that bothers me is the oxy here. Or rather, the oxy that isn't here." He took a deep breath through his nose tube to emphasize his point.

Clayton clamped his teeth together, making the muscles at the side of his jaw stand out.

Parks didn't notice. "You guys have to take those pills, don't you?"

"Yeah."

"I had to take them once. Got stranded on Luna. The cat I was in broke down eighty some miles from Aristarchus Base and I had to walk back--with my oxy low. Well, I figured--"

* * * * *

Clayton listened to Parks' story with a great show of attention, but he had heard it before. This "lost on the moon" stuff and its variations had been going the rounds for forty years. Every once in a while, it actually did happen to someone; just often enough to keep the story going.

This guy did have a couple of new twists, but not enough to make the story worthwhile.

"Boy," Clayton said when Parks had finished, "you were lucky to come out of that alive!"

Parks nodded, well pleased with himself, and bought another round of drinks.

"Something like that happened to me a couple of years ago," Clayton began. "I'm supervisor on the third shift in the mines at Xanthe, but at the time, I was only a foreman. One day, a couple of guys went to a branch tunnel to--"

It was a very good story. Clayton had made it up himself, so he knew that Parks had never heard it before. It was gory in just the right places, with a nice effect at the end.

"--so I had to hold up the rocks with my back while the rescue crew pulled the others out of the tunnel by crawling between my legs. Finally, they got some steel beams down there to take the load off, and I could let go. I was in the hospital for a week," he finished.

Parks was nodding vaguely. Clayton looked up at the clock above the bar and realized that they had been talking for better than an hour. Parks was buying another round.

Parks was a hell of a nice fellow.

There was, Clayton found, only one trouble with Parks. He got to talking so loud that the bartender refused to serve either one of them any more.

* * * * *

The bartender said Clayton was getting loud, too, but it was just because he had to talk loud to make Parks hear him.

Clayton helped Parks put his mask and parka on and they walked out into the cold night.

Parks began to sing Green Hills. About halfway through, he stopped and turned to Clayton.

"I'm from Indiana."

Clayton had already spotted him as an American by his accent.

"Indiana? That's nice. Real nice."

"Yeah. You talk about green hills, we got green hills in Indiana. What time is it?"

Clayton told him.

"Jeez-krise! Ol' spaship takes off in an hour. Ought to have one more drink first."

Clayton realized he didn't like Parks. But maybe he'd buy a bottle.

Sharkie Johnson worked in Fuels Section, and he made a nice little sideline of stealing alcohol, cutting it, and selling it. He thought it was real funny to call it Martian Gin.

Clayton said: "Let's go over to Sharkie's. Sharkie will sell us a bottle."

"Okay," said Parks. "We'll get a bottle. That's what we need: a bottle."

It was quite a walk to the Shark's place. It was so cold that even Parks was beginning to sober up a little. He was laughing like hell when Clayton started to sing.

"We're going over to the Shark's To buy a jug of gin for Parks! Hi ho, hi ho, hi ho!"

One thing about a few drinks; you didn't get so cold. You didn't feel it too much, anyway.

* * * * *

The Shark still had his light on when they arrived. Clayton whispered to Parks: "I'll go in. He knows me. He wouldn't sell it if you were around. You got eight credits?"

"Sure I got eight credits. Just a minute, and I'll give you eight credits." He fished around for a minute inside his parka, and pulled out his notecase. His gloved fingers were a little clumsy, but he managed to get out a five and three ones and hand them to Clayton.

"You wait out here," Clayton said.

He went in through the outer door and knocked on the inner one. He should have asked for ten credits. Sharkie only charged five, and that would leave him three for himself. But he could have got ten--maybe more.

When he came out with the bottle, Parks was sitting on a rock, shivering.

"Jeez-krise!" he said. "It's cold out here. Let's get to someplace where it's warm."

"Sure. I got the bottle. Want a drink?"

Parks took the bottle, opened it, and took a good belt out of it.

"Hooh!" he breathed. "Pretty smooth."

As Clayton drank, Parks said: "Hey! I better get back to the field! I know! We can go to the men's room and finish the bottle before the ship takes off! Isn't that a good idea? It's warm there."

They started back down the street toward the spacefield.

"Yep, I'm from Indiana. Southern part, down around Bloomington," Parks said. "Gimme the jug. Not Bloomington, Illinois--Bloomington, Indiana. We really got green hills down there." He drank, and handed the bottle back to Clayton. "Pers-nally, I don't see why anybody'd stay on Mars. Here y'are, practic'ly on the equator in the middle of the summer, and it's colder than hell. Brrr!

"Now if you was smart, you'd go home, where it's warm. Mars wasn't built for people to live on, anyhow. I don't see how you stand it."

That was when Clayton decided he really hated Parks.

And when Parks said: "Why be dumb, friend? Whyn't you go home?" Clayton kicked him in the stomach, hard.

"And that, that--" Clayton said as Parks doubled over.

He said it again as he kicked him in the head. And in the ribs. Parks was gasping as he writhed on the ground, but he soon lay still.

Then Clayton saw why. Parks' nose tube had come off when Clayton's foot struck his head.

Parks was breathing heavily, but he wasn't getting any oxygen.

That was when the Big Idea hit Ron Clayton. With a nosepiece on like that, you couldn't tell who a man was. He took another drink from the jug and then began to take Parks' clothes off.

The uniform fit Clayton fine, and so did the nose mask. He dumped his own clothing on top of Parks' nearly nude body, adjusted the little oxygen tank so that the gas would flow properly through the mask, took the first deep breath of good air he'd had in fifteen years, and walked toward the spacefield.

* * * * *

He went into the men's room at the Port Building, took a drink, and felt in the pockets of the uniform for Parks' identification. He found it and opened the booklet. It read:

PARKINSON, HERBERT J. Steward 2nd Class, STS

Above it was a photo, and a set of fingerprints.

Clayton grinned. They'd never know it wasn't Parks getting on the ship.

Parks was a steward, too. A cook's helper. That was good. If he'd been a jetman or something like that, the crew might wonder why he wasn't on duty at takeoff. But a steward was different.

Clayton sat for several minutes, looking through the booklet and drinking from the bottle. He emptied it just before the warning sirens keened through the thin air.

Clayton got up and went outside toward the ship.

"Wake up! Hey, you! Wake up!"

Somebody was slapping his cheeks. Clayton opened his eyes and looked at the blurred face over his own.

From a distance, another voice said: "Who is it?"

The blurred face said: "I don't know. He was asleep behind these cases. I think he's drunk."

Clayton wasn't drunk--he was sick. His head felt like hell. Where the devil was he?

"Get up, bud. Come on, get up!"

Clayton pulled himself up by holding to the man's arm. The effort made him dizzy and nauseated.

The other man said: "Take him down to sick bay, Casey. Get some thiamin into him."

Clayton didn't struggle as they led him down to the sick bay. He was trying to clear his head. Where was he? He must have been pretty drunk last night.

He remembered meeting Parks. And getting thrown out by the bartender. Then what?

Oh, yeah. He'd gone to the Shark's for a bottle. From there on, it was mostly gone. He remembered a fight or something, but that was all that registered.

The medic in the sick bay fired two shots from a hypo-gun into both arms, but Clayton ignored the slight sting.

"Where am I?"

"Real original. Here, take these." He handed Clayton a couple of capsules, and gave him a glass of water to wash them down with.

When the water hit his stomach, there was an immediate reaction.

"Oh, Christ!" the medic said. "Get a mop, somebody. Here, bud; heave into this." He put a basin on the table in front of Clayton.

It took them the better part of an hour to get Clayton awake enough to realize what was going on and where he was. Even then, he was plenty groggy.

* * * * *

It was the First Officer of the STS-52 who finally got the story straight. As soon as Clayton was in condition, the medic and the quartermaster officer who had found him took him up to the First Officer's compartment.

"I was checking through the stores this morning when I found this man. He was asleep, dead drunk, behind the crates."

"He was drunk, all right," supplied the medic. "I found this in his pocket." He flipped a booklet to the First Officer.

The First was a young man, not older than twenty-eight with tough-looking gray eyes. He looked over the booklet.

"Where did you get Parkinson's ID booklet? And his uniform?"

Clayton looked down at his clothes in wonder. "I don't know."

"You don't know? That's a hell of an answer."

"Well, I was drunk," Clayton said defensively. "A man doesn't know what he's doing when he's drunk." He frowned in concentration. He knew he'd have to think up some story.

"I kind of remember we made a bet. I bet him I could get on the ship. Sure--I remember, now. That's what happened; I bet him I could get on the ship and we traded clothes."

"Where is he now?"

"At my place, sleeping it off, I guess."

"Without his oxy-mask?"

"Oh, I gave him my oxidation pills for the mask."

The First shook his head. "That sounds like the kind of trick Parkinson would pull, all right. I'll have to write it up and turn you both in to the authorities when we hit Earth." He eyed Clayton. "What's your name?"

"Cartwright. Sam Cartwright," Clayton said without batting an eye.

"Volunteer or convicted colonist?"

"Volunteer."

The First looked at him for a long moment, disbelief in his eyes.

It didn't matter. Volunteer or convict, there was no place Clayton could go. From the officer's viewpoint, he was as safely imprisoned in the spaceship as he would be on Mars or a prison on Earth.

* * * * *

The First wrote in the log book, and then said: "Well, we're one man short in the kitchen. You wanted to take Parkinson's place; brother, you've got it--without pay." He paused for a moment.

"You know, of course," he said judiciously, "that you'll be shipped back to Mars immediately. And you'll have to work out your passage both ways--it will be deducted from your pay."

Clayton nodded. "I know."

"I don't know what else will happen. If there's a conviction, you may lose your volunteer status on Mars. And there may be fines taken out of your pay, too.

"Well, that's all, Cartwright. You can report to Kissman in the kitchen."

The First pressed a button on his desk and spoke into the intercom. "Who was on duty at the airlock when the crew came aboard last night? Send him up. I want to talk to him."

Then the quartermaster officer led Clayton out the door and took him to the kitchen.

The ship's driver tubes were pushing it along at a steady five hundred centimeters per second squared acceleration, pushing her steadily closer to Earth with a little more than half a gravity of drive.

* * * * *

There wasn't much for Clayton to do, really. He helped to select the foods that went into the automatics, and he cleaned them out after each meal was cooked. Once every day, he had to partially dismantle them for a really thorough going-over.

And all the time, he was thinking.

Parkinson must be dead; he knew that. That meant the Chamber. And even if he wasn't, they'd send Clayton back to Mars. Luckily, there was no way for either planet to communicate with the ship; it was hard enough to keep a beam trained on a planet without trying to hit such a comparatively small thing as a ship.

But they would know about it on Earth by now. They would pick him up the instant the ship landed. And the best he could hope for was a return to Mars.

No, by God! He wouldn't go back to that frozen mud-ball! He'd stay on Earth, where it was warm and comfortable and a man could live where he was meant to live. Where there was plenty of air to breathe and plenty of water to drink. Where the beer tasted like beer and not like slop. Earth. Good green hills, the like of which exists nowhere else.

Slowly, over the days, he evolved a plan. He watched and waited and checked each little detail to make sure nothing would go wrong. It couldn't go wrong. He didn't want to die, and he didn't want to go back to Mars.

Nobody on the ship liked him; they couldn't appreciate his position. He hadn't done anything to them, but they just didn't like him. He didn't know why; he'd tried to get along with them. Well, if they didn't like him, the hell with them.

If things worked out the way he figured, they'd be damned sorry.

He was very clever about the whole plan. When turn-over came, he pretended to get violently spacesick. That gave him an opportunity to steal a bottle of chloral hydrate from the medic's locker.

And, while he worked in the kitchen, he spent a great deal of time sharpening a big carving knife.

Once, during his off time, he managed to disable one of the ship's two lifeboats. He was saving the other for himself.

The ship was eight hours out from Earth and still decelerating when Clayton pulled his getaway.

* * * * *

It was surprisingly easy. He was supposed to be asleep when he sneaked down to the drive compartment with the knife. He pushed open the door, looked in, and grinned like an ape.

The Engineer and the two jetmen were out cold from the chloral hydrate in the coffee from the kitchen.

Moving rapidly, he went to the spares locker and began methodically to smash every replacement part for the drivers. Then he took three of the signal bombs from the emergency kit, set them for five minutes, and placed them around the driver circuits.

He looked at the three sleeping men. What if they woke up before the bombs went off? He didn't want to kill them though. He wanted them to know what had happened and who had done it.

He grinned. There was a way. He simply had to drag them outside and jam the door lock. He took the key from the Engineer, inserted it, turned it, and snapped off the head, leaving the body of the key still in the lock. Nobody would unjam it in the next four minutes.

Then he began to run up the stairwell toward the good lifeboat.

He was panting and out of breath when he arrived, but no one had stopped him. No one had even seen him.

He clambered into the lifeboat, made everything ready, and waited.

The signal bombs were not heavy charges; their main purposes was to make a flare bright enough to be seen for thousands of miles in space. Fluorine and magnesium made plenty of light--and heat.

Quite suddenly, there was no gravity. He had felt nothing, but he knew that the bombs had exploded. He punched the LAUNCH switch on the control board of the lifeboat, and the little ship leaped out from the side of the greater one.

Then he turned on the drive, set it at half a gee, and watched the STS-52 drop behind him. It was no longer decelerating, so it would miss Earth and drift on into space. On the other hand, the lifeship would come down very neatly within a few hundred miles of the spaceport in Utah, the destination of the STS-52.

Landing the lifeship would be the only difficult part of the maneuver, but they were designed to be handled by beginners. Full instructions were printed on the simplified control board.

* * * * *

Clayton studied them for a while, then set the alarm to waken him in seven hours and dozed off to sleep.

He dreamed of Indiana. It was full of nice, green hills and leafy woods, and Parkinson was inviting him over to his mother's house for chicken and whiskey. And all for free.

Beneath the dream was the calm assurance that they would never catch him and send him back. When the STS-52 failed to show up, they would think he had been lost with it. They would never look for him.

When the alarm rang, Earth was a mottled globe looming hugely beneath the ship. Clayton watched the dials on the board, and began to follow the instructions on the landing sheet.

He wasn't too good at it. The accelerometer climbed higher and higher, and he felt as though he could hardly move his hands to the proper switches.

He was less than fifteen feet off the ground when his hand slipped. The ship, out of control, shifted, spun, and toppled over on its side, smashing a great hole in the cabin.

Clayton shook his head and tried to stand up in the wreckage. He got to his hands and knees, dizzy but unhurt, and took a deep breath of the fresh air that was blowing in through the hole in the cabin.

It felt just like home.

* * * * *

Bureau of Criminal Investigation Regional Headquarters Cheyenne, Wyoming 20 January 2102

To: Space Transport Service Subject: Lifeship 2, STS-52 Attention Mr. P. D. Latimer

Dear Paul,

I have on hand the copies of your reports on the rescue of the men on the disabled STS-52. It is fortunate that the Lunar radar stations could compute their orbit.

The detailed official report will follow, but briefly, this is what happened:

The lifeship landed--or, rather, crashed--several miles west of Cheyenne, as you know, but it was impossible to find the man who was piloting it until yesterday because of the weather.

He has been identified as Ronald Watkins Clayton, exiled to Mars fifteen years ago.

Evidently, he didn't realize that fifteen years of Martian gravity had so weakened his muscles that he could hardly walk under the pull of a full Earth gee.

As it was, he could only crawl about a hundred yards from the wrecked lifeship before he collapsed.

Well, I hope this clears up everything.

I hope you're not getting the snow storms up there like we've been getting them.

John B. Remley Captain, CBI

THE END

Contents

HAWK CARSE

By Anthony Gilmore

CHAPTER I

The Swoop of the Hawk

Hawk Carse came to the frontiers of space when Saturn was the frontier planet, which was years before the swift Patrol ships brought Earth's law and order to those vast regions. A casual glance at his slender figure made it seem impossible that he was to rise to be the greatest adventurer in space, that his name was to carry such deadly connotation in later years. But on closer inspection, a number of little things became evident: the steadiness of his light gray eyes; the marvelously strong-fingered hands; the wiry build of his splendidly proportioned body. Summing these things up and adding the brilliant resourcefulness of the man, the complete ignorance of fear, one could perhaps understand why even his blood enemy, the impassive Ku Sui, a man otherwise devoid of every human trait, could not face Carse unmoved in his moments of cold fury.

His name, we know, enters most histories of the period 2117-2148 A. D., for he has at last been recognized as the one who probably did most--unofficially, and not with the authority of the Earth Government--to shape the raw frontiers of space, to push them outward and to lay the foundations of the present tremendous commerce between Earth, Vulcan, Pluto, Neptune, Uranus, Saturn and Jupiter. But, little of his fascinating character may be gleaned from the dry words of history; and it is Hawk Carse the adventurer, he of the spitting ray-gun and the phenomenal draw, of the reckless space ship maneuverings, of the queer bangs of flaxen hair that from a certain year hid his forehead, of the score of blood feuds and the one great feud that jarred nations in its final terrible settling--it is with that man we are concerned here.

A number of his exploits never recorded are still among the favorite yarns spun by lonely outlanders in the scattered trading posts of the planets, and among them is that of his final encounter with Judd the Kite. It shows typically the cold deadliness, the prompt repaying of a blood debt, the nerveless daring that were the outstanding qualities of this almost legendary figure.

It began one crisp, early morning on Iapetus, and it ended on Iapetus, with the streaks of ray-guns searing the air; and it explains why there are two square mounds of soil on Iapetus, eighth satellite of Saturn.

* * * * *

Carse pioneered Iapetus and considered its product his by right of prior exploration. One or two men had landed there before he came to the frontiers of space and reported the satellite habitable, possessed of gravital force only slightly under Earth's, despite its twelve-hundred-mile diameter, and of an atmosphere merely a trifle rarer; but they had gone no further. They had noticed the forms of certain strange animals flitting through the satellite's jungles, but had not investigated. It was Carse who captured one of the creatures and saw the commercial possibilities of the pointed seven-inch horn that grew on its head, and who named it phanti, after the now extinct Venusian bird-mammal.

There were great herds of them, and they constituted Iapetus' highest form of life. The space trader cut off a few of their opalescent and green-veined horns and sent them as samples to Earth; and, upon their being valued highly, he two months later established his ranch on Iapetus, and thus laid the foundation for the grim business that men sometimes call the Exploit of the Hawk and the Kite.

No doubt Carse expected trouble over the ranch. To protect the valuable twice-yearly harvest of horn from Ku Sui's several bands of pirates, and other semi-piratical traders who roamed space, he built a formidable ranch-house with generators for powerful offensive rays and a strong defensive ray-web, and manned it with six competent men. Moreover, he came personally twice a year to transport the cargo of horn, and let it be known throughout the frontiers that the sign of the Hawk was on that portion of Iapetus, and that all who trespassed would have to answer to him. This should have been, ordinarily, enough. But there was always the sinister, brilliant Dr. Ku Sui, plotting against him and his belongings, and reckless others to whom the ranch might look like easy pickings. From these Carse had long anticipated a raid on Iapetus.

* * * * *

And now he was worried. Clad as usual in a faded blue tunic, open at the neck, soft blue trousers and old-fashioned rubber soled shoes, he showed it by pulling occasionally at the bangs of flaxen hair that had been trained to hang down his forehead to the thick, straw-colored eyebrows. In his new cruiser, the Star Devil, he was within an hour's time of Iapetus, which lay before the bow observation ports of the control cabin like a giant buff-tinted orange, dark-splotched by seas and jungles, on the third of his semi-annual voyages for the harvest of horn. Away to the left, scintillating and flaming in the blackness of space, whirled Saturn, his rings clear-cut and brilliant, his hard light filling the control cabin. Carse was staring unseeingly at the magnificent spectacle when the giant negro standing nearby at the space-stick rumbled:

"Well, suh, Ah cain't think they's anything wrong--no, suh. They's nobody'd dare touch that ranch! No, suh--not Hawk Carse's ranch."

This was "Friday," the herculean black Earthling whom Carse had rescued years before from one of the Venusian slave-ships, and now a member of that strange trio of totally dissimilar comrades, the third of whom was Master Scientist Eliot Leithgow, now absent and at work in his secret laboratory. Friday thought the Hawk just about the greatest man in the Solar System, and many times already had he given proof of his devotion.

Carse looked full at him. "You're a good mechanic, Eclipse," he said, "but in some ways very innocent. Crane hasn't replied to us for seventy minutes. He knows we're coming and he should be on duty. That cargo's valuable, and it's all ready and packed."

"Hmff," Friday grunted. "But who you think'd dare try an' swipe it when we're so close? One o' Ku Sui's gang, maybe?"

"Perhaps. I haven't heard anything of Ku Sui for some time, and he's never more dangerous than when he keeps silent," said the Hawk thoughtfully. "But Crane might be sick. Or his radio might have broken down temporarily. Still--"

It was then that the third man in the cabin, Harkness, the navigator, straightened abruptly and put a sharp end to the trader's last word by calling out:

"Radio, sir!"

* * * * *

A red dot of light was winking on a switchboard. Friday watched the Hawk move in his quick, effortless way to it and pull a lever down, all in the same motion, and then the negro's neck muscles corded as he listened to the sounds that came, choking and barely intelligible, from a loudspeaker:

"Carse--Hawk Carse--Crane speaking from the ranch. We're besieged--pirate ship--outnumbered--can't hold out much longer. We got most of the cargo inside here, but our generators--they're weakening--and I'm fading, I guess, and the others that're left are wounded. Carse--hurry--hurry...."

Five words went back into the microphone before the receiver went dead.

"I'm coming, Crane! Hold on!"

Friday had seen the Hawk in such moments before, and he knew the sight; but the navigator, Harkness, had not been with Carse very long, and now he stood silent, motionless, while despite himself a shiver ran down his spine as he stared at the tight-pressed bloodless lips and the gray eyes, cold now as space. He started nervously when the Hawk turned and looked him in the eye.

"I want speed," came his quiet, soft, deceptive voice. "I want that hour's running time sliced by a third. Streak through that atmosphere."

"Yes, suh!" answered Friday.

"And you"--to Harkness--"be very sure you get out every ounce she's got. Tell the engineer personally."

"Full speed. Yes, sir," said the navigator, and felt relieved when Carse turned his eyes away. For the Hawk, as always when he learned that property had been ravaged and his friends shot down, seemed less human than the Indrots at the far end of the frigid deeps of space he roamed. His face was mask-like, graven, totally expressionless: blood had been shed, and for each ounce another had to be spilled to balance the scales. At a speaking tube that reached aft to the three other members of the crew, he whispered: "Fighting posts. Arm and be ready for action. Pirates are attacking ranch," and then went noiselessly to the forward electelscope. Meanwhile Friday kept his eyes strictly on the dials before him and held the space-stick rigid, while aft, in the ship's other compartments, three men strapped on ray-gun belts and wondered who was doomed to be caught in the swoop of the Hawk.

* * * * *

Carse himself wondered that. The raider so far showed as a newcomer to the frontiers of space; he was one who as yet had never faced the Hawk, one to whom the tales that were told of him seemed laughable, to whom the rich consignment of horn looked like a gift. Certainly such an open attack did not resemble Ku Sui's subtle methods, or those of his several henchmen, pirates of space all; they, rather, struck behind his back, and then only when the infamous Eurasian had prepared what seemed an escape-proof trap.

"Foolish to raid when I'm so close!" he murmured as he trained the electelscope and peered into its eye-piece. "Stupid! Unless...."

Friday, at the space-stick, mopped the trickles of sweat from his brow and with a vast sigh shifted his bulk. The job of speeding into an atmospheric pressure was always ticklish, and it was with some relief that he reported "Into th' atmosphere, suh," according to routine. He waited for the usual acknowledgment, and when it did not come repeated his observation in a louder voice. Two full minutes of silence passed. Then, finally, Hawk Carse turned from the electelscope, and even the negro shivered at sight of the deadly mask that was his face.

For the ranch-house in its clearing had dimly appeared in the electelscope just as Friday had spoken.

Carse spoke.

"More speed, if it burns us up," came his almost whispered words. "I want much more speed."

Harkness gulped. "Yes, sir," he said, and, moistening his lips, he returned to the engine-room. The frigid gray eyes swung back to the sight that was revealed on Iapetus.

The long, lean shape of a rakish space ship was resting on the soil some three hundred yards from the ranch-house, and between were the hazy figures of six men, busily dragging as many boxes towards their craft. The boxes contained the whole half-year's harvest of phanti horns, and had obviously been looted from the house. The resistance had been overcome; the pirate raid had succeeded. The trim, gray-painted ranch-house was lifeless....

* * * * *

The Hawk switched off the electelscope. His colorless lips were compressed very tightly. "I'll take the helm," he said curtly to Friday. "Turn on the defensive web, and prepare all ray batteries."

"Yes, suh!" The negro's big, yellow-palmed hands worked dexterously among the instruments to his right; then, amidships, grew a shrill whine which keened upward in pitch. A few sparks raced by the Star Devil's after ports, quickly to disappear after they left the almost invisible envelope of delicate bluish light that entirely wrapped her hull.

She was making dangerous speed. The wind screamed as she streaked through the satellite's atmosphere, and the great friction of her passage raised her outer shell to a perilous glow. The altitude dial's finger almost jumped from forty thousand to thirty-five.

"Ready for bow-ray salvo."

"Aye, sir!" replied Harkness, and a moment later repeated crisply: "All ready for bow-ray salvo, sir!" His voice showed no sign of the fear within him--fear that the Star Devil's outer hull would reach the melting point--but his lips fell apart and his face lost its discipline when the Hawk next spoke and acted.

"Steady," came the low whisper to his ears--and he saw the controlling space-stick being shoved down as far as it would go.

CHAPTER II

Pursuit

That was the Hawk's method, and it had given him the name which he had made famous. It was characteristic of the man that he preferred to strike at an enemy ship in a wild, breath-taking swoop, even as the fierce hawk plummets from high heaven to sink its talons deep into the flesh of its more sluggish prey. Nerves were uncomfortable things to have on such occasions, and Harkness had them, and accordingly he felt his heart hammer and something tight seemed to bind his throat. He tried to assume the unshakable calmness of the motionless figure at the stick, but could not, for his body was only flesh and blood--and Hawk Carse was tempered, frosty, steel. Through staring eyes the navigator watched the surface of Iapetus rushing into the bow ports, watched it spread accelerating outward, until he could plainly see the pirate ship lying there, and the nearby figures of men tugging at the heavy boxes of horns.

His eyes were on those figures when they broke. First they teetered hesitantly a moment, glancing wildly around and up at the vision of death that was coming like a silver comet from the skies, and then they melted apart. Three scrambled towards the rim of jungle foliage close at hand, while their fellows leaped in the other direction, trying to make an open port in their craft. Harkness saw them tumble headlong through it and slam it shut. Then a web of blue streaks appeared around the ship, and softened until her hull was bathed is ghostly bluish light.

"Their defensive ray-web's on, sir!" he managed to gasp. Carse, though close, might not have heard, so intently was he watching. The altitude dial's pointer reached for one thousand and slid past. Harkness's face was pale and drawn; his tight-gripped fingers and clenched teeth showed that he expected to crash into the ground in a molten, shapeless tomb of steel. But Friday was grinning, his teeth a slash of white.

"Stand by bow projectors," sounded the Hawk's clipped voice. The negro extended his hands and rumbled:

"Ready, suh."

"Fire."

"Fire!" Friday roared.

His rich laugh rang out and he whirled the wheels over. With a hissing as of a hundred snakes, the rays struck.

* * * * *

Well aimed, the bolt speared straight and true. The distance was short, and it came from generators that were perhaps not equaled in space; no ordinary ship's defensive web could resist its vicious thrust. From the streak of silver that represented the Hawk's swoop, a stream of orange cut a swathe through the air ahead, holding accurately on the brigand ship. For just a tick of time there was a turmoil of color as offensive ray met defensive web; then the air cleared again--and the pirate was unmarked!

By rights she should have been split in two; and, though his face did not show it, it must have been surprising to Carse that she wasn't. With one flick of the wrist he wrenched the Star Devil out of her plunge and sent her scudding, a hundred feet up, over the jungle rim. Friday was gaping. Harkness, still numb from the dive, foolishly staring; and then the brigand bared her fangs in return.

Orange light winked from her stern, and the Hawk's ship was bathed in a streak of color. But the bolt caromed harmlessly off the side of the arcing Star Devil! and the next instant the pirate's lean bulk swayed, lifted a little and zoomed up into the heavens, abandoning the boxes of horn without further fight.

"Runnin' foh it! Scared stiff!" muttered Friday, unholy joy in his gleaming eyes. He looked at the figure at the stick. "Follow 'em now, suh, an' wear out their projectors?"

Carse thoughtfully smoothed his bangs with his free hand. "Plenty of time for that," he said patiently. "Some of the men on the ranch may still be alive: we must care for them. I'm going to land. Tell the engineer to keep watch through the electelscope on that ship. I'll start overtaking it shortly."

"Funny our rays didn't ha'm 'em," Friday ruminated aloud. "Ain't no ordinary craft, that. No, suh, they's more in this heah business than hits yo' eyes!"

"Now you're getting cynical, Eclipse," the Hawk said dryly.

* * * * *

A quarter-mile-square block of land had been fenced off as a corral for the ninety-head herd of bull phantis Carse kept on Iapetus. These creatures resembled mostly the old ostrich of Earth, but grew no feathers. The neck, however was shorter than the ostrich's; the leathery skin of a drab gray color; the powerful hind feet, on which they stood erect, prehensile and armed with short stabbing spurs; the forearms short and used for plucking the delicate shoots and young leaves on which they lived. There was a dim flicker of rudimentary intelligence inside the bullet heads; they recognized men as their enemies, and hated them. And therefore they necessitated careful handling, for, even without the valuable head-horns, their sharp-spurred feet could rip a human being into shreds in seconds.

They were clustered now behind the wire corral-fence, electrified to prevent them from breaking through. They bellowed angrily and shoved each other about as their wicked little blood-shot eyes caught sight of the Star Devil as she came dropping gently down.

At the electelscope of the descending craft was the ship's engineer. He had just centered the instrument on the fleeing pirate craft that by now was leaving the satellite's atmosphere, and the image was large on the screen above the bow windows, where he kept a steady eye on it. The inner door of the port-lock swung open, the outer door down, and Carse walked through, followed by Friday and Harkness.

An ugly scene lay spread out before them in the glaring daylight. The trader had only gone a few paces when he paused and looked down at an outsprawled thing that had once been a man. Stooping, he very gently turned the mess of charred flesh over and peered at what was left of the face. There were small, burnt holes in it, and the flesh surrounding them looked as though it had been suspended for some time over a slow fire....

Carse rose and stared into space.

"Ruthers, a guard," he said softly, as if speaking to himself. He walked on.

Another heap of flesh was pitched before the front wall of the ranch-house. The man it had been a little while before had evidently been running for the door when the deadly rays had got him. His ray-gun was lying a few feet away. Again Carse stooped and again very gently pulled the ragged thing over.

"By God!" stammered Harkness suddenly, staring, his face white, "that--that's Jack O'Fallon--old Jack O'Fallon! Why, we went to navigation school together! We--"

"Yes," said the Hawk, "O'Fallon, overseer." He stepped into the house. Friday, impassive and grim, pulled Harkness away from the distorted body.

* * * * *

Three more were tumbled together behind a splintered table in the main room. The rays had done their work well. Three were welded, it seemed, into one.... It was some time before the Hawk's frigid whisper came.

"Martin ... Olafson ... and this--Antil ... Antil was the only Venusian I ever liked...."

The chairs and tables in the room were overturned, most of them bore the seared scars of ray-guns, which showed plainly enough that there had been a desperate last minute hand-to-hand struggle there, after the defensive ray-web had failed and the pirates rushed the building. The radio alcove was choked with seared, cracked wreckage. Crane, the operator, still sat in his seat, but he was slumped over forward, and his head and chest were pitted with slanting ray holes. One hand had been reaching for a dial. The other was twisted and charred.

"And Crane, the last," said Hawk Carse, and for some moments he stood there, his face cold and unmoving save for the tiny twitching of the left eyelid. Utter silence rested over the bitter three--a silence broken only by the occasional roar of an angry phanti bull outside in the enclosure.

Finally Carse took a deep breath and turned to Friday.

"You'll see to their burying," he ordered quietly. "Get the power ray from the ship and burn out two big pits on that knoll off the corner of the corral."

Friday looked at him in puzzlement. "Two, suh?" he repeated. "Why two? Why not put 'em all in one?"

"You will put all my men in one. I'll need the other later.... You," he went on, to Harkness, "get the cargo of horns aboard. We can't leave it out there, for three of those pirates fled into the jungle. I haven't time to find them, and they'd come out and bury the horns if we left them. I'll be with you soon. We take off in ten minutes."

"Yes, sir," answered the navigator, and he and the negro went out.

* * * * *

For a little while Carse stayed in the cubby. As he softly stroked the flaxen bangs of hair over his brow, he visualized what had happened inside that house of death, piecing a number of things together and forming a whole. On the surface it seemed plain enough, and yet there were one or two points.... His face showed a trace of puzzlement. He shook his head slightly; then he stooped and picked up the radio operator's body with an ease that might have seemed surprising from such a slender man, and walked out of the house.

Beyond one corner of the corral, upon a slight rise in the ground, Friday was melting out the second grave with the ship's great portable ray-gun. Carse laid Crane's body gently down in the first grave, then went to where Harkness, with the Star Devil's radio-man and cook, was loading the cargo of horns aboard. The trader opened several of the boxes, glanced at the upper layers to inspect the quality, and, satisfied, closed them again. All the boxes were trundled soon into the craft's open port and aft to her cargo hold.

The engineer on watch at the electelscope and visi-screen felt a hand on his shoulder and looked around to find his captain standing by him. He pointed up at the screen: on it, the brigand ship was a mere four inches in size, and bearing straight out on an unwavering course. "I reckoned their speed to be about ten thousand an hour, a minute ago, sir," he reported. "Now about five thousand miles away."

"How soon," Carse asked, "do you think we could overhaul them?"

The other grinned. "If you're in a hurry, sir, about two hours and a half."

"I am in a hurry. I want all the speed you can muster."

"Yes, sir. Might be able to get it down, to two."

The Hawk nodded. "Try. Return to your post."

Outside, through the port, he saw Friday smoothing over the grave, the burying finished, and he beckoned him in. At that second Harkness reported the cargo all fastened down. Carse snapped out his orders.

"Harkness," he said shortly, "you and Friday with me in the control cabin. Sparks, you can get an hour's sleep, but leave the radio receiver open. Cook, an hour's rest if you want it--and I think you'd better want it. There's war ahead. Close port!"

The inner and outer doors nestled snugly, one after the other, into place with a hiss; the rows of gravity plates in the ship's belly angled ever so slightly. She quivered, then, in a surge of power, lifted straight up and poised; then, answering the touch of space-stick and accelerator, she went streaking through the atmosphere on the trail of the distant craft that had left its mark of blood on Iapetus and provoked the vengeance of the Hawk....

CHAPTER III

Death Rides the Star Devil

Usually, when pursuing an enemy, Hawk Carse was impassive and grim, apparently emotionless, icy. But now he seemed somehow disturbed.

He fidgeted around, glancing occasionally at the visi-screen to make sure his quarry was not changing course, now watching Friday juggle through the skin of atmosphere into outer space, and now standing apart, silent and solitary, brooding.

There was something about the affair he didn't like. Something that was deeply hidden, that could not be grasped clearly; that might, on the other hand, be pure imagination. And yet, why--

Why, for instance, had the brigands taken to their heels with just the barest semblance of fight? Why, with their defensive ray-web proof for some time at least against his offensive rays, had they left without more of a struggle for the horn? Why were they so willing to flee, knowing as they must that he, the Hawk, would follow? Did they not know he had--thanks to Master Scientist Eliot Leithgow--the fastest ship in space, and would inevitably overtake them?

Were they Ku Sui's men? It seemed so, certainly, from the great strength of their defensive ray-web. No other ships that he knew of in space save Ku Sui's possessed such power. But--it wasn't the brilliant Eurasian's customary style. It was too simple for him.

Carse stroked his bangs. The factors were all mixed up. He didn't like it.

Iapetus' atmosphere was left behind; in minutes the light blue wash of her sky changed to the hard, frigid blackness of lifeless space. The Star Devil's lighting tubes glowed softly, though Saturn's rays, coming through the wide bow windows, still lit every object in the control cabin with hard and dazzling brilliancy. Inside, light and color, life and action; outside, the eternal, sable void, sprinkled with its millions of sparkling motes of worlds. And ahead--shown now on the visa-screen only by the light dots of its ports--was the brigand craft.

The Star Devil was smoothly building up the speed that would eventually bring her up to the craft of the enemy. Carse's Earth-watch told him that an hour and a half had passed. A vague anxiety oppressed him, but he shook it off with the thought that soon the time for accounting would arrive. Only forty minutes more; probably less. His fears--foolish. He was getting too suspicious....

* * * * *

Then came the voice.

It pierced through the control cabin from the loudspeaker cone above the radio switchboard. It was rough and mocking. It said:

"Hawk Carse? Hawk Carse? You hear me?" Many times it repeated this. "Yes? You hear me, Hawk Carse? I've a joke I want you to hear--a very funny joke. You'll enjoy it!" There interrupted the staccato sounds of an irrepressible amusement.

Carse froze. His fingers by habit fluttered over his ray-gun butt as he wheeled and looked into the loudspeaker. Friday, at the space-stick, stared at him; Harkness's face was puzzled as he peered at the loudspeaker and then turned and gazed at his captain.

"But where," he asked, "--where does the voice come from? Who is it?"

As if thinking aloud, Carse whispered:

"From that ship ahead. I half expected ... I know it well, that voice. Very well. It's the voice of ... of ... I can't quite place it.... In a minute.... The voice of--"

The chuckling ceased, and again the voice spoke.

"Yes--a very funny joke! I can't share it all with you, Carse, because you'd spoil it. But do you remember, some years ago, five men--and another who lay before them? Do you remember how this last man said: 'Each one of you will die for what you've done to me?' That man didn't wear bangs over his forehead then. Remember? Well, I'm one of the five the mighty Hawk Carse swore he would kill!"

Again the voice broke into a chuckle.

But it ended suddenly. The tone it changed into was entirely different, was cruel with a taunting sneer.

"Bah! The avenging Hawk! The mighty Hawk! Well, in minutes, you'll be dead. You'll be dead! The mighty Sparrow Carse will be dead!"

A brief eternity went by. Carse remembered, and the glint in his gray eyes grew colder.

"Judd the Kite," he whispered.

Friday's lips formed the words.

And even Harkness, new to the frontiers of space, knew the name and echoed it haltingly.

"Judd the Kite...."

* * * * *

Of all the henchmen Dr. Ku Sui had gathered about him and banded against Earth, and against Carse, and against all peaceful traders and merchant-ships, Judd was perhaps the most cruel and relentless.

The Kite he was called--though only behind his back--yet it might better have been Vulture. Big and gross, with thick unstable lips and stubby, hairy fingers, more than once he and his motley gang of hi-jackers had painted a crimson splash across the far corners of the frontiers, and daubed it to the tortured groans of the crews of honest trading ships. Often they had plunged on isolated trading posts and left their factors wallowing in their life blood. And more....

There are things that cannot be set down in print, that the carefully edited history books only hint at, and into this class fell many of the Kite's deeds. He was a master of the Venusian tortures. He and his band during the unspeakable debauches which always followed a successful raid would amuse themselves by practising certain of these tortures on the day's captives; and his victims, both men and women, would see and feel indescribable things, and Death would be kept most carefully away until the last ounce of life and pain had been squeezed quite dry.

"Judd the Kite," Carse repeated in a hardly audible whisper. "Judd the Kite ... one of the five...." Slowly his left hand rose and smoothed his long bangs of flaxen hair. "I have been looking for him."

"Will you reply to him, sir?" asked Harkness.

"What use? His trap--Ku Sui's trap, of course--has already been set." His brain raced. "What could it be?" he whispered slowly.

* * * * *

Friday was scratching his woolly hair, his smooth face puzzled, when Carse, with the crisp decisiveness that always came to him when in action, looked up at the visi-screen. The brigand was still clinging to a straight course, and being overhauled rapidly. Another thirty minutes and they would be within striking distance. He said tersely:

"Set up the defensive web. Spiral and zig-zag the ship all you dare, altering the period of the swing each time. Harkness, you and I are going to make an inspection tour. General alarm if Judd's course changes, Friday."

"Yes, suh." The negro, frowning, gave his undivided attention to his instruments as the Hawk and Harkness went aft into the next compartment, the engine room.

It looked quite normal. The great dynamos were humming smoothly; the air-renewing machine was functioning steadily; the gauge hands all slept or quivered in their usual places. Nothing uneven in the slight vibration of the ship; nothing that might possibly forbode trouble. Up on his perch, the engineer peered down curiously and asked:

"Anything wrong, sir?"

"Not yet," Carse answered shortly. "You're sure everything is regular here?"

"Yes, sir."

"Good. But check every vital spot at once--and quickly. Then keep alert."

They passed on into the following compartment, the mess-room and sleeping quarters for the crew. Solid, rhythmical snores were issuing from the cook's open mouth as he lay sprawled out on his bunk; the smell of coffee hovered in the air; the cabin was quiet and comfortable with an atmosphere of sleep and rest. The radio-man, reading in his bunk, looked over and, seeing it was Carse, sat up.

"Notice anything wrong?" he was asked.

"Wrong? What--Why, no, sir. You want me for duty?"

"Yes. Stay here and keep your eyes open for signs of trouble. I'm expecting some. General alarm if the slightest thing happens." And Carse went noiselessly into the last division of the ship.

This was the cargo hold. The boxes of phanti horns were neatly stacked in precise rows; the dim tube burning overhead showed nothing that gave the smallest cause for alarm. The Hawk's narrowed eyes swept walls, deck and ceiling in a search for signs of strain or buckling, but found none.

* * * * *

Then he let himself down into the ship's belly, in the three-foot-high space between the deck and the bottom outer hull. He found the three rows of delicately adjusted gravity plates in good order. Harkness joined him.

Their hand-flashes scanned every inch of the narrow compartment as they made the under-deck passage from stem to bow and up through the forward trap-door into the control cabin. They found nothing abnormal. The water and fuel tanks, built in the space between the inner and outer shells above the living quarters, also yielded nothing; likewise the storeroom.

Nothing. Nothing at all. The whole ship was in excellent condition. Everything was working as it should. Carse went forward again with Harness; turned and faced him with puzzled eyes.

"I can't understand it," he said. "Why that threat, when everything seems all right? How can Judd reach me to kill me? And in minutes?"

The navigator shook his head. "It's beyond me, sir."

The Hawk shrugged his shoulders. "Well, we'll see. It might be something altogether new. You report to the engine-room and keep on watch there. Any sound or sign, give the general alarm."

"Yes, sir," he said, and left.

"He talkin' foolish, that Judd," grumbled Friday, seeing that the search had been fruitless. "He think maybe he can bust through our ray-web? Hmff!"

His master said nothing. He was standing motionless in the center of the cabin, waiting--waiting for he knew not what.

Then it came.

A preparatory sputter from the loudspeaker that spun Friday around. Hawk looked up, tensed. Again sounded the hard, sneering voice of Judd the Kite.

"We're ready now, Carse: there was a little delay. I'll give you, say, five seconds. Yes--one for each of the five men you did not kill. Shall I count them off? All right. You have till the fifth.

"One."

Friday's big eyes rolled nervously; he wiped a drop of sweat from his brow and cursed.

"Two."

* * * * *

He glanced at the Hawk, and tried himself to assume the unshakable steely calm of the great adventurer. But his fists would clench and unclench as he stared up at the visi-screen. No change! The brigand was running straight ahead as ever, apparently fleeing.

"Three."

The negro's breath came more quickly; the tendons of his neck stood sharply out, and his powerful arms twitched nervously. "What's he goin' to do, suh? What's he goin' to do?" he asked hoarsely. "What's he goin' to do?"

"Four."

"Change course--a-starboard!" Carse rapped. The space-stick moved a little, all Friday dared, at their speed; the position dials swung; the dot of a fixed star that had been visible a moment before through the bow windows was now gone. Till the fifth, Judd had said.

"Five!"

The two men in the control cabin of the Star Devil peered at each other. One of them licked his lips and wiped the sweat from his brow. But there was nothing. No sound, no change. No general alarm bell. No offensive ray spearing across the reaches of space; no slightest change in the brigand's course. He who had mopped the sweat away laughed loud and long in overwhelming relief.

"All foolishment!" he gurgled. "That Judd, he crazy. Try to scare us, I guess--huh! Try to--"

"What's that?" whispered Hawk Carse.

A sudden faint rustle of noise, of movement, had breathed through the ship.

At first it was hardly discernible; but it grew. It grew with paralyzing rapidity into a low but steady murmur, blended soon with voices raised in quick cries. There was one piercing, ragged shriek, and all the time an undertone of the indefinite, peculiar sound of something rustling, creeping, growing.

* * * * *

Then came the harsh jangle of the general alarm bell.

"Space-suits!" Carse snapped. The alarm was the signal to put them on; it was a safeguard from a possible breach in the ship's walls. Against such an emergency they had drilled often, and all over the ship the crew would be springing rapidly into space-suits hanging ready.

The space-stick automatically locked as Friday, eyes rolling, leaped with his master to the nearby locker. The shriek from aft had quickly died, the alarm bell had snapped off; but now there came a frantic rush of feet, and a man tumbled through into the control cabin, his face white, his eyes stark with horror, his breath coming in gasps and the sweat of fear on his brow.

It was Harkness.

He slammed the door tight shut behind him and stumbled to the suit locker; and as his fingers fumbled at his suit with the clumsiness of panic, he stammered:

"The cargo--the boxes of horn--it came from aft! Fungus! Planted in the horn! It's filling the ship! Got all the others and grew--grew on them! Dead already. There--look, look!"

Carse and Friday, grotesque giants in the bulky sheathings of stiff, many-plied fabric, turned as one and peered through their quartzite face shields to where the navigator's bulging eyes directed them.

It was the door between control cabin and engine room--the door he had just slammed shut. At first nothing was visible; then they saw the van of the enemy that had swarmed through the ship.

A thin line of bright yellow color had appeared along the under crack of the door. A second later the door was rimmed on all sides with it. It grew; reached out. Energy flowed through it: fingers of dusty yellow pronged out from the cracks where the door fitted, hung wavering for a moment, melted together, then slumped to the floor to more quickly continue the advance. It increased marvelously, in minor jerks of speed. It was delicate in texture, mold-like. The more there became, the faster it grew: in seconds shreds of it had darted out from the main mass and affixed themselves to the walls and ceiling of the cabin, there to accelerate the horrible filling process.

* * * * *

All this happened more quickly than it can be related. Within ten seconds most of the cabin was coated by the yellow stuff; grotesquely formed clumps and feathers hung from the ceiling; fern-like fingers kept spurting everywhere. Friday stepped back, before the advance, but not the Hawk. Useless to try and evade the stuff, he knew, and he was fairly positive that there was no immediate danger: the tough fabric of the suits should resist it. A pseudopod-like surge flicked to his leg; crept up; cloaked the suit in patches of yellow; thickened and enveloped him. But it could not pierce through.

"Cap'n Carse! Look heah!"

He turned to the alarmed voice, brushing light, feathery particles of yellow from his face shield, and found the bulky giant that was Friday a few steps behind him, and pointing mutely at Harkness.

The young officer was slumped limply down against a wall, his legs sprawled and body twisted unnaturally. His suit was covered with the yellow, and he had fallen, silently, while they were watching the advance of the fungus and checking the fastenings of their suits.

Carse reached him in three steps, stooped, brushed the fungus off the face-shield and peered through. Friday looked over his shoulder. The yellow enemy had laid its deadly fingers on Harkness's fine pale face. Sprouts of yellow trailed from the nostrils; the mouth was a clump of it; tendrils of spongy substance had climbed out the ears and were still threading rapidly over the head, even as the Hawk and Friday watched.

"That's how the others died," the adventurer said slowly. "Harkness must have carried a bit of the stuff from aft. It was on him when he put on his suit. At least I hope so. If it can get into these suits...." He left the thought unfinished.

"You mean, suh," asked Friday haltingly, "you mean that maybe--maybe it'll get in our suits too?"

"Maybe," said Carse without emotion.

They waited.

CHAPTER IV

The Hawk Prepares a Surprise

Hawk Carse's icy poise in times of emotional stress never failed to amaze friends and enemies alike. Most of them swore he had no nerves, and that in that way he was not human. This estimate, of course, is foolish; Carse was perhaps too human, as was proved by the all-consuming object of his life. It was rather, probably, an inward vanity that made him stand composed as a statue while death was gnawing near; that had, once, led him actually to file his nails when apparently trapped and hotly besieged, with the wicked hiss of ray-guns all around.

And so he stood within his suit now--calm, quite collected, his face graven, while the yellow tendrils carpeted the whole cabin, penetrated between the twin banks of instruments on each side and clouded the bow windows, visi-screen and positionals until the two living men aboard that ship of death were completely shut off from outside vision. Friday, his large white eyes never for a moment still, and waiting as the Hawk was waiting to find whether or not their suits, too, harbored the fungus, could quite easily have been scared into a state of panic; but the sight of the steely figure near him eased his nerves and brought a vague kind of reassurance.

Minutes went by. Presently the Hawk said softly into his microphone:

"We're safe, now, I think. You'd better go aft and see what state the ship's in. Come right back." And as Friday left, wading through the clinging growth, the trader went to the eye-piece of the electelscope.

He brushed the puffy covering of yellow silt away and adjusted the instrument's controls as best he could, centering it on where Judd's craft had last been. Then he peered through--and saw that which made him start.

The Star Devil was rolling round and round, like a ball!

* * * * *

Carse looked out on a star-studded panorama that was sweeping crazily by. Now the cloudy globe of Iapetus, which had just before lain far behind, came swinging into view, sliding rapidly from the bottom of his field of view to the top, and so out of sight again, to quickly give place to the flaming, ringed sphere of Saturn, which in turn passed away and left the star-spangled blackness of space. Then Iapetus once more. He snapped the electelscope off abruptly, and turned from it to see Friday come clumping back.

"Swept everything clean, suh," the negro reported gloomily. "That fungus's thick; cain't even see the men's bodies, it's so deep. It's that way, all over."

"It's down in the gravity propulsion plates too," Carse said shortly. "Their adjustment's been ruined by it, and we're out of control, turning over and over. I couldn't possibly see Judd. Well, we've got to go down to the plates and try and clean them."

It was a weird scene that faced him in the engine room. The complex instruments and machinery were draped with straggling ferns of yellow; up above, a solid clump some ten feet thick hung on the platform where the engineer usually stood--a living tomb. The usual purr of the mechanisms was muffled and hushed. So fecund was the fungus that the path Friday had cleared in his passage aft was already filled, and Carse had to clear a new one. The growth was deep there, but still deeper in the next compartment.

It was practically a solid mass of yellow, for in it their invader had found food. It had fed well on the lockers of supplies and devoured all but the bones and clothing of the two men whom it had caught--radio-operator and cook. Carse fought on through this tough, clinging sea and came at last to the cargo hold, where, in the deck, was the man-hole that gave passage down to the 'tween-decks compartment where the rows of gravity propulsion plates were located.

* * * * *

Friday raised the cover with a wrench: then, preceded by the rays of their hand-flashes, they climbed down and wormed forward as best they could in their hampering suits, to the plates. They found they had lost their customary glitter beneath powdery coatings of yellow, sufficient to disturb their faint electric currents and microscopically adjusted angles. On hands and knees--for the compartment, though as wide as the ship's inner shell, was only three feet in height--the Hawk stopped and said:

"We might be able to get some use out of these plates if we can keep the fungus brushed off. It's thin: let's try it."

But the yellow growth's vitality baulked them. Sweating from their awkward exertions inside the hot space-suits, they again and again brushed clean the plates with pieces of waste--only to see the feathery particles regather as quickly as they were cleared away. There wasn't more than an inch of the fungus, but that inch stuck. There was no removing it.

"No use, boss," gasped the negro, pausing breathless. "Cain't do it. Nothin' to do, I guess, but wait an' see what de Kite does. He'll sure want this ship and the horn."

"I know," his captain answered slowly. "He'll want this ship, for it's the fastest in space--but I can't understand how he'll board us. I'm going up and see what I can find out. You stay here. Try cleaning the plates again."

Up through the man-hole he went, and forward to the control cabin. And, as before, the electelscope's eye-piece held a surprise for him.

Somehow, the Star Devil's speed of wild tumbling had lessened. A moment later the reason appeared. As her bow dipped down and down, there slid across the field of view, about a mile away, the lighted ports of another ship; and, from this other ship's nose there winked a spot of green, the beginning of a ray-stream which stabbed across the gulf to impinge on the Star Devil's bow. Carse could feel his craft steady as it struck. It was a gravital ray, with strong magnetic properties, which Judd was using to stop her turnings so he and his men could board!

* * * * *

Again and again the beam flashed across the Hawk's field of view, and he knew it was raying its mark neatly each time her bow swung abeam, for soon she was hardly turning at all. Then Judd evidently was satisfied. The port-lights of his ship veered aside; drew to a position abreast of the other. The two cold gray eyes that watched saw the outer port-lock door of the pirate open, revealing six figures, clad in space-suits and connected by a rope, that stepped out, pushed, and came floating towards the Star Devil.

Swiftly Carse moved. For many reasons it was useless, he rapidly decided, to try and surprise them as they boarded; there was a better and surer way. And, as always, he attended to every little detail--details that to others might have seemed trivial--of this preferred way.

With quick, strong fingers he removed the fungus-choked body of Harkness from its space-suit, and threw the suit into a nearby locker. From another locker he selected a loop of yellow-encrusted rope. Holding this over one arm, he made his way back rapidly to the aft man-hole, closed it carefully behind him and crept forward to the anxious negro who was still futilely dusting the plates. He told what he had seen, but nothing else.

Friday noted the rope, and he twisted his whole body to get a sight of Carse's gray eyes, through the face-shield.

"What we do, then, suh?" he asked. "Try an surprise 'em?"

"Can't do that; we'd still be helpless, without a way to remove this fungus. They probably know how to do it, and we've got to give them a chance."

Puzzlement pricked the negro. "Then what you goin' to do with that rope?"

"You'll soon see," snapped Hawk Carse.

* * * * *

They waited.

It was hot and stuffy down in the belly of the ship, and also utterly black, for the trader had flicked off his hand-flash. Friday was unhappily possessed of an active curiosity; he wanted terribly to go on with his questions and ask Carse what his plan was; but he did not dare, for he knew very well from past experience that the Hawk was impatient of detailing his schemes in advance. So he sat in silence, and sweated, and stared gloomily into the darkness, thinking uneasy thoughts.

True, he thought, Judd the Kite did not know that Carse and he were still alive; on the contrary, he was probably convinced that they were dead; but what good did that do? Surely it would have been better to have surprised the brigands when boarding, but Captain Carse was against that. And they were hopelessly outnumbered.

Friday remembered a tale told him once by a survivor of a trading ship Judd the Kite had destroyed. It wasn't a nice tale. The Kite, so the report ran, was diabolically ingenious with a long peeling knife, and could improvise with it for hours. Friday pursued the tack of thought, and then suddenly began to sweat in earnest. He recalled--horrible!--that Judd possessed a special dislike for colored gentlemen!...

"Oh, Lawd!" he groaned, unconsciously--to have a cold voice ring in his earphones.

"Quiet!" it snapped. "They're entering."

The negro threw a switch on his helmet so he could catch outside noises. His body tensed. From above, unmistakably, had come the hiss of the inner port-lock door opening. And again, moments later, the hiss echoed. Twice! The lock could hold three men at a time. That probably meant that all six had boarded. Friday turned in the darkness and peered at Carse.

The adventurer without warning flicked on his hand-flash. The beam fell on the parallel planes of the yellow-covered gravity plates. The negro, every nerve in him jumping from impatience and suspense, gazed at them, and suddenly straightened. The mold-like fungus which had prevented them from getting the ship into control was slowly melting away. It was dwindling into fine dust!

"Gas," came a soft whisper to him. "As I expected, Judd's cleaning it out with some sort of gas. But the plates won't work yet--not until they're polished bright." Unthinking, Friday raised his hand to his helmet fastenings. "Keep your face-shield shut!" he was ordered crisply. "The gas would be as fatal as the fungus."

* * * * *

Silence rested tensely over the two men, to be broken at last by the clump of feet proceeding aft on the deck above.

Carse switched off the light. His voice was but faintly audible.

"Coming down to clean off the dust. He'll have a flash. Hide behind the truss-work at your side, and when he gets here seize him by the neck. I'll be with you right away. I want no noise."

Friday saw a great light, and grinned in the confidence it brought him. Of course! That explained the rope. The plan was so simple it had escaped him. Already he felt cheerful. It was only mental worries, and never physical hazards, that unsettled him. He angled around the truss-work and shrank into as small a space as possible--which wasn't very small, as he still wore his bulky, clumsy suit.

The clump-clump of feet had died: now there came the sound of the man-hole aft being raised. A white beam pronged down into the darkness, felt around and flicked off. Boots clanged on the connecting ladder; reached the bottom. The light appeared again, lower now, and came slowly forward. Limned faintly against the reflected light was the outline of a crouching man's body.

He went to hands and knees and progressed carefully, his flash darting to left and right. Suddenly, in a certain light, the two who awaited his coming saw a swarthy, black-stubbled face in profile. He wore no space-suit! That meant, Friday reflected, that the brigands had cleared the ship of the gas in some way. It meant that they could get out of their own suits.

But they could not possibly do so at the moment. They heard the nearby pirate's breathing, a harsh oath as he stubbed a toe. The negro tightened his giant arms and held himself ready, his eyes steady on the black outline which signified his quarry. Then the pirate was close enough.

It was over in seconds. Rounding the truss, Friday caught the man in the armored crook of his arm. A startled croak preluded the thump of two bodies on the hull; there was the tinkle of a falling hand-flash and a slight squirming which was quickly stopped by a belting punch.

* * * * *

Then Carse was there in the darkness, looping his rope around the pirate's arms and legs--a difficult job when wearing a bulky space-suit in such cramped quarters. He used a bunch of waste for a gag and then hauled the captive to a girder farther forward and bound him sitting to it. By the time he had finished, Friday was out of his space-suit and asking:

"Shall I rub him out, suh? Best make sure of him."

"Never in cold blood," said the Hawk acidly. "You should know that well enough by now!

"Now, there should be five left above, and I think they'll send another down. We must get him, too. Get back where you were."

He took off his space-suit also: then, after minutes of silence, they heard voices upraised in argument coming from the control cabin. Once more came the sound of feet overhead; another flash bit down through the man-hole, and another man wriggled into the compartment. He was obviously uneasy and suspicious. He called:

"Jake! Hey, Jake! You there? Where the hell are you?"

Mumbling oaths, he advanced, his light ray weaving over every inch before him.

"What you doing, Jake? Where are you?"

Friday gathered his muscles, unhampered now by the restricting suit. But light must have been reflected by the round whites of his eyes, for the pirate suddenly stopped and called in sharp alarm:

"What's that? What's that there? You, Jake? Hey! I'll ray you--"

And that was all he said. Friday was too far away to reach him in time, but the Hawk was closer; he approached behind the brigand, crouched on silent cat's feet. Two powerful arms reached out and tightened in a strangle hold--and two minutes later the second man was bound and gagged.

Carse loosened his ray-gun in its holster.

"Now we attack," he whispered. "Four to two are fair odds, I think. You go aft and wait by the man-hole; wait till you hear me call. Don't be seen--wait. And when I call, come at once."

"Yes, suh. You goin' forward 'tween the hulls?"

A curt nod answered him.

"Then up through that--"

"Don't ask so many questions!" the Hawk rasped crisply.

They separated.

CHAPTER V

The Hawk and the Kite

In the deck of the control cabin, between a bank of instruments and the starboard wall, was another man-hole that gave entrance from the 'tween hulls compartment to the cabin.

Only two men besides Carse knew of its existence. The adventurer for good reasons of his own had it built in; and so cunningly was its cover fitted on that its outlines were not visible.

Beneath it, now, on the three-rung ladder that led up from the lower shell, Hawk Carse waited.

He could hear quite clearly the angry, snarling voice of Judd the Kite, haranguing his men.

"Rinker, you go down and see what's wrong. Just because Jake and Sako don't come back right away, you guys seem to think the ship's haunted! Haunted! By Betelguese! A sweet bunch of white-livered cowards I've got for a crew--"

"Ah, lay off!" growled a deep, sullen voice. "I ain't scared, but this looks fishy to me. Something's wrong down there 'tween the hulls--damn wrong, I tell you. We only found four skeletons, an' four, ain't the full crew for a ship like this. There oughta to be a couple more somewhere. Carse, blast him! he's got nine lives. How do we know he was one of the four?"

Another spoke up, as Rinker evidently hesitated. "I say we all go down and investigate together."

"Stow it!" thundered Judd. "They didn't get their space-suits out, did they? Why, they hadn't a chance to escape--none of 'em. They were killed, every one, quick! And four's plenty to work this ship. Carse is dead, see, dead! This was one trick he didn't know--one time he couldn't worm out. He was clever, all right, but he couldn't quite stack up against me. I swore I'd get him and I did. He's dead!"

"Judd," said a low, clear voice.

* * * * *

The Kite whirled around. He stared. The hand-flash he was holding dropped to the deck with a clang. His hands went limp, and his voice was suddenly weak and dazed.

"My God--Carse! Hawk Carse!"

"Yes," a whisper answered. "Hawk Carse. And not dead."

It was a scene that might have puzzled a newcomer to the frontiers of space. Certainly there seemed to be nothing menacing about the slender figure that stood by the now open man-hole, both arms hanging easily at his sides; the advantage, on the contrary, appeared to be all with the men whom he confronted. All but one was big, and each was fully armed with a brace of ray-guns and knives.

But, though there were four guns to one, they made no attempt to draw. For it was the Hawk they faced, the fastest, most accurate shot in all those millions of leagues of space, and in his two icy eyes was a menace that filled the control cabin with fine-drawn silence.

At last Judd the Kite opened his lips and wetted them.

"Where did you come from?" he stammered.

"No matter," came the answer from the thinly smiling mouth. "Friday!"

"Yes, suh!" boomed the big black's distant voice.

Judd's three men turned their heads and saw Carse's famous satellite step into the control cabin, a ray-gun in each capacious hand. He was all flashing white teeth, so wide was his grin.

"Well, well!" he chuckled. "Ain't this the pleasure! Certainly am pleased to meet old friends like this--yes, suh! Jus' drop in?"

But the Kite's head had not turned; he seemed not to hear Friday's words; his eyes were held fascinated by Carse's. The attention of everyone came back to the two leaders.

"Ku Sui is in back of this?" asked the Hawk.

Judd licked his lips again. He had to spar for time: to divert for a while the vengeance he knew possessed the other's mind, so that he might find some chance, some loop-hole.

"That's right," he began eagerly, "it was Ku Sui. I had to do this, Carse: I hadn't any choice. He's got something on me: I had to go through with it. Had to!"

* * * * *

The Hawk's eyes were glacial; the ghost of a smile hovered once more around the corners of his lips.

"Go on," he said. "What was that fungus?"

"I don't know. Ku Sui developed it in his laboratory. He just gave me a sealed cartridge of the spores with instructions to raid your ranch, as you saw, and plant them in a drilled-out phanti horn. There was a simple mechanism in the cartridge that allowed us to release the spores by a radio wave from our ship. When I wanted them to grow I simply--"

"I see. A clever scheme," Carse said. "Quite up to Ku Sui's standard. The idea of those three men running for the jungle when I came down on Iapetus was to insure my taking the horn cargo aboard, of course. The raid was only incidental to your scheme to get me. And Crane, the radio operator, was dead when I received that S.O.S. It was faked, to bring me quickly for your schedule."

Judd stared at him. "How in hell did you know that? Damn you, Carse, you're--"

"Where," interrupted the adventurer coldly, "is Ku Sui?"

The pirate's eyes shifted nervously. "I don't know," he muttered.

"Where," came the steady question again, "is Ku Sui?"

The other licked his lips. His fingers clenched, unclenched, gripped tight. "I don't know!" he protested. His eyes widened as he saw the Hawk's left hand stir slightly, and he started as he heard the whip-like word:

"Talk!"

"Carse. I swear it! No one knows where he is. When he wants to see me personally, he comes out of darkness--out of empty space. I don't know whether it's done by invisibility or the fourth dimension, but one moment his ship's not there; the next it is; I don't know where his base is; and if he knew I'd told you what I have, he'd--"

"How do you arrange your meetings, then?"

"They're always in a different place. The next is in seven days. I don't remember the figures: they're in the log of my ship."

Carse nodded. "All right. I believe you. And now--there are a few accounts to be settled."

* * * * *

During the few minutes the Hawk had questioned Judd, the brigand crew in the cabin had stood silent, their breath bated, their eyes watching fascinated. But now they started, and shifted uneasily. They suspected what was coming. The inexorable, seemingly inhuman adventurer went on emotionlessly:

"Six of my men were killed on Iapetus, treacherously, without a chance. Four more were slaughtered by the fungus. That's ten. Back up to your men, Judd."

Judd knew all too well what that order portended. He could not move. His cunning eyes protruded with fear as they shifted down and riveted on the shabby holster that hung on Carse's left side. His breath came unevenly, in short, ragged gasps through parted lips.

"Back, Judd!"

The stinging, icy force of the voice jolted him back despite his will. One short retreating step after another he took, until at length he was standing with his three men against the side wall of the cabin, the dividing line between it and the engine room. Friday's guns were still covering the pirates.

"You goin' to shoot us down in cold blood?" one of them asked hoarsely.

The Hawk surveyed the speaker until the man shivered. Beneath their coldness, his gray eyes were faintly contemptuous.

"No--I leave that for yellow-streaked hi-jacking rats such as you. I'm going to give you a chance: more than a chance. Friday," he called.

"Yes, suh?"

"Do you want to come in on this?"

Without the slightest hesitation the negro answered, grinning:

"Yes, suh!"

"I thought you would. Come here alongside me, then sheathe your guns."

Friday did so. He stood in position beside his master, just in front of the opening that led below. The four brigands were some fifteen feet away. The two groups faced each other squarely.

"Good," whispered Carse.

* * * * *

They stood there, four men to two, deadly enemies; yet not one hand moved toward a ray-gun. Again, an outsider would have marveled why Judd, the numbers on his side did not draw and fire; why he waited; why his face was pale, his eyes nervous. But he knew too well what the least sign of a draw on his part would entail; he preferred to wait, to receive the advantage of the cold vanity in Carse which demanded, in gun-play, that the odds of numbers be against him. Perhaps this time that vanity would lead the Hawk a little too far. Perhaps even yet a loop-hole for strategy might appear.

So the Kite waited, but fear was strong within him.

"A little earlier," the Hawk's frigid voice went on, "there was some counting. To the number five. Remember, Judd? Well, since you managed so poorly before, perhaps you'll count again."

"You mean to count to five?"

"Yes. And on the fifth count, we draw and fire."

Judd's eyes narrowed, shifted, while thoughts clashed and meshed in his brain. Hawk Carse smiled icily.

"Is that clear?" he asked.

Judd said after a while:

"All right."

Friday noted one of the pirates: a brawny, black-browed giant almost as large as himself, and decided to go for him when the time came. He whispered this to Carse; then, keeping his gaze on the man, he stood ready.

"Begin, I'm waiting," reminded Hawk Carse.

* * * * *

The Kite crouched, drew a deep breath--but before his lips could form the first count there was a quick, sharp stir of movement from the brigand to his right; Carse's left hand seemed to vanish; a hiss followed, a streak of wicked blue light. Friday grunted, not yet quite realizing what had happened; Judd, gaped at Carse's lowering weapon, then turned his eyes to the right--and choked out an oath.

The brawny giant by his side was standing, but his face was creased and puzzled. One hand was at a holster; the other grasped a gun--unfired. Accurate to an inch, between his eyebrows there had appeared is if by magic a neatly seared, round hole.

His knees crumpled. His gun clanged to the deck. His head bowed; he bent; he pitched forward, sprawled face downward. Then he quivered and lay still. A burnt odor was in the air....

"I'm still waiting, Judd," came an ironic whisper.

"My God!" stammered one of the pirate chief's two remaining men. "He's a devil. Fast as light!"

Judd's eyes had returned to the Hawk, and they still showed some of his reaction of surprise to what had happened, when a peculiar thing occurred. For a split second his gaze shot past Carse, took in something, then switched back again. And when he had done so his face showed a faint but unmistakable feeling of relief.

This was old stuff to the Hawk, but he could not afford to take chances. Instantly he rapped:

"Look behind. Friday! Quick!"

The negro jerked his head around. He was too late. He had a glimpse of a man standing in the man-hole behind--a glimpse of a short steel bar that flashed to Carse's head in a vicious arc, and again to his own. He was rocked by pain is blackness came across his vision; and together, white man and black crumpled to the deck....

CHAPTER VI

Back to Iapetus

An indefinite time later Carse awoke to a trip-hammer of pain thudding through his head. He groaned a little, and tried to turn over in an effort to ease it. He found he could not. Then his eyes opened and he blinked up.

He found himself lying on the deck of the control cabin, near the after wall, and bound hand and foot with tightly strapped rope. Over him, looking down, was Judd the Kite, hands on his hips, a gloating smile on his coarse lips, and in his eyes a look of taunting, exultant triumph. He drew back his foot and kicked the netted Hawk in the ribs. The trader made no sound; his pale face did not change, except to set a trifle more rigidly.

"Pretty easy the way my men got you, Carse," said Judd. "Seems to me you're just a damned fool with a big rep you don't deserve. You're too careless. You ought to know by now not to leave bound men in reach of high-powered cable. It cuts as good as an electric knife. Does your head hurt where you were hit?" Deliberately, still smiling, he rapped his foot brutally against Carse's head.

The trader said nothing. He glanced around, to get the situation clearly. Friday, he saw, was in the control cabin too, lying stretched out and bound as he was, but evidently still unconscious from the ugly, bloody welt on his head. One of Judd's men was at the ship's space-stick, another stood by her dials, occasionally glancing back at the prisoners and grinning; the two remaining pirates were apparently aft. The body of the one whom Carse had killed had been removed.

Through the port bow window, far out, he noticed a small spot, half black and half brilliant with the reflected light of Saturn: that would be the other space ship, the Kite's, on the same course as they. And ahead was the large-looming sphere of Iapetus. The pirate was returning, then, to the ranch, probably to pick up his three men, and perhaps to leave a small crew to work it.

"Yes. I'm afraid this is the end of the Sparrow Hawk!" Judd sneered the name and laughed harshly. "A lot of people will be glad to hear it. There'll be a big reward for me, too, from Ku Sui. Head still bad?" And again he swung his leg and drove its heavy shoe into his captive's head.

* * * * *

Carse's lips compressed till they were colorless. He looked steadily at Judd's eyes and asked:

"What are you going to do with Friday and me?"

"Well," grinned the pirate, "I can't tell you definitely, but it's sure to be interesting. It'd suit me best if I could teach you a few little tricks with a peeling knife--the Venusians have some very neat ones, you know--and then perhaps burn you full of holes. Little holes, done with a mild needle-ray. But unfortunately I can't kill you personally, for Ku Sui will want to do that himself. You're worth a hell of a lot of money alive."

"I go to Ku Sui, then?"

"That's right. I'll hand you over when I have my rendezvous with him, seven days from now. Clever man, Ku Sui! Half Chinese, you know. He'll be tickled to get you alive."

A muscle in the Hawk's cheek quivered. Then he asked:

"And Friday?"

Judd laughed. "Oh, I don't much care; he's not worth anything. I'll throw him in with you for good measure, probably. How's the head?" Once more the foot swung.

Carse's gray eyes were as frigid as the snow caps of Mars. The left eyelid was twitching a little; otherwise his pale face was as if graven from stone.

"Judd," he whispered, so softly that his voice was almost inaudible. "I shall kill you very soon. I shall make it a point to. Very soon. Judd...."

The Kite stared at the pallid gray eyes. His lips parted slightly. And then he remembered that his captive was bound, helpless. He spat.

"Bah!" he snarled. "Just your old stuff, Carse. It's all over with you now. You'll be screaming to me to kill you when Ku Sui begins to touch you up!" He guffawed, again kicked the man at his feet, and turned away.

Hawk Carse watched him walk to the forward end of the cabin; and, after a little while, he sighed. He could be patient. He was still alive, and he would stay alive, he felt. A chance would come--he did not know how or when; it perhaps would not be soon; it might not come until he had been delivered to Ku Sui, but it would arrive. And then....

Then there would be a reckoning!

The deceptively mild gray eyes of the Hawk were veiled by their lids.

* * * * *

Night had settled over the ranch by the time the Star Devil and Judd's accompanying ship were in the satellite's atmosphere. It was the rare, deep, moonless night of Iapetus, when the only light came from the far, cold, distant stars that hung faintly twinkling in the great void above. Occasionally, the tiny world was lit clearly at night by the rays of Saturn, reflected from one of the eight other satellites; and occasionally, too, there was no night, the central sun of the solar universe sending its distance-weakened shafts of fire to light one side of the globe while ringed Saturn gilded the other.

But this season was the one of dark, full-bodied nights; and it was into the hush of their blackness that the Star Devil and her attendant brigand ship glided.

Below, on the surface of the Satellite, glowed the pin-prick of a camp-fire. When the ships were some fifteen thousand feet up, Judd's orders caused long light-rays to shaft out from the Star Devil and finger the ground. They rested on the ranch house and then passed on to douse with white the figures of three men standing by the fire. Through the electelscope the pirate chief saw them wave their arms in greeting.

Ten minutes later the two ships nestled down close together a hundred yards or more from the ranch clearing, and Judd said to his mate, standing next to him:

"We'll have a little celebration to-night. Break out a few cases of alkite and send three of the boys to the ranch's storeroom after meat for the cook to barbecue."

"What you goin' to do with them two?" the other asked.

"Carse and the nig? Keep them here in the control cabin; I'll detail a couple of men to guard them. I'm taking no chances: they must be in sight every minute. Carse is too damned dangerous." He peered back at the captives. The trader's eyes were shut; Friday still appeared unconscious from the brutal blow on his head. "Asleep. Well, they'd better sleep--while they have eyelid's to close!" Judd said mockingly, and his mate laughed in appreciation of his wit.

But neither the Hawk or Friday was asleep. Nor was the negro unconscious. Carse had ascertained this some time before by cautious signals.

A little stir had come within him when he heard Judd say there would be a celebration, for a celebration, to these men, meant a debauch and relaxed discipline, and relaxed discipline meant--a chance. First, however, there were the tight bonds of rope; they were expertly tied, and strong. But the Hawk was not particularly concerned about them.

He had dismissed them as a problem after a few minutes of consideration, and his mind ran farther ahead, planning coldly, mechanically, the payment of his blood debts....

* * * * *

All in all, Judd was to blame for what happened that night on Iapetus. He was an old hand and a capable one, and certainly he should have known that extraordinary measures had to be adopted when Hawk Carse became his prisoner. By rights, he should have killed Friday immediately, and steered straight for his rendezvous with Ku Sui, keeping his eye on Carse all the time. He would have had to loaf on his way to the rendezvous, of course, for it needed but five days to get there, and he had seven; and he would also have had to pick up his three marooned men later. But that was what he should have done.

Yet, when one regards the personal angles, it is necessary to divide Judd's responsibility for succeeding events. He felt like having a celebration, and certainly he and his men had earned one. He had captured the man who had stood, more than anyone else, in his and in Ku Sui's way for years; the man who had quashed any number of their outlaw schemes, and who had given more trouble to them than all the forces of law and order on Earth and the patrol ships in space. More, he had captured him alive, and that meant a much fatter reward from Ku Sui. He possessed the valuable cargo of phanti horn; he had taken a brand new ship, alone worth millions, besides being the fastest in space. Judd was naturally elated; he had two nights and a day to spare; he felt expansive, and ordered a celebration.

Such decisions--trivial when seen from the eminence of a hundred years--have directed the tide of history more than once.

There were thirteen men left of Judd's crew, including the three posted on Iapetus; these three and the six who manned the pirate's own craft came running to the Star Devil and piled into her open port-lock. They milled around in the control cabin, shouting in high spirits, swearing, throwing clumsy jests at the two silent figures on the deck; and Judd joined with them. There was much loot to be split, and the Hawk was snared at last! Their chief stilled them for a moment and said:

"Well, I guess we deserve a little jamboree. I'm breaking out some alkite and meat; make a big fire outside and dig some barbecue pits. Go ahead--out of here! But wait: you, Sharkey, and you, Keyger."

These last two men, more husky and alert than most of their fellows, he detailed for guard duty ever Carse and Friday. They were much cast down at the job, but he premised them a larger slice of the loot for recompense, and then stalked out after the other men.

The two guards stuck a brace of ray-guns in their belts and looked over the captives. Angry at missing the carousal, the man called Keyger kicked Friday, whose eyelids did not budge and whose body did not quiver, and then, more gingerly, kicked Carse and swore at him--but he turned somewhat hastily when the mild gray eyes slowly opened and stared up into his.

Then the two guards pulled out chairs and placed them by the open port-lock, where they could command a view of the celebration. They drew one ray-gun each, laid them ready, close by, and sat down.

CHAPTER VII

Jamboree

Two hours later their eyes were taking in a fantastic, mad scene, one that in some ways might have occurred in the days when buccaneers roamed the Spanish Main of Earth.

A little over a hundred yards away, straight before them, was the corral of the phantis: far behind it encroached the shadowy fringe of the jungle: to their right, closer to the corral than to the space ships, was the ranch house, lonely now and silent. But these objects were only the background for what had grown in front of the corral wire.

It was the roaring mass of the monster fire that had been lit, a splash of fierce, leaping flames in the velvety cool of the night. Black shapes were clustered around it; bottles were raised and drained; and a frieze of shadows, staggered and jumped and danced around the ruddy pile of fire. The carousal was in full swing; a chorus of wild song rose noisily into the night; more cases were smashed open and more alkite drawn out. The carcases of three animals taken from the ranch's storehouse sizzled on the barbecue pits, to be ripped apart and the rich, dripping meat torn at, tooth and claw. Ever higher pierced the shrieks and oaths, till the calm night was distorted and crazy.

Other heavier sounds accompanied the bedlam of human noise: deep snortings and roarings and the scraping of scores of horn-shod feet. Behind their wired electric fence was clustered the herd of phantis, staring with their evil, red-shot little eyes at the flames and the shapes of the hated men. The big bulls were bellowing, bucking their heads angrily, churning up the soft soil with their strong, dagger-spurred feet: the welter of noise and the sight of so many men had wrought them up into a vicious and dangerous state.

Judd the Kite, a bottle in one hand and in the other a huge joint of meat which he was tearing at with his teeth, suddenly paused with mouth crammed full and stared over through the flickering light at the phanti corral. A cruel light gleamed in his eyes: he gulped down the meat and then turned to the shapes staggering around him. He yelled:

"Hey, there--let's get out the nigger! A little entertainment, fellows! Bring him out; but don't touch Carse: he's Ku Sui's. Douse him with water if he's unconscious."

* * * * *

They yelled in drunken delight at his words, and half of them reeled off towards the Star Devil. Judd, lips up-curved in a smile, drew his ray-gun and set the lever over for the low-power, continuous ray-stream. These guns, unlike our present weapons, could shoot in two ways: they could spit about twenty high-power discharges, a fraction of a second each in duration and easily sufficient to burn a man's head through; or they could deliver a long-lasting low-power stream, just strong enough to sear and crisp a human skin. For the entertainment Judd had in mind he needed low power.

The men sent to the Star Devil shoved past the guards on watch near the port-lock and over to the prisoners. They found them lying, very close together near the after wall.

"Gonna have some fun with the black, Judd's orders," they explained to the guards. "Still unconscious?"

Certainly Friday looked unconscious, his eyes closed, his full lips slightly parted, showing the powerful white teeth.

"I'll give him a shot of the ray," another brigand cut in. "That'll bring him to. Be ready to grab him."

They got an unpleasant shock when the low-power stream flicked the negro's leg. With a gigantic bellow that rang throughout the ship, Friday resisted.

It was like seeing a dead man come to life, and it startled them. Bound as he was, Friday made things unhealthy for his would-be captors; he shunted his legs up and down and squirmed mightily, and once his gleaming teeth snapped into an arm, bringing a howl of pain and several minutes of cursing. The unexpected resistance, once the surprise was over, infuriated the rum-sodden men. One of them yelled: "Sock him; Shorty!" A ray-gun's butt was slapped down on Friday's head; the negro rolled over, stunned. Then he was picked up without resistance and borne out into the night, where fantastic figures cavorted around the towering fire.

"The black devil was faking all the time!" one of the guards said amazedly. "He wasn't unconscious. What in hell did he do that for?"

"Dunno," snarled the other, rubbing a bruised leg. "Must have suspected what he's gonna get. Wish we was over there."

"Well, we can watch from here," grumbled his companion, and returned to the seats by the port-lock.

They both sat down, their backs half turned to the figure still lying on the deck.

* * * * *

Carse had said nothing, made no protest, had not even moved when Friday struggled in fierce resistance. He could have done much more, but it would have been useless. Long before, he had seen the negro's opening eyes and signaled him to feign unconsciousness thus deflecting attention and making him appear harmless. He had also broached his plan for escape to Friday. He had not, however, reckoned on Judd's desire to torture: he would, he now saw, have to act with his greatest speed to save his mate from as much pain as possible.

And he began to act.

The control cabin was streaked with patches of shadow and light, made vague by pools of darkness thrown by the banks of instruments. Only one lighting tube was dimly burning. In this indefinite half-light the Hawk set about stalking his prey.

With eyes narrowed and steady on the two guards who were completely absorbed in the happenings outside, he drew his hands from beneath him. They were no longer bound. The rope knotted around them had been gnawed through strand by strand--sliced by the strong white teeth of a negro....

Cautiously, without a whisper of sound, Carse reached towards the bonds on his legs. The lean fingers worked rapidly. Quickly the knots, yielded and the rope was unwound. The legs were free. For a moment Hawk Carse, ever with careful calculation of time, stretched his cramped muscles, limbering them for action.

A mutter came from the port-lock. He froze. But it was only:

"Look at 'im! This is goin' to be good! Judd gets some damn clever ideas!"

They were utterly wrapped up in the scene outside, and unconscious of the low blot that moved with steely purpose behind them.

* * * * *

The Hawk got to hands and knees; moved forward, the ghost of a shadow. The two men who were his quarry were sitting close together, hunched a little forward in their eagerness not to miss a single detail. Their heads were not a foot apart. Each wore a ray-gun and had another lying on the deck at his side.

Carse came near to their backs. He paused, imperceptibly tensed, judged the distance carefully. Then in a sudden, snake-like movement, he sprang.

A forearm of steel clamped around the back of each guard's head and jerked it sharply into the other's. There was a quick crack; then, dazed, only half-conscious, the two men toppled off their seats and fell to the deck.

"Quiet!" warned an icy whisper. They stared, gaping, then staggered up to their feet.

A ray-gun that just before had been lying on the deck was leveled steadily at them, held in the hand of a gray-eyed man whose fine features were as if graven from stone and on whose wrists were deep blue lines that showed where ropes had pressed. The guards' faces whitened as realization came. One of them choked:

"It's him!"

"Yes," whispered the Hawk dryly. He took a few steps backward, eyes not moving. "Go to that locker," he said to the shorter of the men, indicating with a curt nod the place where space suits were stowed. "First draw your gun and lay it on that table. Hurry!"

The man hastily complied. Anything else was unthinkable; meant quick and lonely and useless death. Shouts and laughter and drunken shrieks were echoing from outside. No one would have ears for him.

When he had stepped into the locker, Carse closed and sealed the door.

"What you goin' to do with me?" croaked the remaining guard. He was big and burly and he towered inches over the figure facing him, but his lips were trembling and his eyes wild with fear.

"You," whispered the Hawk frigidly, "kicked me when I was bound." He sheathed his ray-gun in his holster, then spoke again. "Go for your gun."

The pirate trembled all over. His mouth fell open, and his eyes stuck on Carse's shabby holster. He seemed half hypnotized.

"Draw."

The other's swarthy brow beaded with sudden-starting sweat. His hands hung limp, twitching at the finger-tips. He watched death stare him in the face.

"Damn you, Carse!" he burst out and suddenly went for his ray.

* * * * *

Carse deliberately let him get the gun out. Not until then did his left hand move. But even with such a head-start, so bewildering was the adventurer's speed that only one streak of orange light made a flash in the cabin, and that streak was the Hawk's. The brigand quivered, his face still contorted with his last desperate emotion; then he fell slowly forward and thudded into the deck. His body twitched a little, and in a spasm rolled over. Square between the eyes was a crisp, smooth-burned hole.

Hawk Carse gave the body not a glance, but sheathed his ray-gun, picked up the three others, stuck them in his belt, and glided to the port-lock. There, he peered outside.

His face hardened.

Blobs of flame that flared from wood torches were clustered about the nearest side of the phanti corral. A dark blur of figures were ringed in a half-circle, and from it came yells of delight and almost hysterical laughter. The Hawk's eyes were chilling to look at when he saw, through gaps in the circle of black shapes, the figure of a huge negro, standing with his back almost touching the wire fence of the corral. The actions of Friday gave the clue to what was happening.

He was caught in a broad ray of orange light, and in it he shuddered and hopped grotesquely from one leg to the other in an agony of pain, his lips drawn back taut over the gleaming teeth, his face flexed and the whites of his eyes showing as the eyeballs rolled. The glow that in part hung around him streamed from a ray-gun that was held in the right hand of Judd the Kite. Heat! Friday was being slowly crisped alive; seared on his feet in a furnace of heat: and the men who ringed him were yelling advice at him between their laughter. Carse strained his ears. In a jumble, he caught:

"Jump over"--"Nah, he'd have to climb"--"Climb! The juice's cut!"--"Into the corral!"--"Climb over, you black buzzard"--"Hoowee!"

* * * * *

About a foot behind Friday was the wire fence, behind which the phantis, their snouts converged towards the pirates, their red-shot eyes glaring, their powerful hind feet clawing at the ground, were bellowing in wild and ferocious excitement. Sudden, awful death waited on the other side of the fence; slow death by burning on this side. Yet Friday still hoped, still had faith in his master, for he did not put a quick end to his living death by rushing the devilish circle or clambering over into the thick of the sharp stabbing spurs.

Carse's brain moved with the swiftness of light. He could not rush the group: the odds were too great, and besides, Judd's gun was already out. Nor could he dive at them with the Star Devil itself, or ray them from above: that would mean Friday's death too. It would have to be something else--and in a moment he had it. Carefully he examined all variations and checked the scheme back: it promised to be the final move, engendering the final meeting, and there must be no slip.

First, the Hawk slipped shadow-like to the entrance port of the other space ship, lying a few hundred feet away, shrouded in darkness. He had to know if anyone were aboard.

Gruffly he called inside:

"Judd! Hey, Judd! You there?"

There was no answer. Again he called, but the gloomy interior's silence was not broken. Satisfied that it was empty, he doubled back with noiseless speed, skirted round the Star Devil and arrived like a wind-carried wraith at the rear wall of the ranch house.

A short leap and his hands closed on the copper drain. The muscles of his wiry arms flexed, and the lean figure raised himself foot by foot to the eaves, where a pull and press up brought him over the edge. Stooping, he padded to the side which faced on the clearing and the corral.

And then the ray-gun was drawn from its holster.

For seconds the cold gray eyes reckoned the shooting distance and the angle. The weapon came up and rested at arm's length. The first finger of the deadly left hand began to squeeze back.

A pencil-thin streak of orange light speared the air!

CHAPTER VIII

Stampede

Judd the Kite was enjoying himself hugely. His bestial sense of humor was tickled. It was very funny, the contortions of the negro in the orange ray-stream!

"Climb over!" he suggested, amid roars of laughter from the circle of men. "Climb over, why don't you? I've turned off the current. There's no electricity in the fence. You won't be hurt. Why don't you climb over?"

Friday did not, could not answer. His lips were sucked tight together now in wordless agony; the cheek muscles, strained taut, stood out like welts of flesh; the huge body, bathed always in that steady glow of orange, was slightly livid in patches. He hopped mechanically, changing from one aching leg to the other; his eyes were closed half the time, his whole being one dumb agony. He did not know when it would end, but he still had faith.

Overhead, the flames of four tarred wood torches bobbed and reeled as the men who held them reeled; seemed to shake in the gusts of laughter and yells and oaths that came ceaselessly from the onlookers. And in this distorted light the half-shadowed snouts and bodies of the phantis, clustered behind their nine-foot-high fence, looked indeed diabolical. The fence was high, for the creatures possessed surprising jumping powers; it was composed of eight strands of wire, running parallel a foot apart from each other, with inter-crossing supports. The electric current, now turned off, always kept the phantis from crashing through.

Judd smiled more widely. "I guess I'll increase the power," his coarse lips pronounced. "We'll see how you can duck a strong thin beam. I'll give you about five minutes to climb over. After that you'll be burned down slowly to a cinder. Now--will you climb? See--I'm moving the lever over. Watch, now, and feel--"

* * * * *

Suddenly his voice broke off short. There had been a hiss--a spang--a slight whip of sound. He glanced around swiftly. No, his men had not noticed it. They were still laughing, roaring, swaying in drunken merriment. The Kite's lips curved upward again. He continued:

"Feel the heat increase. It's stronger, now, and--"

Again the spang, the whip, the streak of something swift. The men noticed his expression and quieted somewhat. Judd was looking around him, and even as he saw what it was there came a cry from a pirate nearby.

"Look! The fence!"

Judd's eyes widened; his lips slackened and lost their smile. The noise, the laughs, the shouts, screams and oaths died into the night; frightened silence fell over the group, and all that was left were the concerted bellowings and snortings from the enraged herd of beasts just beyond.

All--except for another spang that sounded as a streak of orange light arrowed from somewhere through the flickering torchlight. And with its coming the third parallel strand of the corral-fence whipped apart with a little singing swish, shot neatly through, as were the two below it. Ten feet of fence on each side slumped visibly.

"Someone's shooting it through!" came a scared whisper. Yet still the brigands, held fascinated by fear and puzzlement, stared at the fence and at the surging crowd of stampede-crazy animals beyond.

Another spang, another streak of light! With deadly accuracy the shot clove the fourth strand. The lower half of a whole section of fence was gone. Behind it the bucking, red-eyed phantis inched forward, still afraid of the electric shock they thought was somewhere there, but drawn to the opening by their hatred of the two-legged creatures so near. Closer, closer! Then the befuddled pirates found their senses. Even as the fifth arrow of light came from the invisible marksman and snapped the fifth strand, a concerted cry of fear of the advancing beasts went up from the crowd of men.

"Run! Run! They're coming! They're coming out!"

They turned, panic-stricken; the torches fell flaring to the ground, to lie there in pools of flame; the brigands ran for the nearest shelter, the dark bulk of the ranch house close by. They ran, fear tingling their spines, in their ears the sound of the maddened phantis.

* * * * *

From his vantage point on the roof of the ranch house, the Hawk confirmed his quick decision that this was the only way.

Rapidly, as was his custom, he had reckoned the problem out minutely and carefully; had considered and checked every possibility. He had to shoot the fence, not the brigands. For he couldn't hope to get more than a couple of them: a pirate toppling over dead would jar the others into instant action; they would scatter in the darkness, leaving the odds too great. And leaving, besides, small chance of wiping out every one of the pirates.

As for Friday, he had to take his chance. There was, this way, a good chance, if he used his brain. For, to the left, as close as the ranch house to the corral, were the grave-pits he himself had dug some hours before, and one was still empty, waiting to be filled. It offered shelter, a good chance--if he used his brain. He, Carse, would do all he could to protect him from the stampeding beasts while he ran.

Some of the pirates would be snared by the rush of phantis. Four or five would probably reach the ranch house. That was what he wanted.

And that was what he got. His fifth shot fired, straight and true from the ray-gun of the most accurate marksman of space, the Hawk lowered the weapon and gazed at the scene resulting, a ghost of a smile on his lips.

He saw the mob of creatures, in a bedlam of noise, sweep under the fence that had for so long kept them back. Bellowing their hatred, their cruel spurs eager for blood, they charged. Before them fled the thin fringe of men, Friday on one flank. A man went down with a scream; a half-grown horn knifed into him; he was trampled, gored, spurred, and left a bloody welter of death in seconds. Another, hearing the loud thud of feet just behind, turned with desperate eyes, dodged, tripped, shrieked and was caught and ripped. Another and another. In the dancing, flickering half-light of the flames of fire and torches, a hellish scene of devastation and death spun out.

* * * * *

Carse was shooting again, with the cold mechanical precision of a machine. There was Friday to be guarded. He was now separated from the other men--cut off and edging to one side--to the side where was the grave-pit! Dodging, wildly twisting and turning, he several times barely escaped three or four phantis that thundered after him. The leader took perhaps ten steps: then its body quivered and it tumbled over and flopped on the ground, a little wisp of smoke curling from its body. The other two went down in swift succession. But there were many, and even as Friday melted into the shadows, a group of several beasts detached themselves and roared after him. The deadly ray-gun on the roof wrought swift slaughter amongst them, but some got into the darkness beyond vision of the icy gray eyes.

Carse lowered his weapon. His face was very hard and very set. Would they catch the negro? Tumble down on him if he made the pit? Well, there was no helping it....

But the reckoning would soon be finished; the time was at hand. Cold as the deeps of space despite the awful havoc he had just created, totally without visible emotion, he drew the last unused ray-gun from his belt and put it in the shabby holster. One would be enough.

Shadow-like, noiseless and swift, he moved towards the far end of the roof.

CHAPTER IX

The Hawk Strikes

His face red, his breath coming in hoarse gasps, Judd the Kite stumbled through the house's door on the heels of four of his men. He swung rapidly and flung his weight against the door: locked and double-locked it. A second later fists pounded on the outer panel, and a voice, racked with fear and terror, screamed:

"Let me in! Let me in! Oh, God, let me in! Judd!"

Then there was the thud of drumming feet, and one awful shriek from the man who had found the door locked against him.

But the Kite was not listening. A measure of courage returning to him with the building's protection, he snapped:

"Get those other doors locked quick! And lights. Then search the house."

The lighting tubes glowed, filling the room with soft radiance. Judd survey his position.

He saw that it could have been far worse. But his men needed courage.

The rapid change from orgy to deadly peril had sobered them completely. And they were frightened; nor was it fear of the beasts. They came treading silently back from their inspection of the house, reporting it empty; but their eyes kept shifting, their ray-guns ready in hand. Each one knew, deep within him, who had fired the shots that collapsed the fence. They had taken two captives; Friday had been under their eyes; there was only one other, and he was--the Hawk.

Hawk Carse! The four men were nervous. More than a few lonely spots in the countless leagues of space had seen his vengeance: and they--they had killed his guards and his overseer, his radio-man, and, with the fungus, his ship's crew; they had tortured Friday. They were now marks for the fatal left hand: fugitives from gray, icy eyes. The Hawk was loose!

* * * * *

Judd saw the fear gnawing at their vitals. He felt it too. But there seemed no immediate danger, so, with a ray-gun in each hand, he summoned a blustering courage and said to the others, harshly:

"Yes, it was that damned Carse! He must have got loose in some way. But pull yourselves together: we're safe here. He's somewhere outside."

He reasoned it out for them.

"He couldn't have done that shooting from the Star Devil; it's too far away. And he's not in it now or he'd be using it to try and find that black of his--if the black's still alive. No, he's not in the ship, and he's not in this house. He's somewhere outside, and he can't reach us here while the phantis have the place surrounded. We can shoot them down from the attic, and they'll soon beat it for the jungle. When that happens we'll rush to the ships, and before Carse knows what it's all about we'll be up and away and he'll be marooned. Then we'll get him later."

His words brought a return of confidence. It was true, the others thought: the Hawk could not reach them as long as the phantis were around the house; and when they were driven away, the ships were near at hand and empty. All they had to do was get to the ships before Carse. The adventurer certainly was not then in one of the craft, or he would be wasting no time hunting for Friday--and raying their stronghold. No doubt he was up a tree somewhere; perhaps gored and dead.

One of the men snickered, and Judd smiled at the sound. Their confidence in him was encouraging.

"Get to the windows of the attic," he ordered. "Some of those crazy brutes are horning at the house. We've got to shoot them and get out of here, quick!"

* * * * *

There were two rooms in the attic; the large one, used as a storeroom for staple foods, had five windows, long, sloping affairs, three in front and one in each side wall. The second room was small and at the rear, and was used to store tools and spare technical apparatus. It had one little window, set high up, and connected with the larger room by a door set in the middle of the partition.

Judd placed one of his pirates at each of the windows of the large room, taking himself the center one.

Around the house milled dozens of animal bodies, snorting, bellowing and roaring, their little red eyes flashing, claws tearing the soil in futile rage at the men they knew to be safely within. A babel of brutish sounds rose from them. Two of the bulls fell foul of each other and fought in fury, to suddenly turn and hurl their weight against a ground floor door, quivering it. But their rashness was answered by a streak of light from an attic window, and as one toppled back, its body burnt through, the sights of the destroying ray-gun were already on its fellow.

The huge fire the brigands had laid was dying, and night was seeping ever thickening darkness over the scene. Glinting very slightly in the starlight were the black shapes of the two silent space ships.

Then Judd the Kite, as he aimed and shot and aimed and shot again, was suddenly struck by a disturbing idea. From where had Carse fired at the corral fence? What was the logical vantage point for him?

A shiver trembled down his spine. He saw suddenly with terrible clearness where that vantage point was--and it had not been searched. The roof!

He turned swiftly, his lips opening to give orders.

And there, standing on the threshold of the door to the smaller adjoining room, stood the figure of a man whose eyes were cold with the absolute cold of space, and whose left hand held a steady-leveled ray-gun that pointed as straight as his eyes at Judd!

"Hawk--Carse!"

"Judd," said the quiet, icy voice.

* * * * *

The Kite went white as a sheet. His men turned slowly as one. One of them gasped at what he saw; another cursed; the other two simply stared with fear-flooded eyes; only one thing flamed in every mind--the never-failing vengeance of the Hawk.

"Carse!" repeated Judd stupidly. "You--again!"

"Yes," whispered the trader. "And for the last time. We settle now. There are a few debts--a few lives--a few blows and kicks--and a matter of some torture to be paid for. The accounts must be squared, Judd."

And slowly he raised his right hand to the queer bangs of flaxen hair which hung down over his forehead. He stroked them gently. Judd's eyes, dry, hot, held fascinated on the hand. He shuddered.

"It's not pleasant," came the whisper, "to always have to wear my hair like this. That's another debt--the largest of all--I have to settle. Sheathe your guns!"

The voice cracked like a whip. They obeyed without sound, though they read death in the frigid gray eyes. As their guns went into holsters, Carse's followed suit; he stood then with both hands hanging at his sides. And he said, in the whisper that carried more weight to them than the trumpets of a host:

"Once before we were interrupted. This time we won't be. This time we will see certainly for whom the number five brings death. Count, Judd."

With a jerk, the Kite regained some control over himself. The odds were five to one. Five guns to one gun. Carse was a great shot, but such odds were surely too great. Perhaps--perhaps there might be a chance. He said in a strained voice to his men:

"Shoot when I reach five."

Then he swallowed and counted:

"One."

Aside from the tiny flickering of the left eyelid, the Hawk was graven, motionless, apparently without feeling. Judd, he knew, was just fairly fast; as for the others--

"Two."

--they were unknown quantities, except for one, the man called Jake. He had the reputation of possessing a lightning draw; his eyes were narrowed, his hands steady, and the body crouched, a sure sign of--

"Three."

--a gunman who knew his business, who was fast. His hip holsters were not really worn on the hips, but in front, very close together; that meant--

"Four."

--that he would probably draw both guns. So Judd must wait; the other three, being unknowns, disposed of in the order in which they were standing; but Jake must be--

"Five!"

--first!

* * * * *

One second there was nothing; the next, wicked pencils of orange light were snaking across the attic! And then two guns clanged on the floor, unfired, and the man called Jake staggered forward, crumpled and fell, a puzzled look on his face and accurately between his eyes a little round neat hole that had come as if by magic. Two others, similarly stricken, toppled down, their fingers still tensed on ray-gun triggers; the fourth pirate, his heart drilled, went back from the force of it and crashed into the wall, slithering down slowly into a limp heap. But Judd the Kite was still on his feet.

His lips were twisted in a snarl; his hands seemed locked. His eyes met the two cold gray ones across the room--and then his coarse face contorted, and he croaked:

"Damn you, Carse! Damn you--"

His body spun around and flattened out on the floor with arms and legs flung wide. A tiny black hole was visible through his shirt. He had been last, and the Hawk had struck him less accurately than his fellows.

The trader was unwounded. He stood there for several minutes, surveying what lay before him. He looked at each body in turn, and his eyes were calm and clear and mild, his face devoid of expression. Silence hung over the attic, for the bellowings and snortings of the beasts outside had died into faint murmurings as they straggled off for their jungle home. The single living man of the six who had lived and breathed there minutes before holstered his still warm ray-gun; and then the sound of a step on the stairs leading from the rooms below made him look up.

A man stood in the doorway of the attic.

* * * * *

He was big and brawny; but, though his arms and bare torso were streaked with blood, and his trousers torn into shreds, and his legs crisscrossed with cuts, there was broad grin on his face--a grin that widened as his rolling white eyes took in what lay on the attic floor.

Neither said anything for a moment. Then the Hawk smiled, and there was all friendliness and affection in his face.

"You made the pit, Eclipse?" he asked, softly.

Friday nodded, and chuckled. "Yes, suh! But only just. If Ah'd bin a leap an' a skip slower Ah'd bin a tee-total eclipse!"

Dancing lights of laughter came to the Hawk's eyes.

"Still feeling chipper," he said, "--in spite of your burns. Well, good for you. But I guess you've had enough of Ku Sui for a little while!"

The negro grunted indignantly. "You surely don't imply Ah'm sca'ed of that yellow Chink? Hell, no! Why--"

Carse chuckled and cut him off.

"I see. Well, then, drag these carrion out to your pit. And then--"

There was something in the air, something big. Friday listened eagerly. "Yes, suh?" he reminded his master after a pause.

"Judd," said Hawk Carse softly, "was to have had a rendezvous with Dr. Ku Sui in seven days. The place of the rendezvous is entered in the log of his ship. I've got the last of Judd's crew a captive on the Star Devil...."

The adventurer paused a moment in thought, and when he resumed his words came clipped and decisive.

"I myself am going to keep that rendezvous with Ku Sui. I want to see him very badly."

Friday looked at the man's gray eyes, his icy graven face, the bangs of flaxen hair which obscured his forehead. He understood.

Contents

THE HELPFUL HAND OF GOD

BY TOM GODWIN

(From "Vogarian Revised Encyclopedia":

SAINTS: Golden Saints, properly, Yellow Saints, a term of contempt applied by the Vogarian State Press to members of the Church Of The Golden Rule because of their opposition to the war then being planned against Alkoria. See CHURCHES.

CHURCH, GOLDEN RULE, OF THE: A group of reactionary fanatics who resisted State control and advocated social chaos through "Individual Freedom." They were liquidated in the Unity Purge but for two-thousand of the more able-bodied, who were sentenced to the moon mines of Belen Nine. The prison ship never arrived there and it is assumed that the condemned Saints somehow overpowered the guards and escaped to some remote section of the galaxy.)

Kane had observed Commander Y'Nor's bird-of-prey profile with detached interest as Y'Nor jerked his head around to glare again at the chronometer on the farther wall of the cruiser's command room.

"What's keeping Dalon?" Y'Nor demanded, transferring his glare to Kane. "Did you assure him that I have all day to waste?"

"He should be here any minute, sir," Kane answered.

"I didn't find the Saints, after others had failed for sixty years, to then sit and wait. The situation on Vogar was already very critical when we left." Y'Nor scowled at the chronometer again. "Every hour we waste waiting here will delay our return to Vogar by an hour--I presume you realize that?

"It does sound like a logical theory," Kane agreed.

Y'Nor's face darkened dangerously. "You will--"

Quick, hard-heeled footsteps sounded in the corridor outside. The guard officer, Dalon, stepped through the doorway and saluted; his eyes like ice under his pale brows and his uniform seeming to bristle with weapons.

"The native is here, sir," he said to Y'Nor.

He turned, and made a commanding gesture. The leader of the Saints appeared; the man whose resistance Y'Nor would have to break.

A frail, white-bearded old man, scuffed uncertainly into the room in straw sandals, his faded blue eyes peering nearsightedly toward Y'Nor.

"Go to the commander's desk," Dalon ordered in his metallic tones.

The old man obeyed and stopped before Y'Nor's desk, his hands clasped together as though to hide their trembling.

"You are Brenn," Y'Nor said, "and you hold, I believe, the impressive titles of Chief Executive of the Council Of Provinces and Supreme Elder of the Churches Of The Golden Rule?"

"Yes, sir." There was a faint quaver in old Brenn's voice. "I welcome you to our world, sir, and offer you our friendship."

"I understand you can produce Elusium X fuel?"

"Yes, sir. Our Dr. Larue told me the process is within our ability. We--" He hesitated. "We know you haven't enough fuel to return to Vogar."

Y'Nor stiffened in his chair. "What makes you think that?"

"It requires a great deal of fuel to get through the Whirlpool star cluster--and even sixty years ago, the Elusium ores of Vogar were almost exhausted."

Y'Nor smiled thinly. "That reminds me--you would be one of the Saints who murdered their guards and stole a ship to get here."

"We killed no guards, sir. In fact, all of them eventually joined our church."

"Where is the ship?"

"We had to cut it up for our start in mechanization."

"I presume you know you will pay for it?"

"It was taking us to our deaths in the radium mines--but we will pay whatever you ask."

"The first installment will be one thousand units of fuel, to be produced with the greatest speed possible."

"Yes, sir. But in return"--the old man stood a little straighter and an underlying resolve was suddenly revealed--"you must recognize us as a free race."

"Free? A colony founded by escaped criminals?"

"That is not true! We committed no crime, harmed no living thing...."

The hard, cold words of Y'Nor cut off his protest:

"This world it now a Vogarian possession. Every man, woman, and child upon it is a prisoner of the Vogarian State. There will be no resistance. This cruiser's disintegrators can destroy a town within seconds, your race within hours. Do you understand what I mean?"

The visible portion of old Brenn's face turned pale. He spoke at last in the bitter tones of frightened, stubborn determination:

"I offered you our friendship; I hoped you would accept, for we are a peaceful race. I should have known that you came only to persecute and enslave us. But the hand of God will reach down to help us and--"

Y'Nor laughed, a raucous sound like the harsh caw of the Vogarian vulture, and held up a hairy fist.

"This, old man, is the hand for you to center your prayers around. I want full-scale fuel production commenced within twenty-four hours. If this is done, and if you continue to unquestioningly obey all my commands, I will for that long defer your punishment as an escaped criminal. If this is not done, I will destroy a town exactly twenty-five hours from now--and as many more as may be necessary. And you will be publicly executed as a condemned criminal and an enemy of the Vogarian State."

Y'Nor turned to Dalon. "Take him away."

* * * * *

"Scared sheep," Y'Nor said when Brenn was gone. "Tomorrow he'll say that he prayed and his god told him what to do--which will be to save his neck by doing as I command."

"I don't know--" Kane said doubtfully. "I think you're wrong about his conscience folding so easily."

"You think?" Y'Nor asked. "Perhaps I should remind you that the ability to think is usually characteristic of commanders rather than sub-ensigns. You will not be asked to try to think beyond the small extent required to comprehend simple commands."

Kane sighed with weary resignation. An unexpected encounter with an Alkorian battleship had sent the Vogarian cruiser fleeing through the unexplored Whirlpool star cluster--Y'Nor and Kane the two surviving commissioned officers--with results of negative value to those most affected: the world of the Saint had been accidentally discovered and he, Kane, had risen from sub-ensign to the shakily temporary position of second-in-command.

Y'Nor spoke again:

"Since Vogarian commanders do not go out and mingle with the natives of a subject world, you will act as my representative. I'll let Brenn sweat until tomorrow, then you will go see him. In that, and in all subsequent contacts with the natives, you will keep in mind the fact that I shall hold you personally responsible for any failure of my program."

* * * * *

The next afternoon, two hours before the deadline, Kane went out into the sweet spring air of the world the Saints had named Sanctuary.

It was a virgin world, rich in the resources needed by Vogar, with twenty thousand Saints as the primary labor supply. It was also, he thought, a green and beautiful world; almost a familiar world. The cruiser stood at the upper edge of the town and in the late afternoon sun the little white and brown houses were touched with gold, half hidden in the deep azure shadows of the tall trees and flowering vines that bordered the gently curving streets.

Restlessness stirred within him as he looked at them. It was like going back in time to the Lost Islands, that isolated little region of Vogar that had eluded collectivization until the year he was sixteen. It had been at the same time of year, in the spring, that the State Unity forces had landed. The Lost Island villages had been drowsing in the sun that afternoon, as this town was drowsing now--

He forced the memories from his mind, and the futile restlessness they brought, and went on past a golden-spired church to a small cottage that was almost hidden in a garden of flowers and giant silver ferns.

Brenn met him at the door, his manner very courteous, his eyes dark-shadowed with weariness as though he had not slept for many hours, and invited him inside.

When they were seated in the simply-furnished room, Brenn said, "You came for my decision, sir?"

"The commander sent me for it."

Brenn folded his thin hands, which seemed to have the trembling sometimes characteristic of the aged.

"Yesterday evening when I came from the ship, I prayed for guidance and I saw that I could only abide by the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."

"Which means," Kane asked, "that you will do what?"

"Should we of the Church be stranded upon an alien world, our fuel supply almost gone, we would ask for help. By our own Golden Rule we can do no less than give it."

"Eighteen hours ago I issued the order for full-scale, all-out fuel production. I've been up all night and day checking the operation."

Kane stared, surprised that Y'Nor should have so correctly predicted Brenn's reaction. He tried to see some change in the old man, some evidence of the personal fear that must have broken him so quickly, but there was only weariness, and a gentleness.

"So much fuel--" Brenn said. "Is Vogar still at war with Alkoria?"

Kane nodded.

"Once I saw some Alkorian prisoners of war on Vogar," Brenn said. "They are a peaceful, doglike race. They never wanted to go to war with Vogar."

Well--they still didn't want war but on Alkoria were Elusium ores and other resources that the Vogarian State had to have before it could carry out its long-frustrated ambition of galactic conquest.

"I'll go, now," Kane said, getting out of his chair, "and see what you're having done. The commander doesn't take anybody's word for anything."

* * * * *

Brenn called a turbo-car and driver to take him to the multi-purpose factory, which was located a short distance beyond the other side of town. The driver stopped before the factory's main office, where a plump, bald man was waiting, his scalp and glasses gleaming in the sunshine.

"I'm Dr Larue, sir," he greeted Kane. He had a face that under normal circumstance would have been genial. "Father Brenn said you were coming. I'm at your service, to show you what we're doing."

They went inside the factory, where the rush of activity was like a beehive. Machines and installations not needed for fuel production were being torn out as quickly as possible, others taking their place. The workers--he craned his neck to verify his astonished first-impression.

All of them were women.

"Father Brenn's suggestion," Larue said. "These girls are as competent as men for this kind of work and their use here permits the release of men to the outer provinces to procure the raw materials. As you know, our population is small and widely scattered--"

A crash sounded as a huge object nearby toppled and fell. Kane took an instinctive backward step, and bumped into something soft.

"Oh ... excuse me, sir!"

He turned, and had a confused vision of an apologetic smile in a pretty young face, of red curls knocked into disarray--and of amazingly short shorts and a tantalizingly wispy halter.

She recovered the notebook she had dropped and hurried on, leaving a faint cloud of perfume in her wake and a disturbing memory of curving, golden tan legs and a flat little stomach that had been exposed both north and south to the extreme limits of modesty.

"A personnel supervisor from Beachville," Larue said. "She was sunbathing when the plane arrived to pick her up and had no time to obtain other clothing. Father Brenn firmly insisted upon losing not one minute of time during this emergency."

A crane rumbled into view and its grapples seized the huge object that had fallen.

"Our central air-conditioning unit," Larue said. "It had to go."

"You're putting something else in its place, of course?"

"Oh yes. We must have more space but Father Brenn opposed the plan of building an annex as too dangerously time consuming. The only alternative is to tear out everything not absolutely essential."

Kane left shortly afterward, satisfied that the Saints were doing as Brenn had said.

* * * * *

He went back out in the spring sunshine where the turbo-car was still waiting for him, debated briefly with himself, and dismissed the driver. After so many weeks in the prison-like ship, it would be pleasant to walk again.

A grassy, tree-covered ridge ran like the swell of a green sea between the plant and the town. He stopped on top of it, where the town was almost hidden from view, and looked out across the wide valley. Shadows moved lazily across it as cotton-puff clouds drifted down the blue dome of the sky, great white birds like swans were soaring overhead, calling to one another in voices like the singing of violins, bringing again the memories of the Lost Islands--

"And the Vogarian lord gazed upon his world and found it good!"

He swung around, his hand dropping to his holstered blaster, and looked into the green, mocking eyes of a tawny-haired girl. She was beautiful, in the savage way that the hill leopards of Vogar were beautiful, and her hand was on a pistol in her belt.

Her eyes flickered from his blaster up to his face, bright with challenge.

"Want to try it?" she asked.

She wore a short skirt of some rough material and her knees were dusty, as though she had walked for a long way. These things he noticed only absently, his eyes going back to the bold, beautiful face. For twenty years he had been accustomed to the women of Vogar; colorless in their Party uniforms and men's haircuts, made even more drab by the masculine mannerisms they affected. Not since the spring the Lost Islands died had he seen a girl like the one before him.

"Well?" she asked. "Do you think you'll know me next time?"

He walked to her, while she watched him with catlike wariness.

"Hand me that pistol," he ordered.

"Try to take it, you Vogarian ape!"

He moved, and a moment later she was sitting on the ground, her eyes wide with dismayed surprise as he shoved the pistol in his own belt.

"Resisting a Vogarian with a deadly weapon calls for the death penalty," he said. "I suppose you know what I can do?"

She got up, defiance like a blaze about her.

"I'll tell you what you can do--you can go to hell!"

The thought came to him that there might be considerable pleasure in laying her over his knee and raising some blisters where they would do her the most good. He regretfully dismissed the idea as too undignified for even a sub-ensign and asked:

"Who are you, and what are you doing here with that pistol?"

She hesitated, then answered with insolent coolness:

"My name is Barbara Loring. I heard that you Vogarians had demanded that we agree to surrender. I came down from the hills to disagree."

"Is a resistance force meeting here?"

"Do you think you could make me tell you?"

"There are ways--but I'm not here to use them. I am not your enemy."

A little of the hostility faded from her face and she asked, "But how could a Vogarian ever not be our enemy?"

He could find no satisfactory answer to the question.

"I can tell you this," she said. "I know of no resistance organization. I can also tell you that we're not the race of cowards you think and we'll fight the instant Father Brenn gives the word."

"For one who speaks respectfully of Brenn," he said, "your recent words and actions weren't very religious and refined."

Fire flashed in the green eyes again. "Up in the Azure Mountains, where I come from, we're not very refined and we like being that way!"

"And why do you carry guns?" he asked.

"Because all along our frontier lines are rhino-stags, cliff bears, thunder hawks, and a lot of other overgrown carnivora that don't like us--that's why."

"I see." He took the pistol from his belt and held it out to her. "Go back to your mountains, where you belong, before you do something to get yourself executed."

* * * * *

Y'Nor, waiting impatiently in the ship, was grimly pleased by the news of Brenn's change of attitude.

"Exactly as I predicted, as you no doubt recall. How long until they can have a thousand units of fuel produced?"

"Larue estimated fourteen days at best."

Y'Nor tapped his thick fingers on his desk, scowling thoughtfully. "As little as seven extra days might force Vogar to accept the Alkorian peace terms because of lack of fuel--the natives can work twice as hard as they expected to. Tell old Brenn they will be given exactly seven days from sunrise tomorrow.

"And summon Dalon and Graver. I want them to make use of every man on the ship for a twenty-four hour guard-and-inspection system in the plant. The natives will get no opportunities for stalling or sabotage."

* * * * *

Brenn was writing at his book-laden table when Kane went into his cottage the next morning.

"These are called edicts," Brenn said, after greeting him, "but I possess no law-making powers and they are really only suggestions."

Brenn shoved the paper to one side. The script was somewhat different from that of Vogar.

The Vogarian inspection and guard system is no more than an expected precaution against sabotage. The Vogarians must be regarded as potential friends who now treat us with suspicion and arrogance only because they do not yet realize the sincerity of our desire to help them to any extent short of surrender--

Kane looked up from the uncompleted, surprisingly humble, edict and Brenn asked:

"Your commander, sir--he is now pleased with our actions?"

"Not exactly. He will disintegrate a town seven days from sunrise this morning if all the fuel isn't produced by then."

"Seven--only seven days?" There was startled disbelief on Brenn's face. "But how can he expect us to produce so much fuel in so short a time?"

"I don't know. I'm sorry--it's something I would have argued against if I hadn't had too much sense to try."

"Seven days--" Brenn said again. "We can only pray that God will let it be time enough."

* * * * *

Kane walked on to the plant. The hilltop where he had met the girl was deserted and he felt a vague disappointment.

The plant was hot without the air-conditioner, especially in the vicinity of the electronic roasters. The girls looked flushed and uncomfortable, but for the redhead who still wore her scanty sunsuit. The armed Vogarians looked incongruously out of place among the girls and were sweating profusely. Kane made a mental note to have them ordered into tropical uniforms.

He found Dalon prowling like a wolf among his guards.

"It's inconceivable that these women could ever be a menace," Dalon said, "but I'm taking no chances."

He saw Graver, the cruiser's Chief Technician; a thin, dry man who seemed to be as emotionless as the machines and electronic circuits that were his life.

"They're doing everything with astonishing competence," Graver said. "My technicians are watching like hawks, though."

Larue was not in his office. His secretary, a brown-eyed woman of strikingly intelligent appearance, said, "I'm sorry, sir--Dr. Larue had to go back to town for a few minutes. May I give him your message?"

"No, thanks," he said. "Father Brenn is probably performing that unpleasant chore right now."

* * * * *

Since Dalon and Graver seemed to have the situation at the plant well in hand, Kane decided to make a tour of the outer provinces where the ores were being mined. An efficient plant would be worthless if it did not receive sufficient ore.

He spent four days on the inspection tour; much longer than he had expected to be gone but made necessary by the fact that the small Elusium mines were widely scattered in rugged, roadless areas and he had to walk most of the distance. The single helicopter on Sanctuary was being used to fly the ore out but it was operating on a schedule that caused him to miss it each time.

Each mine was being worked by full day-and-night crews; in fact, by more men than necessary. The reason for that, and for the way the men silently withheld their hostility, was made apparent in a bit of conversation between two miners that he overheard one day:

"... So why all of us here when not this many are needed?"

"They say Father Brenn wanted to get all the men out of town, away from the cruiser, so there would be no trouble--and you know there would have been if we had stayed. He wants to get the cruiser on its way back to Vogar, they say, so we can get busy producing weapons to fight the Occupation force...."

He returned on the fifth evening of the allotted seven days and stopped by Brenn's cottage before going on to the ship. The old man was working in his garden, his trembling hands trying to tie up a red-flowered vine.

Kane tied it for him and he said, "Thank you, sir. Did you find the mining to be as I had said?"

"I found more than that. You know, don't you, that Y'Nor will return with the Occupation force a hundred days after leaving here?"

"Yes--I know that that is his intention."

"I understand that you're going to try to build weapons while he's gone. Don't, if you think anything of your people, let them do it. Nothing you could build in a hundred days would last a minute against a cruiser's disintegrators."

"I know," Brenn said. "We are supposed to choose between bloody, hopeless resistance and eternal slavery, aren't we? But why should either fate befall a peaceful race?"

Kane asked the logical question: "Why shouldn't it?"

"The laws of God have always been laws of justice and mercy. Not even the Vogarian State can change them."

He thought of the way the State had changed the Lost Islands in one bloody, violent afternoon. Brenn, watching his face, said:

"You are skeptical and bitter, my son--but you will learn that a harmless old man can speak with wisdom."

"No," he said. "There is neither justice nor mercy in the universe. I know from experience. A man can only choose between the lesser of two evils--and almost anything is less evil than Y'Nor when he's mad."

* * * * *

He went to the plant the next morning. Inside, wherever he looked, he saw girls in shorts and halters. The place seemed to be alive with partially clad women. He went to the nearest bulletin board and read Brenn's edict of four days before:

Since the excessively warm temperature of the plant causes much discomfort and thereby impairs the efficiency of all workers, and since maximum efficiency will be required to produce the fuel in the extremely short time permitted us, it is suggested that the cool sunsuits of the Beachville girls become the standard work uniform until further notice. These may be obtained for the asking in Department 5-A.

The next day's edict read:

Some have hesitated to follow yesterday's edict through a sense of modesty. This is most commendable. However, the situation is very critical, our lives depend upon the highest degree of efficiency we can attain, and a hot, miserable worker is not efficient. Your bodies are God's handwork--do not be ashamed of them.

The edict for the next day read simply, warningly:

THOU SHALT NOT COMMIT ADULTERY.

* * * * *

The Vogarian guards and inspectors, now in tropical uniforms, still looked out of place with their holstered weapons but their former cold arrogance was gone and the attitude of the girls had changed from polite reserve to laughing, chattering friendliness.

He found Dalon in a far corner; cornered, literally, by the red-haired personnel supervisor who was spitting like a cat as she said:

"... Then tell your commander how one of your men tried to make one of my girls and got hit with a wrench for it! Ask him whether he wants us to produce fuel or make love! Go ahead--ask him! Or let me--I'll ask him!"

"You'll have to see to it that your girls don't lead my men on." Dalon ran his finger around his collar, worry on his face. "Florence, are you trying to get me ruined?"

"Then inform your men that there is a certain commandment we all believe in and anything beyond our willingness to be friends calls for marriage first."

"Marriage?" Dalon spluttered the word, recovered his poise with an effort, and said stiffly, "My men are soldiers, not suitors. I want them respected as such."

He strode away without seeing Kane. The girl stared after him, fuming, and Kane went in search of Graver.

Graver and the brown-eyed secretary were in Larue's office, their heads together over a flow sheet of some kind. The secretary excused herself and when she was gone, Kane asked:

"Where's Larue?"

"Checking the catalytic processors, I think, sir." Graver answered, almost vaguely. "Mar ... his secretary was just showing me how they improvised so much of their equipment so quickly." There was a strange light in Graver's usually expressionless eyes. "It's incredible!"

"Well--the commander gave them no time to waste, you know."

"Sir? Oh ... I was referring to her intelligence, sir. It's amazing that a woman should have such a thorough knowledge of such a complex process."

Kane felt the birth pains of the first dark premonition.

"If you don't want a thorough knowledge of the interior of State prison," he said in grim warning, "you'd better get that silly look off your face and concentrate on your duties. Tell Dalon the same order applies to him. And tell Larue that the commander reminds him they now have less than forty hours to finish the job."

* * * * *

He decided, again, to walk back to the ship. There was now a multitude of paths through the grass were girls had been walking to and from work. Two groups from the last shift-change were a short distance ahead of him, several of Dalon's guards and Graver's technicians among them, all of them talking and laughing.

In that area they could not be spied upon by Y'Nor with the ship's view-screen scanners and even as he watched, a tall, dark young guard put his arm around the girl walking close beside him. She twisted away from him and ran on to the next group, there to look back with a teasing toss of her head.

Kane watched both groups disappear over the hill, then followed, muttering thoughtfully. He felt he could safely assume--if anything could be said to be safe about the situation--that the lack of discipline he had just witnessed was typical of all the men. They were all young and healthy and for sixteen hours out of each day they were side by side with the almost nude, provocatively feminine, Sanctuary girls.

Their weakness was understandable. It was also very dangerous. Heads would roll if Y'Nor ever learned what was going on and it required no psychic ability to guess whose head would roll the fastest and farthest.

He would have to have it stopped, at once.

He took a short cut to Brenn's cottage, by a sleepy, shady street he had never been down before. Halfway along it was an open-air eating place of some kind, with tables placed about under the trees. There seemed to be no customers at the moment but he stopped, anyway, to take a closer look for errant guards.

A tawny head lifted at a table half hidden by a nearby tree and he looked into the surprised face of the mountain girl, Barbara.

"Well!" she said. "Come on over and let me offer you a glass of cyanide."

He walked over to her table. She was wearing a blouse and skirt similar to that of the day he had met her but the pistol was gone.

"I thought I told you to go back to your hills," he said.

"I decided it would be more fun to work in the plant and sabotage things."

"Let Y'Nor learn you said that and you'll be in a fix I can't help you out of."

"Should a Vogarian care?" But the jeering was gone as she said, "When you gave my pistol back to me--I thought it was a trick of some kind."

"I told you I wasn't your enemy."

"I know ... but it's hard for a Saint to believe any Vogarian could ever be anything else."

"It doesn't seem to be very hard for the girls in the plant," he observed glumly.

"Oh ... that's different." She made a gesture of light dismissal. "Those soldiers and technicians are good boys at heart--they haven't been brain-washed like you officers."

"That's interesting to know, I'm sure. I suppose--"

He stopped as a gray-haired woman came and set down a tray containing a sandwich and a mug. From the foamy top of the mug came the unmistakable aroma of beer.

"Do you Saints drink?" he asked incredulously.

"Sure. Why?"

"But your church--"

"Earth churches used to ban alcohol as sinful because it would cause a mean person to show his true character. My church is more sensible and works to change the person's character, instead."

She took a bite of the sandwich. "Cliff bear steak--it and beer go perfectly together. Shall I order you some?"

"No," he said, thinking of Y'Nor's fury if Y'Nor should learn he had had a friendly lunch with a native girl. "About your church--what kind of a church is it, anyway?"

"What its name implies. Heaven isn't for sale at the pulpit--everybody has to qualify for it by his own actions. We have to practice our belief--just looking pious and saying that we believe doesn't count."

He revised his opinion of the Saints, then asked, "But were you practicing your Golden Rule when you came to this town with a gun to shoot Vogarians?"

"For Vogarians we have a special Golden Rule that reads: Do unto Vogarians as they have come to do unto you. And you came here to enslave or kill us--remember?"

It could not be denied. When he did not answer she smiled at him; a smile surprisingly gentle and understanding.

"You honestly would like to be our friend, wouldn't you? The State psychiatrists didn't do a good job of brainwashing you, after all."

It was the first time since he was sixteen that anyone had spoken to him with genuine kindness. It gave him a strange feeling, a lonely sense of something rising up out of the past to mock him, and he changed the subject:

"Are the Azure Mountains the edge of your frontier?"

She nodded. "Beyond is the Emerald Plain, a great, wide plain, and beyond it are mountain ranges that have never been named or explored. I'm going into them some day and--"

* * * * *

Time passed with astonishing speed as he talked with the girl and it was late in the afternoon when he continued on to Brenn's cottage. He put the thoughts of her from his mind and told Brenn of the too-warm association between the girls and the Vogarians.

"But it is only friendship," Brenn said soothingly. "You can assure your commander that nothing immoral is being done."

"If he knew what was going on, it would be my neck. It has to be stopped. Write an edict--do anything that will stop it at once."

Brenn stroked his white beard thoughtfully. "I'm sorry this unforeseen situation has occurred, sir. Will you have strict orders to the same effect given your men?"

"There's a severe penalty for unauthorized fraternization. I'll see that they're well reminded of it."

"I'll write another edict, at once, forbidding the girls to speak to your men, sir."

* * * * *

Y'Nor was pacing the floor when Kane went to the ship, his face black and ugly with anger.

"Have you been blind?" he demanded.

Kane tried to swallow a sinking feeling, wondering just how much Y'Nor had seen, and said, "Sir?"

"My guards--my so-called guards--how long have they been strolling back from the plant in company with the native women?"

"Oh," he said, feeling a great relief that Y'Nor had not seen the true situation, "it's only that some of the out-going shifts coincide, sir, and--"

"You know, don't you, that military men march to and from duty in military formation?"

"Yes, sir."

"You are aware of the importance of discipline?"

"Yes, sir."

"You are further aware of the fact that you, Dalon, and Graver, will be guilty of treason if this lack of discipline imperils my plans in any way?"

"Yes, sir."

"You have heard of the punishment for treason?"

"Yes, sir."

* * * * *

He went below when the unpleasant business with Y'Nor was finally over. It was the beginning of the eight-hour sleep period for Dalon and Graver but they were still up, sitting on their bunks and staring dreamily into space. It was only belatedly, almost fuzzily, that they became aware of his glowering presence in the doorway.

"I bring you glad tidings," he said, "from the commander's own lips. The multiple-gallows at State prison is still in perfect working order, especially the first three trapdoors--"

The last day dawned, bright and sunny, and he went to see Brenn.

"I had the new edict posted immediately," Brenn said. "I hope it will undo the damage."

"Let's see it," Kane requested and Brenn handed him the handwritten original. It was:

Despite our affection for the Vogarians among us, we must not endanger them by any longer talking to them. A Vogarian military rule is now being enforced which forbids Vogarians to speak to Sanctuary girls except in the line of duty. There is a severe penalty for those who disobey this rule.

It must also be pointed out, sternly to the Sanctuary girls and respectfully to the Vogarians, that flight into the uninhabited Sanctuary mountains would result in execution for the fleeing couples if Commander Y'Nor should ever find them.

"What's this?" Kane demanded, pointing to the last paragraph.

"Why--a warning, sir."

"Warning ... it's a suggestion!"

"A suggestion?" Brenn lifted his hands in shocked protest. "But, sir, how could anyone think--"

"I, personally, wouldn't give a damn if the entire crew was too love-sick to eat. But the commander does and my future welfare, including the privilege of breathing, depends upon my retaining what passes for his good will."

"Good heavens--I shall have this edict removed from the bulletin boards at once!"

"A great idea. It should fix up everything to lock the stable door now that the horse is stolen."

* * * * *

He went to the plant and felt the air of resentment as soon as he stepped inside. Dalon was patrolling among his men, his haggard face becoming more haggard each time the red-haired personnel supervisor went by with her hips swinging and her head held high in hurt, aloof silence. The guards were pacing their beats in wordless quiet, Graver's technicians were speaking only in the line of duty. The girls were not talking even to one another but in the soft, melting glances they gave the Vogarians they said We understand in a manner more eloquent than any words.

In fact, far too eloquent. He considered the plan of having Brenn forbid the girls to look at the guards, discarded that as impractical, for a moment wildly considered ordering the guards not to look at the girls, discarded that as even more impractical, and went, muttering, to Larue's office.

Larue was at his desk, his face lined with fatigue.

"It's been a difficult job," he said, "but we'll meet the deadline."

"Good," Kane answered. "Did Brenn phone you about having that edict removed?"

"Ah--which one?"

"Which one? You mean...."

He turned and ran from the office.

A girl was removing the offending edict from the nearest bulletin board. Another, later, one proclaimed:

We must abandon as hopeless the suggestion of some that if there must be an Occupation force, we would like for it to be these men whom we have come to respect, and many of us to love. This can never be. Only Commander Y'Nor will leave the ship at Vogar, there to select his own Occupation force, while the men now among us continue directly on to the Alkorian war from which many of them will never return.

We must not resent the fact that on this, their last day among us, these men are forbidden to speak to us or to let us speak to them nor say that this is unfair when Commander Y'Nor's Occupation troops will be permitted to associate freely with us. These things are beyond our power to change. We must accept the inevitable and show only by our silent conduct the love we have for these warriors whom we shall never see again.

Kane gulped convulsively, read it again, and hurried back to Larue's office.

"How long has that last edict been up?" he demanded.

"About twelve hours."

"Then every shift has seen it?"

"Ah ... yes. Why--is something wrong with it?"

"That depends on the viewpoint. I want them removed at once. And tell that sanctified old weasel that if this last edict of his gets me hanged, which it probably will, I'll see to it that he gets the same medicine."

He went back into the plant and made his way through the bare-legged, soft-eyed girls, looking for Dalon. He overheard a guard say in low, bitter tones to another: "... Maybe eight hours on Vogar, and we can't leave the ship, then on to the battle front for us while Y'Nor and his home guard favorites come back here and pick out their harems--"

He found Dalon and said to him, "Watch your men. They're resentful. Some of them might even desert--and Y'Nor wasn't joking about that gallows for us last night."

"I know." Dalon ran his finger around the collar that seemed to be getting increasingly tighter for him. "I've warned them that the Occupation troops would get them in the end."

* * * * *

He found Graver at a dial-covered panel. The brown-eyed secretary--her eyes now darker and more appealing than ever--was just leaving, a notebook in her hand.

"Since when," Kane asked, "has it been customary for technicians to need the assistance of secretaries to read a dial?"

"But, sir, she is a very good technician, herself. Her paper work is now done and she was helping me trace a circuit that was fluctuating."

Kane peered suspiciously into Graver's expressionless face.

"Are you sure it was a circuit that was doing the fluctuating?"

"Yes, sir."

"Did you know that half of Dalon's guards seem to be ready to jump ship?"

"Yes, sir. But their resentment is not characteristic of my technicians."

He realized, with surprise, that that was true. And Graver, in contrast to Dalon's agitation, had the calm, purposeful air of a man who had pondered deeply upon an unpleasant future and had taken steps to prevent it.

"I have no desire to hang, sir, and I have convinced my men that it would be suicide for part of them to desert. I shall do my best to convince Dalon's guards of the same thing."

He went back through the plant, much of his confidence restored, and back to the ship.

Y'Nor was pacing the floor again, his impatience keying him to a mood more vile than ever.

"This ship will leave at exactly twenty-three fifteen, Vogar time," Y'Nor said. "Any man not on it then will be regarded as a deserter and executed as such when I return with the Occupation force."

He stopped his pacing to stare at Kane with the ominous anticipation of a spider surveying a captured fly.

"Although I can operate this ship with a minimum of two crewmen, I shall expect you to make certain that every man is on board."

Kane went back out of the ship, his confidence shaken again, and back to the plant.

* * * * *

Night came at last and, finally, the first shielded tank of fuel was delivered to the ship. Others followed, one by one, as the hours went by.

It was almost morning when Graver came to him and said, "My duties and those of my men are finished here, sir. Shall we go to prepare the ship for flight?"

"Yes--get busy at it," Kane answered. "Don't give the commander any excuse to get any madder than he already is."

An hour later the last of the fuel went into the last tank and was hauled away. Someone said, "That's all," and a switch clicked. A machine rumbled off into silence, followed by others. Control panels went dark. Within a minute there was not a machine running, not a panel lighted.

Dalon's whistle for Guard Assembly sounded, high and shrill. A girl's voice called to one of the guards: "Hurry back to your ship, Billy--the thunder hawks might get you if you stayed--" and broke on a sob. Another girl said, "Hush, Julia--it's not his fault."

He went out of the plant, and past Larue's office. He saw that the brown-eyed secretary was gone, her desk clean. Larue was still there, looking very tired. He did not go in. The fuel had been produced, he would never see Larue again.

He took the path that led toward town. Part of the Whirlpool star cluster was still above the horizon, a white blaze of a thousand suns, and the eastern sky was lightening with the first rays of dawn. A dozen girls were ahead of him, their voices a low murmur as they hurried back toward town. There was an undertone of tension, all of the former gaiety gone. The brief week of make-believe was over and the next Vogarians to come would truly be their enemy.

He came to the hilltop where he had met the mountain girl, thought of her with irrational longing, and suddenly she was there before him.

The pistol was again in her belt.

"You came with all the stealth of a plains ox," she said. "I could have shot you a dozen times over."

"Are we already at war?" he asked.

"We Saints have to let you Vogarians kill some of us, first--our penalty for being ethical."

"Listen to me," he said. "We tried to fight the inevitable in the Lost Islands. When the sun went down that day, half of us were dead and the rest prisoners."

"And you rose from prisoner to officer because you were too selfish to keep fighting for what was right."

"I saw them bury the ones who insisted on doing that."

"And you want us to meekly bow down, here?"

"I have no interest of any kind in this world--I'll never see it again--but I know from experience what will happen to you and your people if you try to fight. I don't want that to happen. Do you think that because a man isn't a blind chauvinist, he has to be a soulless monster?"

"No," she said in a suddenly small voice. "But I had hoped ... we were talking that day of the mountains beyond the Emerald Plain and a frontier to last for centuries ... it was just idle talk but I thought maybe that when the showdown came you would be on our side, after all."

She drew a deep breath that came a little raggedly and said with a lightness that was too forced:

"You don't mind if I have a silly sentimental fondness for my world, do you? It's the only world I have. Maybe you would understand if you could see the Azure Mountains in the spring ... but you never will, will you? Because you lied when you said you weren't my enemy and now I know you are and I"--the lightness faltered and broke--"am yours ... and the next time we meet one will have to kill the other."

She turned away, and vanished among the trees like a shadow.

He was unaware of the passage of time as he stood there on the hill that was silent with her going and remembered the day he had met her and the way the song swans had been calling. When he looked up at the sky, it was bright gold in the east and the blazing stars of the Whirlpool were fading into invisibility. He looked to the west, where the road wound its long way out of the valley, and he thought he could see her trudging up it, tiny and distant. He looked at his watch and saw he had just time enough to reach the ship before it left.

* * * * *

Brenn was standing by his gate, watching the dawn flame into incandescence and looking more frail and helpless than ever. The cruiser towered beyond, blotting out half the dawn sky like a sinister omen. A faint, deep hum was coming from it as the drive went into the preliminary phase that preceded take-off.

"You have only seconds left to reach the ship," Brenn said. "You have already tarried almost too long."

"You're looking at a fool," he answered, "who is going to tarry in the Azure Mountains and beyond the Emerald Plain for a hundred days. Then the Occupation men will kill him."

There was no surprise on Brenn's face but it seemed to Kane that the old man smiled in his beard. For the second time since he was sixteen, Kane heard someone speak to him with gentle understanding:

"Although you have not been of much help to my plans, your intentions were good. I was sure that in the end this would be your decision. I am well pleased with you, my son."

A whine came from the ship and the boarding ramp flicked up like a disappearing tongue. The black opening of the air lock seemed to wink, then was solid, featureless metal as the doors slid shut.

"Bon voyage, Y'Nor!" Kane said. "We'll be waiting for you with our bows and arrows."

"There is no one on the ship but Y'Nor," Brenn said. "Graver saw to it that the Ready lights were all going on the command room control board, then he and all the others followed my ... suggestion."

Kane remembered Graver's calmness and his statement concerning his men: "... It would be suicide for part of them to desert."

For part of them. But if every last one deserted--

The drives of the ship roared as Y'Nor pushed a control button and the ship lifted slowly. The roaring faltered and died as Y'Nor pushed another button which called for a crewman who was not there. The ship dropped back with a ponderous thud, careened, and fell with a force that shook the ground. It made no further sound or movement.

He stared at the silent, impotent ship, finding it hard to realize that there would be no hundred-day limit for him; that the new world, the boundless frontier--and Barbara--would be his for as long as he lived.

"Poor Commander Y'Nor," Brenn said. "The air lock is now under the ship and we shall have to dig a tunnel to rescue him."

"Don't hurry about it," Kane advised. "Let him sweat in the dark for a few days with his desk wrapped around his neck. It will do him good."

"We are a kind and harmless race, we could never do anything like that."

"Kind? I believe you. But harmless? You made monkeys out of Vogar's choicest fighting men."

"Please do not use such an uncouth expression. I was only the humble instrument of a greater Power. I only ... ah ... encouraged the natural affection between man and maid, the love that God intended them to have."

"But did you practice your Golden Rule? You saw to it that fifty young men were forced to associate day after day with hundreds of almost-naked girls. Would you really have wanted the same thing done to you if you had been in their place?"

"Would I?" There was a gleam in the old eyes that did not seem to come from the brightness of the dawn. "I, too, was once young, my son--what do you think?"

Contents

A SCIENTIST RISES

By D. W. Hall

"The face of the giant was indeed that of a god...."

On that summer day the sky over New York was unflecked by clouds, and the air hung motionless, the waves of heat undisturbed. The city was a vast oven where even the sounds of the coiling traffic in its streets seemed heavy and weary under the press of heat that poured down from above. In Washington Square, the urchins of the neighborhood splashed in the fountain, and the usual midday assortment of mothers, tramps and out-of-works lounged listlessly on the hot park benches.

As a bowl, the Square was filled by the torrid sun, and the trees and grass drooped like the people on its walks. In the surrounding city, men worked in sweltering offices and the streets rumbled with the never-ceasing tide of business--but Washington Square rested.

And then a man walked out of one of the houses lining the square, and all this was changed.

He came with a calm, steady stride down the steps of a house on the north side, and those who happened to see him gazed with surprised interest. For he was a giant in size. He measured at least eleven feet in height, and his body was well-formed and in perfect proportion. He crossed the street and stepped over the railing into the nearest patch of grass, and there stood with arms folded and legs a little apart. The expression on his face was preoccupied and strangely apart, nor did it change when, almost immediately from the park bench nearest him, a woman's excited voice cried:

"Look! Look! Oh, look!"

The people around her craned their necks and stared, and from them grew a startled murmur. Others from farther away came to see who had cried out, and remained to gaze fascinated at the man on the grass. Quickly the murmur spread across the Square, and from its every part men and women and children streamed towards the center of interest--and then, when they saw, backed away slowly and fearfully, with staring eyes, from where the lone figure stood.

* * * * *

There was about that figure something uncanny and terrible. There, in the hot midday hush, something was happening to it which men would say could not happen; and men, seeing it, backed away in alarm. Quickly they dispersed. Soon there were only white, frightened faces peering from behind buildings and trees.

Before their very eyes the giant was growing.

When he had first emerged, he had been around eleven feet tall, and now, within three minutes, he had risen close to sixteen feet.

His great body maintained its perfect proportions. It was that of an elderly man clad simply in a gray business suit. The face was kind, its clear-chiselled features indicating fine spiritual strength; on the white forehead beneath the sparse gray hair were deep-sunken lines which spoke of years of concentrated work.

No thought of malevolence could come from that head with its gentle blue eyes that showed the peace within, but fear struck ever stronger into those who watched him, and in one place a woman fainted; for the great body continued to grow, and grow ever faster, until it was twenty feet high, then swiftly twenty-five, and the feet, still separated, were as long as the body of a normal boy. Clothes and body grew effortlessly, the latter apparently without pain, as if the terrifying process were wholly natural.

The cars coming into Washington Square had stopped as their drivers sighted what was rising there, and by now the bordering streets were tangled with traffic. A distant crowd of milling people heightened the turmoil. The northern edge was deserted, but in a large semicircle was spread a fear-struck, panicky mob. A single policeman, his face white and his eyes wide, tried to straighten out the tangle of vehicles, but it was infinitely beyond him and he sent in a riot call; and as the giant with the kind, dignified face loomed silently higher than the trees in the Square, and ever higher, a dozen blue-coated figures appeared, and saw, and knew fear too, and hung back awe-stricken, at a loss what to do. For by now the rapidly mounting body had risen to the height of forty feet.

* * * * *

An excited voice raised itself above the general hubbub.

"Why, I know him! I know him! It's Edgar Wesley! Doctor Edgar Wesley!"

A police sergeant turned to the man who had spoken.

"And it--he knows you? Then go closer to him, and--and--ask him what it means."

But the man looked fearfully at the giant and hung back. Even as they talked, his gigantic body had grown as high as the four-storied buildings lining the Square, and his feet were becoming too large for the place where they had first been put. And now a faint smile could be seen on the giant's face, an enigmatic smile, with something ironic and bitter in it.

"Then shout to him from here," pressed the sergeant nervously. "We've got to find out something! This is crazy--impossible! My God! Higher yet--and faster!"

Summoning his courage, the other man cupped his hands about his mouth and shouted:

"Dr. Wesley! Can you speak and tell us? Can we help you stop it?"

The ring of people looked up breathless at the towering figure, and a wave of fear passed over them and several hysterical shrieks rose up as, very slowly, the huge head shook from side to side. But the smile on its lips became stronger, and kinder, and the bitterness seemed to leave it.

There was fear at that motion of the enormous head, but a roar of panic sounded from the watchers when, with marked caution, the growing giant moved one foot from the grass into the street behind and the other into the nearby base of Fifth Avenue, just above the Arch. Fearing harm, they were gripped by terror, and they fought back while the trembling policemen tried vainly to control them; but the panic soon ended when they saw that the leviathan's arms remained crossed and his smile kinder yet. By now he dwarfed the houses, his body looming a hundred and fifty feet into the sky. At this moment a woman back of the semicircle slumped to her knees and prayed hysterically.

"Someone's coming out of his house!" shouted one of the closest onlookers.

* * * * *

The door of the house from which the giant had first appeared had opened, and the figure of a middle-aged, normal-sized man emerged. For a second he crouched on the steps, gaping up at the monstrous shape in the sky, and then he scurried down and made at a desperate run for the nearest group of policemen.

He gripped the sergeant and cried frantically:

"That's Dr. Wesley! Why don't you do something? Why don't--"

"Who are you?" the officer asked, with some return of an authoritative manner.

"I work for him. I'm his janitor. But--can't you do anything? Look at him! Look!"

The crowd pressed closer. "What do you know about this?" went on the sergeant.

The man gulped and stared around wildly. "He's been working on something--many years--I don't know what, for he kept it a close secret. All I knew is that an hour ago I was in my room upstairs, when I heard some disturbance in his laboratory, on the ground floor. I came down and knocked on the door, and he answered from inside and said that everything was all right--"

"You didn't go in?"

"No. I went back up, and everything was quiet for a long time. Then I heard a lot of noise down below--a smashing--as if things were being broken. But I thought he was just destroying something he didn't need, and I didn't investigate: he hated to be disturbed. And then, a little later, I heard them shouting out here in the Square, and I looked out and saw. I saw him--just as I knew him--but a giant! Look at his face! Why, he has the face of--of a god! He's--as if he were looking down on us--and--pitying us...."

For a moment all were silent as they gazed, transfixed, at the vast form that towered two hundred feet above them. Almost as awe-inspiring as the astounding growth was the fine, dignified calmness of the face. The sergeant broke in:

"The explanation of this must be in his laboratory. We've got to have a look. You lead us there."

* * * * *

The other man nodded; but just then the giant moved again, and they waited and watched.

With the utmost caution the titanic shape changed position. Gradually, one great foot, over thirty feet in length, soared up from the street and lowered farther away, and then the other distant foot changed its position; and the leviathan came gently to rest against the tallest building bordering the Square, and once more folded his arms and stood quiet. The enormous body appeared to waver slightly as a breath of wind washed against it: obviously it was not gaining weight as it grew. Almost, now, it appeared to float in the air. Swiftly it grew another twenty-five feet, and the gray expanse of its clothes shimmered strangely as a ripple ran over its colossal bulk.

A change of feeling came gradually over the watching multitude. The face of the giant was indeed that of a god in the noble, irony-tinged serenity of his calm features. It was if a further world had opened, and one of divinity had stepped down; a further world of kindness and fellow-love, where were none of the discords that bring conflicts and slaughterings to the weary people of Earth. Spiritual peace radiated from the enormous face under the silvery hair, peace with an undertone of sadness, as if the giant knew of the sorrows of the swarm of dwarfs beneath him, and pitied them.

From all the roofs and the towers of the city, for miles and miles around, men saw the mammoth shape and the kindly smile grow more and more tenuous against the clear blue sky. The figure remained quietly in the same position, his feet filling two empty streets, and under the spell of his smile all fear seemed to leave the nearer watchers, and they became more quiet and controlled.

* * * * *

The group of policemen and the janitor made a dash for the house from which the giant had come. They ascended the steps, went in, and found the door of the laboratory locked. They broke the door down. The sergeant looked in.

"Anyone in here?" he cried. Nothing disturbed the silence, and he entered, the others following.

A long, wide, dimly-lit room met their eyes, and in its middle the remains of a great mass of apparatus that had dominated it.

The apparatus was now completely destroyed. Its dozen rows of tubes were shattered, its intricate coils of wire and machinery hopelessly smashed. Fragments lay scattered all over the floor. No longer was there the least shape of meaning to anything in the room; there remained merely a litter of glass and stone and scrap metal.

Conspicuous on the floor was a large hammer. The sergeant walked over to pick it up, but, instead, paused and stared at what lay beyond it.

"A body!" he said.

A sprawled out dead man lay on the floor, his dark face twisted up, his sightless eyes staring at the ceiling, his temple crushed as with a hammer. Clutched tight in one stiff hand was an automatic. On his chest was a sheet of paper.

The captain reached down and grasped the paper. He read what was written on it, and then he read it to the others:

* * * * *

There was a fool who dreamed the high dream of the pure scientist, and who lived only to ferret out the secrets of nature, and harness them for his fellow men. He studied and worked and thought, and in time came to concentrate on the manipulation of the atom, especially the possibility of contracting and expanding it--a thing of greatest potential value. For nine years he worked along this line, hoping to succeed and give new power, new happiness, a new horizon to mankind. Hermetically sealed in his laboratory, self-exiled from human contacts, he labored hard.

There came a day when the device into which the fool had poured his life stood completed and a success. And on that very day an agent for a certain government entered his laboratory to steal the device. And in that moment the fool realized what he had done: that, from the apparatus he had invented, not happiness and new freedom would come to his fellow men, but instead slaughter and carnage and drunken power increased a hundredfold. He realized, suddenly, that men had not yet learned to use fruitfully the precious, powerful things given to them, but as yet could only play with them like greedy children--and kill as they played. Already his invention had brought death. And he realized--even on this day of his triumph--that it and its secret must be destroyed, and with them he who had fashioned so blindly.

For the scientist was old, his whole life was the invention, and with its going there would be nothing more.

And so he used the device's great powers on his own body; and then, with those powers working on him, he destroyed the device and all the papers that held its secrets.

Was the fool also mad? Perhaps. But I do not think so. Into his lonely laboratory, with this marauder, had come the wisdom that men must wait, that the time is not yet for such power as he was about to offer. A gesture, his strange death, which you who read this have seen? Yes, but a useful one, for with it he and his invention and its hurtful secrets go from you; and a fitting one, for he dies through his achievement, through his very life.

But, in a better sense, he will not die, for the power of his achievement will dissolve his very body among you infinitely; you will breathe him in your air; and in you he will live incarnate until that later time when another will give you the knowledge he now destroys, and he will see it used as he wished it used.--E. W.

* * * * *

The sergeant's voice ceased, and wordlessly the men in the laboratory looked at each other. No comment was needed. They went out.

They watched from the steps of Edgar Wesley's house. At first sight of the figure in the sky, a new awe struck them, for now the shape of the giant towered a full five hundred feet into the sun, and it seemed almost a mirage, for definite outline was gone from it. It shimmered and wavered against the bright blue like a mist, and the blue shone through it, for it was quite transparent. And yet still they imagined they could discern the slight ironic smile on the face, and the peaceful, understanding light in the serene eyes; and their hearts swelled at the knowledge of the spirit, of the courage, of the fine, far-seeing mind of that outflung titanic martyr to the happiness of men.

The end came quickly. The great misty body rose; it floated over the city like a wraith, and then it swiftly dispersed, even as steam dissolves in the air. They felt a silence over the thousands of watching people in the Square, a hush broken at last by a deep, low murmur of awe and wonderment as the final misty fragments of the vast sky-held figure wavered and melted imperceptibly--melted and were gone from sight in the air that was breathed by the men whom Edgar Wesley loved.

Contents

MONSTERS OF MARS

By Edmond Hamilton

Three Martian-duped Earth-men swing open the gates of space that for so long had barred the greedy hordes of the Red Planet.

Allan Randall stared at the man before him. "And that's why you sent for me, Milton?" he finally asked.

The other's face was unsmiling. "That's why I sent for you, Allan," he said quietly. "To go to Mars with us to-night!"

There was a moment's silence, in which Randall's eyes moved as though uncomprehendingly from the face of Milton to those of the two men beside him. The four sat together at the end of a roughly furnished and electric-lit living-room, and in that momentary silence there came in to them from the outside night the distant pounding of the Atlantic upon the beach. It was Randall who first spoke again.

"To Mars!" he repeated. "Have you gone crazy, Milton--or is this some joke you've put up with Lanier and Nelson here?"

Milton shook his head gravely. "It is not a joke, Allan. Lanier and I are actually going to flash out over the gulf to the planet Mars to-night. Nelson must stay here, and since we wanted three to go I wired you as the most likely of my friends to make the venture."

"But good God!" Randall exploded, rising. "You, Milton, as a physicist ought to know better. Space-ships and projectiles and all that are but fictionists' dreams."

"We are not going in either space-ship or projectile," said Milton calmly. And then as he saw his friend's bewilderment he rose and led the way to a door at the room's end, the other three following him into the room beyond.

* * * * *

It was a long laboratory of unusual size in which Randall found himself, one in which every variety of physical and electrical apparatus seemed represented. Three huge dynamo-motor arrangements took up the room's far end, and from them a tangle of wiring led through square black condensers and transformers to a battery of great tubes. Most remarkable, though, was the object at the room's center.

It was like a great double cube of dull metal, being in effect two metal cubes each twelve feet square, supported a few feet above the floor by insulated standards. One side of each cube was open, exposing the hollow interiors of the two cubical chambers. Other wiring led from the big electronic tubes and from the dynamos to the sides of the two cubes.

The four men gazed at the enigmatic thing for a time in silence. Milton's strong, capable face showed only in its steady eyes what feelings were his, but Lanier's younger countenance was alight with excitement; and so too to some degree was that of Nelson. Randall simply stared at the thing, until Milton nodded toward it.

"That," he said, "is what will flash us out to Mars to-night."

Randall could only turn his stare upon the other, and Lanier chuckled. "Can't take it in yet, Randall? Well, neither could I when the idea was first sprung on us."

* * * * *

Milton nodded to seats behind them, and as the half-dazed Randall sank into one the physicist faced him earnestly.

"Randall, there isn't much time now, but I am going to tell you what I have been doing in the last two years on this God-forsaken Maine coast. I have been for those two years in unbroken communication by radio with beings on the planet Mars!

"It was when I still held my physics professorship back at the university that I got first onto the track of the thing. I was studying the variation of static vibrations, and in so doing caught steady signals--not static--at an unprecedentedly high wave-length. They were dots and dashes of varying length in an entirely unintelligible code, the same arrangement of them being sent out apparently every few hours.

"I began to study them and soon ascertained that they could be sent out by no station on earth. The signals seemed to be growing louder each day, and it suddenly occurred to me that Mars was approaching opposition with earth! I was startled, and kept careful watch. On the day that Mars was closest the earth the signals were loudest. Thereafter, as the red planet receded, they grew weaker. The signals were from some being or beings on Mars!

"At first I was going to give the news to the world, but saw in time that I could not. There was not sufficient proof, and a premature statement would only wreck my own scientific reputation. So I decided to study the signals farther until I had irrefutable proof, and to answer them if possible. I came up here and had this place built, and the aerial towers and other equipment I wanted set up. Lanier and Nelson came with me from the university, and we began our work.

* * * * *

"Our chief object was to answer those signals, but it proved heartbreaking work at first. We could not produce a radio wave of great enough length to pierce out through earth's insulating layer and across the gulf to Mars. We used all the power of our great windmill-dynamo hook-ups, but for long could not make it. Every few hours like clockwork the Martian signals came through. Then at last we heard them repeating one of our own signals. We had been heard!

"For a time we hardly left our instruments. We began the slow and almost impossible work of establishing intelligent communication with the Martians. It was with numbers we began. Earth is the third planet from the sun and Mars the fourth, so three represented earth and four stood for Mars. Slowly we felt our way to an exchange of ideas, and within months were in steady and intelligent communication with them.

"They asked us first concerning earth, its climates and seas and continents, and concerning ourselves, our races and mechanisms and weapons. Much information we flashed out to them, the language of our communication being English, the elements, of which they had learned, with a mixture of numbers and symbolical dot-dash signals.

"We were as eager to learn about them. They were somewhat reticent, we found, concerning their planet and themselves. They admitted that their world was a dying one and that their great canals were to make life possible on it, and also admitted that they were different in bodily form from ourselves.

"They told us finally that communication like this was too ineffective to give us a clear picture of their world, or vice versa. If we could visit Mars, and then they visit earth, both worlds would benefit by the knowledge of the other. It seemed impossible to me, though I was eager enough for it. But the Martians said that while spaceships and the like were impossible, there was a way by which living beings could flash from earth to Mars and back by radio waves, even as our signals flashed!"

* * * * *

Randall broke in in amazement. "By radio!" he exclaimed, and Milton nodded.

"Yes, so they said, nor did the idea of sending matter by radio seem too insane, after all. We send sound, music by radio waves across half the world from our broadcasting stations. We send light, pictures, across the world from our television stations. We do that by changing the wave length of the light-vibrations to make them radio vibrations, flashing them out thus over the world, to receivers which alter their wave-lengths again and change them back into light-vibrations.

"Why then could not matter be sent in the same way? Matter, it has been long believed, is but another vibration of the ether, like light and radiant heat and radio vibrations and the like, having a lower wave-length than any of the others. Suppose we take matter and by applying electrical force to it change its wave-length, step it up to the wave-length of radio vibrations? Then those vibrations can be flashed forth from the sending station to a special receiver that will step them down again from radio vibrations to matter vibrations. Thus matter, living or non-living, could be flashed tremendous distances in a second!

* * * * *

"This the Martians told us, and said they would set up a matter-transmitter and receiver on Mars and would aid and instruct us so that we could set up a similar transmitter and receiver here. Then part of us could be flashed out to Mars as radio vibrations by the transmitter, and in moments would have flashed across the gulf to the red planet and would be transformed back from radio vibrations to matter-vibrations by the receiver awaiting us there!

"Naturally we agreed enthusiastically to build such a matter-transmitter and receiver, and then, with their instructions signalled to us constantly, started the work. Weeks it took, but at last, only yesterday, we finished it. The thing's two cubical chambers are one for the transmitting of matter and the other for its reception. At a time agreed on yesterday we tested the thing, placing a guinea pig in the transmitting chamber and turning on the actuating force. Instantly the animal vanished, and in moments came a signal from the Martians saying that they had received it unharmed in their receiving chamber.

"Then we tested it the other way, they sending the same guinea pig to us, and in moments it flashed into being in our receiving chamber. Of course the step-down force in the receiving chamber had to be in operation, since had it not been at that moment the radio-vibrations of the animal would have simply flashed on endlessly in endless space. And the same would happen to any of us were we flashed forth and no receiving chamber turned on to receive us.

"We signalled the Martians that all tests were satisfactory, and told them that on the next night at exactly midnight by our time we would flash out ourselves on our first visit to them. They have promised to have their receiving chamber operating to receive us at that moment, of course, and it is my plan to stay there twenty-four hours, gathering ample proofs of our visit, and then flash back to earth.

"Nelson must stay here, not only to flash us forth to-night, but above all to have the receiving chamber operating to receive us at the destined moment twenty-four hours later. The force required to operate it is too great to use for more than a few minutes at a time, so it is necessary above all that that force be turned on and the receiving chamber ready for us at the moment we flash back. And since Nelson must stay, and Lanier and I wanted another, we wired you, Randall, in the hope that you would want to go with us on this venture. And do you?"

* * * * *

As Milton's question hung, Randall drew a long breath. His eyes were on the two great cubical chambers, and his brain seemed whirling at what he had heard. Then he was on his feet with the others.

"Go? Could you keep me from going? Why, man, it's the greatest adventure in history!"

Milton grasped his hand, as did Lanier, and then the physicist shot a glance at the square clock on the wall. "Well, there's little enough time left us," he said, "for we've hardly an hour before midnight, and at midnight we must be in that transmitting chamber for Nelson to send us flashing out!"

Randall could never recall but dimly afterward how that tense hour passed. It was an hour in which Milton and Nelson went with anxious faces and low-voiced comments from one to another of the pieces of apparatus in the room, inspecting each carefully, from the great dynamos to the transmitting and receiving chambers, while Lanier quickly got out and made ready the rough khaki suits and equipment they were to take.

It lacked but a quarter-hour of midnight when they had finally donned those suits, each making sure that he was in possession of the small personal kit Milton had designated. This included for each a heavy automatic, a small supply of concentrated foods, and a small case of drugs chosen to counteract the rarer atmosphere and lesser gravity which Milton had been warned to expect on the red planet. Each had also a strong wrist-watch, the three synchronized exactly with the big laboratory clock.

* * * * *

When they had finished checking up on this equipment the clock's longer hand pointed almost to the figure twelve, and the physicist gestured expressively toward the transmitting chamber. Lanier, though, strode for a moment to one of the laboratory's doors and flung it open. As Randall gazed out with him they could see far out over the tossing sea, dimly lit by the great canopy of the summer stars overhead. Right at the zenith among those stars shone brightest a crimson spark.

"Mars," said Lanier, his voice a half-whisper. "And they're waiting out there for us now--out there where we'll be in minutes!"

"And if they shouldn't be waiting--their receiving chamber not ready--"

But Milton's calm voice came across the room to them: "Zero hour," he said, stepping up into the big transmitting chamber.

Lanier and Randall slowly followed, and despite himself a slight shudder shook the latter's body as he stepped into the mechanism that in moments would send him flashing out through the great void as impalpable ether-vibrations. Milton and Lanier were standing silent beside him, their eyes on Nelson, who stood watchfully now at the big switchboard beside the chambers, his own gaze on the clock. They saw him touch a stud, and another, and the hum of the great dynamos at the room's end grew loud as the swarming of angry bees.

The clock's longer hand was crawling over the last space to cover the smaller hand. Nelson turned a knob and the battery of great glass tubes broke into brilliant white light, a crackling coming from them. Randall saw the clock's pointer clicking over the last divisions, and as he saw Nelson grip a great switch there came over him a wild impulse to bolt from the transmitting chamber. But then as his thoughts whirled maelstromlike there came a clang from the clock and Nelson flung down the switch in his grasp. Blinding light seemed to break from all the chamber onto the three; Randall felt himself hurled into nothingness by forces titanic, inconceivable, and then knew no more.

* * * * *

Randall came back to consciousness with a humming sound in his ears and with a sharp pain piercing his lungs at every breath. He felt himself lying on a smooth hard surface, and heard the humming stop and be succeeded by a complete silence. He opened his eyes, drawing himself to his feet as Milton and Lanier were doing, and stared about him.

He was standing with his two friends inside a cubical metal chamber almost exactly the same as the one they had occupied in Milton's laboratory a few moments before. But it was not the same, as their first astounded glance out through its open side told them.

For it was not the laboratory that lay around them, but a vast conelike hall that seemed to Randall's dazed eyes of dimensions illimitable. Its dull-gleaming metal walls slanted up for a thousand feet over their heads, and through a round aperture at the tip far above and through great doors in the walls came a thin sunlight. At the center of the great hall's circular floor stood the two cubical chambers in one of which the three were, while around the chambers were grouped masses of unfamiliar-looking apparatus.

* * * * *

To Randall's untrained eyes it seemed electrical apparatus of very strange design, but neither he nor Milton nor Lanier paid it but small attention in that first breathless moment. They were gazing in fascinated horror at the scores of creatures who stood silent amid the apparatus and at its switches, gazing back at them. Those creatures were erect and roughly man-like in shape, but they were not human men. They were--the thought blasted to Randall's brain in that horror-filled moment--crocodile-men.

Crocodile-men! It was only so that he could think of them in that moment. For they were terribly like great crocodile shapes that had learned in some way to carry themselves erect upon their hinder limbs. The bodies were not covered with skin, but with green bony plates. The limbs, thick and taloned at their paw-ends, seemed greater in size and stronger, the upper two great arms and the lower two the legs upon which each walked, while there was but the suggestion of a tail. But the flat head set on the neckless body was most crocodilian of all, with great fanged, hinged jaws projecting forward, and with dark unwinking eyes set back in bony sockets.

Each of the creatures wore on his torso a gleaming garment like a coat of metal scales, with metal belts in which some had shining tubes. They were standing in groups here and there about the mechanisms, the nearest group at a strange big switch-panel not a half-dozen feet from the three men. Milton and Lanier and Randall returned in a tense silence the unwinking stare of the monstrous beings around them.

"The Martians!" Lanier's horror-filled exclamation was echoed in the next instant by Randall's.

"The Martians! God, Milton! They're not like anything we know--they're reptilian!"

* * * * *

Milton's hand clutched his shoulder. "Steady, Randall," he muttered. "They're terrible enough, God knows--but remember we must seem just as grotesque to them."

The sound of their voices seemed to break the great hall's spell of silence, and they saw the crocodilian Martians before them turning and speaking swiftly to each other in low hissing speech-sounds that were quite unintelligible to the three. Then from the small group nearest them one came forward, until he stood just outside the chamber in which they were.

Randall felt dimly the momentousness of the moment, in which beings of earth and Mars were confronting each other for the first time in the solar system's history. The creature before them opened his great jaws and uttered slowly a succession of sounds that for the moment puzzled them, so different were they from the hissing speech of the others, though with the same sibilance of tone. Again the thing repeated the sounds, and this time Milton uttered an exclamation.

"He's speaking to us!" he cried. "Trying to speak the English that I taught them in our communication! I caught a word--listen...."

As the creature repeated the sounds, Randall and Lanier started to hear also vaguely expressed in that hissing voice familiar words: "You--are Milton and--others from--earth?"

Milton spoke very clearly and slowly to the creature: "We are those from earth," he said. "And you are the Martians with whom we have communicated?"

"We are those Martians," said the other's hissing voice slowly. "These"--he waved a taloned paw toward those behind him--"have charge of the matter-transmitter and receiver. I am of our ruler's council."

"Ruler?" Milton repeated. "A ruler of all Mars?"

"Of all Mars," the other said. "Our name for him would mean in your words the Martian Master. I am to take you to him."

* * * * *

Milton turned to the other two with face alight with excitement. "These Martians have some supreme ruler they call the Martian Master," he said quickly; "and we're to go before him. As the first visitors from earth we're of immense importance here."

As he spoke, the Martian official before them had uttered a hissing call, and in answer to it a long shape of shining metal raced into the vast hall and halted beside them. It was like a fifty-foot centipede of metal, its scores of supporting short legs actuated by some mechanism inside the cylindrical body. There was a transparent-walled control room at the front end of that body, and in it a Martian at the controls who snapped open a door from which a metal ladder automatically descended.

The Martian official gestured with a reptilian arm toward the ladder, and Milton and Lanier and Randall moved carefully out of the cube-chamber and across the floor to it, each of their steps being made a short leap forward by the lesser gravity of the smaller planet. They climbed up into the centipede-machine's control room, their guide following, and then as the door snapped shut, the operator of the thing pulled and turned the knob in his grasp and the long machine scuttled forward with amazing smoothness and speed.

In a moment it was out of the building and into the feeble sunlight of a broad metal-paved street. About them lay a Martian city, seen by their eager eyes for the first time. It was a city whose structures were giant metal cones like that from which they had just come, though none seemed as large as that titanic one. Throngs of the hideous crocodilian Martians were moving busily to and fro in the streets, while among them there scuttled and flashed numbers of the centipede-machines.

* * * * *

As their strange vehicle raced along, Randall saw that the conelike structures were for the most part divided into many levels, and that inside some could be glimpsed ranks of great mechanisms and hurrying Martians tending them. Away to their right across the vast forest of cones that was the city the sun's little disk was shining, and he glimpsed in that direction higher ground covered with a vast tangle of bright crimson jungle that sloped upward from a great, half-glimpsed waterway.

The Martian beside them saw the direction of his gaze and leaned toward him. "No Martians live there," he hissed slowly. "Martians live only in cities where canals meet."

"Then there's no life in those crimson jungles?" Randall asked, repeating the question a moment later more slowly.

"No Martians there, but life--living things," the other told him, searching for words. "But not intelligent, like Martians and you."

He turned to gaze ahead, then pointed. "The Martian Master's cone," he hissed.

The three saw that at the end of the broad metal street down which their vehicle was racing there loomed another titanic cone-structure, fully as large as the mighty one in which they first found themselves. As the centipede-machine swept up to its great door-opening and halted, they descended to the metal paving and then followed their reptilian guide through the opening.

* * * * *

They found themselves in a great hall in which scores of the Martians were coming and going. At the hall's end stood a row of what seemed guards, Martians grasping shining tubes such as they had already glimpsed. These gave way to allow their passage when their conductor uttered a hissing order, and then they were moving down a shorter hall at whose end also were guards. As these sprang aside before them, a great door of massive metal they guarded moved softly upward, disclosing a mighty circular hall or room inside. Their crocodilian guide turned to them.

"The hall of the Martian Master," he hissed.

They passed inside with him. The great hall seemed to extend upward to the giant cone's tip, thin light coming down from an opening there. Upon the dull metal of its looming walls were running friezes of lighter metal, grotesque representations of reptilian shapes that they could but vaguely glimpse. Around the walls stood rank after rank of guards.

At the hall's center was a low dias, and in a semicircle around and behind it stood a half-hundred great crocodilian shapes. Randall guessed even at the moment that they were the council of which their conductor had named himself a member. But like Milton and Lanier, he had eyes in that first moment only for the dais itself. For on it was--the Martian Master.

Randall heard Milton and Lanier choke with the horror that shook his own heart and brain as he gazed. It was not simply another great crocodilian shape that sat upon that dais. It was a monstrous thing formed by the joining of three of the great reptilian bodies! Three distinct crocodile-like bodies sitting close together upon a metal seat, that had but a single great head. A great, grotesque crocodilian head that bulged backward and to either side, and that rested on the three thick short necks that rose from the triple body! And that head, that triple-bodied thing, was living, its unwinking eyes gazing at the three men!

* * * * *

The Martian Master! Randall felt his brain reel as he gazed at that mind-shattering thing. The Martian Master--this great head with three bodies! Reason told Randall, even as he strove for sanity, that the thing was but logical, that even on earth biologists had formed multiple-headed creatures by surgery, and that the Martians had done so to combine in one great head, one great brain, the brains of three bodies. Reason told him that the great triple brain inside that bulging head needed the bloodstreams of all three bodies to nourish it, must be a giant intellect indeed, one fitted to be the supreme Martian Master. But reason could not overcome the horror that choked him as he gazed at the awful thing.

A hissing voice sounding before him made him aware that the Martian Master was speaking.

"You are the Earth-beings with whom we communicated, and whom we instructed to build a matter-transmitter and receiver on earth?" the slow voice asked. "You have come safely to Mars by means of that station?"

"We have come safely." Milton's voice was shaken and he could find no other words.

"That is well. Long had we desired to have such a station built on earth, since with it there to flash back and forth between the two worlds is easy. You have come, then, to learn of this world and to take back what you learn to your races?"

"That is why we came." Milton said, more steadily. "We want to stay only hours on this first visit, and then flash back to earth as we came."

* * * * *

The head's awful eyes seemed to consider them. "But when do you intend to go back?" its strange voice asked. "Unless the one at your earth station has its receiver operating at the right moment you will simply flash on endlessly as radio waves--will be annihilated."

Milton found the courage to smile. "We started from earth at our midnight exactly, and at midnight exactly twenty-four earth hours later, we are to flash back and the receiver will be awaiting us."

There was silence when he had said that, a silence that seemed to Randall's strained mind to have become suddenly tense, sinister. The great triple-bodied creature before them considered them again, its eyes moving over them, and when it again spoke the hissing words came very slowly.

"Twenty-four earth hours," it said; "and then your receiver on earth will be awaiting you. That time we can measure to the moment, and that is well. For it is not you three Earth-beings who will flash back to earth when that moment comes! It will be Martians, the first of our Martian masses who have waited for ages for that moment and who will begin then our conquest of the earth!

"Yes, Earth-beings, our great plan comes to its end now at last! At last! Age on age, prisoned on this dying, arid world, we have desired the earth that by right of power shall be ours, have sought for ages to communicate with its beings. You finally heard us, you hearkened to us, you built the matter-transmitting and receiving station on earth that was the one thing needed for our plan. For when the matter-receiver of that station is turned on in twenty-four of your hours, and ready to receive matter flashes from here, it will be the first of our millions who will flash at last to earth!

"I, the Martian Master, say it. Those first to go shall seize that matter-receiver on earth when first they appear there, shall build other and larger receivers, and through them within days all our Martian hordes shall have been flashed to earth! Shall have poured out over it and conquered with our weapons your weak races of Earth-beings, who cannot stand before us, and whose world you have delivered at last into our hands!"

For a moment, when the great monster's hissing voice had ceased, Milton and Randall and Lanier gazed toward it as though petrified, the whole unearthly scene spinning about them. And then, through the thick silence, the thin sound of Milton's voice:

"Our world--our earth--delivered to the Martians, and by us! God--no!"

With that last cry of agonized comprehension and horror, Milton did what surely had never any in the great hall expected, leaped onto the dais with a single spring toward the Martian Master! Randall heard a hundred wild hissing cries break from about him, saw the crocodilian forms of guards and council rushing forward even as he and Lanier sprang after Milton, and then glimpsed shining tubes levelled from which brilliant shafts of dazzling crimson light or force were stabbing toward them!

* * * * *

To Randall the moment that followed was but a split-second flash and whirl of action. As his earthly muscles took him forward with Lanier after Milton in a great leap to the dais, he was aware of the brilliant red rays stabbing behind him closely, and knew that only the tremendous size of his leap had taken him past them. In the succeeding instant he was made aware of what he had escaped, for the hastily-loosed rays struck squarely a group of three or four Martian guards rushing to the dais from the opposite side, and they vanished from view with a sharp detonation as though clicked out of existence!

Randall was not to know then, that the red rays were ones that annihilated matter by neutralizing or damping the matter-vibrations in the ether. But he did know that no more rays were loosed, for by then he and Milton and Lanier were on the dais and were wrapped in a hurricane combat with the guards that had rushed between them and the Martian Master.

Gleaming fangs--great scaled forms--reaching talons--it was all a wild phantasmagoria of grotesque forms spinning around him as he struck with all the power of his earthly muscles and felt crocodilian forms staggering and going down beneath his frenzied blows. He heard the roar of an automatic close beside him in the melee as Milton remembered at last through the red haze of his fury the weapon he carried, but before either Randall or Lanier could reach their own weapons a new wave of crocodilian forms had poured onto them that by sheer pressing weight held them helpless, to be disarmed.

* * * * *

Hissing orders sounded, the arms and legs of the three were tightly grasped by great taloned paws, and the masses of Martians about them melted back from the dais. Held each by two great creatures, Milton and Randall and Lanier faced again the triple-bodied Martian Master, who in all that wild moment of struggle appeared not to have changed his position. The big monster's black eyes stared unmovedly down at them.

"You Earth-beings seem of lower intelligence even than we thought," his hissing voice informed them. "And those weapons--crude, very crude."

Milton, his face set, spoke back: "It may be that you will find human weapons of some power if your hordes reach earth," he said.

"But what compared with the power of ours?" the other asked coldly. "And since our scientists even now devise new weapons to annihilate the earth's races, I think they would be glad of three of those races to experiment with now. The one use we can make of you, certainly."

The creature turned its bulging head a little towards the guards who held the three men, and uttered a brief hissing order. Instantly the six Martians, grasping the three tightly, marched them across the great hall and through a different door than that by which they had entered.

They were taken down a narrow corridor that turned sharply twice as they went on. Randall saw that it was lit by squares inset in the walls that glowed with crimson light. It came to him as they marched on that night must be upon the Martian city without, since the sun had been sinking when they had crossed it in the centipede-machine.

* * * * *

Through what seemed an ante-room they were taken, and then into a long hall instantly recognizable as a laboratory. There were many glowing squares illuminating it, and narrow windows high in the wall gave them a glimpse of the city outside, a pattern of crimson lights. Long metal tables and racks filled the big room's farther end, while along the walls were ranged shining mechanisms of unfamiliar and grotesque appearance. Fully a score of the crocodilian Martians were busy in the room, some intent on their work at the racks and tables, others operating some of the strange machines.

The guards conducted the three to an open space by the wall, below one of the high window-openings and between two great cylindrical mechanisms. Then, while five of their number held the three men prisoned in that space by the threat of their levelled ray-tubes, the other moved toward one of the busy Martian scientists and held with him a brief interchange of hissing speech.

Milton leaned to whisper to the other two: "We've got to get out of this while we're still living," he whispered. "You heard the Martian Master--in constructing that matter-receiver on earth, we've opened a door through which all the Martian millions will pour onto our world!"

"It's useless, Milton," said Randall dully. "Even if we got clear of this the Martians will be at their matter-transmitter in hordes when the moment comes to flash back to earth."

"I know that, but we've got to try," the other insisted. "If we or some of us could get clear of this, we might in some way hide near the matter-transmitter until the moment came and then fight to it."

"But how to get out of the hands of these, even?" asked Lanier, nodding toward the alert guards before them.

* * * * *

"There's but one way," Milton whispered swiftly. "Our earthly muscles would enable us, I think, to get through this window-opening above us in a leap, if we had a moment's chance. Well, whichever of us they take to experiment with or examine first, must make a struggle or disturbance that will turn the guards' attention for a moment and give the other two a chance to make the attempt!"

"One to stay and the other two to get away...." Randall said slowly; but Milton's tense whisper interrupted:

"It's the only way, and even then a thousand to one chance! But it's we who have opened this gate for the Martian invasion of our world and it's we who must--"

Before he could finish, the approach of hissing voices told them that the leader of the six guards and the Martian who seemed the chief of the experimenters in the hall were nearing them. The three men stood silent and tense as the two crocodilian monsters stopped before them. The scientist, who carried in his metal-belt, instead of a ray-tube a compact case of instruments, surveyed them as though in curiosity.

He came closer, his quick reptilian eyes taking in with evident interest every feature of their bodily appearance. Intuitively the three knew that one of them was to be chosen for a first investigation by the Martian scientists, and that that one would have not even the slender hope of escape open to the other two. A strange lottery of life and death!

* * * * *

Randall saw the creature's gaze turn from one to another of them, and then heard the hiss of his voice as he pointed a taloned paw toward Milton. Instantly two of the guards had seized Milton and had jerked him out from the wall, the other guards holding back Randall and Lanier with threatening tubes. It was upon Milton that the fatal choice had fallen!

Randall and Lanier made together a half-movement forward, but Milton, a tense message in his eyes, forced them back. The guards who held the physicist led him, at the direction of the Martian scientist, toward a great upright frame at the room's far end, upon which were clustered a score of dial-indicators. From these flexible cords led; and now the scientists began attaching these by clips to various spots on Milton's body. Some mechanical examination of his bodily characteristics were apparently to be made. Milton shot suddenly a glance at the two by the wall, and his head nodded in an almost imperceptible signal. The muscles of Lanier and Randall tensed.

Then abruptly Milton seemed to go mad. He shouted aloud in a terrible voice, and at the same moment tore from him the cords just attached, his fists striking out then at the amazed Martians around him. As they leaped back from that sudden explosion of activity and sound on Milton's part the guards before Randall and Lanier whirled instinctively for an instant toward it. And in that instant the two had leaped.

* * * * *

It was upward they leaped, with all the force of their earthly muscles, toward the big window-opening a half-dozen feet in the wall above them. Like released steel springs they sat up, and Randall heard the thump of their feet as they struck the opening's sill, heard wild cries suddenly coming from beneath them, as the guards turned back toward them. Crimson rays clove up like light toward them, but the instant's surprise had been enough, and in it they had leaped on and through the opening, into the outside night!

As they shot downward and struck the metal paving outside, Randall heard a wild babble of cries from inside. A moment he and Lanier gazed frenziedly around them, then were running with great leaps along the base of the building from which they had just escaped.

In the darkness of night the Martian city stretched away to their right, its massive dark cone-structures outlined by points of glowing ruddy light here and there upon them. Beside the city's metal streets were illuminated by the brilliant field of stars overhead and by the soft light of the two moons, one much larger than the other, that moved among those stars.

Along the street crocodilian Martians were coming and going still, though in small numbers, there being but few in sight in the dim-lit street's length. Lanier pointed ahead as they leaped onward.

"Straight onward, Randall!" he jerked. "There seem fewer of the Martians this way!"

"But the great cone of the matter-station is the other way!" Randall exclaimed.

"We can't risk making for it now!" cried the other. "We've got to keep clear of them until the alarm is over. Hear them now?"

For even as they leaped forward a rising clamor of hissing cries and rush of feet was coming from behind as scores of Martians poured out into the darkness from the great cone-building. The two fugitives had passed by then from the shadow of the mighty structure, and as they ran along the broad metal street toward the shadow of the next cone, through the light of the moons above, they heard higher cries and then glimpsed narrow shafts of crimson force cleaving the night around them.

* * * * *

Randall, as the deadly rays drove past him, heard the low detonating sound made by their destruction of the air in their path, and the inrush of new air. But in the misty and uncertain moonlight the rays could not be loosed accurately, and before they could be swept sidewise to annihilate the two fleeing men they had gained, with a last great leap, the shadow of the next building.

On they ran, the clatter of the Martian pursuit growing more noisy behind them. Randall heard Lanier gasping with each great leap, and felt himself at every breath a knife of pain stabbing through his lungs, the rarified atmosphere of the red planet taking its toll. Again from the darkness behind them the crimson rays clove, but this time were wide of their mark.

With every moment the clamor of pursuit seemed growing louder, the alarm spreading out over the Martian city and arousing it. As they raced past cone after cone, Randall knew even the increased power of their muscles could not long aid them against the exhaustion which the thin air was imposing on them. His thoughts spun for a moment to Milton, in the laboratory behind, and then back to their own desperate plight.

Abruptly shapes loomed in the misty light before them! A group of three great Martians, reptilian shapes that had been coming toward them and had stopped for an instant in amazement at sight of the running pair. There was no time to halt themselves, to evade the three, and with a mutual instinct Lanier and Randall seized together the last expedient open to them. They ran straight forward toward the astounded three, and when a half-score feet from them, leaped with all their force upward and toward them, their tensed bodies flying through the air with feet outstretched before them.

Then they had struck the group of three with feet-foremost, and with the impetus of that great leap had knocked them sprawling to this side and that, while with a supreme effort the two kept their balance and leaped on. The cries of the three added to the din behind them as they threw themselves forward.

* * * * *

They flung themselves past a last cone building to halt for an instant in utter amazement despite the nearing pursuit. Before them were no more streets and structures, but a huge smooth-flowing waterway! It gleamed in the moonlight and lay at right angles across their path, seeming to flow along the Martian city's edge.

"A canal!" cried Lanier. "It's one of the canals that meet at this city and flow around it! We're trapped--we've reached the city's edge!"

"Not yet!" Randall gasped. "Look!"

As he pointed to the left Lanier shot a glance there; and then both of them were running in that direction, along the smooth metal paving that bordered the mighty canal. They came to what Randall had seen, a mighty metal arch that soared out over the waterway to its opposite side. A bridge!

They were on it, were racing up the smooth incline of it. Randall glanced back as they reached the arch's summit. From that height the city stretched far away behind them, a lace of crimson lights in the night. He glimpsed the gleam of the giant waterway that encircled the city completely, one that was fed by other canals from far away that emptied into it, the great city's vital water-supply brought thus from this world's melting polar snows.

There were moving lights behind now, too, pouring out onto the metal paving by the waterway, moving to and fro as though in confusion, with a babel of hissing cries. It was not until Randall and Lanier were running down the descending incline of the great arched bridge, though, that the lights and shouts of their pursuers began to move up on that bridge after them.

* * * * *

Running off the bridge's smooth way, the two found themselves stumbling on through the darkness over more metal paving, and then over soft ground. There were no lights or buildings or sounds of any sort on this farther side of the great waterway. A tall dark wall seemed suddenly to loom up out of the darkness some distance ahead of the two.

"The crimson jungle!" Randall cried. "The jungles we glimpsed from the city! It's a chance to hide!"

They raced toward the protecting blackness of that wall of vegetation. They reached it, flung themselves inside, just as the pursuing Martians, a mass of running crocodilian shapes and of great racing centipede-machines, swept up over the bridge's arch behind. A moment the two halted in the thick vegetation's shelter, gasping for breath, then were moving forward through the jungle's denser darkness.

Thick about them and far above them towered the masses of strange trees and plant life through which they made their way. Randall could see but dimly the nature of these plant-forms, but could make out that they were grotesque and unearthly in appearance, all leafless, and with masses of thin tendrils branching from them instead of leaves. He realized that it was only beside the arid planet's great canals that this profusion of plant life had sufficient moisture for existence, and that it was the broad bands of jungle bordering the canals that had made the latter visible to earth's astronomers.

* * * * *

Lanier and he halted for a moment to listen. The thick jungle about them seemed quite silent. But from behind there came through it a vague tumult of hissing calls; and then, as they glimpsed red flashes far behind, they heard the crashing of great masses of the leafless trees.

"The rays!" whispered Lanier. "They're beating through the jungle with them and the centipede-machines after us!"

They paused no more, but pushed on through the thick growths with renewed urgency. Now and then, as they passed through small clearings, Randall glimpsed overhead the fast-moving nearer moon and slower sailing farther moon of Mars, moving across the steady stars. In some of these clearings they saw, too, strange great openings burrowed in the ground as though by some strange animal.

The crashing clamor of the Martians beating the jungle behind was coming close, ever closer, and as they came to still another misty-lit clearing, Lanier paused, with face white and tense.

"They're closing in on us!" he said. "They're hunting us down by beating the jungle with those centipede-machines, and even if we escape them we're getting farther from the city and the matter-station each moment!"

Randall's eyes roved desperately around the clearing; and then, as they fell on a group of the great burrowed openings that seemed present everywhere about them, he uttered an exclamation.

"These holes! We can hide in one until they've passed over us, and then steal back to the city!"

Lanier's eyes lit. "It's a chance!"

* * * * *

They sprang toward the openings. They were each of some four feet diameter, extending indefinitely downward as though the mouths of tunnels. In a moment Randall was lowering himself into one, Lanier after him. The tunnel in which they were, they found, curved to one side a few feet below the surface. They crawled down this curve until they were out of sight of the opening above. They crouched silent, then, listening.

There came down to them the dull, distant clamor of the centipede-machines crashing through the jungle, cutting a way with rays, their clamor growing ever louder. Then Randall, who was lowest in the tunnel, turned suddenly as there came to him a strange rustling sound from beneath him. It was as though some crawling or creeping thing was moving in the tunnel below them!

He grasped the arm of Lanier, beside and a little above him, to warn him, but the words he was about to whisper never were uttered. For at this moment a big shapeless living thing seemed to flash up toward them through the darkness from beneath, cold ropelike tentacles gripped both tightly; and then in an instant they were being dragged irresistibly down into the lightless tunnel's depths!

* * * * *

As they were pulled swiftly downward into the tunnel by the tentacles that grasped them an involuntary cry of horror came from Randall and Lanier alike. They twisted frantically in the cold grip that held them, but found it of the quality of steel. And as Randall twisted in it to strike frantically down through the darkness at whatever thing of horror held them, his clenched fist met but the cold smooth skin of some big, soft-bodied creature!

Down--down--remorselessly they were being drawn farther into the black depths of the tunnel by the great thing crawling down below them. Again and again the two twisted and struck, but could not shake its hold. In sheer exhaustion they ceased to struggle, dragged helplessly farther down.

Was it minutes or hours, Randall wondered afterward, of that horrible progress downward, that passed before they glimpsed light beneath? A feeble glow, hardly discernible, it was, and as they went lower still he saw that it was caused by the tunnel passing through a strata of radio-active rock that gave off the faint light. In that light they glimpsed for the first time the horror dragging them downward.

It was a huge worm creature! A thing like a giant angleworm, three feet or more in thickness and thrice that in length, its great body soft and cold and worm-like. From the end nearest them projected two long tentacles with which it had gripped the two men and was dragging them down the tunnel after it! Randall glimpsed a mouth-aperture in the tentacled end of the worm body also, and two scarlike marks above it, placed like eyes, although eyes the monstrous thing had not.

* * * * *

But a moment they glimpsed it and then were in darkness again as the tunnel passed through the radio-active strata and lower. The horror of that moment's glimpse, though, made them strike out in blind repulsion, but relentlessly the creature dragged them after it.

"God!" It was Lanier's panting cry as they were dragged on. "This worm monster--we're hundreds of feet below the surface!"

Randall sought to reply, but his voice choked. The air about them was close and damp, with an overpowering earthy smell. He felt consciousness leaving him.

A gleam of soft light--they were passing more radio-active patches. He felt the wild convulsive struggles of Lanier against the thing; and then suddenly the tunnel ended, debouched into a far-stretching, low-ceilinged cavity. It was feebly illuminated by radio-active patches here and there in walls and ceiling, and as the monster that held them halted on entering the cavity, Randall and Lanier lay in its grip and stared across the weird place with intensified horror.

For it was swarming with countless worm monsters! All were like the one who held them, thick long worm bodies with projecting tentacles and with black eyeless faces. They were crawling to and fro in this cavern far beneath the surface, swarming in hordes around and over each other, pouring in and out of the awful place from countless tunnels that led upward and downward from it!

* * * * *

A world of worm monsters, beneath the surface of the Martian jungles! As Randall stared across that swarming, dim-lit cave of horror, physically sick at sight of it, he remembered the countless tunnel openings they had glimpsed in their flight through the jungle, and remembered the remark of the Martian who had first guided them across the city, that in the jungles were living things, of a sort. These were the things, worm monsters whose unthinkable networks of tunnels and burrows formed beneath the surface a veritable worm world!

"Randall!" It was Lanier's thick exclamation. "Randall--those scar-marks on their--faces--you see--?"

"See?"

"Those marks! These creatures had eyes once but must have been forced down here by the Martians. These may once have been--ages ago--human!"

At that thought Randall felt horror overcoming his senses. He was aware that the great worm monster holding them was dragging them forward through the cavern, that others of the swarms there were crowding around them, feeling them blindly with their tentacles, helping to drag them forward.

Half-carried and half-dragged they went, scores of tentacles now holding them, great worm shapes crawling forward on all sides of them and accompanying them along the cavern's length. He glimpsed worm monsters here and there emerging from the upward tunnels with masses of strange plant stuff in their grasp that others blindly devoured. His senses reeled from the suffocating air, the great cavity being but a half-score feet in height, burrowed from the damp earth by these numberless things.

* * * * *

The faint, strange light of the radio-active patches showed him that they were approaching the cavern's end. Tunnels opened from its end as from all its walls and floor, and into one Randall was dragged by the creatures, one before and one behind, grasping him, and Lanier being brought behind him in the same way. In the close tunnel the heavy air was deadly, and he was but partly conscious when again, after moments of crawling along it, he felt himself dragged out into another cavern.

This earth-walled cavity, though, seemed to extend farther than the first, though of the same height as the first and with a few radio-active illuminating patches. In it seethed and swarmed literally hundreds on hundreds of the worm monsters, a sea of great crawling bodies. Randall and Lanier saw that they were being carried and dragged now toward the farther end of this larger cavity.

As they approached it, pushing through the swarming creatures who felt them with inquisitive tentacles as their captors took them forward, the two men saw that a great shape was looming up in the faint light at the cave's far end. In moments they were close enough to discern its nature, and a horror and awe filled them at sight of it more intense than they had yet felt.

For the looming shape was a huge earthen image or statue of a worm! It was shaped with a childish crudeness from the solid earth, a giant earthen worm shape whose body looped across the cave's end, and whose tentacled head or front end was reared upward to the cavity's roof. Before this awful earthen shape was a section of the cave's floor higher than the rest, and on it a great crudely shaped rectangular earthen block.

"Lanier--that shape!" whispered Randall in his horror. "That earthen image, made by these creatures--it's the worm god they've made for themselves!"

"A worm god!" Lanier repeated, staring toward it as they were dragged nearer. "Then that block...."

"Its altar!" Randall exclaimed. "These things have some dim spark of intelligence or memory! They're brought us here to--"

* * * * *

Before he could finish, the clutching tentacles of the worm monsters about them had dragged them up onto the raised floor beside the block, beneath the looming earthen worm shape. There they glimpsed for the first time in the faint light another who stood there held tightly by the tentacles of two worm monsters. It was a Martian!

The big crocodilian shape was apparently a prisoner like themselves, captured and brought down from above. His reptilian eyes surveyed Lanier and Randall quickly as they were dragged up and held beside him, but he took no other interest. To the two men, at the moment, it seemed that his great crocodilian shape was human, almost, so much more man-like was it than the grotesque worm monsters before them.

With a half-dozen of the creatures holding the two men and the Martian tightly, another great worm monster crawled to the edge of the raised earth floor in front of the giant worm god's image, and then reared up the first third of his thick body into the air. By then the great, faint-lit cavity stretching before them was filled with countless numbers of the monsters, pouring into it from all the tunnels that opened into it from above and below, packing it thick with their grotesque bodies as far as the eye could reach in the dim light.

They were seething and crawling in that great mass; but as the worm monster on the elevation upreared, all in the cavity seemed suddenly to quiet. Then the upreared eyeless thing began to move his long tentacles. Very slowly at first he waved them back and forth, and slowly the masses of monsters in the cavity, all turned by some sense toward him, did likewise, the cavity becoming a forest of upraised tentacles waving rhythmically back and forth in unison with those of the leader.

* * * * *

Back and forth--back and forth--Randall felt caught in some torturing nightmare as he watched the countless tentacle-feelers waving thus from one side to the other. It was a ceremony, he knew--some strange rite springing perhaps from dim memory alone, that these worm monsters carried out thus before the looming shape of their worm god. Only the six that held the three captives never relaxed their grip.

Still on and on went the strange and senseless rite. By then the close, damp air of that cavity far beneath Mars' surface was sinking Randall and Lanier deeper into a half-consciousness. The Martian beside them never moved or spoke. The upstretched tentacles of the leader and of the great worm horde before him never ceased swaying rhythmically from side to side.

Randall, half-hypnotized by those swaying tentacles and but semi-conscious by then, could only estimate afterward how long that grotesque rite went on. Hours it must have endured, he knew, hours in which each opening of his eyes revealed only the dimly-illuminated cavern, the worm monsters that filled it, the forest of tentacles waving in unison. It was only toward the end of those hours that he noticed vaguely that the tentacles were waving faster and faster.

And as the tentacles of leader and worm horde waved alike ever more swiftly an atmosphere of growing excitement and expectation seemed to hold the horde. At last the upstretched feelers were whipping back and forth almost too swiftly for the eye to follow. Then abruptly the worm leader ceased the motion himself, and while the horde before him continued it, turned and crawled to the three captives.

* * * * *

In an instant, at though in answer to a second command, the two worm monsters who held the Martian dragged him forward toward the great earthen block before the worm god's image. Two others of the creatures came from the side, and the four swiftly stretched the Martian flat on the block's top, each of the four grasping with their tentacles one of his four taloned limbs. They seemed to hesitate then, the worm leader beside them, the tentacles of the horde waving swiftly still.

Abruptly the tentacles of the leader flashed up as though in a signal. There was a dull ripping sound, and in that moment Randall and Lanier saw the Martian on the block torn literally limb from limb by the four great worm monsters who had held his four limbs!

The tentacles of the horde waved suddenly with increased, excited swiftness at that. Randall shrank in horror.

"They've brought us here for that!" he cried. "To sacrifice us on that altar that way to their worm god!"

But Lanier too had cried out, appalled, as he saw that awful sacrifice, and both strained madly against the grip of the worm creatures. Their struggles were in vain, and then in answer to another unspoken command the two monsters that held Randall were dragging him also to the earthen altar!

He felt himself gripped by the four great creatures around the block, felt as he struggled with his last strength that he was being stretched out on the block, each of the four at one of its corners grasping one of his limbs. He heard Lanier's mad cries as though from a great distance, glimpsed as he was held thus on his back the great shape of the earthen worm god reared over him, and then glimpsed the leader of the monsters rearing beside him.

* * * * *

The dull sound of the swift-waving tentacles of the horde came to him, there was a tense moment of agony of waiting, and then the tentacles of the leader flashed up in the signal!

But at the same moment Randall felt his limbs released by the four monsters that had held them! There seemed sudden wild confusion in the great cave. The strange rite broke off; the horde of worm monsters crawled frantically this way and that in it. Randall slipped off the block; staggered to his feet.

The worm monsters in the cave were swarming toward the downward tunnel openings! The two captives forgotten, the creatures were pouring in crawling, fighting swarms toward those openings. And then, as Randall and Lanier stared stupefied, there came a red flash from one of the upward tunnels and a brilliant crimson ray stabbed down and mowed a path of annihilation in the cave's earthen side!

The two heard great thumping sounds from above, saw the tunnels leading from above becoming suddenly many times greater in size as red rays flashed down along them to gouge the tunnel's walls. Then down from those enlarged tunnels there were bursting long shining shapes, great centipede-machines crawling down the tunnels which their rays made larger before them! And as the centipede-machines burst down into the cavern their crimson rays stabbed right and left to cut paths of annihilation among the worms.

"The Martians!" Lanier cried. "They didn't find us above--they knew we must have been taken by these things--and they've come down after us!"

* * * * *

"Back, Lanier!" Randall shouted. "Quick, before they see us, behind this--"

As he spoke he was jerking Lanier with him behind the looming earthen statue of the great worm god. Crouched there between the statue and the cave's wall they were hidden precariously from the view of those in the cavern. And now that cavern had become a scene of horror unthinkable as the centipede-machines pouring down into it blasted the frantically crawling worm monsters with their rays.

The worm monsters attempted no resistance, but sought only to escape into their downward tunnels, and in moments those not caught by the rays had vanished in the openings. But the centipede-machines, after racing swiftly around the cavity, were following them, were going down into those downward tunnels also, their rays blasting down ahead of each to make the tunnel large enough for them to follow.

In a moment all but one had vanished down into the openings, the remaining one having its front or head jammed in one of the openings from the failure of its operator to blast a large enough opening before him. As Lanier and Randall watched tensely they saw the machine's control room door open and a Martian descend. He inspected the tunnel opening in which his vehicle was jammed, then with a hand ray-tube began to disintegrate the earth around that opening to free his machine.

Randall clutched his companion's arm. "That machine!" he whispered. "If we could capture it, it would give us a chance to get back to the city--to Milton and the matter-transmitter!"

Lanier started, then nodded swiftly. "We'll chance it," he whispered. "For our twenty-four hours here must be almost up."

* * * * *

They hesitated a moment, then crept forward from behind the great earthen statue. The Martian had his back to them, his attention on the freeing of his mechanism. Across the dim-lit cavern they crept softly, and were within a dozen feet of the Martian when some sound made him wheel quickly to confront them with the deadly tube. But even as he whirled the two had leaped.

The force of their leap sent them flying through that dozen feet of space to strike the Martian at the moment his tube levelled. One hissing call he uttered as they struck him, and then with all his strength Lanier had grasped the crocodilian body and bent it backward. Something in it snapped, and the Martian collapsed limply. The two looked wildly around.

Nothing showed that the Martian's call had been heard, and after a moment's glance that showed the head of the centipede machine already freed, they were clambering up into its control room, closing the door. Randall seized the knob with which he had seen the machines operated. As he pulled it toward him the machine moved across the tunnel opening and raced smoothly over the cavern's floor. As he turned the knob the machine turned swiftly in the same direction.

He headed the long mechanism toward one of the upward-curving tunnels which the Martians had blasted larger in descending. They were almost to it when there flashed up into the cavity from one of the downward tunnel openings a centipede-machine, and then another, and another. The Martians in their transparent-windowed control rooms took in at a glance the dead crocodilian on the floor, and then the three great machines were darting toward that of Randall and Lanier.

"The Martian we killed!" Randall cried. "They heard his call and are coming after us!"

"Turn to the wall!" Lanier shouted to him. "I have the rays--"

* * * * *

At that moment there was a clicking beside Randall and he glimpsed Lanier pulling forth two small grips he had found, then saw that two crimson rays were stabbing from tubes in their machine's front toward the others even as their own rays darted back. The beams that had been loosed toward them grazed past them as Randall whirled their machine to the wall, and he saw one of the three attacking mechanisms vanish as Lanier's beams struck it.

Around--back--with instinctive, lightninglike motions he whirled their centipede-machine in the great dim-lit cave as the two remaining ones leapt again to the attack. Their rays shot right and left to catch the two men's vehicle in a trap of death, and as Randall swung their own mechanism straight ahead he glimpsed at the cavern's far end the great earthen worm god still upreared.

On either side of them the red beams burned as they leapt forward, but as though running a gauntlet of death Randall kept the machine racing forward in the succeeding second until the two others loomed on either side of it. Then Lanier's beams were driving in turn to right and left of them and the two vanished as though by magic as they were struck.

"Up to the surface!" Lanier cried, his eyes on the glowing dial of his wrist-watch. "We've been held hours here--we've but a half-hour or more before earth midnight!"

* * * * *

Randall sent their machine racing again toward one of the upward tunnels, and as the long mechanism began to climb smoothly up the darkness he heard Lanier agonizing beside him.

"God, if we have only enough time to get to that matter-transmitter before the Martians start flashing to earth through it!"

"But Milton?" Randall cried. "We don't know whether he's alive or dead! We can't leave him!"

"We must!" said Lanier solemnly. "Our duty's to the earth now, man, to the world that we alone can save from the Martian invasion and conquest! At the hour of twelve Nelson will have the matter-receiver turned on and at that hour the Martian will start flashing to earth--unless we prevent!"

Suddenly Randall grasped the knob in his hands more tightly as light showed above them. They had been climbing upward through the enlarged tunnel at their machine's highest speed, and now as the tunnel curved the light grew stronger. Suddenly they were emerging into the thin sunlight of the Martian day.

In the crimson jungle about them were many Martians, milling excitedly to and fro, and other centipede-machines that were blasting their way down through tunnels to the worm world beneath.

Randall and Lanier, breathless, crouched low in the transparent-windowed control room as they sent their mechanism racing through this scene of swarming activity. Both gasped as one of the centipede-machines clashed against their own in passing, its Martian driver turning to stare after them. But there came no alarm, and in a moment they had passed out of the swarm of Martians and machines and were heading through the jungle in the direction of the city.

* * * * *

Through the weird red vegetation their mechanism raced with them, Randall holding it at its highest speed, and in minutes they came out of the jungle and were racing over the clear space between it and the great canal. Beyond that canal loomed into the thin sunlight the clustering cones of the mighty Martian city, two towering above all the others--the cone of the Martian Master and the other cone in which was the matter-transmitter and receiver.

It was toward the latter that Lanier pointed. "Head straight toward that cone, Randall--we've but minutes left!"

They were racing now up over the great arch of the canal's metal bridge, and then scuttling smoothly off it and along the broad metal street through which they had fled in darkness hours before. In it Martians and centipede-machines were coming and going in great numbers, but none noticed the human forms of the two crouched low in their mechanism's control room.

They were rushing then toward the looming cone of the Martian Master. As they flashed past it Randall saw Lanier's face working, knew the desire that tore at him even as at himself to burst inside and ascertain whether or not Milton still lived in the laboratories from which they had fled. But they were past it, faces white and grim, were rushing on through the Martian city at reckless speed toward the other mighty cone.

* * * * *

It seemed that all in the great city were heading toward the same goal, streams of crocodilian Martians and masses of shining centipede-machines filling the streets as they moved toward it. As they came closer to the mighty structure, hearts pounding, they saw that around it surged a mighty mass of Martians and machines. The hordes waiting to be released through the matter-transmitter inside upon the unsuspecting earth!

"Try to get the machine inside!" Lanier whispered tensely. "If we can smash that transmitter yet...."

Randall nodded grimly. "Keep ready at the ray-tubes," he told the other.

As unobtrusively as possible he sent their long mechanism worming forward through the vast throng of machines and Martians, toward the great cone's door. Crouching low, the hands of their watches closing fast toward the twelfth figure, they edged forward in the long machine. At last they were moving through the mighty door, into the cone's interior.

They moved slowly on through the mass of machines and crocodile forms inside, then halted. For at the great crowd's center was a clear circle hundreds of feet across, and as Randall gazed across it his heart seemed to leap once and then stop.

At the center of that clear circle rose the two cubical metal chambers of the matter-transmitter and receiver. The transmitting chamber, they saw, was flooded with humming force, with white light pouring from its inner walls. It was already in operation, and the masses of Martians in the great cone were only waiting for the moment to sound when the receiver on earth would be operating also. Then they would pour into the chamber to be flashed in masses across the gulf to earth! The eyes of all in the cone seemed turned toward an erect dial-mechanism beside the chambers which was clocklike in appearance, and that would mark the moment when the first Martian could enter the transmitting-chamber and flash out.

* * * * *

A little distance from the two metal chambers stood a low dais on which there sat the hideous triple-bodied form of the Martian Master. Around him were the massed members of his council, waiting like him for the start of their age-planned invasion of earth. And beside the dais was a figure between two crocodilian guards at sight of whom Randall forgot all else.

"Milton! My God, Lanier, it's Milton!"

"Milton! They've brought him here to torture or kill him if they find he's lied about the moment they could flash to earth!"

Milton! And at sight of him something snapped in Randall's brain.

With a single motion of the knob he sent their centipede-machine crashing out into the clear circle at the mighty cone's center. A wild uproar of hissing cries broke from all the thousands in it as he sent the mechanism whirling toward the dais of the Martian Master. He saw the crocodilian forms there scattering blindly before him, and then as his rays drove out and spun and stabbed in mad figures of crimson death through the astounded Martian masses he saw Milton looking up toward them, crying out crazily to them as his two guards loosed him for the moment.

A high call from the Martian Master ripped across the hall and was answered by a shattering roar of hissing voices as Martians and machines surged madly toward them. Randall and Lanier in a single leap were out of the centipede-machine, and in an instant had half-dragged Milton with them in a great leap up to the edge of the humming transmitting chamber.

* * * * *

Milton was shouting hoarsely to them over the wild uproar. To enter that transmitting chamber before the destined moment was annihilation, to be flashed out with no receiver on earth awaiting them. They turned, struck with all their strength at the first Martians rushing up to them. No rays flashed, for a ray loosed would destroy the chamber behind them that was the one gate for the Martians to the world they would invade. But as the Martian Master's high call hissed again all the countless crocodilian forms in the great cone were rushing toward them.

Braced at the very edge of the humming, light-filled chamber, Randall and Lanier and Milton struck madly at the Martians surging up toward them. Randall seemed in a dream. A score of taloned paws clutched him from beneath; scaled forms collapsed under his insane blows.

The whole vast cone and surging reptilian hordes seemed spinning at increasing speed around him. As his clenched fists flashed with waning strength he glimpsed crocodilian forms swarming up on either side of them, glimpsed Lanier down, talons reaching toward him, Milton fighting over him like a madman. Another moment would see it ended--reptilian arms reaching in scores to drag him down--Milton jerking Lanier half to his feet. The Martian Master's call sounded--and then came a great clanging sound at which the Martian hordes seemed to freeze for an instant motionless, at which Milton's voice reached him in a supreme cry.

"Randall--the transmitter!"

For in that instant Milton was leaping back with Lanier, and as Randall with his last strength threw himself backward with them into the humming transmitting-chamber's brilliant light, he heard a last frenzied roar of hissing cries from the Martian hordes about them. Then as the brilliant light and force from the chamber's walls smote them, Randall felt himself hurled into blackness inconceivable, that smashed like a descending curtain across his brain.

The curtain of blackness lifted for a moment. He was lying with Milton and Lanier in another chamber whose force beat upon them. He saw a yellow-lit room instead of the great cone--saw the tense, anxious face of Nelson at the switch beside them. He strove to move, made to Nelson a gesture with his arm that seemed to drain all strength and life from him; and then, as in answer to it Nelson drove up the switch and turned off the force of the matter-receiver in which they lay, the black curtain descended on Randall's brain once more.

* * * * *

Two hours later it was when Milton and Randall and Lanier and Nelson turned to the laboratory's door. They paused to glance behind them. Of the great matter-transmitter and receiver, of the apparatus that had crowded the laboratory, there remained now but wreckage.

For that had been their first thought, their first task, when the astounded Nelson had brought the three back to consciousness and had heard their amazing tale. They had wrecked so completely the matter-station and its actuating apparatus that none could ever have guessed what a mechanism of wonder the laboratory a short time before had held.

The cubical chambers had been smashed beyond all recognition, the dynamos were masses of split metal and fused wiring, the batteries of tubes were shattered, the condensers and transformers and wiring demolished. And it had only been when the last written plans and blue-prints of the mechanism had been burned that Milton and Randall and Lanier had stopped to allow their exhausted bodies a moment of rest.

* * * * *

Now as they paused at the laboratory's door, Lanier reached and swung it open. Together, silent, they gazed out.

It all seemed to Randall exactly as upon the night before. The shadowy masses in the darkness, the heaving, dim-lit sea stretching far away before them, the curtain of summer stars stretched across the heavens. And, sinking westward amid those stars, the red spark of Mars toward which as though toward a magnet all their eyes had turned.

Milton was speaking. "Up there it has shone for centuries--ages--a crimson spot of light. And up there the Martians have been watching, watching--until at last we opened to them the gate."

Randall's hand was on his shoulder. "But we closed that gate, too, in the end."

Milton nodded slowly. "We--or the fate that rules our worlds. But the gate is closed, and God grant, shall never again be opened by any on this world."

"God grant it," the other echoed.

And they were all gazing still toward the thing. Gazing up toward the crimson spot of light that burned there among the stars, toward the planet that shone red, menacing, terrible, but whose menace and whose terror had been thrust back even as they had crouched to spring at last upon the earth.

Contents

THE SARGASSO OF SPACE

By Edmond Hamilton

Helpless, doomed, into the graveyard of space floats the wrecked freighter Pallas.

Captain Crain faced his crew calmly. "We may as well face the facts, men," he said. "The ship's fuel-tanks are empty and we are drifting through space toward the dead-area."

The twenty-odd officers and men gathered on the middle-deck of the freighter Pallas made no answer, and Crain continued:

"We left Jupiter with full tanks, more than enough fuel to take us to Neptune. But the leaks in the starboard tanks lost us half our supply, and we had used the other half before discovering that. Since the ship's rocket-tubes cannot operate without fuel, we are simply drifting. We would drift on to Neptune if the attraction of Uranus were not pulling us to the right. That attraction alters our course so that in three ship-days we shall drift into the dead-area."

Rance Kent, first-officer of the Pallas, asked a question: "Couldn't we, raise Neptune with the radio, sir, and have them send out a fuel-ship in time to reach us?"

"It's impossible, Mr. Kent," Crain answered. "Our main radio is dead without fuel to run its dynamotors, and our auxiliary set hasn't the power to reach Neptune."

"Why not abandon ship in the space-suits," asked Liggett, the second-officer, "and trust to the chance of some ship picking us up?"

The captain shook his head. "It would be quite useless, for we'd simply drift on through space with the ship into the dead-area."

The score of members of the crew, bronzed space-sailors out of every port in the solar system, had listened mutely. Now, one of them, a tall tube-man, stepped forward a little.

"Just what is this dead-area, sir?" he asked. "I've heard of it, but as this is my first outer-planet voyage, I know nothing about it."

"I'll admit I know little more," said Liggett, "save that a good many disabled ships have drifted into it and have never come out."

* * * * *

"The dead area," Crain told them, "is a region of space ninety thousand miles across within Neptune's orbit, in which the ordinary gravitational attractions of the solar system are dead. This is because in that region the pulls of the sun and the outer planets exactly balance each other. Because of that, anything in the dead-area, will stay in there until time ends, unless it has power of its own. Many wrecked space-ships have drifted into it at one time or another, none ever emerging; and it's believed that there is a great mass of wrecks somewhere in the area, drawn and held together by mutual attraction."

"And we're drifting in to join them," Kent said. "Some prospect!"

"Then there's really no chance for us?" asked Liggett keenly.

Captain Crain thought. "As I see it, very little," he admitted. "If our auxiliary radio can reach some nearby ship before the Pallas enters the dead-area, we'll have a chance. But it seems a remote one."

He addressed himself to the men: "I have laid the situation frankly before you because I consider you entitled to the truth. You must remember, however, that while there is life there is hope.

"There will be no change in ship routine, and the customary watches will be kept. Half-rations of food and water will be the rule from now on, though. That is all."

As the men moved silently off, the captain looked after them with something of pride.

"They're taking it like men," he told Kent and Liggett. "It's a pity there's no way out for them and us."

"If the Pallas does enter the dead-area and join the wreck-pack," Liggett said, "how long will we be able to live?"

"Probably for some months on our present condensed air and food supplies," Crain answered. "I would prefer, myself, a quicker end."

"So would I," said Kent. "Well, there's nothing left but to pray for some kind of ship to cross our path in the next day or two."

* * * * *

Kent's prayers were not answered in the next ship-day, nor in the next. For, though one of the Pallas' radio-operators was constantly at the instruments under Captain Crain's orders, the weak calls of the auxiliary set raised no response.

Had they been on the Venus or Mars run, Kent told himself, there would be some chance, but out here in the vast spaces, between the outer planets, ships were fewer and farther between. The big, cigar-shaped freighter drifted helplessly on in a broad curve toward the dreaded area, the green light-speck of Neptune swinging to their left.

On the third ship-day Kent and Captain Crain stood in the pilot-house behind Liggett, who sat at the now useless rocket-tube controls. Their eyes were on the big glass screen of the gravograph. The black dot on it that represented their ship was crawling steadily toward the bright red circle that stood for the dead-area....

They watched silently until the dot had crawled over the circle's red line, heading toward its center.

"Well, we're in at last," Kent commented. "There seems to be no change in anything, either."

Crain pointed to the instrument-panel. "Look at the gravitometers."

Kent did. "All dead! No gravitational pull from any direction--no, that one shows a slight attraction from ahead!"

"Then gravitational attraction of some sort does exist in the dead-area after all!" Liggett exclaimed.

"You don't understand," said Crain. "That attraction from ahead is the pull of the wreck-pack at the dead-area's center."

"And it's pulling the Pallas toward it?" Kent exclaimed.

Crain nodded. "We'll probably reach the wreck-pack in two more ship-days."

* * * * *

The next two ship-days seemed to Kent drawn out endlessly. A moody silence had grown upon the officers and men of the ship. All seemed oppressed by the strange forces of fate that had seized the ship and were carrying it, smoothly and soundlessly, into this region of irrevocable doom.

The radio-operators' vain calls had ceased. The Pallas drifted on into the dreaded area like some dumb ship laden with damned souls. It drifted on, Kent told himself, as many a wrecked and disabled ship had done before it, with the ordinary activities and life of the solar system forever behind it, and mystery and death ahead.

It was toward the end of the second of those two ship-days that Liggett's voice came down from the pilot-house:

"Wreck-pack in sight ahead!"

"We've arrived, anyway!" Kent cried, as he and Crain hastened up into the pilot house. The crew was running to the deck-windows.

"Right ahead there, about fifteen degrees left," Liggett told Kent and Crain, pointing. "Do you see it?"

Kent stared; nodded. The wreck-pack was a distant, disk-like mass against the star-flecked heavens, a mass that glinted here and there in the feeble sunlight of space. It did not seem large, but, as they drifted steadily closer in the next hours, they saw that in reality the wreck-pack was tremendous, measuring at least fifty miles across.

Its huge mass was a heterogeneous heap, composed mostly of countless cigar-like space-ships in all stages of wreckage. Some appeared smashed almost out of all recognizable shape, while others were, to all appearances unharmed. They floated together in this dense mass in space, crowded against one another by their mutual attraction.

There seemed to be among them every type of ship known in the solar system, from small, swift mail-boats to big freighters. And, as they drifted nearer, the three in the pilot-house could see that around and between the ships of the wreck-pack floated much other matter--fragments of wreckage, meteors, small and large, and space-debris of every sort.

The Pallas was drifting, not straight toward the wreck-pack, but in a course that promised to take the ship past it.

"We're not heading into the wreck-pack!" Liggett exclaimed. "Maybe we'll drift past it, and on out the dead-area's other side!"

* * * * *

Captain Crain smiled mirthlessly. "You're forgetting your space-mechanics, Liggett. We will drift along the wreck-pack's edge, and then will curve in and go round it in a closing spiral until we reach its edge."

"Lord, who'd have thought there were so many wrecks here!" Kent marvelled. "There must be thousands of them!"

"They've been collecting here ever since the first interplanetary rocket-ships went forth," Crain reminded him. "Not only meteor-wrecked ships, but ships whose mechanisms went wrong--or that ran out of fuel like ours--or that were captured and sacked, and then set adrift by space-pirates."

The Pallas by then was drifting along the wreck-pack's rim at a half-mile distance, and Kent's eyes were running over the mass.

"Some of those ships look entirely undamaged. Why couldn't we find one that has fuel in its tanks, transfer it to our own tanks, and get away?" he asked.

Crain's eyes lit. "Kent, that's a real chance! There must be some ships in that pack with fuel in them, and we can use the space-suits to explore for them!"

"Look, we're beginning to curve in around the pack now!" Liggett exclaimed.

The Pallas, as though loath to pass the wreck-pack, was curving inward to follow its rim. In the next hours it continued to sail slowly around the great pack, approaching closer and closer to its edge.

In those hours Kent and Crain and all in the ship watched with a fascinated interest that even knowledge of their own peril could not kill. They could see swift-lined passenger-ships of the Pluto and Neptune runs shouldering against small space-yachts with the insignia of Mars or Venus on their bows. Wrecked freighters from Saturn or Earth floated beside rotund grain-boats from Jupiter.

The debris among the pack's wrecks was just as varied, holding fragments of metal, dark meteors of differing size--and many human bodies. Among these were some clad in the insulated space-suits, with their transparent glassite helmets. Kent wondered what wreck they had abandoned hastily in those suits, only to be swept with it into the dead-area, to die in their suits.

By the end of that ship-day, the Pallas, having floated almost completely around the wreck-pack, finally struck the wrecks at its edge with a jarring shock; then bobbed for a while and lay still. From pilot-house and deck windows the men looked eagerly forth.

* * * * *

Their ship floated at the wreck-pack's edge. Directly to its right floated a sleek, shining Uranus-Jupiter passenger-ship whose bows had been smashed in by a meteor. On their left bobbed an unmarked freighter of the old type with projecting rocket-tubes, apparently intact. Beyond them in the wreck-pack lay another Uranus craft, a freighter, and, beyond it, stretched the countless other wrecks.

Captain Crain summoned the crew together again on the middle-deck.

"Men, we've reached the wreck-pack at the dead-area's center, and here we'll stay until the end of time unless we get out under our own power. Mr. Kent has suggested a possible way of doing so, which I consider highly feasible.

"He has suggested that in some of the ships in the wreck-pack may be found enough fuel to enable us to escape from the dead-area, once it is transferred to this ship. I am going to permit him to explore the wreck-pack with a party in space suits, and I am asking for volunteers for this service."

The entire crew stepped quickly forward. Crain smiled. "Twelve of you will be enough," he told them. "The eight tube-men and four of the cargo-men will go, therefore, with Mr. Kent and Mr. Liggett as leaders. Mr. Kent, you may address the men if you wish."

"Get down to the lower airlock and into your space-suits at once, then," Kent told them. "Mr. Liggett, will you supervise that?"

As Liggett and the men trooped down to the airlock, Kent turned back toward his superior.

"There's a very real chance of your becoming lost in this huge wreck-pack, Kent," Crain told him: "so be very careful to keep your bearings at all times. I know I can depend on you."

"I'll do my best," Kent was saying, when Liggett's excited face reappeared suddenly at the stair.

"There are men coming toward the Pallas along the wreck-pack's edge!" he reported--"a half-dozen men in space-suits!"

"You must be mistaken, Liggett!" exclaimed Crain. "They must be some of the bodies in space-suits we saw in the pack."

"No, they're living men!" Liggett cried. "They're coming straight toward us--come down and see!"

* * * * *

Crain and Kent followed Liggett quickly down to the airlock room, where the men who had started donning their space-suits were now peering excitedly from the windows. Crain and Kent looked where Liggett pointed, along the wreck-pack's edge to the ship's right.

Six floating shapes, men in space-suits, were approaching along the pack's border. They floated smoothly through space, reaching the wrecked passenger-ship beside the Pallas. They braced their feet against its side and propelled themselves on through the void like swimmers under water, toward the Pallas.

"They must be survivors from some wreck that drifted in here as we did!" Kent exclaimed. "Maybe they've lived here for months!"

"It's evident that they saw the Pallas drift into the pack, and have come to investigate," Crain estimated. "Open the airlock for them, men, for they'll want to come inside."

Two of the men spun the wheels that slid aside the airlock's outer door. In a moment the half-dozen men outside had reached the ship's side, and had pulled themselves down inside the airlock.

When all were in, the outer door was closed, and air hissed in to fill the lock. The airlock's inner door then slid open and the newcomers stepped into the ship's interior, unscrewing their transparent helmets as they did so. For a few moments the visitors silently surveyed their new surroundings.

Their leader was a swarthy individual with sardonic black eyes who, on noticing Crain's captain-insignia, came toward him with outstretched hand. His followers seemed to be cargo-men or deck-men, looking hardly intelligent enough to Kent's eyes to be tube-men.

* * * * *

"Welcome to our city!" their leader exclaimed as he shook Crain's hand. "We saw your ship drift in, but hardly expected to find anyone living in it."

"I'll confess that we're surprised ourselves to find any life here," Crain told him. "You're living on one of the wrecks?"

The other nodded. "Yes, on the Martian Queen, a quarter-mile along the pack's edge. It was a Saturn-Neptune passenger ship, and about a month ago we were at this cursed dead-area's edge, when half our rocket-tubes exploded. Eighteen of us escaped the explosion, the ship's walls still being tight; and we drifted into the pack here, and have been living here ever since."

"My name's Krell," he added, "and I was a tube-man on the ship. I and another of the tube-men, named Jandron, were the highest in rank left, all the officers and other tube-men having been killed, so we took charge and have been keeping order."

"What about your passengers?" Liggett asked.

"All killed but one," Krell answered. "When the tubes let go they smashed up the whole lower two decks."

Crain briefly explained to him the Pallas' predicament. "Mr. Kent and Mr. Liggett were on the point of starting a search of the wreck-pack for fuel when you arrived," he said, "With enough fuel we can get clear of the dead-area."

Krell's eyes lit up. "That would mean a getaway for all of us! It surely ought to be possible!"

"Do you know whether there are any ships in the pack with fuel in their tanks?" Kent asked. Krell shook his head.

"We've searched through the wreck-pack a good bit, but never bothered about fuel, it being no good to us. But there ought to be some, at least: there's enough wrecks in this cursed place to make it possible to find almost anything.

"You'd better not start exploring, though," he added, "without some of us along as guides, for I'm here to tell you that you can lose yourself in this wreck-pack without knowing it. If you wait until to-morrow, I'll come over myself and go with you."

"I think that would be wise," Crain said to Kent. "There is plenty of time."

"Time is the one thing there's plenty of in this damned place," Krell agreed. "We'll be getting back to the Martian Queen now and give the good news to Jandron and the rest."

"Wouldn't mind if Liggett and I came along, would you?" Kent asked. "I'd like to see how your ship's fixed--that is, if it's all right with you, sir," he added to his superior.

Crain nodded. "All right if you don't stay long," he said. But, to Kent's surprise Krell seemed reluctant to endorse his proposal.

"I guess it'll be all right," he said slowly, "though there's nothing much on the Martian Queen to see."

* * * * *

Krell and his followers replaced their helmets and returned into the airlock. Liggett followed them, and, as Kent struggled hastily into a space-suit, he found Captain Crain at his side.

"Kent, look sharp when you get over on that ship," Crain told him. "I don't like the look of this Krell, and his story about all the officers being killed in the explosion sounds fishy to me."

"To me, too," Kent agreed. "But Liggett and I will have the suit-phones in our space-suits and can call you from there in case of need."

Crain nodded, and Kent with space-suit on and transparent helmet screwed tight, stepped into the airlock with the rest. The airlock's inner door closed, the outer one opened, and as the air puffed out into space, Kent and Krell and Liggett leapt out into the void, the others following.

It was no novelty to Kent to float in a space-suit in the empty void. He and the others now floated as smoothly as though under water toward a wrecked liner at the Pallas' right. They reached it, pulled themselves around it, and, with feet braced against its side, propelled themselves on through space along the border of the wreck-pack.

They passed a half-dozen wrecks thus, before coming to the Martian Queen. It was a silvery, glistening ship whose stern and lower walls were bulging and strained, but not cracked. Kent told himself that Krell had spoken truth about the exploding rocket-tubes, at least.

They struck the Martian Queen's side and entered the upper-airlock open for them. Once through the airlock they found themselves on the ship's upper-deck. And when Kent and Liggett removed their helmets with the others they found a full dozen men confronting them, a brutal-faced group who exhibited some surprise at sight of them.

* * * * *

Foremost among them stood a tall, heavy individual who regarded Kent and Liggett with the cold, suspicious eyes of an animal.

"My comrade and fellow-ruler here, Wald Jandron," said Krell. To Jandron he explained rapidly. "The whole crew of the Pallas is alive, and they say if they can find fuel in the wreck-pack their ship can get out of here."

"Good," grunted Jandron. "The sooner they can do it, the better it will be for us."

Kent saw Liggett flush angrily, but he ignored Jandron and spoke to Krell. "You said one of your passengers had escaped the explosion?"

To Kent's amazement a girl stepped from behind the group of men, a slim girl with pale face and steady, dark eyes. "I'm the passenger," she told him. "My name's Marta Mallen."

Kent and Liggett stared, astounded. "Good Lord!" Kent exclaimed. "A girl like you on this ship!"

"Miss Mallen happened to be on the upper-deck at the time of the explosion and, so, escaped when the other passengers were killed," Krell explained smoothly. "Isn't that so, Miss Mallen?"

The girl's eyes had not left Kent's, but at Krell's words she nodded. "Yes, that is so," she said mechanically.

Kent collected his whirling thoughts. "But wouldn't you rather go back to the Pallas with us?" he asked. "I'm sure you'd be more comfortable there."

"She doesn't go," grunted Jandron. Kent turned in quick wrath toward him, but Krell intervened.

"Jandron only means that Miss Mallen is much more comfortable on this passenger-ship than she'd be in your freighter." He shot a glance at the girl as he spoke, and Kent saw her wince.

"I'm afraid that's so," she said; "but I thank you for the offer, Mr. Kent."

Kent could have sworn that there was an appeal in her eyes, and he stood for a moment, indecisive, Jandron's stare upon him. After a moment's thought he turned to Krell.

"You were going to show me the damage the exploding tubes did," he said, and Krell nodded quickly.

"Of course; you can see from the head of the stair back in the after-deck."

He led the way along a corridor, Jandron and the girl and two of the men coming with them. Kent's thoughts were still chaotic as he walked between Krell and Liggett. What was this girl doing amid the men of the Martian Queen? What had her eyes tried to tell him?

Liggett nudged his side in the dim corridor, and Kent, looking down, saw dark splotches on its metal floor. Blood-stains! His suspicions strengthened. They might be from the bleeding of those wounded in the tube-explosions. But were they?

* * * * *

They reached the after-deck whose stair's head gave a view of the wrecked tube-rooms beneath. The lower decks had been smashed by terrific forces. Kent's practiced eyes ran rapidly over the shattered rocket-tubes.

"They've back-blasted from being fired too fast," he said. "Who was controlling the ship when this happened?"

"Galling, our second-officer," answered Krell. "He had found us routed too close to the dead-area's edge and was trying to get away from it in a hurry, when he used the tubes too fast, and half of them back-blasted."

"If Galling was at the controls in the pilot-house, how did the explosion kill him?" asked Liggett skeptically. Krell turned quickly.

"The shock threw him against the pilot-house wall and fractured his skull--he died in an hour," he said. Liggett was silent.

"Well, this ship will never move again," Kent said. "It's too bad that the explosion blew out your tanks, but we ought to find fuel somewhere in the wreck-pack for the Pallas. And now we'd best get back."

As they returned up the dim corridor Kent managed to walk beside Marta Mallen, and, without being seen, he contrived to detach his suit-phone--the compact little radiophone case inside his space-suit's neck--and slip it into the girl's grasp. He dared utter no word of explanation, but apparently she understood, for she had concealed the suit-phone by the time they reached the upper-deck.

Kent and Liggett prepared to don their space-helmets, and before entering the airlock, Kent turned to Krell.

"We'll expect you at the Pallas first hour to-morrow, and we'll start searching the wreck-pack with a dozen of our men," he said.

He then extended his hand to the girl. "Good-by, Miss Mallen. I hope we can have a talk soon."

He had said the words with double meaning, and saw understanding in her eyes. "I hope we can, too," she said.

Kent's nod to Jandron went unanswered, and he and Liggett adjusted their helmets and entered the airlock.

Once out of it, they kicked rapidly away from the Martian Queen, floating along with the wreck-pack's huge mass to their right, and only the star-flecked emptiness of infinity to their left. In a few minutes they reached the airlock of the Pallas.

* * * * *

They found Captain Crain awaiting them anxiously. Briefly Kent reported everything.

"I'm certain there has been foul play aboard the Martian Queen," he said. "Krell you saw for yourself, Jandron is pure brute, and their men seem capable of anything.

"I gave the suit-phone to the girl, however, and if she can call us with it, we can get the truth from her. She dared not tell me anything there in the presence of Krell and Jandron."

Crain nodded, his face grave. "We'll see whether or not she calls," he said.

Kent took a suit-phone from one of their space-suits and rapidly, tuned it to match the one he had left with Marta Mallen. Almost at once they heard her voice from it, and Kent answered rapidly.

"I'm so glad I got you!" she exclaimed. "Mr. Kent, I dared not tell you the truth about this ship when you were here, or Krell and the rest would have killed you at once."

"I thought that was it, and that's why I left the suit-phone for you," Kent said. "Just what is the truth?"

"Krell and Jandron and these men of theirs are the ones who killed the officers and passengers of the Martian Queen! What they told you about the explosion was true enough, for the explosion did happen that way, and because of it, the ship drifted into the dead-area. But the only ones killed by it were some of the tube-men and three passengers.

"Then, while the ship was drifting into the dead-area, Krell told the men that the fewer aboard, the longer they could live on the ship's food and air. Krell and Jandron led the men in a surprise attack and killed all the officers and passengers, and threw their bodies out into space. I was the only passenger they spared, because both Krell and Jandron--want me!"

* * * * *

There was a silence, and Kent felt a red anger rising in him. "Have they dared harm you?" he asked after a moment.

"No, for Krell and Jandron are too jealous of each other to permit the other to touch me. But it's been terrible living with them in this awful place."

"Ask her if she knows what their plans are in regard to us," Crain told Kent.

Marta had apparently overheard the question. "I don't know that, for they shut me in my cabin as soon as you left," she said. "I've heard them talking and arguing excitedly, though. I know that if you do find fuel, they'll try to kill you all and escape from here in your ship."

"Pleasant prospect," Kent commented. "Do you think they plan an attack on us now?"

"No; I think that they'll wait until you've refueled your ship, if you are able to do that, and then try treachery."

"Well, they'll find us ready. Miss Mallen, you have the suit-phone: keep it hidden in your cabin and I'll call you first thing to-morrow. We're going to get you out of there, but we don't want to break with Krell until we're ready. Will you be all right until then?"

"Of course I will," she answered. "There's another thing, though. My name isn't Miss Mallen--it's Marta."

"Mine's Rance," said Kent, smiling. "Good-by until to-morrow, then, Marta."

"Good-by, Rance."

Kent rose from the instrument with the smile still in his eyes, but with his lips compressed. "Damn it, there's the bravest and finest girl in the solar system!" he exclaimed. "Over there with those brutes!"

"We'll have her out, never fear," Crain reassured him. "The main thing is to determine our course toward Krell and Jandron."

Kent thought. "As I see it, Krell can help us immeasurably in our search through the wreck-pack for fuel," he said. "I think it would be best to keep on good terms with him until we've found fuel and have it in our tanks. Then we can turn the tables on them before they can do anything."

Crain nodded thoughtfully. "I think you're right. Then you and Liggett and Krell can head our search-party to-morrow."

Crain established watches on a new schedule, and Kent and Liggett and the dozen men chosen for the exploring party of the next day ate a scanty meal and turned in for some sleep.

* * * * *

When Kent woke and glimpsed the massed wrecks through the window he was for the moment amazed, but rapidly remembered. He and Liggett were finishing their morning ration when Crain pointed to a window.

"There comes Krell now," he said, indicating the single space-suited figure approaching along the wreck-pack's edge.

"I'll call Marta before he gets here," said Kent hastily.

The girl answered on the suit-phone immediately, and it occurred to Kent that she must have spent the night without sleeping. "Krell left a few minutes ago," she said.

"Yes, he's coming now. You heard nothing of their plans?"

"No; they've kept me shut in my cabin. However, I did hear Krell giving Jandron and the rest directions. I'm sure they're plotting something."

"We're prepared for them," Kent assured her. "If all goes well, before you realize it, you'll be sailing out of here with us in the Pallas."

"I hope so," she said. "Rance, be careful with Krell in the wreck-pack. He's dangerous."

"I'll be watching him," he promised. "Good-by, Marta."

Kent reached the lower-deck just as Krell entered from the airlock, his swarthy face smiling as he removed his helmet. He carried a pointed steel bar. Liggett and the others were donning their suits.

"All ready to go, Kent?" Krell asked.

Kent nodded. "All ready," he said shortly. Since hearing Marta's story he found it hard to dissimulate with Krell.

"You'll want bars like mine," Krell continued, "for they're damned handy when you get jammed between wreckage masses. Exploring this wreck-pack is no soft job: I can tell you from experience."

Liggett and the rest had their suits adjusted, and with bars in their grasp, followed Krell into the airlock. Kent hung back for a last word with Crain, who, with his half-dozen remaining men, was watching.

"Marta just told me that Krell and Jandron have been plotting something," he told the captain; "so I'd keep a close watch outside."

"Don't worry, Kent. We'll let no one inside the Pallas until you and Liggett and the men get back."

* * * * *

In a few minutes they were out of the ship, with Krell and Kent and Liggett leading, and the twelve members of the Pallas' crew following closely.

The three leaders climbed up on the Uranus-Jupiter passenger-ship that lay beside the Pallas, the others moving on and exploring the neighboring wrecks in parties of two and three. From the top of the passenger-ship, when they gained it, Kent and his two companions could look far out over the wreck-pack. It was an extraordinary spectacle, this stupendous mass of dead ships floating motionless in the depths of space, with the burning stars above and below them.

His companions and the other men clambering over the neighboring wrecks seemed weird figures in their bulky suits and transparent helmets. Kent looked back at the Pallas, and then along the wreck-pack's edge to where he could glimpse the silvery side of the Martian Queen. But now Krell and Liggett were descending into the ship's interior through the great opening smashed in its bows, and Kent followed.

They found themselves in the liner's upper navigation-rooms. Officers and men lay about, frozen to death at the instant the meteor-struck vessel's air had rushed out, and the cold of space had entered. Krell led the way on, down into the ship's lower decks, where they found the bodies of the crew and passengers lying in the same silent death.

The salons held beautifully-dressed women, distinguished-looking men, lying about as the meteor's shock had hurled them. One group lay around a card-table, their game interrupted. A woman still held a small child, both seemingly asleep. Kent tried to shake off the oppression he felt as he and Krell and Liggett continued down to the tank-rooms.

They found their quest there useless, for the tanks had been strained by the meteor's shock, and were empty. Kent felt Liggett grasp his hand and heard him speak, the sound-vibrations coming through their contacting suits.

"Nothing here; and we'll find it much the same through all these wrecks, if I'm not wrong. Tanks always give at a shock."

"There must be some ships with fuel still in them among all these," Kent answered.

* * * * *

They climbed back, up to the ship's top, and leapt off it toward a Jupiter freighter lying a little farther inside the pack. As they floated toward it, Kent saw their men moving on with them from ship to ship, progressing inward into the pack. Both Kent and Liggett kept Krell always ahead of them, knowing that a blow from his bar, shattering their glassite helmets, meant instant death. But Krell seemed quite intent on the search for fuel.

The big Jupiter freighter seemed intact from above, but, when they penetrated into it, they found its whole under-side blown away, apparently by an explosion of its tanks. They moved on to the next ship, a private space-yacht, small in size, but luxurious in fittings. It had been abandoned in space, its rocket-tubes burst and tanks strained.

They went on, working deeper into the wreck-pack. Kent almost forgot the paramount importance of their search in the fascination of it. They explored almost every known type of ship--freighters, liners, cold-storage boats, and grain-boats. Once Kent's hopes ran high at sight of a fuel-ship, but it proved to be in ballast, its cargo-tanks empty and its own tanks and tubes apparently blown simultaneously.

Kent's muscles ached from the arduous work of climbing over and exploring the wrecks. He and Liggett had become accustomed to the sight of frozen, motionless bodies.

As they worked deeper into the pack, they noticed that the ships were of increasingly older types, and at last Krell signalled a halt. "We're almost a mile in," he told them, gripping their hands. "We'd better work back out, taking a different section of the pack as we do."

Kent nodded. "It may change our luck," he said.

It did; for when they had gone not more than a half-mile back, they glimpsed one of their men waving excitedly from the top of a Pluto liner.

They hastened at once toward him, the other men gathering also; and when Kent grasped the man's hand he heard his excited voice.

"Fuel-tanks here are more than half-full, sir!"

* * * * *

They descended quickly into the liner, finding that though its whole stern had been sheared away by a meteor, its tanks had remained miraculously unstrained.

"Enough fuel here to take the Pallas to Neptune!" Kent exclaimed.

"How will you get it over to your ship?" Krell asked. Kent pointed to great reels of flexible metal tubing hanging near the tanks.

"We'll pump it over. The Pallas has tubing like this ship's, for taking on fuel in space, and, by joining its tubing to this, we'll have a tube-line between the two ships. It's hardly more than a quarter-mile."

"Let's get back and let them know about it," Liggett urged, and they climbed back out of the liner.

They worked their way out of the wreck-pack with much greater speed than that with which they had entered, needing only an occasional brace against a ship's side to send them floating over the wrecks. They came to the wreck-pack's edge at a little distance from the Pallas, and hastened toward it.

They found the outer door of the Pallas' airlock open, and entered, Krell remaining with them. As the outer door closed and air hissed into the lock, Kent and the rest removed their helmets. The inner door slid open as they were doing this, and from inside almost a score of men leapt upon them!

Kent, stunned for a moment, saw Jandron among their attackers, bellowing orders to them, and even as he struck out furiously he comprehended. Jandron and the men of the Martian Queen had somehow captured the Pallas from Crain and had been awaiting their return!

* * * * *

The struggle was almost instantly over, for, outnumbered and hampered as they were by their heavy space-suits, Kent and Liggett and their followers had no chance. Their hands, still in the suits, were bound quickly behind them at Jandron's orders.

Kent heard an exclamation, and saw Marta starting toward him from behind Jandron's men. But a sweep of Jandron's arm brushed her rudely back. Kent strained madly at his bonds. Krell's face had a triumphant look.

"Did it all work as I told you it would, Jandron?" he asked.

"It worked," Jandron answered impassively. "When they saw fifteen of us coming from the wreck-pack in space-suits, they opened right up to us."

Kent understood, and cursed Krell's cunning. Crain, seeing the fifteen figures approaching from the wreck-pack, had naturally thought they were Kent's party, and had let them enter to overwhelm his half-dozen men.

"We put Crain and his men over in the Martian Queen," Jandron continued, "and took all their helmets so they can't escape. The girl we brought over here. Did you find a wreck with fuel?"

Krell nodded. "A Pluto liner a quarter-mile back, and we can pump the fuel over here by connecting tube-lines. What the devil--"

Jandron had made a signal at which three of his men had leapt forward on Krell, securing his hands like those of the others.

"Have you gone crazy, Jandron?" cried Krell, his face red with anger and surprise.

"No," Jandron replied impassively; "but the men are as tired as I am of your bossing ways, and have chosen me as their sole leader."

"You dirty double-crosser!" Krell raged. "Are you men going to let him get away with this?"

The men paid no attention, and Jandron motioned to the airlock. "Take them over to the Martian Queen too," he ordered, "and make sure there's no space-helmet left there. Then get back at once, for we've got to get the fuel into this ship and make a getaway."

* * * * *

The helmets of Kent and Krell and the other helpless prisoners were put upon them, and, with hands still bound, they were herded into the airlock by eight of Jandron's men attired in space-suits also. The prisoners were then joined one to another by a strand of metal cable.

Kent, glancing back into the ship as the airlock's inner door closed, saw Jandron giving rapid orders to his followers, and noticed Marta held back from the airlock by one of them. Krell's eyes glittered venomously through his helmet. The outer door opened, and their guards jerked them forth into space by the connecting cable.

They were towed helplessly along the wreck-pack's rim toward the Martian Queen. Once inside its airlock, Jandron's men removed the prisoners' space-helmets and then used the duplicate-control inside the airlock itself to open the inner door. Through this opening they thrust the captives, those inside the ship not daring to enter the airlock. Jandron's men then closed the inner door, re-opened the outer one, and started back toward the Pallas with the helmets of Kent and his companions.

Kent and the others soon found Crain and his half-dozen men who rapidly undid their bonds. Crain's men still wore their space-suits, but, like Kent's companions, were without space-helmets.

"Kent, I was afraid they'd get you and your men too!" Crain exclaimed. "It's all my fault, for when I saw Jandron and his men coming from the wreck-pack I never doubted but that it was you."

"It's no one's fault," Kent told him. "It's just something that we couldn't foresee."

* * * * *

Crain's eyes fell on Krell. "But what's he doing here?" he exclaimed. Kent briefly explained Jandron's treachery toward Krell, and Crain's brows drew ominously together.

"So Jandron put you here with us! Krell, I am a commissioned captain of a space-ship, and as such can legally try you and sentence you to death here without further formalities."

Krell did not answer, but Kent intervened. "There's hardly time for that now, sir," he said. "I'm as anxious to settle with Krell as anyone, but right now our main enemy is Jandron, and Krell hates Jandron worse than we do, if I'm not mistaken."

"You're not," said Krell grimly. "All I want right now is to get within reach of Jandron."

"There's small chance of any of us doing that," Crain told them. "There's not a single space-helmet on the Martian Queen."

"You've searched?" Liggett asked.

"Every cubic inch of the ship," Crain told him. "No, Jandron's men made sure there were no helmets left here, and without helmets this ship is an inescapable prison."

"Damn it, there must be some way out!" Kent exclaimed. "Why, Jandron and his men must be starting to pump that fuel into the Pallas by now! They'll be sailing off as soon as they do it!"

Crain's face was sad. "I'm afraid this is the end, Kent. Without helmets, the space between the Martian Queen and the Pallas is a greater barrier to us than a mile-thick wall of steel. In this ship we'll stay, until the air and food give out, and death releases us."

"Damn it, I'm not thinking of myself!" Kent cried. "I'm thinking of Marta! The Pallas will sail out of here with her in Jandron's power!"

"The girl!" Liggett exclaimed. "If she could bring us over space-helmets from the Pallas we could get out of here!"

Kent was thoughtful. "If we could talk to her--she must still have that suit-phone I gave her. Where's another?"

* * * * *

Crain quickly detached the compact suit-phone from inside the neck of his own space-suit, and Kent rapidly tuned it to the one he had given Marta Mallen. His heart leapt as her voice came instantly from it:

"Rance! Rance Kent--"

"Marta--this is Rance!" he cried.

He heard a sob of relief. "I've been calling you for minutes! I was hoping that you'd remember to listen!

"Jandron and ten of the others have gone to that wreck in which you found the fuel," she added swiftly. "They unreeled a tube-line behind them as they went, and I can hear them pumping in the fuel now."

"Are the others guarding you?" Kent asked quickly.

"They're down in the lower deck at the tanks and airlocks. They won't allow me down on that deck. I'm up here in the middle-deck, absolutely alone.

"Jandron told me that we'd start out of here as soon as the fuel was in," she added, "and he and the men were laughing about Krell."

"Marta, could you in any way get space-helmets and get out to bring them over here to us?" Kent asked eagerly.

"There's a lot of space-suits and helmets here," she answered, "but I couldn't get out with them, Rance! I couldn't get to the airlocks with Jandron's seven or eight men down there guarding them!"

Kent felt despair; then as an idea suddenly flamed in him, he almost shouted into the instrument:

"Marta, unless you can get over here with helmets for us, we're all lost. I want you to put on a space-suit and helmet at once!"

* * * * *

There was a short silence, and then her voice came, a little muffled. "I've got the suit and helmet on, Rance. I'm wearing the suit-phone inside it."

"Good! Now, can you get up to the pilot-house? There's no one guarding it or the upper-deck? Hurry up there, then, at once."

Crain and the rest were staring at Kent. "Kent, what are you going to have her do?" Crain exclaimed. "It'll do no good for her to start the Pallas: those guards will be up there in a minute!"

"I'm not going to have her start the Pallas," said Kent grimly. "Marta, you're in the pilot-house? Do you see the heavy little steel door in the wall beside the instrument-panel?"

"I'm at it, but it's locked with a combination-lock," she said.

"The combination is 6-34-77-81," Kent told her swiftly. "Open it as quickly as you can."

"Good God, Kent!" cried Crain. "You're going to have her--?"

"Get out of there the only way she can!" Kent finished fiercely. "You have the door open, Marta?"

"Yes; there are six or seven control-wheels inside."

"Those wheels control the Pallas' exhaust-valves," Kent told her. "Each wheel opens the valves of one of the ship's decks or compartments and allows its air to escape into space. They're used for testing leaks in the different deck and compartment divisions. Marta, you must turn all those wheels as far as you can to the right."

"But all the ship's air will rush out; the guards below have no suits on, and they'll be--" she was exclaiming. Kent interrupted.

"It's the only chance for you, for all of us. Turn them!"

There was a moment of silence, and Kent was going to repeat the order when her voice came, lower in tone, a little strange:

"I understand, Rance. I'm going to turn them."

* * * * *

There was silence again, and Kent and the men grouped round him were tense. All were envisioning the same thing--the air rushing out of the Pallas' valves, and the unsuspecting guards in its lower deck smitten suddenly by an instantaneous death.

Then Marta's voice, almost a sob: "I turned them, Rance. The air puffed out all around me."

"Your space-suit is working all right?"

"Perfectly," she said.

"Then go down and tie together as many space-helmets as you can manage, get out of the airlock, and try to get over here to the Martian Queen with them. Do you think you can do that, Marta?"

"I'm going to try," she said steadily. "But I'll have to pass those men in the lower-deck I just--killed. Don't be anxious if I don't talk for a little."

Yet her voice came again almost immediately. "Rance, the pumping has stopped! They must have pumped all the fuel into the Pallas!"

"Then Jandron and the rest will be coming back to the Pallas at once!" Kent cried. "Hurry, Marta!"

The suit-phone was silent; and Kent and the rest, their faces closely pressed against the deck-windows, peered intently along the wreck-pack's edge. The Pallas was hidden from their view by the wrecks between, and there was no sign as yet of the girl.

Kent felt his heart beating rapidly. Crain and Liggett pressed beside him, the men around them; Krell's face was a mask as he too gazed. Kent was rapidly becoming convinced that some mischance had overtaken the girl when an exclamation came from Liggett. He pointed excitedly.

* * * * *

She was in sight, unrecognizable in space-suit and helmet, floating along the wreck-pack's edge toward them. A mass of the glassite space-helmets tied together was in her grasp. She climbed bravely over the stern of a projecting wreck and shot on toward the Martian Queen.

The airlock's door was open for her, and, when she was inside it, the outer door closed and air hissed into the lock. In a moment she was in among them, still clinging to the helmets. Kent grasped her swaying figure and removed her helmet.

"Marta, you're all right?" he cried. She nodded a little weakly.

"I'm all right. It was just that I had to go over those guards that were all frozen.... Terrible!"

"Get these helmets on!" Crain was crying. "There's a dozen of them, and twelve of us can stop Jandron's men if we get back in time!"

Kent and Liggett and the nearer of their men were swiftly donning the helmets. Krell grasped one and Crain sought to snatch it.

"Let that go! We'll not have you with us when we haven't enough helmets for our own men!"

"You'll have me or kill me here!" Krell cried, his eyes hate-mad. "I've got my own account to settle with Jandron!"

"Let him have it!" Liggett cried. "We've no time now to argue!"

Kent reached toward the girl. "Marta, give one of the men your helmet," he ordered; but she shook her head.

"I'm going with you!" Before Kent could dispute she had the helmet on again, and Crain was pushing them into the airlock. The nine or ten left inside without helmets hastily thrust steel bars into the men's hands before the inner door closed. The outer one opened and they leapt forth into space, floating smoothly along the wreck-pack's border with bars in their grasp, thirteen strong.

Kent found the slowness with which they floated forward torturing. He glimpsed Crain and Liggett ahead, Marta beside him, Krell floating behind him to the left. They reached the projecting freighters, climbed over and around them, braced against them and shot on. They sighted the Pallas ahead now. Suddenly they discerned another group of eleven figures in space-suits approaching it from the wreck-pack's interior, rolling up the tube-line that led from the Pallas as they did so. Jandron's party!

* * * * *

Jandron and his men had seen them and were suddenly making greater efforts to reach the Pallas. Kent and his companions, propelling themselves frenziedly on from another wreck, reached the ship's side at the same time as Jandron's men. The two groups mixed and mingled, twisted and turned in a mad space-combat.

Kent had been grasped by one of Jandron's men and raised his bar to crack the other's glassite helmet. His opponent caught the bar, and they struggled, twisting and turning over and over far up in space amid a half-score similar struggles. Kent wrenched his bar free at last from the other's grasp and brought it down on his helmet. The glassite cracked, and he caught a glimpse of the man's hate-distorted face frozen instantly in death.

Kent released him and propelled himself toward a struggling trio nearby. As he floated toward them, he saw Jandron beyond them making wild gestures of command and saw Krell approaching Jandron with upraised bar. Kent, on reaching the three combatants, found them to be two of Jandron's men overcoming Crain. He shattered one's helmet as he reached them, but saw the other's bar go up for a blow.

Kent twisted frantically, uselessly, to escape it, but before the blow could descend a bar shattered his opponent's helmet from behind. As the man froze in instant death Kent saw that it was Marta who had struck him from behind. He jerked her to his side. The struggles in space around them seemed to be ending.

Six of Jandron's party had been slain, and three of Kent's companions. Jandron's four other followers were giving up the combat, floating off into the wreck-pack in clumsy, hasty flight. Someone grasped Kent's arm, and he turned to find it was Liggett.

"They're beaten!" Liggett's voice came to him! "They're all killed but those four!"

"What about Jandron himself?" Kent cried. Liggett pointed to two space-suited bodies twisting together in space, with bars still in their lifeless grasp.

Kent saw through their shattered helmets the stiffened faces of Jandron and Krell, their helmets having apparently been broken by each other's simultaneous blows.

Crain had gripped Kent's arm also. "Kent, it's over!" he was exclaiming. "Liggett and I will close the Pallas' exhaust-valves and release new air in it. You take over helmets for the rest of our men in the Martian Queen."

* * * * *

In several minutes Kent was back with the men from the Martian Queen. The Pallas was ready, with Liggett in its pilot-house, the men taking their stations, and Crain and Marta awaiting Kent.

"We've enough fuel to take us out of the dead-area and to Neptune without trouble!" Crain declared. "But what about those four of Jandron's men that got away?"

"The best we can do is leave them here," Kent told him. "Best for them, too, for at Neptune they'd be executed, while they can live indefinitely in the wreck-pack."

"I've seen so many men killed on the Martian Queen and here," pleaded Marta. "Please don't take them to Neptune."

"All right, we'll leave them," Crain agreed, "though the scoundrels ought to meet justice." He hastened up to the pilot-house after Liggett.

In a moment came the familiar blast of the rocket-tubes, and the Pallas shot out cleanly from the wreck-pack's edge. A scattered cheer came from the crew. With gathering speed the ship arrowed out, its rocket-tubes blasting now in steady succession.

Kent, with his arm across Marta's shoulders, watched the wreck-pack grow smaller behind. It lay as when he first had seen it, a strange great mass, floating forever motionless among the brilliant stars. He felt the girl beside him shiver, and swung her quickly around.

"Let's not look back or remember now, Marta!" he said. "Let's look ahead."

She nestled closer inside his arm. "Yes, Rance. Let's look ahead.

Contents

THE K-FACTOR

By Harry Harrison

WE'RE losing a planet, Neel. I'm afraid that I can't ... understand it."

The bald and wrinkled head wobbled a bit on the thin neck, and his eyes were moist. Abravanel was a very old man. Looking at him, Neel realized for the first time just how old and close to death he was. It was a profoundly shocking thought.

"Pardon me, sir," Neel broke in, "but is it possible? To lose a planet, I mean. If the readings are done correctly, and the k-factor equations worked to the tenth decimal place, then it's really just a matter of adjustment, making the indicated corrections. After all, Societics is an exact science—"

"Exact? Exact! Of course it's not! Have I taught you so little that you dare say that to me?" Anger animated the old man, driving the shadow of death back a step or two.

Neel hesitated, feeling his hands quiver ever so slightly, groping for the right words. Societics was his faith, and his teacher, Abravanel, its only prophet. This man before him, carefully preserved by the age-retarding drugs, was unique in the galaxy. A living anachronism, a refugee from the history books. Abravanel had singlehandedly worked out the equations, spelled out his science of Societics. Then he had trained seven generations of students in its fundamentals. Hearing the article of his faith defamed by its creator produced a negative feedback loop in Neel so strong his hands vibrated in tune with it. It took a jarring effort to crack out of the cycle.

"The laws that control Societics, as postulated by ... you, are as exact as any others in the unified-field theory universe."

"No they're not. And, if any man I taught believes that nonsense, I'm retiring tomorrow and dropping dead the day after. My science—and it is really not logical to call it a science—is based on observation, experimentation, control groups and corrected observations. And though we have made observations in the millions, we are dealing in units in the billions, and the interactions of these units are multiples of that. And let us never forget that our units are people who, when they operate as individuals, do so in a completely different manner. So you cannot truthfully call my theories exact. They fit the facts well enough and produce results in practice, that has been empirically proven. So far. Some day, I am sure, we will run across a culture that doesn't fit my rules. At that time the rules will have to be revised. We may have that situation now on Himmel. There's trouble cooking there."

"They have always had a high activity count, sir," Neel put in hopefully.

"High yes, but always negative. Until now. Now it is slightly positive and nothing we can do seems to change it. That's why I've called you in. I want you to run a new basic survey, ignoring the old one still in operation, to re-examine the check points on our graphs. The trouble may lie there."

Neel thought before he answered, picking his words carefully. "Wouldn't that be a little ... unethical, sir? After all Hengly, who is operator there now, is a friend of mine. Going behind his back, you know."

"I know nothing of the sort." Abravanel snorted. "We are not playing for poker chips, or seeing who can get a paper published first. Have you forgotten what Societics is?"

Neel answered by rote. "The applied study of the interaction of individuals in a culture, the interaction of the group generated by these individuals, the equations derived therefrom, and the application of these equations to control one or more factors of this same culture."

"And what is the one factor that we have tried to control in order to make all the other factors possible of existence?"

"War." Neel said, in a very small voice.

"Very good then, there is no doubt what it is we are talking about. You are going to land quietly on Himmel, do a survey as quickly as possible and transmit the data back here. There is no cause to think of it as sneaking behind Hengly's back, but as doing something to help him set the matter right. Is that understood?"

"Yes, sir," Neel said firmly this time, straightening his back and letting his right hand rest reassuringly on the computer slung from his belt.

"Excellent. Then it is now time to meet your assistant." Abravanel touched a button on his desk.

It was an unexpected development and Neel waited with interest as the door opened. But he turned away abruptly, his eyes slitted and his face white with anger. Abravanel introduced them.

"Neel Sidorak, this is—"

"Costa. I know him. He was in my class for six months." There wasn't the slightest touch of friendliness in Neel's voice now. Abravanel either ignored it or didn't hear it. He went on as if the two cold, distant young men were the best of friends.

"Classmates. Very good—then there is no need to make introductions. Though it might be best to make clear your separate areas of control. This is your project Neel, and Adao Costa will be your assistant, following your orders and doing whatever he can to help. You know he isn't a graduate Societist, but he has done a lot of field work for us and can help you greatly in that. And, of course, he will be acting as an observer for the UN, and making his own reports in this connection."

Neel's anger was hot and apparent. "So he's a UN observer now. I wonder if he still holds his old job at the same time. I think it only fair, sir, that you know. He works for Interpol."

Abravanel's ancient and weary eyes looked at both men, and he sighed. "Wait outside Costa," he said, "Neel will be with you in a minute."

Costa left without a word and Abravanel waved Neel back to his chair. "Listen to me now," he said, "and stop playing tunes on that infernal buzzer." Neel snapped his hand away from the belt computer, as if it had suddenly grown hot. A hesitant finger reached out to clear the figures he had nervously been setting up, then thought better of it. Abravanel sucked life into his ancient pipe and squinted at the younger man.

"Listen," he said. "You have led a very sheltered life here at the university, and that is probably my fault. No, don't look angry, I don't mean about girls. In that matter undergraduates have been the same for centuries. I'm talking about people in groups, individuals, politics, and all the complicated mess that makes up human life. This has been your area of study and the program is carefully planned so you can study it secondhand. The important thing is to develop the abstract viewpoint, since any attempt to prejudge results can only mean disaster. And it has been proved many times that a man with a certain interest will make many unwitting errors to shape an observation or experiment in favor of his interest. No, we could have none of that here.

"We are following the proper study of mankind and we must do that by keeping personally on the outside, to preserve our perspective. When you understand that, you understand many small things about the university. Why we give only resident student scholarships at a young age, and why the out-of-the-way location here in the Dolomites. You will also see the reason why the campus bookstore stocks all of the books published, but never has an adequate supply of newspapers. The agreed policy has been to see that you all mature with the long view. Then—hopefully—you will be immune to short-term political interests after you leave.

"This policy has worked well in turning out men with the correct attitude towards their work. It has also turned out a fair number of self-centered, egocentric horrors."

Neel flushed. "Do you mean that I—"

"No, I don't mean you. If I did, I would say so. Your worst fault—if you can call it a fault, since it is the very thing we have been trying to bring about—is that you have a very provincial attitude towards the universe. Now is the time to re-examine some of those ideas. Firstly, what do you think the attitude of the UN is towards Societics?"

There was no easy answer, Neel could see traps ready for anything he said. His words were hesitant. "I can't say I've really ever thought about it. I imagine the UN would be in favor of it, since we make their job of world government that much easier—"

"No such thing," Abravanel said, tempering the sharpness of his words with a smile. "To put it in the simplest language, they hate our guts. They wish I had never formulated Societics, and at the same time they are very glad I did. They are in the position of the man who caught the tiger by the tail. The man enjoys watching the tiger eat all of his enemies, but as each one is consumed his worry grows greater. What will happen when the last one is gone? Will the tiger then turn and eat him?

"Well—we are the UN's tiger. Societics came along just at the time it was sorely needed. Earth had settled a number of planets, and governed them. First as outposts, then as colonies. The most advanced planets very quickly outgrew the colony stage and flexed their independent muscles. The UN had no particular desire to rule an empire, but at the same time they had to insure Earth's safety. I imagine they were considering all sorts of schemes—including outright military control—when they came to me.

"Even in its early, crude form, Societics provided a stopgap that would give them some breathing time. They saw to it that my work was well endowed and aided me—unofficially of course—in setting up the first control experiments on different planets. We had results, some very good, and the others not so bad that the local police couldn't get things back under control after a while. I was, of course, happy to perfect my theories in practice. After a hundred years I had all the rough spots evened down and we were in business. The UN has never come up with a workable alternative plan, so they have settled down to the uncomfortable business of holding the tiger's tail. They worry and spend vast sums of money keeping an eye on our work."

"But why?" Neel broke in.

"Why?" Abravanel gave a quick smile. "Thank you for fine character rating. I imagine it is inconceivable to you that I might want to be Emperor of the Universe. I could be, you know. The same forces that hold the lids on the planets could just as easily blow them off."

Neel was speechless at the awful enormity of the thought. Abravanel rose from behind his desk with an effort, and shambled over to lay a thin and feather-light arm on the younger man's shoulders. "Those are the facts of life my boy. And since we cannot escape them, we must live with them. Costa is just a man doing his duty. So try and put up with him. For my sake if not for your own."

"Of course," Neel agreed quickly. "The whole thing takes a bit of getting used to, but I think I can manage. We'll do as good a job on Himmel as it is possible to do. Don't worry about me, sir."

Costa was waiting in the next room, puffing quietly on a long cigarette. They left together, walking down the hall in silence. Neel glanced sideways at the wiry, dark-skinned Brazilian and wondered what he could say to smooth things out. He still had his reservations about Costa, but he'd keep them to himself now. Abravanel had ordered peace between them, and what the old man said was the law.

It was Costa who spoke first. "Can you brief me on Himmel—what we'll find there, and be expected to do?"

"Run the basic survey first, of course," Neel told him. "Chances are that that will be enough to straighten things out. Since the completion last year of the refining equations of Debir's Postulate, all sigma-110 and alpha-142 graph points are suspect—"

"Just stop there please, and run the flag back down the pole." Costa interrupted. "I had a six-months survey of Societics seven years ago, to give me a general idea of the field. I've worked with survey teams since then, but I have only the vaguest idea of the application of the information we got. Could you cover the ground again—only a bit slower?"

Neel controlled his anger successfully and started again, in his best classroom manner.

"Well, I'm sure you realize that a good survey is half the problem. It must be impartial and exact. If it is accurately done, application of the k-factor equations is almost mechanical."

"You've lost me again. Everyone always talks about the k-factor, but no one has ever explained just what it is."

Neel was warming to his topic now. "It's a term borrowed from nucleonics, and best understood in that context. Look, you know how an atomic pile works—essentially just like an atomic bomb. The difference is just a matter of degree and control. In both of them you have neutrons tearing around, some of them hitting nuclei and starting new neutrons going. These in turn hit and start others. This goes on faster and faster and bam, a few milliseconds later you have an atomic bomb. This is what happens if you don't attempt to control the reaction.

"However, if you have something like heavy water or graphite that will slow down neutrons and an absorber like cadmium, you can alter the speed of the reaction. Too much damping material will absorb too many neutrons and the reaction will stop. Not enough and the reaction will build up to an explosion. Neither of these extremes is wanted in an atomic pile. What is needed is a happy balance where you are soaking up just as many neutrons as are being generated all the time. This will give you a constant temperature inside the reactor. The net neutron reproduction constant is then 1. This balance of neutron generation and absorption is the k-factor of the reactor. Ideally 1.0000000.

"That's the ideal, though, the impossible to attain in a dynamic system like a reactor. All you need is a few more neutrons around, giving you a k-factor of 1.00000001 and you are headed for trouble. Each extra neutron produces two and your production rate soars geometrically towards bang. On the other hand, a k-factor of 0.999999999 is just as bad. Your reaction is spiraling down in the other direction. To control a pile you watch your k-factor and make constant adjustments."

"All this I follow," Costa said, "but where's the connection with Societics?"

"We'll get to that—just as soon as you realize and admit that a minute difference of degree can produce a marked difference of kind. You might say that a single, impossibly tiny, neutron is the difference between an atom bomb and a slowly cooling pile of inert uranium isotopes. Does that make sense?"

"I'm staggering, but still with you."

"Good. Then try to go along with the analogy that a human society is like an atomic pile. At one extreme you will have a dying, decadent culture—the remains of a highly mechanized society—living off its capital, using up resources it can't replace because of a lost technology. When the last machine breaks and the final food synthesizer collapses the people will die. This is the cooled down atomic pile. At the other extreme is complete and violent anarchy. Every man thinking only of himself, killing and destroying anything that gets in his way—the atomic explosion. Midway between the two is a vital, active, producing society.

"This is a generalization—and you must look at it that way. In reality society is infinitely complex, and the ramifications and possibilities are endless. It can do a lot more things than fizzle or go boom. Pressure of population, war or persecution patterns can cause waves of immigration. Plant and animal species can be wiped out by momentary needs or fashions. Remember the fate of the passenger pigeon and the American bison.

"All the pressures, cross-relationships, hungers, needs, hatreds, desires of people are reflected in their interrelationships. One man standing by himself tells us nothing. But as soon as he says something, passes on information in an altered form, or merely expresses an attitude—he becomes a reference point. He can be marked, measured and entered on a graph. His actions can be grouped with others and the action of the group measured. Man—and his society—then becomes a systems problem that can be fed into a computer. We've cut the Gordian knot of the three-L's and are on our way towards a solution."

"Stop!" Costa said, raising his hand. "I was with you as far as the 3L's. What are they? A private code?"

"Not a code—abbreviation. Linear Logic Language, the pitfall of all the old researchers. All of them, historians, sociologists, political analysts, anthropologists, were licked before they started. They had to know all about A and B before they could find C. Facts to them were always hooked up in a series. Whereas in truth they had to be analyzed as a complex circuit complete with elements like positive and negative feedback, and crossover switching. With the whole thing being stirred up constantly by continual homeostasis correction. It's little wonder they did do badly."

"You can't really say that," Adao Costa protested. "I'll admit that Societics has carried the art tremendously far ahead. But there were many basics that had already been discovered."

"If you are postulating a linear progression from the old social sciences—forget it," Neel said. "There is the same relationship here that alchemy holds to physics. The old boys with their frog guts and awful offal knew a bit about things like distilling and smelting. But there was no real order to their knowledge, and it was all an unconsidered by-product of their single goal, the whole nonsense of transmutation."

They passed a lounge, and Adao waved Neel in after him, dropping into a chair. He rummaged through his pockets for a cigarette, organizing his thoughts. "I'm still with you," he said. "But how do we work this back to the k-factor?"

"Simple," Neel told him. "Once you've gotten rid of the 3L's and their false conclusions. Remember that politics in the old days was all We are angels and They are devils. This was literally believed. In the history of mankind there has yet to be a war that wasn't backed by the official clergy on each side. And each declared that God was on their side. Which leaves You Know Who as prime supporter of the enemy. This theory is no more valid than the one that a single man can lead a country into war, followed by the inference that a well-timed assassination can save the peace."

"That doesn't sound too unreasonable," Costa said.

"Of course not. All of the old ideas sound good. They have a simple-minded simplicity that anyone can understand. That doesn't make them true. Kill a war-minded dictator and nothing changes. The violence-orientated society, the factors that produced it, the military party that represents it—none of these are changed. The k-factor remains the same."

"There's that word again. Do I get a definition yet?"

Neel smiled. "Of course. The k-factor is one of the many factors that interrelate in a society. Abstractly it is no more important than the other odd thousand we work with. But in practice it is the only one we try to alter."

"The k-factor is the war factor," Adao Costa said. All the humor was gone now.

"That's a good enough name for it," Neel said, grinding out his half-smoked cigarette. "If a society has a positive k-factor, even a slight one that stays positive, then you are going to have a war. Our planetary operators have two jobs. First to gather and interpret data. Secondly to keep the k-factor negative."

They were both on their feet now, moved by the same emotion.

"And Himmel has a positive one that stays positive," Costa said. Neel Sidorak nodded agreement. "Then let's get into the ship and get going," he said.

It was a fast trip and a faster landing. The UN cruiser cut its engines and dropped like a rock in free fall. Night rain washed the ports and the computer cut in the maximum permissible blast for the minimum time that would reduce their speed to zero at zero altitude. Deceleration sat on their chests and squeezed their bones to rubber. Something crunched heavily under their stern at the exact instant the drive cut out. Costa was unbelted and out the door while Neel was still feeling his insides shiver back into shape.

The unloading had an organized rhythm that rejected Neel. He finally realized he could help best by standing back out of the way while the crewmen grav-lifted the heavy cases out through the cargo port, into the blackness of the rain-lashed woods. Adao Costa supervised this and seemed to know what he was doing. A signal rating wearing earphones stood to one side of the lock chanting numbers that sounded like detector fixes. There was apparently enough time to unload everything—but none to spare. Things got close towards the end.

Neel was suddenly bustled out into the rain and the last two crates were literally thrown out after him. He plowed through the mud to the edge of the clearing and had just enough time to cover his face before the take-off blast burst out like a new sun.

"Sit down and relax," Costa told him. "Everything is in the green so far. The ship wasn't spotted on the way down. Now all we have to do is wait for transportation."

In theory at least, Adao Costa was Neel's assistant. In practice he took complete charge of moving their equipment and getting it under cover in the capital city of Kitezh. Men and trucks appeared to help them, and vanished as soon as their work was done. Within twenty hours they were installed in a large loft, all of the machines uncrated and plugged in. Neel took a no-sleep and began tuning checks on all the circuits, glad of something to do. Costa locked the heavy door behind their last silent helper, then dropped gratefully onto one of the bedding rolls.

"How did the gadgets hold up?" he asked.

"I'm finding out now. They're built to take punishment—but being dropped twelve feet into mud soup, then getting baked by rockets isn't in the original specs."

"They crate things well these days," Costa said unworriedly, sucking on a bottle of the famous Himmelian beer. "When do you go to work?"

"We're working right now," Neel told him, pulling a folder of papers out of the file. "Before we left I drew up a list of current magazines and newspapers I would need. You can start on these. I'll have a sampling program planned by the time you get back."

Costa groaned hollowly and reached for the papers.

Once the survey was in operation it went ahead of its own momentum. Both men grabbed what food and sleep they could. The computers gulped down Neel's figures and spat out tape-reels of answers that demanded even more facts. Costa and his unseen helpers were kept busy supplying the material.

Only one thing broke the ordered labors of the week. Neel blinked twice at Costa before his equation-fogged brain assimilated an immediate and personal factor.

"You've a bandage on your head," he said. "A blood-stained bandage!"

"A little trouble in the streets. Mobs. And that's an incredible feat of observation," Costa marveled. "I had the feeling that if I came in here stark naked, you wouldn't notice it."

"I ... I get involved," Neel said. Dropping the papers on a table and kneading the tired furrow between his eyes. "Get wrapped up in the computation. Sorry. I tend to forget about people."

"Don't feel sorry to me," Costa said. "You're right. Doing the job. I'm supposed to help you, not pose for the before picture in Home Hospital ads. Anyway—how are we doing? Is there going to be a war? Certainly seems like one brewing outside. I've seen two people lynched who were only suspected of being Earthies."

"Looks don't mean a thing," Neel said, opening two beers. "Remember the analogy of the pile. It boils liquid metal and cooks out energy from the infrared right through to hard radiation. Yet it keeps on generating power at a nice, steady rate. But your A-bomb at zero minus one second looks as harmless as a fallen log. It's the k-factor that counts, not surface appearance. This planet may look like a dictator's dream of glory, but as long as we're reading in the negative things are fine."

"And how are things? How's our little k-factor?"

"Coming out soon," Neel said, pointing at the humming computer. "Can't tell about it yet. You never can until the computation is complete. There's a temptation to try and guess from the first figures, but they're meaningless. Like trying to predict the winner of a horse race by looking at the starters lined up at the gate."

"Lots of people think they can."

"Let them. There are few enough pleasures in this life without taking away all delusions."

Behind them the computer thunked and was suddenly still.

"This is it," Neel said, and pulled out the tape. He ran it quickly through his fingers, mumbling under his breath. Just once he stopped and set some figures into his hand computer. The result flashed in the window and he stared at it, unmoving.

"Good? Bad? What is it?"

Neel raised his head and his eyes were ten years older.

"Positive. Bad. Much worse than it was when we left Earth."

"How much time do we have?"

"Don't know for certain," Neel shrugged. "I can set it up and get an approximation. But there is no definite point on the scale where war has to break out. Just a going and going until, somewhere along the line—"

"I know. Gone." Costa said, reaching for his gun. He slid it into his side pocket. "Now it's time to stop looking and start doing. What do I do?"

"Going to kill War Marshal Lommeord?" Neel asked distastefully. "I thought we had settled that you can't stop a war by assassinating the top man."

"We also settled that something can be done to change the k-factor. The gun is for my own protection. While you're radioing results back to Earth and they're feeling bad about it, I'm going to be doing something. Now you tell me what that something is."

This was a different man from the relaxed and quietly efficient Adao Costa of the past week. All of his muscles were hard with the restrained energy of an animal crouching to leap. The gun, ready in his pocket, had a suddenly new significance. Neel looked away, reaching around for words. This was all very alien to him and suddenly a little frightening. It was one thing to work out a k-problem in class, and discuss the theory of correction.

It was something entirely different to direct the operation.

"Well?" Costa's voice knifed through his thoughts.

"You can ... well ... it's possible to change one of the peak population curves. Isolate individuals and groups, then effect status and location changes—"

"You mean get a lot of guys to take jobs in other towns through the commercial agents?"

Neel nodded.

"Too slow." Costa withered the idea with his voice. "Fine in the long run, but of absolutely no value in an emergency." He began to pace back and forth. Too quickly. It was more of a bubbling-over than a relaxation. "Can't you isolate some recent key events that can be reversed?"

"It's possible." Neel thought about it, quickly. "It wouldn't be a final answer, just a delaying action."

"That's good enough. Tell me what to do."

Neel flipped through his books of notes, checking off the Beta-13's. These were the reinforcers, the individuals and groups who were k-factor amplifiers. It was a long list which he cut down quickly by crossing off the low increment additions and multiple groups. Even while the list was incomplete, Neel began to notice a pattern. It was an unlikely one, but it was there. He isolated the motivator and did a frequency check. Then sat back and whistled softly.

"We have a powerhouse here," he said, flipping the paper across the table. "Take this organization out of the equations and you might even knock us negative."

"Society for the Protection of the Native Born," Costa read. "Doesn't sound like very important. Who or what are they?"

"Proof positive of the law of averages. It's possible to be dealt a royal flush in a hand of cards, but it isn't very common. It's just as possible for a bunch of simpletons to set up an organization for one purpose, and have it turn out to be a supercharged, high-frequency k-factor amplifier. That's what's happened with this infernal S.P.N.B. A seedy little social club, dedicated to jingoists with low I.Q.'s. With the war scare they have managed to get hold of a few credits. They have probably been telling the same inflated stories for years about the discrimination against natives of this fair planet, but no one has really cared. Now they have a chance to get their news releases and faked pix out in quantity. Just at a time when the public is ripe for their brand of nonsense. Putting this bunch out of business will be a good day's work."

"Won't there be repercussions?" Costa asked. "If they are this important and throw so much weight around—won't it look suspicious if they are suddenly shut up. Like an obvious move by the enemy?"

"Not at all. That might be true if, for instance, you blew up the headquarters of the War Party. It would certainly be taken as an aggressive move. But no one really knows or cares about this Society of the Half-baked Native Born. There might be reaction and interest if attention was drawn to them. But if some accident or act of nature were to put them out of business, that would be the end of it."

Costa was snapping his lighter on and off as he listened to Neel, staring at the flame. He closed it and held it up. "I believe in accidents. I believe that even in our fireproof age, fires still occur. Buildings still burn down. And if a burnt building just happened to be occupied by the S.P.N.B.—just one tenant of many—and their offices and records were destroyed; that would be of very little interest to anyone except the fire brigade."

"You're a born criminal," Neel told him. "I'm glad we're on the same side. That's your department and I leave it to you. I'll just listen for the news flashes. Meanwhile I have one little errand to take care of."

The words stopped Costa, who was almost out the door. He turned stiffly to look at Neel putting papers into an envelope. Yet Costa spoke naturally, letting none of his feelings through into his voice.

"Where are you going?"

"To see Hengly, the planetary operator here. Abravanel told me to stay away from him, to run an entirely new basic survey. Well we've done that now, and pinpointed some of the trouble areas as well. I can stop feeling guilty about poaching another man's territory and let him know what's going on."

"No. Stay away from Hengly," Costa said. "The last thing in the world we want to do, is to be seen near him. There's a chance that he ... well ... might be compromised."

"What do you mean!" Neel snapped. "Hengly's a friend of mine, a graduate—"

"He might also be surrounded ten deep by the secret police. Did you stop to think about that?"

Neel hadn't thought about it, and his anger vanished when he did. Costa drove the point home.

"Societics has been a well kept secret for over two centuries. It may still be a secret—or bits of it might have leaked out. And even if the Himmelians know nothing about Societics, they have certainly heard of espionage. They know the UN has agents on their world, they might think Hengly is one of them. This is all speculation, of course, but we do have one fact—this Society of Native Boobs we turned up. We had no trouble finding them. If Hengly had reliable field men, he should know about them, too. The only reason he hasn't is because he isn't getting the information. Which means he's compromised."

Reaching back for a chair, Neel fell heavily into it. "You're right ... of course! I never realized."

"Good," Costa said. "We'll do something to help Hengly tomorrow, but this operation comes first. Sit tight. Get some rest. And don't open the door for anyone except me."

It had been a long job—and a tiring one—but it was almost over. Neel allowed himself the luxury of a long yawn, then shuffled over to the case of rations they had brought. He stripped the seal from something optimistically labeled CHICKEN DINNER—it tasted just like the algae it had been made from—and boiled some coffee while it was heating.

And all the time he was doing these prosaic tasks his mind was turning an indigestible fact over and over. It wasn't a conscious process, but it was nevertheless going on. The automatic mechanism of his brain ran it back and forth like a half heard tune, searching for its name. Neel was tired, or he would have reacted sooner. The idea finally penetrated. One fact he had taken for granted was an obvious impossibility.

The coffee splashed to the floor as he jumped to his feet.

"It's wrong ... it has to be wrong!" he said aloud, grabbing up the papers. Computations and graphs dropped and were trampled into the spilled coffee. When he finally found the one he wanted his hands were shaking as he flipped through it. The synopsis of Hengly's reports for the past five years. The gradual rise and fall of the k-factor from month to month. There were no sharp breaks in the curve or gaps in the supporting equations.

Societics isn't an exact science. But it's exact enough to know when it is working with incomplete or false information. If Hengly had been kept in the dark about the S.P.N.B., he would also have been misinformed about other factors. This kind of alteration of survey would have to show in the equations.

It didn't.

Time was running out and Neel had to act. But what to do? He must warn Adao Costa. And the records here had to be protected. Or better yet destroyed. There was a power in these machines and charts that couldn't be allowed to fall into nationalist hands. But what could be done about it?

In all the welter of equipment and containers, there was one solid, heavy box that he had never opened. It belonged to Costa, and the UN man had never unlocked it in his presence. Neel looked at the heavy clasps on it and felt defeat. But when he pulled at the lid, wondering what to do next, it fell open. It hadn't been sealed. Costa wasn't the kind of man who did things by accident. He had looked forward to the time when Neel might need what was in this box, and had it ready.

Inside was just what Neel expected. Grenades, guns, some smoothly polished devices that held an aura of violence. Looking at them, Neel had an overwhelming sensation of defeat. His life was dedicated to peace and the furthering of peace. He hated the violence that seemed inborn in man, and detested all the hypocritical rationalizations, such as the ends justifying the means. All of his training and personal inclinations were against it.

And he reached down and removed the blunt, black gun.

There was one other thing he recognized in the compact arsenal—a time bomb. There had been lectures on this mechanism in school, since the fact was clearly recognized that a time might come when equipment had to be destroyed rather than fall into the wrong hands. He had never seen one since, but he had learned the lesson well. Neel pushed the open chest nearer to his instruments and set the bomb dial for fifteen minutes. He slipped the gun into his pocket, started the fuse, and carefully locked the door when he left.

The bridges were burned. Now he had to find Adao Costa.

This entire operation was outside of his experience and knowledge. He could think of no plan that could possibly make things easier or safer. All he could do was head for the offices of the Society for the Protection of the Native Born and hope he could catch Adao before he ran into any trouble.

Two blocks away from the address he heard the sirens. Trying to act as natural as the other pedestrians, he turned to look as the armored cars and trucks hurtled by. Packed with armed police, their sirens and revolving lights cleared a path through the dark streets. Neel kept walking, following the cars now.

The street he wanted to go into was cordoned off.

Showing more than a normal interest would have been a giveaway. He let himself be hurried past, with no more than a glance down the block, with the other pedestrians. Cars and men were clustered around a doorway that Neel felt sure was number 265, his destination. Something was very wrong.

Had Costa walked into a trap—or tripped an alarm? It didn't really matter which, either way the balloon had gone up. Neel walked on slowly, painfully aware of his own inadequacy in dealing with the situation. It was a time for action—but what action? He hadn't the slightest idea where Costa was or how he could be of help to him.

Halfway down the block there was a dark mouth of an alleyway—unguarded. Without stopping to think, Neel turned into it. It would bring him closer to the building. Perhaps Costa was still trapped in there. He could get in, help him.

The back of 265 was quiet, with no hint of the activity on the other side of the building. Neel had counted carefully and was sure he had the right one. It was completely dark in the unlit alley, but he found a recessed door by touch. The chances were it was locked, but he moved into the alcove and leaned his weight against it, pulling at the handle, just in case. Nothing moved.

An inch behind his back the alley filled with light, washed with it, eye burning and strong. His eyes snapped shut, but he forced them open again, blinking against the pain. There were searchlights at each end of the alley, sealing it off. He couldn't get out.

In the instant before the fear hit him he saw the blood spots on the ground. There were three of them, large and glistening redly wet. They extended in a straight line away from him, pointing towards the gaping entrance of a cellar.

When the lights went out, Neel dived headlong towards the cracked and filthy pavement. The darkness meant that the police were moving slowly towards him from both ends of the alley, trapping him in between. There was nothing doubtful about the fate of an armed Earthman caught here. He didn't care. Neel's fear wasn't gone—he just had not time to think about it. His long shot had paid off and there was still a chance he could get Costa out of the trap he had let him walk into.

The lights had burned an after-image into his retina. Before it faded he reached out and felt his fingers slide across the dusty ground into a patch of wetness. He scrubbed at it with his sleeve, soaking up the blood, wiping the spot fiercely. With his other hand he pushed together a pile of dust and dirt, spreading it over the stain. As soon as he was sure the stain was covered he slid forward, groping for the second telltale splash.

Time was his enemy and he had no way to measure it. He could have been lying in the rubble of that alley for an hour—or a second. What was to be done, had to be done at once without a sound. There were silent, deadly men coming towards him through the darkness.

After the second smear was covered there was a drawn out moment of fear when he couldn't find the third and last. His fingers touched it finally, much farther on than he had expected. Time had certainly run out. Yet he forced himself to do as good a job here as he had with the other two. Only when it was dried and covered did he allow himself to slide forward into the cellar entrance.

Everything was going too fast. He had time for a single deep breath before the shriek of a whistle paralyzed him again. Footsteps slapped towards him and one of the searchlights burned with light. The footsteps speeded up and the man ran by, close enough for Neel to touch if he had reached out a hand. His clothing was shapeless and torn, his head and face thick with hair. That was all Neel had time to see before the guns roared and burned the life from the runner.

Some derelict, sleeping in the alley, who had paid with his life for being in the wrong spot at the wrong time. But his death had bought Neel a little more time. He turned and looked into the barrel of a gun.

Shock after shock had destroyed his capacity for fear. There was nothing left that could move him, even his own death. He looked quietly—dully—at the muzzle of the gun. With slow determination his mind turned over and he finally realized that this time there was nothing to fear.

"It's me, Adao," he whispered. "You'll be all right now."

"Ahh, it is you—" the voice came softly out of the darkness, the gun barrel wavered and sank. "Lift me up so I can get at this door. Can't seem to stand too well any more."

Neel reached down, found Costa's shoulders and slowly dragged him to his feet. His eyes were adjusting to the glare above them now, and he could make out the gleam of reflected light on the metal in Costa's fingers. The UN man's other hand was clutched tightly to his waist. The gun had vanished. The metal device wasn't a key, but Costa used it like one. It turned in the lock and the door swung open under their weight. Neel half carried, half dragged the other man's dead weight through it, dropping him to the floor inside. Before he closed the door he reached down and felt a great pool of blood outside.

There was no time to do a perfect job, the hard footsteps were coming, just a few yards away. His sleeves were sodden with blood as he blotted, then pushed rubble into the stain. He pulled back inside and the door closed with only the slightest click.

"I don't know how you managed it, but I'm glad you found me," Costa said. There was weakness as well as silence in his whisper.

"It was only chance I found you," Neel said bitterly. "But criminal stupidity on my part that let you walk into this trap."

"Don't worry about it, I knew what I was getting into. But I still had to go. Spring the trap to see if it was a trap."

"You suspected then that Hengly was—" Neel couldn't finish the sentence. He knew what he wanted to say, but the idea was too unbearable to put into words. Costa had no such compunction.

"Yes. Dear Hengly, graduate of the University and Practitioner of Societics. A traitor. A warmonger, worse than any of his predecessors because he knew just what to sell and how to sell it. It's never happened before ... but there was always the chance ... the weight of responsibility was too much ... he gave in—" Costa's voice had died away almost to a whisper. Then it was suddenly loud again, no louder than normal speaking volume, but sounding like a shout in the secret basement.

"Neel!"

"It's all right. Take it easy—"

"Nothing is all right—don't you realize that. I've been sending my reports back, so the UN and your Societics people will know how to straighten this mess out. But Hengly can turn this world upside down and might even get a shooting-war going before they get here. I'm out of it, but I can tell you who to contact, people who'll help. Hold the k-factor down—"

"That wouldn't do any good," Neel said quietly. "The whole thing is past the patch and polish stage now. Besides—I blew the whole works up. My machines and records, your—"

"You're a fool!" For the first time there was pain in Costa's voice.

"No. I was before—but not any more. As long as I thought it was a normal problem I was being outguessed at every turn. You must understand the ramifications of Societics. To a good operator there is no interrelationship that cannot be uncovered. Hengly would be certain to keep his eyes open for another field check. Our kind of operation is very easy to spot if you know where—and how—to look. The act of getting information implies contact of some kind, that contact can be detected. He's had our location marked and has been sitting tight, buying time. But our time ran out when you showed them we were ready to fight back. That's why I destroyed our setup, and cut our trail."

"But ... then we're defenseless! What can we possibly do?"

Neel knew the answer, but he hesitated to put it into words. It would be final then. He suddenly realized he had forgotten about Costa's wound.

"I'm sorry ... I forgot about your being hurt. What can I do?"

"Nothing," Costa snapped. "I put a field dressing on, that'll do. Answer my question. What is there left? What can be done now?"

"I'll have to kill Hengly. That will set things right until the team gets here."

"But what good will that accomplish?" Costa asked, trying to see the other man in the darkness of the cellar. "You told me yourself that a war couldn't be averted by assassination. No one individual means that much."

"Only in a normal situation," Neel explained. "You must look at the power struggle between planets as a kind of celestial chess game. It has its own rules. When I talked about individuals earlier I was talking about pieces on this chessboard. What I'm proposing now is a little more dramatic. I'm going to win the chess game in a slightly more unorthodox way. I'm going to shoot the other chess player."

There was silence for a long moment, broken only by the soft sigh of their breathing. Then Costa stirred and there was the sound of metal clinking slightly on the floor.

"It's really my job," Costa said, "but I'm no good for it. You're right, you'll have to go. But I can help you, plan it so you will be able to get to Hengly. You might even stand a better chance than me, because you are so obviously an amateur. Now listen carefully, because we haven't much time."

Neel didn't argue. He knew what needed doing, but Costa could tell him how best to go about it. The instructions were easy to memorize, and he put the weapons away as he was told.

"Once you're clear of this building, you'll have to get cleaned up," Costa said. "But that's the only thing you should stop for. Get to Hengly while he is still rattled, catch him off guard as much as possible. Then—after you finish with him—dig yourself in. Stay hidden at least three days before you try to make any contacts. Things should have quieted down a bit by then."

"I don't like leaving you here," Neel said.

"It's the best way, as well as being the only way. I'll be safe enough. I've a nice little puncture in me, but there's enough medication to see me through."

"If I'm going to hole up, I'll hole up here. I'll be back to take care of you."

Costa didn't answer him. There was nothing more to say. They shook hands in the darkness and Neel crawled away.

There was little difficulty in finding the front door of the building, but Neel hesitated before he opened it. Costa had been sure Neel could get away without being noticed, but he didn't feel so sure himself. There certainly would be plenty of police in the streets, even here. Only as he eased the door did he understand why Costa had been so positive about this.

Gunfire hammered somewhere behind him; other guns answered. Costa must have had another gun. He had planned it this way and the best thing Neel could do was not to think about it and go ahead with the plan. A car whined by in the roadway. As soon as it had passed Neel slipped out and crossed the empty street to the nearest monosub entrance. Most of the stations had valet machines.

It was less than an hour later when he reached Hengly's apartment. Washed, shaved—and with his clothes cleaned—Neel felt a little more sure of himself. No one had stopped him or even noticed him. The lobby had been empty and the automatic elevator left him off at the right floor when he gave it Hengly's name. Now, facing the featureless door, he had a sharp knife of fear. It was too easy. He reached out slowly and tried the handle. The door was unlocked. Taking a deep breath, he opened it and stepped inside.

It was a large room, but unlit. An open door at the other end had a dim light shining through it. Neel started that way and pain burst in his head, spinning him down, face forward.

He never quite lost consciousness, but details were vague in his memory. When full awareness returned he realized that the lights were on in the room. He was lying on his back, looking up at them. Two men stood next to him, staring down at him from above the perspective columns of their legs. One held a short metal bar that he kept slapping into his open palm.

The other man was Hengly.

"Not very friendly for an old classmate," he said, holding out Neel's gun. "Now get inside, I want to talk to you."

Neel rolled over painfully and crawled to his feet. His head throbbed with pain, but he tried to ignore it. As he stood up his hand brushed his ankle. The tiny gun Costa had given him was still in the top of his shoe. Perhaps Hengly wasn't being as smart as he should.

"I can take care of him," Hengly said to the man with the metal rod. "He's the only one left now, so you can get some sleep. See you early in the morning though." The man nodded agreement and left.

Slouched in the chair Neel looked forward to a certain pleasure in killing Hengly. Costa was dead, and this man was responsible for his death. It wouldn't even be like killing a friend, Hengly was very different from the man he had known. He had put on a lot of weight and affected a thick beard and flowing mustache. There was something jovial and paternal about him—until you looked into his eyes. Neel slumped forward, worn out, letting his fingers fall naturally next to the gun in his shoe. Hengly couldn't see his hand, the desk was in the way. All Neel had to do was draw and fire.

"You can pull out the gun," Hengly said with a grim smile, "but don't try to shoot it." He had his own gun now, aimed directly at Neel. Leaning forward he watched as Neel carefully pulled out the tiny weapon and threw it across the room. "That's better," he said, placing his own gun on the desk where he could reach it easily. "Now we can talk."

"There's nothing I have to say to you, Hengly." Neel leaned back in the chair, exhausted. "You're a traitor!"

Hengly hammered the desk in sudden anger and shouted. "Don't talk to me of treachery, my little man of peace. Creeping up with a gun to kill a friend. Is that peaceful? Where are the ethos of humanism now, you were very fond of them when we were in the University!"

Neel didn't want to listen to the words, he thought instead of how right Costa had been. He was dead, but this was still his operation. It was going according to plan.

"Walk right in there," Costa had said. "He won't kill you. Not at first, at least. He's the loneliest man in the universe, because he has given up one world for another that he hasn't gained yet. There will be no one he can confide in. He'll know you have come to kill him, but he won't be able to resist talking to you first. Particularly if you make it easy for him to defeat you. Not too easy—he must feel he is outthinking you. You'll have a gun for him to take away, but that will be too obvious. This small gun will be hidden as well, and when he finds that, too, he should be taken off his guard. Not much, but enough for you to kill him. Don't wait. Do it at the first opportunity."

Out of the corner of his eye, Neel could see the radiophone clipped to the front of his jacket. It was slightly tarnished, looking like any one of ten thousand in daily use—almost a duplicate of the one Hengly wore. A universal symbol of the age, like the keys and small change in his pockets.

Only Neel's phone was a deadly weapon. Product of a research into sudden death that he had never been aware of before. All he had to do was get it near Hengly, the mechanism had been armed when he put it on. It had a range of two feet. As soon as it was that far from any part of his body it would be actuated.

"Can I ask you a question, Hengly?" His words cut loudly through the run of the other man's speech.

Hengly frowned at the interruption, then nodded permission. "Go ahead," he said. "What would you like to know?"

"The obvious. Why did you do it? Change sides I mean. Give up a positive work, for this ... this negative corruption...."

"That's how much you know about it." Hengly was shouting now. "Positive, negative. War, peace. Those are just words, and it took me years to find it out. What could be more positive than making something of my life—and of this planet at the same time. It's in my power to do it, and I've done it."

"Power, perhaps that's the key word," Neel said, suddenly very tired. "We have the stars now but we have carried with us our little personal lusts and emotions. There's nothing wrong with that, I suppose, as long as we keep them personal. It's when we start inflicting them on others the trouble starts. Well, it's over now. At least this time."

With a single, easy motion he unclipped the radiophone and flipped it across the desk towards Hengly.

"Good-by," he said.

The tiny mechanism clattered onto the desk and Hengly leaped back, shouting hoarsely. He pulled the gun up and tried to aim at the radiophone and at Neel at the same time. It was too late to do either. There was a brief humming noise from the phone.

Neel jerked in his chair. It felt as if a slight electric shock had passed through him. He had felt only a microscopic percentage of the radiation.

Hengly got it all. The actuated field of the device had scanned his nervous system, measured and tested it precisely. Then adjusted itself to the exact micro-frequency that carried the messages in his efferent nervous system. Once the adjustment had been made, the charged condensers had released their full blasts of energy on that frequency.

The results were horribly dramatic. Every efferent neuron in his system carried the message full power. Every muscle in his body responded with a contraction of full intensity.

Neel closed his eyes, covered them, turned away gasping. It couldn't be watched. An epileptic in a seizure can break the bones in a leg or arm by simultaneous contraction of opposing muscles. When all the opposed muscles of Hengly's body did this the results were horrible beyond imagining.

When Neel recovered a measure of sanity he was in the street, running. He slowed to a walk, and looked around. It was just dawn and the streets were empty. Ahead was the glowing entrance of a monotube and he headed for it. The danger was over now, as long as he was careful.

Pausing on the top step, he breathed the fresh air of the new morning. There was a sighing below as an early train pulled into the station. The dawn-lit sky was the color of blood.

"Blood," he said aloud. Then, "Do we have to keep on killing? Isn't there another way?"

He started guiltily as his voice echoed in the empty street, but no one had heard him.

Quickly, two at a time, he ran down the steps.

THE END

Contents

THE MISPLACED BATTLESHIP

By HARRY HARRISON

WHEN it comes to picking locks and cracking safes I admit to no master. The door to Inskipp's private quarters had an old-fashioned tumbler drum that was easier to pick than my teeth. I must have gone through that door without breaking step. Quiet as I was though, Inskipp still heard me. The light came on and there he was sitting up in bed pointing a .75 caliber recoilless at my sternum.

"You should have more brains than that, diGriz," he snarled. "Creeping into my room at night! You could have been shot."

"No I couldn't," I told him, as he stowed the cannon back under his pillow. "A man with a curiosity bump as big as yours will always talk first and shoot later. And besides—none of this pussyfooting around in the dark would be necessary if your screen was open and I could have got a call through."

Inskipp yawned and poured himself a glass of water from the dispenser unit above the bed. "Just because I head the Special Corps, doesn't mean that I am the Special Corps," he said moistly while he drained the glass. "I have to sleep sometime. My screen is open only for emergency calls, not for every agent who needs his hand held."

"Meaning I am in the hand-holding category?" I asked with as much sweetness as I could.

"Put yourself in any category you please," he grumbled as he slumped down in the bed. "And also put yourself out into the hall and see me tomorrow during working hours."

He was at my mercy, really. He wanted sleep so much. And he was going to be wide awake so very soon.

"Do you know what this is?" I asked him, poking a large glossy pic under his long broken nose. One eye opened slowly.

"Big warship of some kind, looks like Empire lines. Now for the last time—go away!" he said.

"A very good guess for this late at night," I told him cheerily. "It is a late Empire battleship of the Warlord class. Undoubtedly one of the most truly efficient engines of destruction ever manufactured. Over a half mile of defensive screens and armament, that could probably turn any fleet existent today into fine radioactive ash—"

"Except for the fact that the last one was broken up for scrap over a thousand years ago," he mumbled.

I leaned over and put my lips close to his ear. So there would be no chance of misunderstanding. Speaking softly, but clearly.

"True, true," I said. "But wouldn't you be just a little bit interested if I was to tell you that one is being built today?"

Oh, it was beautiful to watch. The covers went one way and Inskipp went the other. In a single unfolding, in concerted motion he left the horizontal and recumbent and stood tensely vertical against the wall. Examining the pic of the battleship under the light. He apparently did not believe in pajama bottoms and it hurt me to see the goose-bumps rising on those thin shanks. But if the legs were thin, the voice was more than full enough to make up for the difference.

"Talk, blast you diGriz—talk!" he roared. "What is this nonsense about a battleship? Who's building it?"

I had my nail file out and was touching up a cuticle, holding it out for inspection before I said anything. From the corner of my eye I could see him getting purple about the face—but he kept quiet. I savored my small moment of power.

"Put diGriz in charge of the record room for a while, you said, that way he can learn the ropes. Burrowing around in century-old, dusty files will be just the thing for a free spirit like Slippery Jim diGriz. Teach him discipline. Show him what the Corps stands for. At the same time it will get the records in shape. They have been needing reorganization for quite a while."

Inskipp opened his mouth, made a choking noise, then closed it. He undoubtedly realized that any interruption would only lengthen my explanation, not shorten it. I smiled and nodded at his decision, then continued.

"So you thought you had me safely out of the way. Breaking my spirit under the guise of 'giving me a little background in the Corps' activities.' In this sense your plan failed. Something else happened instead. I nosed through the files and found them most interesting. Particularly the C & M setup—the Categorizer and Memory. That building full of machinery that takes in and digests news and reports from all the planets in the galaxy, indexes it to every category it can possibly relate, then files it. Great machine to work with. I had it digging out spaceship info for me, something I have always been interested in—"

"You should be," Inskipp interrupted rudely. "You've stolen enough of them in your time."

I gave him a hurt look and went on—slowly. "I won't bore you with all the details, since you seem impatient, but eventually I turned up this plan." He had it out of my fingers before it cleared my wallet.

"What are you getting at?" he mumbled as he ran his eyes over the blueprints. "This is an ordinary heavy-cargo and passenger job. It's no more a Warlord battleship than I am."

It is hard to curl your lips with contempt and talk at the same time, but I succeeded. "Of course. You don't expect them to file warship plans with the League Registry, do you? But, as I said, I know more than a little bit about ships. It seemed to me this thing was just too big for the use intended. Enough old ships are fuel-wasters, you don't have to build new ones to do that. This started me thinking and I punched for a complete list of ships that size that had been constructed in the past. You can imagine my surprise when, after three minutes of groaning, the C & M only produced six. One was built for self-sustaining colony attempt at the second galaxy. For all we know she is still on the way. The other five were all D-class colonizers, built during the Expansion when large populations were moved. Too big to be practical now.

"I was still teased, as I had no idea what a ship this large could be used for. So I removed the time interlock on the C & M and let it pick around through the entire history of space to see if it could find a comparison. It sure did. Right at the Golden Age of Empire expansion, the giant Warlord battleships. The machine even found a blueprint for me."

Inskipp grabbed again and began comparing the two prints. I leaned over his shoulder and pointed out the interesting parts.

"Notice—if the engine room specs are changed slightly to include this cargo hold, there is plenty of room for the brutes needed. This superstructure—obviously just tacked onto the plans—gets thrown away, and turrets take its place. The hulls are identical. A change here, a shift there, and the stodgy freighter becomes the fast battlewagon. These changes could be made during construction, then plans filed. By the time anyone in the League found out what was being built the ship would be finished and launched. Of course, this could all be coincidence—the plans of a newly built ship agreeing to six places with those of a ship built a thousand years ago. But if you think so, I will give you hundred-to-one odds you are wrong, any size bet you name."

I wasn't winning any sucker bets that night. Inskipp had led just as crooked a youth as I had, and needed no help in smelling a fishy deal. While he pulled on his clothes he shot questions at me.

"And the name of the peace-loving planet that is building this bad memory from the past?"

"Cittanuvo. Second planet of a B star in Corona Borealis. No other colonized planets in the system."

"Never heard of it," Inskipp said as we took the private drop chute to his office. "Which may be a good or a bad sign. Wouldn't be the first time trouble came from some out-of-the-way spot I never even knew existed."

With the automatic disregard for others of the truly dedicated, he pressed the scramble button on his desk. Very quickly sleepy-eyed clerks and assistants were bringing files and records. We went through them together.

Modesty prevented me from speaking first, but I had a very short wait before Inskipp reached the same conclusion I had. He hurled a folder the length of the room and scowled out at the harsh dawn light.

"The more I look at this thing," he said, "the fishier it gets. This planet seems to have no possible motive or use for a battleship. But they are building one—that I will swear on a stack of one thousand credit notes as high as this building. Yet what will they do with it when they have it built? They have an expanding culture, no unemployment, a surplus of heavy metals and ready markets for all they produce. No hereditary enemies, feuds or the like. If it wasn't for this battleship thing, I would call them an ideal League planet. I have to know more about them."

"I've already called the spaceport—in your name of course," I told him. "Ordered a fast courier ship. I'll leave within the hour."

"Aren't you getting a little ahead of yourself, diGriz," he said. Voice chill as the icecap. "I still give the orders and I'll tell you when you're ready for an independent command."

I was sweetness and light because a lot depended on his decision. "Just trying to help, chief, get things ready in case you wanted more info. And this isn't really an operation, just a reconnaissance. I can do that as well as any of the experienced operators. And it may give me the experience I need, so that some day, I, too, will be qualified to join the ranks...."

"All right," he said. "Stop shoveling it on while I can still breathe. Get out there. Find out what is going on. Then get back. Nothing else—and that's an order."

By the way he said it, I knew he thought there was little chance of its happening that way. Since my forced induction into the Corps six months earlier I had been stuck on this super-secret planetoid that was its headquarters and main base. I had very little sitting-down patience anyway, and it had been long since exhausted.

It had been interesting at first. Particularly since up until the time I was drafted into the Special Corps I wasn't even certain it really existed. It was too much like a con man's nightmare to be real. A secret worry. After a few happy years of successful crime you begin to wonder how long it will last. Planetary police are all pushovers and you start to feel you can go on forever if they're your only competition. What about the League though? Don't they take any interest in crime? Just about that time you hear your first rumor of the Special Corps and it fits the bad dreams. A shadowy, powerful group that slip silently between the stars, ready to bring the interstellar lawbreaker low. Sounds like TV drama stuff. I had been quite surprised to find they really existed.

I was even more surprised when I joined them. Of course there was a little pressure at the time. I had the alternative choice of instant death. But I still think it was a wise move. Under the motto "Set a thief to catch one," the Corps supposedly made good use of men like myself to get rid of the more antisocial types that infest the universe.

This was still all hearsay to me. I had been pulled into headquarters and given routine administration work for training. Six months of this had me slightly ga-ga and I wanted out. Since no one seemed to be in a hurry to give me an assignment I had found one for myself. I had no idea of what would come if it, but I also had no intention of returning until the job was done.

A quick stop at supply and record sections gave me everything I needed. The sun was barely clear of the horizon when the silver needle of my ship lifted in the gray field, then blasted into space.

The trip took only a few days, more than enough time to memorize everything I needed to know about Cittanuvo. And the more I knew the less I could understand their need for a battleship. It didn't fit. Cittanuvo was a secondary settlement out of the Cellini system, and I had run into these settlements before. They were all united in a loose alliance and bickered a lot among themselves, but never came to blows. If anything, they shared a universal abhorrence of war.

Yet they were secretly building a battleship.

Since I was only chasing my tail with this line of thought, I put it out of my mind and worked on some tri-di chess problems. This filled the time until Cittanuvo blinked into the bow screen.

One of my most effective mottoes has always been, "Secrecy can be an obviousity." What the magicians call misdirection. Let people very obviously see what you want them to see, then they'll never notice what is hidden. This was why I landed at midday, on the largest field on the planet, after a very showy approach. I was already dressed for my role, and out of the ship before the landing braces stopped vibrating. Buckling the fur cape around my shoulders with the platinum clasp, I stamped down the ramp. The sturdy little M-3 robot rumbled after me with my bags. Heading directly towards the main gate, I ignored the scurry of activity around the customs building. Only when a uniformed under-official of some kind ran over to me, did I give the field any attention.

Before he could talk I did, foot in the door and stay on top.

"Beautiful planet you have here. Delightful climate! Ideal spot for a country home. Friendly people, always willing to help strangers and all that I imagine. That's what I like. Makes me feel grateful. Very pleased to meet you. I am the Grand Duke Sant' Angelo." I shook his hand enthusiastically at this point and let a one hundred credit note slip into his palm.

"Now," I added, "I wonder if you would ask the customs agents to look at my bags here. Don't want to waste time, do we? The ship is open, they can check that whenever they please."

My manner, clothes, jewelry, the easy way I passed money around and the luxurious sheen of my bags, could mean only one thing. There was little that was worth smuggling into or out of Cittanuvo. Certainly nothing a rich man would be interested in. The official murmured something with a smile, spoke a few words into his phone, and the job was done.

A small wave of custom men hung stickers on my luggage, peeked into one or two for conformity's sake, and waved me through. I shook hands all around—a rustling hand-clasp of course—then was on my way. A cab was summoned, a hotel suggested. I nodded agreement and settled back while the robot loaded the bags about me.

The ship was completely clean. Everything I might need for the job was in my luggage. Some of it quite lethal and explosive, and very embarrassing if it was discovered in my bags. In the safety of my hotel suite I made a change of clothes and personality. After the robot had checked the rooms for bugs.

And very nice gadgets too, these Corps robots. It looked and acted like a moron M-3 all the time. It was anything but. The brain was as good as any other robot brain I have known, plus the fact that the chunky body was crammed with devices and machines of varying use. It chugged slowly around the room, moving my bags and laying out my kit. And all the time following a careful route that covered every inch of the suite. When it had finished it stopped and called the all-clear.

"All rooms checked. Results negative except for one optic bug in that wall."

"Should you be pointing like that?" I asked the robot. "Might make people suspicious, you know."

"Impossible," the robot said with mechanical surety. "I brushed against it and it is now unserviceable."

With this assurance I pulled off my flashy clothes and slipped into the midnight black dress uniform of an admiral in the League Grand Fleet. It came complete with decorations, gold bullion, and all the necessary documents. I thought it a little showy myself, but it was just the thing to make the right impression on Cittanuvo. Like many other planets, this one was uniform-conscious. Delivery boys, street cleaners, clerks—all had to have characteristic uniforms. Much prestige attached to them, and my black dress outfit should rate as high as any uniform in the galaxy.

A long cloak would conceal the uniform while I left the hotel, but the gold-encrusted helmet and a brief case of papers were a problem. I had never explored all the possibilities of the pseudo M-3 robot, perhaps it could be of help.

"You there, short and chunky," I called. "Do you have any concealed compartments or drawers built into your steel hide? If so, let's see."

For a second I thought the robot had exploded. The thing had more drawers in it than a battery of cash registers. Big, small, flat, thin, they shot out on all sides. One held a gun and two more were stuffed with grenades; the rest were empty. I put the hat in one, the brief case in another and snapped my fingers. The drawers slid shut and its metal hide was as smooth as ever.

I pulled on a fancy sports cap, buckled the cape up tight, and was ready to go. The luggage was all booby-trapped and could defend itself. Guns, gas, poison needles, the usual sort of thing. In the last resort it would blow itself up. The M-3 went down by a freight elevator. I used a back stairs and we met in the street.

Since it was still daylight I didn't take a heli, but rented a groundcar instead. We had a leisurely drive out into the country and reached President Ferraro's house after dark.

As befitted the top official of a rich planet, the place was a mansion. But the security precautions were ludicrous to say the least. I took myself and a three hundred fifty kilo robot through the guards and alarms without causing the slightest stir. President Ferraro, a bachelor, was eating his dinner. This gave me enough undisturbed time to search his study.

There was absolutely nothing. Nothing to do with wars or battleships that is. If I had been interested in blackmail I had enough evidence in my hand to support me for life. I was looking for something bigger than political corruption, however.

When Ferraro rolled into his study after dinner the room was dark. I heard him murmur something about the servants and fumble for the switch. Before he found it, the robot closed the door and turned on the lights. I sat behind his desk, all his personal papers before me—weighted down with a pistol—and as fierce a scowl as I could raise smeared across my face. Before he got over the shock I snapped an order at him.

"Come over here and sit down, quick!"

The robot hustled him across the room at the same time, so he had no choice except to obey. When he saw the papers on the desk his eyes bulged and he just gurgled a little. Before he could recover I threw a thick folder in front of him.

"I am Admiral Thar, League Grand Fleet. These are my credentials. You had better check them." Since they were as good as any real admiral's I didn't worry in the slightest. Ferraro went through them as carefully as he could in his rattled state, even checking the seals under UV. It gave him time to regain a bit of control and he used it to bluster.

"What do you mean by entering my private quarters and burglaring—"

"You're in very bad trouble," I said in as gloomy a voice as I could muster.

Ferraro's tanned face went a dirty gray at my words. I pressed the advantage.

"I am arresting you for conspiracy, extortion, theft, and whatever other charges develop after a careful review of these documents. Seize him." This last order was directed at the robot who was well briefed in its role. It rumbled forward and locked its hand around Ferraro's wrist, handcuff style. He barely noticed.

"I can explain," he said desperately. "Everything can be explained. There is no need to make such charges. I don't know what papers you have there, so I wouldn't attempt to say they are all forgeries. I have many enemies you know. If the League knew the difficulties faced on a backward planet like this...."

"That will be entirely enough," I snapped, cutting him off with a wave of my hand. "All those questions will be answered by a court at the proper time. There is only one question I want an answer to now. Why are you building that battleship?"

The man was a great actor. His eyes opened wide, his jaw dropped, he sank back into the chair as if he had been tapped lightly with a hammer. When he managed to speak the words were completely unnecessary; he had already registered every evidence of injured innocence.

"What battleship!" he gasped.

"The Warlord class battleship that is being built at the Cenerentola Spaceyards. Disguised behind these blueprints." I threw them across the desk to him, and pointed to one corner. "Those are your initials there, authorizing construction."

Ferraro still had the baffled act going as he fumbled with the papers, examined the initials and such. I gave him plenty of time. He finally put them down, shaking his head.

"I know nothing about any battleship. These are the plans for a new cargo liner. Those are my initials, I recall putting them there."

I phrased my question carefully, as I had him right where I wanted him now. "You deny any knowledge of the Warlord battleship that is being built from these modified plans."

"These are the plans for an ordinary passenger-freighter, that is all I know."

His words had the simple innocence of a young child's. Was he ever caught. I sat back with a relaxed sigh and lit a cigar.

"Wouldn't you be interested in knowing something about that robot who is holding you," I said. He looked down, as if aware for the first time that the robot had been holding him by the wrist during the interview. "That is no ordinary robot. It has a number of interesting devices built into its fingertips. Thermocouples, galvanometers, things like that. While you talked it registered your skin temperature, blood pressure, amount of perspiration and such. In other words it is an efficient and fast working lie detector. We will now hear all about your lies."

Ferraro pulled away from the robot's hand as if it had been a poisonous snake. I blew a relaxed smoke ring. "Report," I said to the robot. "Has this man told any lies?"

"Many," the robot said. "Exactly seventy-four per cent of all statements he made were fake."

"Very good," I nodded, throwing the last lock on my trap. "That means he knows all about this battleship."

"The subject has no knowledge of the battleship," the robot said coldly. "All of his statements concerning the construction of this ship were true."

Now it was my turn for the gaping and eye-popping act while Ferraro pulled himself together. He had no idea I wasn't interested in his other hanky-panky, but could tell I had had a low blow. It took an effort, but I managed to get my mind back into gear and consider the evidence.

If President Ferraro didn't know about the battleship, he must have been taken in by the cover-up job. But if he wasn't responsible—who was? Some militaristic clique that meant to overthrow him and take power? I didn't know enough about the planet, so I enlisted Ferraro on my side.

This was easy—even without the threat of exposure of the documents I had found in his files. Using their disclosure as a prod I could have made him jump through hoops. It wasn't necessary. As soon as I showed him the different blueprints and explained the possibilities he understood. If anything, he was more eager than I was to find out who was using his administration as a cat's-paw. By silent agreement the documents were forgotten.

We agreed that the next logical step would be the Cenerentola Spaceyards. He had some idea of sniffing around quietly first, trying to get a line to his political opponents. I gave him to understand that the League, and the League Navy in particular, wanted to stop the construction of the battleship. After that he could play his politics. With this point understood he called his car and squadron of guards and we made a parade to the shipyards. It was a four-hour drive and we made plans on the way down.

The spaceyard manager was named Rocca, and he was happily asleep when we arrived. But not for long. The parade of uniforms and guns in the middle of the night had him frightened into a state where he could hardly walk. I imagine he was as full of petty larceny as Ferraro. No innocent man could have looked so terror stricken. Taking advantage of the situation, I latched my motorized lie detector onto him and began snapping the questions.

Even before I had all the answers I began to get the drift of things. They were a little frightening, too. The manager of the spaceyard that was building the ship had no idea of its true nature.

Anyone with less self-esteem than myself—or who had led a more honest early life—might have doubted his own reasoning at that moment. I didn't. The ship on the ways still resembled a warship to six places. And knowing human nature the way I do, that was too much of a coincidence to expect. Occam's razor always points the way. If there are two choices to take, take the simpler. In this case I chose the natural acquisitive instinct of man as opposed to blind chance and accident. Nevertheless I put the theory to the test.

Looking over the original blueprints again, the big superstructure hit my eye. In order to turn the ship into a warship that would have to be one of the first things to go.

"Rocca!" I barked, in what I hoped was authentic old space-dog manner. "Look at these plans, at this space-going front porch here. Is it still being built onto the ship?"

He shook his head at once and said, "No, the plans were changed. We had to fit in some kind of new meteor-repelling gear for operating in the planetary debris belt."

I flipped through my case and drew out a plan. "Does your new gear look anything like this?" I asked, throwing it across the table to him.

He rubbed his jaw while he looked at it. "Well," he said hesitatingly, "I don't want to say for certain. After all these details aren't in my department, I'm just responsible for final assembly, not unit work. But this surely looks like the thing they installed. Big thing. Lots of power leads—"

It was a battleship all right, no doubt of that now. I was mentally reaching around to pat myself on the back when the meaning of his words sank in.

"Installed!" I shouted. "Did you say installed?"

Rocca collapsed away from my roar and gnawed his nails. "Yes—" he said, "not too long ago. I remember there was some trouble...."

"And what else!" I interrupted him. Cold moisture was beginning to collect along my spine now. "The drives, controls—are they in, too?"

"Why, yes," he said. "How did you know? The normal scheduling was changed around, causing a great deal of unnecessary trouble."

The cold sweat was now a running river of fear. I was beginning to have the feeling that I had been missing the boat all along the line. The original estimated date of completion was nearly a year away. But there was no real reason why that couldn't be changed, too.

"Cars! Guns!" I bellowed. "To the spaceyard. If that ship is anywhere near completion, we are in big, big trouble!"

All the bored guards had a great time with the sirens, lights, accelerators on the floor and that sort of thing. We blasted a screaming hole through the night right to the spaceyard and through the gate.

It didn't make any difference, we were still too late. A uniformed watchman frantically waved to us and the whole convoy jerked to a stop.

The ship was gone.

Rocca couldn't believe it, neither could the president. They wandered up and down the empty ways where it had been built. I just crunched down in the back of the car, chewing my cigar to pieces and cursing myself for being a fool.

I had missed the obvious fact, being carried away by the thought of a planetary government building a warship. The government was involved for sure—but only as a pawn. No little planet-bound political mind could have dreamed up as big a scheme as this. I smelled a rat—a stainless steel one. Someone who operated the way I had done before my conversion.

Now that the rodent was well out of the bag I knew just where to look, and had a pretty good idea of what I would find. Rocca, the spaceyard manager, had staggered back and was pulling at his hair, cursing and crying at the same time. President Ferraro had his gun out and was staring at it grimly. It was hard to tell if he was thinking of murder or suicide. I didn't care which. All he had to worry about was the next election, when the voters and the political competition would carve him up for losing the ship. My troubles were a little bigger.

I had to find the battleship before it blasted its way across the galaxy.

"Rocca!" I shouted. "Get into the car. I want to see your records—all of your records—and I want to see them right now."

He climbed wearily in and had directed the driver before he fully realized what was happening. Blinking at the sickly light of dawn brought him slowly back to reality.

"But ... admiral ... the hour! Everyone will be asleep...."

I just growled, but it was enough. Rocca caught the idea from my expression and grabbed the car phone. The office doors were open when we got there.

Normally I curse the paper tangles of bureaucracy, but this was one time when I blessed them all. These people had it down to a fine science. Not a rivet fell, but that its fall was noted—in quintuplicate. And later followed up with a memo, rivet, wastage, query. The facts I needed were all neatly tucked away in their paper catacombs. All I had to do was sniff them out. I didn't try to look for first causes, this would have taken too long. Instead I concentrated my attention on the recent modifications, like the gun turret, that would quickly give me a trail to the guilty parties.

Once the clerks understood what I had in mind they hurled themselves into their work, urged on by the fires of patriotism and the burning voices of their superiors. All I had to do was suggest a line of search and the relevant documents would begin appearing at once.

Bit by bit a pattern started to emerge. A delicate webwork of forgery, bribery, chicanery and falsehood. It could only have been conceived by a mind as brilliantly crooked as my own. I chewed my lip with jealousy. Like all great ideas, this one was basically simple.

A party or parties unknown had neatly warped the ship construction program to their own ends. Undoubtedly they had started the program for the giant transport, that would have to be checked later. And once the program was underway, it had been guided with a skill that bordered on genius. Orders were originated in many places, passed on, changed and shuffled. I painfully traced each one to its source. Many times the source was a forgery. Some changes seemed to be unexplainable, until I noticed the officers in question had a temporary secretary while their normal assistants were ill. All the girls had food poisoning, a regular epidemic it seemed. Each of them in turn had been replaced by the same girl. She stayed just long enough in each position to see that the battleship plan moved forward one more notch.

This girl was obviously the assistant to the Mastermind who originated the scheme. He sat in the center of the plot, like a spider on its web, pulling the strings that set things into motion. My first thought that a gang was involved proved wrong. All my secondary suspects turned out to be simple forgeries, not individuals. In the few cases where forgery wasn't adequate, my mysterious X had apparently hired himself to do the job. X himself had the permanent job of Assistant Engineering Designer. One by one the untangled threads ran to this office. He also had a secretary whose "illnesses" coincided with her employment in other offices.

When I straightened up from my desk the ache in my back stabbed like a hot wire. I swallowed a painkiller and looked around at my drooping, sack-eyed assistants who had shared the sleepless seventy-two hour task. They sat or slumped against the furniture, waiting for my conclusions. Even President Ferraro was there, his hair looking scraggly where he had pulled out handfuls.

"You've found them, the criminal ring?" he asked, his fingers groping over his scalp for a fresh hold.

"I have found them, yes," I said hoarsely. "But not a criminal ring. An inspired master criminal—who apparently has more executive ability in one ear lobe than all your bribe-bloated bureaucrats—and his female assistant. They pulled the entire job by themselves. His name, or undoubtedly pseudoname, is Pepe Nero. The girl is called Angelina...."

"Arrest them at once! Guards ... guards—" Ferraro's voice died away as he ran out of the room. I talked to his vanishing back.

"That is just what we intend to do, but it's a little difficult at the moment since they are the ones who not only built the battleship, but undoubtedly stole it as well. It was fully automated so no crew is necessary."

"What do you plan to do?" one of the clerks asked.

"I shall do nothing," I told him, with the snapped precision of an old space dog. "The League fleet is already closing in on the renegades and you will be informed of the capture. Thank you for your assistance."

I threw them as snappy a salute as I could muster and they filed out. Staring gloomily at their backs I envied for one moment their simple faith in the League Navy. When in reality the vengeful fleet was just as imaginary as my admiral's rating. This was still a job for the Corps. Inskipp would have to be given the latest information at once. I had sent him a psigram about the theft, but there was no answer as yet. Maybe the identity of the thieves would stir some response out of him.

My message was in code, but it could be quickly broken if someone wanted to try hard enough. I took it to the message center myself. The psiman was in his transparent cubicle and I locked myself in with him. His eyes were unfocused as he spoke softly into a mike, pulling in a message from somewhere across the galaxy. Outside the rushing transcribers copied, coded and filed messages, but no sound penetrated the insulated wall. I waited until his attention clicked back into the room, and handed him the sheets of paper.

"League Central 14—rush," I told him.

He raised his eyebrows, but didn't ask any questions. Establishing contact only took a few seconds, as they had an entire battery of psimen for their communications. He read the code words carefully, shaping them with his mouth but not speaking aloud, the power of his thoughts carrying across the light-years of distance. As soon as he was finished I took back the sheet, tore it up and pocketed the pieces.

I had my answer back quickly enough, Inskipp must have been hovering around waiting for my message. The mike was turned off to the transcribers outside, and I took the code groups down in shorthand myself.

"... xybb dfil fdno, and if you don't—don't come back!"

The message broke into clear at the end and the psiman smiled as he spoke the words. I broke the point off my stylus and growled at him not to repeat any of this message, as it was classified, and I would personally see him shot if he did. That got rid of the smile, but didn't make me feel any better.

The decoded message turned out not to be as bad as I had imagined. Until further notice I was in charge of tracking and capturing the stolen battleship. I could call on the League for any aid I needed. I would keep my identity as an admiral for the rest of the job. I was to keep him informed of progress. Only those ominous last words in clear kept my happiness from being complete.

I had been handed my long-awaited assignment. But translated into simple terms my orders were to get the battleship, or it would be my neck. Never a word about my efforts in uncovering the plot in the first place. This is a heartless world we live in.

This moment of self-pity relaxed me and I immediately went to bed. Since my main job now was waiting, I could wait just as well asleep.

And waiting was all I could do. Of course there were secondary tasks, such as ordering a Naval cruiser for my own use, and digging for more information on the thieves, but these really were secondary to my main purpose. Which was waiting for bad news. There was no place I could go that would be better situated for the chase than Cittanuvo. The missing ship could have gone in any direction. With each passing minute the sphere of probable locations grew larger by the power of the squared cube. I kept the on-watch crew of the cruiser at duty stations and confined the rest within a one hundred yard radius of the ship.

There was little more information on Pepe and Angelina, they had covered their tracks well. Their origin was unknown, though the fact they both talked with a slight accent suggested an off-world origin. There was one dim picture of Pepe, chubby but looking too grim to be a happy fat boy. There was no picture of the girl. I shuffled the meager findings, controlled my impatience, and kept the ship's psiman busy pulling in all the reports of any kind of trouble in space. The navigator and I plotted their locations in his tank, comparing the positions in relation to the growing sphere that enclosed all the possible locations of the stolen ship. Some of the disasters and apparent accidents hit inside this area, but further investigation proved them all to have natural causes.

I had left standing orders that all reports falling inside the danger area were to be brought to me at any time. The messenger woke me from a deep sleep, turning on the light and handing me the slip of paper. I blinked myself awake, read the first two lines, and pressed the action station alarm over my bunk. I'll say this, the Navy boys know their business. When the sirens screamed, the crew secured ship and blasted off before I had finished reading the report. As soon as my eyeballs unsquashed back into focus I read it through, then once more, carefully, from the beginning.

It looked like the one we had been waiting for. There were no witnesses to the tragedy, but a number of monitor stations had picked up the discharge static of a large energy weapon being fired. Triangulation had lead investigators to the spot where they found a freighter, Ogget's Dream, with a hole punched through it as big as a railroad tunnel. The freighter's cargo of plutonium was gone.

I read Pepe in every line of the message. Since he was flying an undermanned battleship, he had used it in the most efficient way possible. If he attempted to negotiate or threaten another ship, the element of chance would be introduced. So he had simply roared up to the unsuspecting freighter and blasted her with the monster guns his battleship packed. All eighteen men aboard had been killed instantly. The thieves were now murderers.

I was under pressure now to act. And under a greater pressure not to make any mistakes. Roly-poly Pepe had shown himself to be a ruthless killer. He knew what he wanted—then reached out and took it. Destroying anyone who stood in his way. More people would die before this was over, it was up to me to keep that number as small as possible.

Ideally I should have rushed out the fleet with guns blazing and dragged him to justice. Very nice, and I wished it could be done that way. Except where was he? A battleship may be gigantic on some terms of reference, but in the immensity of the galaxy it is microscopically infinitesimal. As long as it stayed out of the regular lanes of commerce, and clear of detector stations and planets, it would never be found.

Then how could I find it—and having found it, catch it? When the infernal thing was more than a match for any ship it might meet. That was my problem. It had kept me awake nights and talking to myself days, since there was no easy answer.

I had to construct a solution, slowly and carefully. Since I couldn't be sure where Pepe was going to be next, I had to make him go where I wanted him to.

There were some things in my favor. The most important was the fact I had forced him to make his play before he was absolutely ready. It wasn't chance that he had left the same day I arrived on Cittanuvo. Any plan as elaborate as his certainly included warning of approaching danger. The drive on the battleship, as well as controls and primary armament had been installed weeks before I showed up. Much of the subsidiary work remained to be done when the ship had left. One witness of the theft had graphically described the power lines and cables dangling from the ship's locks when she lifted.

My arrival had forced Pepe off balance. Now I had to keep pushing until he fell. This meant I had to think as he did, fall into his plan, think ahead—then trap him. Set a thief to catch a thief. A great theory, only I felt uncomfortably on the spot when I tried to put it into practice.

A drink helped, as did a cigar. Puffing on it, staring at the smooth bulkhead, relaxed me a bit. After all—there aren't that many things you can do with a battleship. You can't run a big con, blow safes or make burmedex with it. It is hell-on-jets for space piracy, but that's about all.

"Great, great—but why a battleship?"

I was talking to myself, normally a bad sign, but right now I didn't care. The mood of space piracy had seized me and I had been going along fine. Until this glaring inconsistency jumped out and hit me square in the eye.

Why a battleship? Why all the trouble and years of work to get a ship that two people could just barely manage? With a tenth of the effort Pepe could have had a cruiser that would have suited his purposes just as well.

Just as good for space piracy, that is—but not for his purposes. He had wanted a battleship, and he had gotten himself a battleship. Which meant he had more in mind than simple piracy. What? It was obvious that Pepe was a monomaniac, an egomaniac, and as psychotic as a shorted computer. Some day the mystery of how he had slipped through the screen of official testing would have to be investigated. That wasn't my concern now. He still had to be caught.

A plan was beginning to take shape in my head, but I didn't rush it. First I had to be sure that I knew him well. Any man that can con an entire world into building a battleship for him—then steal it from them—is not going to stop there. The ship would need a crew, a base for refueling and a mission.

Fuel had been taken care of first, the gutted hull of Ogget's Dream was silent witness to that. There were countless planets that could be used as a base. Getting a crew would be more difficult in these peaceful times, although I could think of a few answers to that one, too. Raid the mental hospitals and jails. Do that often enough and you would have a crew that would make any pirate chief proud. Though piracy was, of course, too mean an ambition to ascribe to this boy. Did he want to rule a whole planet—or maybe an entire system? Or more? I shuddered a bit as the thought hit me. Was there really anything that could stop a plan like this once it got rolling? During the Kingly Wars any number of types with a couple of ships and less brains than Pepe had set up just this kind of empire. They were all pulled down in the end, since their success depended on one-man rule. But the price that had to be paid first!

This was the plan and I felt in my bones that I was right. I might be wrong on some of the minor details, they weren't important. I knew the general outline of the idea, just as when I bumped into a mark I knew how much he could be taken for, and just how to do it. There are natural laws in crime as in every other field of human endeavor. I knew this was it.

"Get the Communications Officer in here at once," I shouted at the intercom. "Also a couple of clerks with transcribers. And fast—this is a matter of life or death!" This last had a hollow ring, and I realized my enthusiasm had carried me out of character. I buttoned my collar, straightened my ribbons and squared my shoulders. By the time they knocked on the door I was all admiral again.

Acting on my orders the ship dropped out of warpdrive so our psiman could get through to the other operators. Captain Steng grumbled as we floated there with the engines silent, wasting precious days, while half his crew was involved in getting out what appeared to be insane instructions. My plan was beyond his understanding. Which is, of course, why he is a captain and I'm an admiral, even a temporary one.

Following my orders, the navigator again constructed a sphere of speculation in his tank. The surface of the sphere contacted all the star systems a days flight ahead of the maximum flight of the stolen battleship. There weren't too many of these at first and the psiman could handle them all, calling each in turn and sending by news releases to the Naval Public Relations officers there. As the sphere kept growing he started to drop behind, steadily losing ground. By this time I had a general release prepared, along with directions for use and follow up, which he sent to Central 14. The battery of psimen there contacted the individual planets and all we had to do was keep adding to the list of planets.

The release and follow-ups all harped on one theme. I expanded on it, waxed enthusiastic, condemned it, and worked it into an interview. I wrote as many variations as I could, so it could be slipped into as many different formats as possible. In one form or another I wanted the basic information in every magazine, newspaper and journal inside that expanding sphere.

"What in the devil does this nonsense mean?" Captain Steng asked peevishly. He had long since given up the entire operation as a futile one, and spent most of the time in his cabin worrying about the affect of it on his service record. Boredom or curiosity had driven him out, and he was reading one of my releases with horror.

"Billionaire to found own world ... space yacht filled with luxuries to last a hundred years," the captain's face grew red as he flipped through the stack of notes. "What connection does this tripe have with catching those murderers?"

When we were alone he was anything but courteous to me, having assured himself by not-too-subtle questioning that I was a spurious admiral. There was no doubt I was still in charge, but our relationship was anything but formal.

"This tripe and nonsense," I told him, "is the bait that will snag our fish. A trap for Pepe and his partner in crime."

"Who is this mysterious billionaire?"

"Me," I said. "I've always wanted to be rich."

"But this ship, the space yacht, where is it?"

"Being built now in the naval shipyard at Udrydde. We're almost ready to go there now, soon as this batch of instructions goes out."

Captain Steng dropped the releases onto the table, then carefully wiped his hands off to remove any possible infection. He was trying to be fair and considerate of my views, and not succeeding in the slightest.

"It doesn't make sense," he growled. "How can you be sure this killer will ever read one of these things. And if he does—why should he be interested? It looks to me as if you are wasting time while he slips through your fingers. The alarm should be out and every ship notified. The Navy alerted and patrols set on all spacelanes—"

"Which he could easily avoid by going around, or better yet not even bother about, since he can lick any ship we have. That's not the answer," I told him. "This Pepe is smart and as tricky as a fixed gambling machine. That's his strength—and his weakness as well. Characters like that never think it possible for someone else to outthink them. Which is what I'm going to do."

"Modest, aren't you," Steng said.

"I try not to be," I told him. "False modesty is the refuge of the incompetent. I'm going to catch this thug and I'll tell you how I'll do it. He's going to hit again soon, and wherever he hits there will be some kind of a periodical with my plant in it. Whatever else he is after, he is going to take all of the magazines and papers he can find. Partly to satisfy his own ego, but mostly to keep track of the things he is interested in. Such as ship sailings."

"You're just guessing—you don't know all this."

His automatic assumption of my incompetence was beginning to get me annoyed. I bridled my temper and tried one last time.

"Yes, I'm guessing—an informed guess—but I do know some facts as well. Ogget's Dream was cleaned out of all reading matter, that was one of the first things I checked. We can't stop the battleship from attacking again, but we can see to it that the time after that she sails into a trap."

"I don't know," the captain said, "it sounds to me like...."

I never heard what it sounded like, which is all right since he was getting under my skin and might have been tempted to pull my pseudo-rank. The alarm sirens cut his sentence off and we foot-raced to the communications room.

Captain Steng won by a nose, it was his ship and he knew all the shortcuts. The psiman was holding out a transcription, but he summed it up in one sentence. He looked at me while he talked and his face was hard and cold.

"They hit again, knocked out a Navy supply satellite, thirty-four men dead."

"If your plan doesn't work, admiral," the captain whispered hoarsely in my ear, "I'll personally see that you're flayed alive!"

"If my plan doesn't work, captain—there won't be enough of my skin left to pick up with a tweezer. Now if you please, I'd like to get to Udrydde and pick up my ship as soon as possible."

The easy-going hatred and contempt of all my associates had annoyed me, thrown me off balance. I was thinking with anger now, not with logic. Forcing a bit of control, I ordered my thoughts, checking off a mental list.

"Belay that last command," I shouted, getting back into my old space-dog mood. "Get a call through first and find out if any of our plants were picked up during the raid."

While the psiman unfocused his eyes and mumbled under his breath I riffled some papers, relaxed and cool. The ratings and officers waited tensely, and made some slight attempt to conceal their hatred of me. It took about ten minutes to get an answer.

"Affirmative," the psiman said. "A store ship docked there twenty hours before the attack. Among other things, it left newspapers containing the article."

"Very good," I said calmly. "Send a general order to suspend all future activity with the planted releases. Send it by psimen only, no mention on any other Naval signaling equipment, there's a good chance now it might be 'overheard'."

I strolled out slowly, in command of the situation. Keeping my face turned away so they couldn't see the cold sweat.

It was a fast run to Udrydde where my billionaire's yacht, the Eldorado, was waiting. The dockyard commander showed me the ship, and made a noble effort to control his curiosity. I took a sadistic revenge on the Navy by not telling him a word about my mission. After checking out the controls and special apparatus with the technicians, I cleared the ship. There was a tape in the automatic navigator that would put me on the course mentioned in all the articles, just a press of a button and I would be on my way. I pressed the button.

It was a beautiful ship, and the dockyard had been lavish with their attention to detail. From bow to rear tubes she was plated in pure gold. There are other metals with a higher albedo, but none that give a richer effect. All the fittings, inside and out, were either machine-turned or plated. All this work could not have been done in the time allotted, the Navy must have adapted a luxury yacht to my needs.

Everything was ready. Either Pepe would make his move—or I would sail on to my billionaire's paradise planet. If that happened, it would be best if I stayed there.

Now that I was in space, past the point of no return, all the doubts that I had dismissed fought for attention. The plan that had seemed so clear and logical now began to look like a patched and crazy makeshift.

"Hold on there, sailor," I said to myself. Using my best admiral's voice. "Nothing has changed. It's still the best and only plan possible under the circumstances."

Was it? Could I be sure that Pepe, flying his mountain of a ship and eating Navy rations, would be interested in some of the comforts and luxuries of life? Or if the luxuries didn't catch his eye, would he be interested in the planetary homesteading gear? I had loaded the cards with all the things he might want, and planted the information where he could get it. He had the bait now—but would he grab the hook?

I couldn't tell. And I could work myself into a neurotic state if I kept running through the worry cycle. It took an effort to concentrate on anything else, but it had to be made. The next four days passed very slowly.

When the alarm blew off, all I felt was an intense sensation of relief. I might be dead and blasted to dust in the next few minutes, but that didn't seem to make much difference.

Pepe had swallowed the bait. There was only one ship in the galaxy that could knock back a blip that big at such a distance. It was closing last, using the raw energy of the battleship engines for a headlong approach. My ship bucked a bit as the tug-beams locked on at maximum distance. The radio bleeped at me for attention at the same time. I waited as long as I dared, then flipped it on. The voice boomed out.

"... That you are under the guns of a warship! Don't attempt to run, signal, take evasive action, or in any other way...."

"Who are you—and what the devil do you want?" I spluttered into the mike. I had my scanner on, so they could see me, but my own screen stayed dark. They weren't sending any picture. In a way it made my act easier, I just played to an unseen audience. They could see the rich cut of my clothes, the luxurious cabin behind me. Of course they couldn't see my hands.

"It doesn't matter who we are," the radio boomed again. "Just obey orders if you care to live. Stay away from the controls until we have tied on, then do exactly as I say."

There were two distant clangs as magnetic grapples hit the hull. A little later the ship lurched, drawn home against the battleship. I let my eyes roll in fear, looking around for a way to escape—and taking a peek at the outside scanners. The yacht was flush against the space-filling bulk of the other ship. I pressed the button that sent the torch-wielding robot on his way.

"Now let me tell you something," I snapped into the mike, wiping away the worried billionaire expression. "First I'll repeat your own warning—obey orders if you want to live. I'll show you why——"

When I threw the big switch a carefully worked out sequence took place. First, of course, the hull was magnetized and the bombs fused. A light blinked as the scanner in the cabin turned off, and the one in the generator room came on. I checked the monitor screen to make sure, then started into the spacesuit. It had to be done fast, at the same time it was necessary to talk naturally. They must still think of me as sitting in the control room.

"That's the ship's generators you're looking at," I said. "Ninety-eight per cent of their output is now feeding into coils that make an electromagnet of this ship's hull. You will find it very hard to separate us. And I would advise you not to try."

The suit was on, and I kept the running chatter up through the mike in the helmet, relaying to the ship's transmitter. The scene in the monitor receiver changed.

"You are now looking at a hydrogen bomb that is primed and aware of the magnetic field holding our ships together. It will, of course, go off if you try to pull away."

I grabbed up the monitor receiver and ran towards the air lock.

"This is a different bomb now," I said, keeping one eye on the screen and the other on the slowly opening outer door. "This one has receptors on the hull. Attempt to destroy any part of this ship, or even gain entry to it, and this one will detonate."

I was in space now, leaping across to the gigantic wall of the other ship.

"What do you want?" These were the first words Pepe had spoken since his first threats.

"I want to talk to you, arrange a deal. Something that would be profitable for both of us. But let me first show you the rest of the bombs, so you won't get any strange ideas about co-operating."

Of course I had to show him the rest of the bombs, there was no getting out of it. The scanners in the ship were following a planned program. I made light talk about all my massive armament that would carry us both to perdition, while I climbed through the hole in the battleship's hull. There was no armor or warning devices at this spot, it had been chosen carefully from the blueprints.

"Yeah, yeah ... I take your word for it, you're a flying bomb. So stop with this roving reporter bit and tell me what you have in mind."

This time I didn't answer him, because I was running and panting like a dog, and had the mike turned off. Just ahead, if the blueprints were right, was the door to the control room. Pepe should be there.

I stepped through, gun out, and pointed it at the back of his head. Angelina stood next to him, looking at the screen.

"The game's over," I said. "Stand up slowly and keep your hands in sight."

"What do you mean," he said angrily, looking at the screen in front of him. The girl caught wise first. She spun around and pointed.

"He's here!"

They both stared, gaped at me, caught off guard and completely unprepared.

"You're under arrest, crime-king," I told him. "And your girl friend."

Angelina rolled her eyes up and slid slowly to the floor. Real or faked, I didn't care. I kept the gun on Pepe's pudgy form while he picked her up and carried her to an acceleration couch against the wall.

"What ... what will happen now?" He quavered the question. His pouchy jaws shook and I swear there were tears in his eyes. I was not impressed by his acting since I could clearly remember the dead men floating in space. He stumbled over to a chair, half dropping into it.

"Will they do anything to me?" Angelina asked. Her eyes were open now.

"I have no idea of what will happen to you," I told her truthfully. "That is up to the courts to decide."

"But he made me do all those things," she wailed. She was young, dark and beautiful, the tears did nothing to spoil this.

Pepe dropped his face into his hands and his shoulders shook. I flicked the gun his way and snapped at him.

"Sit up, Pepe. I find it very hard to believe that you are crying. There are some Naval ships on the way now, the automatic alarm was triggered about a minute ago. I'm sure they'll be glad to see the man who...."

"Don't let them take me, please!" Angelina was on her feet now, her back pressed to the wall. "They'll put me in prison, do things to my mind!" She shrunk away as she spoke, stumbling along the wall. I looked back at Pepe, not wanting to have my eyes off him for an instant.

"There's nothing I can do," I told her. I glanced her way and a small door was swinging open and she was gone.

"Don't try to run," I shouted after her, "it can't do any good!"

Pepe made a strangling noise and I looked back to him quickly. He was sitting up now and his face was dry of tears. In fact he was laughing, not crying.

"So she caught you, too, Mr. Wise-cop, poor little Angelina with the soft eyes." He broke down again, shaking with laughter.

"What do you mean," I growled.

"Don't you catch yet? The story she told you was true—except she twisted it around a bit. The whole plan, building the battleship, then stealing it, was hers. She pulled me into it, played me like an accordion. I fell in love with her, hating myself and happy at the same time. Well—I'm glad now it's over. At least I gave her a chance to get away, I owe her that much. Though I thought I would explode when she went into that innocence act!"

The cold feeling was now a ball of ice that threatened to paralyze me. "You're lying," I said hoarsely, and even I didn't believe it.

"Sorry. That's the way it is. Your brain-boys will pick my skull to pieces and find out the truth anyway. There's no point in lying now."

"We'll search the ship, she can't hide for long."

"She won't have to," Pepe said. "There's a fast scout we picked up, stowed in one of the holds. That must be it leaving now." We could feel the vibration, distantly through the floor.

"The Navy will get her," I told him, with far more conviction than I felt.

"Maybe," he said, suddenly slumped and tired, no longer laughing. "Maybe they will. But I gave her her chance. It is all over for me now, but she knows that I loved her to the end." He bared his teeth in sudden pain. "Not that she will care in the slightest."

I kept the gun on him and neither of us moved while the Navy ships pulled up and their boots stamped outside. I had captured my battleship and the raids were over. And I couldn't be blamed if the girl had slipped away. If she evaded the Navy ships, that was their fault, not mine.

I had my victory all right.

Then why did it taste like ashes in my mouth?

It's a big galaxy, but it wasn't going to be big enough to hide Angelina now. I can be conned once—but only once. The next time we met things were going to be very different.

THE END

Contents

WALLS OF ACID

BY HENRY HASSE

Five millenniums have passed since the loathsome Termans were eliminated from the world of Diskra.... But what of the other planets?

Braanol stirred, throbbed sluggishly once, then lay quiescent as his mental self surged up from the deeps of non-entity. And gradually he came to know that someone had entered the room. His room, far beneath the city.

Now he could feel the vibra-currents through the liquids of the huge tanks where he had lain somnolent for untold aeons. It was pleasant, caressing. For a moment he floated there, enjoying to the utmost this strange sensation as the renewed thought-life-force set his every convolution to pulsing.

"To be once more aware! O gloriously aware!" the thought came fierce and vibrant. "Once more they have wakened me--but how long has it been?" Then curiously: "And what can they want this time?"

The huge brain was alert now, with a supernal sense of keening. Tentatively he sent out a thought-potential that encompassed the room.

"They are afraid!" he sensed. "Two have entered here, and they are afraid of me. I shall remedy that!"

Braanol lowered his thought-potential to one-eighth of one magnitude, and felt his mind contact theirs. "Approach, my children," he said kindly. "You have nothing to fear from me! I take it you are the imperial messengers sent by her Supreme Magnificence, the Empress Alaazar?"

He felt the fright slip from their minds. But they were startled.

"The Empress Uldulla reigns now, fourth in the Royal line," came the thought. "Empress Alaazar died long ago!"

"I am truly grieved!" Braanol flashed to them. "Alaazar--may she rest in peace--did not neglect me! How well I remember her interest in the stories I could tell, stories of the Diskra of old when we sent men out to glorious adventures on the other planets! Aye! Five millenniums ago it was that we achieved space travel. In those days--"

Braanol ceased in his reminiscences, aware that these two were trying to get their thoughts through to him.

"That is why we have come! The Empress Uldulla, too, wishes a story. The story of the first space-flight from Diskra, and the events that brought it about. And of how you--"

"Aye! Of how I came to be as you see me now! I shall be delighted, my children, to tell it again. But first, prepare the trans-telector so that it may be recorded faithfully."

Braanol directed them to a machine on the far side of the room, and instructed them as to its operation. Soon the hundreds of tiny coils were humming, and a maze of tubes fed out of the machine, on which would be recorded Braanol's every thought. For a moment he paused, gently swaying, pulsing, a huge independent brain suspended in the pale green liquid. Then he began his story.

* * * * *

Your Supreme Beneficence! When the imperial messengers came to me, bringing the communication with which you deigned to address my decrepit solitude, it was like a glorious ray of light come to illumine the deepening darkness of my declining years!

It is with trepidation that I set about to fulfill your Exalted Command. Five millenniums, aye, even more, have passed, since those who were part of that segment of history into which you inquire, have become but drifting dust. Only within the feeble memory of your humblest servant is there any record of it.

Five millenniums! Aye! That was truly the golden period of our beloved Diskra--not that our period under Your Serene Effulgence is not golden indeed! But in that day all Diskra was under the glorious rule of Palladin. His city on the scarlet shores of our central sea was the wonder of us all. Aye! We had a sea then, where there is now but desert.

The intelligent planets were three: our own Diskra, of course, fourth from the sun. And nearest the sun, Mirla, that fiery globe, where life apes the quality of our own salamander, existing by necessity near the flames. And second from the sun Venia, the cloud-capped world, where life exalts the virtues of the fish. Of the third planet, Terra, we then knew little.

Our cities faced the sun in those days, towering in polychromatic splendor. Height was no obstacle then, for we had wings--wings! Think of it, O Beneficence! No need had we of clumsy, metal vessels. But all that has changed. Now no whirr of wings disturbs the air, and our formi-tectural splendors rise within. The history of this change is what Your Supreme Exaltation would know. This, then, is the record.

With the rule of Palladin was born the age of science, not so much due to the intellects of that day, as through the driving urge of ultimate necessity. For Palladin had a brother, Thid. He was unfortunately a mutant. Whereas our features were delicate and quite regular, Thid's were gross and stamped with power. His royal head was too large and cumbersome, and instead of our slender waists, he was almost asymmetrical in shape. In short--no member of our fairer, royal sex could look upon him with aught but horror. And it was because of this that he was dietetically conditioned for the realm of science.

It was a mistake. As the years passed, the loneliness of his virtual exile tended to derange Thid's prodigious mind! Aye, prodigious--and dangerous in his manic-depressive state. Then one day Palladin called an emergency meeting of the Inner Council. I, Braanol, was a member of that Council.

"It has come to my attention," Palladin said, "that Thid has been carrying on certain dangerous experiments! Experiments of a sort that could well be inimical to us--to our very existence!"

We well knew to what Palladin referred. But Thid was his brother, one of the Imperial ones. No one dared speak.

"Why was I not made aware of it sooner?" Palladin demanded sternly. "You, Braanol! You knew of it?"

"Yes, your majesty." I was frightened. "I beg to explain--I have tried to dissuade him--"

Palladin's visage became less stern, as though he understood our reluctance in this matter. "True," he said. "Thid is my brother. He must be mad! And I tell you now: if he has gone as far in this experiment as I suspect, I shall not hesitate to apply the only remedy dictated by efficiency--death! Have him brought to me at once."

But Thid was nowhere to be found. He had learned of Palladin's anger, and had fled into the Diskran desert where the abhorred Termans dwelt in myriads despite all our effort to eradicate them. These Termans were soft-bodied, subterranean creatures with an obstinate life-force, and we had long realized that they might one day be a menace to us.

So into the desert our Thid fled, spurred by the knowledge that his life was forfeit. For a time, he was naturally thought dead. Who could survive unprotected the extremes of heat and cold? And if by a miracle he triumphed over the elements, how survive the appalling enmity of the Termans, whose rudimentary brains conceived no mercy?

Nevertheless, startling bits of rumor began to drift in to our city; rumors that Thid had been seen, leading hordes of gigantic Termans across the desert wastes!

We laughed, of course, for caravaneers are ever the prey of sun mirages, and legends are dear to their souls. A legend was begun concerning Thid. Arriving caravans vied with each other in fantastic reports. Some had seen him with immense hordes of the repulsive Termans. Still others had discovered subterranean labyrinths being built by the Termans under his command, and had barely escaped with their lives. And still we laughed, blessed by the constant climate on the shores of our sea, and the beneficent rule of our Exalted Palladin.

And then we ceased to laugh. Palladin called together his Council of Scientists.

"Can it be?" Palladin asked. "Two whole caravans have vanished on the way to Estka beyond the mountains." And he told us more, reports that had arrived from other cities. Survivors had arrived, with the light of madness in their eyes, babbling some nameless fear. Others had died from ghastly wounds--great burns that refused to heal, but spread a kind of disease through the tissues. I, Braanol, examined some of these wounds and reported to Palladin.

"Only a perverted, scientific intellect such as Thid's could have evolved weapons to inflict such wounds!"

"If he has organized the Termans," suggested another Council Member, "despite their pigmy size, they will become a menace that cannot be ignored."

"We have delayed too long!" thundered Palladin. "Find Thid! I command it!"

* * * * *

An army, the greatest ever assembled on Diskra, was sent forth to hunt out Thid and exterminate the Termans whom he had managed to organize by heaven only knew what magic. The planet must be cleansed of that leprous form of life, else there would be no peace.

But we did not know what depths of horror we were to plumb. Even now, O Illustrious Empress, reason reels and totters at the remembrance. I led one fine division of the Imperial Guards, armored warriors of the first magnitude. With them I felt able to conquer planets, not to speak of the trivial-sized Termans.

For many days we trekked, penetrating ever deeper the Red Desert's heart. But of the abhorred Termans we caught no sight. There was only the molten downpour of sun by day, and the desiccating numbness of cold at night. But on the sixth day, as we encamped near an underground pool located by our experts--we encountered the Termans.

The blue wings of dusk were beating down when suddenly, from every rampart of sand-dune, every crumbling hillock, out of the very bowels of the planet itself, they came like an avalanche. They carried slender metal tubes that spewed polychromatic death at us! Wherever the deadly discharge touched, would appear horrible burns that ate away the tissues. But that isn't what paralyzed us. We had known these vermin to be short of twelve inches tall, but now they reared monstrously four feet into the air! Their black, hairy limbs lashed in an ecstasy of murder-lust, their beady eyes gleamed with fiendish purpose. And they had intelligent leaders!

The sight of these monsters grown to such awful size struck terror into the hearts of our legion. Nevertheless, we, who are seven feet tall, towered above them as we fought with the strength and ferocity of desperation. Every weapon at our command was brought into play, and they were blasted and seared by the myriads. Still they came on, blindly, unswervingly, as if driven by a single prodigious force.

How these life-forms had grown to such bestial proportions was not known until later. We captured a few and delicately probed them--while still alive, of course--dissecting their anatomy until we found that some genius had managed to control their growth through glandular development. That genius could only have been our Thid!

Soon the desert was covered by a sea of their dead--and ours! The stench was unbearable, for the Termans exude an odor of their own, particularly in death, which is sheer nausea ... but lest I offend your refined sensibilities, O Serene Empress, perhaps it were best that I draw a veil of darkness over that shambles of horror. At last it seemed as if only utter annihilation of both sides would be the outcome. Already the battle had lasted for three obeisances of our Diskra to its parent sun.

And then wisely, our glorious Palladin flashed to us the command to retreat.

"Already Estka and Kraaj have fallen, with all the populace wiped out," said the message. "The Termans are converging upon our capital city! Return here with all haste!"

So it was that we retreated--those who remained of us--to the capitol, and prepared to make a formidable stand. The other armies of our empire had done likewise. Who would have thought that this despised, destructive form of life could ever become such a menace! We remembered one of Thid's treatises on the noxious pests, in which he had maintained that they had rudimentary intelligence and an interesting, if sub-primitive, form of social life. How we had laughed at the thought of imputing a social order to these subterranean aphids!

But we weren't laughing now! A race of malignant monsters had sprung up in the twenty years that Thid had vanished into the desert.

* * * * *

Of Thid, nothing more was seen. But we knew he must still exist somewhere among the Termans. Under that baleful inventive genius their weapons seemed to multiply, and we were forced to tax our scientists to the utmost in order to have weapons, of offense--and yes, O Beneficence--defense!

For now, though we had managed to stem their attack on our capital, they were steadily encroaching on our territory. Underground lakes and streams were dammed by these fiends. Vast areas of vegetation were denuded. Precious mines of rare metals were converted by them, under Thid's direction, into sources for their ceaseless attacks. Aye! We died a thousand deaths multiplied a thousand times.

Our ethero-magnum, by which our telepathic vibrations were amplified for planetary broadcast, became a monotonous recorder of tragedy as city after city fell to the hordes. For untold years this savage struggle went on. How well we realized that this was a war for sole dominance of the planet!

Until at last, only our proud capital by the shores of the scarlet sea, and its immense valley was left to us.

"We must evolve the principles of inter-spacial travel," Palladin told us sadly. "The day may come when we shall need it."

Hitherto, our rare flights to Venia and Mirla had been primitive affairs in which the dangerous rocket principle was employed, with the terrific effects of acceleration crushing the crews and making landing an even greater hazard than the flight itself. But now, through inconceivable efforts of thought--aye, through sheer desperation!--our scientists evolved a system of atomic integration in which free orbital electrons were utilized to create atomic quantities beyond our known table, drawing upon the energy that could be harnessed in the process. It is difficult to describe otherwise than through pure mathematics--though if your Serene Effulgence wishes, I will be happy to describe it to you at a later date; it will take some little effort to recall the exact formulae.

"We must send an expedition to Terra," Palladin told us. "From what we have been able to gather astronomically, that planet seems habitable. Mirla, we know, is out of the question; it is a holocaust of fire. And to dwell on the semi-aquatic world of Venia, a new environmental adaptation would be necessary."

Fantastic, wasn't it, O Exalted Empress, that we the rightful Lords of Diskra should be compelled to abandon our beloved homes by a horde of vermin? Indeed it was a tragic day when the first scientific expedition was assembled. And I, Braanol, was honored beyond my humble desserts by his Supreme Magnificence, Palladin. I was assigned as Recorder on the expedition.

Strapped and cushioned until not an inch of my body was visible, I was launched into space together with my fellow scientists, within the spheroid confines of our atomic projectile. The agony of enduring--even for seconds--the required acceleration, will forever remain in my mind as the ultimate in torture. But at last the agony was gone, as we traveled at unimaginable speed toward the planet which we hoped would be our future home.

No, not hoped--because meanwhile on Diskra the experiments with acid gas were going on, in a sort of last-ditch defense which we hoped might stem the endless hordes!

* * * * *

It was on the eleventh day that we really saw Terra in its full prismatic glory. For days it had loomed larger in our three-dimensional electro-cone, where we studied its continents and oceans to select the likeliest spot for a landing. Terra was intensely blue now, rivalling in color the priceless zafirines of our own Diskra. I hope in the humblest depths of my mind, O Empress Uldulla, that you shall never know the unplumbed abyss of loneliness we all felt.

At last we were forced to use the forward atomic beam to brake our meteoric entrance into the heavy atmosphere. We had, of course, turned on the neutralizing frigi-rectifiers that formed a network on the outer shell of our sphere. At last we were through. Dipping lower as we circled, we discerned majestic oceans; ice-clad peaks crowning the stark glory of the landscape, and then more inviting lands criss-crossed by rivers and studded with shining lakes.

It was to us, O Great Beneficence, a paradise indeed! Entranced, we all but forgot our landing which would require the utmost skill. Brunoj, our greatest navigator, was at the controls, padded and cushioned beyond the possibility of injury. The rest of us retired to the special crash-room.

I remember we carried in our laboratory, in a special container of glassaran, two embalmed specimens of the monstrous Termans. These we were to show as a warning to whatever race existed here. One glance at the revolting monsters would have been enough for an intelligent race.

But now that would not be necessary. Terra seemed uninhabited. We had seen no cities as we circumnavigated the globe. Had intelligent life-forms failed as yet to materialize on this verdant world? We assumed that fact, in our joyous eagerness to feel the good earth beneath us.

"Prepare to land!" came the warning from Brunoj.

* * * * *

To this day I cannot say what happened. No one knew. For the brief instant in which I remained conscious, I felt as if Terra had burst asunder under the terrific impact.

Nor do I know when I finally struggled upward from oblivion; it may have been hours later, or days. Many among us were dead. I was a hopelessly crushed horror who still lived somehow, miraculously. For many days we remained within our sphere--disposing of the dead, tending to the injured, conserving our strength. I might have been destroyed, but with that frantic will to live which rises within us, I flashed a message to my companions:

"I still live! Place me in the delocalizer! I will still be of use!"

This was done. The delocalizer, reacting on the thalamic region of my brain, intercepted pain currents and allowed me to exist without physical feeling. Only my mind, lucid and intensely alive as never before, continued to record the adventure in this world. It was not until later that my brain was completely dissevered from my crushed body....

My companions had tested the atmosphere and found no gasses that might have been inimical to our organisms. Thus they prepared for the greatest adventure of all--the emergence. The locks were opened. A draft of fragrant, if heavy atmosphere swept through our globe. It was pleasantly invigorating and bright outside--so I was told by their telepathic messages, for I alone remained within.

Telepathically they kept me informed, as they wandered up the narrow valley. The soil was firm and amazingly fertile. Vegetation grew thickly everywhere. They reached the far end of the valley at last, and rocky ramparts towered over them.

Then it was--how can I begin to describe it to you, Exalted Empress? From their minds, coming back to me, was a sudden flood of excited, hysterical thought! It seemed filled with intense loathing and fear! Imagine me there, if you can--helpless--and in a frenzy of despair wondering what they could have encountered!

Desperately I extended my potential. I managed to intuit a fierce battle in which they were engaging. And some of my companions were dying! Hordes of fierce denizens from the rocks above were descending upon them. They had taken weapons along, true--but I could sense now by their frantic thought that these war-like creatures of Terra numbered in the hundreds, with hordes of them swarming from beyond!

For a long while the battle raged, then I sensed that my companions were retreating. Oh, I was glad! Glad! At least I would not be left alone. But of the two score who had ventured out, only six returned. As they operated the lock of the ship, and tumbled in, I could see--or rather perceive--a long part of the terrain behind them.

Then it was that my mind sickened. For the creatures of this bright new world were--Termans! Slightly different from those we had battled on Diskra, true. These were even more monstrous, over six feet tall, with long shaggy manes and a reddish fuzz covering their four limbs ... and O Beneficence, I swear it--sickening blue eyes! They walked upright and carried crude weapons, shafts of wood fitted with sharp-edged stone!

Not until much later did my returning companions tell me what they had seen through their telescopic lenses. Just beyond this valley were vast plains where the Termans seemed to number in the thousands, huge nomadic tribes of them. There were other creatures as well, some massive beyond all belief, others fierce and blood-lusting with huge saber-like teeth.

"We could colonize Terra indeed," was the consensus of our thoughts, "but at what a price! To be forever battling these creatures--particularly the Termans, that abominable genus Homo...."

Can you imagine, O Empress Uldulla, how the irony of it bit us? It was almost more than we could bear to think that on Diskra our own genus Formicae was in life-or-death struggle with these creatures and we had found them swarming here as well! All--all of this lush, verdant world was defiled!

There was nothing we remaining seven could do now. Sadly we set about repairing the ship, so that we could bear the awful tidings back to Diskra. And as we sped again toward our beloved planet, a sombre pall fell upon us. The interchange of thoughts were brief and tinged with a profound despair.

* * * * *

This resolved into amazement, however, as we came ever closer to Diskra. For now, through our telecto-scope we could see that our planet had been subtly altered! A few symmetrical lines had appeared on the face of Diskra, as if a cosmic hand had drawn straight lines across with mathematical precision!

Not until we had safely landed, did we learn the truth. O joyous news! The hordes of Termans had been repulsed and were even then being slowly driven back! Our scientists had created in the laboratories a type of formic acid somewhat similar to the vesicatory secretion occurring within our own bodies--but infinitely more deadly! It had been used as a weapon against the Termans. And more! Huge walls of gaseous formic acid, held unwavering by electronic force fields, were being erected. It was these walls that caused the astronomical illusion we had seen from space.

The rest, O Illustrious Empress, I believe you know well. How the Termans never again were able to penetrate our walls. How we waged war on the detestable creatures for a number of years until finally no trace of them remained on Diskra.

Aye! Five millenniums have passed since the events I have related. Five millenniums since my crushed body was done away with and I was preserved in my rectangle of glassaran, with the constantly renovated thought-life-fluid kept exquisitely warm. In this state I have accompanied many another expedition to the planets, in my capacity of official Recorder. I am but Yours to command, Exalted Empress, should you wish to hear of them.

But I have a warning! Slowly I have developed a new sense that needs not eyes, nor ears, nor sense of touch--no antennae even, such as I once possessed--but unites and transcends all these! And I beg of you in my most abject humility, do not venture to remove even one formic-acid wall, either from above or from its depth into the ground. Rather build more! Perceptively I shudder in the awful remembrance of their occasion, and the day may come when they will be needed once more.

Thus I warn humbly, and remain Your Supreme Fertility's most insignificant servant,

Braanol.

Contents

OLD RAMBLING HOUSE

by Frank Herbert

All the Grahams desired was a home they could call their own ... but what did the home want?

On his last night on Earth, Ted Graham stepped out of a glass-walled telephone booth, ducked to avoid a swooping moth that battered itself in a frenzy against a bare globe above the booth.

Ted Graham was a long-necked man with a head of pronounced egg shape topped by prematurely balding sandy hair. Something about his lanky, intense appearance suggested his occupation: certified public accountant.

He stopped behind his wife, who was studying a newspaper classified page, and frowned. "They said to wait here. They'll come get us. Said the place is hard to find at night."

Martha Graham looked up from the newspaper. She was a doll-faced woman, heavily pregnant, a kind of pink prettiness about her. The yellow glow from the light above the booth subdued the red-auburn cast of her ponytail hair.

"I just have to be in a house when the baby's born," she said. "What'd they sound like?"

"I dunno. There was a funny kind of interruption--like an argument in some foreign language."

"Did they sound foreign?"

"In a way." He motioned along the night-shrouded line of trailers toward one with two windows glowing amber. "Let's wait inside. These bugs out here are fierce."

"Did you tell them which trailer is ours?"

"Yes. They didn't sound at all anxious to look at it. That's odd--them wanting to trade their house for a trailer."

"There's nothing odd about it. They've probably just got itchy feet like we did."

He appeared not to hear her. "Funniest-sounding language you ever heard when that argument started--like a squirt of noise."

* * * * *

Inside the trailer, Ted Graham sat down on the green couch that opened into a double bed for company.

"They could use a good tax accountant around here," he said. "When I first saw the place, I got that definite feeling. The valley looks prosperous. It's a wonder nobody's opened an office here before."

His wife took a straight chair by the counter separating kitchen and living area, folded her hands across her heavy stomach.

"I'm just continental tired of wheels going around under me," she said. "I want to sit and stare at the same view for the rest of my life. I don't know how a trailer ever seemed glamorous when--"

"It was the inheritance gave us itchy feet," he said.

Tires gritted on gravel outside.

Martha Graham straightened. "Could that be them?"

"Awful quick, if it is." He went to the door, opened it, stared down at the man who was just raising a hand to knock.

"Are you Mr. Graham?" asked the man.

"Yes." He found himself staring at the caller.

"I'm Clint Rush. You called about the house?" The man moved farther into the light. At first, he'd appeared an old man, fine wrinkle lines in his face, a tired leather look to his skin. But as he moved his head in the light, the wrinkles seemed to dissolve--and with them, the years lifted from him.

"Yes, we called," said Ted Graham. He stood aside. "Do you want to look at the trailer now?"

Martha Graham crossed to stand beside her husband. "We've kept it in awfully good shape," she said. "We've never let anything get seriously wrong with it."

She sounds too anxious, thought Ted Graham. I wish she'd let me do the talking for the two of us.

"We can come back and look at your trailer tomorrow in daylight," said Rush. "My car's right out here, if you'd like to see our house."

Ted Graham hesitated. He felt a nagging worry tug at his mind, tried to fix his attention on what bothered him.

"Hadn't we better take our car?" he asked. "We could follow you."

"No need," said Rush. "We're coming back into town tonight anyway. We can drop you off then."

Ted Graham nodded. "Be right with you as soon as I lock up."

Inside the car, Rush mumbled introductions. His wife was a dark shadow in the front seat, her hair drawn back in a severe bun. Her features suggested gypsy blood. He called her Raimee.

Odd name, thought Ted Graham. And he noticed that she, too, gave that strange first impression of age that melted in a shift of light.

Mrs. Rush turned her gypsy features toward Martha Graham. "You are going to have a baby?"

It came out as an odd, veiled statement.

Abruptly, the car rolled forward.

Martha Graham said, "It's supposed to be born in about two months. We hope it's a boy."

Mrs. Rush looked at her husband. "I have changed my mind," she said.

Rush spoke without taking his attention from the road. "It is too ..." He broke off, spoke in a tumble of strange sounds.

Ted Graham recognized it as the language he'd heard on the telephone.

Mrs. Rush answered in the same tongue, anger showing in the intensity of her voice. Her husband replied, his voice calmer.

Presently, Mrs. Rush fell moodily silent.

Rush tipped his head toward the rear of the car. "My wife has moments when she does not want to get rid of the old house. It has been with her for many years."

Ted Graham said, "Oh." Then: "Are you Spanish?"

Rush hesitated. "No. We are Basque."

He turned the car down a well-lighted avenue that merged into a highway. They turned onto a side road. There followed more turns--left, right, right.

Ted Graham lost track.

They hit a jolting bump that made Martha gasp.

"I hope that wasn't too rough on you," said Rush. "We're almost there."

* * * * *

The car swung into a lane, its lights picking out the skeleton outlines of trees: peculiar trees--tall, gaunt, leafless. They added to Ted Graham's feeling of uneasiness.

The lane dipped, ended at a low wall of a house--red brick with clerestory windows beneath overhanging eaves. The effect of the wall and a wide-beamed door they could see to the left was ultramodern.

Ted Graham helped his wife out of the car, followed the Rushes to the door.

"I thought you told me it was an old house," he said.

"It was designed by one of the first modernists," said Rush. He fumbled with an odd curved key. The wide door swung open onto a hallway equally wide, carpeted by a deep pile rug. They could glimpse floor-to-ceiling view windows at the end of the hall, city lights beyond.

Martha Graham gasped, entered the hall as though in a trance. Ted Graham followed, heard the door close behind them.

"It's so--so--so big," exclaimed Martha Graham.

"You want to trade this for our trailer?" asked Ted Graham.

"It's too inconvenient for us," said Rush. "My work is over the mountains on the coast." He shrugged. "We cannot sell it."

Ted Graham looked at him sharply. "Isn't there any money around here?" He had a sudden vision of a tax accountant with no customers.

"Plenty of money, but no real estate customers."

They entered the living room. Sectional divans lined the walls. Subdued lighting glowed from the corners. Two paintings hung on the opposite walls--oblongs of odd lines and twists that made Ted Graham dizzy.

Warning bells clamored in his mind.

* * * * *

Martha Graham crossed to the windows, looked at the lights far away below. "I had no idea we'd climbed that far," she said. "It's like a fairy city."

Mrs. Rush emitted a short, nervous laugh.

Ted Graham glanced around the room, thought: If the rest of the house is like this, it's worth fifty or sixty thousand. He thought of the trailer: A good one, but not worth more than seven thousand.

Uneasiness was like a neon sign flashing in his mind. "This seems so ..." He shook his head.

"Would you like to see the rest of the house?" asked Rush.

Martha Graham turned from the window. "Oh, yes."

Ted Graham shrugged. No harm in looking, he thought.

When they returned to the living room, Ted Graham had doubled his previous estimate on the house's value. His brain reeled with the summing of it: a solarium with an entire ceiling covered by sun lamps, an automatic laundry where you dropped soiled clothing down a chute, took it washed and ironed from the other end ...

"Perhaps you and your wife would like to discuss it in private," said Rush. "We will leave you for a moment."

And they were gone before Ted Graham could protest.

Martha Graham said, "Ted, I honestly never in my life dreamed--"

"Something's very wrong, honey."

"But, Ted--"

"This house is worth at least a hundred thousand dollars. Maybe more. And they want to trade this--" he looked around him--"for a seven-thousand-dollar trailer?"

"Ted, they're foreigners. And if they're so foolish they don't know the value of this place, then why should--"

"I don't like it," he said. Again he looked around the room, recalled the fantastic equipment of the house. "But maybe you're right."

He stared out at the city lights. They had a lacelike quality: tall buildings linked by lines of flickering incandescence. Something like a Roman candle shot skyward in the distance.

"Okay!" he said. "If they want to trade, let's go push the deal ..."

Abruptly, the house shuddered. The city lights blinked out. A humming sound filled the air.

Martha Graham clutched her husband's arm. "Ted! Wha-- what was that?"

"I dunno." He turned. "Mr. Rush!"

No answer. Only the humming.

The door at the end of the room opened. A strange man came through it. He wore a short toga-like garment of gray, metallic cloth belted at the waist by something that glittered and shimmered through every color of the spectrum. An aura of coldness and power emanated from him--a sense of untouchable hauteur.

* * * * *

He glanced around the room, spoke in the same tongue the Rushes had used.

Ted Graham said, "I don't understand you, mister."

The man put a hand to his flickering belt. Both Ted and Martha Graham felt themselves rooted to the floor, a tingling sensation vibrating along every nerve.

Again the strange language rolled from the man's tongue, but now the words were understood.

"Who are you?"

"My name's Graham. This is my wife. What's going--"

"How did you get here?"

"The Rushes--they wanted to trade us this house for our trailer. They brought us. Now look, we--"

"What is your talent--your occupation?"

"Tax accountant. Say! Why all these--"

"That was to be expected," said the man. "Clever! Oh, excessively clever!" His hand moved again to the belt. "Now be very quiet. This may confuse you momentarily."

Colored lights filled both the Grahams' minds. They staggered.

"You are qualified," said the man. "You will serve."

"Where are we?" demanded Martha Graham.

"The coordinates would not be intelligible to you," he said. "I am of the Rojac. It is sufficient for you to know that you are under Rojac sovereignty."

* * * * *

Ted Graham said, "But--"

"You have, in a way, been kidnapped. And the Raimees have fled to your planet--an unregistered planet."

"I'm afraid," Martha Graham said shakily.

"You have nothing to fear," said the man. "You are no longer on the planet of your birth--nor even in the same galaxy." He glanced at Ted Graham's wrist. "That device on your wrist--it tells your local time?"

"Yes."

"That will help in the search. And your sun--can you describe its atomic cycle?"

Ted Graham groped in his mind for his science memories from school, from the Sunday supplements. "I can recall that our galaxy is a spiral like--"

"Most galaxies are spiral."

"Is this some kind of a practical joke?" asked Ted Graham.

The man smiled, a cold, superior smile. "It is no joke. Now I will make you a proposition."

Ted nodded warily. "All right, let's have the stinger."

"The people who brought you here were tax collectors we Rojac recruited from a subject planet. They were conditioned to make it impossible for them to leave their job untended. Unfortunately, they were clever enough to realize that if they brought someone else in who could do their job, they were released from their mental bonds. Very clever."

"But--"

"You may have their job," said the man. "Normally, you would be put to work in the lower echelons, but we believe in meting out justice wherever possible. The Raimees undoubtedly stumbled on your planet by accident and lured you into this position without--"

"How do you know I can do your job?"

"That moment of brilliance was an aptitude test. You passed. Well, do you accept?"

"What about our baby?" Martha Graham worriedly wanted to know.

"You will be allowed to keep it until it reaches the age of decision--about the time it will take the child to reach adult stature."

"Then what?" insisted Martha Graham.

"The child will take its position in society--according to its ability."

"Will we ever see our child after that?"

"Possibly."

Ted Graham said, "What's the joker in this?"

Again the cold, superior smile. "You will receive conditioning similar to that which we gave the Raimees. And we will want to examine your memories to aid us in our search for your planet. It would be good to find a new inhabitable place."

"Why did they trap us like this?" asked Martha Graham.

"It's lonely work," the man explained. "Your house is actually a type of space conveyance that travels along your collection route--and there is much travel to the job. And then--you will not have friends, nor time for much other than work. Our methods are necessarily severe at times."

"Travel?" Martha Graham repeated in dismay.

"Almost constantly."

Ted Graham felt his mind whirling. And behind him, he heard his wife sobbing.

* * * * *

The Raimees sat in what had been the Grahams' trailer.

"For a few moments, I feared he would not succumb to the bait," she said. "I knew you could never overcome the mental compulsion enough to leave them there without their first agreeing."

Raimee chuckled. "Yes. And now I'm going to indulge in everything the Rojac never permitted. I'm going to write ballads and poems."

"And I'm going to paint," she said. "Oh, the delicious freedom!"

"Greed won this for us," he said. "The long study of the Grahams paid off. They couldn't refuse to trade."

"I knew they'd agree. The looks in their eyes when they saw the house! They both had ..." She broke off, a look of horror coming into her eyes. "One of them did not agree!"

"They both did. You heard them."

"The baby?"

He stared at his wife. "But--but it is not at the age of decision!"

"In perhaps eighteen of this planet's years, it will be at the age of decision. What then?"

His shoulders sagged. He shuddered. "I will not be able to fight it off. I will have to build a transmitter, call the Rojac and confess!"

"And they will collect another inhabitable place," she said, her voice flat and toneless.

"I've spoiled it," he said. "I've spoiled it!"

--FRANK HERBERT

Contents

MADE IN TANGANYIKA

by Carl Jacobi

See what happens when two conchologists get caught in a necromantic nightmare of their own.

On his fortieth birthday Martin Sutter decided life was too short to continue in the rut that had been his existence for more than twenty years. He withdrew his savings from the Explosion City Third Federal Bank, stopped in a display room and informed a somewhat surprised clerk he was taking the electric runabout with the blue bonnet. The ground-car, complete with extras, retailed for a tidy three thousand credits.

To accustom himself to the car's controls Sutter chose Highway 56 for a driving lesson. He tooled the electric runabout up into the third level, purred out across state at an effortless two hundred, then descended via a cloverleaf to ground tier and entered a maze of subsidiary roads that led through the summer countryside.

In this manner he drove the major part of the afternoon. Travel was light, away from the elevated lanes and he enjoyed himself.

At four o'clock he began to look for a convenient place to turn around. It was then that he sighted the roadside stand ahead. Above it a freshly painted sign read: TV SETS. LATEST MODELS. SPECIAL WHOLESALE PRICES!

Sutter smiled. Whoever heard of selling television sets on a country highway? It was like--why, it was like selling eggs in the lobby of the Hotel International! Then it occurred to him that his own TV set had not been in good working order for more than a year. The olfactory control had jammed last week while he was watching a Sumatran tribal ceremony, inland from Soerabaja, and he had been unable to smell the backdrop frangipani blossoms. It was time he bought a new set....

Sutter touched a stud and the electric runabout coasted to a halt. As he climbed out of the car and walked across the highway toward the stand, he thought for a moment there was something wrong with his contact lenses or perhaps his eyes.

The stand and the sign above it appeared to waver uncertainly, to become disjointed as though viewed through uneven glass. But the effect passed and Sutter approached the stand and nodded to the individual tilted back in a chair beside it.

He was a rawboned man with a thatch of thick black hair and small watery eyes. He was dressed, oddly enough, in a pair of tight-fitting trousers of white lawn, a flaming red tunic and a yellow cummerbund.

"Yes, sir," he said. "Can I show you something in a new TV?"

"Where are they?" asked Sutter, surveying the empty stand.

"Out back," replied the man. "Just a minute and I'll show you."

He rose lazily from his chair and led the way around to the rear of the stand. Sutter could have sworn he had seen an apple orchard behind the structure as he rode up, but he must have been mistaken for now he saw a low-roofed, aluminum-walled building there, huge doors open on one side. It looked, he thought, somewhat like a hangar....

Two hours later Sutter arrived back at his home in town. He parked the car, went around to the rear compartment, lifted out a large packing case and carried it to his sitting room. There, with the aid of hammer and crowbar, he stripped away the protective boards and then trundled the cabinet to an unoccupied corner.

It was certainly a unique TV set. A very new model, the salesman had said. The cabinet was shaped like a delta with a cube surmounted on the pointed end of the triangle. The cube held the screen, the triangle, the controls. Finished in a subdued ochre color, the set captured the light of the dying day that filtered through the bay window and gleamed with a soft radiance.

Sutter looked at the control panel and his smile of satisfaction faded somewhat. It looked a little complicated....

Instead of the usual knobs there were five small spoked wheels, each closely calibrated in lavender with resilient studs that seemed to be made of plush. Below this was a small dial with the legend Element of Probability lettered on it.

Sutter was about to switch on the set when the door buzzer sounded. He crossed to the door and pulled it open.

A tall gangly man stood there. Swarthy, face partially covered by a neatly trimmed beard, he looked the conventional picture of a story-book villain. He wore a broad-brimmed hat and an under-slung pipe was clamped in his teeth. He said in a deep booming voice, "Are you Mr. Martin Sutter?"

"Yes, I am. What can I do for you?"

The man said his name was Lucien Travail. He explained that he had been looking for a room and that Mrs. Conworth, the landlady, had informed him she had no vacancies but suggested that her roomer, Mr. Sutter, might be interested in a roommate.

"Of course I realize you don't know me but I believe our strangeness will be offset by our mutual hobby."

Sutter was silent, waiting for him to continue.

"I collect shells," Travail said.

For thirty years Sutter had pursued a hobby which had begun in his boyhood days during summer vacations at the seashore--the collecting of exoskeletons of mollusks and crustaceans. Long ago his assortment of cowries, spiny combs and yellow dragon-castles had outgrown their glass cabinet and overflowed into three carefully catalogued packing cases.

To Sutter, anyone who liked shells was a person above suspicion. Thus it was that two days later, after a casual checking of the bearded man's references, he invited Travail to move in with him.

During those two days Sutter tried unsuccessfully to put his new television set into operation. But the set refused to work. Turn the queer dials as he would, all he could get on the elliptical screen was a blur of blinding colors.

On the evening of the third day Travail looked up from his newspaper, said, "It says here that the president of the Federal Union Congress is going to make a speech in New Paris. Will you tune him in?"

Sutter frowned. "I would," he said, "but my set is out of order. I should call a repair man, but I had hoped to get it regulated myself."

Travail laid down his pipe. "Out of order, eh?" he said. "I'm sort of handy with gadgets. Let me take a look at it."

He walked across to the cabinet, turned it around and stood peering at the complicated chassis. A small brass nameplate caught his eye: Manufactured by the Tanganyika Company, Dodoma, Empire of Tanganyika, East Africa. Under charter of the Atomic Commercial Enterprise Commission. Warning: Permit only an accredited employee of this company to touch wiring.

Travail snorted. "Accredited employee, my foot! I know as much about these things as they do."

He went into the kitchen and returned with a screwdriver. While Sutter looked on with apprehensive eyes, he began to tinker with the wiring. Suddenly there was a dull report and a flash of flame. Travail jerked his arm back as a thin streamer of smoke and the smell of burning insulation entered the room.

"You've broken it," said Sutter accusingly.

But his voice died abruptly as the screen flared into light and a low hum sounded behind the panel. An instant later the light became subdued and a streak of tawny yellow took form. The yellow slowly coalesced into a sandy stretch of beach with long rolling swells washing up on it, to recede in a smother of foam. Through the amplifier came the muted roar of the breakers and the low soughing of the wind.

"Well, we got something at any rate," Travail said. "I wonder what it is."

Sutter stared, fascinated. The view of the beach seemed to come into sharper focus as he watched, and he saw now that it was an incredibly lonely scene, with the sea stretching away to a vanishing point and a stand of stunted spruce flanking the width of sand. But what caught his eye and held him almost in a trance was the array of objects littering the sand at the water's edge.

They were shells. Not the prosaic commonplace shells usually found on a New England shore nor even the brighter colored, more intricately formed shells of tropic seas. These were shells he had never seen before, even in library collections. Alien and soft-hued and lovely shells that caused his collector's heart to jump wildly. He saw a delicate star-shaped thing that might have been fashioned of porcelain and enameled with the brush of the Mings. He saw spiral coverings from uncatalogued cephalopods, many chambered and many hued. He saw shells of a thousand shapes and designs, all incredibly beautiful....

Sutter forgot everything else as he sat there staring at that collector's paradise.

"I'll see if I can get something else," said Travail.

"No!" said Sutter quickly. "Don't touch it!"

He continued to stare hungrily at the alien shells until suddenly the scene before him grew dim, then faded completely away.

Travail laughed shortly. "Somebody sold you a fluke. This set must be an off brand. Incidentally, isn't Tanganyika a colony governed by the Federal Union Congress?"

"Yes, it is," replied Sutter. "I don't understand this at all. There's no Empire of Tanganyika."

* * * * *

Next morning after breakfast Sutter announced that he was driving into the country to visit a friend. There was no reason why he should not have told his roommate the truth--that he was going to look up the man who had sold him the TV set. No reason except for the odd fact that Travail had made no mention of the alien shells, and Sutter kept thinking that a shell collector would have been immediately aware of the rareness of them.

Once again Sutter drove out across state and down the highway where he had seen the roadside stand. But when he reached the spot there was no sign of the stand. The big oak tree which had shaded it and the rail fence on the adjoining property were there. But no stand. As Sutter stared with perplexed eyes at the spot he saw something he had not noticed before.

At the edge of the highway was a large granite boulder with a bronze plate fastened to its slanting surface. Sutter got out of the car, approached it and read:

This property has been preserved as a State Park to commemorate the first successful trial explosion of the Hydrogen Bomb which took place on this site and marked the beginning of an era.

It seemed to Sutter as he stood there that the surrounding silence grew more intense. Then he passed through a wide gateway and began to stride across an evenly clipped lawn toward a grove of trees beyond. Halfway he paused and glanced absently at his watch. It was exactly twelve o'clock noon.

And abruptly the scene before him slipped out of plumb. The sky and the lawn seemed to alter positions, to rotate madly as in a vortex. The whirling ceased and the next instant Sutter stood on the shore of a lonely sea with a tawny width of sand stretching out before him and the waves washing up almost at his feet. Then he saw the shells....

It was the beach of the alien shells! There they lay, scattered about the sand, hundreds, thousands of them, alien and delicate and lovely, exoskeletons the like of which he had never seen before. Their pastel colors blended with one another to form a horizontal rainbow extending into the measureless distance.

And somehow, as Sutter walked among them, picking his way with care, the years of his life seemed to slip away and he was a small boy at the seashore again, entranced with his first shell discovery. He could even hear his mother's voice calling "Be careful, Martin! Don't go too far!"

He walked on and on, slowly, uncertainly, until the beach and the sea began to waver like a heat mirage. And suddenly the shells and the water vanished and he was on the green grass again with the grove of trees just ahead. He turned, saw a white highway with his car parked on the shoulder.

Dazedly, Sutter walked back to the car....

All next morning he ruminated over his strange experience. Toward noon the pieces of the puzzle began to fit slowly together in his mind. But the partial answer at which he arrived seemed too fantastic for belief. Could it be possible that when he had stopped at the roadside stand he had blundered, in some inexplicable way, into another dimension?

Sutter had a layman's knowledge of Einsteinian physics, and he knew that experiments in Time were being made every day. Only last week he had read in the paper of an army officer who had reportedly Time-traveled some twenty-two minutes. And a year ago the Belgian scientist, Delgar, claimed to have entered a secondary world which he declared impinged on our own.

Assuming all this to be true, then it could be that the Tanganyika television set was a product manufactured in Future Time by a company that, by Sutter's Time standards, didn't yet exist.

The following day saw Sutter begin an experiment of which he was rather proud. Travail had said that he had tried to tune in the noon news broadcast yesterday on the TV and had turned the set on from twelve o'clock until five minutes after. At a nearby appliance store Sutter purchased a clock control which would turn his television set on and off at any chosen time. He set the control for two o'clock, then managed to lure Travail out of the house for the afternoon by giving him an invitation he'd received for a lecture on marine life at a local club. Next, he drove again to the H-bomb site and stood waiting in the grass-like park, watch in hand.

At precisely two o'clock there came that queer staggering of earth and sky. The trees gave way to the stretch of sand; the waves, leaden-colored and cheerless, dotted with white caps rolled up on the lonely shore. As before Sutter felt that same exhilaration, that same reversal to the spirit of his youth. But despite his mental excitement he maintained an awareness of the situation and a remembrance of why he had come here.

When he walked among the shells this time he carried a large basket with him and he picked up shells and dropped them into the basket, selecting those that were the most alien.

In due time the basket was filled to overflowing and Sutter stood still, waiting. Once more the surrounding landscape underwent its change. After the whirling had ceased and the initial feeling of vertigo had passed Sutter carried the full basket back to the car and began the long drive home.

As he drove he mused over what Travail would say when he saw these shells. Then on second thought, he decided not to show them to him. Travail was getting on his nerves. He had obviously lied about his interest in shells. On discussing the subject with him Sutter found he did not know the first thing about them. In fact, he regretted taking him in as a roommate.

He was convinced that Travail's friendly good-fellowship attitude was just a pose, cloaking a so far mysterious motive. But it could be that Travail knew of the value of Sutter's shell collection. Yesterday a letter had come from the Federal Arts Museum offering five thousand credits for the lot, and while he had made no mention of the amount, Sutter had been foolish enough to tell Travail there had been an offer.

"Are you going to sell?" Travail had asked.

"Certainly not. They're worth five times the price they offered."

"Are they really?" said Travail. "That makes my own collection seem worthless by comparison."

Oh, Travail could be clever all right! Why else had he made no comment about the alien shells they both had seen on the television set, if he did know something of the value of shells?

Arriving home, Sutter entered by the rear door and carried the basket of shells to his bedroom. There he took them out and one by one spread them on the table. He drew a goose-necked lamp down close and from the table drawer took out a powerful ato-magnifying glass. Then he selected one of the larger shells and began to examine it.

* * * * *

After a while he took a small keyhole saw which he kept for such purposes, and very carefully began to cut the shell into two equal portions. Once again he moved the ato-glass and began to study one of the sections. But the lamp was not very powerful, and insufficient for the tiny details. Sutter abruptly remembered the four-position lamp in the sitting room. He took the shell and the ato-glass and went to the front room, hoping that Travail was not there.

To his relief he found the sitting room deserted. The television set stood silent in a corner and as he passed it Sutter switched it on, then crossed to the four-position lamp and turned it up full. For a second time he peered through the ato-glass long and intently.

The bisected shell appeared to be a spinal univalve, resembling the familiar cephalopoda, nautilus, with thin septa dividing the many chambers.

Behind him the Tanganyika TV swelled on, the screen presenting that same scene of the beach of shells. As it did so Sutter uttered a startled exclamation.

Under the magnifying glass the chambers in the bisected shell suddenly became more than outgrowths of marine organism. They were rooms! Tessellated ceilings, microscopically mosaic inlaid floors, long sweeping staircases with graceful slender balustrades and tall almost Ionic columns....

Heart pounding, Sutter looked again.

He saw that it was actually the light from the television set that was illuminating the interior of the shell, lighting it with a strange radiance that seemed to extend outward from the shell in a steadily widening cone. His hand touched this cone, and it possessed a curious solidity.

He hadn't been mistaken. There were rooms in that shell! Narrow corridors with arched doorways opened off alcoves and galleries. One vaulted chamber had a kind of dais in the center of it. The entire inner structure was fashioned of pastel-tinted walls which caught the light of the TV and radiated it to every corner in a soft glow of effulgence.

A magnetic lure swept over Sutter. He felt an overwhelming desire to step into that cone of light....

Whether the exoskeleton expanded to admit his entrance or whether his own figure magically dwindled he could not tell, but the next instant he found himself in a fairy palace with all about him a world of silence.

A long broad hallway stretched before him. At the far end a ramp angled upward to a higher level. Sutter walked forward slowly, aware in a vague way that he had entered another plane that was at once a microcosm and a macrocosm. On the second level the way ahead divided. After a moment's hesitation he chose the left-hand passage, passing through a keyhole-shaped archway into a broad amphitheater, empty of furnishings, with a kind of terrace or gallery at the far end. Emerging upon that gallery, Sutter saw that he had reached the outer limit of the shell. The edges of the wall before him were cut off, jagged and rough, where his saw had done its work.

He was looking out upon the normal world that was his living room.

He stiffened as the door to the room opened and Lucien Travail entered. He sat down before the center table and carefully, systematically began going through the contents of the table drawer. Startled, Sutter watched from his strange vantage point. Travail had not noticed that the television set was turned on, and the high-backed davenport apparently hid the cone of blue light from his view.

He took a sheet of paper from the drawer, began reading it. With a start Sutter recognized his letter from the Federal Arts Museum.

And as a wave of wrath swept over him, Sutter saw that the beach scene on the television set was slowly fading away. Fear and a realization of his strange position struck him. He turned and ran madly back across the amphitheater, down the ramp and along the long hallway to the point where he had entered the shell. Even as he approached it the cone of blue light dimmed, wavered and was replaced by a wall of partial blackness.

Sutter sent his hands clawing desperately at that wall as it flickered twice and momentarily became translucent again. He forced his body between folds of palpable darkness, slid into the vanishing blue cone. Instantly he found himself in his normal world, standing in the center of the sitting room. Travail looked up, startled.

"Hullo. Where did you come from?" he said finally.

Sutter said, "What are you doing in my drawer?"

"I was looking for my tobacco pouch," Travail replied easily. "I'm sure I left it here on the table last night. I thought the maid might have put it in the drawer."

In his bedroom Sutter wrapped each of the alien shells in a sheet of newspaper and restored them to the basket. He placed the basket on the top shelf of the closet, concealing it with a couple of old hats.

He didn't sleep well that night. His mind reviewed over and over his strange experience. Toward morning he fell into a deep sleep and dreamed a wild dream of walking down a broad highway, flanked on one side by an endless line of television sets and on the other by man-high hills of alien shells.

He had his breakfast at the little coffee shop around the corner. But halfway back to his apartment he suddenly thought of Travail alone in the house with his shells. He broke into a run and he was panting for breath when he reached his door.

The basket of shells was still on the shelf, but the newspaper wrappings were loosened, and the bisected shell was entirely free of covering. And he had not left them that way last evening.

Had atomic transmigration attempted to draw the shells back into the Time sphere to which they really belonged? Sutter was a logical man, and even as this thought came his mind rejected it. It must be Travail. He had taken a sample shell from the basket and even now perhaps was dickering with the officials of the Federal Arts Museum on a price.

Sutter picked up the bisected shell and went into the sitting room. He carefully placed the shell upon the table so that the light from the television set would fall directly upon it. Then he sat down to wait.

As he waited he mentally viewed the material prospects of his discovery.

If the Federal Arts Museum had offered five thousand credits for his old collection, they would surely double their price on these rarities. He saw himself the recipient of a fat check, his name and picture in the papers, television interviews, lecture assignments, world fame ...

And to think that Travail had the brazen nerve to believe he could cash in on his good fortune!

"Damned bearded coot!" Sutter mumbled to himself. "He must take me for an utter fool!"

Footsteps sounded and his bearded roommate entered the room. Was it fancy or did Sutter see in those grey eyes a gleam of mingled avarice and satisfaction?

"Have a cigar?" said Travail casually.

Sutter shook his head. "You know I don't smoke." He crossed the room, adjusted the controls of the television set and watched the familiar beach scene come into sharper focus. As the sound of the washing waves boomed from the speaker, the cone of bluish light took form before the bisected shell. Sutter moved the shell slightly so that it lay at directly right angles to the panel of the TV set. Travail, drawing on his cigar, watched him curiously.

"What are you doing?" he asked at length.

"Little experiment. Stand over here and I'll show you. Here, in front of this cone of light."

Travail took the place indicated. His face was emotionless as he looked beyond the light into the bisected shell.

"Now walk forward," commanded Sutter.

"I'll do nothing of the sort," said Travail, starting to back away. "What are you up to anyway?"

Sutter had no plan in mind beyond an overwhelming desire to put a bad fright into his roommate in payment for what he considered a monstrous act of duplicity. It would serve Travail right if, once he entered the secondary plane of the shell, he would be forced to stay there a while. A good scare would cause him to leave, maybe.

Sutter moved up behind the bearded man and gave him a violent shove forward. "In you go!" he cried hysterically.

Travail pitched head foremost. But, spinning, he clutched at Sutter's arm, gripping it with the desperation of a drowning man. Half inside, half outside the cone of blue light he seemed propelled into the depths of the bisected shell by an irresistible force. In vain did Sutter fight to release the hold upon his arm. His squirming legs fastened themselves about the legs of a heavy Windsor chair, kicked frantically.

The chair spun from between his feet and lurched heavily across the room where it fell hard upon the television set, shattering the glowing screen into a thousand fragments. Simultaneously, Sutter slid forward into the bisected shell as the cone of light vanished after him....

Mrs. Conworth, the landlady, reported the disappearance of her two roomers on August first, a week after she last saw them. First, however, to the disgust of the police, she cleaned their apartment, giving to the trash man all valueless and inconsequential articles, including a box of old sea shells which she found in the closet. It was a curious fact that neither Sutter nor Travail possessed relatives or friends to make inquiry as to their whereabouts and thus without incentive the official search died into nothing.

Mrs. Conworth rather regretted the loss of her bachelor roomers and, as she said to her neighbor across the street, she kept one memento of them--a thing that looked like a shell but wasn't a shell. She thought it must be one of them optical illusion things.

"When you look at it in a certain way," said Mrs. Conworth, "it seems as if there are two tiny men inside it, fighting to get out."

Contents

SIGHT GAG

By Laurence Mark Janifer

Intelligence is a great help in the evolution-by-survival--but intelligence without muscle is even less useful than muscle without brains. But it's so easy to forget that muscle--plain physical force--is important, too!

Downstairs, the hotel register told Fredericks that Mr. John P. Jones was occupying Room 1014. But Fredericks didn't believe the register. He knew better than that. Wherever his man was, he wasn't in Room 1014. And whoever he was, his real name certainly wasn't John P. Jones. "P for Paul," Fredericks muttered to himself. "Oh, the helpful superman, the man who knows better, the man who does better."

Fredericks had first known of him as FBI Operative 71-054P, under the name of William K. Brady. "And what does the K stand for?" Fredericks muttered, remembering. "Killer?" Brady wouldn't be the man's real name, either. FBI Operatives had as many names as they had jobs, that much was elementary. Particularly operatives like Jones-Brady-X. "Special talents," Fredericks muttered. "Psi powers," he said, making it sound like a curse. "Superman."

Upstairs, in Room 1212, the superman sat in a comfortable chair and tried to relax. He wasn't a trained telepath but he could read surface thoughts if there were enough force behind them, and he could read the red thoughts of the man downstairs. They worried him more than he wanted to admit, and for a second he considered sending out a call for help. But that idea died before it had been truly born.

Donegan had told him he could handle the situation. Without weapons, forbidden to run, faced by a man who wanted only his death, he could handle the situation.

Sure he could, he thought bitterly.

Of course, if he asked for reinforcements he would undoubtedly get them. The FBI didn't want one of its Psi Operatives killed; there weren't enough to go round as it was. But calling for help, when Donegan had specifically told him he wouldn't need it, would mean being sent back a grade automatically. A man of his rank and experience, Donegan had implied, could handle the job solo. If he couldn't--why, then, he didn't deserve the rank. It was all very simple.

Unfortunately, he was still fresh out of good ideas.

The notion of killing Fredericks--using his telekinetic powers to collapse the hotel room on the man, or some such, even if he wasn't allowed to bear arms--had occurred to him in a desperate second, and Donegan had turned it down very flatly. "Look," the Psi Section chief had told him, "you got the guy's brother and sent him up for trial. The jury found him guilty of murder, first degree, no recommendation for mercy. The judge turned him over to the chair, and he fries next week."

"So let Fredericks take it out on the judge and jury," he'd said. "Why do I have to be the sitting duck?"

"Because ... well, from Fredericks' point of view, without you his brother might never have been caught. It's logic--of a sort."

"Logic, hell," he said. "The guy was guilty. I had to send him up. That's my job."

"And so is this," Donegan said. "That's our side of it. Fredericks has friends--his brother's friends. Petty criminals, would-be criminals, unbalanced types. You know that. You've read the record."

"Read it?" he said. "I dug up half of it."

Donegan nodded. "Sure," he said. "And we're going to have six more cases like Fredericks' brother--murder, robbery, God knows what else--unless we can choke them off somehow."

"Crime prevention," he said. "And I'm in the middle."

"That's the way the job is," Donegan said. "We're not superman. We've got limits, just like everybody else. Our talents have limits."

He nodded. "So?"

"So," Donegan said, "we've got to convince Fredericks' friends--the unbalanced fringe--that we are supermen, that we have no limits, that no matter what they try against us they're bound to fail."

"Nice trick," he said sourly.

"Very nice," Donegan said. "And what's more, it works. Nobody except an out-and-out psychotic commits a crime when he hasn't got a hope of success. And these people aren't psychotics; most criminals aren't. Show them they can't get away with a thing--show them we're infallible, all-knowing, all-powerful supermen--and they'll be scared off trying anything."

"But killing Fredericks would do that just as well--" he began.

Donegan shook his head. "Now, hold on," he said. "You're getting all worked up about this. It's your first time with this stakeout business, that's all. But you can't kill him. You can't kill except when really necessary. You know that."

"All right. But if he's going to kill me--"

"That doesn't make it necessary, not this time," Donegan said. "This vengeance syndrome doesn't last forever, you know. Block it, and you're through with it. And think how much more effective it is, letting Fredericks go back alive to tell the tale."

"Think how much more effective it would be," he said, "if Fredericks managed to get me."

"He won't," Donegan said.

"But without weapons--"

"No Psi Operative carries weapons," Donegan said. "We don't need them. We're supermen ... remember?"

He twisted his face with a smile. "Easy for you to talk about it," he said. "But I'm going to have to go out and face it--"

"We've all faced it," Donegan said. "When I was an Operative I went through it, too. It's part of the job."

"But--"

"And I'm not going to tell you how to do the job," Donegan went on firmly. "Either you know that by now, or you don't belong here."

He got up to leave, slowly. "It's a fine way to find out," he said mournfully.

Donegan rose, too. "Good luck," he said. And meant it, too.

That was the chief for you, he thought. Send you out into God knows what with no weapons, no instructions, lots of help planted for the man who wanted to kill you--and then wish you good luck at the end of it.

Sometimes he wondered why he didn't go in for some nice, peaceful job of work--like rocket testing, for instance.

* * * * *

Fredericks, downstairs, was deciding to do things the subtle way. The man upstairs--Jones, Brady or whatever his name was--deserved what he was going to get. Psi powers were all very well, but there were defenses against them. Briefly he thought of the man who'd sold him the special equipment, and wondered why more criminals didn't know the equipment existed. It worked; he was sure of that. Fredericks knew enough of general psi theory to know when somebody was handing him a snow job. And the equipment was no snow job.

A force shield, that was the basic thing. A shield with no points of entrance for anything larger than air molecules. Sight and sound could get through, because the shield was constructed to allow selected vibrations and frequencies. But no psi force could crack the shield.

Fredericks has sat through a long explanation. Psi wasn't a physical force; it was more like the application of a mental "set," in the mathematical sense, to the existing order. But it could be detected by specially built instruments--and a shield could be set up behind which no detection was possible. It wasn't accurate to say that a psi force was blocked by the shield; no construct can block that which has no real physical existence. It was, more simply, that the shield created a framework inside of which the universe existed in the absence of psi.

That wasn't very clear, either, Fredericks thought; but mathematics was the only adequate language for talking about psi, anyhow. It had been the theory of sets that had led to the first ideas of structure and rationality within the field, and the math had gotten progressively more complex ever since.

Psi couldn't get through the shield, at any rate; that was quite certain. And very little else could get in, or out. There was only one point of exit. Unholstering his gun and aiming it automatically keyed the shield to allow passage of a bullet, and the point of exit was controlled by the gun's aiming. It was efficient and simple to handle.

But Fredericks wasn't depending on the shield alone. There was a binder field, too--a field which linked him to the surrounding area, quite tightly. That took care of the chance that the Psi Operative would try to pick him up, force shield and all, and throw him out a window or through the roof. With the binder field in operation, no psi force could move him an inch.

A plug gas mask, too, inserted into the nostrils. The shield plus the mask's pack held two hours' worth of air--just in case the Psi Operative tried to throw poisonous molecules through the force shield, or deprive him of oxygen.

And then there was the blindfold. Such a simple thing, and so effective.

* * * * *

Upstairs, the Psi Operative caught the sequence of thoughts. Did the FBI have to do such a thorough job, he wondered bitterly. The equipment, he knew, would do everything Fredericks thought it would do. It was important that Fredericks go up against the Operative thinking he was completely protected--in that way his final defeat would be most effective. He'd have guarded against every possible failure--so, when he failed, there would be nothing to explain it.

Except the "fact" that the Psi Operatives were supermen.

He gritted his teeth. It would be nice, he reflected, to be a real superman. But any talent has its limits. And, even allowing for that, only Donegan and a very few others could handle the full theoretical potentials of their talents. In theory, a telekineticist could move any object with his mind that he could move with his hands. That was a rough rule of thumb, but it worked. The larger objects were barred by sheer mass; no matter what kind of force you're using, there's a limit to how much of it you can apply.

The smaller objects--molecules, electrons, photons--simply took practice and training. First the object had to be visualized, and the general structure memorized. Then the power had to be controlled carefully enough so that you moved just what you wanted to move and not, for instance, shift the Empire State Building while trying to lift a molecule out of its topmast.

It was possible, in theory, to create full sensory hallucinations by juggling electron streams and molecules within the brain. But memorizing the entire structure of the brain was a lifelong task, since you also had to allow for individual variation, and that meant working with "tracking" molecules inside each brain before any work began. Most Operatives stuck to one area--usually, as most effective, sight or sound.

He was a sight man. He could create any visual hallucination, as long as the subject was within a twenty-five-foot range. Beyond that, control of the fantastically small electrons and photons simply became too diffused.

But Fredericks had a shield. And in case the shield didn't work, he was coming with a blindfold.

The Psi Operative had no weapons, no reinforcements, no chance to run--nothing except his psi talent, which Fredericks had defenses against, and his brains.

But there had to be a way out.

Didn't there?

* * * * *

The desk clerk looked young and comparatively innocent. Fredericks ambled over, taking his time about it. The clerk looked up and smiled distantly. "Yes, sir?"

"You've got a man registered here," Fredericks said, in crisp, official tones. "He gave the name of John P. Jones--"

The clerk was consulting a card file. "Yes, sir," he said brightly. "Room 1014."

"He's at work on an FBI matter," Fredericks said. "Naturally, this is private and confidential--"

"Naturally," the clerk said in a subdued tone. "But I--"

"I'm assigned to work with him," Fredericks said. "You understand."

"Of course, sir," the clerk said, trying to look as if he did.

Fredericks took a deep breath. "I know he's here, but I don't know his room number," he said. "Some red-tape mixup."

"He's in 1014," the clerk said hopefully.

Fredericks shook his head. "Not that," he said. "The real room number. Look, I've got to get to him immediately--"

"Of course, sir," the clerk said. "Identification, sir?"

Fredericks grinned and fished in pockets. Naturally, he didn't come up with a thing, FBI identification was infra-red tested, totally unmistakable and unavailable to non-Operatives under any circumstances whatever. "Got it here some place," he muttered.

The clerk nodded. "Of course, sir," he said. "No need to waste time. I understand."

Fredericks stopped and stared. "You what?"

"The room, sir, is 1212," the clerk said. "Would you like me to accompany you--"

"No thanks," Fredericks breathed. "I'll find it myself." The man was too easy to find, he thought savagely. It ought to be tough to find him--but it's easy.

Remotely, that idea bothered him. But what difference did it make, after all? He had all the protection in the world. He had all the protection he was going to need. And all the time to fire one shot. Doing it blindfolded was going to be tough, but not insuperably tough. Fredericks had spent a week practicing, and he could locate a fly by sound within two inches, nineteen times out of twenty. That, he thought, was going to be good enough.

Upstairs, the Psi Operative thought so, too.

There had to be a way out, he told himself desperately.

But he couldn't find it.

He couldn't even come close.

* * * * *

On the way to Room 1212, he flipped on the shield, the mask, the binder field. Now let the superman try something, he thought wildly. Now let him try his tricks! He attached the blindfold as he got off the elevator. He could see Room 1212, three doors down the corridor, twenty steps--and then the blindfold was on. From now on he worked in the dark.

He felt the skeleton key in his palm and flipped the shield off for a second; then the key was in the lock, the shield back on, protecting him. The door opened slowly.

He heard it shut behind him. Then there was silence. He drew his gun.

"Go ahead," a muffled voice said from his right. "Go ahead and try something, Fredericks."

He whirled and almost fired--but voices could be thrown. He listened again. There was silence ... not quite silence ... a movement ... a rustle--

Breathing was faint but unmistakable. It gave him a new direction. Breathing couldn't be faked.

He pictured the Psi Operative, in one flash of imagination, trying to get through the shield, sweating as he strained helplessly against the force shield, the binder field, the mask, the blindfold--oh, there was no way out for the poor superman, no way at all.

And Psi Operatives didn't carry weapons or anything else. They depended on their powers, and that was all.

And he'd neutralized those powers.

The breathing gave him the direction. He turned again, bringing the gun up, and fired six shots without a second's break between them. There was a sound like a gasp, and then nothing.

Nothing at all.

Grinning wildly, Fredericks whipped off the blindfold and switched off his shield in one triumphant motion. There, on the floor--

There, on the floor, was a nice gray rug with nobody at all lying dead on top of it. In the half-second it took Fredericks to see that, the Psi Operative moved. Fredericks tossed the empty gun at him and missed; the man was coming too fast. He guarded his face but the Psi Operative didn't go for the face. Instead his hands went swinging up and out and back.

The sides of the palms landed neatly on the twin junctions of Fredericks' arms and shoulders. Fredericks let out a shriek as his arms turned to acutely painful stone, and the Psi Operative stepped back and moved again in one blinding motion. This time the solar plexus was the target for one balled fist.

And then, of course, it was all over.

* * * * *

"Of course it was simple," Donegan said. "Anyone could have thought of it--and I knew you would."

"All the same," the Psi Operative said, "I nearly didn't."

Donegan nodded. "If you hadn't," he said, "we'd stationed a man downstairs who'd memorized your room. He could have done the job, too."

The Operative blinked. "Who?" he said.

"Desk clerk," Donegan said.

"Why didn't you tell me--"

"Now, use your head," Donegan said. "If you'd known you were all right, you'd never have thought of the answer. You had to prove you could do it--prove it to yourself as well as to me."

"But--"

"And you had to prove you could beat him on his grounds, too, as well as yours," Donegan went on. "You had to take him, not only with psi forces, but with the only weapons a Psi Operative is allowed to carry."

"Fists," the Operative said. "Sure Judo and Karate are standard subjects--every Operative has to know them. What's so tough about that?"

"Nothing," Donegan said. "Nothing at all--except for Fredericks. He's been beaten on your ground, and on his own. Now he knows he's licked. Standard operating procedure."

"I guess so," the Operative said.

"And after all," Donegan said, "now that you're going up a grade--"

"Now that I'm what?"

"That," Donegan said, "was your promotion test, friend. And you passed."

There was a second of absolute silence. Then the Operative said: "And it was all so simple."

"Sure," Donegan said. "Simple enough so that you get a promotion out of it--and Fredericks gets sixty days for attempted assault."

"Not ADW--assault with a deadly weapon--because we've got to keep up the myth," the Operative said. "Psi Operatives are untouchable. No such thing as a deadly weapon for a Psi Operative."

"Which is nonsense," Donegan said, "but necessary nonsense. I wonder if Fredericks will ever figure out how you got him."

"I wonder," the Operative said. "He'll know about karate, of course."

"Karate's hand-to-hand fighting." Donegan said. "That was his field. No, I mean our field. Psi."

"It makes a nice puzzle for him, doesn't it?" the Operative said, and grinned. "After all, I didn't touch him--couldn't, in any way. He'd shielded himself perfectly from any telekinetic force--and I had no weapons. I couldn't even get to him barehanded because of his shield and the binder field. He had me located--no tomfoolery about that. He fired six shots at me, point-blank at can't-miss range."

"But you got him," Donegan said.

"Sure," the Operative said. "Simplest thing in the world."

"All you had to do--" Donegan began.

"All I had to do," the Operative finished for him, "was use my mind to move the bullets--as he fired them."

Contents

GET OUT OF OUR SKIES!

By E. K. JARVIS

On the first cloudy day in November, Tom Blacker, the shining light of Ostreich and Company, Public Relations Counsellors, placed a call to a shirtsleeved man on the rooftop of the Cannon Building in New York City.

His message brought an immediate response from the waiting engineer, who flicked switches and twirled dials with expert motions, and brought into play the gigantic 50,000-watt projector installed on the peak.

In his own office, Tom paced the floor in front of the three-window exposure, watching the heavens for the results.

They weren't long in coming.

The eyes came first. Eyes the size of Navy dirigibles, with pupils of deep cerulean blue, floating against the backdrop of the gray cumulus. The long lashes curled out almost a hundred feet from the lids. Then the rest of Monica Mitchell's famous face appeared: the flowing yellow locks, the sensuously curved lips, parted moistly from even white teeth. From chin to hairline, the projected image above the city was close to a thousand feet in diameter.

Then, as if the floating countenance wasn't alarming enough, the ruby lips began to move. Monica's sweet-sultry voice, like the first drippings from a jar of honey, overcame the city sounds, and began crooning the syrupy strains of Love Me Alone. Which happened, by no coincidence, to be the title and theme song of Monica's newest epic.

It was a triumph. Tom knew it the moment he looked down at the crowded thoroughfare eighteen stories beneath the window. Traffic had come to a more than normal standstill. Drivers were leaving their autos, and hands were being upraised towards the gargantuan face on the clouds above.

And of course, Tom's phone rang.

* * * * *

Ostreich's big scowling face was barely squeezed within the confines of the visiphone screen. He said nothing intelligible for two minutes.

"Relax, Chief," Tom said brightly. "I've been saving this as a surprise."

Ostreich's reply was censorable.

"Now look, D. O. You gave me carte blanche with this Mitchell babe, remember? I figured we really needed a shot in the arm for this new picture of hers. The receipts on her last turkey couldn't pay her masseurs."

Ostreich, who had built his firm by establishing golden public images for various industrialists and their enterprises, had anticipated trouble the moment he let the barrier down to admit such unworthy clients as Monica Mitchell. But he had never anticipated that his ace publicist would display such carnival tactics in their promotion. He growled like a taunted leopard.

"This is a cheap trick, Tom! Do you hear me? Turn that thing off at once!"

"Who, me?" Tom said innocently. "Gosh, D. O. I'm no engineer. I left instructions with the operator to keep the projector going for three hours, until sunset. Don't think I can do anything about it now."

"You'll damn well have to do something about it! You're ruining us!"

"Look at it this way, Chief. What can we lose? If anybody takes offense, we can blame it on that Hollywood gang."

"Turn that damn thing off! If that blankety face isn't out of the sky in ten minutes, you can start emptying your desk!"

Tom was a redhead. He reached over and snapped the visiphone switch before his boss could have the satisfaction. He stomped to the window, still raging at Ostreich's lack of appreciation.

But he chuckled when he saw the activity in the street. The crowds were thickening at the intersections, and a special battalion of city police were trying to keep things moving. Behind him, the visiphone was beeping frantically again.

He waited a full minute before answering, all set to snap at Ostreich once more.

But it wasn't Ostreich. It was a square-faced man with beetling brows and a chin like the biting end of a steam shovel. It took Tom a while to recognize the face of Stinson, commissioner of police.

"Mr. Blacker?"

"Yes, sir?" Tom gulped.

"Mr. Ostreich referred me to you. You responsible for that--" the commissioner's voice was choked. "--that menace?"

"Menace, sir?"

"You know what I'm talking about. We've got half a dozen CAA complaints already. That thing's a menace to public safety, a hazard to air travel--"

"Look, Mr. Stinson. It's only a harmless publicity stunt."

"Harmless? You got funny ideas, Mr. Blacker. Don't get the wrong idea about our city ordinances. We got statutes that cover this kind of thing. If you don't want to be a victim of one of them, turn that damned monstrosity off!"

The commissioner's angry visage left a reverse shadow burned on the visiphone screen. It remained glowing there long after the contact was broken.

Tom Blacker walked the carpeted floor of his office, chewing on his lower lip, and cursing the feeble imaginations of Ostreich and the rest of them. When his temper had cooled, he got sober thoughts of indictments, and law suits, and unemployment. With a sigh, he contacted the engineer on the roof of the Cannon Building. Then he went to the window, and watched Monica's thousand-foot face fade gradually out of sight.

* * * * *

At four o'clock that afternoon, a long white envelope crossed Tom's blotter. There was a check to the amount of a month's salary enclosed, and a briefly-worded message from the office of the president.

When he left the office, Ostreich's rolling phrases buzzed in his head like swarming gnats. "... a mockery of a great profession ... lowering of dignity ... incompatible with the highest ideals of ..."

At ten o'clock that night, Tom was telling his troubles to a red-coated man behind a chromium bar on Forty-ninth Street. The man listened with all the gravity of a physician, and lined up the appropriate medicine in front of his patient.

By midnight, Tom was singing Christmas carols, in advance of the season, with a tableful of Texans.

At one o'clock, he swung a right cross at a mounted policeman, missed, and fell beneath the horse's legs.

At one-fifteen, he fell asleep against the shoulder of a B-girl as they rode through the streets of the city in a sleek police vehicle.

That was all Tom Blacker remembered, until he woke up in Livia Cord's cozy two-room apartment. He moved his head and winced with the pain.

* * * * *

"Hi," the girl said.

She was smiling down at him, and for a moment, her floating face reminded Tom of the episode which had just cost him twenty grand a year. He groaned, and rolled the other way on the contour couch.

"Hair of the dog?" she said. There was a gleaming cannister in her hand.

"No, thanks." He sat up, rubbing the stiff red hair on the back of his head. One eye seemed permanently screwed shut, but the other managed to take in his surroundings. It explored the girl first, and appreciatively.

She was wearing something black and satiny, cut in the newest Dallas-approved style, with long, tantalizing diagonal slashes across the breast and hips. Her hair was strikingly two-toned, black and blonde. Her teeth were a blinding white, and had been filed to canine sharpness.

"My name's Livia," the girl said pleasantly. "Livia Cord. I hope you don't mind what I did."

"And what was that?" Tom's other eye popped open, almost audibly.

"Bailing you out of jail. Seems you got into a fracas with a mounted cop. I think you tried to punch his horse."

"Nuts. I was trying to hit him."

"Well, you didn't." She chuckled, and poured herself a drink. "You've had quite a day, Mr. Blacker."

"You said it." There was a taste in his mouth like cigar ashes. He tried to stand up, but the weight on his head kept him where he was. "You wouldn't have an oxygen pill around?"

"Sure." She left with a toss of her skirt and a revelation of silky calves. When she returned with the tablet and water, he took it gratefully. After a few minutes, he felt better enough to ask:

"Why?"

"What's that?"

"Why'd you bail me out? I don't know you. Or do I?"

She laughed. "No. Not yet you don't. But I know you, Mr. Blacker. By reputation, at any rate. You see--" She sat next to him on the couch, and Tom was feeling well enough to tingle at her nearness. "We're in the same line of work, you and I."

"Unemployment?"

"No," she smiled. "Public relations. Only I'm on the client's side of the fence. I work for an organization called Homelovers, Incorporated. Ever hear of them?"

Tom shook his head.

"Maybe you should. It's a rather important company, and growing. And they're always on the lookout for superior talent."

* * * * *

He squinted at her. "What is this? A job offer?"

"Maybe." She wriggled a little, and the slits in her dress widened just a fraction. "We've got the nucleus of a good PR department now. But with a really experienced man at the controls--it could grow enormously. Think you might be interested?"

"Maybe I would," Tom said. But he wasn't thinking about PR right then.

"Mr. Andrusco's had you in mind for a long time," Livia Cord continued. "I've mentioned your name to him several times as a possible candidate. If you hadn't been fired from Ostreich, we might have tried to tempt you away." Her fingers touched a stray lock of red hair. "Now--we don't have to be surreptitious about it. Do we?"

"No," Tom said guardedly. "I guess not."

"If you're free tomorrow, I could arrange a meeting with Mr. Andrusco. Would you like that?"

"Well ..."

"His office opens at nine. We could get there early."

Tom looked at his watch. Livia said: "I know it's late. But we could get an early start in the morning, right after breakfast. Couldn't we?"

"I dunno," Tom frowned. "By the time I get home ..."

"Home?" The girl leaned back. "Who said anything about home?"

Her bedroom was monochromed. Even the sheets were pink. At five o'clock, the false dawn glimmered through the window, and the light falling on his eyes awakened him. He looked over at the sleeping girl, feeling drugged and detached. She moaned slightly, and turned her face towards him. He blinked at the sight of it, and cried aloud.

"What is it?" She sat up in bed and nicked on the table lamp. "What's the matter?"

He looked at her carefully. She was beautiful. There wasn't even a smudge of lipstick on her face.

"Nothing," he said dreamily, and turned away. By the time he was asleep again, his mind had already erased the strange image from his clouded brain--that Livia Cord had absolutely no mouth at all.

* * * * *

It was hard to keep track of the glass-and-steel structures that had been springing up daily along the Fifth-Madison Thruway. When Tom and Livia stepped out of the cab in front of 320, he wasn't surprised that the building--an odd, cylindrical affair with a pointed spire--was strange to him. But he was taken aback to realize that all sixty floors were the property of Homelovers, Incorporated.

"Quite a place," he told the girl.

She smiled at him tightly. Livia was crackling with business electricity this morning, her spiked heels clicking along the marble floors of the lobby like typewriter keys. She wore a tailored gray suit that clung to her body with all the perfection and sexlessness of a window mannikin. In the elevator, shooting towards the executive offices on the 57th floor, Tom looked over at her and scratched his poorly-shaven cheeks in wonderment.

They plowed right through the frosty receptionist barrier, and entered an office only half the size of Penn Station. The man behind the U-shaped desk couldn't have been better suited to the surroundings by Central Casting. He was cleft-jawed, tanned, exquisitely tailored. If his polished brown toupee had been better fitted, he would have been positively handsome.

The handshake was firm.

"Good to see you," he grinned. "Heard a lot about you, Mr. Blacker. All of it good."

"Well," Livia said airily. "I've done my part. Now you two come to terms. Buzz me if you need me, J. A."

John Andrusco unwrapped a cigar when she left, and said: "Well, now. Suppose we get right down to cases, Mr. Blacker. Our organization is badly in need of a public relations set-up that can pull out all the stops. We have money and we have influence. Now all we need is guidance. If you can supply that, there's a vacant chair at the end of the hall that can accommodate your backside." He grinned manfully.

"Well," Tom said delicately. "My big problem is this, Mr. Andrusco. I don't know what the hell business you're in."

The executive laughed heartily. "Then let me fill you in."

He stepped over to a cork-lined wall, pressed a concealed button, and panels parted. An organizational chart, with designations that were meaningless to Tom, appeared behind it.

"Speaking basically," Andrusco said, "Homelovers, Incorporated represents the interests of the world's leading real estate concerns. Land, you know, is still the number one commodity of Earth, the one priceless possession that rarely deteriorates in value. In fact, with the increase in the Earth's population, the one commodity that never seems to be in excess supply."

"I see," Tom said, not wholly in truth.

"The stability of real estate is our prime concern. By unification of our efforts, we have maintained these values over a good many years. But as you know, a good business organization never rests on its laurels. Sometimes, even basic human needs undergo unusual--alterations."

"I'm not following too well," Tom said frankly. "Just where does public relations come into this? I can't see much connection."

* * * * *

Andrusco frowned, but without wrinkling his serene brow too much. He went to the multipaned window and locked his hands behind his back.

"Let me put it this way, Mr. Blacker. With the Earth's population approaching the three billion mark, you can imagine that real estate is at a greater premium than ever--yes, even the remotest land areas have gained in market value. But let me ask you this. If there were only a hundred apples in the world, and you owned all of them, what would you do if you learned that someone else had discovered a fruitful orchard, which contains ten million apples?"

"I'd go out of the apple business."

"Precisely." Andrusco rocked on his heels. "In a sense, that's very much the problem that Homelovers, Incorporated may have to face in the next generation."

"Somebody swiping your apples?"

"In a way." The man chuckled. "Yes, in a way." He raised his arm slowly, and pointed to the sky. "The apples," he said, "are up there."

"Huh?" Tom said.

* * * * *

"Space, Mr. Blacker. Space is opening its doors to us. Already, the UN Space Commission has launched some two dozen manned vehicles into the outer reaches. Already, the satellite-building colony on the moon is well under way. The progress of our space program has been accelerating month by month. The expert predictions have been more and more optimistic of late. In another ten, twenty years, the solar system will be beckoning the children of Earth ..."

Tom said nothing for a while. Then he cleared his throat.

"Well ... I'm no expert on these things. But maybe the population could stand a little more real estate, Mr. Andrusco. In twenty years ..."

"Nonsense!" The voice was snappish. "The best authorities say it isn't so. There's plenty of room on Earth. But if ever a mass exodus begins--"

"That doesn't seem possible," Tom said. "Does it? I mean, only a handful of guys have ever gone out there. A drop in the bucket. I mean, Mars and all that may be fun to visit, but who'd want to live there?"

Andrusco turned to him slowly.

"The apples in the new orchard may be sour, Mr. Blacker. But if your livelihood depended on your own little stack of fruit--would you be willing to sit by and take the chance?"

Tom shrugged. "And is that the public relations job? To keep people out of space?"

"Put in its crudest form, yes."

"A pretty tough job. You know that guff about Man's Pioneering Spirit."

"Yes. But we're worried about the public spirit, Mr. Blacker. If we can dampen their ardor for space flight--only delay it, mind you, for another few years--we can tighten our own lines of economic defense. Do I make myself clear?"

"Not completely."

"Will you take the job?"

"What does it pay?"

"Fifty thousand."

"Where do I sit?"

* * * * *

By the afternoon, Tom Blacker was ensconced in a fair-sized office with vaguely oriental furnishings and an ankle-deep rug. Livia's pretty ankles visited it first.

"Here's an outline I began on the PR program," she told him briskly, dropping a sheet of paper on his desk. "I didn't get very far with it. I'm sure you can add a lot."

"Okay. I'll read it over this afternoon." He tipped the chair back. "How about dinner tonight?"

"Sorry. Busy tonight. Maybe later this week."

But it wasn't until Friday, three days later, that he saw Livia Cord again. He accomplished that by calling her in for a conference, spreading his own typewritten notes on the desk in front of him.

"Got some rough ideas drafted on the program," he told her. "The possibilities of this thing are really unlimited. Granted, of course, that there's money in this picture."

"There's money all right," Livia said. "We don't have to worry about that."

"Good. I've put down a list of leading citizens that might be enrolled as backers for anything we might come up with, people who have been outspoken about the expense or danger of space flight. We'll keep it on file, and add to it as new names crop up in the press. Then here's a listing of categories for us to develop subprograms around. Religious, economic, social, medical--Medical's good. There's a heck of a lot of scare-value in stories about cosmic rays, alien diseases, plagues, zero gravity sickness, all that sort of thing. Sterility is a good gimmick; impotence is even better."

* * * * *

Livia smiled. "I know what you mean."

"Mmm. Come to think of it, we ought to set up a special woman's-point-of-view program, too. That'll be worth plenty. Then there's the tax question. We'll have to see what we can set up in Washington, some kind of anti-space lobby. Good feature story material here, too. You know the stuff--one space vessel equals the cost of two hundred country hospitals."

"Sounds great."

"We'll have to plan on press parties, special stuff for the magazines and networks. I've got a plan for some Hollywood promotion to counteract all this Destination Space garbage they've been turning out. And as for television--"

He talked on for another hour, feeling mounting excitement for the job he was doing. Tom wasn't sure that he liked the aims of Homelovers, Incorporated, but the challenge was enjoyable. Even at dinner that night, in Livia's snug apartment, he rattled on about the PR program until the girl began to yawn.

The bedroom was still monochrome. Only Livia had transformed it magically into powder blue. Tom slept blissfully until morning, and went into the office that weekend for sheer love of what he was doing.

After less than a month, his efforts started producing results. On a crisp December morning, he found the following in his mail:

"EARTH SONG" A Screenplay by Duncan Devine

Roger Tenblade, a dashing young rocket pilot in the UN Air Force, yearns to join the Space Expeditionary Force now planning the first landing and colonization of the planet Mars. Despite the protest of his lovely fiancée, Diane, he embarks upon the journey. The trip is fraught with hazards, and the ship is struck by a meteor en route. Every member of the crew is killed, except Roger, who heroically brings the vessel back to home base. However, Roger is exposed to large amounts of cosmic radiation. When he is so informed by the medical authorities, he realizes that he can never make Diane a normal husband. So rather than return to her and ruin her life, he changes his identity and disappears to South America, where he takes a job as a shuttle pilot for a third-class airline.

Meanwhile, Diane marries Harold Farnsworth, scion of one of America's wealthiest families ...

Tom Blacker chuckled, and slipped the scenario back into the envelope. He marked the manuscript "O.K. for Production," and turned to the other mail.

There was the prospectus of a television series that sounded interesting. He looked it over carefully.

"CAPTAIN TERRA" Half-hour Television Series written by Craig Comfort

Captain Terra, and his Earth Cadets are dedicated to the principle of "Earth Above All" and have sworn their lives to the preservation of Earth and its peoples, and to the protection of Earth against the hostile aliens constantly threatening the planet.

Program One, Act One

Bobby, Captain Terra's youthful aide, is attacked one day by a strange creature which he describes as half-man, half-snake. He reports the incident to Captain Terra, who calls a special session of his Earth Patrol to determine how best to deal with this enemy ...

Tom read the prospectus through, and then dictated a letter to its producers to call for an appointment.

At the bottom of the mail pile, he found an enthusiastic letter from a theatrical producer named Homer Bradshaw, whom he had dealt with briefly during his career at Ostreich and Company.

Dear Tom,

Great to hear about your new connection! Have a fabulous gimmick that ought to be right down your alley. Am thinking of producing a new extravaganza entitled: "Be It Ever So Humble."

This will be a real classy show, with plenty of chorus line and top gags. We plan to kid the pants off this spaceman business, until those bright boys in the glass hats cry uncle. I've already lined up James Hocum for the top banana, and Sylvia Crowe for the female lead. You know Sylvia, Tom; she'll make space flight sound about as chic as a debutante's ball on the Staten Island Ferry. This is the way to do the job, Tom--laugh 'em out of it.

If you're interested in a piece of this, you can always reach me at ...

He was about to call it a day at five-thirty, when he got a visiphone call from John Andrusco. When he walked into the immense office at the other end of the floor, he saw a glassy-eyed man standing at Andrusco's desk, twirling his hat with nervous fingers.

"Tom," Andrusco said cheerfully, "want you to meet somebody. This is Sergeant Walt Spencer, formerly of the UN Space Commission."

Tom shook the man's hand, and he could feel it trembling in his own.

"I called Walt in here specially, thanks to that memo you sent me, Tom. Great idea of yours, about talking to some of the boys who've actually been in space. Walter here's willing to cooperate a hundred percent."

"That's fine," Tom said uneasily.

"Thought you two ought to get together," Andrusco said, reaching for his hat. "Think he can help a lot, Tom. Talk it over."

"Well--suppose we have a drink, Sergeant? That fit your plans all right?"

"Suits me," the man said, without emotion.

They went down in the elevator together, and slid into a red-leather booth in the Tuscany Bar in the base of the building. The sergeant ordered a double Scotch, and gulped it with the same respect you give water.

"So you've been in space," Tom said, looking at him curiously. "Must have been quite an experience."

"Yeah."

"Er--I take it you've left the service."

"Yeah."

Tom frowned, and sipped his martini. "How many trips did you make, Sergeant?"

"Just one. Reconnaissance Moon Flight Four. About six years ago. You must have read about it."

"Yes," Tom said. "Sorry."

The man shrugged. "Things happen. Even on Earth, things happen."

"Tell me something." Tom leaned forward. "Is it true about--" He paused, embarrassed. "Well, you hear a lot of stories. But I understand some of the men on that flight, the ones who got back all right, had children. And--well, you know how rumors go--"

"Lies," Spencer said, without rancor. "I've got two kids myself. Both of 'em normal."

"Oh." Tom tried to hide his disappointment behind the cocktail glass. It would have made great copy, if he could have proved the truth of the old rumor about two-headed babies. But what could Sergeant Spencer do for the PR program? Andrusco must have had something in mind.

* * * * *

He asked him point-blank.

"It's like this," the man said, his eyes distant. "Since I quit the service, I haven't been doin' so good. With jobs, I mean. And Mr. Andrusco--he said he'd give me five thousand dollars if I'd--help you people."

"Did Mr. Andrusco describe this help?"

"Yeah. He wants me to do a story. About the kid my wife had. The first kid."

"What about the first kid?"

"Well, she died, the first kid did. In childbirth. It was something that happens, you know. My wife's a little woman; the baby was smothered."

"I see. And what kind of story do you want to tell?"

"It's not my idea." A hint of stubbornness glimmered in his dull eyes. "It's that Andrusco guy's. He wants me to tell how the baby was born a--mutant."

"What?"

"He wants me to release a story saying the baby was a freak. The kid was born at home, you see. The only other person who saw her, besides me and my wife, was this doctor we had. And he died a couple of years back."

Tom slumped in his chair. This was pushing public relations a little far.

"Well, I dunno," he said. "If the baby was really normal--"

"It was normal, all right. Only dead, that's all."

Tom stood up. "Okay, Sergeant Spencer. Let me think it over, and I'll give you a buzz before the end of the week. All right?"

"Anything you say, Chief."

* * * * *

In the morning, Tom Blacker went storming into John Andrusco's plush office.

"Now look, Mr. Andrusco. I don't mind slanting a story a little far. But this Spencer story of yours is nothing but a hoax."

Andrusco looked hurt. "Did he tell you that? How do you like that nerve?"

"What do you mean?"

"Why, that story's as genuine as gold. We've known about the freak birth for a long time. Cosmic rays, you know. Those men on that reconnaissance flight really got bombarded."

Tom wasn't sure of himself. "You mean, it's true?"

"Of course it is! As a matter of fact, we've got a photograph of the dead baby, right after it was delivered. The doctor who attended Mrs. Spencer took it without their knowledge, as a medical curiosity. He sold it to us several years ago. We've never used it before, because we knew that the Spencers would just deny it. Now that Walt's willing to cooperate ..."

"Can I see the photo?"

"Why, certainly." He opened the top drawer and handed a glossy print across the desk. Tom looked at it, and winced.

"Scales!" he said.

"Like a fish," Andrusco said sadly. "Pretty sad, isn't it?" He looked out of the window and sighed cavernously. "It's a menacing world up there...."

The rest of the day was wasted. Tom Blacker's mind wasn't functioning right.

He told Livia about it at lunch.

Livia Cord continued eating, chewing delicately on her food without flexing a muscle or wincing an eyebrow.

* * * * *

On the Third of April, the story of Sergeant Walter Spencer's first-born monster broke in newspapers, magazines, and telecasts across the country. It was a five-year-old story, but it carried too much significance for the space-minded present to be ignored.

Two days later, Sergeant Spencer, 32, and his wife, Laura, 30, were found dead of asphyxiation in their new home in Greenwich, Connecticut. The cause of death was listed as suicide.

Tom Blacker didn't hear the news until a day after it happened. He was in Washington, setting up a series of meetings with members of a House group investigating space flight expenditures. When he returned by 'copter that evening, he found Police Commissioner Joe Stinson waiting for him in Tom's own favorite chair.

The square, heavy-jowled face was strangely calm.

"Long time no see," he said mildly. "You've been a busy man lately, Mr. Blacker."

"Hello, Mr. Stinson. Won't you come in?"

"I'm in," the commissioner shrugged. "Landlord let me wait here. It's chilly outside. Do you want the preliminaries, or should we have the main bout?"

"It's about Spencer, isn't it?" Tom built himself a long drink. "I heard about it on the 'copter radio, flying in. Too bad. He was a nice guy; I never met his wife."

"But you knew him, right? In fact, you and the sergeant did a lot of business together?"

"Look, Mr. Stinson. You know what kind of job I'm trying to do. It's no secret. Spencer's story happened to gear in nicely with our public relations effort. And that's all."

"Maybe it is." The commissioner's eyes hardened. "Only some of us aren't satisfied. Some of us are kinda restless about the coroner's verdict."

"What?"

"You heard me. It's fishy, you know? Nice young couple buys a new house, then turns on the gas. Leave behind a couple of kids, too. Boys, nice boys."

"I couldn't feel worse about it," Tom said glumly. "In a way, I can almost feel responsible ..."

"How?"

"I dunno. They were perfectly willing to release that story about their first-born. But maybe when they actually saw it in print, they couldn't stand the spotlight--"

"And that's your theory?"

"Yes. But I hope I'm wrong, Mr. Stinson. For my own sake."

The commissioner drew a folded sheet of paper out of his pocket.

"Let me read you something. This hasn't been released to the press, and maybe it won't be. Interested?"

"Of course."

"It's a letter. A letter that was never mailed. It's addressed to Tom Blacker, care of Homelovers, Incorporated, 320 Fifth-Madison, New York."

"What?" Tom reached for it.

"Uh-uh. It was never mailed, so it's not your property. But I'll read it to you." He slipped on a pair of bifocals.

Dear Mr. Blacker. I've been trying to reach you all week, but you've been out of town. Laura and I have just seen the first news story about our baby, and we're just sick about it. Why didn't you tell us about that photograph you were going to print? If we had known about that, we never would have consented to doing what you wanted. My wife never gave birth to that damned thing, and I don't care who knows it. I've called Mr. Andrusco to tell him that we don't want any part of this business any more. I'd send you back every penny of the five thousand dollars, only we've already spent half of it. I'm going to call the newspapers and tell them everything ...

The commissioner paused. "It goes on for another half page. But no use reading any more. I'd like a reaction, Mr. Blacker. Got one handy?"

Tom was on his feet.

"I don't believe it!" His fist thudded into his palm. "The letter's a fake!"

"That's easy to prove, Mr. Blacker."

"But the picture was genuine! Don't you see that? Sure, we paid Spencer something for his cooperation. But the picture was the real thing, taken by his family doctor. You've heard what the medical authorities said about it."

Stinson said nothing. Then he got up slowly and walked to the door.

"Maybe so. But you're missing the point I want to make, Mr. Blacker. This letter was dated the same day as the Spencer suicides. Does it sound to you like the kind of thing a man would put in a suicide note? Think it over."

Tom looked at the door the commissioner closed behind him.

"No," he said aloud. "It doesn't."

* * * * *

Tom didn't go to the Homelovers building the next morning. He proceeded directly to the Lunt Theatre, where Homer Bradshaw was putting Be It Ever So Humble into rehearsal.

He was in no mood for the theatre, but the appointment had been made too long before. When he came through the doors of the theatre, Homer leaped halfway up the aisle to greet him, and pounded his back like a long-lost pal. Actually, he had met the producer only twice before.

"Great to have you here, Tom!" he said enthusiastically. "Great! We've just been putting things together. Got some red-hot numbers we had written specially for us. Wait 'til you hear 'em!" He waved towards the two shirtsleeved men hovering around the on-stage piano. "You know Julie, don't you? And Milt Steiner? Great team! Great team!"

They took seats in the sixth row while Homer raved about the forthcoming production that was going to cost Homelovers, Incorporated some hundred thousand dollars. A dozen shapely girls in shorts and leotards were kicking their heels lackadaisically in the background, and a stout man with a wild checkered suit was wandering around the stage with an unlit cigar in his hand, begging the stagehands for a match.

"Hey, fellas!" Homer Bradshaw called to the men at the piano. "Run through that Gypsy number for Mr. Blacker, huh?"

They came to life like animated dolls. The tallest of the pair stepped in front of the stage while the other thumped the piano keys. The tall one sang in a loud nasal voice, with an abundance of gestures.

"Gypsy! Gypsy! Why do you have to be a gypsy? Life could be so ipsy-pipsy Staying home and getting tipsy Safe on Earth with me!"

He swung into the second chorus while Tom Blacker kept his face from showing his true opinion of the specialty number. The next offering didn't change his viewpoint. It was a ballad. A blonde girl in clinging black shorts sang it feelingly.

"There's a beautiful Earth tonight With a beautiful mellow light Shining on my spaceman in the moon. Why did he leave me? Only to grieve me? Spaceman, come home to me soon ..."

"Did you like it? Did you like it?" Homer Bradshaw said eagerly.

"It'll do fine," Tom Blacker said, with his teeth clenched.

* * * * *

When he left the theatre, Tom visiphoned the office to tell Livia that he was taking the rest of the day off. But he found that Livia herself was spending the day in her two-room apartment downtown. He hung up, and decided that he had to talk to her about Stinson's visit. He hopped a cab, and gave him Livia's address.

John Andrusco answered the door.

"Well! Thought you were at the office, Tom?"

He found himself glaring at the lean-jawed executive. What was Andrusco doing here?

"I've been over at the theatre," Tom explained. "Watching that musical we're spending all that dough on." He stepped inside. "I might say the same about you, Mr. Andrusco."

"Me? Oh, I just came to talk over some business with Livia. Poor kid's not feeling so hot, you know."

"No, I didn't." He dropped his hat familiarly on the contour couch, with almost too much deliberation. "Livia in bed?"

"No." The girl appeared at the door of the bedroom, wrapping a powder-blue negligee around her. "What brings you here, Tom?"

"I--I wanted to talk something over with you. Now that you're here, Mr. Andrusco, we can all talk it over."

"What's that?" Andrusco made himself at home at the bar.

"It's about Walt Spencer. I had a visitor last night, the police commissioner. He showed me a letter that Spencer had written just before he--before he died. It was addressed to me, only Spencer had never mailed it."

Andrusco looked sharply at the girl. "And what was in this letter?"

"He was upset," Tom said. "He wanted to back out of the deal we made. Said the picture was a phoney. But the thing that's bothering the police is the tone of the damned letter. It just doesn't sound like a man about to kill himself and his wife--"

"Is that all?" Livia took the drink from Andrusco's hand and sipped at it. "I thought it was something serious."

"It is serious!" Tom looked sternly at her. "I want to know something, Mr. Andrusco. You told me that picture was genuine. Now I want you to tell me again."

The man smiled, with perfect teeth. "How do you mean, genuine? Is it a picture of a genuine infant with scales?"

"Yes."

"I assure you. In that respect, the picture is absolutely genuine."

Tom thought it over.

"Wait a while. Was the story genuine, too?"

John Andrusco smiled. He sat on the sofa, and rubbed the palms of his hands over his knees. Then he looked towards Livia Cord and said:

"Well--I didn't think we could hold out on our clever Mr. Blacker as long as we have. So we might as well enlist his cooperation fully. Eh, Livia?"

"I think so." The girl smiled, her teeth sharp.

"What does that mean?" Tom said.

"The infant," John Andrusco answered slowly, "was not Walter Spencer's child. That, I'm afraid, was nothing more than a little white lie."

Tom looked confused.

"Then what was it?"

Livia finished her drink.

"It was my child."

* * * * *

The man and the woman, whose grins now seemed permanently affixed to their faces, were forced to wait a considerable amount of time before Tom Blacker was both ready and able to listen to their explanation.

Livia did most of the talking.

"You'll probably be horrified at all this," she said, with a trace of amusement around her red mouth. "Particularly since you and I have been--" She paused, and looked towards Andrusco with a slight lift of her shoulder. "Well, you know. But you needn't feel too squeamish, Tom. After all, I was born and raised on Earth. I am, you might say, an honorary Earth woman."

Tom's eyes bulged at her.

"This civilization from which my husband and I claim ancestry is perhaps no older than your own. Unfortunately, we were not blessed with a planetary situation as agreeable as Earth's. Our sun is far feebler, the orbital paths of our moons act drastically upon our waters, causing generations of drought and centuries of flood ..."

"What are you talking about?" Tom said hoarsely.

"I speak of home," Livia Cord said. And her eyes gleamed.

"Antamunda is the name we give it," John Andrusco said cordially. "A world very much like your own in size and atmosphere, Mr. Blacker. But tragically, a world whose usefulness has been gradually coming to an end. Our ancestors, who were scientists of much ability, foresaw this some hundreds of years ago. Since that time, they have been seeking a solution to the problem."

"I don't believe this!"

"We have," Livia said carefully, "excellent evidence."

"Some five hundred years ago," Andrusco continued, "our people despatched an exploratory space vessel. A home-hunting force, seeking to relocate the surviving members of our race. It was a long, trying odyssey, but it finally culminated in the selection of a new home. I needn't tell you that the home is in your own solar system."

Tom shot to his feet. "You mean Earth? You mean you want to take over here--"

Andrusco looked shocked. "Certainly not! What a violent thought, Mr. Blacker!"

"The planet you call Mars," Livia said coolly, "was the selected destination. A planet with only limited facilities for the support of life. But a planet even more like our own dying world than Earth, Mr. Blacker. So you needn't cry havoc about alien invaders." She laughed sharply.

"Then what are you doing here?"

"Merely waiting," Andrusco said. "We are the offspring of the surviving members of the expeditionary force from Antamunda, placed here on Earth as a vanguard of the immigration that will shortly take place to this system. But your own world is in no danger, Mr. Blacker. That you must believe. Physically, our people are not your equals. Scientifically, we are advanced in certain fields and shamefully backwards in others. Biologically--" He frowned. "This is our greatest weakness. To the Antamundans, your breeding capacity is nothing short of grotesque." His handsome lip curled. He enjoyed watching Tom's reaction.

* * * * *

Tom swallowed hard. "How long have you been here?"

"Some four generations have been born here. Our duty has been merely to await the arrival of our people. But in the last fifty years, we found ourselves faced with another obligation. It was that obligation which brought about the formation of Homelovers, Incorporated."

"I don't understand."

"We had underestimated the science of Earth. Our own necessity drove us towards the perfection of space flight. Earth had no such urgency. But now--" Livia looked mournful. "Now we were faced with the possibility that Mars would soon be a colony of your own planet, before our people had a chance to make it their rightful home. You can see the consequences of that. A conflict of interests, a question of territorial rights. Even the possibility of an interplanetary war--"

"War!"

"A possibility greatly to be abhorred," Andrusco said. "And one we were sure we could eliminate, if we could merely delay the colonization of Mars."

"Don't you see?" Livia said earnestly. "If we could make Mars our natural home, then the people of Earth would come to us as friendly visitors--or invaders, whichever they prefer. But if we arrived too late-- No, Tom. We feel that it is imperative--to the peace of both our worlds--that Antamunda reach Mars first."

"Then it's a race!" Tom was bewildered.

"You may call it that. But a race we are determined to win. And we will win!"

Tom thought of another question.

"The infant," he said. "The creature with scales ..."

"It was mine," the girl said sadly. "Born to John and me some ten years ago. Unfortunately, it did not live. And while your Earth eyes may consider it a creature--" She drew herself up proudly. "It was a perfectly formed Antamundan child."

Tom gaped at her.

"No," she said, answering the question in his gaze. "You are looking at us as we are. We lose our scales after our infancy, when our mouths are formed ..."

After a while, Tom asked:

"And what about Spencer?"

"Unfortunate," the man said. "His betrayal to the press would have done us incalculable harm. It was necessary to do what we did."

"Then you did kill them?"

Livia turned her head aside.

"And you think I'll stand for that?" Tom said.

"Perhaps not," Andrusco said. "But frankly--I don't really know what you can do about it. Except, of course, repeat this explanation to the authorities. You're free to do that, Tom. Any time at all." He smiled, slyly.

"You think they won't believe me?"

Livia came over to Tom's chair, and slithered one arm around his shoulder.

"Why, Tom, darling. Are you so sure that you believe it?"

* * * * *

He left the apartment some ten minutes later, and took a cab to 320 Fifth-Madison. It was almost five o'clock, and the steel-and-glass cylinder was emptying rapidly of its Homelovers employees. He watched the stream of ordinary people stepping off the elevators: the young secretaries with their fresh faces and slim figures, laughing at office anecdotes and sharing intimate confidences about office bachelors; the smooth-cheeked young executives, in their gray and blue suits, gripping well-stocked brief cases, and striding energetically down the lobby, heading for the commuter trains; the paunchy, dignified men with their gray temples and gleaming spectacles, walking slowly to the exits, quoting stock prices and planning golf dates.

The crowd eddied about him like a battling current as he made his way towards the elevators, and their images swam before his face in pink-and-white blurs. And for one terrible moment, in the thickest vortex of the crowd, he began to imagine that the faces were melting before his eyes, the mouths disappearing into the flesh, and below the white collars and black-knit ties and starched pink blouses appeared a shimmering collection of ugly scales.

He shuddered, and stepped into an empty car, punching the button that shot him to the executive floor of the Homelovers Building.

In his office, he switched on the visiphone and made contact with a square-faced man who frowned mightily when he recognized his caller.

"What do you want?" Stinson said.

"I have to see you," Tom told him. "I learned something this afternoon, about Walt Spencer. I don't know whether you'll believe it or not, but I have to take that chance. Will you talk to me?"

"All right. But we'll have to make it down here."

"I'll be there in an hour. I want to organize a few things first. Then we can talk."

Tom switched off, and began to empty his desk. He found nothing in the official communications of the Homelovers that would substantiate his story, but he continued to gather what information he could about the PR program.

He was just clicking the locks on his brief case, when a gray-haired woman with a pencil thrust into her curls popped her head in the doorway.

"Mr. Blacker?" she smiled. "I'm Dora, Mr. Wright's secretary. Mr. Wright wants to know if you'll stop in to see him."

"Wright?" Tom said blankly.

"The treasurer. His office is just down the hall. He's very anxious to see you, something about the expense sheets you turned in last week."

Tom frowned. "Why don't I see him in the morning?"

"It won't take but a minute."

"All right."

He sighed, picked up the brief case, and followed Dora outside. She showed him the door of an office some thirty paces from his own, and he entered without knocking.

A frail man, with a bald head and a squiggly moustache, stood up behind his desk.

"Oh, dear," he said nervously. "I'm terribly sorry to do this, Mr. Blacker. But I have my instructions."

"Do what?"

"Oh, dear," Mr. Wright said again.

* * * * *

He took the gun that was lying in his out-box, and fired it. His trembling hand sent the bullet spanging into the wooden frame of the door. Tom dropped to the thick carpet, and then scrambled to the tall credenza set against the right wall of the office. He shoved it aside with his left hand and ducked behind it. The treasurer came out from behind his desk, still muttering to himself.

"Please," he said in anguish, "this is very painful for me!"

He fired the gun again, and the bullet tore a white hole in the wall above Tom's head.

"Don't be so difficult," the little man pleaded. "Sooner or later--"

But Tom insisted upon being difficult. His fingers closed around a loose volume of New York State Tax Laws, and jiggled it in readiness. When the little treasurer came closer, he sprung from hiding and hurled the book. It slammed against Wright's side, and surprised him enough to send the arm holding the weapon into the air. That was the advantage Tom wanted. He leaped in a low-flying tackle, and brought Wright to the carpet. Then he was on top of the little man, grappling for the gun. Tom fought hard to get the gun.

He got it, but not before it was fired again.

Tom looked down at the widening stain that was marring the smooth texture of the carpet and was horrified. He bent down over the frail figure, lifting the bald head in his hands.

"Mr. Wright!"

The treasurer groaned. "Sorry," he said. "Instructions, Mr. Blacker ..."

"From whom? Andrusco?"

"Yes ... Your message reported from switchboard ... had orders ..."

"Is it true?" Tom said frantically. "About Antamunda? Is the story true?"

The little man nodded. Then he lifted one hand feebly towards the desk. "Gary," he said. "Tell Gary ..."

Tom looked in the direction of the gesture, and saw the back of a framed photograph.

When he turned to the treasurer again, the thin lips had stopped moving.

He lowered the body to the floor and went to the desk. The photo was that of a young man with stiff-bristled blond hair and a rugged smile. The inscription read:

"To Pop, with deep affection, Gary."

Tom shook his head, wonderingly. Were these creatures so very different?

* * * * *

When Tom stepped out on Fifth-Madison some ten minutes later, it was just in time to watch a police vehicle draw up to the entrance of 320. Sensing danger, he stepped into the shade of the Tuscany Bar awning, and watched the uniformed men pound their way down the marbled lobby floor towards the elevators. He thought fast, and decided that the arrival of the police was connected with the shooting in Wright's office.

The question was--who were they after?

He walked into the Tuscany, and headed for the bank of visiphone booths. He dialed the police commissioner, but ducked out of the path of the visiphone eye.

Stinson growled at the blank screen. "Who is it?"

"Never mind," Tom said, muffling his voice. "But if you want the killers of Walt Spencer and his wife, pick up John Andrusco and a gal named Livia Cord."

"Okay, Blacker," Stinson thundered. "I knew you'd be calling in."

Tom swore, and showed himself. "Listen, I'm telling you the truth. They told me the whole story. Then they tried to have me killed."

"Is that so? And I suppose the assassin was a guy named Wright?"

"Yes!"

"Okay, wise guy. We're on to you. You've been pocketing some of that Homelovers dough, and the treasurer found you out. Isn't that the story?"

"No! Wright's one of them."

"Sure, pal. Whatever you say. Only stay right where you are so you can do your explaining proper."

Tom tightened his lips. "Uh-huh. I don't like the sound of things. I'll see you later, Mr. Stinson."

"Blacker!"

Tom switched off.

By the time he was settled behind the red neck of a cab-driver, Tom was wiping a dripping film of sweat from his forehead. He couldn't return to his apartment; there was bound to be a stake-out. He couldn't go to Livia's; that would be walking right into danger. And he couldn't go to Stinson, without risking a murder charge.

He leaned forward.

"Driver--make that the LaGuardia Heliport."

However efficient Stinson's operations might have been, their tentacles hadn't reached the 'copter-rental station at the heliport. Tom signed out a speedy vessel under an assumed name, and taxied it down the runway. Then he pointed the nose west, and radioed ahead to his destination at Washington, D. C.

* * * * *

Colonel Grady Mordigan had the thoughtful air of a scholar and the body of a college wrestler. When Tom Blacker's name was announced to him, his mouth turned down grimly. He was commanding officer of the Space Flight Commission of the UN Air Force, and he had good reason to frown at the sound of the PR man's name.

But he invited him into his office.

"So you're Tom Blacker," he said, pinching his jaw. "I've heard a lot about you, Mr. Blacker."

"I'm sure," Tom said. "Only I want to tell you this, Colonel. I've broken my connection with Homelovers. I'm on your side now."

"Side? There are no sides in this issue, Mr. Blacker. As far as I'm concerned, Homelovers is nothing but a flea on the lip of a lion. A damned annoying flea, maybe--but nothing more than that. Now what do you want?"

"I have to talk to you about something. Something I just found out. Will you listen to me?"

The colonel leaned back, looking at his watch.

"Five minutes," he snapped.

* * * * *

Tom talked for fifteen. Mordigan didn't call a halt until he was finished, listening without a change of expression. When Tom ran out of words, he merely tapped his fingers on the desk.

"And that's your whole story?" he said gently.

"Yes, sir. I know it's a wild one. That's one of the things they're counting on. It's just wild enough to get me put into a laughing academy, where I can't do them any mischief. But I had to take that chance, Colonel."

"I see. And this--man you killed. What's happening about that?"

"I don't know," Tom said. "The way I figure it, Andrusco and the girl have told the police that I was embezzling money from the firm--that I killed the treasurer for my own protection. But it's not true! He's one of them--one of those creatures--"

"But you have no real proof?"

Tom's back stiffened. "No," he said grimly. "If I had proof, I'd have gone to the police. But I came here instead. Now you can tell me if I did the right thing."

Mordigan grimaced. "I don't know, damn it! I don't have any love for the Homelovers. To me, they've always been a bunch of greedy businessmen, intent on salvaging their franchises at any expense. But it's not easy to think of them as a bunch of--" His mouth twisted. "Loathsome aliens ..."

"Maybe not so loathsome," Tom said miserably. "I just don't know. Maybe their cause is as just to them as ours is to us. But they're determined to reach Mars before we do--before you do! And they'll do anything to make sure--"

The colonel stood up. "But I'm afraid that question is academic, Mr. Blacker. Because if our calculations are right, an Earth vessel will be on the planet Mars within the next thirty-six hours."

"What?"

"No announcement has been made. But a Mars-bound ship was launched almost a month ago, containing seven members of the space commission. Our last radio contact with Captain Wright leads us to expect--"

"Who?" Tom was on his feet.

"Captain Gary Wright, the commander of the ship." His brow knitted. "Why? Do you know him?"

"I'm not sure," Tom said weakly. "But if he's the same man--then that flight's in danger."

"What are you talking about?"

* * * * *

Tom concluded his story about the death of the Homelovers treasurer, down to the last detail of the framed photograph on Wright's desk. The tale brought Colonel Mordigan into immediate action. He buzzed for his orderly, and in another minute, was fumbling through a folder marked Classified.

"Yes," he said numbly. "It's the same man. Father's named Benjamin Wright, and he's vice-president and treasurer of Homelovers, Incorporated. I never connected the two ..." He looked up, his eyes heavy. "If your story is true, Mr. Blacker, then Captain Wright is one of these so-called Antamundans. And if their mission is what you say it is--"

Tom clenched his fists on the blotter. "Please, sir! Let me stay here until the flight is concluded. After that, you can do what you like."

"All right," Mordigan said wearily. "I'll fix you up with something in the officer's quarters. But I'm sure you're wrong, Mr. Blacker. You have to be."

Twenty-four hours later, radio contact with the Mars expeditionary ship ceased abruptly.

From Mt. Wilson observatory, a hurried message arrived, reporting a small, brief nova in the orbital vicinity of the planet Mars.

Tom Blacker, dozing fitfully on a cot in the quarters of a grumpy Lieutenant-Colonel, was awakened suddenly, and summoned to the office of Colonel Grady Mordigan.

"Very well, Mr. Blacker," the colonel said stiffly. "I'm willing to help. Just tell me what you want me to do."

* * * * *

The receptionist smiled icily at Tom, and then the smile vanished like a Martian polar cap.

"Why--Mr. Blacker!"

"Hi, Stella," he grinned. "Mr. Andrusco in his office?"

"Why, I don't know. Suppose I give him a ring--"

He stopped the hand that was reaching for the telephone. "No need of that. I think I'll just surprise him. After all, it's been some time."

He turned the knob of John Andrusco's door slowly.

Livia was with him. When he entered, they both stood up hastily, their eyes wide and their mouths unhinged.

Livia reacted first. She cried out his name, and then sat down heavily, as if the words had been a physical force.

"Hi, Livia," Tom said casually. "Good to see you again, Mr. Andrusco. Sorry that I haven't been around--but things have been pretty hectic for me lately."

"How did you get here?" Andrusco's voice was choked.

"I've been here all weekend, if you want to know." Tom seated himself blithely. "As a matter of fact, the Homelovers Building has had quite a lot of visitors this weekend."

"What do you mean?"

"You know the staff of cleaning personnel that invades this place every Saturday? Well, there were some changes made this particular weekend. I'm sure you'll be interested in hearing about them."

Livia said: "Shall I call the police, John?"

"The police were represented," Tom said. "Don't worry about that. In fact, the top technicians from three government agencies were doing the housework around here this weekend, Mr. Andrusco. They probably didn't get the building much cleaner--but they swept up a lot of other things. Yes, they certainly uncovered other things."

* * * * *

Andrusco walked over to Livia, and touched her shoulder in a comforting gesture. The sight of them made Tom scowl.

"All right!" he said roughly. "I'm not blaming you for what you're doing. But things were getting out of hand, Mr. Andrusco. That's why we had to put a stop to it."

"And have you?" Andrusco asked politely.

"I'm afraid so. It was quite a shock, let me tell you. We didn't know what to expect when we dissected this building of yours. But the last thing we expected to find was--a spaceship."

Andrusco smiled. "It was cleverly done. You'll have to admit that."

"I do," Tom said fervently. "You've got those space flight experts absolutely insane with curiosity. They'll want to hear the whole story. Will you give it to them?"

The man shrugged. "It doesn't matter, I suppose. I presume the engines have been dismantled?"

"Made inoperable, yes. It would have been a great trick, if you could have done it."

Livia spoke sadly. "It was the only thing we could have done. There's no place on this Earth where we could have erected a spaceship without being observed. So we created this building. In time, we would have perfected the mechanism and left this silly planet of yours."

"That's what I don't understand," Tom said. "What about Antamunda--and the survivors--"

"There's no longer an Antamunda," John Andrusco said hollowly. "The story we told you was true in its essence, but not, I'm afraid complete. You see, the exodus that took place five hundred years ago was a total exodus. The entire population of our world--a handful, a pitiful ragged thousand--left Antamunda for this planet. We thought to make it our new home, for all eternity. But in time, we learned that we had emigrated to an extinction just as certain."

"What do you mean?"

"This world is cursed to us, Mr. Blacker. I can't tell you why. We breed slowly, infrequently--you might even say, thoughtfully. And on your planet, but one child in a thousand has survived the rigors of childbirth on Earth." He looked at Livia, and the woman lowered her eyes in remembered sorrow.

"That's why we had to leave," Andrusco said. "To repopulate elsewhere. We chose the planet Mars, and we were determined to make it our home before your world claimed it. Our scientists and technicians have worked on nothing else but this flight since the beginning of the last century. This building--this vessel--was the culmination of our plans. In another few years, we would have been ready. The dream would have been realized."

* * * * *

Tom walked to the window of the office, and looked out at a bank of swift-moving clouds drifting past the spire of the Homelovers Building.

"I'm afraid that's the saddest part," he said. "The atomic engines in the basement have been examined, Mr. Andrusco. The best opinions say that they're pitifully inadequate. The men who studied them say that you would never have made the journey in safety."

"That can't be true! In time--"

"In time, perhaps. But since your landing here, your scientists have forgotten a great deal about space flight. I'm afraid you would have never reached that Promised Land ..."

Andrusco said: "Then we must die ..."

"No!" Tom said.

Livia looked at him.

"I said no!" he repeated. "The Antamundans can live. Don't you see that?"

"No," Andrusco said, shaking his head. "On Earth, we shall die. If Mars is closed to us ..."

"Can't you see? If Mars can be opened for Earth, then it can be opened for you, too. For all Antamundans! Your people can make the journey, too, once space has been cleared for Earth ships. You can still have your new home!"

"Perhaps," Livia said dreamily. "Perhaps that is the only way. But by then, Tom, it will be already too late. There has been no living child born to us in the last ten years. By the time the Earth people reach Mars and establish regular passageway--we will be too old to keep the race alive."

* * * * *

"Then let's speed it up!" he said. "Let's make sure that the space lanes open! Let's do everything to make Space the most important project on Earth!"

"But how?" Andrusco said, bewildered.

Tom went to the visiphone.

"Get me the Lunt Theatre!" he snapped.

Homer Bradshaw's face appeared.

"Mr. Bradshaw?"

"Hi, Tom! How's the boy?"

"Great, Homer, great. Only listen. I got a new angle for you. We're gonna doctor up that show of yours before the opening. Don't worry about the dough-- Homelovers will take care of it with pleasure."

"Sure, Tom! Anything you say!"

"Then take this down. The first thing we're changing is the title. From now on it's Mars Or Bust ..."

THE END

Contents

CUBS OF THE WOLF

BY RAYMOND F. JONES

It may be that there is a weapon that, from the viewpoint of the one it's used on, is worse than lethal. You might say that death multiplies you by zero; what would multiplication by minus one do?

In the spring the cherry blossoms are heavy in the air over the campus of Solarian Institute of Science and Humanities. On a small slope that rims the park area, Cameron Wilder lay on his back squinting through the cloud of pink-white petals to the sky beyond. Beside him, Joyce Farquhar drew her jacket closer with an irritated gesture. It was still too cold to be sitting on the grass, but Cameron didn't seem to notice it--or anything else, Joyce thought.

"If you don't submit a subject for your thesis now," she said, "you'll take another full six months getting your doctorate. Sometimes I think you don't really want it!"

Cameron stirred. He shifted his squinting gaze from the sky to Joyce and finally sat up. But he was staring ahead through the trees again as he took his pipe from his pocket and began filling it slowly.

"I don't want it if it's not going to mean anything after I get it," he said belligerently. "I'm not going to do an investigation of some silly subject like The Transience of Venusian Immigrants in Relation to the Martian Polar Ice Cap Cycle. Solarian sociologists are the butt of enough ridicule now. Do something like that and for the rest of your life you get knocking of the knees whenever anybody inquires about the specialty you worked in and threatens to read your thesis."

"Nobody's asking you to do anything you don't want to. But you picked the field of sociology to work in. Now I don't see why you have to act such a purist that it takes months to find a research project for your degree. Pick something--anything!--I don't care what it is. But if you don't get a degree and an appointment out of the next session I don't think we'll ever get married--not ever."

Cameron removed his pipe from his mouth with a precise grip and considered it intently as it cupped in his hands. "I'm glad you mentioned marriage," he said. "I was just about to speak of it myself."

"Well, don't!" said Joyce. "After three years--Three years!"

He turned to face her and smiled for the first time. He liked to lead her along occasionally just to watch her explode, but he was not always sure when he had gone too far. Joyce had a mind like a snapping, random matching calculator while he operated more on a slow, carefully shaping analogue basis, knowing things were never quite what they seemed but trying to get as close an approximation of the true picture as possible.

"Will you marry me now?" he said.

The question did not seem to startle her. "No degree, no appointment--and no chance of getting one--we couldn't even get a license. I hope you aren't suggesting we try to get along without one, or on a forgery!"

Cameron shook his head. "No, darling, this is a perfectly bona fide proposal, complete with license, appointment, the works--what do you say?"

"I say this spring sun is too much for you." She touched the dark mass of his hair, warmed by the sun's rays, and put her head on his shoulder. She started to cry. "Don't tease me like that, Cameron. It seems like we've been waiting forever--and there's still forever ahead of us. You can't do anything you want to--"

Cameron put his arms about her, not caring if the whole Institute faculty leaned out the windows to watch. "That's why you should appreciate being about to marry such a resourceful fellow," he said more gently. And now he dropped all banter. "I've been thinking about how long it's been, too. That's why I decided to try to kill a couple of sparrows with one pebble."

Joyce sat up. "You aren't serious--?"

Cameron sucked on his pipe once more. "Ever hear of the Markovian Nucleus?" he said thoughtfully.

Joyce slowly nodded her head. "Oh, I think I've heard the name mentioned," she murmured, "but nothing more than that."

"I've asked for that as my research project."

"But that's clear out of the galaxy--in Transpace!"

"Yes, and obviously out of bounds for the ordinary graduate researcher. But because of the scholarship record I've been able to rack up here I took a chance on applying to the Corning Foundation for a grant. And they decided to take a chance on me after considerable and not entirely painless investigation. That's why you were followed around like a suspected Disloyalist for a month. My application included a provision for you to go along as my wife. Professor Fothergill notified me this morning that the grant had been awarded."

"Cam--" Joyce's voice was brittle now. "You aren't fooling me?"

He gathered her in his arms again. "You think I would fool about something like that, darling? In a week you'll be Mrs. C. Wilder, and as soon as school is out, on your way to the Markovian Nucleus. And besides, it took me almost as much work preparing the research prospectus as the average guy spends on his whole project!"

* * * * *

Sometimes Joyce Farquhar wished Cameron were a good deal different than he was. But then he wouldn't have been Cameron, and she wouldn't want to marry him, she supposed. And somehow, while he fell behind on the mid-stretch, he always managed to come in at the end with the rest of the field. Or just a little bit ahead of it.

Or a good deal ahead of it. As now. It took her a few moments to realize the magnitude of the coup he had actually pulled off. For weeks she had been depressed because he refused to use some trivial, breeze research to get his degree. He could have started it as much as a year ago, and they could have been married now if he'd set himself up a real cinch.

But now they were getting married anyway--and Cameron was getting the kind of research deal that would satisfy his frantic desire for integrity in a world where it counted for little, and his wish to contribute something genuine to the sociological understanding of sentient creatures.

Their marriage, as was customary, would be a cut and dried affair. A call to the license bureau, receipt of formal sanction in the mail--she supposed Cameron had already made application--and a little party with a few of their closest friends on the campus. She wished she had lived in the days when getting married was much easier to do, and something to make a fuss about.

She stirred and sat up, loosening the jacket as the sun came from behind a puff of cloud. "You could have told me about this a long time ago, couldn't you?" she said accusingly.

Cameron nodded. "I could have. But I didn't want to get false hopes aroused. I didn't have much hope the deal would actually go through, myself. I think Fothergill is pretty much responsible for it."

"Transpace--" Joyce said dreamily. "Tell me about the Markovian Nucleus. Why is it important enough for a big research study, anyway?"

"It's a case of a leopard who changed his spots," said Cameron. "And nobody knows how or why. The full title of the project is A Study of the Metamorphosis of the Markovian Nucleus."

"What happened? How are they any different from the way they used to be?"

"A hundred and fifty years ago the Markovians were the meanest, nastiest, orneriest specimens in the entire Council of Galactic Associates. The groups of worlds in one corner of their galaxy, which make up the Nucleus, controlled a military force that outweighed anything the Council could possibly bring to bear against them.

"With complete disregard of any scheme of interplanetary rules or order they harassed and attacked peaceful shipping and inoffensive cultures throughout a wide territory. They were something demanding the Council's military action. But the Council lacked the strength.

"For years the Council dragged on, debating and threatening ineffectively. But nothing was ever done. And then, so gradually it was hardly noticed, the harassments began to die down. The warlike posturing was abandoned by the Markovians. Within a period of about seventy or eighty years there was a complete about-face. They wound up as good Indians, peaceful, coöperative and intelligent members of the Council."

"Didn't anybody ever find out why?" asked Joyce.

"No. Nobody wanted to find out. In the early years the worlds of the Council were hiding behind their collective hands hoping with all their might that the threat might go away if they kept their eyes closed long enough. And by some miracle of all miracles, when they parted their fingers for a scared glimpse, the threat had disappeared.

"When they could breathe a little more easily it seemed a foolish thing to bring out this old skeleton from the closet again, so a perpetual state of hush was established. Finally, the whole thing was practically forgotten except for a short paragraph in an occasional history text. But no politician or historian has ever dared publicly to question the mysterious why of the Markovian's about-face."

"Sociologists should have done it long ago," said Joyce.

"There was always the political pressure, of course," said Cameron. "But the real reason was simply our preoccupation with making bibliographies of each others' papers. It's going to take a lot of leg work, something in which our formal courses don't give us any basic training. Fothergill understands that--it's why he pushed me so hard with the Foundation. And Riley up there is capable of seeing it, too.

"I showed him that here was a complex of at least a hundred and ten major planets, inhabited by a fairly homogenous, civilized people, speaking from a technological point of view at least. And almost overnight some force changed the entire cultural posture. I made him see that identification of that force is of no small interest to us right now. If it operated once, it could operate again--and would its results be as happy a second time?

"Riley got the Foundation to kick through enough for you and me to make a start. A preliminary survey is about all it will amount to, actually, but if we show evidence of something tangible I'll get my degree, you'll get your basic certification--and we'll both return in charge of a full-scale inquiry with a staff big enough to really dig into things next year.

"Now--about this matter of marriage which you didn't want me to speak of--"

"Keep talking, Cam--you're doing wonderfully!"

* * * * *

They got married at once, even though there were several weeks of school which had to be finished before they could leave. Among their friends on the campus there were a good many whispered remarks about the insanity of Joyce and Cameron in planning such a fantastic excursion, but Joyce was certain there was as much envy as criticism in the eyes of her associates. It might be true when they asserted that every conceivable sociological factor or combination of factors could be found and analyzed right here in the Solar System, but a husband who could finagle a way to combine a honeymoon trip halfway across space with his graduate research thesis was a rare specimen. Joyce played her advantage for all it was worth.

Two weeks before departure time, however, Cameron was called to the office of Professor Fothergill. As he entered he found a third man present, wearing a uniform he recognized at once as belonging to the Council Secretariat.

"I'll wait outside," he said abruptly as Fothergill turned. "I got your message and came right over. I didn't know--"

"Sit down," said Fothergill. "Cameron, this is Mr. Ebbing, whose position you no doubt recognize. Mr. Ebbing, Mr. Wilder."

The men shook hands and took seats across from each other. Fothergill sat between them at the polished table. "The Council, it seems, has developed an interest in your proposed research among the Markovians," he said. "I'll let Mr. Ebbing tell you about it."

Cameron felt a sinking anticipation within him as he turned to the secretary. Surely the Council wasn't going to actively oppose the investigation after so long a time!

The secretary coughed and shuffled the papers he drew from his case. "It's not actually the Council's interest," he said, and Cameron was immediately relieved. "But I have been asked by the Markovian Nucleus, through their representative, to suggest that they would like to save you the long and unnecessary trip. He offers to co-operate to the fullest degree by causing all necessary materials to be transferred to your site of study right here. He feels that this is the least they can do since so much interest appears to exist in the Nucleus."

Cameron stared at the secretary, trying to discern what the man's own attitude might be, but Ebbing gave no sign of playing it any way but straight.

"It sounds like a polite invitation to stay home and mind our own business," said Cameron finally. "They don't want company."

The secretary's expression changed to acknowledgment of the correct appraisal. "They don't want any investigation into the Metamorphosis of the Markovian Nucleus. There is no such thing. It is entirely a myth."

"Says the Markovians--!"

Ebbing nodded. "Says the Markovians. Other worlds, both within and without the Council have persisted in spreading tales and rumors about the Markovians for a long time. They don't like it. They are willing to co-operate in having a correct analysis of their culture published, but they don't want any more of these infamous rumors circulated."

"Then why aren't they willing to promote such an investigation? This would be their big chance--if their ridiculous position were true!"

"They are willing. I've told you the representative has offered to send you all needed material showing the status of their culture."

Cameron looked at the secretary for a long time before speaking again. "What's your position?" he asked finally. "Are we being ordered off the investigation?"

"The Markovian representative doesn't want to go to quite that extreme. He knows that, too, would react unfavorably towards his people. Here's his point: So far, he's blocked news of your proposed research getting to his home worlds. But he knows that if you do carry it out in the manner you propose it is going to make a lot of the home folks mighty unhappy and they'll demand to know why he didn't stop it. So he's trying to satisfy both sides at once."

"Why will the people in the Nucleus be made unhappy by our coming?"

"Because you'll go there trying to track down the basis for the rumors that defame the Markovian character. You'll bring forcibly to their attention the fact that the rest of the Universe believes the Markovians are basically a bunch of pirates."

"And the Markovians don't like to hear these things?"

"Definitely not."

"So you tell me the research is not being forbidden, but that the Markovians won't like it. Suppose I tell you, then, I'm not going to give up short of an order from the Council itself. But I am willing to camouflage the investigation if necessary. I'll make no open mention of what outside opinion says of the Markovians. I'll simply make a study of their history and character as it becomes available to me."

Ebbing nodded slowly, his eyes fixed on Cameron's face. "I would say that would be eminently satisfactory," he said. "I will inform the representative of your decision."

Then his face became more severe. "The Council will be pleased to learn of your willingness to be discreet. I wonder if you understand that the Foundation came to us upon receipt of your application, for official clearance of the project. It coincided quite fortuitously with the plans of the Council itself. For a long time we have been concerned with the lack of information regarding the Markovian situation and have been at a loss as to how to improve our situation.

"Your proposed investigation seemed the answer, but we anticipated the Markovian objection and had to make certain you would co-operate to his satisfaction. I believe this will do it."

"Why is the Council concerned?" said Cameron. "Have the Markovians changed their attitude in any way?"

"No--but the rest of us remember, even though we don't speak of it, that the Nucleus was never punished for its depredations, nor was it ever defeated. Its strength is as great as ever in proportion to the other Council worlds.

"What are the chances and potentialities of the Nucleus worlds ever again becoming the marauders they once were? That is the question which we feel must be answered. Without knowing, we are sitting on a powder keg in which the fuse may or may not be lighted. Will you bring us back the answer we need?"

Cameron felt a sudden grimness which had not been present before. "I'll do all I can," he said soberly. "If the information is there I'll bring it back."

* * * * *

After the secretary had gone and Fothergill turned from the door to rejoin him Cameron sat in faintly shocked consideration of the Council's unexpected support. It took his research out of the realm of the purely sociological and projected it into politics and diplomacy. He was pleased by their confidence, but not cheered by the added responsibility.

"That's a lucky break," said Fothergill enthusiastically, "and I'm beginning to suspect you may be rather badly in need of all the breaks you can get once you land among the Markovians. Don't forget for a single minute that you are dealing with the sons and grandsons of genuine pirates."

The professor sat down again. "There's one other little item of interest I turned up the other day. You should know about it before you leave. The Markovian Nucleus is somewhat of a hotbed of Ids."

"Ids--you mean the Idealists--?"

Fothergill nodded. "Know anything about them?"

"Not much, except that they are a sort of parasitic group, living usually in a servant relationship to other races on terran-type worlds. As I recall, even they claim that they do not know the planet or even the galaxy of their origin, because they have been wanderers for so many generations among alien races. Perhaps it would be a good idea to make a study of them, too--I don't know that a thorough one has ever been made."

"That's what I wanted to warn you about," said Fothergill, smiling. "Stick to one subject at a time. The Ids would make a nice research project in themselves, and maybe you can get around to it eventually. But leave them alone for the present and don't become distracted from your basic project among the Markovians. The policy of the Corning Foundation is to demand something very definite in return for the money they lay on the line. You won't get to go back next year unless you produce. That's why I don't want you to get sidetracked in any way."

II

Cameron admitted to himself that he was getting more edgy as the day of departure approached, but he tried to keep Joyce from seeing it. He was worried about the possible development of further opposition now that the Markovian had expressed his displeasure, and he was worried about their reception once they reached the Nucleus. He wondered why they had not seen in advance that it would be an obvious blunder to let the Markovians be aware of their real purpose. It didn't even require a pirate ancestry to make groups unappreciative about resurrection of their family skeletons.

But no other hindrance appeared, and on the evening before their departure Fothergill called that word had been received from Ebbing stating the Markovian representative had approved the visit now that Cameron had expressed a change in his objectives. Their coming had been announced to the Markovian people and the way prepared for an official welcome.

Cameron was pleased by the change of attitude. He was hit for the first time, however, by the full force of the fact that he was taking his bride to a pirate center which the Council had never overthrown and which was active only moments ago, culturally speaking.

If any kind of trouble should develop the Council would be almost impotent in offering them assistance. On the face of it, there was no reason to expect trouble. But the peculiarly oblique opposition of the Markovian delegate in the Council continued to make him uneasy.

His tentative suggestion that he would feel better if he knew she were safe on Earth brought a blistering response from Joyce, which left him with no doubts about carrying out his original plans.

And then, as the last of their packing was completed and they were ready to call it a day, the phone buzzed. Cameron hesitated, determined to let it go unanswered, then punched the button irritably on audio only.

Instead of the caller, he heard the voice of the operator. "One moment please. Interstellar, Transpace, printed. Please connect visio."

It was like a shock, he thought afterwards. There was no one he knew who could be making such a call to him. But automatically he did as directed. Joyce had come up and was peering over his shoulder now. The screen fluttered for a moment with polychrome colors and cleared. The message, printed for English translation, stood out sharply. Joyce and Cameron exclaimed simultaneously at the titling. It was from Premier Jargla, Executive Head of the Markovian Government.

"To Wilder, Cameron and Joyce," it read, "greetings and appreciation for your proposed visit to the Markovian Nucleus for study of our history and customs. We have not been before so honored. We feel, however, that it is an imposition on your Foundation and on you personally to require that you make the long journey to the Nucleus for this purpose alone. While we would be honored to entertain you--"

It was the same proposition as Ebbing had reported the delegate offered. Only this time it was from the head of the Markovian government himself.

They sat up nearly all the rest of the night considering this new development. "Maybe you shouldn't go, after all," said Joyce once. "Maybe this is something that needs bigger handling than we can possibly give it."

Cameron shook his head. "I've got to go. They haven't closed the door and said we can't come. If I backed out before they did, I'd be known the rest of my life as the guy who was going to crack the Markovian problem. But I'd much rather you--"

"No! If you're going, so am I."

* * * * *

They consulted again with Fothergill and finally drafted as polite a reply as possible, explaining they were newly married, desired to make the trip a honeymoon excursion primarily and conduct an investigation into Markovian culture to prevent the waste of the wonderful opportunity their visit would afford them.

An hour before takeoff a polite acknowledgment came back from the Nucleus assuring them a warm welcome and congratulating them on their marriage. They went at once to the spaceport and took over their stateroom. "Before anything else happens to try to pull us off this investigation," Cameron said.

The trip would be a long one, involving more than two months subjective time, because no express runs moved any distance at all in the direction of the Nucleus. It was necessary to transfer three times, with days of waiting between ships on planets whose surface conditions permitted exploration only in cumbersome suits that could not be worn for more than short periods. Most of the waiting time was spent in the visitors' chambers at the landing fields.

These seemed to grow progressively worse. The last one could not maintain a gravity below 2G, and the minimum temperature available was 104 degrees. There was a three-day wait here and Joyce spent most of it lying on the bed, under the breeze of a fan which seemed to have required a special dispensation of the governing body to obtain.

Cameron, however, was unwilling to spend his time this way in spite of the discomfort imposed by any kind of activity. Humidity was a physical factor which seemed to have gone undiscovered by the inhabitants of the planet they were on. He was sure it was constantly maintained within a fractional per cent of one hundred as he donned a clean pair of trunks and staggered miserably along the corridor toward a window that gave a limited view of the city about them.

That was when he discovered that they were to be accompanied on the remainder of the journey by a Markovian citizen and his Id servant.

The visitors' chamber in which these semi-terran conditions were supplied consisted of only three suites. The other two had been empty when Cameron and Joyce arrived the night before. Now a Markovian Id occupied a seat by the window. He glanced up with warm friendliness and invited Cameron to join him.

Cameron hesitated, undecided for a moment whether to return to his suite for the portable semantic translator used in his profession at times like this. He always felt there was something decidedly unprofessional about resorting to their use and had spent many hours trying to master Markovian before leaving. He understood the Id well enough and decided to see if he could get along without the translator.

"Thanks," he said, taking a seat. "I don't suppose there's much else to do except look at the scenery here."

The Id showed obvious surprise that Cameron spoke the language without use of an instrument. His look of pleasure increased. "It is not often we find one of your race who has taken the trouble to make himself communicable with us. You must be expecting to make a long stay?"

Cameron's sense of caution returned as he remembered the previous results of indiscreet announcement of his purpose. He wiped the stream of sweat from his face and neck and took a good look at the Id.

* * * * *

The Idealists were of an anthropomorphic race, dark-skinned like the terran Indian. Very few of them had ever appeared on Earth, however, and this was actually Cameron's first view of one in the flesh. He knew something of their reputation and characteristics from very brief study at the Institute--but no one really knew very much of the Ids as far as Earthmen were concerned. The warning of Fothergill to keep to the main line of his research sank to the bottom of his mind as he leaned toward the stranger with a fresh sense of excitement inside him.

"I have never felt you could understand another man unless you spoke his language," he said in his not too stumbling Markovian.

The Id, like himself, was dressed in the briefest of garments and perspiration poured from the dark skin as he nodded. "You speak sounder wisdom than one usually meets in a stranger," he said. "May I introduce myself: Sal Karone, servant of the Master Dalls Ret Marthasa?"

Cameron introduced himself and cautiously explained that he and Joyce were on their honeymoon, but had a side interest in the history and customs of the Markovian Nucleus. "My people know so little about you," he said, "it would be a great privilege to be able to take back information that would increase our mutual understanding."

"All that the Idealists have belongs to every man and every race," said Sal Karone solemnly. "What we can give you may be had for the asking. But I would give you a word of warning about my Masters."

Cameron felt the flesh of his back tingle with sudden chill as the eyes of the Id turned full upon him.

"Do not try to find out the hidden things of the Masters. That is what you have come for, is it not, Cameron Wilder? That is why you have taken so much trouble to learn the language which we speak. I say do not inquire of the things about which they do not wish to speak. My Masters are a people who cannot yet be understood by the men of other worlds. In time there will be understanding, but that time is not yet. You will only bring disaster and disappointment upon us and yourselves by attempting to hasten that time."

"I assure you I have no intention of prying," said Cameron haltingly. He fumbled for the right Markovian words. "You have misunderstood--We come only in friendship and with no intention of disturbing--"

The Id nodded sagely. "So many crises are originated by good intentions. But I am sure that now you understand the feelings of my Masters in these things that you will be concerned only with your own enjoyment while in the Nucleus. And do come to the centers of the Idealists, for there is much we can show you, and our willingness has no limits."

For a moment it was impossible for Cameron to remember that he was dealing with a mere servant of the Markovians. The Id's words were so incisive and his manner so commanding that it seemed he must be speaking in his own right.

And then his manner changed. His boldness vanished and he spoke obsequiously. "You will forgive me," he said, "but this is a matter concerning which there is much feeling."

* * * * *

Cameron Wilder was more than willing to agree with this sentiment. As he returned to his own quarters he debated telling Joyce of his encounter with the Id, deciding finally that he'd have to mention it since they'd all be traveling together, but omitting the Id's repetition of the previous warnings.

He did not meet the Markovian, nor did he encounter the Id again in the waiting quarters. It was not until they had embarked on the last leg of the journey and had been aboard the vessel for half a day that they met a second time.

The ship was not a Markovian or a terran-type vessel of any kind. Another week's wait would have been required for one of those. As it was, their quarters were not too uncomfortable although very limited. The bulk of the vessel was designed for crew and passengers very much unlike Terran or Markovian, and only a few suites were provided for accommodation of such races.

This threw the travelers to the Nucleus in close association again. Their suites opened to a common lounge deck and when Cameron and Joyce went out they found Sal Karone and the Markovian, Marthasa, already there.

The Id was on his feet instantly. With a sharp bow he introduced the newcomers to his Master. Dells Marthasa stood and extended a hand with a smile. "I believe that is your greeting on Earth, is it not?" he said.

"You must be familiar with our home world," said Cameron, returning the handshake.

"Only a little, through my studies," said the Markovian. "Enough to make me want to hear much more. Please join us. Since my sargh told me we would be traveling together I have looked forward to your company."

The term, sargh, as Cameron learned shortly was applied to all Ids attached to Markovians. It had a connotation somewhere between servant and companion. Sal Karone remained in the background, but there was no servility in his manner. His eyes remained respectfully--almost fondly; that was the right word, Cameron thought curiously--on Marthasa.

While the Id was slender in build, the Markovian was taller and bulkier. His complexion was also dark, but not quite so much so as the Id's. He was dressed in loose, highly colored attire that gave Cameron an impression of an Oriental potentate of his own world.

But somehow there was a quality in Marthasa's manner that was jarring. It would have been less so if the Markovian had been less anthropomorphic in form and feature, but Cameron found it difficult to think of him as anything but a fellow man.

A man of arrogance and ill manners, and completely unaware that he was so.

It was apparent in his gestures and in the negligence with which he leaned back and surveyed his companions. "You'll be surprised when you see the Nucleus," he said. "We sometimes hear of rumors circulated among Council worlds that Markovian culture is rather backward."

"I've never heard anything of that kind," said Cameron. "In fact we've heard almost nothing at all of the Nucleus. That's why we decided to come."

"I'm sure we can make you glad you did. Don't you think so, Karone?"

The face of the Id was very sober as he nodded solemnly and said, "Indeed, Master." His burning eyes were boring directly into Cameron's own.

"I want to hear about your people, about Earth," said Marthasa. "Tell me what you would like to see and do while you're in the Nucleus."

While Joyce answered, explaining they hardly knew what there was to be seen, Cameron's attention was fixed by the problem of the strange relationship between the two men--the two races. In the face of the Id there seemed a serenity, a dignity that the Markovian would never know. Why had the Ids failed to lift themselves out of servility to a state of independence, he wondered?

Joyce explained the story about their honeymoon trip and built their interest in Markovian culture as casual indeed. As she went on, Marthasa seemed to be struck by a sudden thought.

"I insist that you make your headquarters with me during your stay," he said. "I can see that you learn everything possible about the Nucleus while you are here. My son is a Chief Historian at our largest research library and my daughter has the post of Assistant Curator at our Museum of Science and Culture. You will never have a better opportunity to examine the culture of the Nucleus!"

Cameron winced inwardly at the thought of Marthasa's companionship during their whole stay, and yet the Markovian's statement might be perfectly true--there would be no better opportunity to make their study.

"We have an official note of welcome from your Executive Head, Premier Jargla," he said. "While we would be very happy to accept your invitation, it may be that he has different plans for our reception."

Marthasa waved a hand. "I shall arrange for my appointment as your official host. Consider it agreed upon!"

It was agreed. But Joyce was not as optimistic as Cameron in regarding it an aid to their study. "If they have a general aversion to talking about their pirate ancestry, Marthasa is just the boy to put us off the track," she said. "If he gets a clue to what we really want to know, he'll keep us busy looking at everything else until we give up and go home."

Cameron leaned back in the deep chair with his hands behind his head. "It's not too hard to imagine Marthasa's great-great-grandfather running down vessels in space and pillaging helpless cities on other planets. The veneer of civilization on him doesn't look very thick."

"It's not hard to imagine Marthasa doing it," said Joyce. "A scimitar between his teeth would be completely in character!"

"If all goes well, you will probably see just that--figuratively speaking, of course. Where a cultural shift has been so great as this one you are certain to see evidence of both levels in conflict with one another. It's like a geologic fault line. Once we learn enough about the current mores the anomalies will stand out in full view. That's what we want to watch for."

"One thing that's out of character right now is his offer of assistance through his son, the Chief Historian," said Joyce. "That doesn't check with the previous invitations to stay home. Once they let us have access to their historical records we'll have them pegged."

"We haven't got it yet," said Cameron. "We can't be sure just what they'll let us see. But for my money I'd just as soon tackle the question of the Ids. Sal Karone is twice the man Marthasa is, yet he acts like he has no will of his own when the Markovian is around."

"The Roman-slave relationship," said Joyce. "The Markovians probably conquered a large community of the Ids in their pirate days and brought them here as slaves. And I'll bet they are very much aware that the Ids are the better men. Marthasa knows it. That's why he has to put on a show in front of Sal Karone. He's the old Roman merchant struggling to keep up his conviction of superiority before the Greek scholar slave."

"The Ids aren't supposed to be slaves. According to the little that's known they are completely free. I'm going to get Marthasa's version of it, anyway. Fothergill and the Foundation can't object to that much investigation of the Ids."

He found the Markovian completely willing to talk about his sargh. On the last day of the voyage they managed to be alone for a time without the presence of Sal Karone.

Marthasa shook his head in answer to Cameron's question. "No, the sargh is not a slave--not in the sense I believe you mean it. None of the Ids are. It's a matter of religion with them to be attached to us the way they are. They have some incomprehensible belief that their existence is of no value unless they are serving their fellow beings. Since that means all of them they can't be satisfied by serving each other so they have to pick on some other race.

"I don't recall when they first showed up in the Nucleus, but it's been many generations ago. There've been Ids in my family for a half dozen generations anyway."

"They had space flight, so they came under their own power?" Cameron asked incredulously.

"No. Nothing like that. You can't imagine them building spaceships can you? They migrated at first as lowest-class passengers on the commercial lines. Nobody knows just where they came from. They don't even know their home worlds. At first we tried to persuade them to go somewhere else, but then we saw how useful they could be with their fanatic belief in servitude.

"At present there is probably no family in the Nucleus that doesn't have at least one Id sargh. Many of us have one for every member of the family." Marthasa paused. The tone of his voice changed. "When you've had one almost all your life as I've had Sal Karone it--well, it does something to you."

"What do you mean?" Cameron asked cautiously.

"Consider the situation from Sal Karone's point of view. He has no life whatever that is his own. His whole purpose is to give me companionship and satisfy my requirements. And I don't have to force him in any way. It's all voluntary. He's free to leave, even, any time he wants to. But I'm certain he never will."

"Why do you feel so sure of this?"

"It's hard to explain. I feel as if I've become so much a part of him that he couldn't survive alone any more. He's the one who's made it that way, not me. I have become indispensable to his existence. That's the way I explain it to myself. Most of my friends agree that this is about right."

"It's rather difficult to understand a relationship like that--unless you put it in terms I am familiar with on Earth."

"Yes--? What would it be called among your people?"

"When a man so devotes his life to another we say it is because of love."

Marthasa considered the word. "You would be wrong," he said. "It is just that in some way we have become indispensable to the Ids. They're parasites, if you want to put it that way. But they provide us a relationship we can get nowhere else, and that does us a great deal of good. That's what I meant when I said it does something to us."

"What about the Id's own culture? Haven't they any community ties among themselves, or do they ignore their own kind?"

"We've never investigated very much. I suppose some of our scholars know the answer to that, but the rest of us don't. The Ids have communities, all right. Not all of them are in service as sarghs at one time. They have little groups and communities on the outskirts of our cities, but they don't amount to much. As a race they are simply inferior. They don't have the capacity for a strong culture of their own, so they can't exist independently and build a social structure like other people. It's this religion of theirs that does it. They won't let go of it, and as long as they hang onto it they can't stand on their own feet. But you don't need to feel sorry for them. We treat them all right."

"Of course--didn't mean to imply anything else," said Cameron. "Do you know if there are other Id groups serving in other galaxies?"

"Must be thousands of them altogether. Out beyond the Nucleus, away from your galaxy, you can't find a planet anywhere that isn't using the Ids. It's a wonderful setup. The Ids get what they want, and we get sarghs with nothing like the slave relationship you had in mind. With slaves there's rebellion, constant need of watchfulness, and no genuine companionship. A sargh is different. He can be a man's friend."

III

They came out of the darkness of Transpace that evening and the stars returned in the glory of a million closely gathered suns. The Markovian Nucleus lay in a galaxy of tightly packed stars that made bright the nights of all their planets. It was a spectacle for Cameron, who had traveled but little away from the Solar System, and for Joyce who had never traveled at all.

Marthasa and Sal Karone were with them in the lounge watching the screens as the ship changed drives. The Markovian squinted a moment and pointed to a minor dot near the corner of the view. "That's our destination. Another six hours and you can set foot on the best planet in the whole Universe!"

If it had been mere enthusiasm, Cameron could have taken it with tolerant understanding. But Marthasa's smugness and arrogance had not deserted him once since the beginning of this leg of the trip. Objectively, as a cultural facet to be examined, it was interesting, but Cameron agreed with Joyce that it was going to be difficult to live with.

The unsolved puzzle, however, was Sal Karone. It was obvious that the Id was sensitive to the gauche ways of the Master, yet his equally obvious devotion was unwavering.

Marthasa had sent word ahead to the government that he desired the Terrans to be his guests. Evidently he was a person of influence for assent was returned immediately.

His planet was a colorful world, banded by huge, golden deserts and pinkish seas. The dense vegetation of the habitable areas was blue with only a scattered touch of green. Cameron wondered about the chemistry involved.

The landing was made at a port that bordered a sea. The four of them were the only ones disembarking, and before the car that met them had reached the edge of the city the ship was gone again.

A pirates' lair, Cameron thought, without the slightest touch of amusement. The field looked very old, and from it he could imagine raiders had once taken off to harass distant shipping and do wanton destruction of cities and peoples on innocent worlds.

He watched the face of Marthasa as they rode through the city. There was a kind of Roman splendor in what they saw, and there was a crude Roman pride in the Markovian who was their host. The arrogance, that was not far from cruelty, could take such pride in the sweep of spaceships embarking on missions of murder and plunder.

And yet all this barbarism had been put aside. Only the arrogance remained, expressed in Marthasa's tone as he called their attention to the features of the city and landscape through which they passed. It wasn't pleasing particularly to Terran tastes, but Cameron guessed that it represented a considerable accomplishment to the Markovians. Stone appeared to be the chief building material, and, while the craftsmanship was exact, the lines of the structures lacked the grace of the Greek and Roman monuments of which Cameron was reminded.

They came at last to the house of Marthasa. There was no doubt now that he was a man of wealth or importance--probably both. He occupied a vast, villa-like structure set on a low hill overlooking the city. It was a place of obvious luxury in the economic scale of the Markovians.

They were assigned spacious quarters overlooking a garden of incredible colors beyond the transparent wall facing it. Sal Karone was also assigned duties as their personal attendant, which Cameron grasped intuitively was a gesture of supreme honor among the Markovians. He thanked Marthasa profusely for this courtesy.

After getting unpacked they were shown through the house and grounds and met Marthasa's family. His wife was a woman of considerable beauty even by Terran standards, but there was a sharpness in her manner and a sense of coldness in the small black eyes that repelled Cameron and Joyce even as the thoughtless actions of Marthasa had done.

Cameron looked carefully for the same qualities in the three smaller children who were at home, and found them easily. In none of them was there the aura of serenity possessed by the Id servants.

When they were finally alone that night Cameron sat down to make some notes on their observations up to date. "The fault line I mentioned is so obvious you can't miss it," he said to Joyce. "It's as if they're living one kind of life because they think it's the thing to do, but all their thoughts and feelings are being drawn invisibly in another direction--and they're half ashamed of it."

"Maybe the Ids have something to do with it. Remember Marthasa's statement that the relationship of the sarghs does something to the Markovians? If we found out exactly what that something is, we might have the answer."

Cameron shook his head. "I've tried to fit it together that way, too, but it just doesn't add up. The basic premise of the Ids is asceticism and there never was any strength in that idea. Marthasa is probably right in his estimate of the Ids. They have achieved an internal serenity but only through compensating their basic weakness with the crude strength of the Markovians and other races to which they cling. They haven't the strength to build a civilization of their own. Certainly they haven't got the power to influence the whole Nucleus. No--we'll have to look a good deal farther than the Ids before we find the answer. I'm convinced of that, even though I'd like to find out exactly what makes them tick. Maybe next trip--"

* * * * *

The following days were spent in almost profitless activity as far as their basic purpose in being in the Nucleus was concerned. Marthasa and his wife took them on long tours through the city and into the scenic areas of the continent. They promised trips over the whole planet and to other worlds of the Nucleus. There seemed no end to the sight-seeing that was proposed for them to do.

Cameron improved his facility with the language, and Joyce was beginning to get along without the translator. They were introduced to a considerable number of other Markovians, including the official representative of Premier Jargla. This gave them added contact with the Markovian character, but Marthasa and his family seemed so typical of the race that scarcely anything new was learned from the others.

At no time was anything hinted in reference to the original reluctance to have the Terrans visit the Nucleus. All possible courtesy was shown them now, and Cameron dared not mention the invitations to stay home. He felt the situation was as penetrable as a thick wall of sponge rubber backed by a ten-foot foundation of steel.

After three weeks of this, however, he cautiously broached the subject of meeting the son and daughter of Marthasa in regard to visiting the library and museum. He had met each of them just once and found them rather cool to his presence. He had not dared express his interest in their specialties at that time.

Marthasa was favorable and apologetic, however. "I have intended to arrange it," he said. "There have been so many other things to do that I have neglected your interest in these things. We won't neglect it any longer. Suppose we make an appointment for this afternoon? Zlenon will be able to give you his personal attention."

Zlenon was Marthasa's son, who held the position of Chief Historian at the research library. He was more slender and darker than his father, and lacking in his volubility and glad-handedness.

He greeted Cameron's request with a tolerant smile. "You have to be quite specific, Mr. Wilder, when you say you would like to know about the history of the Markovian Nucleus. You understand the Nucleus consists of over a hundred worlds and has a composite history extending back more than thirty thousand of your years in very minute detail."

Cameron countered with a helpless shrug and smile. "I'm afraid I'll have to depend on your good nature to guide me through such a mass. I don't intend to become a student of Markovian history, of course, but perhaps you have adequate summaries with which a stranger could start. Going backward, let us say, for perhaps two or three hundred Terran years?"

"Of course--some very excellent ones are available--" He moved toward the reading table nearby and began punching a selection of buttons.

As Cameron and Joyce moved to follow, Marthasa waved a hand expansively and started out the other way. "I can see you're going to be set for a while. I'll just leave you here, and send the car back after I reach the house. Don't be late for dinner."

They nodded and smiled and turned to Zlenon. The Markovian was watching them with pin-point eyes. "I wondered if there was any particular problem in which you might be interested," he said calmly. "If there is--?"

Cameron shook his head hastily. "No--certainly not. Just general information--"

The Historian turned his attention to the table and began explaining its use to the Terrans, showing how they could obtain recording of any specific material they wished to choose. It would appear in either printed or pictorial form or could be had on audio if they wanted it. Once he was certain they could make their own selections he left them to their study.

"This is the best break we could possibly have hoped for," Joyce whispered as Zlenon disappeared from their sight. "We can get anything we want in the whole library if I understand the operation of this gadget the way I think I do."

"That's the way it looks to me," Cameron answered. "But don't get your hopes too high. There must be a catch in it somewhere, the way they were trying to shoo us away from coming here."

* * * * *

They punched the buttons for the history of the planet they were on, scanning slowly from the present to earlier years. There were endless accountings of trading and commercial treaties between members of the Nucleus as shifts of economic balance occurred. There were stories of explorations and benevolent contacts with races on the outer worlds. Details of their most outstanding scientific discoveries, which seemed to come with profligate rapidity--

Cameron whipped back through the pages of the histories, searching only for a single item, one clue to the swift evolution from barbarism to peaceful co-operation. After an hour he was in the middle of that critical period when the Council despaired of its inability to cope with the Markovian menace.

But the stories of commerce and invention and far-flung exchange with other peoples continued. Nowhere was there any reference to the violence of the period. They went back two hundred--five hundred years--beyond the time when Council members first made contact with the Nucleus.

There was nothing.

Cameron sat back in complete puzzlement as it became apparent that it was useless to go back further. "The normal thing would be for them to brag all over the place about their great conquests. Even races who become comparatively civilized citizens ordinarily let themselves go when it comes to history. If they've had a long record of conquest and bloodshed, they say so with plenty of chest pounding. Of course, it's padded out to reflect their righteous conquest over tyranny, but it's always there in some form.

"But nothing up to now has been normal about the development of the Markovian problem and this really tops it off--the complete omission of any reference to their armed conquests."

"Maybe this planet didn't participate very much. Perhaps only a small number of the Nucleus worlds were responsible for it," said Joyce.

Cameron shook his head. "No. The Council records show that the Nucleus as a unit was responsible, and that virtually all the worlds are specifically mentioned. And even if this one had been out of it completely you could still expect references to it because there was constant interchange with most of the other planets. We can try another one, though--"

They tried one more, then a half dozen in quick scanning. They swept through a summarization of the Nucleus as a whole during that critical period.

There was nothing to show that the Markovians had ever been anything but peace-loving citizens intent on pursuit of science, commerce, and the arts.

"This could have been rigged for our special benefit," said Joyce thoughtfully as they ended the day's futile search. "They didn't want to apply enough pressure to keep us from coming, but they did want to make sure we wouldn't find out anything about their past."

Cameron shook his head slowly. "It couldn't have been done in the time they've had. Simply cutting out what they didn't want to show us wouldn't have done it. There's too much cross reference to all periods involved. It's a complete phony, but it's not something done on the spur of the moment just for our benefit. It's too good for that."

"Maybe they've had it for a long time--just in case somebody like us should come along."

"It's possible, but I don't think that's right either," said Cameron. "I can't give you any reason for thinking so--except the phoniness goes deeper than merely deceiving an investigator. Somehow I have the feeling that the Markovians are even deceiving themselves!"

* * * * *

They left the building and took the car back to the house of Marthasa without seeing Zlenon again. Their Markovian host was waiting. Cameron thought he sensed a trace of tension in Marthasa that wasn't there before as he led them to seats in the garden.

"We don't like to boast about the Nucleus," he said with his customary volubility, "but we have to admit we are proud of our science and technology. Few civilizations in the Universe can match it. That's not to disparage the fine accomplishments of the Terrans, you understand, but it's only natural that out here on these older worlds--"

They listened half attentively, trying in their imaginations to pierce the armor he used to defend so frantically the thing the Markovians did not want the outer worlds to know anything about.

The talk went on during mealtime. Marthasa's wife caught the spirit of it and they both regaled the Terrans with accounts of the grandeur of Markovian exploits. Cameron grew more and more depressed by it, and as they retired to their rooms early he began to realize how absolutely complete was the impasse into which they had been driven.

"They've let us in," he said to Joyce. "They've shown us the history they've written of themselves. There's no way in the Universe we can stand up and boldly challenge that history and call them the liars we know they are."

"But they must know of the histories written on other Council worlds about their doings," said Joyce. "Maybe we could reach a point where we could at least ask about them. Ask how it is that other histories show that a hundred and twenty years ago a fleet of Markovian ships swept unexpectedly out of space and looted and decimated the planet Lakcaine VI. Ask why the Markovian history says only that the Nucleus concluded six new commercial treaties to the benefit of all worlds concerned in that period, without any mention of Lakcaine VI."

"When you start asking questions like that you've got to be ready to run. And if it fizzles out you've lost all chance of coming back for a second try. That could fizzle out because they simply deny the validity of all history outside their own."

"Then we might as well pack and go home if you're not going to challenge any of this stuff they hand out. We won't find the answer by standing around and taking their word on everything."

"I forgot to tell you one thing," Cameron said slowly. "We may not have to take their word for it. Someone else here knows the truth of the situation, also."

"Who?"

"The Ids." He told her then of the warning Sal Karone had given him aboard the ship on the way to the Nucleus, the statement that "My Masters are a people who cannot yet be understood by the men of other worlds."

"The Ids know what the Markovians are and what they are trying to hide. I had almost overlooked that simple fact."

"But you can't go out and challenge them to tell the truth any more than you can the Markovians!" Joyce protested. "Because Sal Karone went out of his way to warn you doesn't mean he's going to get real buddy-buddy and tell you everything you want to know."

"No, of course not. But there's one little difference between him and the Markovians. He has admitted openly that he knows why we're here. None of the Markovians have done that yet. We don't have to challenge him because there already exists the tacit understanding that something is decidedly phony.

"And besides, he invited us to come and visit the Id communities outside the city. I think that's an invitation we should accept just as soon as possible."

IV

Sal Karone had not repeated his invitation that the Terrans visit the Id communities, but he showed no adverse reaction when Cameron said they would like to take him up on his previous offer.

"You will be very welcome," he said. A soft smile lightened his features. "I will notify my leaders you will come."

With a start, Cameron realized that the existence of any kind of community probably implied leaders, but he had ignored this in view of Marthasa's insistence that the Ids had no culture of their own. He wondered just how untrue that assertion might be.

For the first time, he sensed genuine disapproval in the attitude of Marthasa when he mentioned plans to go with Sal Karone to the Id centers. "There's nothing out there you'd want to see," the Markovian said. "Their village is only a group of crude huts in the forest. It'll be a waste of your time to go out there when there's so much else we could show you."

"Sal Karone suggested the visit before we arrived," said Cameron. "He'd be hurt if we turned him down. Perhaps just to satisfy him--"

Angry indecision hid behind Marthasa's eyes. "Well--maybe that makes it different," he said finally. "We try to do everything possible to make the Ids happy. It's up to you if you want to waste your time on the visit."

"I think I do. Sal Karone has been very attentive and pleasant to us. It's a small favor in return."

* * * * *

Early in the morning, two days later, they left with Sal Karone directing them to the Idealist center. They discovered that the term, at the edge of the city, was a mere euphemism. It was a long two-hour trip at the high speed of which the Markovian cars were capable.

The city itself vanished, and a thickly wooded area took its place during the last half of the journey, reminding them of the few remote, peaceful forests of Earth. Then, as the car slowed, they left the highway for a rough trail that led for a number of miles back into the forest. They came at last into a clearing circled by rough wooden dwellings possessing all the appearance of crude, primitive existence on little more than a subsistence level.

"This is the village of our Chief," said Sal Karone. "He will be pleased to explain all you may wish to know about the Idealist Way."

Cameron was shocked almost beyond speech by his first sight of the clearing. He had tried to prepare for the worst, but he had told himself that the Markovian's estimate of the Ids could not be true. Now he was forced to admit that it was. In contact with all the skills of their Masters, which they would certainly be permitted to learn if they wanted to, the Ids chose primitive squalor when they were on their own.

Their serenity could be little more than the serenity of the savage who has no wants or goals and is content to merely serve those whose ambitions are greater. It was the serenity and peacefulness of death. The Ids had died--as a race--long ago. The Markovians were loud, boastful, and obnoxious, but that could be discounted as the awkwardness of youth in a race that would perhaps be very great in the Universe at a time when the Ids were wholly forgotten.

Cameron felt depressed by the sight. He began to doubt the wisdom of his coming here in hope of finding an answer to the Markovian deception. The warning of Sal Karone on shipboard seemed now like nothing more than a half ignorant demonstration of loyalty toward the Markovian Masters. Possibly there had been some talk which the Id had overheard and he had taken it upon himself to warn the Terrans--knowing perhaps nothing of the matter which the Markovians were reluctant to expose.

If he could have done so gracefully, Cameron felt he would have turned and gone back without bothering with the interview. His curiosity about the Ids themselves had all but vanished. The answer to their situation was obvious. And he had maintained such high hope that somehow his expectation in them would be fulfilled during this visit.

There was a satisfying cleanliness apparent in everything as Sal Karone led them to the largest of the buildings. Joyce seemed to be enjoying herself as she surveyed the surroundings with an interest Cameron had lost.

As they entered the doorway a thin, straight old man with a white beard arose from a chair and approached them in greeting. The ancient, conventional, patriarchal order, Cameron thought. He could see the whole setup in a nutshell right now. Squalid communities like this where the too-old and the too-young were nurtured on the calcified traditions to which nothing was ever added. The able serving in the homes of the Markovians, providing sustenance for themselves and those who depended on them. The Markovians were generous indeed in not referring to the Ids as slaves. There was little else they could ever be called.

The Chief was addressed as Venor by Sal Karone, who introduced them. "It is kind of you to include our village in your visit to the Nucleus," said Venor. "There are many more spectacular things to see."

"There is often greatest wisdom in the least spectacular," said Cameron, trying to sound like a sage. "Sal Karone was kind enough to invite us to your center and said there was much you could show us."

"The things of the soul are not possible to show," said Venor gently. "We wish there were time that we might teach you some of the great things our people have learned in their long wanderings. I am told that your profession and your purpose in being here is the study of races and their actions and the things they have learned."

With a start, Cameron came to greater attention. He was certain he had never given any such information in the presence of Sal Karone or Marthasa. Yet even Venor knew he was a sociologist! Here was the first knowledge that must lie behind the evidence of the undercurrent of objections of the Markovian representative in the Council and Premier Jargla.

And this primitive patriarch was in possession of it.

Relations between the individuals of this planet were something far more complex than Cameron had assumed. He hesitated a moment before speaking. Just why had this bait been so innocently thrown to him? Marthasa had never mentioned it. Yet had the Markovians asked for an attempt to get an admission from him for their own purposes? And what purposes--?

He abandoned caution, and nodded. "Yes, that is the thing I am interested in. I had hoped to study the history and ways of the Markovians. As Sal Karone has told me, they don't want strangers to make such a study. You are perhaps not so unwilling to be known--?"

"We wish the entire Universe might know of us and be as we are."

"You hardly make that possible, subjugating your identity so completely to that of another race. The worlds will never know of you unless you become strong and unified as a people and obtain a name of your own."

"Our name is known," said Venor. "We are the Idealists. You will not find many worlds on which we are unknown, and they call us the ones who serve. Even on your world you have the saying of a philosopher who taught that any who would be master should become the servant of all. Your people once understood it."

"Not as a literal undertaking," said Cameron. "You can't submerge your entire racial identity as you have done. That is not what the saying meant."

"To us it does," said Venor solemnly. "We would master the Universe--and therefore we must serve it. That is the core of the law of the Idealists."

* * * * *

Cameron let his gaze scan through the window to the small clearing in the thick forest, to the circle of wooden houses. We would master the Universe--he restrained a smile.

"You cannot believe this," said Venor, "because you have never understood the mark of the servant or the mark of the master. How often is there difficulty in distinguishing one from the other!"

And how often do the illusions of the mind ease the privations of the body, Cameron thought. So that was the source of the Idealist serenity. Wherever they went they considered themselves the masters through service--and conversely, those they served became the slaves, he supposed. It was a pleasant, easy philosophy that hurt no one. Except the ones who believed it. They died the moment they accepted it, for all initiative and desire were gone.

"The master is he who guides the destiny of a man or a race," said Venor almost in meditation. "He is not the man who gathers or disperses the wealth, or who builds the cities and the ships to the stars. The master is he who teaches what must be done with these things and how a people shall expend their lives."

"And the Markovians do this, in obedience to you?" said Cameron whimsically.

"Wherever my people are," answered Venor, "strife ceases and peace comes. Who can do this is master of worlds."

There was a strange solemnity about the voice and figure of the old Idealist that checked the sense of ridiculousness in Cameron. It seemed somehow strangely moving.

"You believe the worlds are better," he asked gently, "just because you are there?"

"Yes," said Venor, "because we are there."

There was a pathos about it that fired Cameron's anger. On scores of worlds there were primitive groups like this one, blinding themselves with a glory that didn't exist, in the grip of ancient, meaningless traditions. The younger ones--like Sal Karone--were intelligent, worth salvaging, but they could never be lifted out of this mire of false belief unless they could be shown how empty it was.

"Nothing you have said explains the mystery of how this great thing is accomplished," said Cameron almost angrily. "Even if we wanted to believe it were true, it is still as utterly incomprehensible as before we came."

"There is a saying among us," said Venor kindly. "Translated into your tongue it would be: How was the wild dog tamed, and a saddle put upon the fierce stallion?"

* * * * *

Stubbornly, then, Venor would say no more about the philosophy of the Idealists. He spoke freely of the many other worlds upon which the Idealists lived and served, and he affirmed the tradition that they did not even know the place of their origin, the planet that might have been their home world.

He was evasive, however, when Cameron asked when the first contact was made between his people and the Markovians. There was something that the Ids, too, were holding back, the sociologist thought, and there was no apparent reason for it.

Recklessly, he decided nothing could be lost by attempting to blast for it. "Why have the Markovians consistently lied to us?" he said. "They've given us their history--and if your people know the feelings of other worlds they know this history is a lie. Only a few generations ago the Markovians pirated and plundered these worlds, and now they pose as little tin gods with a silver halo. Why?"

Sal Karone stood by with a look of horror on his face, but Venor made no sign of alarm at this forbidden question. He merely inclined his held slowly and repeated, "How was the wild dog tamed, and a saddle put upon the fierce stallion?"

* * * * *

That was the end of the interview. The Ids insisted, however, that he inspect the rest of the village and they personally guided the Terrans on the tour. Cameron's trained eye took in at a glance, however, the evidence supporting his previous conclusion. The artifacts and buildings demonstrated a primitive forest culture. The other individuals he saw were almost entirely the old and very young--the ones unsuitable as servants to the Markovians. Venor explained that family life among them paralleled in general that of the Masters. Whole Idealist families lived and served as units in the Markovian household. Exceptions existed in the case of Sal Karone and others of his age who were separated from their families and had not yet begun their own.

As they returned to the car Venor took their hands. He pressed Cameron's warmly and looked into his eyes with deep sincerity. "You have made us glad by your presence," he said. "And when the time comes for you to return, we shall repay all the pleasure you have given us."

"I'm afraid we won't be able to do that," said Cameron. "We appreciate your hospitality, but I'm sure time will not permit us to visit you again, as much as we'd like to." In the past few minutes he had reached the conclusion that further research on this whole planet was futile. The best thing they could do was go somewhere else in the Nucleus and make a fresh start.

Venor shook his head, smiling. "We will see each other again, Joyce and Cameron. I feel that the day will be very soon."

It was senseless to let himself be irritated by the senile patriarch who spoke out of a world of illusion but Cameron could not help feeling nettled as he started back to the city. Somehow it seemed impossible to regard Venor as merely a specimen for sociological research. The Chief of the Idealists reached out of his unreal world and made his contact with the Terrans a personal thing--almost as if he had spent all his life waiting for their coming. There was a sense of intimacy against which Cameron rebelled, and yet it was not an unpleasant thing.

Cameron's mind oscillated between the annoyance of Venor's calm assertion that they would be back shortly, and the nonsense of the Id belief that they controlled the civilizations in which they were servants. How was the wild dog tamed, and a saddle put upon the fierce stallion?

He smiled faintly to himself, wondering if the Markovians were fully aware that the Ids regarded them as tamed dogs and saddled stallions. They couldn't help knowing, of course, but it was hard to imagine Marthasa and his wife being very much amused by such an estimate. The situation would be intolerable, however, if it were met by anything except amusement. It might be a mildly explosive subject, but he was going to find out about that one small item before moving on, anyway, Cameron decided.

* * * * *

Sal Karone was strangely silent during the whole of the return trip. He offered no comments and made only brief, noncommittal replies to questions about the country through which they passed. He seemed depressed by the results of their visit. Probably because the violation of his warning to not question the lives of the Markovians. It was a curious evidence of their completely unreal, proprietary attitude in respect to their Masters. They'd have to investigate Marthasa's response as thoroughly as possible. There seemed to be no taboo on discussion of the Ids with him.

His annoyance at their acceptance of the invitation to the Id village appeared to have vanished as he greeted them upon their return. "We delayed eating, thinking you'd be back in time. If you'll join us in the dining room as soon as you're ready--?"

The villa of Marthasa seemed different after the day's experience with the Ids, although Cameron was certain nothing had changed either in a physical way or in their relations with the Markovians. It was as if his senses had been somehow sharpened to detect an undercurrent of feeling of which he had previously been unaware. Glancing at Joyce, he sensed she felt the same.

"I have the feeling that we missed something," she said, as they changed clothes to join Marthasa and his wife. "There was something Venor wanted us to know and wouldn't say. I would almost like to go back there again before we go away."

Cameron was surprised at his own annoyance with Joyce's statement. It reflected the impressions in his own mind which he was trying to ignore. "Nonsense," he said. "There's no use trying to read great profundity in the words of an old patriarch of the woods. He's nothing except what he appears to be."

The Markovians talked easily of Venor and the rest of the Ids. "We have tried to get him to join us in the city," said Marthasa as the meal began, "but he won't hear of it. It seems to give him a sense of importance to live out there alone with his retinue and have the other Ids come to him with their problems. He's a kind of arbiter and patriarch to all of them for many miles around."

While Marthasa talked Cameron tried to bring his awareness of all the varied facets of the problem together and see it whole, as he now understood it. The Markovians, a vast pirate community, had voluntarily abandoned freebooting for reasons yet to be discovered. They had turned their backs upon it so forcibly that they hid even the history of their depredations. And one of their last acts must have been the capture of a large colony of Idealists who were forced into servitude. Now the Ids compensated their enslavement by the religious belief that service made them masters over the ex-pirates, convincing themselves that they had changed the Markovians, taming them like wild dogs, saddling them as fierce stallions--

Cameron wondered if he dared, and then dismissed the thought that there could be any risk. It was too ridiculous!

* * * * *

There was even a half-malicious smile on his lips as he broke into Marthasa's conversation. "One of the things that made me very curious today," he said, "was the general reaction of your people to the Idealist illusion that they have tamed you--as expressed in their aphorism about how was the wild dog--?"

He never finished. Across the table the faces of the Markovians had frozen in sudden bitterness. The shield of friendliness vanished under the cold glare from their eyes.

Marthasa's lips seemed to curl as he whispered, "So you came like all the rest! And we wanted so much to believe you were honest. A study! A chance to find material for lies about the Nucleus to spread among all the Council worlds."

He continued almost sadly, "You will be confined to your quarters until transfer authorities can arrange for your return to Earth. And you may be sure that never again will such a scheme get one of your kind into the Nucleus again."

But there was no hint of sadness in his wife's face. She glared coldly. "I said they should never had been permitted to come!"

Cameron rose in sudden bewildered protest. "I assure you we have no intention--" he began.

And then he stopped. In one moment of incredible clarity while they stood there, eyes locked in bitter stares, he understood. He knew the myth was not a myth. It was cold, unbelievable reality. The Ids had tamed the Markovians.

In a moment of fear he wondered if it were anything more than a thin shell that could be shattered by a whisper from a stupid dabbler in cultures, who really knew nothing at all about the profession to which he pretended.

V

As if upon some secret signal Sal Karone appeared from the serving room at their left.

"Our visitors are no longer our guests," Marthasa said sharply with accusing eyes still upon Cameron. "They will remain in their rooms until time for deportation.

"I trust it will not be necessary to use force," he said directly to Cameron.

"Of course not. But won't you let me explain--won't you even allow an apology for breaking a taboo we did not understand?"

"Is it not taboo among all civilized peoples, including your own, to invent and spread lies about those who wish you only well?"

It was useless to argue, Cameron saw. He turned, taking Joyce's arm, and allowed Sal Karone to lead them back to their rooms. As they paused at the doorway the Id spoke without expression on his dark face. "This is not a good thing, Cameron Wilder. It would have been best for you to have considered my warning."

He turned and stepped away, locking the door behind him.

Joyce slumped on the bed in dejection. "This is a fine fix we've got ourselves into, being declared persona non grata before we even get a good start! They'll remember that back home when A Study of the Metamorphosis of the Markovian Nucleus is mentioned in professional circles!"

"Don't rub it in," Cameron said, half angrily. "How was I to know that was such a vicious taboo? It can't be any secret to the Markovians that the Ids look upon them as tamed. Why should they get their hackles up because I mentioned it?"

"All I know is we're washed up as of now. What do we do when we get back home?"

Cameron stood with his back to her, looking through the windows to the garden beyond. "I'm not thinking of that," he said. "Can't you see we haven't failed? We've almost got it--the thing we came to find. We knew why the Markovians suddenly became good Indians. The Ids actually did tame them. We've got to find out how such an apparently impossible thing could be done."

"Do you really believe that's what happened?" asked Joyce.

Cameron nodded. "It's the only thing there is to believe. If it weren't true, Marthasa and his wife would have laughed it off as nonsense. Getting all huffy and talking about deportation for cooking up lies is the best proof you could ask for that we hit pay dirt. Don't ask me how I think the Ids could do it. That's what I'm going to find out."

"How?"

"I don't know."

But he did have an idea that if he could somehow get word to the old Id chieftain help could be had. He knew he was straining to believe things he wanted to believe, yet it seemed as if this were almost the very thing Venor had tried to convey the day before but had left unspoken.

There was only one possibility of establishing contact, however, and that was through Sal Karone. A remote chance indeed, Cameron thought, in view of the relationship between the Markovian and his sargh. As a last resort it was worth trying, however.

It looked as if they would not have even this chance as the evening grew darker. Cameron kept watch through the windows in the hope of signaling Sal Karone in case he should appear. They hoped he might come to the room for a final check of their needs for the night as he usually did.

But he did not appear.

* * * * *

Cameron finally went to bed after Joyce was long asleep. He turned restlessly, beating his mind with increasing wonder as to how it could be so incredibly true that the Idealists were the actual masters of the Nucleus. That they had somehow tamed the murderous, piratical Markovians. He couldn't have known this was it!

One thing he could understood, however, was the Markovians reluctance to have visitors--and their careful watch over them. Marthasa had been more than a host, he thought. He was a guard as well, trying to keep the Terrans from discovering the unpleasant reality concerning the influence of the Ids. He had slipped in allowing the visit to Venor.

At dawn there was the sound of their door opening and Cameron whirled from his dressing, hopeful it might be Sal Karone. It was Marthasa, however, grim and distant. "I have obtained word that your deportation can be accomplished today. Premier Jargla has been informed and concurs. The Council has been notified and offers no protestations. You will ready yourselves before the evening hour."

He slammed the door behind him. Joyce turned down the covers in the other room and sat up. "I wonder if he isn't even going to feed us today?"

Cameron made no answer. He finished dressing hurriedly and kept a frantic watch for any sign of Sal Karone.

At last there was a knock on the door and the Id appeared with breakfast on a cart. Cameron exhaled with relief that it was not one of the other sarghs in the household.

Sal Karone eyed them impassively as he wheeled in and arranged the food on the table by a window. Cameron watched, estimating his chances.

"Your Chief, Venor, was very kind to us yesterday," he said quietly. "Our biggest regret in leaving is that our conversation with him must go unfinished."

Sal Karone paused. "Were there things you had yet to say to him?" he asked.

"No--there were things Venor wanted to tell us. You heard him. He wanted us to come back. It is completely impossible for us to see him again before we go?"

Sal Karone straightened and set the utensils on the table. "No, it is not impossible. I have been instructed to bring you back to the village if it should be your request."

Cameron felt a surge of eager excitement within him. "When? Our deportation is scheduled for today. How can we get there? How can we avoid Marthasa and the Markovians?"

"Stand very quietly," said Sal Karone, that sense of power and command in his voice and bearing as Cameron had seen it once before aboard the spaceship. "Now," he said. "Close your eyes."

There was a sudden wrenching twist as if two solid surfaces had slammed them from front and back, and a third force had thrust them sideways.

They opened their eyes in the wooden house of Venor, in the village of the Idealists.

* * * * *

"We owe you apologies," said Venor. "We hope you are not harmed in any way."

Cameron stared around uncertainly. Joyce clutched his hand. "How did we--?" Cameron stammered.

"Teleportation is the descriptive term in your language, I believe," said Venor. "It was rather urgent that you come without further delay so we resorted to it. Nothing else would do in the face of Marthasa's action. Sit down if you will, please. If you wish to rest or eat, your quarters are ready."

"Our quarters--! Then you did expect us back. You knew this was going to happen exactly as it has!"

"Yes, I knew," said Venor quietly. "I planned it this way when word first came to us of your visit."

"I think we are entitled to explanations," Cameron said at last. "We seem to have been pieces in a game we knew nothing about."

And it had taken this long for the full impact of Venor's admission of teleportation to hit him. He closed his eyes in a moment's reaction of fright. He didn't want to believe it--and knew he must. These Idealists--who could master galaxies and tame the wild Markovians--was there anything they could not do?

"Not a game," Venor protested. "We planned this because we wanted you to see what you have seen. We wanted a man of Earth to know what we have done."

"But don't the Markovians realize the foolishness of deporting us because we stumbled onto the relationship between you and them? And if you are in control how can they issue such an order--unless you want it?"

"Our relationship is more complex than that. There are different levels of control. We operate the one that brought you here--" He let Cameron consider the implication of the unfinished statement.

Then he continued, "To understand the Markovians' reason for deporting you, consider that on Earth men have tamed wolves and made faithful, loyal dogs who can be trusted. Dogs who have forever lost the knowledge their ancestors were fierce marauders ready to rip and tear the flesh of any man or beast that came their way.

"Consider the dogs only a generation or two from the vicious wolves who were their forebears. The old urges have not entirely died, yet they want to know man's affection and trust. Could you remind them of what their kind once was without stirring up torment within them?

"So it is with the Markovians. They are peaceful and creative, but only a few generations behind them are pirates who were not fit to sit in the Councils of civilized beings. They have no tradition of culture to support them. It knocks the props out from under them, so to speak, to have it known what lies behind them. They cannot be friends with such a man. They cannot even endure the knowledge among themselves."

"Then I was right!" Cameron exclaimed. "Their phony history was set up to deceive their own people as well as others."

"Yes. The dog would destroy all evidence of his wolf ancestry. It has been an enormous project, but the people of the Nucleus have been at it a long time. They have concocted a consistent history which leaves out all evidence of their predatory ancestry. The items of reality which were possible to leave have been retained. The gaps between have been bridged by fictionized accounts of glorious undertakings and discoveries. Most of the Markovian science has been taken from other cultures, but now their history boasts of heroes and discoverers who never lived and who were responsible for all the great science they enjoy."

"But nothing stable can be built upon such an unhealthy foundation of self-deception!" Cameron protested.

"It is not unhealthy--not at the present moment," said Venor. "The time will come when it, too, will be thrust aside and a tremendous effort of scholarship will extract the elements of truth and find that which was suppressed. But the Markovians themselves will do it--a generation of them who can afford to laugh at the fears and fantasies of their ancestors."

"This tells us nothing of how you were able to make a creative people out of a race of pirate marauders," said Cameron.

"I gave you the key," said Venor. "It was one used long ago by your own people before it was abandoned.

"How was the savage wolf tamed to become the loyal, friendly dog? Did ancient man try to exterminate the wolves that came to his caves and carried off his young? Perhaps he tried. But he learned, perhaps accidentally, another way of conquest. He found the wolf's cubs, and learned to love them. He brought the cubs home and cared for them tenderly and his own children played with them and fed them and loved them.

"It took time, but eventually there were no more wild wolves to trouble man, because he had discovered a great friend, the dog. And man plus dog could handle wolf with ease. Dog forgot in time what his forebears were and became willing to defend man against his own kind--because man loved him.

"It happened again and again. Agricultural man hated the wild horse that ate his grain and trampled his fields. But he learned to love the horse, too, after a while. Again--no more wild horses."

"But you can't take a predatory, savage pirate and love him into decency!" Cameron protested.

"No," Venor agreed. "It is too difficult ordinarily at that level, and wasteful of time and resources. But I didn't say that is what happened. You don't tame a wolf by loving it, but the cubs--yes. And even pirates have cubs, who are susceptible to being loved.

"The first weapon was hate. But after learning the futility of it, sentient creatures discovered another, the succeeding evolutionary emotion. It is pure savagery in its destructive power, a thousand times more effective in annihilating the enemy.

"You've thought 'Love thy enemy' was a soft, gentle, futile doctrine! Actually, instead of merely killing the enemy it twists his personality, destroys his identity. He continues to live, but he has lost his integrity as an entity. The wolf cub never becomes an adult wolf. He becomes Dog.

"It is not a doctrine of weakness, but the ultimate weapon of destruction. It can be used to induce any orientation desired in the mind of the enemy. He'll do everything you want him to--because he has your love."

* * * * *

"How did you apply that to the Markovians?" asked Joyce in almost a whisper.

"It was one of the most difficult programs we have ever undertaken," said Venor. "There were comparatively few of us and such a tremendous population of Markovians. We had predicted long ago, even before the organization of the Council, the situation would grow critical and dangerous. By the time the Council awoke to the fact and started its futile debates we had made a strong beginning.

"We arranged to be in the path of a Markovian attack on one of the worlds where our work was completed. The Markovians were only too happy to take us into slavery and use us as victims in their brutal sports."

"You didn't deliberately fall into a trap where you allowed yourselves to be killed and tortured by them?" exclaimed Cameron.

Venor smiled. "The Markovians thought we did. We could hardly do that, of course. Our numbers were so small compared with theirs that we wouldn't have lasted very long. And, obviously, it would have been plain stupid. There is one key that must not be forgotten: An effective use of love requires an absolute superiority on the levels attainable by the individual to be tamed. So, in this case, we had to have power to keep the Markovians from slaughtering us or we would have been unable to accomplish our purpose.

"Teleportation is of obvious use here. Likewise, psychosomatic controls that can handle any ordinary wound we might permit them to inflict. We gave them the illusion of slaughtering and torturing us, but our numbers did not dwindle."

"Why did you give them such an illusion?" Joyce asked. "And you say you permitted them to inflict wounds--?"

Venor nodded. "We were in their households, you see, employed as slaves and assigned the care of their young. The cubs of the wolf were given into our hands to love--and to tame.

"These Markovian children were witnesses to the supposed torture and killing of those who loved them. It was a tremendous psychic impact and served to drive their influence toward the side of the slaves. And even the adults slowly recognized the net loss to them of doing away with servants so skilled and useful in household tasks and caring for the young. The games and brutality vanished spontaneously within a short time. Markovians, young and old, simply didn't want them any longer.

"During the maturity of that first generation of young on whom we expended our love our position became more secure. These were no longer wolves. They had become dogs, loyal to those who had loved them, and we could use them now against their own kind. Influences to abandon piracy against other peoples began to spread throughout the Nucleus.

"Today the Markovians are no longer a threat capable of holding the Council worlds in helpless fear. They long ago ceased their depredations. Their internal stability is rising and is almost at the point where we shall be able to leave them. Our work here is about finished."

"Surely all this was unnecessary!" Joyce said. "With your powers of teleportation and other psionic abilities you must possess it should have been easy for you to control the Markovians directly, force them to cease their piracy--"

"Of course," said Venor. "That would have been so much easier for us. And so futile. The Markovians would have learned nothing through being taken over by us and operated externally. They would have remained the same. But it was our desire to change them, teach them, accomplish genuine learning within them. It is always longer and more difficult this way. The results, however, are more lasting!"

"Who are you people--what are you?" Cameron said with sudden intensity. "You have teleportation--and how many other unknown psychic powers? You have forced us to believe you can tame such a vicious world as the Markovian Nucleus once was.

"But where is there a life of your own? With all your powers you must live at the whim of other cultures. Where is your culture? Where is your own purpose? In spite of all you have, your life is a parasitical one."

Venor smiled gently. "Is not the parent--or the teacher--the servant of the child?" he said. "Has it not always been so if a species is to rise very far in its conquest of the Universe?

"But this does not mean that the parent or teacher has no life of his own. You ask where is our culture? The culture of all worlds is ours. We don't have great cities and vast fleets. The wolf cubs build these for us. They carry us across space and shelter us in their cities.

"Our own energies are expended in a thousand other and more profitable ways. We have sought and learned a few of the secrets of life and mind. With these we can move as you were moved, when we choose to do so. From where I sit I can speak with any of our kind on this planet or any world of the entire Nucleus. And a few of us, united in the effort, can touch those in distant galaxies.

"What culture would you have us acquire, that we do not have?" Venor finished.

* * * * *

Without answer, Cameron arose and strode slowly to the window, his back to the room. He looked out upon the rude wooden huts and the towering forest beyond. He tried to tell himself it was all a lie. Such things couldn't be. But he could feel it now with increasing strength, as if all his senses were quickening--the benign aura, the indefinable wash of power that seemed to lap at the edge of his mind.

Out of the corner of his eye he could see Joyce's face, almost radiant as she, too, sensed it here in the presence of the Ids.

Love, as a genuine power, had been taught by every Terran philosopher of any social worth. But it had never really been tried. Not in the way the Ids understood it. Cameron felt he could only guess at the terrible discipline of mind it required to use it as they did. The analogy of the wolf cubs was all very well, and man had learned to go that far. But there is a difference when your own kind is involved, he thought.

Perhaps it was out of sheer fear of each other that men continued to try to sway with hate, the most primitive of all their weapons.

It's easy to hate, he thought. Love is hard, and because it is, the tough humans who can't achieve it and have the patience to manipulate it must scorn it. The truly weak ones, they're incapable of the stern and brutal self-discipline required of one who loves his enemy.

But men had known how. Back in the caves they had known how to conquer the wolf and the wild horse. Where had they lost it?

The vision of the buildings and the forest with its eternal peace was still in his eyes. What else could you want, with the whole Universe in the palm of your hand?

He turned sharply. "You tricked us into betraying ourselves to Marthasa, and you said that you planned it this way when you first heard of our coming. But you have not yet said why. Why did you want us to see what you had done?"

"You needed to have evidence from the Markovians themselves," said Venor. "That is why I led you to the point where the admission would be forced from them. The problem you came to solve is now answered, is it not? Is there anything to prevent you returning to Earth and writing a successful paper on the mystery of the Markovians?"

"You know very well there is," said Cameron with the sudden sense that Venor was laughing gently at him. "Who on Earth would believe what you have told me--that a handful of meek, subservient Ids had conquered the mighty Markovian Nucleus?"

He paused, looking at Joyce who returned his intense gaze.

"Is that all?" said Venor finally.

"No that is not all. After taking us to the heights and showing us everything that lies beyond, are you simply going to turn us away empty-handed?"

"What would you have us give you?"

"This," said Cameron, gesturing with his hand to include the circle of all of them, and the community beyond the window. "We want what you have discovered. Is your circle a closed one--or can you admit those who would learn of your ways but are not of your race?"

Venor's smile broadened as he arose and stepped toward them, and they felt the warm wave of acceptance from his mind even before he spoke. "This is what we brought you here to receive," he said. "But you had to ask for yourselves. We wanted men of Earth in our ranks. There are many races and many worlds who make up the Idealists. That is why it is said that the Ids do not know the home world from which they originally came. It is true, they do not. We are citizens of the Universe.

"But we have never been represented by a native of Earth, which needs us badly. Will you join us, Terrans?"

THE END

Contents

THE COSMIC EXPENSE ACCOUNT

By C. M. Kornbluth

The Lackawanna was still running one cautious morning train a day into Scranton, though the city was said to be emptying fast Professor Leuten and I had a coach to ourselves, except for a scared, jittery trainman who hung around and talked at us.

"The name's Pech," he said. "And let me tell you, the Peches have been around for a mighty long time in these parts. There's a town twenty-three miles north of Scranton named Pechville. Full of my cousins and aunts and uncles, and I used to visit there and we used to send picture post cards and get them, too. But my God, mister, what's happened to them?"

His question was rhetorical. He didn't realize that Professor Leuten and I happened to be the only two people outside the miscalled Plague Area who could probably answer it.

"Mr. Pech," I said, "if you don't mind -- we'd like to talk some business."

"Sorry," he said miserably, and went on to the next car.

When we were alone Professor Leuten remarked: "An interesting reaction." He was very smooth about it. Without the slightest warning he whipped a huge, writhing, hairy spider from his pocket and thrust it at my face.

I was fast on the draw too. In one violent fling I was standing on my left foot in the aisle, thumbing my nose, my tongue stuck out. Goose flesh rippled down my neck and shoulders.

"Very good," he said, and put the spider away. It was damnably realistic. Even knowing that it was a gadget of twisted springs and plush, I cringed at the thought of its nestling in his pocket. With me it was spiders. With the professor it was rats and asphyxiation. Toward the end of our mutual training program it took only one part per million of sulfur dioxide gas in his vicinity to send him whirling into the posture of defense, cranelike on one leg, tongue out and thumb to nose, the sweat of terror on his brow.

"I have something to tell you, Professor," I said.

"So?" he asked tolerantly. And that did it. The tolerance. I had been prepared to make my point with a dignified recital and apology, but there were two ways to tell the story and I suddenly chose the second.

"You're a phony," I said with satisfaction.

"What?" he gasped.

"A phony. A fake. A hoaxer. A self-deluding crackpot. Your Functional Epistemology is a farce. Let's not go into this thing kidding ourselves."

His accent thickened a little. "Let me remind you, Mr. Norris, that you are addressing a doctor of philosophy of the University of Gottingen and a member of the faculty of the University of Basle."

"You mean a Privatdozent who teaches freshman logic. And I seem to remember that Gottingen revoked your degree."

He said slowly: "I have known all along that you were a fool, Mr. Norris. Not until now did I realize that you are also an anti-Semite. It was the Nazis who went through an illegal ceremony of revocation."

"So that makes me an anti-Semite. From a teacher of logic that's very funny."

"You are correct," he said after a long pause. "I withdraw my remark. Now, would you be good enough to amplify yours?"

"Gladly, Professor. In the first place--"

I had been winding up the rubber rat in my pocket. I yanked it out and tossed it into his lap where it scrabbled and clawed. He yelled with terror, but the yell didn't cost him a split second. Almost before it started from his throat he was standing one-legged, thumb to nose, tongue stuck out.

He thanked me coldly, I congratulated him coldly, I pocketed the rat while he shuddered and we went on with the conversation.

I told him how, eighteen months ago, Mr. Hopedale called me into his office. Nice office, oak panels, signed pictures of Hopedale Press writers from our glorious past: Kipling, Barrie, Theodore Roosevelt and the rest of the backlog boys.

What about Eino Elekinen, Mr. Hopedale wanted to know. Eino was one of our novelists. His first, Vinland the Good, had been a critical success and a popular flop; Cubs of the Viking Breed, the sequel, made us all a little money. He was now a month past delivery date on the final volume of the trilogy and the end was not in sight.

"I think he's pulling a sit-down strike, Mr. Hopedale. He's way overdrawn now and I had to refuse him a thousand-dollar advance. He wanted to send his wife to the Virgin Islands for a divorce."

"Give him the money," Mr. Hopedale said impatiently. "How can you expect the man to write when he's beset by personal difficulties?"

"Mr. Hopedale," I said politely, "she could divorce him right in New York State. He's given her grounds in all five boroughs and the western townships of Long Island. But that's not the point. He can't write. And even if he could, the last thing American literature needs right now is another trilogy about a Scandinavian immigrant family."

"I know," he said. "I know. He's not very good yet But I think he's going to be, and do you want him to starve while he's getting the juvenilia out of his system?" His next remark had nothing to do with Elekinen. He looked at the signed photo of T. R. "To a bully publisher" and said: "Norris, we're broke."

I said: "Ah?"

"We owe everybody. Printer, paper mill, warehouse. Everybody. It's the end of Hopedale Press. Unless -- I don't want you to think people have been reporting on you, Morris, but I understand you came up with an interesting idea at lunch yesterday. Some Swiss professor."

I had to think hard. "You must mean Leuten, Mr. Hopedale. No, there's nothing in it for us, sir. I was joking. My brother-he teaches philosophy at Columbia-- mentioned him to me. Leuten's a crackpot. Every year or two Weintraub Verlag in Basle brings out another volume of his watchamacallit and they sell about a thousand. Functional Epistemology --my brother says it's all nonsense, the kind of stuff vanity presses put out. It was just a gag about us turning him into a Schweitzer or a Toynbee and bringing out a one-volume condensation. People just buy his books, I suppose, because they got started and feel ashamed to stop."

Mr. Hopedale said: "Do it, Norris. Do it. We can scrape together enough cash for one big promotion and then the end. I'm going to see Brewster of Commercial Factors in the morning. I believe he will advance us sixty-five per cent on our accounts receivable." He tried on a cynical smile. It didn't become him. "Norris, you are what is technically called a Publisher's Bright Young Man. We can get seven-fifty for a scholarly book. With luck and promotion we can sell in the hundred thousands. Get on it." I nodded, feeling sick, and started out. Mr. Hopedale said in a tired voice: "And it might actually be work of some inspirational value."

Professor Leuten sat and listened, red-faced, breathing hard.

"You betrayer," he said at last. "You with the smiling face that came to Basle, that talked of lectures in America, that told me to sign your damnable contract. My face on the cover of the Time magazine that looks like a monkey, the idiotic interviews, the press releasements in my name that I never saw. America, I thought, and held my tongue. But from the beginning it was a lie!" He buried his face in his hands and muttered: "Ach! You stink!"

That reminded me. I took a small stench-bomb from my pocket and crushed it.

He leaped up, balanced on one leg and thumbed his nose. His tongue was out four inches and he was panting with the terror of asphyxiation.

"Very good," I said.

"Thank you. I suchest we move to the other end of the car."

We and our luggage were settled before he began to breathe normally. I judged that the panic and most of his anger had passed. "Professor," I said cautiously, "I've been thinking of what we do when and if we find Miss Phoebe."

"We shall complete her re-education," he said. "We shall point out that her unleashed powers have been dysfunctionally applied--"

"I can think of something better to do than completing her reeducation. It's why I spoke a little harshly. Presumably Miss Phoebe considers you the greatest man in the world."

He smiled reminiscently and I knew what he was thinking.

La Plume, Pa. Wednesday 4A.M. (!)

Professor Konrad Leuten c/o The Hopedale Press New York City, New York

My Dear Professor,

Though you are a famous and busy man I do hope you will take time to read a few words of grateful tribute from an old lady (eighty-four). I have just finished your magnificent and inspirational book How to Live on the Cosmic Expense Account: an Introduction to Functional Epistemology.

Professor, I believe. I know every splendid word in your book is true. If there is one chapter finer than the others it is No. 9, "How to be in Utter Harmony with Your Environment." The Twelve Rules in that chapter shall from this minute be my guiding light, and I shall practice them faithfully forever.

Your grateful friend,

(Miss) Phoebe Bancroft

That flattering letter reached us on Friday, one day after the papers reported with amusement or dismay the "blackout" of La Plume, Pennsylvania. The term "Plague Area" came later.

"I suppose she might," said the professor.

"Well, think about it."

The train slowed for a turn. I noticed that the track was lined with men and women. And some of them, by God, were leaping for the moving train! Brakes went on with a squeal and jolt; my nose bashed against the seat in front of us.

"Aggression," the professor said, astonished. "But that is not in the pattern!"

We saw the trainman in the vestibule opening the door to yell at the trackside people. He was trampled as they swarmed aboard, filling, jamming the car in a twinkling.

"Got to Scranton," we heard them saying. "Zombies "

"I get it," I shouted at the professor over their hubbub, "These are refugees from Scranton. They must have blocked the track. Right now they're probably bullying the engineer into backing up all the way to Wilkes-Barre. We've got to get off!" he said. We were in an end seat. By elbowing, crowding, and a little slugging we got to the vestibule and dropped to the tracks. The professor lost all his luggage in the brief, fierce struggle. I saved only my briefcase. The powers of Hell itself were not going to separate me from that briefcase.

Hundreds of yelling, milling people were trying to climb aboard. Some made it to the roofs of the cars after it was physically impossible for one more body to be fitted inside. The locomotive uttered a despairing toot and the train began to back up.

"Well," I said, "we head north."

We found U.S. 6 after a short overland hike and trudged along the concrete. There was no traffic. Everybody with a car had left Scranton days ago, and nobody was going into Scranton. Except us.

We saw our first zombie where a signpost told us it was three miles to the city. She was a woman in a Mother Hubbard and sunbonnet. I couldn't tell whether she was young or old, beautiful or a hag. She gave us a sweet, empty smile and asked if we had any food. I said no. She said she wasn't complaining about her lot but she was hungry, and of course the vegetables and things were so much better now that they weren't poisoning the soil with those dreadful chemical fertilizers. Then she said maybe there might be something to eat down the road, wished us a pleasant good day and went on.

"Dreadful chemical fertilizers?" I asked.

The professor said: "I believe that is a contribution by the Duchess of Carbondale to Miss Phoebe's reign. Several interviews mention it." We walked on. I could read his mind like a book. He hasn't even read the interviews. He is a foolish, an impossible young man. And yet he is here, he has undergone a rigorous course of training, he is after all risking a sort of death. Why? I let him go on wondering. The answer was in my briefcase.

"When do you think we'll be in range?" I asked.

"Heaven knows," he said testily. "Too many variables. Maybe it's different when she sleeps, maybe it grows at different rates varying as the number of people affected. I feel nothing yet."

"Neither do I."

And when we felt something specifically, when we felt Miss Phoebe Bancroft practicing the Twelve Rules of "How to be in Utter Harmony with Your Environment" we would do something completely idiotic, something that had got us thrown --literally thrown-- out of the office of the Secretary of Defense.

He had thundered at us: "Are you two trying to make a fool of me? Are you proposing that soldiers of the United States Army undergo a three-month training course in sticking out their tongues and thumbing their noses?" He was quivering with elevated blood pressure. Two M.P. lieutenants collared us under his personal orders and tossed us down the Pentagon steps when we were unable to deny that he had stated our proposal more or less correctly.

And so squads, platoons, companies, battalions and regiments marched into the Plague Area and never marched out again.

Some soldiers stumbled out as zombies. After a few days spent at a sufficient distance from the Plague Area their minds cleared and they told their confused stories. Something came over them, they said. A mental fuzziness almost impossible to describe. They liked it where they were, for instance; they left the Plague Area only by accident. They were wrapped in a vague, silly contentment even when they were hungry, which was usually. What was life like in the Plague Area? Well, not much happened. You wandered around looking for food. A lot of people looked sick but seemed to be contented. Farmers in the area gave you food with the universal silly smile, but their crops were very poor. Animal pests got most of them. Nobody seemed to eat meat. Nobody quarreled or fought or ever said a harsh word in the Plague Area. Add it was hell on earth. Nothing conceivable could induce any of them to return.

The Duchess of Carbondale? Yes, sometimes she came driving by in her chariot, wearing fluttery robes and a golden crown. Everybody bowed down to her. She was a big, fat middle-aged woman with rimless glasses and a pinched look of righteous triumph on her face.

The recovered zombies at first were quarantined and doctors made their wills before going to examine them. This proved to be unnecessary and the examinations proved to be fruitless. No bacteria, no Rickettsia, no viruses. Nothing. Which didn't stop them from continuing in the assumption embodied in the official name of the affected counties.

Professor Leuten and I knew better, of course. For knowing better we were thrown out of offices, declined interviews and once almost locked up as lunatics. That was when we tried to get through to the President direct. The Secret Service, I am able to testify, guards our Chief Executive with a zeal that borders on ferocity.

"How goes the book?" Professor Leuten asked abruptly.

"Third hundred thousand. Why? Want an advance?"

I don't understand German, but I can recognize deep, heartfelt profanity in any language. He spluttered and crackled for almost a full minute before he snarled in English: "Idiots! Dolts! Out of almost one third of a million readers, exactly one had read the book!"

I wanted to defer comment on that, "There's a car," I said.

"Obviously it stalled and was abandoned by a refugee from Scranton."

"Let's have a look anyway." It was a battered old Ford sedan halfway off the pavement. The rear was full of canned goods and liquor. Somebody had been looting. I pushed the starter and cranked for a while; the motor didn't catch.

"Useless," said the professor. I ignored him, yanked the dashboard hood button and got out to inspect the guts. There was air showing on top of the gas in the sediment cup.

"We ride, professor," I told him. "I know these babies and their fuel pumps. The car quit on the upgrade there and he let it roll back." I unscrewed the clamp of the carburetor air filter, twisted the filter off and heaved it into the roadside bushes. The professor, of course was a "mere-machinery" boy with the true European intellectual's contempt for greasy hands. He stood by haughtily while I poured a bottle of gin empty, found a wrench in the toolbox that fit the gas-tank drain plug and refilled the gin bottle with gasoline. He condescended to sit behind the wheel and crank the motor from time to time while I sprinkled gas into the carburetor. Each time the motor coughed there was less air showing in the sediment cup; finally the motor caught for good. I moved him over, tucked my briefcase in beside me, U-turned on the broad, empty highway and we chugged north into Scranton.

It was only natural that he edged away from me, I suppose. I was grimy from working under the gas tank. This plus the discreditable ability I had shown in starting the stalled car reminded him that he was, after all, a Herr Doktor from a real university while I was, after all, a publisher's employee with nebulous qualifications from some place called Cornell. The atmosphere was wrong for it, but sooner or later he had to be told.

"Professor, we've got to have a talk and get something straight before we find Miss Phoebe."

He looked at the huge striped sign the city fathers of Scranton wisely erected to mark that awful downgrade into the city.

WARNING' SEVEN-MILE DEATH TRAP AHEAD. SHIFT INTO LOWER GEAR. $50 FINE. OBEY OR PAY!

"What is there to get straight?" he demanded. "She has partially mastered Functional Epistemology even though Hopedale Press prefers to call it 'Living on the Cosmic Expense Account.' This has unleashed certain latent powers of hers. It is simply our task to complete her mastery of the ethical aspect of F.E. She will cease to dominate other minds as soon as she comprehends that her behavior is dysfunctional and in contravention of the Principle of Permissive Evolution." To him the matter was settled. He mused: "Really I should not have let you cut so drastically my exposition of Dyadic Imbalance; that must be the root of her difficulty. A brief inductive explanation--"

"Professor," I said, "I thought I told you in the train that you're a fake."

He corrected me loftily. "You told me that you think I'm a fake, Mr. Norris. Naturally I was angered by your duplicity, but your opinion of me proves nothing. I ask you to look around you. Is this fakery?"

We were well into the city. Bewildered dogs yelped at our car. Windows were broken and goods were scattered on the sidewalks; here and there a house was burning brightly. Smashed and overturned cars dotted the streets, and zombies walked slowly around them. When Miss Phoebe hit a city the effects were something like a thousand-bomber raid.

"It's not fakery," I said, steering around a smiling man in a straw hat and overalls. "It isn't Functional Epistemology either. It's faith in Functional Epistemology. It could have been faith in anything, but your book just happened to be what she settled on."

"Are you daring," he demanded, white to the lips, "to compare me with the faith healers?"

"Yes," I said wearily. "They get their cures. So do lots of people. Let's roll it up in a ball, Professor. I think the best thing to do when we meet Miss Phoebe is for you to tell her you're a fake. Destroy her faith in you and your system and I think she'll turn back into a normal old lady again. Wait a minute! Don't tell me you're not a fake. I can prove you are. You say she's partly mastered F.E. and gets her powers from that partial mastery. Well, presumably you've completely mastered F.E., since you invented it. So why can't you do everything she's done, and lots more? Why can't you end this mess by levitating to La Plume, instead of taking the Lackawanna and a 1941 Ford? And, by God, why couldn't you fix the Ford with a pass of the hands and F.E. instead of standing by while I worked?"

His voice was genuinely puzzled. "I thought I just explained, Norris. Though it never occurred to me before, I suppose I could do what you say, but I wouldn't dream of it. As I said, it would be dysfunctional and in complete contravention of the Principle of Permissive "

I said something very rude and added: "In short, you can but you won't."

"Naturally not! The Principle of Permissive " He looked at me with slow awareness dawning in his eyes. "Norris! My editor. My proofreader. My by-the-publisher-officially-assigned fidus Achates. Norris, haven't you read my book?"

"No," I said sharply. "I've been much too busy. You didn't get on the cover of Time magazine by blind chance, you know."

He was laughing helplessly. "How goes that song," he finally asked me, his eyes damp, "'God Bless America'?"

I stopped the car abruptly. "I think I feel something," I said. "Professor, I like you."

"I like you too, Norris," he told me. "Norris, my boy, what do you think of ladies?"

"Delicate creatures. Custodians of culture. Professor, what about meat eating?"

"Shocking barbarous survival. This is it, Norris!"

We yanked open the doors and leaped out. We stood on one foot each, thumbed our noses, and stuck out our tongues.

Allowing for the time on the train, this was the 1,961st time I had done it in the past two months. One thousand, nine hundred and sixty-one times the professor had arranged for spiders to pop out at me from books, from the television screen, from under steaks, from desk drawers, from my pockets, from his. Black widows, tarantulas, harmless (hah!) big house spiders, real and imitation. One thousand, nine hundred and sixty-one times I had felt the arachnophobe's horrified revulsion. Each time I felt it I had thrown major voluntary muscular systems into play by drawing up one leg violently, violently swinging my hand to my nose, violently grimacing to stick out my tongue.

My body had learned at last. There was no spider (his time; there was only Miss Phoebe: a vague, pleasant feeling something like the first martini. But my posture of defense this 1,962d time was accompanied by the old rejection and horror. It had no spider, so it turned on Miss Phoebe. The vague first-martini feeling vanished like morning mist burned away by the sun.

I relaxed cautiously. On the other side of the car so did Professor Leuten. "Professor," I said, "I don't like you any more."

"Thank you," he said coldly. "Nor do I like you."

"I guess we're back to normal," I said. "Climb in." He climbed in and we started off. I grudgingly said: "Congratulations."

"Because it worked? Don't be ridiculous. It was to be expected that a plan of campaign derived from the principles of Functional Epistemology would be successful. All that was required was that you be at least as smart as one of Professor Pavlov's dogs, and I admit I considered that hypothesis the weak link in my chain of reasoning...."

We stopped for a meal from the canned stuff in the back of the car about one o'clock and then chugged steadily north through the ruined countryside. The little towns were wrecked and abandoned. Presumably refugees from the expanding Plague Area did the first damage by looting; the subsequent destruction just happened. It showed you what would just happen to any twentieth-century town or city in the course of a few weeks if the people who wage endless war against breakdown and dilapidation put aside their arms. It was anybody's guess whether fire or water had done more damage.

Between the towns the animals were incredibly bold. There was a veritable army of rabbits eating their way across a field of clover. A farmer-zombie flapped a patchwork quilt at them, saying affectionately: "Shoo, little bunnies! Go away, now! I mean it!"

But they knew he didn't and continued to chew their way across his field.

I stopped the car and called to the farmer. He came right away, smiling. "The little dickenses!" he said, waving at the rabbits. "But I haven't the heart to really scare them."

"Are you happy?" I asked him.

"Oh yes!" His eyes were sunken and bright; his cheekbones showed on his starved face. "People should be considerate," he said. "I always say that being considerate is what matters most."

"Don't you miss electricity and cars and tractors?"

"Goodness, no, I always say that things were better in the old days. Life was more gracious, I always say. Why, I don't miss gasoline or electricity one little bit. Everybody's so considerate and gracious that it makes up for everything."

"I wonder if you'd be so considerate and gracious as to lie down in the road so we can drive over you?"

He looked mildly surprised and started to get down, saying: "Well, if it would afford you gentlemen any pleasure--"

"No; don't bother after all. You can get back to your rabbits."

He touched his straw hat and went away, beaming. We drove on. I said to the professor: "Chapter Nine: 'How to be in Utter Harmony with Your Environment.' Only she didn't change herself, Professor Leuten; she changed the environment. Every man and woman in the Area is what Miss Phoebe thinks they ought to be: silly, sentimental, obliging and gracious to the point of idiocy. Nostalgic and all thumbs when it comes to this dreadful machinery."

"Norris," the professor said thoughtfully, "we've been associated for some time. I think you might drop the 'professor' and call me 'Leuten.' In a way we're friends--"

I jammed on the worn, mushy brakes. "Out!" I yelled, and we piled out. The silly glow was enveloping me fast. Again, thumb to nose and tongue out, I burned it away. When I looked at the professor and was quite sure he was a stubborn old fossil I knew I was all right again. When he glared at me and snapped: "Naturally I withdraw my last remark, Norris, and no gentleman would hold me to it," I knew he was normal. We got in and kept going north.

The devastation became noticeably worse after we passed a gutted, stinking shambles that had once been the town of Meshoppen, PA. After Meshoppen there were more bodies on the road and the flies became a horror. No pyrethrum from Kenya. No DDT from Wilmington. We drove in the afternoon heat with the windows cranked up and the hood ventilator closed. It was at about Meshoppen's radius from La Plume that things had stabilized for a while and the Army Engineers actually began to throw up barbed wire. Who knew what happened then? Perhaps Miss Phoebe recovered from a slight cold, or perhaps she told herself firmly that her faith in Professor Leuten's wonderful book was weakening; that she must take hold of herself and really work hard at being in utter harmony with her environment. The next morning no Army Engineers. Zombies in uniform were glimpsed wandering about and smiling. The next morning the radius of the Plague Area was growing at the old mile a day.

I wanted distraction from the sweat that streamed down my face. "Professor," I said, "do you remember the last word in Miss Phoebe's letter? It was forever.' Do you suppose...?"

"Immortality? Yes; I think that is well within the range of misapplied F.E. Of course complete mastery of F.E. ensures that no such selfish power would be invoked. The beauty of F.E. is its conservatism, in the kinetic sense. It is self-regulating. A world in which universal mastery of F.E. has been achieved and I now perceive that the publication of my views by the Hopedale Press was if anything a step away from that ideal would be in no outward wise different from the present world."

"Built-in escape clause," I snapped. "Like yoga. You ask 'em to prove they've achieved self-mastery, just a little demonstration like levitating or turning transparent, but they're all ready for you. They tell you they've achieved so much self-mastery they've mastered the desire to levitate or turn transparent. I almost wish I'd read your book, professor, instead of just editing it. Maybe you're smarter than I thought--"

He turned brick red and gritted out: "Your insults merely bore me, Norris."

The highway took a turn and we turned with it. I braked again and rubbed my eyes. "Do you see them?" I asked the professor.

"Yes," he said matter-of-factly. "This must be the retinue of the Duchess of Carbondale."

They were a dozen men shoulder to shoulder barricading the road. They were armed with miscellaneous sporting rifles and one bazooka. They wore kilt-like garments and what seemed to be bracelets from a five-and-ten. When we stopped they opened up the center of the line and the Duchess of Carbondale drove through in her chariot only the chariot was a harness-racing sulky and she didn't drive it; the horse was led by a skinny teen-age girl got up as Charmian for a high-school production of Antony and Cleopatra. The Duchess herself wore ample white robes, a tiara and junk jewelry. She looked like your unfavorite aunt, the fat one, or a grade-school teacher you remember with loathing when you're forty, or one of those women who ring your doorbell and try to bully you into signing petitions against fluoridation or atheism in the public schools.

The bazooka man had his stovepipe trained on our hood. His finger was on the button and he was waiting for the Duchess to nod. "Get out," I told the professor, grabbing my briefcase, He looked at the bazooka and we got out.

"Hail, O mortals," said the Duchess.

I looked helplessly at the professor. Not even my extensive experience with lady novelists had equipped me to deal with the situation. He, however, was able to take the ball. He was a European and he had status and that's the starting point for them: establish status and then conduct yourself accordingly. He said: "Madame, my name is Konrad Leuten. I am a doctor of philosophy of the University of Gottingen and a member of the faculty of the University of Basle. Whom have I the honor to address?"

Her eyes narrowed appraisingly. "O mortal," she said, and her voice was less windily dramatic, "know ye that here in the New Lemuria worldly titles are as naught. And know ye not that the pure hearts of my subjects may not be sullied by base machinery?"

"I didn't know, madame," Leuten said politely. "I apologize. We intended, however, to go only as far as La Plume. May we have your permission to do so?"

At the mention of La Plume she went poker-faced. After a moment she waved at the bazooka man. "Destroy, O Phraxanartes, the base machine of the strangers," she said. Phraxanartes touched the button of his stovepipe. Leuten and I jumped for the ditch, my hand welded to the brief-case handle, when the rocket whooshed into the poor old Ford's motor. We huddled there while the gas tank boomed and cans and bottles exploded. The noise subsided to a crackling roar and the whizzing fragments stopped coming our way after maybe a minute. I put my head up first. The Duchess and her retinue were gone, presumably melted into the roadside stand of trees.

Her windy contralto blasted out: "Arise, O strangers, and join us."

Leuten said from the ditch: "A perfectly reasonable request, Norris. Let us do so. After all, one must be obliging."

"And gracious," I added.

Good old Duchess! I thought. Good old Leuten! Wonderful old-world, with hills and trees and bunnies and kittens and considerate people...

Leuten was standing on one foot, thumbing his nose, sticking out his tongue, screaming: "Norris! Norris! Defend yourself!" He was slapping my face with his free hand. Sluggishly I went into the posture of defense, thinking: Such nonsense. Defense against what? But I wouldn't hurt old Leuten's feelings for the world.

Adrenalin boiled through my veins, triggered by the posture. Spiders. Crawling, hairy, horrid spiders with purple, venom-dripping fangs. They hid in your shoes and bit you and your feet swelled with the poison. Their sticky, loathsome webs brushed across your face when you walked in the dark and they came scuttling silently, champing their jaws, winking their evil gemlike eyes. Spiders!

The voice of the Duchess blared impatiently: "I said, join us, O strangers. Well, what are you waiting for?"

The professor and I relaxed and looked at each other. "She's mad," the professor said softly. "From an asylum."

"I doubt it. You don't know America very well. Maybe you lock them up when they get like that in Europe; over here we elect them chairlady of the Library Fund Drive. If we don't, we never hear the end of it."

The costumed girl was leading the Duchess's sulky onto the road again. Some of her retinue were beginning to follow; she waved them back and dismissed the girl curtly. We skirted the heat of the burning car and approached her. It was that or try to outrun a volley from the miscellaneous sporting rifles.

"O strangers," she said, "you mentioned La Plume. Do you happen to be acquainted with my dear friend Phoebe Bancroft?"

The professor nodded before I could stop him. But almost simultaneously with his nod I was dragging the Duchess from her improvised chariot. It was very unpleasant, but I put my hands around her throat and knelt on her. It meant letting go of the briefcase but it was worth it.

She guggled and floundered and managed to whoop: "Don't shoot! I take it back, don't shoot them. Pamphilius, don't shoot, you might hit me!"

"Send 'em away," I told her.

"Never!" she blared. "They are my loyal retainers."

"You try, Professor," I said.

I believe what he put on then was his classroom manner. He stiffened and swelled and rasped toward the shrubbery: "Come out at once. All of you."

They came out, shambling and puzzled. They realized that something was very wrong. There was the Duchess on the ground and she wasn't telling them what to do the way she'd been telling them for weeks now. They wanted to oblige her in any little way they could, like shooting strangers, or scrounging canned food for her, but how could they oblige her while she lay there, slowly turning purple? It was very confusing. Luckily there was somebody else to oblige, the professor.

"Go away," he barked at them. "Go far away. We do not need you any more. And throw away your guns."

Well, that was something a body could understand. They smiled and threw away their guns and went away in their obliging and considerate fashion.

I eased up on the Duchess's throat. "What was that guff about the New Lemuria?" I asked her.

"You're a rude and ignorant young man," she snapped. From the corner of my eye I could see the professor involuntarily nodding agreement. "Every educated person knows that the lost wisdom of Lemuria was to be revived in the person of a beautiful priestess this year. According to the science of pyramidology--"

Beautiful priestess? Oh.

The professor and I stood by while she spouted an amazing compost of lost-continentism, the Ten Tribes, anti fluoridation, vegetarianism, homeopathic medicine, organic fanning, astrology, flying saucers, and the prose poem of Kahlil Gibran.

The professor said dubiously at last: "I suppose one must call her a sort of Cultural Diffusionist...." He was happier when he had her classified. He went on: "I think you know Miss Phoebe Bancroft. We wish you to present us to her as soon as possible."

"Professor," I complained, "we have a road map and we can find La Plume. And once we've found La Plume I don't think it'll be very hard to find Miss Phoebe."

"I will be pleased to accompany you," said the Duchess. "Though normally I frown on mechanical devices, I keep an automobile nearby in case in case of --well! Of all the rude!"

Believe it or not, she was speechless. Nothing in her rich store of gibberish and hate seemed to fit the situation. And fluoridation, organic farming, even Khalil Gibran were irrelevant in the face of us two each standing on one leg, thumbing our noses, and sticking out our tongues.

Undeniably the posture of defense was losing efficiency. It took longer to burn away the foolish glow....

"Professor," I asked after we warily relaxed, "how many more of those can we take?"

He shrugged. "That is why a guide will be useful," he said. "Madame, I believe you mentioned an automobile."

"I know!" she said brightly. "It was asana yoga, wasn't it? Postures, I mean?"

The professor sucked an invisible lemon. "No, madame," he said cadaverously. "It was neither siddhasana nor padmasana. Yoga has been subsumed under Functional Epistemology, as has every other working philosophical system, Eastern and Western--but we waste time. The automobile?"

"You have to do that every so often, is that it?"

"We will leave it at that, madame. The automobile, please."

"Come right along," she said gaily. I didn't look on her face. Madam Chairlady was about to spring a parliamentary coup. But I got my briefcase and followed.

The car was in a nearby barn. It was a handsome new Lincoln, and I was reasonably certain that our fair cicerone had stolen it. But then, we had stolen the Ford.

I loaded the briefcase in and took the wheel over her objections and we headed for La Plume, a dozen miles away. On the road she yelped: "Oh, Functional Epistemology and you're Professor Lewten--"

"Yes, madame," he wearily agreed.

"I've read your book, of course. So has Miss Bancroft; shell be so pleased to see you."

"Then why, madame, did you order your subjects to murder us?"

"Well, Professor, of course I didn't know who you were then, and it was rather shocking, seeing somebody in a car. I, ah, had the feeling that you were up to no good, especially when you mentioned dear Miss Bancroft. She, you know, is really responsible for the re-emergence of the New Lemuria."

"Indeed?" said the professor. "You understand, then, about Leveled Personality Interflow?" He was beaming.

"I beg your pardon?"

"Leveled Personality Interflow!" he barked. "Chapter Nine!"

"Oh. In your book, of course. Well, as a matter of fact I skipped--"

"Another one." muttered the professor, leaning back.

The Duchess chattered on: "Dear Miss Bancroft, of course, swears by your book. But you were asking no, it wasn't what you said. I cast her horoscope and it turned out that she is the Twenty-seventh Pendragon!"

"Scheissdreck." the professor mumbled, too discouraged to translate.

"So naturally, Professor, she incarnates Taliesin spiritually and," a modest giggle, "you know who incarnates it materially. Which is only sensible, since I'm descended from the high priestesses of Mu. Little did I think when I was running the Wee Occult Book Shoppe in Carbondale!"

"Say," said the professor. He made an effort. "Madame, tell me something. Do you never feel a certain thing, a sense of friendliness and intoxication and good will enveloping you quite suddenly?"

"Oh, that" she said scornfully. "Yes; every now and then. It doesn't bother me. I just think of all the work I have to do. How I must stamp out the dreadful, soul-destroying advocates of meat eating, and chemical fertilizer, and fluoridation. How I must wage the good fight for occult science and crush the materialistic philosophers. How I must tear down our corrupt and self-seeking ministers and priests, our rotten laws and customs--"

"Lieber Gott." the professor marveled as she went on. "With Norris it is spiders. With me it is rats and asphyxiation. But with this woman it is apparently everything in the Kosmos except her own revolting self!" She didn't hear him; she was demanding that the voting age for women be lowered to sixteen and for men raised to thirty-five.

We plowed through flies and mosquitoes like smoke. The flies bred happily on dead cows and in sheep which unfortunately were still alive. There wasn't oil cake for the cows in the New Lemuria. There wasn't sheep-dip for the sheep. There weren't state and county and township and village road crews constantly patrolling, unplugging sluices, clearing gutters, replacing rusted culverts, and so quite naturally the countryside was reverting to swampland. The mosquitoes loved it.

"La Plume," the Duchess announced gaily. "And that's Miss Phoebe Bancroft's little house right there. Just why did you wish to see her, Professor, by the way?"

"To complete her re-education..." the professor said in a tired voice.

Miss Phoebe's house, and the few near it, were the only places we had seen in the Area which weren't blighted by neglect. Miss Phoebe, of course, was able to tell the shambling zombies what to do in the way of truck gardening, lawn mowing and maintenance. The bugs weren't too bad there.

"She's probably resting, poor dear," said the Duchess. I stopped the car and we got out The Duchess said something about Kleenex and got in again and rummaged through the glove compartment.

"Please, Professor," I said, clutching my briefcase. "Play it the smart way. The way I told you."

"Norris," he said, "I realize that you have my best interests at heart. You're a good boy, Norris and I like you n--"

"Watch it!" I yelled, and swung into the posture of defense. So did he.

Spiders. It wasn't a good old world, not while there were loathsome spiders in it. Spiders.

And a bullet shot past my ear. The professor fell. I turned and saw the Duchess looking smug, about to shoot me too. I side-stepped and she missed; as I slapped the automatic out of her hand I thought confusedly that it was a near miracle, her hitting the professor at five paces even if he was a standing target. People don't realize how hard it is to hit anything with a hand gun.

I suppose I was going to kill her or at least damage her badly when a new element intruded. A little old white-baked lady tottering down the neat gravel path from the house. She wore a nice pastel dress which surprised me; somehow I had always though of her in black.

"Bertha!" Miss Phoebe, rapped out "What have you done?"

The Duchess simpered. "That man there was going to harm you, Phoebe, dear. And this fellow is just as bad--"

Miss Phoebe said: "Nonsense. Nobody can harm me. Chapter Nine, Rule Seven. Bertha, I saw you shoot that gentleman. I'm very angry with you, Bertha. Very angry!"

The Duchess turned up her eyes and crumpled. I didn't have to check; I was sure she was dead. Miss Phoebe was once again in Utter Harmony with Her Environment.

I went over and knelt beside the professor. He had a hole in his stomach and was still breathing. There wasn't much blood. I sat down and cried. For the professor. For the poor damned human race which at a mile per day would be gobbled up into apathy and idiocy. Good-by, Newton and Einstein, good-by steak dinners and Michelangelo and Tenzing Norkay; good-by Moses, Rodin, Kwan Yin, transistors, Boole and Steichen...

A redheaded man with an Adam's apple was saying gently to Miss Phoebe: "It's this rabbit, ma'am." And indeed an enormous rabbit was loping up to him. "Every time I find a turnip or something he takes it away from me and he kicks and bites when I try to reason with him--" And indeed he took a piece of turnip from his pocket and the rabbit insolently pawed it from has hand and nibbled it triumphantly with one wise-guy eye cocked up at his victim. "He does that every time, Miss Phoebe," the man said unhappily.

The little old lady said: "I'll think of something, Henry. But let me take care of these people first."

"Yes, ma'am," Henry said. He reached out cautiously for his piece of turnip and the rabbit bit him and then went back to its nibbling.

"Young man," Miss Phoebe said to me, "what's wrong? You're giving in to despair. You musn't do that. Chapter Nine, Rule Three,"

I pulled myself together enough to say: "This is Professor Leuten. He's dying."

Her eyes widened. "The Professor Leuten?" I nodded. "Haw to Live on the Cosmic Expense Account?" I nodded.

"Oh dear! If only there were something I could do!"

Heal the dying? Apparently not. She didn't think she could, so she couldn't.

"Professor," I said. "Professor."

He opened his eyes and said something in German, then, hazily: "Woman shot me. Spoil her racket, you call it? Who is this?" He grimaced with pain.

"I'm Miss Phoebe Bancroft, Professor Leuten," she breathed, leaning over him. "I'm so dreadfully sorry; I admire your wonderful book so much."

His weary eyes turned to me. "So, Norris," he said "No time to do it right. We do it your way. Help me up."

I helped him to his feet, suffering, I think, almost as much as he did. The wound started to bleed more copiously.

"No!" Miss Phoebe exclaimed. "You should lie down."

The professor leered. "Good idea, baby. You want to keep me company?"

"What's that?" she snapped.

"You heard me, baby. Say, you got any liquor in your place?"

"Certainly not! Alcohol is inimical to the development of the higher functions of the mind. Chapter Nine--"

"Pfui on Chapter Nine, baby. I chust wrote that stuff for money."

If Miss Phoebe hadn't been in a state resembling surgical shock after hearing that, she would have seen the pain convulsing his face. "You mean... ?" she quavered, beginning to look her age for the first time.

"Sure. Lotta garbage. Sling fancy words and make money. What I go for is liquor and women. Women like you, baby."

The goose did it.

Weeping, frightened, insulted and lost she tottered blindly up the neat path to her house. I eased the professor to the ground. He was biting almost through his lower lip.

I heard a new noise behind me. It was Henry, the redhead with the Adam's apple. He was chewing his piece of turnip and had hold of the big rabbit by the hind legs. He was flailing it against a tree. Henry looked ferocious, savage, carnivorous and very, very dangerous to meddle with. In a word, human.

"Professor," I breathed at his waxen face, "you've done it. It's broken. Over. No more Plague Area."

He muttered, his eyes closed: "I regret not doing it properly... but tell the people how I died, Norris. With dignity, without fear. Because of Functional Epistemology."

I said through tears: "I'll do more than tell them, Professor. The world will know about your heroism."

"The world must know. We've got to make a book of this your authentic, authorized, fictional biography and as Hopedale's west-coast agent I'll see to the film sale--"

"Film?" he said drowsily. "Book...?"

"Yes. Your years of struggle, the little girl at home who kept faith in you when everybody scoffed, your burning mission to transform the world, and the climax here, now! as you give up your life for your philosophy."

"What girl?" he asked weakly.

"There must have been someone, Professor. We'll find someone."

"You would," he asked feebly, "document my expulsion from Germany by the Nazis?"

"Well, I don't think so, Professor. The export market's important, especially when it comes to selling film rights, and you don't want to go offending people by raking up old memories. But don't worry, Professor. The big thing is, the world will never forget you and what you've done."

He opened his eyes and breathed: "You mean your version of what I've done. Ach, Norris, Norris! Never did I think there was a power on Earth which could force me to contravene the Principle of Permissive Evolution." His voice became stronger. "But you, Norris, are that power." He got to his feet, grunting. "Norris," he said, "I hereby give you formal warning that any attempt to make a fictional biography or cinema film of my life will result in an immediate injunction being--you say slapped?--upon you, as well as suits for damages from libel, copyright infringement and invasion of privacy. I have had enough."

"Professor," I gasped. "You're well!"

He grimaced. "I'm sick. Profoundly sick to my stomach at my contravention of the Principle of Permissive--"

His voice grew fainter. This was because he was rising slowly into the air. He leveled off at a hundred feet and called: "Send the royalty statements to my old address in Basle. And remember, Norris, I warned you--"

He zoomed eastward then at perhaps one hundred miles per hour. I think he was picking up speed when he vanished from sight.

I stood there for ten minutes or so and sighed and rubbed my eyes and wondered whether anything was worth while. I decided I'd read the professor's book tomorrow without fail, unless something came up.

Then I took my briefcase and went up the walk and into Miss Phoebe's house. (Henry had made a twig fire on the lawn and was roasting his rabbit; he glared at me most disobligingly and I skirted him with care.)

This was, after all, the pay-off; this was, after all, the reason why I had risked my life and sanity.

"Miss Phoebe," I said to her taking it out of the briefcase, "I represent the Hopedale Press; this is one of our standard contracts. We're very much interested in publishing the story of your life, with special emphasis on the events of the past few weeks. Naturally you'd have an experienced collaborator. I believe sales in the hundred thousands wouldn't be too much to expect I would suggest as a title that's right, you sign on that line there How to be Supreme Ruler of Everybody..."

Contents

WE DIDN'T DO ANYTHING WRONG, HARDLY

By ROGER KUYKENDALL

After all--they only borrowed it a little while, just to fix it--

I mean, it isn't like we swiped anything. We maybe borrowed a couple of things, like. But, gee, we put everything back like we found it, pretty near.

Even like the compressor we got from Stinky Brinker that his old man wasn't using and I traded my outboard motor for, my old m ... my father made me trade back. But it was like Skinny said ... You know, Skinny. Skinny Thompson. He's the one you guys keep calling the boy genius, but shucks, he's no ...

Well, yeah, it's like Skinny said, we didn't need an outboard motor, and we did need a compressor. You've got to have a compressor on a spaceship, everybody knows that. And that old compression chamber that old man ... I mean Mr. Fields let us use didn't have a compressor.

Sure he said we could use it. Anyway he said we could play with it, and Skinny said we were going to make a spaceship out of it, and he said go ahead.

Well, no, he didn't say it exactly like that. I mean, well, like he didn't take it serious, sort of.

Anyway, it made a swell spaceship. It had four portholes on it and an air lock and real bunks in it and lots of room for all that stuff that Skinny put in there. But it didn't have a compressor and that's why ...

What stuff? Oh, you know, the stuff that Skinny put in there. Like the radar he made out of a TV set and the antigravity and the atomic power plant he invented to run it all with.

He's awful smart, Skinny is, but he's not like what you think of a genius. You know, he's not all the time using big words, and he doesn't look like a genius. I mean, we call him Skinny 'cause he used to be--Skinny.

But he isn't now, I mean he's maybe small for his age, anyway he's smaller than me, and I'm the same age as he is. 'Course, I'm big for my age, so that doesn't mean much, does it?

Well, I guess Stinker Brinker started it. He's always riding Skinny about one thing or another, but Skinny never gets mad and it's a good thing for Stinker, too. I saw Skinny clean up on a bunch of ninth graders ... Well, a couple of them anyway. They were saying ... Well, I guess I won't tell you what they were saying. Anyway, Skinny used judo, I guess, because there wasn't much of a fight.

Anyway, Stinker said something about how he was going to be a rocket pilot when he grew up, and I told him that Skinny had told me that there wouldn't be any rockets, and that antigravity would be the thing as soon as it was invented. So Stinker said it never would be invented, and I said it would so, and he said it would not, and I said ...

Well, if you're going to keep interrupting me, how can I ...

All right. Anyway, Skinny broke into the argument and said that he could prove mathematically that antigravity was possible, and Stinky said suure he could, and Skinny said sure he could, and Stinky said suuure he could, like that. Honestly, is that any way to argue? I mean it sounds like two people agreeing, only Stinky keeps going suuure, like that, you know? And Stinky, what does he know about mathematics? He's had to take Remedial Arithmetic ever since ...

* * * * *

No, I don't understand how the antigravity works. Skinny told me, but it was something about meson flow and stuff like that that I didn't understand. The atomic power plant made more sense.

Where did we get what uranium? Gee, no, we couldn't afford uranium, so Skinny invented a hydrogen fusion plant. Anyone can make hydrogen. You just take zinc and sulfuric acid and ...

Deuterium? You mean like heavy hydrogen? No, Skinny said it would probably work better, but like I said, we couldn't afford anything fancy. As it was, Skinny had to pay five or six dollars for that special square tubing in the antigravity, and the plastic space helmets we had cost us ninety-eight cents each. And it cost a dollar and a half for the special tube that Skinny needed to make the TV set into a radar.

You see, we didn't steal anything, really. It was mostly stuff that was just lying around. Like the TV set was up in my attic, and the old refrigerator that Skinny used the parts to make the atomic power plant out of from. And then, a lot of the stuff we already had. Like the skin diving suits we made into spacesuits and the vacuum pump that Skinny had already and the generator.

Sure, we did a lot of skin diving, but that was last summer. That's how we knew about old man Brinker's compressor that Stinky said was his and I traded my outboard motor for and had to trade back. And that's how we knew about Mr. Fields' old compression chamber, and all like that.

The rocket? Well, it works on the same principle as the atomic power plant, only it doesn't work except in a vacuum, hardly. Course you don't need much of a rocket when you have antigravity. Everyone knows that.

Well, anyway, that's how we built the spaceship, and believe me, it wasn't easy. I mean with Stinky all the time bothering us and laughing at us. And I had to do a lot of lawn mowing to get money for the square tubing for the antigravity and the special tube for the radar, and my space helmet.

Stinky called the space helmets kid stuff. He was always saying things like say hello to the folks on Mars for me, and bring back a bottle of canal number five, and all like that, you know. Course, they did look like kid stuff, I guess. We bought them at the five-and-dime, and they were meant for kids. Of course when Skinny got through with them, they worked fine.

We tested them in the air lock of the compression chamber when we got the compressor in. They tested out pretty good for a half-hour, then we tried them on in there. Well, it wasn't a complete vacuum, just twenty-seven inches of mercury, but that was O.K. for a test.

So anyway, we got ready to take off. Stinky was there to watch, of course. He was saying things like, farewell, O brave pioneers, and stuff like that. I mean it was enough to make you sick.

He was standing there laughing and singing something like up in the air junior birdmen, but when we closed the air-lock door, we couldn't hear him. Skinny started up the atomic power plant, and we could see Stinky laughing fit to kill. It takes a couple of minutes for it to warm up, you know. So Stinky started throwing rocks to attract our attention, and Skinny was scared that he'd crack a porthole or something, so he threw the switch and we took off.

Boy, you should of seen Stinky's face. I mean you really should of seen it. One minute he was laughing you know, and the next minute he looked like a goldfish. I guess he always did look like a goldfish, but I mean even more like, then. And he was getting smaller and smaller, because we had taken off.

* * * * *

We were gone pretty near six hours, and it's a good thing my Mom made me take a lunch. Sure, I told her where we were going. Well ... anyway I told her we were maybe going to fly around the world in Skinny and my spaceship, or maybe go down to Carson's pond. And she made me take a lunch and made me promise I wouldn't go swimming alone, and I sure didn't.

But we did go around the world three or four times. I lost count. Anyway that's when we saw the satellite--on radar. So Skinny pulled the spaceship over to it and we got out and looked at it. The spacesuits worked fine, too.

Gosh no, we didn't steal it or anything. Like Skinny said, it was just a menace to navigation, and the batteries were dead, and it wasn't working right anyway. So we tied it onto the spaceship and took it home. No, we had to tie it on top, it was too big to take inside with the antennas sticking out. Course, we found out how to fold them later.

Well, anyway the next day, the Russians started squawking about a capitalist plot, and someone had swiped their satellite. Gee, I mean with all the satellites up there, who'd miss just one?

So I got worried that they'd find out that we took it. Course, I didn't need to worry, because Stinky told them all right, just like a tattletale.

So anyway, after Skinny got the batteries recharged, we put it back. And then when we landed there were hundreds of people standing around, and Mr. Anderson from the State Department. I guess you know the rest.

Except maybe Mr. Anderson started laughing when we told him, and he said it was the best joke on the Russians he ever heard.

I guess it is when you think about it. I mean, the Russians complaining about somebody swiping their satellite and then the State Department answering a couple of kids borrowed it, but they put it back.

One thing that bothers me though, we didn't put it back exactly the way we found it. But I guess it doesn't matter. You see, when we put it back, we goofed a little. I mean, we put it back in the same orbit, more or less, but we got it going in the wrong direction.

THE END

Contents

THE GREAT POTLATCH RIOTS

By ALLEN KIM LANG

Oh, leave it to the bureaucrats and they'll figure out new ways to make you buy more and more.... But there was only one way the poor consumer could rise up in his wrath.

"I've sweated for months over the plans for this campaign," Captain Wesley Winfree told the Major. "Just nod, sir; that's all I ask; and I'll throw my forces into the field."

"I admire your audacity, Winfree," Major Stanley Dampfer said, "but don't you think we'd be wise to consolidate our current positions before launching a fresh offensive?"

Captain Winfree, straight in his scarlet-trimmed winter greens, tapped the toe of one boot with his swagger-stick. "With all respect, sir," he said, "I feel that if we do no more than hold the line, we're lending moral comfort to the foes of prosperity. Attack! That's my battle-plan, sir. Attack! And attack again!"

Major Dampfer, seated behind Winfree's desk, stretched out his legs and sighed. "You younger officers, men who've never in your lives tasted defeat, are an inspiration and a trial to us old field-graders," he said. "Captain, a project that failed could set your District back fifteen years."

"I realize that, sir," Winfree said. "I'm placing my career in the balance. If I attempt this, and goof, ship me to the sticks, Major. I'd rather spend the rest of my BSG years as a corporal, a simple Potlatch Observer in a downstate village, than never to have embarked on this campaign."

"Young Napoleon must have been very like you, Winfree," Major Dampfer mused. "Very well, lad. Brief me."

"Yes, sir!" Captain Winfree marched over to the giant calendar that covered one wall of his office and tapped his stick against the three dates circled in red. "We've established this triangle of strong-points," he said. "We control the second Sunday in May and the third Sunday in June in addition to our first and most vital holding, the twenty-fifth of December. I regard these three victories, sir, as only beachheads, only the softening-up phases of a still greater campaign. We must press on toward Total Prosperity."

"How, Winfree?" Major Dampfer asked.

"By adding three hundred and sixty-two days a year to our laurels, sir," Winfree said, sweeping his swagger-stick across the face of the calendar. "My plan is to make every consumer's birthday a Gratuity Day for each of his Nearest-and-Dearest."

Major Dampfer sat up straight. "Captain," he said softly, "this is Thinking Big. This could lend billions a year to the Gross National Product. It could mean a major break-through on the Prosperity front. Are you really proposing that each consumer be required to give birthday presents to the same people, and on the same scale, as he now gives Xmas Gratuities?"

"Precisely, sir," Captain Winfree said. "My staff has in the files the birthdate of every consumer in the District. Enforcement of the new quotas I propose will be no more difficult than the old: the same scale of fines for non-compliance, the same terms of imprisonment for repeated offenses will be imposed. The dates-of-destruction to be marked on Birthday Gratuities will be set as the next Potlatch Day, plus one year. Merchandise will be marked with the year-date precisely as is now done for Xmas, Dad's Day, and Mom's Day gifts. Birthday-cards will be addressed and sent from this office, just like Xmas cards."

* * * * *

Major Dampfer stood and drew on his uniform gauntlets. "May I assume that you've covered the field public-relations-wise?" he asked.

"Yes, sir," Captain Winfree said. "I've composed a slogan for this year's drive in my District: 'Make the Magi Come the Year 'Round--Birthday Gratuities for All!'"

"It sings, Winfree," Major Dampfer said. "I like it. Captain, you have my nod. Carry on with this program. If you win the battle for this District, I'll get you a desk in Washington and Divisional Command; you'll help us tailor your plan to fit the entire nation."

"Thank you, sir," Winfree said, grinning. "I won't disappoint you."

"You'd best not," the Major said. He paused by the office door. "Captain Winfree, the word is on the grapevine that you're planning to marry one of the corporals in your office. That right?"

"Yes, sir," Winfree said. "Peggy and I have set the wedding for twenty-three December, the day before Potlatch. We'd be delighted should your duties allow you to attend, Major."

"I'll be there," Major Dampfer promised. "And as a little gift from the Bureau of Seasonal Gratuities, Winfree, I order you to move out on your new campaign that same day: twenty-three December." He raised a gauntleted hand. "No, Captain! Don't protest that you'll be needed here. Your work is strategy, not tactics. Your plans can be implemented by your staff while you're off on your honeymoon."

"Whatever you say, sir," Winfree said.

"I'd be further gratified," the Major continued, "if you'd hold the ceremony right here in your Headquarters Building. We of the BSG must establish some traditions, Winfree; the other Services have a century-and-a-half's lead on us in that field. So, if the lovely corporal approves, we'll make yours a proper military wedding."

"All this is very good of you, sir," Captain Winfree said. "I'm certain Peggy will be pleased."

"Good!" Major Dampfer said. "I'll handle all the details. Winfree, you've got the quality we used to know as Old-Fashioned Intestinal Fortitude, back in the day when a spade was called a spade and no apologies about it. We need more men like you in the Bureau." He snapped a salute. "Carry on, Captain; and Happy Potlatch!"

"A Very Happy Potlatch to you, sir!" Winfree said, tossing back the salute. "And a Merry Xmas!"

Captain Winfree walked to the big window in the outer office to watch Major Dampfer driven off in his sergeant-chauffeured, scarlet-and-green BSG Rolls limousine. Then he about-faced without warning to glare at his little command, the eight non-coms, the twenty-seven Other Ranks, the four young lieutenants. They all sat silent, watching him as though waiting for confirmation of an unpleasant rumor. Not a file-cabinet stood open, not a typewriter was moving. "Listen, you people," Winfree growled, pointing his swagger-stick like a weapon, not sparing even Corporal Peggy MacHenery his anger; "We've got a Potlatch Day coming up, the biggest ever. Now get on the ball, dammit! I don't want to see one of you stopping for breath again till Xmas Day." The lieutenants and sergeants flushed; the girl privates jumped their fingers onto typewriter keys. "Corporal MacHenery," Winfree said, "bring your notepad to my office."

* * * * *

Peggy MacHenery, Corporal, Bureau of Seasonal Gratuities, followed her commanding officer and husband-designate into his office. "Close the door, Corporal," Winfree said. Peggy did so, and took her chair next to his desk, the pad open on her knee and her fountain pen at the ready. "No dictation," Captain Winfree said. "Please forgive me for taking valuable official time for a personal matter, Corporal; especially after that little display of tyranny I just put on out there. Peggy, Major Dampfer has ordered us to hold our wedding here at District Headquarters. He'll bring in a transport loaded with BSG brass, fly in a band to give us a send-off with pibrochs and marches and double-flams; and he'll probably set up an arch of sabers for us to parade through. Do you mind all this very much, Peggy?"

* * * * *

She snapped her notepad shut. "Daddy will be furious," she said.

"Your dad is already so worked up about your marrying me, a BSG-man, that a little extra anger won't even show," Winfree said. "I'm convinced that he's teaching me fencing only in hopes I'll have a fatal accident."

"Nonsense!" Peggy said. She tossed her notebook on the desk and stood to take Winfree's hand. "Don't make Daddy out a monster, Wes. About the other thing, the military wedding, I don't care. I'd marry you in a beer-barrel, if you wanted it that way."

Captain Winfree took the girl's free hand. "Peggy," he said, "you're the greatest! Now the good news. Major Dampfer has approved my plans for instituting Birthday Gratuity Quotas in this District. Aren't you glad for me?"

"Glad?" Peggy demanded, pulling away. "Wes, do you think the consumers of this District will put up with another invasion of their pocketbooks, let alone their private sentiments?"

"Peggy, if you're going to gripe every time the Bureau raises the quotas a notch," Winfree said, "you don't belong in that uniform you're wearing."

"Want me to take it off?" Peggy challenged, reaching for the top button of her blouse.

"No, dammit!" Winfree said. "But if you're going to discuss the propriety of every decision I make, please have the grace to wait till we're outside District Headquarters to do it."

"Yes, sir; thank you, sir," Peggy said. She saluted. "Is there anything more you want to chew me out about, sir?"

Winfree saluted back, then growled at himself for the reflex. "Woman," he said, "once we're married I want to see your request for discharge lying here on my desk. How the devil can an officer run an organization when one of the enlisted personnel, the corporal he's in love with, persists in subordination?"

"I can't quit," Peggy said. "We'll need my salary, Wes, if only to pay off our BSG quotas. What with buying Xmas presents, gifts for Mom's Day and Pop's Day, and sending Birthday Gratuities to every name on our combined Nearest-and-Dearest lists, we'll be living on rice and soybeans till you make Light Colonel. Quit? Wes, if you expect to eat regular after we're married, you'd best put me in for sergeant's stripes."

"Please, Peggy," Winfree asked. "We'll discuss this all tonight, off duty, if I survive your father's swordplay. For now, please let letters out to all District wholesalers, telling them of the Birthday Quotas and the new dating procedures. Have one of the lieutenants open the secret files for you--it's all under 'Operation Nativity.' You can get at it right away."

"Very well, Captain, sir," Peggy said. "Happy Potlatch, sir." She about-faced and marched out, banging the office door behind her.

"Happy Potlatch be damned!" Captain Winfree said, flinging his swagger-stick toward the calendar.

* * * * *

The MacHenery home was all gables and pinnacles and spooled porch-pillars, very like an enormous wedding-cake, every horizontal surface now frosted with a thin layer of snow. Captain Winfree tugged off his gauntlets, rang the bell, and stood straighter than usual to withstand the hostile inspection of Kevin MacHenery, Peggy's father.

Mr. MacHenery opened the door. Captain Winfree, although retaining his smile of greeting, groaned inwardly. MacHenery was wearing his canvas fencing outfit, flat-soled shoes, and carried a foil in one hand. "My you are a gorgeous sight, all Kelly-green and scarlet piping, like a tropical bird that's somehow strayed into the snowfields," MacHenery said. "Do come in, Captain, and warm your feathers."

"Thank you, sir," Winfree said, brushing the snow from his cap. He peeled off his overcoat and hung it on the hall tree, sticking his swagger-stick in one of its pockets. "Peggy busy?" he asked, hoping that her appearance would preclude his being given another unsolicited fencing-lesson.

"After having spent two hours in the bathroom with a curry-comb and a bottle of wave-set," MacHenery said, "my daughter has finally got down to work in the kitchen. We have time for an engagement at steel in the parlor, if you'd care to refine your style, Captain."

"Just as you say, sir," Winfree said.

"Your politeness offends me, Wes," Kevin MacHenery complained, handing him a foil and a wire-mesh mask. "Slip off your shoes. It's a terrible burden you are laying on the shoulders of an aging man, being so well-spoken when he likes nothing more than an argument. Now assume the on guard position, Wesley."

Winfree obediently placed his feet at right angles, raised his foil, and "sat down," assuming the bent-leg position and feeling his leg-muscles, still sore from his last session with MacHenery, begin to complain. "You're holding your foil like a flyswatter," MacHenery said. "Here, like this!"

"None of that, Daddy," Peggy said, appearing from the kitchen. "I'll not have you two sitting down to eat all sweaty and out of breath, like last time Wes was over here."

"She treats me like a backward child," MacHenery said. He took a bottle from a shelf and poured generous dollops of Scotch into two glasses, one of which he handed to Winfree. "Inasmuch as I disapprove of the coming season," he said, "I'll offer you no toast, Captain."

"You don't care even for Xmas?" Winfree asked in a tone of mild reproach.

"Ex-mas?" MacHenery demanded. "What the devil is this nor-fish-nor-fowl thing you call Ex-mas? Some new festival, perhaps, celebrated by carillons of cash-register chimes?"

"Christmas, if you prefer, sir," Winfree said. "We in the Bureau of Seasonal Gratuities get used to using the other name. We use the word so much in writing that cutting it from nine letters to four saves some thirty thousand dollars annually, in this District alone."

"That's grand," MacHenery said. He sat down with his whiskey. "Simply grand."

"We could drink to a Happy Potlatch," Captain Winfree suggested.

"I'd sooner toast my imminent death by tetanus," MacHenery said.

"I'd like to taste this stuff," Winfree said. "Let's compromise. Can we drink to Peggy?"

"Accepted," MacHenery said, raising his glass. "To my Peggy--our Peggy." He gave the whiskey the concentration it deserved. Then, "You know, Wesley," he said, "if you weren't in the BSG I could like you real well. I'd rejoice at your becoming my son-in-law. Too bad that you wear the enemy uniform."

* * * * *

"The BSG is hardly an enemy," Winfree said. "It's been an American institution for a long time. This is excellent whiskey."

"We'll test a second sample, to see whether its quality stands up through the bottle," MacHenery suggested. "For all we know, they may be putting the best on top." He poured them each another. "Yes, Wesley, the Bureau of Seasonal Gratuities has been with the American consumer quite a while. Twenty years it'll be, come next Potlatch Day. You were brought up in the foul tradition, Wes. You don't know what our country was like in the good old days, when Christmas was spelled with a C instead of an X."

"I know that a paltry twenty billion dollars a year were spent on Xmas--sorry, sir--on Christmas Gratuities, back before my Bureau came on the scene to triple that figure, to bring us all greater prosperity."

"Your Bureau brought us the stink of burning," MacHenery said. "It brought us the Potlatch Pyres."

"Yes, Potlatch!" Captain Winfree said. "Potlatch Pyres and Potlatch Day--childhood's brightest memory. Ah, those smells from the fire! The incense of seared varnish; the piny smoke from building-blocks tossed into the flames; the thick wool stinks of dated shirts and cowboy-suits, gasoline-soaked and tossed into the Potlatch Pyre. My little brother, padded fat in his snowsuit, toddling up to the fire to toss in his dated sled, then scampering back from the sparks while Mom and Dad smiled at him from the porch, cuddling hot cups of holiday ponchero in their hands."

"Seduction of the innocents," MacHenery said. "Training the babes to be wastrels."

"We loved it," Winfree insisted. "True, the little girls might cry as they handed a dated doll to the BSG-man; while he prepared it for suttee with a wash of gasoline and set it into the fire; but little girls, as I suppose you know, relish occasions for weeping. They cheered up mighty quick, believe me, when the thermite grenades were set off, filling the night air with the electric smell of molten metal, burning dated clocks and desk-lamps, radios and humidors, shoes and ships and carving-sets; burning them down to smoke and golden-glowing puddles under the ashes of the Potlatch Pyre. Then the fireworks, Mr. MacHenery. The fireworks! The BSG-man touching a flaming torch to the fuses of the mortars; a sizzle and a burst; the Japanese star-shells splitting the sky, splashing across the night's ceiling, scattering from their pods, blossoming into Queen Anne's Lace in a dozen colors of fire."

"Fire and destruction," MacHenery said. "There's your holiday for children--fire and destruction!"

"You missed it, sir," Winfree said. "You don't understand. Potlatch is a wonderful day for children, a glorious introduction to the science of economics. The boys light Roman candles, shooting crimson and orchid and brass-flamed astonishers into the clouds. A soft fog of snow makes fuzzy smears of the pinwheels, of the children racing, sparklers in both hands, across the frozen lawn. Dad lights the strings of cannon-crackers--at our house they used to dangle from a wire strung across the porch, like clusters of giant phlox--and they convulse into life, jumping and banging and scattering their red skins onto the snow, filling the air with the spice of gunpowder.

* * * * *

"The high-school kids come home from their Potlatch Parties ..."

"Wreckage and mayhem," MacHenery grunted. "We used to throw the same kind of parties when I was a tad, but they were against the law, back then. We called 'em chicken-runs."

"But nowadays, sir, those Potlatch Parties contribute to the general prosperity," Winfree explained. "Used-car lots used to border all the downtown streets, anchors on progress. Now those dated cars are smashed, and used for scrap. The high-school drivers work off their aggressions ramming them together. And there's no mayhem, Mr. MacHenery; the BSG-man assigned to Potlatch Parties strap the kids in safe and make sure their crash-helmets fit tight. It's all clean fun."

"Morally," MacHenery said, "Potlatch Parties are still chicken-runs."

* * * * *

Peggy came back, as sleek and crisp as though cooking were an expensive sort of beauty treatment. "Supper will be ready in five minutes," she said. "If you tigers will wash up ..."

"We'll drink up, first," her father said. "This man of yours has been feeding me BSG propaganda. I'm not sure I have any appetite left."

"What started you hating the Bureau of Seasonal Gratuities, Mr. MacHenery?" Winfree said.

MacHenery poured them each a drink. "You ever read Suetonius, Wes?" he asked.

"No, sir."

"Yours is a generation of monoglots," MacHenery sighed. "It figures, though. There's no profit in having today's youth read the clinical record of another civilization that died of self-indulgence, that went roistering to its doom in a carnival of bloat."

"Doom?" Winfree asked.

"Doom richly deserved," MacHenery said. "Old Suetonius describes, for example, an instrument that accompanied dinner-parties during the reigns of the last few Caesars. It was a device that accomplished, two thousand years ago, the function of our proud Bureau of Seasonal Gratuities. A feather, my boy. A simple goose-quill."

"I don't understand," Winfree said.

"I'd be hurt if you did, Captain," MacHenery said. "I've set my mind on explaining the point. Now you see, Wes, the late Caesars were pretty good consumers of everything but petroleum, we having that edge on them. They spread a mighty fine table. A gourmet would bring to Rome caviar from the Caucasus, peaches from Majorca, and, for all I know, kippers from Britain. Picture it, Wesley: cherries served in golden bowls, heaped on the snow trotted down from mountain-tops by marathons of slaves. A dish called The Shield of Minerva was one of their greatest delights; this being an Irish stew compounded of lamprey-milt, pike-livers, flamingo-tongues, and the tiny, tasty brains of pheasants and peacocks; eaten while viewing the floor-show of strip-teasing Circassian girls or--Galba's invention, this--elephants walking tight-rope. Grand, Wes. No meals like that at the supermarket; no shows like that even on the television."

"But the feather?" Winfree prompted.

"Ah, yes," MacHenery said. "The moment our noble Roman had eaten his fill he'd pick up the feather next to his plate and, excusing himself, adjourn to the adjoining vomitorium. A few tickles of the palate, and his first meal would be only a lovely memory. He'd saunter back to his bench by the table again, ready to set to with another helping of Minerva's Shield."

"Disgusting," Winfree said.

"Yes, indeed," MacHenery agreed, smiling and fitting his fingertips together. "Now attend my simile, Captain. Unlike those feathered Romans of the Decadence, we moderns settle for one meal at a sitting, and let it digest in peace. We have instead our more sophisticated greeds, whetted by subtle persuasions and an assurance that it's really quite moral to ransom our future for today's gimmicks."

"Prosperity requires the cooperation of every citizen," Captain Winfree said, quoting an early slogan of the BSG.

"Your artificial prosperity requires us, the moment we're sated with chrome chariots and miracle-fiber dressing-gowns and electronic magics, the minute our children have toys enough to last them through the age of franchise, to take in hand the feather forced upon us by regulation of the Bureau of Seasonal Gratuities and visit the parish Potlatch Pyre, our modern vomitorium, to spew up last year's dainties to make belly-room for a new lot," MacHenery said.

"Daddy!" Peggy MacHenery protested from the living-room doorway. "What sort of table-talk is that?"

"Truth is the sweetest sauce, Peggy," MacHenery said, getting up from his chair. "What delights have you cooked up for us, child?"

"Your favorite dish, Daddy," Peggy said, grinning at him. "Peacock brains on toast."

* * * * *

The next two weeks were too busy for Captain Winfree to partner Kevin MacHenery on the fencing-mat. He was double-busy, in fact; planning the biggest Potlatch Day in twenty years at the same time he started the wheels of his project to make birthdays Gratuity Days for every consumer in his District.

The girls, assisted by two of the male sergeants, had decorated the District Headquarters till it glittered like a child's dream of the North Pole. Against one wall they'd placed the Xmas tree, its branches bearing dozens of dancing elves, Japanese swordsmen, marching squads of BSG-recruits, prancing circus-ponies; all watch-work figures busy with movement, flashing with microscopic lights, humming little melodies that matched their motions. A giant replica of the Bureau's cap-emblem--the Federal eagle clutching between his talons a banderole bearing the motto, 'Tis More Blessed to Give Than Receive--had been mounted on the center wall, the place of honor. Beneath the eagle stood a bandstand draped in bunting, ready to accommodate the Bureau of Seasonal Gratuities Brass-Band-and-Glee-Club, the members of which were to fly in from Washington to grace the bridal day with epithalamiums and martial song.

The big work, the eight-hours-a-day and after-supper-overtime work, was the preparation for Potlatch Day, the festival that meant to the BSG what April Fifteenth means to the Internal Revenue Service. Cases of fireworks piled up in the brick warehouse next door to Headquarters. Sawdust-packed thermite grenades were stacked right up to the perforated pipes of the sprinkler system. No Smoking sign blossomed a hundred yards on every side. The blacklists, naming consumers who'd withheld dated gifts from the Potlatch Pyres of earlier years, were brought up to date and distributed to the Reserve BSG Officers in each township of Winfree's District. These holdouts, it was safe to assume, would be under surveillance on Potlatch Day. Cold-eyed sergeants and lieutenants would make note of the material each of them consigned to the flames, and would cross-check their notes with Nearest-and-Dearest lists to make sure that all post-dated Mom's Day and Dad's Day gratuities, all of last Xmas's gifts, had been destroyed as required by BSG ordinance.

Meanwhile letters piled into Captain Winfree's office, thousands of them each time the Post Office truck stopped outside Headquarters. Several of these were penned in a brownish stuff purported to be their authors' lifeblood; and all voiced indignation against Schedule 121B, Table 12, which set minimum levels of cost for the birthday gratuities they'd have to give each of the fifteen persons on their Nearest-and-Dearest lists. Hundreds of protests were printed in the vox populi columns of District newspapers, recommending every printable form of violence against agents of the Bureau. BSG practice was to regard with benign eye public outcry of this sort. No consumer in Winfree's District, immersed as he was in the debate over Birthday Gratuity Minima, could possibly plead ignorance should he be apprehended in violation of these new regulations.

* * * * *

Finally, it was two days before Xmas, Potlatch Day Minus One. Phone-calls had rippled out from District Headquarters, calling all BSG Reservists to the colors, assigning them to Potlatch Duty in the townships or patrol in the city; telling each officer and non-com where and when to submit his requisition for pyrotechnical devices, gasoline, thermite bombs, and pads of BSG Form No. 217-C, "Incident of Consumer Non-Compliance." And the day was even more than this. It was the day Captain Wesley Winfree was to wed Corporal Margaret MacHenery in the sight of God, man, and the glitteringest crowd of BSG brass ever assembled outside Washington.

By noon the typewriters in Headquarters were covered and shoved with their desks behind folding screens hung with pine-boughs. Every wheel in the District motor pool was on the highway from the airport, shuttling in the wedding-party. The bride, closeted in an anteroom with a gaggle of envious bachelor-girls, was dressing herself in winter greens, her chevrons brilliant against her sleeves. Peggy had pinned a tiny poinsettia to her lapel; strictly against Regulations; but who'd have the heart to reprimand so lovely a bride? The minister who was to perform the wedding, a young captain-chaplain of BSG, paced amongst the hidden desks, memorizing the greetings he'd composed to precede the formal words of wedding. The guests came laughing through a corridor of potted pines into the District Headquarters, where they were greeted by the BSG Band-and-Glee-Club's rendition of the Bureau's official anthem, "I'm Dreaming of a White Potlatch." As though it had been arranged by Washington, snow had indeed begun to fall; and the tiers of overcoats racked in the outer hall were beaded with melted flakes.

* * * * *

The groom, wearing his dress greens--the winter uniform worn with white shirt and a scarlet bow-tie--was still trapped behind his desk, hardly conscious of the joyful noises from beyond the door. "They haven't shown?" he bellowed into the telephone. "Don't fret your head about it, Sergeant. Those Reservists will damned well be on duty tomorrow morning or we'll have their cans in a courtroom before dark." Slam! An anxious girl Pfc tiptoed in. "Sir, a consumer's delegation wishes to speak with you about the new Birthday Quotas."

"Tell them they're stuck with it," Winfree snapped. "Hand these around that delegation, Soldier," he said, shoving a stack of Schedules 1219B across his desk toward the girl. "Tell that bunch of complainers I'll keep this District's economy healthy if I have to jail every consumer in it."

The phone rang again. "It's me, Wes, Peggy."

"Darling, I'm busy," Winfree said.

"Didn't you write our wedding-date on your appointment list?" she asked. "It'll only take a quarter-hour."

"Don't marry anyone else," Winfree said. "I'll be right out." He hung up the phone and stood at the mirror in his closet to check his uniform. Then he picked up his silver-trimmed dress swagger-stick and marched out into the main office to meet the chaplain, and his wife.

Major Stanley Dampfer, glorious in his dress greens, a Sam Bowie belt equating his belly and supporting the side-arm holstered by one big hip, slapped Winfree on the back as he entered the hall. "At ease!" the Major shouted, then glanced contritely toward the two BSG colonels who'd been talking the loudest. "Gentlemen, ladies: I want to present the founder of this feast, the brightest star in the Bureau's firmament, the young genius of Birthday Gratuity Quotas. I refer, of course, to Captain Wesley Winfree!"

[Applause, shouts, a few ribald remarks from the officers nearest the bar]

"I just want to tell you all," the Major went on, his arm heavy across Winfree's unwilling shoulders, "before I relinquish this fine young officer to his new commander, a corporal ..."

[Laughter]

"... that here's a man who's going places. Look well at Captain Winfree's face, friends. You will see it yet on the cover of Time, above a pair of stars."

[Applause]

* * * * *

The Major freed Captain Winfree, the guests settled down into their folding-chairs, and the chaplain opened his BSG Book of Authorized Ceremonies. He and the affianced couple stood alone together in a moment of silence. He opened the service. "Dearly beloved, we are gathered together here ...

"... Margaret, wilt thou have this Man to thy wedded husband ... so long as ye both shall live? ... by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Corps of Chaplains, Bureau of Seasonal Gratuities, I pronounce that you are Man and Wife. Amen, and Congratulations!"

The first wedded kiss, and the stag-line demanding its similar perquisite. Kevin MacHenery seized his son-in-law's right hand. "I wish you both fifty happy years, Wes," he said. "I hope you'll see the light soon, and spend most of those years in decent mufti." Major Dampfer shouldered Mr. MacHenery aside to tug Winfree and his new wife toward the mountain of gifts, covered like a giant's corpse with a sheet, standing by the base of the Xmas tree. The Major triumphantly pulled a ripcord, and the sheet dropped away. Beneath it were dozens of boxes and bundles and bottles, wrapped in scarlet and green and silver and gold. "Open them!" some guest prompted from the end of the hall.

"Why open them?" Corporal Mrs. Peggy Winfree asked. "Anyone got a match? We'll have our Potlatch Pyre right here and now, burn them right off instead of waiting a year."

"The lady jests," Major Dampfer assumed. "Wedding-gifts, Corporal, aren't subject to Potlatching."

"Goody," Peggy said.

"I'll have some of the enlisted guests carry these gratuities out to your car," the Major said. "You can unwrap them during your honeymoon." He chuckled.

Towing his bride with his left hand, accepting handshakes with his right, Captain Winfree shouldered his way through the mob of brass and chevrons to the door. His car, adorned with a Just Married sign that completely obscured the rear window, trailing strings of shoes and empty milk-tins, stood at the end of a corridor formed by two face-to-face ranks of BSG Officer-Candidates. The OCS-men wore dress greens and Academy helmets, and about the waist of each hung a saber. Consumers stood gray and inconspicuous behind the two rows of uniformed men, silent, unsmiling, like onlookers at an accident. Captain Winfree looked over this civilian crowd. Each person wore, pinned to a lapel, perched in a hatbrim, or worn like a corsage, a small white feather. "We'd best hurry, Peggy," he said, urging her toward the gantlet.

* * * * *

The Officer-Candidates, on a signal from Major Dampfer, snicked their ceremonial sabers from their scabbards and presented them, blade-tip to blade-tip, as an archway. The BSG Band-and-Glee-Club, playing and singing, "Potlatch Is Comin' to Town," stood in the doorway. Captain Winfree, clasping Peggy's gloved hand tightly, led her through the saber-roofed aisleway as rapidly as he could. "What's the rush, Wes?" she asked. "We'll get married only once, and I'd like to see the ceremony well enough to be able to describe it to our eventual children, when they ask me what it was like."

Winfree opened the door of their car. "We'd better get out of here," he said. "I smell a riot brewing; and I don't want you to have to describe that to our children."

Peggy scooted into the car just as the District Headquarters building burped out a giant bubble of smoke. An arm reached out to Winfree's lapel and tugged him back from the car. "You're going nowhere, buddy," a civilian growled at him. The man, Winfree saw, was wearing the ubiquitous white feather in his lapel. As Winfree shook himself free from the civilian, the arch of sabers above them collapsed. The BSG-OCS-men were tossed about in a mob of suddenly screaming consumers, waving their weapons as ineffectively as brooms. Fragments were spun off the whirl of people, bits of BSG uniforms torn off their wearers and tossed like confetti. A huge pink figure, clad in one trouser-leg and a pair of shorts, smeared across the chest and face with soot, dashed toward Winfree, waving a .45 pistol. "Stop this violence!" he screamed at the consumers in his way, leveling his pistol. "Maintain the peace, dammit! or I'll shoot!"

"That idiot!" Winfree said. He slammed the door of the car to give Peggy a little protection, then scooped up a handful of snow from the gutter to pound into a ball and toss like a grenade at the back of Major Dampfer's neck. The Major's boots flew out from under him, and he landed belly-down in the snow, burying his pistol's muzzle. The gun went off, flinging itself like a rocket out of his hand. Winfree snatched it up. "Blanks!" he yelled, waving the .45. "He was only going to shoot blanks."

* * * * *

Three more civilians, wearing the white-feather symbol on their overcoats, advanced toward Winfree. Together, like partners in a ballet, they bent to build snowballs, then stood and let fly. Winfree ducked, found one of the dress sabers ignominiously sheathed in snow, and drew it out. He retreated toward the automobile, the saber raised to protect Peggy. "Stand back," he shouted. "I don't want to bloody-up this clean snow."

Another mitrailleusade of snowballs connected, knocking off Winfree's cap and sending a shower of snow down his collar. The Headquarters building was burning so well that it served as a warming bonfire to the tattered BSG personnel. A squad of civilian youngsters was chasing Major Dampfer down the street, pelting the huge target of his backside with snowballs.

The BSG Band-and-Glee-Club, covering their nakedness by pooling their rags, were a musical rabble. Kevin MacHenery, carrying a saber captured from one of the BSG-OCS-men, shouted to a tuba-player, the bell of whose horn had been dimpled by a hard-cored snowball. "Play the National Anthem," he yelled. The player, chilly and terrified, raised the mouthpiece of the tuba to his lips and, looking fearfully about like the target of a test-your-skill ball-throwing game, puffed out the sonorous opening notes. One by one the other players, a flute behind an elm tree, a trumpet hidden in the back seat of a parked limousine, a snow-damaged snare-drum, joined in; gravitating towards one another through the suddenly quiet crowd. Winfree, like the other men, civil and BSG, stood at attention; but as he felt Peggy's arm slip through his he spoke out of the corner of his mouth. "Get back to the car, Peggy," he said. "Drive like hell out of this chivaree. I'll meet you at your dad's place. Now git!"

"You think maybe I had my fingers crossed when I promised to have and hold you?" she asked. "You're my man, Wes. If you get beat up, I want my eyes blackened to match yours."

The anthem drew to a close just as a new instrument, the siren of a firetruck, joined in. "Stop that truck!" one of the insurgent consumers shouted. "Don't let 'em touch our fire."

* * * * *

The mob went back into action in two task-forces; one dedicated to the extirpation of the BSG-men currently available, the other clustered around the firetruck, thwarting the fire-fighters' efforts to couple their hose to the hydrant. One youngster, wearing the black leather jacket and crash-helmet of a Potlatch Party, ran from the fireworks warehouse with a thermite grenade. Pulling the pin, he tossed the sputtering bomb through a window of the burning building. "Stop him!" the white-helmeted fire-chief shouted.

"Stop him, hell!" a consumer replied. "Man, we got a rebellion going. Don't you guys try to throw cold water on it unless you'd like to be squirted solid ice with your own hose."

* * * * *

The fire-chief, his hands raised in despair, turned to his colleagues. "Stand by, boys," he said. "Nothing we can do till the cops get here to quell this bunch."

"Pretty, isn't it?" one of the firemen remarked, dropping the canvas hose. "We never get to see a building burn all the way. Think of all the papers in there, file-cabinets full of government regulations, lists of all our birthdays, quota-forms; all curling up and turning brown and reaching the kindling point. Nice fire, Chief."

The fire-chief faced Headquarters, a new look replacing his anxiety. "It is kind of pretty," he admitted. He turned to the consumer ringleader. "OK with you if we throw a little water on the fireworks warehouse?" he asked.

"Sure," the man said. "We don't want to blow up the old home-town; we only want to put the BSG out of business." His band of consumers stepped back from the yellow fireplug to let the firemen hook up their hoses, toggle on the pressure, and begin playing water over the blank face of the fireworks warehouse.

Captain Winfree was buried in hard-fisted civilians, all seemingly intent on erasing him as the most familiar symbol of the Bureau of Seasonal Gratuities. Winfree bobbed to the surface of the maelstrom for a moment, waving his saber, and shouted, "MacHenery! Get these jokers off my back before I'm knee-deep in cold meat." He thwacked another of his assailants across the pate with the flat of his blade.

MacHenery, using his saber as a lever, pried himself a path through the crowd. As he reached Captain Winfree, he raised his saber. The crowd about the two men retreated. "These folks have suffered a lot from you, Captain," MacHenery said. "Think maybe they're due to see a little bloodshed?"

"OK by me," Winfree said, panting, "if you don't mind shedding it." He raised his saber in salute--the only fencing-movement he'd become proficient in--and jumped into a crouch. MacHenery closed, and the two blades met in a clanging opening. Peggy's father, for all his handicap of twenty years, was a fencer; Winfree, in his maiden effort as a sabreur, used his weapon like a club. He allemanded about MacHenery, now and then dashing in with clumsy deliveries that were always met by the older man's blade.

Those firemen not immediately concerned with spraying the warehouse wall mounted the racks of their truck to watch the duel. BSG-men and -women, huddled close to the warmth of the burning building, watched unhappily as their champion was forced to retreat before MacHenery's technique. "He'll kill him!" Peggy shouted. She was restrained from trying to break up the fight by two burly consumers.

* * * * *

Winfree, trying a gambit he'd seen in one of MacHenery's books but had never before attempted, extended his saber and flew forward toward MacHenery in a flèche. MacHenery caught Winfree's blade on his own and tossed it aside. He brought back his own weapon to sketch a line down the Captain's right cheek. The scratch was pink for a moment, then it started to bleed heavily. The crowd shouted encouragement, the BSG-troops groaned. "Keep cool, Wes," MacHenery whispered to his opponent as they dos-à-doed back into position. "I have to make this look fierce or they'll insist on lynching you."

"Don't make it look too good," Winfree panted. "Cover yourself--I might hurt you out of sheer clumsiness." His chin and throat were covered with blood, now; blood enough to satisfy the most indignant consumer. The moment the measure was set again, Winfree lunged, trying to slip his blade beneath MacHenery's guard to strike his arm. His foible met the flash of the other man's forte, and his blade bounced aside like a sprung bow.

MacHenery slammed his saber into Winfree's, spinning the weapon out of his hand into the crowd. He lunged then, delivering his point against Winfree's chest. Peggy, released from her captors, burst from the crowd to throw herself against her father. "Stop it, Daddy!" she pleaded, "please stop!"

MacHenery raised his saber in salute. "All right, Pocahontas," he said. "Take your John Smith home and patch up that cut. It's no worse than what he gets shaving." He turned to the crowd, his saber still raised in salute. "Potlatch is over forever!" he shouted.

Urged by a delegation of music-loving consumers, the tubist raised his ravaged horn. The other members of the BSG Band-and-Glee-Club gathered round him, all ragged, some with one eye closed by a purple fist-mark; and they began, on the tubist's signal, "God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen." The District Headquarters building, gutted, was glowing like an abandoned fireplace. The firemen joined the singing as they coiled their hoses. The Potlatch Riot was over.

Winfree led his wife to their car. The Just Married sign was still in place, but the car's train of shoes and milk-cans had been ripped off to furnish ammunition in the fight. "Let's go home, Peggy," Winfree said. "I yearn for a fireside and some privacy."

Kevin MacHenery spoke from the back seat. "You deserve them, Wes," he said.

"What are you doing here?" Peggy demanded, twisting to face her father. "After you cut up my Wes you should be ashamed to show us your face."

"I want to apologize for that unfortunate necessity," MacHenery said. "But if I hadn't scratched him, Peggy-my-heart, the mob might have done more radical surgery. I saw one consumer with a rope, trying different knots."

"Apology accepted," Winfree said. "Now, if you don't mind, Mr. MacHenery, Peggy and I'd like to be alone."

"Of course," MacHenery said. "First, though, I'd like to present you a decoration to commemorate your part in this skirmish, Wes." He took the little white feather from his hatbrim and attached it to Winfree's tattered, blood-stained tunic.

"What's this for?" Winfree asked.

"For services rendered the Rebellion," MacHenery said. "I've often wondered why it's only the Tom Paines and the Jeffersons who get honored by successful rebels. There's many a revolution, Wesley, that would have failed except for the dedicated tyranny of the men it overthrew."

"I don't understand, Daddy," Peggy protested.

"Wes will probably explain to you sometime how he brought this all on himself," MacHenery said, opening his door to get out. "Now I expect you two have other things to talk about. Thank you, Captain Winfree, for playing so excellent a George the Third to our rebellion."

"Thank you, sir," Winfree said, raising his hand in salute. "I wish you a Merry, nine-letter Christmas."

THE END

Contents

GAMBLER'S WORLD

By KEITH LAUMER

I

Retief paused before a tall mirror to check the overlap of the four sets of lapels that ornamented the vermilion cutaway of a First Secretary and Consul.

"Come along, Retief," Magnan said. "The Ambassador has a word to say to the staff before we go in."

"I hope he isn't going to change the spontaneous speech he plans to make when the Potentate impulsively suggests a trade agreement along the lines they've been discussing for the last two months."

"Your derisive attitude is uncalled for, Retief," Magnan said sharply. "I think you realize it's delayed your promotion in the Corps."

Retief took a last glance in the mirror. "I'm not sure I want a promotion," he said. "It would mean more lapels."

Ambassador Crodfoller pursed his lips, waiting until Retief and Magnan took places in the ring of Terrestrial diplomats around him.

"A word of caution only, gentlemen," he said. "Keep always foremost in your minds the necessity for our identification with the Nenni Caste. Even a hint of familiarity with lower echelons could mean the failure of the mission. Let us remember that the Nenni represent authority here on Petreac. Their traditions must be observed, whatever our personal preferences. Let's go along now. The Potentate will be making his entrance any moment."

Magnan came to Retief's side as they moved toward the salon.

"The Ambassador's remarks were addressed chiefly to you, Retief," he said. "Your laxness in these matters is notorious. Naturally, I believe firmly in democratic principles myself--"

"Have you ever had a feeling, Mr. Magnan, that there's a lot going on here that we don't know about?"

Magnan nodded. "Quite so. Ambassador Crodfoller's point exactly. Matters which are not of concern to the Nenni are of no concern to us."

"Another feeling I get is that the Nenni aren't very bright. Now suppose--"

"I'm not given to suppositions, Retief. We're here to implement the policies of the Chief of Mission. And I should dislike to be in the shoes of a member of the staff whose conduct jeopardized the agreement that will be concluded here tonight."

* * * * *

A bearer with a tray of drinks rounded a fluted column, shied as he confronted the diplomats, fumbled the tray, grabbed and sent a glass crashing to the floor.

Magnan leaped back, slapping at the purple cloth of his pants leg. Retief's hand shot out to steady the tray. The servant rolled terrified eyes.

"I'll take one of these, now that you're here," Retief said. He took a glass from the tray, winking at the servant.

"No harm done," he said. "Mr. Magnan's just warming up for the big dance."

A Nenni major-domo bustled up, rubbing his hands politely.

"Some trouble here?" he said. "What happened, Honorables, what, what...."

"The blundering idiot," Magnan spluttered. "How dare--"

"You're quite an actor, Mr. Magnan," Retief said. "If I didn't know about your democratic principles, I'd think you were really mad."

The servant ducked his head and scuttled away.

"Has this fellow...." The major-domo eyed the retreating bearer.

"I dropped my glass," Retief said. "Mr. Magnan's upset because he hates to see liquor wasted."

Retief turned to find himself face-to-face with Ambassador Crodfoller.

"I witnessed that," The Ambassador hissed. "By the goodness of Providence, the Potentate and his retinue haven't appeared yet. But I can assure you the servants saw it. A more un-Nenni-like display I would find it difficult to imagine!"

Retief arranged his features in an expression of deep interest.

"More un-Nenni-like, sir?" he said. "I'm not sure I--"

"Bah!" The Ambassador glared at Retief, "Your reputation has preceded you, sir. Your name is associated with a number of the most bizarre incidents in Corps history. I'm warning you; I'll tolerate nothing." He turned and stalked away.

"Ambassador-baiting is a dangerous sport, Retief," Magnan said.

Retief took a swallow of his drink. "Still," he said, "it's better than no sport at all."

"Your time would be better spent observing the Nenni mannerisms. Frankly, Retief, you're not fitting into the group at all well."

"I'll be candid with you, Mr. Magnan. The group gives me the willies."

"Oh, the Nenni are a trifle frivolous, I'll concede," Magnan said. "But it's with them that we must deal. And you'd be making a contribution to the overall mission if you merely abandoned that rather arrogant manner of yours." Magnan looked at Retief critically. "You can't help your height, of course. But couldn't you curve your back just a bit--and possibly assume a more placating expression? Just act a little more...."

"Girlish?"

"Exactly." Magnan nodded, then looked sharply at Retief.

Retief drained his glass and put it on a passing tray.

"I'm better at acting girlish when I'm well juiced," he said. "But I can't face another sorghum-and-soda. I suppose it would be un-Nenni-like to slip the bearer a credit and ask for a Scotch and water."

"Decidedly." Magnan glanced toward a sound across the room.

"Ah, here's the Potentate now!" He hurried off.

Retief watched the bearers coming and going, bringing trays laden with drinks, carrying off empties. There was a lull in the drinking now, as the diplomats gathered around the periwigged Chief of State and his courtiers. Bearers loitered near the service door, eyeing the notables. Retief strolled over to the service door, pushed through it into a narrow white-tiled hall filled with the odors of the kitchen. Silent servants gaped as he passed, watching as he moved along to the kitchen door and stepped inside.

II

A dozen or more low-caste Petreacans, gathered around a long table in the center of the room looked up, startled. A heap of long-bladed bread knives, French knives, carving knives and cleavers lay in the center of the table. Other knives were thrust into belts or held in the hands of the men. A fat man in the yellow sarong of a cook stood frozen in the act of handing a knife to a tall one-eyed sweeper.

Retief took one glance, then let his eyes wander to a far corner of the room. Humming a careless little tune, he sauntered across to the open liquor shelves, selected a garish green bottle and turned unhurriedly back toward the door. The group of servants watched him, transfixed.

As Retief reached the door, it swung inward. Magnan, lips pursed, stood in the doorway.

"I had a premonition," he said.

"I'll bet it was a dandy," Retief said. "You must tell me all about it--in the salon."

"We'll have this out right here," Magnan snapped. "I've warned you!" Magnan's voice trailed off as he took in the scene around the table.

"After you," Retief said, nudging Magnan toward the door.

"What's going on here?" Magnan barked. He stared at the men, started around Retief. A hand stopped him.

"Let's be going," Retief said, propelling Magnan toward the hall.

"Those knives!" Magnan yelped. "Take your hands off me, Retief! What are you men--?"

Retief glanced back. The fat cook gestured suddenly, and the men faded back. The cook stood, arm cocked, a knife across his palm.

"Close the door and make no sound," he said softly.

Magnan pressed back against Retief. "Let's ... r-run...." he faltered.

Retief turned slowly, put his hands up.

"I don't run very well with a knife in my back," he said. "Stand very still, Magnan, and do just what he tells you."

"Take them out through the back," the cook said.

"What does he mean?" Magnan spluttered. "Here, you--"

"Silence," the cook said, almost casually. Magnan gaped at him, closed his mouth.

Two of the men with knives came to Retief's side and gestured, grinning broadly.

"Let's go, peacocks," one said.

Retief and Magnan silently crossed the kitchen, went out the back door, stopped on command and stood waiting. The sky was brilliant with stars. A gentle breeze stirred the tree-tops beyond the garden. Behind them the servants talked in low voices.

"You go too, Illy," the cook was saying.

"Do it here," another said.

"And carry their damn dead bodies down?"

"Pitch 'em behind the hedge."

"I said the river. Three of you is plenty for a couple of Nenni. We don't know if we want to--"

"They're foreigners, not Nenni. We don't know--"

"So they're foreign Nenni. Makes no difference. I've seen them. I need every man here; now get going."

"What about the big guy? He looks tough."

"Him? He waltzed into the room and didn't notice a thing. But watch the other one."

At a prod from a knife point, Retief moved off down the walk, two of the escort behind him and Magnan, another going ahead to scout the way.

Magnan moved closer to Retief.

"Say," he said in a whisper. "That fellow in the lead; isn't he the one who spilled the drink? The one you took the blame for?"

"That's him, all right. He doesn't seem nervous any more, I notice."

"You saved him from serious punishment," Magnan said. "He'll be grateful; he'll let us go."

"Better check with the fellows with the knives before you act on that."

"Say something to him," Magnan hissed, "Remind him."

* * * * *

The lead man fell back in line with Retief and Magnan.

"These two are scared of you," he said, grinning and jerking a thumb toward the knife-handlers. "They haven't worked around the Nenni like me; they don't know you."

"Don't you recognize this gentleman?" Magnan said.

"He did me a favor," the man said. "I remember."

"What's it all about?" Retief asked.

"The revolution. We're taking over now."

"Who's 'we'?"

"The People's Anti-Fascist Freedom League."

"What are all the knives for?"

"For the Nenni; and for all you foreigners."

"What do you mean?" Magnan gasped.

"We'll slit all the throats at one time. Saves a lot of running around."

"What time will that be?"

"Just at dawn; and dawn comes early, this time of year. By full daylight the PAFFL will be in charge."

"You'll never succeed," Magnan said. "A few servants with knives! You'll all be caught and killed."

"By who, the Nenni?" the man laughed. "You Nenni are a caution."

"But we're not Nenni--"

"We've watched you; you're the same. You're part of the same blood-sucking class."

"There are better ways to, uh, adjust differences," Magnan said. "This killing won't help you, I'll personally see to it that your grievances are heard in the Corps Courts. I can assure you that the plight of the downtrodden workers will be alleviated. Equal rights for all--"

"These threats won't work," the man said. "You don't scare me."

"Threats? I'm promising relief to the exploited classes of Petreac!"

"You must be nuts," the man said. "You trying to upset the system or something?"

"Isn't that the purpose of your revolution?"

"Look, Nenni, we're tired of you Nenni getting all the graft. We want our turn. What good would it do us to run Petreac if there's no loot?"

"You mean you intend to oppress the people? But they're your own group."

"Group, schmoop. We're taking all the chances; we're doing the work. We deserve the payoff. You think we're throwing up good jobs for the fun of it?"

"You're basing a revolt on these cynical premises?"

"Wise up, Nenni. There's never been a revolution for any other reason."

"Who's in charge of this?" Retief said.

"Shoke, the head chef."

"I mean the big boss. Who tells Shoke what all to do?"

"Oh, that's Zorn. Look out, here's where we start down the slope. It's slippery."

"Look," Magnan said. "You."

"My name's Illy."

"Mr. Illy, this man showed you mercy when he could have had you beaten."

"Keep moving. Yeah, I said I was grateful."

"Yes," Magnan said, swallowing hard. "A noble emotion, gratitude. You won't regret it."

"I always try to pay back a good turn," Illy said. "Watch your step now on this sea-wall."

"You'll never regret it," Magnan said.

"This is far enough," Illy motioned to one of the knife men. "Give me your knife, Vug."

The man passed his knife to Illy. There was an odor of sea-mud and kelp. Small waves slapped against the stones of the sea-wall. The wind was stronger here.

"I know a neat stroke," Illy said. "Practically painless. Who's first?"

"What do you mean?" Magnan quavered.

"I said I was grateful. I'll do it myself, give you a nice clean job. You know these amateurs; botch it up and have a guy floppin' around, yellin' and spatterin' everybody up."

"I'm first," Retief said. He pushed past Magnan, stopped suddenly, drove a straight punch at Illy's mouth.

* * * * *

The long blade flicked harmlessly over Retief's shoulder as Illy fell. Retief whirled, leaped past Magnan, took the unarmed servant by the throat and belt, lifted him and slammed him against the third man. Both scrambled, yelped and fell from the sea-wall into the water.

Retief turned back to Illy. He pulled off the man's belt and strapped his hands together.

Magnan found his voice.

"You.... we.... they...."

"I know," Retief said.

"We've got to get back," Magnan said, "Warn them!"

"We'd never get through the rebel cordon around the palace. And if we did, trying to give an alarm would only set the assassinations off early."

"We can't just...."

"We've got to go to the source; this fellow Zorn. Get him to call it off."

"We'd be killed! At least we're safe here."

Illy groaned and opened his eyes. He sat up.

"On your feet, Illy," Retief said.

Illy looked around. "I'm sick," he said.

"The damp air is bad for you. Let's be going." Retief pulled the man to his feet. "Where does Zorn stay when he's in town?" he demanded.

"What happened? Where's Vug and...."

"They had an accident. Fell in the pond."

Illy gazed down at the restless black water.

"I guess I had you Nenni figured wrong."

"Us Nenni have hidden qualities. Let's get moving before Vug and Slug make it to shore and start it all over again."

"No hurry," Illy said. "They can't swim." He spat into the water. "So long, Vug. So long, Toscin. Take a pull, at the Hell Horn for me." He started off along the sea wall toward the sound of the surf.

"You want to see Zorn, I'll take you to see Zorn," he said. "I can't swim either."

III

"I take it," Retief said, "that the casino is a front for his political activities."

"He makes plenty off it. This PAFFL is a new kick. I never heard about it until maybe a couple months ago."

Retief motioned toward a dark shed with an open door.

"We'll stop here," he said, "long enough to strip the gadgets off these uniforms."

Illy, hands strapped behind his back, stood by and watched as Retief and Magnan removed medals, ribbons, orders and insignia from the formal diplomatic garments.

"This may help some," Retief said, "if the word is out that two diplomats are loose."

"It's a breeze," Illy said. "We see cats in purple and orange tailcoats all the time."

"I hope you're right," Retief said. "But if we're called, you'll be the first to go, Illy."

"You're a funny kind of Nenni," Illy said, eyeing Retief, "Toscin and Vug must be wonderin' what happened to 'em."

"If you think I'm good at drowning people, you ought to see me with a knife. Let's get going."

"It's only a little way now," Illy said. "But you better untie me. Somebody's liable to stick their nose in and get me killed."

"I'll take the chance. How do we get to the casino?"

"We follow this street. It twists around and goes under a couple tunnels. When we get to the Drunkard's Stairs we go up and it's right in front of us. A pink front with a sign like a big Luck Wheel."

"Give me your belt, Magnan," Retief said.

Magnan handed it over.

"Lie down, Illy," Retief said.

The servant looked at Retief.

"Vug and Toscin will be glad to see me," he said. "But they'll never believe me." He lay down. Retief strapped his feet together and stuffed a handkerchief in his mouth.

"Why are you doing that?" Magnan asked. "We need him."

"We know the way. And we don't need anyone to announce our arrival. It's only on three-dee that you can march a man through a gang of his pals with a finger in his back."

Magnan looked at the man. "Maybe you'd better, uh, cut his throat," he said.

Illy rolled his eyes.

"That's a very un-Nenni-like suggestion, Mr. Magnan," Retief said. "If we have any trouble finding the casino, I'll give it serious thought."

There were few people in the narrow street. Shops were shuttered, windows dark.

"Maybe they heard about the coup," Magnan said. "They're lying low."

"More likely, they're at the palace picking up their knives."

They rounded a corner, stepped over a man curled in the gutter snoring heavily and found themselves at the foot of a long flight of littered stone steps.

"The Drunkard's Stairs are plainly marked," Magnan sniffed.

"I hear sounds up there," Retief said. "Sounds of merrymaking."

"Maybe we'd better go back."

"Merrymaking doesn't scare me," Retief said. "Come to think of it, I don't know what the word means." He started up, Magnan behind him.

* * * * *

At the top of the long stair a dense throng milled in the alley-like street.

A giant illuminated roulette wheel revolved slowly above them. A loudspeaker blared the chant of the croupiers from the tables inside. Magnan and Retief moved through the crowd toward the wide-open doors.

Magnan plucked at Retief's sleeve. "Are you sure we ought to push right in like this? Maybe we ought to wait a bit, look around...."

"When you're where you have no business being," Retief said, "always stride along purposefully. If you loiter, people begin to get curious."

Inside, a mob packed the wide, low-ceilinged room, clustered around gambling devices in the form of towers, tables and basins.

"What do we do now?" Magnan asked.

"We gamble. How much money do you have in your pockets?"

"Why ... a few credits." Magnan handed the money to Retief. "But what about the man Zorn?"

"A purple cutaway is conspicuous enough, without ignoring the tables," Retief said. "We've got a hundred credits between us. We'll get to Zorn in due course, I hope."

"Your pleasure, gents," a bullet-headed man said, eyeing the colorful evening clothes of the diplomats. "You'll be wantin' to try your luck at the Zoop tower, I'd guess. A game for real sporting gents."

"Why ... ah ..." Magnan said.

"What's a zoop tower?" Retief asked.

"Out-of-towners, hey?" The bullet-headed man shifted his dope-stick to the other corner of his mouth. "Zoop is a great little game. Two teams of players buy into the pot. Each player takes a lever; the object is to make the ball drop from the top of the tower into your net. Okay?"

"What's the ante?"

"I got a hundred-credit pot workin' now, gents."

Retief nodded. "We'll try it."

The shill led the way to an eight-foot tower mounted on gimbals. Two perspiring men in trade-class pullovers gripped two of the levers that controlled the tilt of the tower. A white ball lay in a hollow in the thick glass platform at the top. From the center, an intricate pattern of grooves led out to the edge of the glass. Retief and Magnan took chairs before the two free levers.

"When the light goes on, gents, work the lever to jack the tower. You got three gears. Takes a good arm to work top gear. That's this button here. The little knob controls what way you're goin'. May the best team win. I'll take the hundred credits now."

* * * * *

Retief handed over the money. A red light flashed on, and Retief tried the lever.

It moved easily, with a ratcheting sound. The tower trembled, slowly tilted toward the two perspiring workmen pumping frantically at their levers. Magnan started slowly, accelerated as he saw the direction the tower was taking.

"Faster, Retief," he said. "They're winning."

"This is against the clock, gents," the bullet-headed man said. "If nobody wins when the light goes off, the house takes all."

"Crank it over to the left," Retief said.

"I'm getting tired."

"Shift to a lower gear."

The tower leaned. The ball stirred, rolled into a concentric channel. Retief shifted to middle gear, worked the lever. The tower creaked to a stop, started back upright.

"There isn't any lower gear," Magnan gasped. One of the two on the other side of the tower shifted to middle gear; the other followed suit. They worked harder now, heaving against the stiff levers. The tower quivered, moved slowly toward their side.

"I'm exhausted," Magnan gasped. He dropped the lever, lolled back in the chair, gulping air. Retief shifted position, took Magnan's lever with his left hand.

"Shift it to middle gear," Retief said. Magnan gulped, punched the button and slumped back, panting.

"My arm," he said. "I've injured myself."

The two men in pullovers conferred hurriedly as they cranked their levers; then one punched a button and the other reached across, using his left arm to help.

"They've shifted to high," Magnan said. "Give up, it's hopeless."

"Shift me to high," Retief said. "Both buttons!"

Magnan complied. Retief's shoulders bulged. He brought one lever down, then the other, alternately, slowly at first, then faster. The tower jerked, tilted toward him, farther.... The ball rolled in the channel, found an outlet--

Abruptly, both Retief's levers froze.

The tower trembled, wavered and moved back. Retief heaved. One lever folded at the base, bent down and snapped off short. Retief braced his feet, took the other lever with both hands and pulled.

There was a rasp of metal friction, and a loud twang. The lever came free, a length of broken cable flopping into view. The tower fell over as the two on the other side scrambled aside.

"Hey!" Bullet-head yelled. "You wrecked my equipment!"

Retief got up and faced him.

"Does Zorn know you've got your tower rigged for suckers?"

"You tryin' to call me a cheat or something?"

The crowd had fallen back, ringing the two men. Bullet-head glanced around. With a lightning motion, he plucked a knife from somewhere.

"That'll be five hundred credits for the equipment," he said. "Nobody calls Kippy a cheat."

* * * * *

Retief picked up the broken lever.

"Don't make me hit you with this, you cheap chiseler."

Kippy looked at the bar.

"Comin' in here," he said indignantly, looking to the crowd for support. "Bustin' up my rig, callin' names...."

"I want a hundred credits," Retief said. "Now."

"Highway robbery!" Kippy yelled.

"Better pay up," somebody called.

"Hit him, mister," someone else said.

A broad-shouldered man with graying hair pushed through the crowd and looked around. "You heard 'em, Kippy. Give," he said.

The shill growled but tucked his knife away. Reluctantly he peeled a bill from a fat roll and handed it over.

The newcomer looked from Retief to Magnan.

"Pick another game, strangers," he said. "Kippy made a little mistake."

"This is small-time stuff," Retief said. "I'm interested in something big."

The broad-shouldered man lit a perfumed dope stick. "What would you call big?" he said softly.

"What's the biggest you've got?"

The man narrowed his eyes, smiling. "Maybe you'd like to try Slam."

"Tell me about it."

"Over here." The crowd opened up, made a path. Retief and Magnan followed across the room to a brightly-lit glass-walled box.

There was an arm-sized opening at waist height. Inside was a hand grip. A two-foot plastic globe a quarter full of chips hung in the center. Apparatus was mounted at the top of the box.

"Slam pays good odds," the man said. "You can go as high as you like. Chips cost you a hundred credits. You start it up by dropping a chip in here." He indicated a slot.

"You take the hand grip. When you squeeze, it unlocks. The globe starts to turn. You can see, it's full of chips. There's a hole at the top. As long as you hold the grip, the bowl turns. The harder you squeeze, the faster it turns. Eventually it'll turn over to where the hole is down, and chips fall out.

"On the other hand, there's contact plates spotted around the bowl. When one of 'em lines up with a live contact, you get quite a little jolt--guaranteed nonlethal. All you've got to do is hold on long enough, and you'll get the payoff."

"How often does this random pattern put the hole down?"

"Anywhere from three minutes to fifteen, with the average run of players. Oh, by the way, one more thing. That lead block up there--" The man motioned with his head toward a one-foot cube suspended by a thick cable. "It's rigged to drop every now and again. Averages five minutes. A warning light flashes first. You can take a chance; sometimes the light's a bluff. You can set the clock back on it by dropping another chip--or you can let go the grip."

Retief looked at the massive block of metal.

"That would mess up a man's dealing hand, wouldn't it?"

"The last two jokers who were too cheap to feed the machine had to have 'em off. Their arms, I mean. That lead's heavy stuff."

"I don't suppose your machine has a habit of getting stuck, like Kippy's?"

The broad-shouldered man frowned.

"You're a stranger," he said, "You don't know any better."

"It's a fair game, Mister," someone called.

"Where do I buy the chips?"

The man smiled. "I'll fix you up. How many?"

"One."

"A big spender, eh?" The man snickered, but handed over a large plastic chip.

IV

Retief stepped to the machine, dropped the coin.

"If you want to change your mind," the man said, "you can back out now. All it'll cost you is the chip you dropped."

Retief reached through the hole, took the grip. It was leather padded hand-filling. He squeezed it. There was a click and bright lights sprang up. The crowd ah!-ed. The globe began to twirl lazily. The four-inch hole at its top was plainly visible.

"If ever the hole gets in position it will empty very quickly," Magnan said, hopefully.

Suddenly, a brilliant white light flooded the glass cage. A sound went up from the spectators.

"Quick, drop a chip," someone called.

"You've only got ten seconds...."

"Let go!" Magnan yelped.

Retief sat silent, holding the grip, frowning up at the weight. The globe twirled faster now. Then the bright white light winked off.

"A bluff!" Magnan gasped.

"That's risky, stranger," the gray-templed man said.

The globe was turning rapidly now, oscillating from side to side. The hole seemed to travel in a wavering loop, dipping lower, swinging up high, then down again.

"It has to move to the bottom soon," Magnan said. "Slow it down."

"The slower it goes, the longer it takes to get to the bottom," someone said.

There was a crackle and Retief stiffened. Magnan heard a sharp intake of breath. The globe slowed, and Retief shook his head, blinking.

The broad-shouldered man glanced at a meter.

"You took pretty near a full jolt, that time," he said.

The hole in the globe was tracing an oblique course now, swinging to the center, then below.

"A little longer," Magnan said.

"That's the best speed I ever seen on the Slam ball," someone said. "How much longer can he hold it?"

Magnan looked at Retief's knuckles. They showed white against the grip. The globe tilted farther, swung around, then down; two chips fell out, clattered down a chute and into a box.

"We're ahead," Magnan said. "Let's quit."

Retief shook his head. The globe rotated, dipped again; three chips fell.

"She's ready," someone called.

"It's bound to hit soon," another voice added excitedly. "Come on, Mister!"

"Slow down," Magnan said. "So it won't move past too quickly."

"Speed it up, before that lead block gets you," someone called.

The hole swung high, over the top, then down the side. Chips rained out of the hole, six, eight....

"Next pass," a voice called.

The white light flooded the cage. The globe whirled; the hole slid over the top, down, down.... A chip fell, two more....

Retief half rose, clamped his jaw and crushed the grip. Sparks flew. The globe slowed, chips spewing. It stopped, swung back, weighted by the mass of chips at the bottom, and stopped again with the hole centered.

Chips cascaded down the chute, filled the box before Retief, spilled on the floor. The crowd yelled.

Retief released the grip and withdrew his arm at the same instant that the lead block slammed down.

"Good lord," Magnan said. "I felt that through the floor."

Retief turned to the broad-shouldered man.

"This game's all right for beginners," he said. "But I'd like to talk a really big gamble. Why don't we go to your office, Mr. Zorn?"

* * * * *

"Your proposition interests me," Zorn said, grinding out the stump of his dope stick in a brass ashtray. "But there's some angles to this I haven't mentioned yet."

"You're a gambler, Zorn, not a suicide," Retief said. "Take what I've offered. The other idea was fancier, I agree, but it won't work."

"How do I know you birds aren't lying?" Zorn snarled. He stood up, strode up and down the room. "You walk in here and tell me I'll have a task force on my neck, that the Corps won't recognize my regime. Maybe you're right. But I've got other contacts. They say different." He whirled, stared at Retief.

"I have pretty good assurance that once I put it over, the Corps will have to recognize me as the legal government of Petreac. They won't meddle in internal affairs."

"Nonsense," Magnan spoke up. "The Corps will never deal with a pack of criminals calling themselves--"

"Watch your language, you!" Zorn rasped.

"I'll admit Mr. Magnan's point is a little weak," Retief said. "But you're overlooking something. You plan to murder a dozen or so officers of the Corps Diplomatique Terrestrienne along with the local wheels. The corps won't overlook that. It can't."

"Their tough luck they're in the middle," Zorn muttered.

"Our offer is extremely generous, Mr. Zorn," Magnan said. "The post you'll get will pay you very well indeed. As against the certain failure of your planned coup, the choice should be simple."

Zorn eyed Magnan. "Offering me a job--it sounds phony as hell. I thought you birds were goody-goody diplomats."

"It's time you knew," Retief said. "There's no phonier business in the Galaxy than diplomacy."

"You'd better take it, Mr. Zorn," Magnan said.

"Don't push me, Junior!" Zorn said. "You two walk into my headquarters empty-handed and big-mouthed. I don't know what I'm talking to you for. The answer is no. N-I-X, no!"

"Who are you afraid of?" Retief said softly.

Zorn glared at him.

"Where do you get that 'afraid' routine? I'm top man here!"

"Don't kid around, Zorn. Somebody's got you under their thumb. I can see you squirming from here."

* * * * *

"What if I let your boys alone?" Zorn said suddenly. "The Corps won't have anything to say then, huh?"

"The Corps has plans for Petreac, Zorn. You aren't part of them. A revolution right now isn't part of them. Having the Potentate and the whole Nenni caste slaughtered isn't part of them. Do I make myself clear?"

"Listen," Zorn said urgently, pulling a chair around. "I'll tell you guys a few things. You ever heard of a world they call Rotune?"

"Certainly," Magnan said. "It's a near neighbor of yours. Another backward--that is, emergent--"

"Okay," Zorn said. "You guys think I'm a piker, do you? Well, let me wise you up. The Federal Junta on Rotune is backing my play. I'll be recognized by Rotune, and the Rotune fleet will stand by in case I need any help. I'll present the CDT with what you call a fait accompli."

"What does Rotune get out of this? I thought they were your traditional enemies."

"Don't get me wrong. I've got no use for Rotune; but our interests happen to coincide right now."

"Do they?" Retief smiled grimly. "You can spot a sucker as soon as he comes through that door out there--but you go for a deal like this!"

"What do you mean?" Zorn looked angrily at Retief. "It's fool-proof."

"After you get in power, you'll be fast friends with Rotune, is that it?"

"Friends, hell! Just give me time to get set, and I'll square a few things with that--"

"Exactly. And what do you suppose they have in mind for you?"

"What are you getting at?"

"Why is Rotune interested in your take-over?"

Zorn studied Retief's face. "I'll tell you why," he said. "It's you birds. You and your trade agreement. You're here to tie Petreac into some kind of trade combine. That cuts Rotune out. Well, we're doing all right out here. We don't need any commitments to a lot of fancy-pants on the other side of the Galaxy."

"That's what Rotune has sold you, eh?" Retief said, smiling.

"Sold, nothing!"

* * * * *

Zorn ground out his dope-stick, lit another. He snorted angrily.

"Okay; what's your idea?" he asked after a moment.

"You know what Petreac is getting in the way of imports as a result of the agreement?"

"Sure. A lot of junk."

"To be specific," Retief said, "there'll be 50,000 Tatone B-3 dry washers; 100,000 Glo-float motile lamps; 100,000 Earthworm Minor garden cultivators; 25,000 Veco space heaters; and 75,000 replacement elements for Ford Monomeg drives."

"Like I said. A lot of junk."

Retief leaned back, looking sardonically at Zorn, "Here's the gimmick, Zorn," he said. "The Corps is getting a little tired of Petreac and Rotune carrying on their two-penny war out here. Your privateers have a nasty habit of picking on innocent bystanders. After studying both sides, the Corps has decided Petreac would be a little easier to do business with. So this trade agreement was worked out. The Corps can't openly sponsor an arms shipment to a belligerent. But personal appliances are another story."

"So what do we do--plow 'em under with back-yard cultivators?" Zorn looked at Retief, puzzled. "What's the point?"

"You take the sealed monitor unit from the washer, the repeller field generator from the lamp, the converter control from the cultivator, et cetera, et cetera. You fit these together according to some very simple instructions. Presto! You have one hundred thousand Standard-class Y hand blasters. Just the thing to turn the tide in a stalemated war fought with obsolete arms."

"Good lord!" Magnan said. "Retief, are you--"

"I have to tell him," Retief said. "He has to know what he's putting his neck into."

"Weapons, hey?" Zorn said. "And Rotune knows about it?"

"Sure they know about it. It's not too hard to figure out. And there's more. They want the CDT delegation included in the massacre for a reason. It will put Petreac out of the picture; the trade agreement will go to Rotune; and you and your new regime will find yourselves looking down the muzzles of your own blasters."

Zorn threw his dope-stick to the floor with a snarl.

"I should have smelled something when that Rotune smoothie made his pitch." Zorn looked at his watch.

"I've got two hundred armed men in the palace. We've got about forty minutes to get over there before the rocket goes up."

V

"You'd better stay here on this terrace out of the way until I've spread the word," Zorn said. "Just in case."

"Let me caution you against any ... ah ... slip-ups, Mr. Zorn," Magnan said. "The Nenni are not to be molested--"

Zorn looked at Retief.

"Your friend talks too much," he said. "I'll keep my end of it. He'd better keep his."

"Nothing's happened yet, you're sure?" Magnan said.

"I'm sure," Zorn said. "Ten minutes to go. Plenty of time."

"I'll just step into the salon to assure myself that all is well," Magnan said.

"Suit yourself," Zorn said. "Just stay clear of the kitchen, or you'll get your throat cut." He sniffed at his dope-stick. "What's keeping Shoke?" he muttered.

Magnan stepped to a tall glass door, eased it open and poked his head through the heavy draperies. As he moved to draw back, a voice was faintly audible. Magnan paused, head still through the drapes.

"What's going on there?" Zorn rasped. He and Retief stepped up behind Magnan.

"--breath of air, ha-ha," Magnan was saying.

"Well, come along, Magnan!" Ambassador Crodfoller's voice snapped.

Magnan shifted from one foot to the other then pushed through the drapes.

"Where've you been, Mr. Magnan?" The Ambassador's voice was sharp.

"Oh ... ah ... a slight accident, Mr. Ambassador."

"What's happened to your shoes? Where are your insignia and decorations?"

"I--ah--spilled a drink on them. Sir. Ah--listen...."

The sound of an orchestra came up suddenly, blaring a fanfare.

Zorn shifted restlessly, ear against the glass.

"What's your friend pulling?" he rasped. "I don't like this."

"Keep cool, Zorn," Retief said. "Mr. Magnan is doing a little emergency salvage on his career."

The music died away with a clatter.

"--My God," Ambassador Crodfoller's voice was faint. "Magnan, you'll be knighted for this. Thank God you reached me. Thank God it's not too late. I'll find some excuse. I'll get a gram off at once."

"But you--"

"It's all right, Magnan. You were in time. Another ten minutes and the agreement would have been signed and transmitted. The wheels would have been put in motion. My career ruined...."

Retief felt a prod at his back. He turned.

"Doublecrossed," Zorn said softly. "So much for the word of a diplomat."

* * * * *

Retief looked at the short-barreled needler in Zorn's hand.

"I see you hedge your bets, Zorn," he said.

"We'll wait here," Zorn said, "until the excitement's over inside. I wouldn't want to attract any attention right now."

"Your politics are still lousy, Zorn. The picture hasn't changed. Your coup hasn't got a chance."

"Skip it. I'll take up one problem at a time."

"Magnan's mouth has a habit of falling open at the wrong time--"

"That's my good luck that I heard it. So there'll be no agreement, no guns, no fat job for Tammany Zorn, hey? Well, I can still play it the other way, What have I got to lose?"

With a movement too quick to follow, Retief's hand chopped down across Zorn's wrist. The needler clattered as Zorn reeled, and then Retief's hand clamped Zorn's arm and whirled him around.

"In answer to your last question," Retief said, "your neck."

"You haven't got a chance, doublecrosser," Zorn gasped.

"Shoke will be here in a minute," Retief said. "Tell him it's all off."

"Twist harder, Mister," Zorn said. "Break it off at the shoulder. I'm telling him nothing!"

"The kidding's over, Zorn," Retief said. "Call it off or I'll kill you."

"I believe you," Zorn said. "But you won't have long to remember it."

"All the killing will be for nothing," Retief said. "You'll be dead and the Rotunes will step into the power vacuum."

"So what? When I die, the world ends."

"Suppose I make you another offer, Zorn?"

"Why would it be any better than the last one, chiseler?"

Retief released Zorn's arm, pushed him away, stooped and picked up the needler.

"I could kill you, Zorn. You know that."

"Go ahead!"

Retief reversed the needler, held it out.

"I'm a gambler too, Zorn. I'm gambling you'll listen to what I have to say."

Zorn snatched the gun, stepped back. He looked at Retief.

"That wasn't the smartest bet you ever made, Mister; but go ahead. You've got maybe ten seconds."

"Nobody doublecrossed you, Zorn. Magnan put his foot in it. Too bad. Is that a reason to kill yourself and a lot of other people who've bet their lives on you?"

"They gambled and lost. Tough."

"Maybe you haven't lost yet--if you don't quit."

"Get to the point!"

Retief spoke earnestly for a minute and a half. Zorn stood, gun aimed, listening. Then both men turned as footsteps approached along the terrace. A fat man in a yellow sarong padded up to Zorn.

Zorn tucked the needler in his waistband.

"Hold everything, Shoke," he said. "Tell the boys to put the knives away. Spread the word fast. It's all off."

* * * * *

"I want to commend you, Retief," Ambassador Crodfoller said expansively. "You mixed very well at last night's affair. Actually, I was hardly aware of your presence."

"I've been studying Mr. Magnan's work," Retief said.

"A good man, Magnan. In a crowd, he's virtually invisible."

"He knows when to disappear all right."

"This has been in many ways a model operation, Retief." The Ambassador patted his paunch contentedly. "By observing local social customs and blending harmoniously with the court, I've succeeded in establishing a fine, friendly, working relationship with the Potentate."

"I understand the agreement has been postponed."

The Ambassador chuckled. "The Potentate's a crafty one. Through ... ah ... a special study I have been conducting, I learned last night that he had hoped to, shall I say, 'put one over' on the Corps."

"Great heavens," Retief said.

"Naturally, this placed me in a difficult position. It was my task to quash this gambit, without giving any indication that I was aware of its existence."

"A hairy position indeed," Retief said.

"Quite casually, I informed the Potentate that certain items which had been included in the terms of the agreement had been deleted and others substituted. I admired him at that moment, Retief. He took it coolly--appearing completely indifferent--perfectly dissembling his very serious disappointment."

"I noticed him dancing with three girls wearing a bunch of grapes apiece. He's very agile for a man of his bulk."

"You mustn't discount the Potentate! Remember, beneath that mask of frivolity, he had absorbed a bitter blow."

"He had me fooled," Retief said.

"Don't feel badly; I confess at first I failed to sense his shrewdness." The Ambassador nodded and moved off along the corridor.

Retief turned and went into an office. Magnan looked up from his desk.

"Ah," he said. "Retief. I've been meaning to ask you. About the ... ah ... blasters. Are you--?"

Retief leaned on Magnan's desk, looked at him.

"I thought that was to be our little secret."

"Well, naturally I--" Magnan closed his mouth, swallowed. "How is it, Retief," he said sharply, "that you were aware of this blaster business, when the Ambassador himself wasn't?"

"Easy," Retief said. "I made it up."

"You what!" Magnan looked wild. "But the agreement--it's been revised! Ambassador Crodfoller has gone on record...."

"Too bad. Glad I didn't tell him about it."

* * * * *

Magnan leaned back and closed his eyes.

"It was big of you to take all the ... blame," Retief said, "when the Ambassador was talking about knighting people."

Magnan opened his eyes.

"What about that gambler, Zorn? Won't he be upset?"

"It's all right," Retief said, "I made another arrangement. The business about making blasters out of common components wasn't completely imaginary. You can actually do it, using parts from an old-fashioned disposal unit."

"What good will that do him?" Magnan whispered, looking nervous. "We're not shipping in any old-fashioned disposal units."

"We don't need to," Retief said. "They're already installed in the palace kitchen--and in a few thousand other places, Zorn tells me."

"If this ever leaks...." Magnan put a hand to his forehead.

"I have his word on it that the Nenni slaughter is out. This place is ripe for a change. Maybe Zorn is what it needs."

"But how can we know?" Magnan yelped. "How can we be sure?"

"We can't," Retief said. "But it's not up to the Corps to meddle in Petreacs' internal affairs." He leaned over, picked up Magnan's desk lighter and lit a cigar. He blew a cloud of smoke toward the ceiling. "Right?"

Magnan looked at him, nodded weakly. "Right."

"I'd better be getting along to my desk," Retief said. "Now that the Ambassador feels that I'm settling down at last--"

"Retief," Magnan said, "tonight, I implore you. Stay out of the kitchen--no matter what."

Retief raised his eyebrows.

"I know," Magnan said. "If you hadn't interfered, we'd all have had our throats cut. But at least," he added, "we'd have died in accordance with regulations!"

END

Contents

NO GREAT MAGIC

by FRITZ LEIBER

The troupers of the Big Time lack no art to sway a crowd-- or to change all history!

I

To bring the dead to life Is no great magic. Few are wholly dead: Blow on a dead man's embers And a live flame will start. --Graves

I dipped through the filmy curtain into the boys' half of the dressing room and there was Sid sitting at the star's dressing table in his threadbare yellowed undershirt, the lucky one, not making up yet but staring sternly at himself in the bulb-framed mirror and experimentally working his features a little, as actors will, and kneading the stubble on his fat chin.

I said to him quietly, "Siddy, what are we putting on tonight? Maxwell Anderson's Elizabeth the Queen or Shakespeare's Macbeth? It says Macbeth on the callboard, but Miss Nefer's getting ready for Elizabeth. She just had me go and fetch the red wig."

He tried out a few eyebrow rears--right, left, both together--then turned to me, sucking in his big gut a little, as he always does when a gal heaves into hailing distance, and said, "Your pardon, sweetling, what sayest thou?"

Sid always uses that kook antique patter backstage, until I sometimes wonder whether I'm in Central Park, New York City, nineteen hundred and three quarters, or somewhere in Southwark, Merry England, fifteen hundred and same. The truth is that although he loves every last fat part in Shakespeare and will play the skinniest one with loyal and inspired affection, he thinks Willy S. penned Falstaff with nobody else in mind but Sidney J. Lessingham. (And no accent on the ham, please.)

I closed my eyes and counted to eight, then repeated my question.

He replied, "Why, the Bard's tragical history of the bloody Scot, certes." He waved his hand toward the portrait of Shakespeare that always sits beside his mirror on top of his reserve makeup box. At first that particular picture of the Bard looked too nancy to me--a sort of peeping-tom schoolteacher--but I've grown used to it over the months and even palsy-feeling.

He didn't ask me why I hadn't asked Miss Nefer my question. Everybody in the company knows she spends the hour before curtain-time getting into character, never parting her lips except for that purpose--or to bite your head off if you try to make the most necessary conversation.

"Aye, 'tiz Macbeth tonight," Sid confirmed, returning to his frowning-practice: left eyebrow up, right down, reverse, repeat, rest. "And I must play the ill-starred Thane of Glamis."

I said, "That's fine, Siddy, but where does it leave us with Miss Nefer? She's already thinned her eyebrows and beaked out the top of her nose for Queen Liz, though that's as far as she's got. A beautiful job, the nose. Anybody else would think it was plastic surgery instead of putty. But it's going to look kind of funny on the Thaness of Glamis."

* * * * *

Sid hesitated a half second longer than he usually would--I thought, his timing's off tonight--and then he harrumphed and said, "Why, Iris Nefer, decked out as Good Queen Bess, will speak a prologue to the play--a prologue which I have myself but last week writ." He owled his eyes. "'Tis an experiment in the new theater."

I said, "Siddy, prologues were nothing new to Shakespeare. He had them on half his other plays. Besides, it doesn't make sense to use Queen Elizabeth. She was dead by the time he whipped up Macbeth, which is all about witchcraft and directed at King James."

He growled a little at me and demanded, "Prithee, how comes it your peewit-brain bears such a ballast of fusty book-knowledge, chit?"

I said softly, "Siddy, you don't camp in a Shakespearean dressing room for a year, tete-a-teting with some of the wisest actors ever, without learning a little. Sure I'm a mental case, a poor little A & A existing on your sweet charity, and don't think I don't appreciate it, but--"

"A-and-A, thou sayest?" he frowned. "Methinks the gladsome new forswearers of sack and ale call themselves AA."

"Agoraphobe and Amnesiac," I told him. "But look, Siddy, I was going to sayest that I do know the plays. Having Queen Elizabeth speak a prologue to Macbeth is as much an anachronism as if you put her on the gantry of the British moonship, busting a bottle of champagne over its schnozzle."

"Ha!" he cried as if he'd caught me out. "And saying there's a new Elizabeth, wouldn't that be the bravest advertisement ever for the Empire?--perchance rechristening the pilot, copilot and astrogator Drake, Hawkins and Raleigh? And the ship The Golden Hind? Tilly fally, lady!"

He went on, "My prologue an anachronism, quotha! The groundlings will never mark it. Think'st thou wisdom came to mankind with the stenchful rocket and the sundered atomy? More, the Bard himself was topfull of anachronism. He put spectacles on King Lear, had clocks tolling the hour in Caesar's Rome, buried that Roman 'stead o' burning him and gave Czechoslovakia a seacoast. Go to, doll."

"Czechoslovakia, Siddy?"

"Bohemia, then, what skills it? Leave me now, sweet poppet. Go thy ways. I have matters of import to ponder. There's more to running a repertory company than reading the footnotes to Furness."

* * * * *

Martin had just slouched by calling the Half Hour and looking in his solemnity, sneakers, levis and dirty T-shirt more like an underage refugee from Skid Row than Sid's newest recruit, assistant stage manager and hardest-worked juvenile--though for once he'd remembered to shave. I was about to ask Sid who was going to play Lady Mack if Miss Nefer wasn't, or, if she were going to double the roles, shouldn't I help her with the change? She's a slow dresser and the Elizabeth costumes are pretty realistically stayed. And she would have trouble getting off that nose, I was sure. But then I saw that Siddy was already slapping on the alboline to keep the grease paint from getting into his pores.

Greta, you ask too many questions, I told myself. You get everybody riled up and you rack your own poor ricketty little mind; and I hied myself off to the costumery to settle my nerves.

The costumery, which occupies the back end of the dressing room, is exactly the right place to settle the nerves and warm the fancies of any child, including an unraveled adult who's saving what's left of her sanity by pretending to be one. To begin with there are the regular costumes for Shakespeare's plays, all jeweled and spangled and brocaded, stage armor, great Roman togas with weights in the borders to make them drape right, velvets of every color to rest your cheek against and dream, and the fantastic costumes for the other plays we favor; Ibsen's Peer Gynt, Shaw's Back to Methuselah and Hilliard's adaptation of Heinlein's Children of Methuselah, the Capek brothers' Insect People, O'Neill's The Fountain, Flecker's Hassan, Camino Real, Children of the Moon, The Beggar's Opera, Mary of Scotland, Berkeley Square, The Road to Rome.

There are also the costumes for all the special and variety performances we give of the plays: Hamlet in modern dress, Julius Caesar set in a dictatorship of the 1920's, The Taming of the Shrew in caveman furs and leopard skins, where Petruchio comes in riding a dinosaur, The Tempest set on another planet with a spaceship wreck to start it off Karrumph!--which means a half dozen spacesuits, featherweight but looking ever so practical, and the weirdest sort of extraterrestrial-beast outfits for Ariel and Caliban and the other monsters.

Oh, I tell you the stuff in the costumery ranges over such a sweep of space and time that you sometimes get frightened you'll be whirled up and spun off just anywhere, so that you have to clutch at something very real to you to keep it from happening and to remind you where you really are--as I did now at the subway token on the thin gold chain around my neck (Siddy's first gift to me that I can remember) and chanted very softly to myself, like a charm or a prayer, closing my eyes and squeezing the holes in the token: "Columbus Circle, Times Square, Penn Station, Christopher Street...."

* * * * *

But you don't ever get really frightened in the costumery. Not exactly, though your goosehairs get wonderfully realistically tingled and your tummy chilled from time to time--because you know it's all make-believe, a lifesize doll world, a children's dress-up world. It gets you thinking of far-off times and scenes as pleasant places and not as black hungry mouths that might gobble you up and keep you forever. It's always safe, always just in the theatre, just on the stage, no matter how far it seems to plunge and roam ... and the best sort of therapy for a pot-holed mind like mine, with as many gray ruts and curves and gaps as its cerebrum, that can't remember one single thing before this last year in the dressing room and that can't ever push its shaking body out of that same motherly fatherly room, except to stand in the wings for a scene or two and watch the play until the fear gets too great and the urge to take just one peek at the audience gets too strong ... and I remember what happened the two times I did peek, and I have to come scuttling back.

The costumery's good occupational therapy for me, too, as my pricked and calloused fingertips testify. I think I must have stitched up or darned half the costumes in it this last twelvemonth, though there are so many of them that I swear the drawers have accordion pleats and the racks extend into the fourth dimension--not to mention the boxes of props and the shelves of scripts and prompt-copies and other books, including a couple of encyclopedias and the many thick volumes of Furness's Variorum Shakespeare, which as Sid had guessed I'd been boning up on. Oh, and I've sponged and pressed enough costumes, too, and even refitted them to newcomers like Martin, ripping up and resewing seams, which can be a punishing job with heavy materials.

In a less sloppily organized company I'd be called wardrobe mistress, I guess. Except that to anyone in show business that suggests a crotchety old dame with lots of authority and scissors hanging around her neck on a string. Although I got my crochets, all right, I'm not that old. Kind of childish, in fact. As for authority, everybody outranks me, even Martin.

Of course to somebody outside show business, wardrobe mistress might suggest a yummy gal who spends her time dressing up as Nell Gwyn or Anitra or Mrs. Pinchwife or Cleopatra or even Eve (we got a legal costume for it) and inspiring the boys. I've tried that once or twice. But Siddy frowns on it, and if Miss Nefer ever caught me at it I think she'd whang me.

And in a normaller company it would be the wardrobe room, too, but costumery is my infantile name for it and the actors go along with my little whims.

I don't mean to suggest our company is completely crackers. To get as close to Broadway even as Central Park you got to have something. But in spite of Sid's whip-cracking there is a comforting looseness about its efficiency--people trade around the parts they play without fuss, the bill may be changed a half hour before curtain without anybody getting hysterics, nobody gets fired for eating garlic and breathing it in the leading lady's face. In short, we're a team. Which is funny when you come to think of it, as Sid and Miss Nefer and Bruce and Maudie are British (Miss Nefer with a touch of Eurasian blood, I romance); Martin and Beau and me are American (at least I think I am) while the rest come from just everywhere.

* * * * *

Besides my costumery work, I fetch things and run inside errands and help the actresses dress and the actors too. The dressing room's very coeducational in a halfway respectable way. And every once in a while Martin and I police up the whole place, me skittering about with dustcloth and wastebasket, he wielding the scrub-brush and mop with such silent grim efficiency that it always makes me nervous to get through and duck back into the costumery to collect myself.

Yes, the costumery's a great place to quiet your nerves or improve your mind or even dream your life away. But this time I couldn't have been there eight minutes when Miss Nefer's Elizabeth-angry voice came skirling, "Girl! Girl! Greta, where is my ruff with silver trim?" I laid my hands on it in a flash and loped it to her, because Old Queen Liz was known to slap even her Maids of Honor around a bit now and then and Miss Nefer is a bear on getting into character--a real Paul Muni.

She was all made up now, I was happy to note, at least as far as her face went--I hate to see that spooky eight-spoked faint tattoo on her forehead (I've sometimes wondered if she got it acting in India or Egypt maybe).

Yes, she was already all made up. This time she'd been going extra heavy on the burrowing-into-character bit, I could tell right away, even if it was only for a hacked-out anachronistic prologue. She signed to me to help her dress without even looking at me, but as I got busy I looked at her eyes. They were so cold and sad and lonely (maybe because they were so far away from her eyebrows and temples and small tight mouth, and so shut away from each other by that ridge of nose) that I got the creeps. Then she began to murmur and sigh, very softly at first, then loudly enough so I got the sense of it.

"Cold, so cold," she said, still seeing things far away though her hands were working smoothly with mine. "Even a gallop hardly fires my blood. Never was such a Januarius, though there's no snow. Snow will not come, or tears. Yet my brain burns with the thought of Mary's death-warrant unsigned. There's my particular hell!--to doom, perchance, all future queens, or leave a hole for the Spaniard and the Pope to creep like old worms back into the sweet apple of England. Philip's tall black crooked ships massing like sea-going fortresses south-away--cragged castles set to march into the waves. Parma in the Lowlands! And all the while my bright young idiot gentlemen spurting out my treasure as if it were so much water, as if gold pieces were a glut of summer posies. Oh, alackanight!"

And I thought, Cry Iced!--that's sure going to be one tyrannosaur of a prologue. And how you'll ever shift back to being Lady Mack beats me. Greta, if this is what it takes to do just a bit part, you'd better give up your secret ambition of playing walk-ons some day when your nerves heal.

* * * * *

She was really getting to me, you see, with that characterization. It was as if I'd managed to go out and take a walk and sat down in the park outside and heard the President talking to himself about the chances of war with Russia and realized he'd sat down on a bench with its back to mine and only a bush between. You see, here we were, two females undignifiedly twisted together, at the moment getting her into that crazy crouch-deep bodice that's like a big icecream cone, and yet here at the same time was Queen Elizabeth the First of England, three hundred and umpty-ump years dead, coming back to life in a Central Park dressing room. It shook me.

She looked so much the part, you see--even without the red wig yet, just powdered pale makeup going back to a quarter of an inch from her own short dark bang combed and netted back tight. The age too. Miss Nefer can't be a day over forty--well, forty-two at most--but now she looked and talked and felt to my hands dressing her, well, at least a dozen years older. I guess when Miss Nefer gets into character she does it with each molecule.

That age point fascinated me so much that I risked asking her a question. Probably I was figuring that she couldn't do me much damage because of the positions we happened to be in at the moment. You see, I'd started to lace her up and to do it right I had my knee against the tail of her spine.

"How old, I mean how young might your majesty be?" I asked her, innocently wonderingly like some dumb serving wench.

For a wonder she didn't somehow swing around and clout me, but only settled into character a little more deeply.

"Fifty-four winters," she replied dismally. "'Tiz Januarius of Our Lord's year One Thousand and Five Hundred and Eighty and Seven. I sit cold in Greenwich, staring at the table where Mary's death warrant waits only my sign manual. If I send her to the block, I open the doors to future, less official regicides. But if I doom her not, Philip's armada will come inching up the Channel in a season, puffing smoke and shot, and my English Catholics, thinking only of Mary Regina, will rise and i' the end the Spaniard will have all. All history would alter. That must not be, even if I'm damned for it! And yet ... and yet...."

A bright blue fly came buzzing along (the dressing room has some insect life) and slowly circled her head rather close, but she didn't even flicker her eyelids.

"I sit cold in Greenwich, going mad. Each afternoon I ride, praying for some mischance, some prodigy, to wash from my mind away the bloody question for some little space. It skills not what: a fire, a tree a-failing, Davison or e'en Eyes Leicester tumbled with his horse, an assassin's ball clipping the cold twigs by my ear, a maid crying rape, a wild boar charging with dipping tusks, news of the Spaniard at Thames' mouth or, more happily, a band of strolling actors setting forth some new comedy to charm the fancy or some great unheard-of tragedy to tear the heart--though that were somewhat much to hope for at this season and place, even if Southwark be close by."

* * * * *

The lacing was done. I stood back from her, and really she looked so much like Elizabeth painted by Gheeraerts or on the Great Seal of Ireland or something--though the ash-colored plush dress trimmed in silver and the little silver-edge ruff and the black-silver tinsel-cloth cloak lined with white plush hanging behind her looked most like a winter riding costume--and her face was such a pale frozen mask of Elizabeth's inward tortures, that I told myself, Oh, I got to talk to Siddy again, he's made some big mistake, the lardy old lackwit. Miss Nefer just can't be figuring on playing in Macbeth tonight.

As a matter of fact I was nerving myself to ask her all about it direct, though it was going to take some real nerve and maybe be risking broken bones or at least a flayed cheek to break the ice of that characterization, when who should come by calling the Fifteen Minutes but Martin. He looked so downright goofy that it took my mind off Nefer-in-character for all of eight seconds.

His levied bottom half still looked like The Lower Depths. Martin is Village Stanislavsky rather than Ye Olde English Stage Traditions. But above that ... well, all it really amounted to was that he was stripped to the waist and had shaved off the small high tuft of chest hair and was wearing a black wig that hung down in front of his shoulders in two big braids heavy with silver hoops and pins. But just the same those simple things, along with his tarpaper-solarium tan and habitual poker expression, made him look so like an American Indian that I thought, Hey Zeus!--he's all set to play Hiawatha, or if he'd just cover up that straight-line chest, a frowny Pocahontas. And I quick ran through what plays with Indian parts we do and could only come up with The Fountain.

I mutely goggled my question at him, wiggling my hands like guppy fins, but he brushed me off with a solemn mysterious smile and backed through the curtain. I thought, nobody can explain this but Siddy, and I followed Martin.

II

History does not move in one current, like the wind across bare seas, but in a thousand streams and eddies, like the wind over a broken landscape. --Cary

The boys' half of the dressing room (two-thirds really) was bustling. There was the smell of spirit gum and Max Factor and just plain men. Several guys were getting dressed or un-, and Bruce was cussing Bloody-something because he'd just burnt his fingers unwinding from the neck of a hot electric bulb some crepe hair he'd wound there to dry after wetting and stretching it to turn it from crinkly to straight for his Banquo beard. Bruce is always getting to the theater late and trying shortcuts.

But I had eyes only for Sid. So help me, as soon as I saw him they bugged again. Greta, I told myself, you're going to have to send Martin out to the drugstore for some anti-bug powder. "For the roaches, boy?" "No, for the eyes."

Sid was made up and had his long mustaches and elf-locked Macbeth wig on--and his corset too. I could tell by the way his waist was sucked in before he saw me. But instead of dark kilts and that bronze-studded sweat-stained leather battle harness that lets him show off his beefy shoulders and the top half of his heavily furred chest--and which really does look great on Macbeth in the first act when he comes in straight from battle--but instead of that he was wearing, so help me, red tights cross-gartered with strips of gold-blue tinsel-cloth, a green doublet gold-trimmed and to top it a ruff, and he was trying to fit onto his front a bright silvered cuirass that would have looked just dandy maybe on one of the Pope's Swiss Guards.

I thought, Siddy, Willy S. ought to reach out of his portrait there and bop you one on the koko for contemplating such a crazy-quilt desecration of just about his greatest and certainly his most atmospheric play.

Just then he noticed me and hissed accusingly, "There thou art, slothy minx! Spring to and help stuff me into this monstrous chest-kettle."

"Siddy, what is all this?" I demanded as my hands automatically obeyed. "Are you going to play Macbeth for laughs, except maybe leaving the Porter a serious character? You think you're Red Skelton?"

"What monstrous brabble is this, you mad bitch?" he retorted, grunting as I bear-hugged his waist, shouldering the cuirass to squeeze it home.

"The clown costumes on all you men," I told him, for now I'd noticed that the others were in rainbow hues, Bruce a real eye-buster in yellow tights and violet doublet as he furiously bushed out and clipped crosswise sections of beard and slapped them on his chin gleaming brown with spirit gum. "I haven't seen any eight-inch polka-dots yet but I'm sure I will."

Suddenly a big grin split Siddy's face and he laughed out loud at me, though the laugh changed to a gasp as I strapped in the cuirass three notches too tight. When we'd got that adjusted he said, "I' faith thou slayest me, pretty witling. Did I not tell you this production is an experiment, a novelty? We shall but show Macbeth as it might have been costumed at the court of King James. In the clothes of the day, but gaudier, as was then the stage fashion. Hold, dove, I've somewhat for thee." He fumbled his grouch bag from under his doublet and dipped finger and thumb in it, and put in my palm a silver model of the Empire State Building, charm bracelet size, and one of the new Kennedy dimes.

* * * * *

As I squeezed those two and gloated my eyes on them, feeling securer and happier and friendlier for them though I didn't at the moment want to, I thought, Well, Siddy's right about that, at least I've read they used to costume the plays that way, though I don't see how Shakespeare stood it. But it was dirty of them all not to tell me beforehand.

But that's the way it is. Sometimes I'm the butt as well as the pet of the dressing room, and considering all the breaks I get I shouldn't mind. I smiled at Sid and went on tiptoes and necked out my head and kissed him on a powdery cheek just above an aromatic mustache. Then I wiped the smile off my face and said, "Okay, Siddy, play Macbeth as Little Lord Fauntleroy or Baby Snooks if you want to. I'll never squeak again. But the Elizabeth prologue's still an anachronism. And--this is the thing I came to tell you, Siddy--Miss Nefer's not getting ready for any measly prologue. She's set to play Queen Elizabeth all night and tomorrow morning too. Whatever you think, she doesn't know we're doing Macbeth. But who'll do Lady Mack if she doesn't? And Martin's not dressing for Malcolm, but for the Son of the Last of the Mohicans, I'd say. What's more--"

You know, something I said must have annoyed Sid, for he changed his mood again in a flash. "Shut your jaw, you crook brained cat, and begone!" he snarled at me. "Here's curtain time close upon us, and you come like a wittol scattering your mad questions like the crazed Ophelia her flowers. Begone, I say!"

"Yessir," I whipped out softly. I skittered off toward the door to the stage, because that was the easiest direction. I figured I could do with a breath of less grease-painty air. Then, "Oh, Greta," I heard Martin call nicely.

He'd changed his levis for black tights, and was stepping into and pulling up around him a very familiar dress, dark green and embroidered with silver and stage-rubies. He'd safety-pinned a folded towel around his chest--to make a bosom of sorts, I realized.

He armed into the sleeves and turned his back to me. "Hook me up, would you?" he entreated.

Then it hit me. They had no actresses in Shakespeare's day, they used boys. And the dark green dress was so familiar to me because--

"Martin," I said, halfway up the hooks and working fast--Miss Nefer's costume fitted him fine. "You're going to play--?"

"Lady Macbeth, yes," he finished for me. "Wish me courage, will you Greta? Nobody else seems to think I need it."

* * * * *

I punched him half-heartedly in the rear. Then, as I fastened the last hooks, my eyes topped his shoulder and I looked at our faces side by side in the mirror of his dressing table. His, in spite of the female edging and him being at least eight years younger than me, I think, looked wise, poised, infinitely resourceful with power in reserve, very very real, while mine looked like that of a bewildered and characterless child ghost about to scatter into air--and the edges of my charcoal sweater and skirt, contrasting with his strong colors, didn't dispel that last illusion.

"Oh, by the way, Greta," he said, "I picked up a copy of The Village Times for you. There's a thumbnail review of our Measure for Measure, though it mentions no names, darn it. It's around here somewhere...."

But I was already hurrying on. Oh, it was logical enough to have Martin playing Mrs. Macbeth in a production styled to Shakespeare's own times (though pedantically over-authentic, I'd have thought) and it really did answer all my questions, even why Miss Nefer could sink herself wholly in Elizabeth tonight if she wanted to. But it meant that I must be missing so much of what was going on right around me, in spite of spending 24 hours a day in the dressing room, or at most in the small adjoining john or in the wings of the stage just outside the dressing room door, that it scared me. Siddy telling everybody, "Macbeth tonight in Elizabethan costume, boys and girls," sure, that I could have missed--though you'd have thought he'd have asked my help on the costumes.

But Martin getting up in Mrs. Mack. Why, someone must have held the part on him twenty-eight times, cueing him, while he got the lines. And there must have been at least a couple of run-through rehearsals to make sure he had all the business and stage movements down pat, and Sid and Martin would have been doing their big scenes every backstage minute they could spare with Sid yelling, "Witling! Think'st that's a wifely buss?" and Martin would have been droning his lines last time he scrubbed and mopped....

Greta, they're hiding things from you, I told myself.

Maybe there was a 25th hour nobody had told me about yet when they did all the things they didn't tell me about.

Maybe they were things they didn't dare tell me because of my top-storey weakness.

I felt a cold draft and shivered and I realized I was at the door to the stage.

I should explain that our stage is rather an unusual one, in that it can face two ways, with the drops and set pieces and lighting all capable of being switched around completely. To your left, as you look out the dressing-room door, is an open-air theater, or rather an open-air place for the audience--a large upward-sloping glade walled by thick tall trees and with benches for over two thousand people. On that side the stage kind of merges into the grass and can be made to look part of it by a green groundcloth.

To your right is a big roofed auditorium with the same number of seats.

The whole thing grew out of the free summer Shakespeare performances in Central Park that they started back in the 1950's.

The Janus-stage idea is that in nice weather you can have the audience outdoors, but if it rains or there's a cold snap, or if you want to play all winter without a single break, as we've been doing, then you can put your audience in the auditorium. In that case, a big accordion-pleated wall shuts off the out of doors and keeps the wind from blowing your backdrop, which is on that side, of course, when the auditorium's in use.

Tonight the stage was set up to face the outdoors, although that draft felt mighty chilly.

I hesitated, as I always do at the door to the stage--though it wasn't the actual stage lying just ahead of me, but only backstage, the wings. You see, I always have to fight the feeling that if I go out the dressing room door, go out just eight steps, the world will change while I'm out there and I'll never be able to get back. It won't be New York City any more, but Chicago or Mars or Algiers or Atlanta, Georgia, or Atlantis or Hell and I'll never be able to get back to that lovely warm womb with all the jolly boys and girls and all the costumes smelling like autumn leaves.

Or, especially when there's a cold breeze blowing, I'm afraid that I'll change, that I'll grow wrinkled and old in eight footsteps, or shrink down to the witless blob of a baby, or forget altogether who I am--

--or, it occurred to me for the first time now, remember who I am. Which might be even worse.

Maybe that's what I'm afraid of.

I took a step back. I noticed something new just beside the door: a high-legged, short-keyboard piano. Then I saw that the legs were those of a table. The piano was just a box with yellowed keys. Spinet? Harpsichord?

"Five minutes, everybody," Martin quietly called out behind me.

I took hold of myself. Greta, I told myself--also for the first time, you know that some day you're really going to have to face this thing, and not just for a quick dip out and back either. Better get in some practice.

I stepped through the door.

* * * * *

Beau and Doc were already out there, made up and in costume for Ross and King Duncan. They were discreetly peering past the wings at the gathering audience. Or at the place where the audience ought to be gathering, at any rate--sometimes the movies and girlie shows and brainheavy beatnik bruhahas outdraw us altogether. Their costumes were the same kooky colorful ones as the others'. Doc had a mock-ermine robe and a huge gilt papier-mache crown. Beau was carrying a ragged black robe and hood over his left arm--he doubles the First Witch.

As I came up behind them, making no noise in my black sneakers, I heard Beau say, "I see some rude fellows from the City approaching. I was hoping we wouldn't get any of those. How should they scent us out?"

Brother, I thought, where do you expect them to come from if not the City? Central Park is bounded on three sides by Manhattan Island and on the fourth by the Eighth Avenue Subway. And Brooklyn and Bronx boys have got pretty sharp scenters. And what's it get you insulting the woiking and non-woiking people of the woild's greatest metropolis? Be grateful for any audience you get, boy.

But I suppose Beau Lassiter considers anybody from north of Vicksburg a "rude fellow" and is always waiting for the day when the entire audience will arrive in carriage and democrat wagons.

Doc replied, holding down his white beard and heavy on the mongrel Russo-German accent he miraculously manages to suppress on stage except when "Vot does it matter? Ve don't convinze zem, ve don't convinze nobody. Nichevo."

Maybe, I thought, Doc shares my doubts about making Macbeth plausible in rainbow pants.

Still unobserved by them, I looked between their shoulders and got the first of my shocks.

It wasn't night at all, but afternoon. A dark cold lowering afternoon, admittedly. But afternoon all the same.

Sure, between shows I sometimes forget whether it's day or night, living inside like I do. But getting matinees and evening performances mixed is something else again.

It also seemed to me, although Beau was leaning in now and I couldn't see so well, that the glade was smaller than it should be, the trees closer to us and more irregular, and I couldn't see the benches. That was Shock Two.

Beau said anxiously, glancing at his wrist, "I wonder what's holding up the Queen?"

Although I was busy keeping up nerve-pressure against the shocks, I managed to think. So he knows about Siddy's stupid Queen Elizabeth prologue too. But of course he would. It's only me they keep in the dark. If he's so smart he ought to remember that Miss Nefer is always the last person on stage, even when she opens the play.

And then I thought I heard, through the trees, the distant drumming of horses' hoofs and the sound of a horn.

* * * * *

Now they do have horseback riding in Central Park and you can hear auto horns there, but the hoofbeats don't drum that wild way. And there aren't so many riding together. And no auto horn I ever heard gave out with that sweet yet imperious ta-ta-ta-TA.

I must have squeaked or something, because Beau and Doc turned around quickly, blocking my view, their expressions half angry, half anxious.

I turned too and ran for the dressing room, for I could feel one of my mind-wavery fits coming on. At the last second it had seemed to me that the scenery was getting skimpier, hardly more than thin trees and bushes itself, and underfoot feeling more like ground than a ground cloth, and overhead not theater roof but gray sky. Shock Three and you're out, Greta, my umpire was calling.

I made it through the dressing room door and nothing there was wavering or dissolving, praised be Pan. Just Martin standing with his back to me, alert, alive, poised like a cat inside that green dress, the prompt book in his right hand with a finger in it, and from his left hand long black tatters swinging--telling me he'd still be doubling Second Witch. And he was hissing, "Places, please, everybody. On stage!"

With a sweep of silver and ash-colored plush, Miss Nefer came past him, for once leading the last-minute hurry to the stage. She had on the dark red wig now. For me that crowned her characterization. It made me remember her saying, "My brain burns." I ducked aside as if she were majesty incarnate.

And then she didn't break her own precedent. She stopped at the new thing beside the door and poised her long white skinny fingers over the yellowed keys, and suddenly I remembered what it was called: a virginals.

She stared down at it fiercely, evilly, like a witch planning an enchantment. Her face got the secret fiendish look that, I told myself, the real Elizabeth would have had ordering the deaths of Ballard and Babington, or plotting with Drake (for all they say she didn't) one of his raids, that long long forefinger tracing crooked courses through a crabbedly drawn map of the Indies and she smiling at the dots of cities that would burn.

Then all her eight fingers came flickering down and the strings inside the virginals began to twang and hum with a high-pitched rendering of Grieg's "In the Hall of the Mountain King."

Then as Sid and Bruce and Martin rushed past me, along with a black swooping that was Maud already robed and hooded for Third Witch, I beat it for my sleeping closet like Peer Gynt himself dashing across the mountainside away from the cave of the Troll King, who only wanted to make tiny slits in his eyeballs so that forever afterwards he'd see reality just a little differently. And as I ran, the master-anachronism of that menacing mad march music was shrilling in my ears.

III

Sound a dumbe shew. Enter the three fatall sisters, with a rocke, a threed, and a pair of sheeres. --Old Play

My sleeping closet is just a cot at the back end of the girls' third of the dressing room, with a three-panel screen to make it private.

When I sleep I hang my outside clothes on the screen, which is pasted and thumbtacked all over with the New York City stuff that gives me security: theater programs and restaurant menus, clippings from the Times and the Mirror, a torn-out picture of the United Nations building with a hundred tiny gay paper flags pasted around it, and hanging in an old hairnet a home-run baseball autographed by Willy Mays. Things like that.

Right now I was jumping my eyes over that stuff, asking it to keep me located and make me safe, as I lay on my cot in my clothes with my knees drawn up and my fingers over my ears so the louder lines from the play wouldn't be able to come nosing back around the trunks and tables and bright-lit mirrors and find me. Generally I like to listen to them, even if they're sort of sepulchral and drained of overtones by their crooked trip. But they're always tense-making. And tonight (I mean this afternoon)--no!

It's funny I should find security in mementos of a city I daren't go out into--no, not even for a stroll through Central Park, though I know it from the Pond to Harlem Meer--the Met Museum, the Menagerie, the Ramble, the Great Lawn, Cleopatra's Needle and all the rest. But that's the way it is. Maybe I'm like Jonah in the whale, reluctant to go outside because the whale's a terrible monster that's awful scary to look in the face and might really damage you gulping you a second time, yet reassured to know you're living in the stomach of that particular monster and not a seventeen tentacled one from the fifth planet of Aldebaran.

It's really true, you see, about me actually living in the dressing room. The boys bring me meals: coffee in cardboard cylinders and doughnuts in little brown grease-spotted paper sacks and malts and hamburgers and apples and little pizzas, and Maud brings me raw vegetables--carrots and parsnips and little onions and such, and watches to make sure I exercise my molars grinding them and get my vitamins. I take spit-baths in the little john. Architects don't seem to think actors ever take baths, even when they've browned themselves all over playing Pindarus the Parthian in Julius Caesar. And all my shut-eye is caught on this little cot in the twilight of my NYC screen.

* * * * *

You'd think I'd be terrified being alone in the dressing room during the wee and morning hours, let alone trying to sleep then, but that isn't the way it works out. For one thing, there's apt to be someone sleeping in too. Maudie especially. And it's my favorite time too for costume-mending and reading the Variorum and other books, and for just plain way-out dreaming. You see, the dressing room is the one place I really do feel safe. Whatever is out there in New York that terrorizes me, I'm pretty confident that it can never get in here.

Besides that, there's a great big bolt on the inside of the dressing room door that I throw whenever I'm all alone after the show. Next day they buzz for me to open it.

It worried me a bit at first and I had asked Sid, "But what if I'm so deep asleep I don't hear and you have to get in fast?" and he had replied, "Sweetling, a word in your ear: our own Beauregard Lassiter is the prettiest picklock unjailed since Jimmy Valentine and Jimmy Dale. I'll not ask where he learned his trade, but 'tis sober truth, upon my honor."

And Beau had confirmed this with a courtly bow, murmuring, "At your service, Miss Greta."

"How do you jigger a big iron bolt through a three-inch door that fits like Maudie's tights?" I wanted to know.

"He carries lodestones of great power and divers subtle tools," Sid had explained for him.

I don't know how they work it so that some Traverse-Three cop or park official doesn't find out about me and raise a stink. Maybe Sid just throws a little more of the temperament he uses to keep most outsiders out of the dressing-room. We sure don't get any janitors or scrubwomen, as Martin and I know only too well. More likely he squares someone. I do get the impression all the company's gone a little way out on a limb letting me stay here--that the directors of our theater wouldn't like it if they found out about me.

In fact, the actors are all so good about helping me and putting up with my antics (though they have their own, Danu digs!) that I sometimes think I must be related to one of them--a distant cousin or sister-in-law (or wife, my God!), because I've checked our faces side by side in the mirrors often enough and I can't find any striking family resemblances. Or maybe I was even an actress in the company. The least important one. Playing the tiniest roles like Lucius in Caesar and Bianca in Othello and one of the little princes in Dick the Three Eyes and Fleance and the Gentlewoman in Macbeth, though me doing even that much acting strikes me to laugh.

But whatever I am in that direction--if I'm anything--not one of the actors has told me a word about it or dropped the least hint. Not even when I beg them to tell me or try to trick them into it, presumably because it might revive the shock that gave me agoraphobia and amnesia in the first place, and maybe this time knock out my entire mind or at least smash the new mouse-in-a-hole consciousness I've made for myself.

* * * * *

I guess they must have got by themselves a year ago and talked me over and decided my best chance for cure or for just bumping along half happily was staying in the dressing room rather than being sent home (funny, could I have another?) or to a mental hospital. And then they must have been cocky enough about their amateur psychiatry and interested enough in me (the White Horse knows why) to go ahead with a program almost any psychiatrist would be bound to yike at.

I got so worried about the set up once and about the risks they might be running that, gritting down my dread of the idea, I said to Sid, "Siddy, shouldn't I see a doctor?"

He looked at me solemnly for a couple of seconds and then said, "Sure, why not? Go talk to Doc right now," tipping a thumb toward Doc Pyeskov, who was just sneaking back into the bottom of his makeup box what looked like a half pint from the flask I got. I did, incidentally. Doc explained to me Kraepelin's classification of the psychoses, muttering, as he absentmindedly fondled my wrist, that in a year or two he'd be a good illustration of Korsakov's Syndrome.

They've all been pretty darn good to me in their kooky ways, the actors have. Not one of them has tried to take advantage of my situation to extort anything out of me, beyond asking me to sew on a button or polish some boots or at worst clean the wash bowl. Not one of the boys has made a pass I didn't at least seem to invite. And when my crush on Sid was at its worst he shouldered me off by getting polite--something he only is to strangers. On the rebound I hit Beau, who treated me like a real Southern gentleman.

All this for a stupid little waif, whom anyone but a gang of sentimental actors would have sent to Bellevue without a second thought or feeling. For, to get disgustingly realistic, my most plausible theory of me is that I'm a stage-struck girl from Iowa who saw her twenties slipping away and her sanity too, and made the dash to Greenwich Village, and went so ape on Shakespeare after seeing her first performance in Central Park that she kept going back there night after night (Christopher Street, Penn Station, Times Square, Columbus Circle--see?) and hung around the stage door, so mousy but open-mouthed that the actors made a pet of her.

And then something very nasty happened to her, either down at the Village or in a dark corner of the Park. Something so nasty that it blew the top of her head right off. And she ran to the only people and place where she felt she could ever again feel safe. And she showed them the top of her head with its singed hair and its jagged ring of skull and they took pity.

My least plausible theory of me, but the one I like the most, is that I was born in the dressing room, cradled in the top of a flat theatrical trunk with my ears full of Shakespeare's lines before I ever said "Mama," let alone lamped a TV; hush-walked when I cried by whoever was off stage, old props my first toys, trying to eat crepe hair my first indiscretion, sticks of grease-paint my first crayons. You know, I really wouldn't be bothered by crazy fears about New York changing and the dressing room shifting around in space and time, if I could be sure I'd always be able to stay in it and that the same sweet guys and gals would always be with me and that the shows would always go on.

* * * * *

This show was sure going on, it suddenly hit me, for I'd let my fingers slip off my ears as I sentimentalized and wish-dreamed and I heard, muted by the length and stuff of the dressing room, the slow beat of a drum and then a drum note in Maudie's voice taking up that beat as she warned the other two witches, "A drum, a drum! Macbeth doth come."

Why, I'd not only missed Sid's history-making-and-breaking Queen Elizabeth prologue (kicking myself that I had, now it was over), I'd also missed the short witch scene with its famous "Fair is foul and foul is fair," the Bloody Sergeant scene where Duncan hears about Macbeth's victory, and we were well into the second witch scene, the one on the blasted heath where Macbeth gets it predicted to him he'll be king after Duncan and is tempted to speculate about hurrying up the process.

I sat up. I did hesitate a minute then, my fingers going back toward my ears, because Macbeth is specially tense-making and when I've had one of my mind-wavery fits I feel weak for a while and things are blurry and uncertain. Maybe I'd better take a couple of the barbiturate sleeping pills Maudie manages to get for me and--but No, Greta, I told myself, you want to watch this show, you want to see how they do in those crazy costumes. You especially want to see how Martin makes out. He'd never forgive you if you didn't.

So I walked to the other end of the empty dressing room, moving quite slowly and touching the edges here and there, the words of the play getting louder all the time. By the time I got to the door Bruce-Banquo was saying to the witches, "If you can look into the seeds of time, And say which grain will grow and which will not,"--those lines that stir anyone's imagination with their veiled vision of the universe.

The overall lighting was a little dim (afternoon fading already?--a late matinee?) and the stage lights flickery and the scenery still a little spectral-flimsy. Oh, my mind-wavery fits can be lulus! But I concentrated on the actors, watching them through the entrance-gaps in the wings. They were solid enough.

Giving a solid performance, too, as I decided after watching that scene through and the one after it where Duncan congratulates Macbeth, with never a pause between the two scenes in true Elizabethan style. Nobody was laughing at the colorful costumes. After a while I began to accept them myself.

Oh, it was a different Macbeth than our company usually does. Louder and faster, with shorter pauses between speeches, the blank verse at times approaching a chant. But it had a lot of real guts and everybody was just throwing themselves into it, Sid especially.

* * * * *

The first Lady Macbeth scene came. Without exactly realizing it I moved forward to where I'd been when I got my three shocks. Martin is so intent on his career and making good that he has me the same way about it.

The Thaness started off, as she always does, toward the opposite side of the stage and facing a little away from me. Then she moved a step and looked down at the stage-parchment letter in her hands and began to read it, though there was nothing on it but scribble, and my heart sank because the voice I heard was Miss Nefer's. I thought (and almost said out loud) Oh, dammit, he funked out, or Sid decided at the last minute he couldn't trust him with the part. Whoever got Miss Nefer out of the ice cream cone in time?

Then she swung around and I saw that no, my God, it was Martin, no mistaking. He'd been using her voice. When a person first does a part, especially getting up in it without much rehearsing, he's bound to copy the actor he's been hearing doing it. And as I listened on, I realized it was fundamentally Martin's own voice pitched a trifle high, only some of the intonations and rhythms were Miss Nefer's. He was showing a lot of feeling and intensity too and real Martin-type poise. You're off to a great start, kid, I cheered inwardly. Keep it up!

Just then I looked toward the audience. Once again I almost squeaked out loud. For out there, close to the stage, in the very middle of the reserve section, was a carpet spread out. And sitting in the middle of it on some sort of little chair, with what looked like two charcoal braziers smoking to either side of her, was Miss Nefer with a string of extras in Elizabethan hats with cloaks pulled around them.

For a second it really threw me because it reminded me of the things I'd seen or thought I'd seen the couple of times I'd sneaked a peek through the curtain-hole at the audience in the indoor auditorium.

It hardly threw me for more than a second, though, because I remembered that the characters who speak Shakespeare's prologues often stay on stage and sometimes kind of join the audience and even comment on the play from time to time--Christopher Sly and attendant lords in The Shrew, for one. Sid had just copied and in his usual style laid it on thick.

Well, bully for you, Siddy, I thought, I'm sure the witless New York groundlings will be thrilled to their cold little toes knowing they're sitting in the same audience as Good Queen Liz and attendant courtiers. And as for you, Miss Nefer, I added a shade invidiously, you just keep on sitting cold in Central Park, warmed by dry-ice smoke from braziers, and keep your mouth shut and everything'll be fine. I'm sincerely glad you'll be able to be Queen Elizabeth all night long. Just so long as you don't try to steal the scene from Martin and the rest of the cast, and the real play.

I suppose that camp chair will get a little uncomfortable by the time the Fifth Act comes tramping along to that drumbeat, but I'm sure you're so much in character you'll never feel it.

One thing though: just don't scare me again pretending to work witchcraft--with a virginals or any other way.

Okay?

Swell.

Me, now, I'm going to watch the play.

IV

... to dream of new dimensions, Cheating checkmate by painting the king's robe So that he slides like a queen; --Graves

I swung back to the play just at the moment Lady Mack soliloquizes, "Come to my woman's breasts. And take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers." Although I knew it was just folded towel Martin was touching with his fingertips as he lifted them to the top half of his green bodice, I got carried away, he made it so real. I decided boys can play girls better than people think. Maybe they should do it a little more often, and girls play boys too.

Then Sid-Macbeth came back to his wife from the wars, looking triumphant but scared because the murder-idea's started to smoulder in him, and she got busy fanning the blaze like any other good little hausfrau intent on her husband rising in the company and knowing that she's the power behind him and that when there are promotions someone's always got to get the axe. Sid and Martin made this charming little domestic scene so natural yet gutsy too that I wanted to shout hooray. Even Sid clutching Martin to that ridiculous pot-chested cuirass didn't have one note of horseplay in it. Their bodies spoke. It was the McCoy.

After that, the play began to get real good, the fast tempo and exaggerated facial expressions actually helping it. By the time the Dagger Scene came along I was digging my fingernails into my sweaty palms. Which was a good thing--my eating up the play, I mean--because it kept me from looking at the audience again, even taking a fast peek. As you've gathered, audiences bug me. All those people out there in the shadows, watching the actors in the light, all those silent voyeurs as Bruce calls them. Why, they might be anything. And sometimes (to my mind-wavery sorrow) I think they are. Maybe crouching in the dark out there, hiding among the others, is the one who did the nasty thing to me that tore off the top of my head.

Anyhow, if I so much as glance at the audience, I begin to get ideas about it--and sometimes even if I don't, as just at this moment I thought I heard horses restlessly pawing hard ground and one whinny, though that was shut off fast. Krishna kressed us! I thought, Skiddy can't have hired horses for Nefer-Elizabeth much as he's a circus man at heart. We don't have that kind of money. Besides--

But just then Sid-Macbeth gasped as if he were sucking in a bucket of air. He'd shed the cuirass, fortunately. He said, "Is this a dagger which I see before me, the handle toward my hand?" and the play hooked me again, and I had no time to think about or listen for anything else. Most of the offstage actors were on the other side of the stage, as that's where they make their exits and entrances at this point in the Second Act. I stood alone in the wings, watching the play like a bug, frightened only of the horrors Shakespeare had in mind when he wrote it.

Yes, the play was going great. The Dagger Scene was terrific where Duncan gets murdered offstage, and so was the part afterwards where hysteria mounts as the crime's discovered.

But just at this point I began to catch notes I didn't like. Twice someone was late on entrance and came on as if shot from a cannon. And three times at least Sid had to throw someone a line when they blew up--in the clutches Sid's better than any prompt book. It began to look as if the play were getting out of control, maybe because the new tempo was so hot.

* * * * *

But they got through the Murder Scene okay. As they came trooping off, yelling "Well contented," most of them on my side for a change, I went for Sid with a towel. He always sweats like a pig in the Murder Scene. I mopped his neck and shoved the towel up under his doublet to catch the dripping armpits.

Meanwhile he was fumbling around on a narrow table where they lay props and costumes for quick changes. Suddenly he dug his fingers into my shoulder, enough to catch my attention at this point, meaning I'd show bruises tomorrow, and yelled at me under his breath, "And you love me, our crows and robes. Presto!"

I was off like a flash to the costumery. There were Mr. and Mrs. Mack's king-and-queen robes and stuff hanging and sitting just where I knew they'd have to be.

I snatched them up, thinking, Boy, they made a mistake when they didn't tell about this special performance, and I started back like Flash Two.

As I shot out the dressing room door the theater was very quiet. There's a short low-pitched scene on stage then, to give the audience a breather. I heard Miss Nefer say loudly (it had to be loud to get to me from even the front of the audience): "'Tis a good bloody play, Eyes," and some voice I didn't recognize reply a bit grudgingly, "There's meat in it and some poetry too, though rough-wrought." She went on, still as loudly as if she owned the theater, "'Twill make Master Kyd bite his nails with jealousy--ha, ha!"

Ha-ha yourself, you scene-stealing witch, I thought, as I helped Sid and then Martin on with their royal outer duds. But at the same time I knew Sid must have written those lines himself to go along with his prologue. They had the unmistakable rough-wrought Lessingham touch. Did he really expect the audience to make anything of that reference to Shakespeare's predecessor Thomas Kyd of The Spanish Tragedy and the lost Hamlet? And if they knew enough to spot that, wouldn't they be bound to realize the whole Elizabeth-Macbeth tie-up was anachronistic? But when Sid gets an inspiration he can be very bull-headed.

Just then, while Bruce-Banquo was speaking his broody low soliloquy on stage, Miss Nefer cut in again loudly with, "Aye, Eyes, a good bloody play. Yet somehow, methinks--I know not how--I've heard it before." Whereupon Sid grabbed Martin by the wrist and hissed, "Did'st hear? Oh, I like not that," and I thought, Oh-ho, so now she's beginning to ad-lib.

Well, right away they all went on stage with a flourish, Sid and Martin crowned and hand in hand. The play got going strong again. But there were still those edge-of-control undercurrents and I began to be more uneasy than caught up, and I had to stare consciously at the actors to keep off a wavery-fit.

* * * * *

Other things began to bother me too, such as all the doubling.

Macbeth's a great play for doubling. For instance, anyone except Macbeth or Banquo can double one of the Three Witches--or one of the Three Murderers for that matter. Normally we double at least one or two of the Witches and Murderers, but this performance there'd been more multiple-parting than I'd ever seen. Doc had whipped off his Duncan beard and thrown on a brown smock and hood to play the Porter with his normal bottle-roughened accents. Well, a drunk impersonating a drunk, pretty appropriate. But Bruce was doing the next-door-to-impossible double of Banquo and Macduff, using a ringing tenor voice for the latter and wearing in the murder scene a helmet with dropped visor to hide his Banquo beard. He'd be able to tear it off, of course, after the Murderers got Banquo and he'd made his brief appearance as a bloodied-up ghost in the Banquet Scene. I asked myself, My God, has Siddy got all the other actors out in front playing courtiers to Elizabeth-Nefer? Wasting them that way? The whoreson rogue's gone nuts!

But really it was plain frightening, all that frantic doubling and tripling with its suggestion that the play (and the company too, Freya forfend) was becoming a ricketty patchwork illusion with everybody racing around faster and faster to hide the holes. And the scenery-wavery stuff and the warped Park-sounds were scary too. I was actually shivering by the time Sid got to: "Light thickens; and the crow Makes wing to the rooky wood: Good things of day begin to droop and drowse; Whiles night's black agents to their preys do rouse." Those graveyard lines didn't help my nerves any, of course. Nor did thinking I heard Nefer-Elizabeth say from the audience, rather softly for her this time, "Eyes, I have heard that speech, I know not where. Think you 'tiz stolen?"

Greta, I told myself, you need a miltown before the crow makes wing through your kooky head.

I turned to go and fetch me one from my closet. And stopped dead.

Just behind me, pacing back and forth like an ash-colored tiger in the gloomy wings, looking daggers at the audience every time she turned at that end of her invisible cage, but ignoring me completely, was Miss Nefer in the Elizabeth wig and rig.

Well, I suppose I should have said to myself, Greta, you imagined that last loud whisper from the audience. Miss Nefer's simply unkinked herself, waved a hand to the real audience and come back stage. Maybe Sid just had her out there for the first half of the play. Or maybe she just couldn't stand watching Martin give such a bang-up performance in her part of Lady Mack.

Yes, maybe I should have told myself something like that, but somehow all I could think then--and I thought it with a steady mounting shiver--was, We got two Elizabeths. This one is our witch Nefer. I know. I dressed her. And I know that devil-look from the virginals. But if this is our Elizabeth, the company Elizabeth, the stage Elizabeth ... who's the other?

And because I didn't dare to let myself think of the answer to that question, I dodged around the invisible cage that the ash-colored skirt seemed to ripple against as the Tiger Queen turned and I ran into the dressing room, my only thought to get behind my New York City Screen.

V

Even little things are turning out to be great things and becoming intensely interesting. Have you ever thought about the properties of numbers? --The Maiden

Lying on my cot, my eyes crosswise to the printing, I looked from a pink Algonquin menu to a pale green New Amsterdam program, with a tiny doll of Father Knickerbocker dangling between them on a yellow thread. Really they weren't covering up much of anything. A ghostly hole an inch and a half across seemed to char itself in the program. As if my eye were right up against it, I saw in vivid memory what I'd seen the two times I'd dared a peek through the hole in the curtain: a bevy of ladies in masks and Nell Gwyn dresses and men in King Charles knee-breeches and long curled hair, and the second time a bunch of people and creatures just wild: all sorts and colors of clothes, humans with hoofs for feet and antennae springing from their foreheads, furry and feathery things that had more arms than two and in one case that many heads--as if they were dressed up in our Tempest, Peer Gynt and Insect People costumes and some more besides.

Naturally I'd had mind-wavery fits both times. Afterwards Sid had wagged a finger at me and explained that on those two nights we'd been giving performances for people who'd arranged a costume theater-party and been going to attend a masquerade ball, and 'zounds, when would I learn to guard my half-patched pate?

I don't know, I guess never, I answered now, quick looking at a Giants pennant, a Korvette ad, a map of Central Park, my Willy Mays baseball and a Radio City tour ticket. That was eight items I'd looked at this trip without feeling any inward improvement. They weren't reassuring me at all.

The blue fly came slowly buzzing down over my screen and I asked it, "What are you looking for? A spider?" when what should I hear coming back through the dressing room straight toward my sleeping closet but Miss Nefer's footsteps. No one else walks that way.

She's going to do something to you, Greta, I thought. She's the maniac in the company. She's the one who terrorized you with the boning knife in the shrubbery, or sicked the giant tarantula on you at the dark end of the subway platform, or whatever it was, and the others are covering up for. She's going to smile the devil-smile and weave those white twig-fingers at you, all eight of them. And Birnam Wood'll come to Dunsinane and you'll be burnt at the stake by men in armor or drawn and quartered by eight-legged monkeys that talk or torn apart by wild centaurs or whirled through the roof to the moon without being dressed for it or sent burrowing into the past to stifle in Iowa 1948 or Egypt 4,008 B.C. The screen won't keep her out.

* * * * *

Then a head of hair pushed over the screen. But it was black-bound-with-silver, Brahma bless us, and a moment later Martin was giving me one of his rare smiles.

I said, "Marty, do something for me. Don't ever use Miss Nefer's footsteps again. Her voice, okay, if you have to. But not the footsteps. Don't ask me why, just don't."

Martin came around and sat on the foot of my cot. My legs were already doubled up. He straightened out his blue-and-gold skirt and rested a hand on my black sneakers.

"Feeling a little wonky, Greta?" he asked. "Don't worry about me. Banquo's dead and so's his ghost. We've finished the Banquet Scene. I've got lots of time."

I just looked at him, queerly I guess. Then without lifting my head I asked him, "Martin, tell me the truth. Does the dressing room move around?"

I was talking so low that he hitched a little closer, not touching me anywhere else though.

"The Earth's whipping around the sun at 20 miles a second," he replied, "and the dressing room goes with it."

I shook my head, my cheek scrubbing the pillow, "I mean ... shifting," I said. "By itself."

"How?" he asked.

"Well," I told him, "I've had this idea--it's just a sort of fancy, remember--that if you wanted to time-travel and, well, do things, you could hardly pick a more practical machine than a dressing room and sort of stage and half-theater attached, with actors to man it. Actors can fit in anywhere. They're used to learning new parts and wearing strange costumes. Heck, they're even used to traveling a lot. And if an actor's a bit strange nobody thinks anything of it--he's almost expected to be foreign, it's an asset to him."

"And a theater, well, a theater can spring up almost anywhere and nobody ask questions, except the zoning authorities and such and they can always be squared. Theaters come and go. It happens all the time. They're transitory. Yet theaters are crossroads, anonymous meeting places, anybody with a few bucks or sometimes nothing at all can go. And theaters attract important people, the sort of people you might want to do something to. Caesar was stabbed in a theater. Lincoln was shot in one. And...."

My voice trailed off. "A cute idea," he commented.

I reached down to his hand on my shoe and took hold of his middle finger as a baby might.

"Yeah," I said, "But Martin, is it true?"

He asked me gravely, "What do you think?"

I didn't say anything.

"How would you like to work in a company like that?" he asked speculatively.

"I don't really know," I said.

* * * * *

He sat up straighter and his voice got brisk. "Well, all fantasy aside, how'd you like to work in this company?" He asked, lightly slapping my ankle. "On the stage, I mean. Sid thinks you're ready for some of the smaller parts. In fact, he asked me to put it to you. He thinks you never take him seriously."

"Pardon me while I gasp and glow," I said. Then, "Oh Marty, I can't really imagine myself doing the tiniest part."

"Me neither, eight months ago," he said. "Now, look. Lady Macbeth."

"But Marty," I said, reaching for his finger again, "you haven't answered my question. About whether it's true."

"Oh that!" he said with a laugh, switching his hand to the other side. "Ask me something else."

"Okay," I said, "why am I bugged on the number eight? Because I'm permanently behind a private 8-ball?"

"Eight's a number with many properties," he said, suddenly as intently serious as he usually is. "The corners of a cube."

"You mean I'm a square?" I said. "Or just a brick? You know, 'She's a brick.'"

"But eight's most curious property," he continued with a frown, "is that lying on its side it signifies infinity. So eight erect is really--" and suddenly his made-up, naturally solemn face got a great glow of inspiration and devotion--"Infinity Arisen!"

Well, I don't know. You meet quite a few people in the theater who are bats on numerology, they use it to pick stage-names. But I'd never have guessed it of Martin. He always struck me as the skeptical, cynical type.

"I had another idea about eight," I said hesitatingly. "Spiders. That 8-legged asterisk on Miss Nefer's forehead--" I suppressed a shudder.

"You don't like her, do you?" he stated.

"I'm afraid of her," I said.

"You shouldn't be. She's a very great woman and tonight she's playing an infinitely more difficult part than I am. No, Greta," he went on as I started to protest, "believe me, you don't understand anything about it at this moment. Just as you don't understand about spiders, fearing them. They're the first to climb the rigging and to climb ashore too. They're the web-weavers, the line-throwers, the connectors, Siva and Kali united in love. They're the double mandala, the beginning and the end, infinity mustered and on the march--"

"They're also on my New York screen!" I squeaked, shrinking back across the cot a little and pointing at a tiny glinting silver-and-black thing mounting below my Willy-ball.

Martin gently caught its line on his finger and lifted it very close to his face. "Eight eyes too," he told me. Then, "Poor little god," he said and put it back.

"Marty? Marty?" Sid's desperate stage-whisper rasped the length of the dressing room.

Martin stood up. "Yes, Sid?"

Sid's voice stayed a whisper but went from desperate to ferocious. "You villainous elf-skin! Know you not the Cauldron Scene's been playing a hundred heartbeats? 'Tis 'most my entrance and we still mustering only two witches out of three! Oh, you nott-pated starveling!"

Before Sid had got much more than half of that out, Martin had slipped around the screen, raced the length of the dressing room, and I'd heard a lusty thwack as he went out the door. I couldn't help grinning, though with Martin racked by anxieties and reliefs over his first time as Lady Mack, it was easy to understand it slipping his mind that he was still doubling Second Witch.

VI

I will vault credit and affect high pleasures Beyond death. --Ferdinand

I sat down where Martin had been, first pushing the screen far enough to the side for me to see the length of the dressing room and notice anyone coming through the door and any blurs moving behind the thin white curtain shutting off the boys' two-thirds.

I'd been going to think. But instead I just sat there, experiencing my body and the room around it, steadying myself or maybe readying myself. I couldn't tell which, but it was nothing to think about, only to feel. My heartbeat became a very faint, slow, solid throb. My spine straightened.

No one came in or went out. Distantly I heard Macbeth and the witches and the apparitions talk.

Once I looked at the New York Screen, but all the stuff there had grown stale. No protection, no nothing.

I reached down to my suitcase and from where I'd been going to get a miltown I took a dexedrine and popped it in my mouth. Then I started out, beginning to shake.

When I got to the end of the curtain I went around it to Sid's dressing table and asked Shakespeare, "Am I doing the right thing, Pop?" But he didn't answer me out of his portrait. He just looked sneaky-innocent, like he knew a lot but wouldn't tell, and I found myself think of a little silver-framed photo Sid had used to keep there too of a cocky German-looking young actor with "Erich" autographed across it in white ink. At least I supposed he was an actor. He looked a little like Erich von Stroheim, but nicer yet somehow nastier too. The photo had used to upset me, I don't know why. Sid must have noticed it, for one day it was gone.

I thought of the tiny black-and-silver spider crawling across the remembered silver frame, and for some reason it gave me the cold creeps.

Well, this wasn't doing me any good, just making me feel dismal again, so I quickly went out. In the door I had to slip around the actors coming back from the Cauldron Scene and the big bolt nicked my hip.

Outside Maud was peeling off her Third Witch stuff to reveal Lady Macduff beneath. She twitched me a grin.

"How's it going?" I asked.

"Okay, I guess," she shrugged. "What an audience! Noisy as highschool kids."

"How come Sid didn't have a boy do your part?" I asked.

"He goofed, I guess. But I've battened down my bosoms and playing Mrs. Macduff as a boy."

"How does a girl do that in a dress?" I asked.

"She sits stiff and thinks pants," she said, handing me her witch robe. "'Scuse me now. I got to find my children and go get murdered."

* * * * *

I'd moved a few steps nearer the stage when I felt the gentlest tug at my hip. I looked down and saw that a taut black thread from the bottom of my sweater connected me with the dressing room. It must have snagged on the big bolt and unraveled. I moved my body an inch or so, tugging it delicately to see what it felt like and I got the answers: Theseus's clew, a spider's line, an umbilicus.

I reached down close to my side and snapped it with my fingernails. The black thread leaped away. But the dressing room door didn't vanish, or the wings change, or the world end, and I didn't fall down.

After that I just stood there for quite a while, feeling my new freedom and steadiness, letting my body get used to it. I didn't do any thinking. I hardly bothered to study anything around me, though I did notice that there were more bushes and trees than set pieces, and that the flickery lightning was simply torches and that Queen Elizabeth was in (or back in) the audience. Sometimes letting your body get used to something is all you should do, or maybe can do.

And I did smell horse dung.

When the Lady Macduff Scene was over and the Chicken Scene well begun, I went back to the dressing room. Actors call it the Chicken Scene because Macduff weeps in it about "all my pretty chickens and their dam," meaning his kids and wife, being murdered "at one fell swoop" on orders of that chickenyard-raiding "hell-kite" Macbeth.

Inside the dressing room I steered down the boys' side. Doc was putting on an improbable-looking dark makeup for Macbeth's last faithful servant Seyton. He didn't seem as boozy-woozy as usual for Fourth Act, but just the same I stopped to help him get into a chain-mail shirt made of thick cord woven and silvered.

In the third chair beyond, Sid was sitting back with his corset loosened and critically surveying Martin, who'd now changed to a white wool nightgown that clung and draped beautifully, but not particularly enticingly, on him and his folded towel, which had slipped a bit.

From beside Sid's mirror, Shakespeare smiled out of his portrait at them like an intelligent big-headed bug.

Martin stood tall, spread his arms rather like a high priest, and intoned, "Amici! Romani! Populares!"

I nudged Doc. "What goes on now?" I whispered.

He turned a bleary eye on them. "I think they are rehearsing Julius Caesar in Latin." He shrugged. "It begins the oration of Antony."

"But why?" I asked. Sid does like to put every moment to use when the performance-fire is in people, but this project seemed pretty far afield--hyper-pedantic. Yet at the same time I felt my scalp shivering as if my mind were jumping with speculations just below the surface.

Doc shook his head and shrugged again.

Sid shoved a palm at Martin and roared softly, "'Sdeath, boy, thou'rt not playing a Roman statua but a Roman! Loosen your knees and try again."

Then he saw me. Signing Martin to stop, he called, "Come hither, sweetling." I obeyed quickly. He gave me a fiendish grin and said, "Thou'st heard our proposal from Martin. What sayest thou, wench?"

* * * * *

This time the shiver was in my back. It felt good. I realized I was grinning back at him, and I knew what I'd been getting ready for the last twenty minutes.

"I'm on," I said. "Count me in the company."

Sid jumped up and grabbed me by the shoulders and hair and bussed me on both cheeks. It was a little like being bombed.

"Prodigious!" he cried. "Thou'lt play the Gentlewoman in the Sleepwalking Scene tonight. Martin, her costume! Now sweet wench, mark me well." His voice grew grave and old. "When was it she last walked?"

The new courage went out of me like water down a chute. "But Siddy, I can't start tonight," I protested, half pleading, half outraged.

"Tonight or never! 'Tis an emergency--we're short-handed." Again his voice changed. "When was it she last walked?"

"But Siddy, I don't know the part."

"You must. You've heard the play twenty times this year past. When was it she last walked?"

Martin was back and yanking down a blonde wig on my head and shoving my arms into a light gray robe.

"I've never studied the lines," I squeaked at Sidney.

"Liar! I've watched your lips move a dozen nights when you watched the scene from the wings. Close your eyes, girl! Martin, unhand her. Close your eyes, girl, empty your mind, and listen, listen only. When was it she last walked?"

In the blackness I heard myself replying to that cue, first in a whisper, then more loudly, then full-throated but grave, "Since his majesty went into the field, I have seen her rise from her bed, throw her nightgown upon her, unlock her closet, take forth--"

"Bravissimo!" Siddy cried and bombed me again. Martin hugged his arm around my shoulders too, then quickly stooped to start hooking up my robe from the bottom.

"But that's only the first lines, Siddy," I protested.

"They're enough!"

"But Siddy, what if I blow up?" I asked.

"Keep your mind empty. You won't. Further, I'll be at your side, doubling the Doctor, to prompt you if you pause."

That ought to take care of two of me, I thought. Then something else struck me. "But Siddy," I quavered, "how do I play the Gentlewoman as a boy?"

"Boy?" he demanded wonderingly. "Play her without falling down flat on your face and I'll be past measure happy!" And he smacked me hard on the fanny.

Martin's fingers were darting at the next to the last hook. I stopped him and shoved my hand down the neck of my sweater and got hold of the subway token and the chain it was on and yanked. It burned my neck but the gold links parted. I started to throw it across the room, but instead I smiled at Siddy and dropped it in his palm.

"The Sleepwalking Scene!" Maud hissed insistently to us from the door.

VII

I know death hath ten thousand several doors For men to take their exits, and 'tis found They go on such strange geometrical hinges, You may open them both ways. --The Duchess

There is this about an actor on stage: he can see the audience but he can't look at them, unless he's a narrator or some sort of comic. I wasn't the first (Grendel groks!) and only scared to death of becoming the second as Siddy walked me out of the wings onto the stage, over the groundcloth that felt so much like ground, with a sort of interweaving policeman-grip on my left arm.

Sid was in a dark gray robe looking like some dismal kind of monk, his head so hooded for the Doctor that you couldn't see his face at all.

My skull was pulse-buzzing. My throat was squeezed dry. My heart was pounding. Below that my body was empty, squirmy, electricity-stung, yet with the feeling of wearing ice cold iron pants.

I heard as if from two million miles, "When was it she last walked?" and then an iron bell somewhere tolling the reply--I guess it had to be my voice coming up through my body from my iron pants: "Since his majesty went into the field--" and so on, until Martin had come on stage, stary-eyed, a white scarf tossed over the back of his long black wig and a flaring candle two inches thick gripped in his right hand and dripping wax on his wrist, and started to do Lady Mack's sleepwalking half-hinted confessions of the murders of Duncan and Banquo and Lady Macduff.

So here is what I saw then without looking, like a vivid scene that floats out in front of your mind in a reverie, hovering against a background of dark blur, and sort of flashes on and off as you think, or in my case act. All the time, remember, with Sid's hand hard on my wrist and me now and then tolling Shakespearan language out of some lightless storehouse of memory I'd never known was there to belong to me.

* * * * *

There was a medium-size glade in a forest. Through the half-naked black branches shone a dark cold sky, like ashes of silver, early evening.

The glade had two horns, as it were, narrowing back to either side and going off through the forest. A chilly breeze was blowing out of them, almost enough to put out the candle. Its flame rippled.

Rather far back in the horn to my left, but not very far, were clumped two dozen or so men in dark cloaks they huddled around themselves. They wore brimmed tallish hats and pale stuff showing at their necks. Somehow I assumed that these men must be the "rude fellows from the City" I remembered Beau mentioning a million or so years ago. Although I couldn't see them very well, and didn't spend much time on them, there was one of them who had his hat off or excitedly pushed way back, showing a big pale forehead. Although that was all the conscious impression I had of his face, he seemed frighteningly familiar.

In the horn to my right, which was wider, were lined up about a dozen horses, with grooms holding tight every two of them, but throwing their heads back now and then as they strained against the reins, and stamping their front hooves restlessly. Oh, they frightened me, I tell you, that line of two-foot-long glossy-haired faces, writhing back their upper lips from teeth wide as piano keys, every horse of them looking as wild-eyed and evil as Fuseli's steed sticking its head through the drapes in his picture "The Nightmare."

To the center the trees came close to the stage. Just in front of them was Queen Elizabeth sitting on the chair on the spread carpet, just as I'd seen her out there before; only now I could see that the braziers were glowing and redly high-lighting her pale cheeks and dark red hair and the silver in her dress and cloak. She was looking at Martin--Lady Mack--most intently, her mouth grimaced tight, twisting her fingers together.

Standing rather close around her were a half dozen men with fancier hats and ruffs and wide-flaring riding gauntlets.

Then, through the trees and tall leafless bushes just behind Elizabeth, I saw an identical Elizabeth-face floating, only this one was smiling a demonic smile. The eyes were open very wide. Now and then the pupils darted rapid glances from side to side.

* * * * *

There was a sharp pain in my left wrist and Sid whisper-snarling at me, "Accustomed action!" out of the corner of his shadowed mouth.

I tolled on obediently, "It is an accustomed action with her, to seem thus washing her hands: I have known her continue in this a quarter of an hour."

Martin had set down the candle, which still flared and guttered, on a little high table so firm its thin legs must have been stabbed into the ground. And he was rubbing his hands together slowly, continually, tormentedly, trying to get rid of Duncan's blood which Mrs. Mack knows in her sleep is still there. And all the while as he did it, the agitation of the seated Elizabeth grew, the eyes flicking from side to side, hands writhing.

He got to the lines, "Here's the smell of blood still: all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand. Oh, oh, oh!"

As he wrung out those soft, tortured sighs, Elizabeth stood up from her chair and took a step forward. The courtiers moved toward her quickly, but not touching her, and she said loudly, "Tis the blood of Mary Stuart whereof she speaks--the pails of blood that will gush from her chopped neck. Oh, I cannot endure it!" And as she said that last, she suddenly turned about and strode back toward the trees, kicking out her ash-colored skirt. One of the courtiers turned with her and stooped toward her closely, whispering something. But although she paused a moment, all she said was, "Nay, Eyes, stop not the play, but follow me not! Nay, I say leave me, Leicester!" And she walked into the trees, he looking after her.

Then Sid was kicking my ankle and I was reciting something and Martin was taking up his candle again without looking at it saying with a drugged agitation, "To bed; to bed; there's knocking at the gate."

Elizabeth came walking out of the trees again, her head bowed. She couldn't have been in them ten seconds. Leicester hurried toward her, hand anxiously outstretched.

Martin moved offstage, torturedly yet softly wailing, "What's done cannot be undone."

Just then Elizabeth flicked aside Leicester's hand with playful contempt and looked up and she was smiling the devil-smile. A horse whinnied like a trumpeted snicker.

As Sid and I started our last few lines together I intoned mechanically, letting words free-fall from my mind to my tongue. All this time I had been answering Lady Mack in my thoughts, That's what you think, sister.

VIII

God cannot effect that anything which is past should not have been. It is more impossible than rising the dead. --Summa Theologica

The moment I was out of sight of the audience I broke away from Sid and ran to the dressing room. I flopped down on the first chair I saw, my head and arms trailed over its back, and I almost passed out. It wasn't a mind-wavery fit. Just normal faint.

I couldn't have been there long--well, not very long, though the battle-rattle and alarums of the last scene were echoing tinnily from the stage--when Bruce and Beau and Mark (who was playing Malcolm, Martin's usual main part) came in wearing their last-act stage-armor and carrying between them Queen Elizabeth flaccid as a sack. Martin came after them, stripping off his white wool nightgown so fast that buttons flew. I thought automatically, I'll have to sew those.

They laid her down on three chairs set side by side and hurried out. Unpinning the folded towel, which had fallen around his waist, Martin walked over and looked down at her. He yanked off his wig by a braid and tossed it at me.

I let it hit me and fall on the floor. I was looking at that white queenly face, eyes open and staring sightless at the ceiling, mouth open a little too with a thread of foam trailing from the corner, and at that ice-cream-cone bodice that never stirred. The blue fly came buzzing over my head and circled down toward her face.

"Martin," I said with difficulty, "I don't think I'm going to like what we're doing."

He turned on me, his short hair elfed, his fists planted high on his hips at the edge of his black tights, which now were all his clothes.

"You knew!" he said impatiently. "You knew you were signing up for more than acting when you said, 'Count me in the company.'"

Like a legged sapphire the blue fly walked across her upper lip and stopped by the thread of foam.

"But Martin ... changing the past ... dipping back and killing the real queen ... replacing her with a double--"

His dark brows shot up. "The real--You think this is the real Queen Elizabeth?" He grabbed a bottle of rubbing alcohol from the nearest table, gushed some on a towel stained with grease-paint and, holding the dead head by its red hair (no, wig--the real one wore a wig too) scrubbed the forehead.

The white cosmetic came away, showing sallow skin and on it a faint tattoo in the form of an "S" styled like a yin-yang symbol left a little open.

* * * * *

"Snake!" he hissed. "Destroyer! The arch-enemy, the eternal opponent! God knows how many times people like Queen Elizabeth have been dug out of the past, first by Snakes, then by Spiders, and kidnapped or killed and replaced in the course of our war. This is the first big operation I've been on, Greta. But I know that much."

My head began to ache. I asked, "If she's an enemy double, why didn't she know a performance of Macbeth in her lifetime was an anachronism?"

"Foxholed in the past, only trying to hold a position, they get dulled. They turn half zombie. Even the Snakes. Even our people. Besides, she almost did catch on, twice when she spoke to Leicester."

"Martin," I said dully, "if there've been all these replacements, first by them, then by us, what's happened to the real Elizabeth?"

He shrugged. "God knows."

I asked softly, "But does He, Martin? Can He?"

He hugged his shoulders in, as if to contain a shudder. "Look, Greta," he said, "it's the Snakes who are the warpers and destroyers. We're restoring the past. The Spiders are trying to keep things as first created. We only kill when we must."

I shuddered then, for bursting out of my memory came the glittering, knife-flashing, night-shrouded, bloody image of my lover, the Spider soldier-of-change Erich von Hohenwald, dying in the grip of a giant silver spider, or spider-shaped entity large as he, as they rolled in a tangled ball down a flight of rocks in Central Park.

But the memory-burst didn't blow up my mind, as it had done a year ago, no more than snapping the black thread from my sweater had ended the world. I asked Martin, "Is that what the Snakes say?"

"Of course not! They make the same claims we do. But somewhere, Greta, you have to trust." He put out the middle finger of his hand.

I didn't take hold of it. He whirled it away, snapping it against his thumb.

"You're still grieving for that carrion there!" he accused me. He jerked down a section of white curtain and whirled it over the stiffening body. "If you must grieve, grieve for Miss Nefer! Exiled, imprisoned, locked forever in the past, her mind pulsing faintly in the black hole of the dead and gone, yearning for Nirvana yet nursing one lone painful patch of consciousness. And only to hold a fort! Only to make sure Mary Stuart is executed, the Armada licked, and that all the other consequences flow on. The Snakes' Elizabeth let Mary live ... and England die ... and the Spaniard hold North America to the Great Lakes and New Scandinavia."

Once more he put out his middle finger.

* * * * *

"All right, all right," I said, barely touching it. "You've convinced me."

"Great!" he said. "'By for now, Greta. I got to help strike the set."

"That's good," I said. He loped out.

I could hear the skirling sword-clashes of the final fight to the death of the two Macks, Duff and Beth. But I only sat there in the empty dressing room pretending to grieve for a devil-smiling snow tiger locked in a time-cage and for a cute sardonic German killed for insubordination that I had reported ... but really grieving for a girl who for a year had been a rootless child of the theater with a whole company of mothers and fathers, afraid of nothing more than subway bogies and Park and Village monsters.

As I sat there pitying myself beside a shrouded queen, a shadow fell across my knees. I saw stealing through the dressing room a young man in worn dark clothes. He couldn't have been more than twenty-three. He was a frail sort of guy with a weak chin and big forehead and eyes that saw everything. I knew at one he was the one who had seemed familiar to me in the knot of City fellows.

He looked at me and I looked from him to the picture sitting on the reserve makeup box by Siddy's mirror. And I began to tremble.

He looked at it too, of course, as fast as I did. And then he began to tremble too, though it was a finer-grained tremor than mine.

The sword-fight had ended seconds back and now I heard the witches faintly wailing, "Fair is foul, and foul is fair--" Sid has them echo that line offstage at the end to give a feeling of prophecy fulfilled.

Then Sid came pounding up. He's the first finished, since the fight ends offstage so Macduff can carry back a red-necked papier-mache head of him and show it to the audience. Sid stopped dead in the door.

Then the stranger turned around. His shoulders jerked as he saw Sid. He moved toward him just two or three steps at a time, speaking at the same time in breathy little rushes.

* * * * *

Sid stood there and watched him. When the other actors came boiling up behind him, he put his hands on the doorframe to either side so none of them could get past. Their faces peered around him.

And all this while the stranger was saying, "What may this mean? Can such things be? Are all the seeds of time ... wetted by some hell-trickle ... sprouted at once in their granary? Speak ... speak! You played me a play ... that I am writing in my secretest heart. Have you disjointed the frame of things ... to steal my unborn thoughts? Fair is foul indeed. Is all the world a stage? Speak, I say! Are you not my friend Sidney James Lessingham of King's Lynn ... singed by time's fiery wand ... sifted over with the ashes of thirty years? Speak, are you not he? Oh, there are more things in heaven and earth ... aye, and perchance hell too ... Speak, I charge you!"

And with that he put his hands on Sid's shoulders, half to shake him, I think, but half to keep from falling over. And for the one time I ever saw it, glib old Siddy had nothing to say.

He worked his lips. He opened his mouth twice and twice shut it. Then, with a kind of desperation in his face, he motioned the actors out of the way behind him with one big arm and swung the other around the stranger's narrow shoulders and swept him out of the dressing room, himself following.

The actors came pouring in then, Bruce tossing Macbeth's head to Martin like a football while he tugged off his horned helmet, Mark dumping a stack of shields in the corner, Maudie pausing as she skittered past me to say, "Hi Gret, great you're back," and patting my temple to show what part of me she meant. Beau went straight to Sid's dressing table and set the portrait aside and lifted out Sid's reserve makeup box.

"The lights, Martin!" he called.

Then Sid came back in, slamming and bolting the door behind him and standing for a moment with his back against it, panting.

I rushed to him. Something was boiling up inside me, but before it could get to my brain I opened my mouth and it came out as, "Siddy, you can't fool me, that was no dirty S-or-S. I don't care how much he shakes and purrs, or shakes a spear, or just plain shakes--Siddy, that was Shakespeare!"

"Aye, girl, I think so," he told me, holding my wrists together. "They can't find dolls to double men like that--or such is my main hope." A big sickly grin came on his face. "Oh, gods," he demanded, "with what words do you talk to a man whose speech you've stolen all your life?"

I asked him, "Sid, were we ever in Central Park?"

He answered, "Once--twelve months back. A one-night stand. They came for Erich. You flipped."

He swung me aside and moved behind Beau. All the lights went out.

* * * * *

Then I saw, dimly at first, the great dull-gleaming jewel, covered with dials and green-glowing windows, that Beau had lifted from Sid's reserve makeup box. The strongest green glow showed his intent face, still framed by the long glistening locks of the Ross wig, as he kneeled before the thing--Major Maintainer, I remembered it was called.

"When now? Where?" Beau tossed impatiently to Sid over his shoulder.

"The forty-fourth year before our Lord's birth!" Sid answered instantly. "Rome!"

Beau's fingers danced over the dials like a musician's, or a safe-cracker's. The green glow flared and faded flickeringly.

"There's a storm in that vector of the Void."

"Circle it," Sid ordered.

"There are dark mists every way."

"Then pick the likeliest dark path!"

I called through the dark, "Fair is foul, and foul is fair, eh, Siddy?"

"Aye, chick," he answered me. "'Tis all the rule we have!"

--FRITZ LEIBER

Contents

THE AMBULANCE MADE TWO TRIPS

By Murray Leinster

If you should set a thief to catch a thief, what does it take to stop a racketeer...?

Detective Sergeant Fitzgerald found a package before his door that morning, along with the milk. He took it inside and opened it. It was a remarkably fine meerschaum pipe, such as the sergeant had longed irrationally to own for many years. There was no message with it, nor any card. He swore bitterly.

On his way to Headquarters he stopped in at the orphanage where he usually left such gifts. On other occasions he had left Scotch, a fly-rod, sets of very expensive dry-flies, and dozens of pairs of silk socks. The female head of the orphanage accepted the gift with gratitude.

"I don't suppose," said Fitzgerald morbidly, "that any of your kids will smoke this pipe, but I want to be rid of it and for somebody to know." He paused. "Are you gettin' many other gifts on this order, from other cops? Like you used to?"

The head of the orphanage admitted that the total had dropped off. Fitzgerald went on his way, brooding. He'd been getting anonymous gifts like this ever since Big Jake Connors moved into town with bright ideas. Big Jake denied that he was the generous party. He expressed complete ignorance. But Detective Sergeant Fitzgerald knew better. The gifts were having their effect upon the Force. There was a police lieutenant whose wife had received a mink stole out of thin air and didn't speak to her husband for ten days when he gave it to the Community Drive. He wouldn't do a thing like that again! There was another sergeant--not Fitzgerald--who'd found a set of four new white-walls tires on his doorstep, and was ostracized by his teen-age offspring when he turned them into the police Lost and Found. Fitzgerald gave his gifts to an orphanage, with a fine disregard of their inappropriateness. But he gloomily suspected that a great many of his friends were weakening. The presents weren't bribes. Big Jake not only didn't ask acknowledgments of them, he denied that he was the giver. But inevitably the recipients of bounty with the morning milk felt less indignation about what Big Jake was doing and wasn't getting caught at.

At Headquarters, Detective Sergeant Fitzgerald found a memo. A memo was routine, but the contents of this one were remarkable. He scowled at it. He made phone calls, checking up on the more unlikely parts of it. Then he went to make the regular investigation.

When he reached his destination he found it an unpretentious frame building with a sign outside: "Elite Cleaners and Dyers." There were no plate-glass windows. There was nothing show-off about it. It was just a medium-sized, modestly up-to-date establishment to which lesser tailoring shops would send work for wholesale treatment. From some place in the back, puffs of steam shot out at irregular intervals. Somebody worked a steampresser on garments of one sort or another. There was a rumbling hum, as of an oversized washing-machine in operation. All seemed tranquil.

The detective went in the door. Inside there was that peculiar, professional-cleaning-fluid smell, which is not as alarming as gasoline or carbon tetrachloride, but nevertheless discourages the idea of striking a match. In the outer office a man wrote placidly on one blue-paper strip after another. He had an air of pleasant self-confidence. He glanced up briefly, nodded, wrote on three more blue-paper strips, and then gathered them all up and put them in a particular place. He turned to Fitzgerald.

"Well?"

Fitzgerald showed his shield. The man behind the counter nodded again.

"My name's Fitzgerald," grunted the detective. "The boss?"

"Me," said the man behind the counter. He was cordial. "My name's Brink. You've got something to talk to me about?"

"That's the idea," said Fitzgerald. "A coupla questions."

Brink jerked a thumb toward a door.

"Come in the other office. Chairs there, and we can sit down. What's the trouble? A complaint of some kind?"

* * * * *

He ushered Fitzgerald in before him. The detective found himself scowling. He'd have felt better with a different kind of man to ask questions of. This Brink looked untroubled and confident. It didn't fit the situation. The inner office looked equally matter-of-fact. No.... There was the shelf with the usual books of reference on textiles and such items as a cleaner-and-dyer might need to have on hand. But there were some others: "Basic Principles of Psi", "Modern Psychokinetic Theories." There was a small, mostly-plastic machine on another shelf. It had no obvious function. It looked as if it had some unguessable but rarely-used purpose. There was dust on it.

"What's the complaint?" repeated Brink. "Hm-m-m. A cigar?"

"No," said Detective Sergeant Fitzgerald. "I'll light my pipe." He did, extracting tobacco and a pipe that was by no means a meerschaum from his pocket. He puffed and said: "A guy who works for you caught himself on fire this mornin'. It happened on a bus. Very peculiar. The guy's name was Jacaro."

Brink did not look surprised.

"What happened?"

"It's kind of a strange thing," said Fitzgerald. "Accordin' to the report he's ridin' this bus, readin' his paper, when all of a sudden he yells an' jumps up. His pants are on fire. He get 'em off fast and chucks them out the bus window. He's blistered some but not serious, and he clams up--but good--when the ambulance doc puts salve on him. He won't say a word about what happened or how. They hadda call a ambulance because he couldn't go huntin' a doc with no pants on."

"But he's not burned badly?" asked Brink.

"No. Blisters, yes. Scared, yes. And mad as hell. But he'll get along. It's too bad. We've pinched him three times on suspicion of arson, but we couldn't make it stick. Something ought to happen to make that guy stop playin' with matches--only this wasn't matches."

"I'm glad he's only a little bit scorched," said Brink. He considered. "Did he say anything about his eyelids twitching this morning? I don't suppose he would."

The detective stared.

"He didn't. Say aren't you curious about how he came to catch on fire? Or what his pants smelled of that burned so urgent? Or where he expected burnin' to start instead of his pants?"

Brink thought it over. Then he shook his head.

"No. I don't think I'm curious."

The detective looked at him long and hard.

"O.K.," he said dourly. "But there's something else. Day before yesterday there was a car accident opposite here. Remember?"

"I wasn't here at the time," said Brink.

"There's a car rolling along the street outside," said the detective. "There's some hoods in it--guys who do dirty work for Big Jake Connors. I can't prove a thing, but it looks like they had ideas about this place. About thirty yards up the street a sawed-off shotgun goes off. Very peculiar. It sends a load of buckshot through a side window of your place."

Brink said with an air of surprise: "Oh! That must have been what broke the window!"

"Yeah," said Fitzgerald. "But the interesting thing is that the flash of the shotgun burned all the hair off the head of the guy that was doin' the drivin'. It didn't scratch him, just scorched his hair off. It scared him silly."

Brink grinned faintly, but he said pleasantly: "Tsk. Tsk. Tsk."

"He jams down the accelerator and rams a telephone pole," pursued Fitzgerald. "There's four hoods in that car, remember, and every one of 'em's got a police record you could paper a house with. And they've got four sawed-off shotguns and a tommy-gun in the back seat. They're all laid out cold when the cops arrive."

"I was wondering about the window," said Brink, pensively.

"It puzzles you, eh?" demanded the detective ironically. "Could you've figured it out that they were goin' to shoot up your plant to scare the people who work for you so they'll quit? Did you make a guess they intended to drive you outta business like they did the guy that had this place before you?"

"That's an interesting theory," said Brink encouragingly.

Detective Fitzgerald nodded.

"There's one thing more," he said formidably. "You got a delivery truck. You keep it in a garage back yonder. Yesterday you sent it to a garage for inspection of brakes an' lights an' such."

"Yes," said Brink. "I did. It's not back yet. They were busy. They'll call me when it's ready."

Fitzgerald snorted.

"They'll call you when the bomb squad gets through checkin' it! When the guys at the garage lifted the hood they started runnin'. Then they hollered copper. There was a bomb in there!"

Brink seemed to try to look surprised. He only looked interested.

"Two sticks of dynamite," the detective told him grimly, "wired up to go off when your driver turned on the ignition. He did but it didn't. But we got a police force in this town! We know there's racketeerin' bein' practiced. We know there's crooked stuff goin' on. We even got mighty good ideas who's doin' it. But we ain't been able to get anything on anybody. Not yet. Nobody's been willin' to talk, so far. But you--"

The telephone rang stridently. Brink looked at the instrument and shrugged. He answered.

"Hello.... No, Mr. Jacaro isn't in today. He didn't come to work. On the way downtown his pants caught on fire--"

Fitzgerald guessed that the voice at the other end of the line said "What?" in, an explosive manner.

Brink said matter-of-factly: "I said his pants caught on fire. It was probably something he was bringing here to burn the plant down with--a fire bomb. I don't think he's to blame that it went off early. He probably started out with the worst possible intentions, but something happened...." He listened and said: "But he didn't chicken! He couldn't come to work and plant a fire bomb to set fire to the place!... I know it must be upsetting to have things like that automobile accident and my truck not blowing up and now Jacaro's pants instead of my business going up in flames. But I told you--"

He stopped and listened. Once he grinned.

"Wait!" he said after a moment. He covered the transmitter and turned to Fitzgerald. "What hospital is Jacaro in?"

Fitzgerald said sourly: "He wasn't burned bad. Just blistered. They lent him some pants and he went home cussing."

"Thanks," said Brink. He uncovered the transmitter. "He went home," he told the instrument. "You can ask him about it. In a way I'm sure it wasn't his fault. I'm quite sure his eyelids twitched when he started out. I think the men who drove the car the other day had twitching eyelids, too. You should ask--"

The detective heard muted noises, as it a man shouted into a transmitter somewhere.

Brink said briskly: "No, I don't see any reason to change my mind.... No.... I know it was luck, it you want to put it that way, but.... No. I wouldn't advise that! Please take my advice about when your eyelid twitches--"

Fitzgerald heard the crash of the receiver hung up at some distant place. Brink rubbed his ear. He turned back.

"Hm-m-m," he said. "Your pipe's gone out."

It was. Sergeant Fitzgerald puffed ineffectually. Brink reached out his finger and tapped the bowl of the detective's pipe. Instantly fragrant smoke filled the detective's mouth. He sputtered.

"Now.... where were we?" asked Brink.

"Who was that?" demanded Fitzgerald ferociously. "That was Big Jake Connors!"

"You may be right." Brink told him. "He's never exactly given me his name. He just calls up every so often and talks nonsense."

"What sort of nonsense?"

"He wants to be a partner in this business," said Brink without emotion. "He's been saying that things will happen to it otherwise. I don't believe it. Anyhow nothing's happened so far."

* * * * *

Detective Sergeant Fitzgerald tried at one and the same time to roar and to swallow. He accomplished neither. He put his finger in the bowl of his pipe. He jerked it out, scorched.

"Look!" he said almost hoarsely, "I was tellin' you when the phone rang! We got a police force here in town! This's what we've been tryin' to get! You come along with me to Headquarters an' swear to a complaint--"

Brink said interestedly: "Why?"

"That guy Big Jake Connors!" raged the detective. "That's why! Tryin' to threaten you into givin' him a share in your business! Tryin' to burn it down or blow it up when you won't! He was just a small-town crook, once. He went to the big town an' came back with ideas. He's usin' 'em!"

Brink looked at him expectantly.

"He started a beer business," said the detective bitterly. "Simultaneous other beer dealers started havin' trouble. Empty kegs smashed. Trucks broke down. Drivers in fights. They hadda go outta business!"

"What did the cops do?" asked Brink.

"They listened to their wives!" snarled Fitzgerald. "They begun to find little grabbag packages in the mail an' with the milk. Fancy perfume. Tricky stockin's. Fancy underwear they shoulda been ashamed for anybody to know they had it on underneath. The cops weren't bribed, but their wives liked openin' the door of a mornin' an' findin' charmin' little surprises."

"Ah," said Brink.

"Then there were juke boxes," went on the detective. "He went in that business--an' trouble started. People'd drive up to a beer joint, go in, get in a scuffle an'--bingo! The juke box smashed. Always the juke box. Always a out-of-town customer. Half the juke boxes in town weren't workin', on an average. But the ones that were workin' were always Big Jake's. Presently he had the juke-box business to himself."

Brink nodded, somehow appreciatively.

"Then it was cabs," said Fitzgerald. "A lot of cops felt bad about that. But their wives wouldn't be happy if anything happened to dear Mr. Big Jake who denied that he gave anybody anything, so it was all right to use that lovely perfume.... Cabs got holes in their radiators. They got sand in their oil systems. They had blowouts an' leaks in brake-fluid lines. Cops' wives were afraid Big Jake would get caught. But he didn't. He started insurin' cabs against that kinda accident. Now every cab-driver pays protection-money for what they call insurance--or else. An' cops' wives get up early, bright-eyed, to see what Santa Claus left with the milk."

"You seem," said Brink with a grin, "to hint that this Big Jake is ... well ... dishonest."

"Dishonest!" Fitzgerald's face was purplish, from many memories of wrongs. "There was a guy named Burdock who owned this business before you. Y'know what happened to him?"

"Yes," said Drink. "He's my brother-in-law. Connors or somebody insisted on having a share of the business and threatened dreadful things if he didn't. He didn't. So acid got spilled on clothes. Machinery got smashed. Once a whole delivery-truck load of clothes disappeared and my brother-in-law had to pay for any number of suits and dresses. It got him down. He's recovering from the nervous strain now, and my sister ... eh, asked me to help out. So I offered to take over. He warned me I'd have the same trouble."

"And you've got it!" fumed the detective. "But anyhow you'll make a complaint. We'll get out some warrants, and we'll have somethin' to go on--"

"But nothing's happened to complain about," said Brink, quite reasonably. "One broken window's not worth a fuss."

"But somethin's goin' to happen!" insisted the detective. "That guy Big Jake is poison! He's takin' over the whole town, bit by bit! You've been lucky so far, but your luck could run out--"

Brink shook his head.

"No-o-o," he said matter-of-factly. "I'm grateful to you, Mr. Fitzgerald, but I have a special kind of luck. I won't tell you about it because you wouldn't believe but--but I can give you some of it. If you don't mind, I will."

He went to the slightly dusty, partly-plastic machine. On its shelf were some parts of metal, and some of transparent plastic, and some grayish, granular substance it was hard to identify. There was an elaborate diagram of something like an electronic circuit inside, but it might have been a molecular diagram from organic chemistry. Brink made an adjustment and pressed firmly on a special part of the machine, which did not yield at all. Then he took a slip of plastic out of a slot in the bottom.

"You can call this a good-luck charm," he said pleasantly, "or a talisman. Actually it's a psionic unit. One like it works very well, for me. Anyhow there's no harm in it. Just one thing. If your eyelids start to twitch, you'll be headed for danger or trouble or something unpleasant. So if they do twitch, stop and be very, very careful. Please!"

He handed the bit of plastic to Fitzgerald, who took it without conscious volition.

Then Brink said briskly: "If there isn't anything else--"

"You won't swear out a warrant against Big Jake?" demanded Fitzgerald bitterly.

"I haven't any reason to," said Brink amiably. "I'm doing all right. He hasn't harmed me. I don't think he will."

"O.K.!" said the detective bitterly. "Have it your way! But he's got it in for you an' he's goin' to keep tryin' until he gets you! An' whether you like it or not, you're goin' to have some police protection as soon as I can set it up."

He stamped out of the cleaning-and-drying plant. Automatically, he put the bit of plastic in his pocket. He didn't know why. He got into his car and drove downtown. As he drove, he looked suspiciously at his pipe. He fumed. As he fumed, he swore. He did not like mysteries. But there was no mystery about his dislike for Big Jake Connors. He turned aside from the direct route to Headquarters to indulge it. He drove to a hospital where four out-of-town hoods had been carried two days before. He marched inside and up to a second-floor corridor door with a uniformed policeman seated outside it.

* * * * *

"Hm-m-m. Donnelly," he growled. "How about those guys?"

"Not so good," said the patrolman. "They're gettin' better."

"They would," growled Fitzgerald.

"A lawyer's been to see 'em twice," said the patrolman. "He's comin' back after lunch."

"He would," grunted the detective.

"They want out," said the cop.

"I'm not surprised," said Detective Sergeant Fitzgerald.

He went into the sick room. There were four patients in it, none of them looking exactly like gentle invalids. There were two broken noses of long-ago dates, three cauliflower ears, and one scar of a kind that is not the result of playing lawn tennis. Two were visibly bandaged, and the others adhesive-taped. All of them looked at Fitzgerald without cordiality.

"Well, well, well!" he said. "You fellas still here!" There was silence. "In union there is strength," said Fitzgerald. "As long as you stay in one room everybody's sure the others haven't started rattin'. Right?"

One of the four snarled silently at him.

"It was just a accident," pursued the detective. "You four guys are ridin' along peaceable, merrily takin' the air, when quite inadvertently one of you almost blows the head off of another, and he's so astonished at there bein' a gun in the car that he wrecks it. And when they get you guys in the hospital there ain't one of you knows anything about four sawed-off shotguns and a tommy gun in the car with you. Strange! Strange! Strange!"

Four faces regarded him with impassive dislike. The bandaged ones were prettier than the ones that weren't.

"That tommy gun business," explained Fitzgerald, "is a federal affair. It's against Fed law to carry 'em around loaded. And your friend Big Jake hasn't been leavin' presents on the White House steps. Y'know, you guys could be in trouble!"

Three pairs of eyes and an odd one--the other was hidden under a bandage--stared at him stonily.

"Y'see," explained Fitzgerald again, "Big Jake's slipped up. He hasn't realized it yet. Its my little secret. A week ago I thought he had me licked. But somethin' happened, and today I felt like I had to come around and congratulate you fellas. You got a break! You're gonna have free board and lodging for years to come! I wanted to be the first to tell you!"

He beamed at them and went out. Outside, his expression changed. He said bitterly to the cop at the door: "I bet they beat this rap!"

He went downstairs and out of the hospital. He started around the building to his car.

His eyelid twitched. It twitched again. It began to quiver and flutter continuously. Fitzgerald stopped short to rub the offending eye.

There was a crash. A heavy class water-pitcher hit the cement walk immediately before him. It broke into a million pieces. He glared up. The pitcher would have hit him if it hadn't been for a twitching eyelid that had brought him to a stop. The window of the room he'd just left was open, but there was no way to prove that a patient had gotten out of bed to heave the pitcher. And it had broken into too many pieces to offer fingerprint evidence.

"Hah!" said Fitzgerald morosely. "They're plenty confident!"

He went to Headquarters. There were more memos for his attention. One was just in. A cab had crossed a sidewalk and crashed into a plate-glass window. Its hydraulic brakes had failed. The trouble was a clean saw-cut in a pressure-line. Fitzgerald went to find out about it. The cab driver bitterly refused to answer any questions. He wouldn't even admit that he was not insured by Big Jake against such accidents. Fitzgerald stormed. The owner-driver firmly--and gloomily--refused to answer a question about whether he'd been threatened if he didn't pay protection money.

Fitzgerald raged, on the sidewalk beside the cab in the act of being extracted from the plate-glass window. Am open-mouthed bystander listened admiringly to his language. Then the detective's eyelid twitched. It twitched again, violently. Something made him look up. An employee of the plate-glass company--there were rumors that Big Jake was interesting himself in plate-glass insurance besides cabs--wrenched loose a certain spot. Fitzgerald grabbed the bystander and leaped. There was a musical crash behind him. A tall section of the shattered glass fell exactly where he had been standing. It could have been pure accident. On the other hand--

He couldn't prove anything, but he had a queer feeling as he left the scene of the crash. Back in his own car he felt chilly. Driving away, presently, he felt his eyelid tentatively. He wasn't a nervous man. Ordinarily his eyelids didn't twitch.

* * * * *

He went to investigate a second memo. It was a restaurant, and he edged the police car gingerly into a lane beside the building. In the rear, the odor of spilled beer filled the air. It would have been attractive but for an admixture of gasoline fumes and the fact that it was mud. Mud whose moisture-content is spilled beer has a peculiar smell all its own.

He got out of his car and gloomily asked the questions the memo called for. He didn't need to. He could have written down all the answers in advance. The restaurant now reporting vandalism had found big Jake's brand of beer unpopular. It had twenty cases of a superior brew brought in by motor-truck. It was stacked in a small building behind the café. For one happy evening, the customers chose their own beer.

Now, next day, there were eighteen cases of smashed beer bottles. The crime had been committed in the small hours. There were no clues. The restaurant proprietor unconvincingly declared that he had no idea who'd caused it. But he'd only notified the police so he could collect insurance--not from Big Jake.

With a sort of morbid, frustrated gloom, Detective Sergeant Fitzgerald made the necessary notes. He put his notebook in his pocket and backed his car out of the alley. Oddly enough, he thought of a beautifully carved meerschaum pipe he'd found with the milk that morning. He'd presented it to an orphanage mainly because, irrationally, he'd have liked to keep it. There had been other expensive gifts he'd have liked to keep. Bourbon. A set of expensive dry-flies. An eight-millimeter movie camera. Scotch. Shiny, smooth silk socks that would have soothed his weary feet. He'd denied himself these gifts because he believed--he knew--that they came from Big Jake, who tactfully won friends and influenced people by making presents and denying it. In business matters he was stern, because that was the way to collect protection-money. But he was subtle with cops. He had their wives on his side.

Sergeant Fitzgerald growled in his throat. He'd always wanted a really fine meerschaum pipe. He'd had one this morning, and he'd had to get rid of it because it came from Big Jake. He felt that Big Jake had robbed him of it.

He turned the police car and drove back toward the Elite Cleaners and Dyers establishment. As he drove, he growled. His eyelid had twitched twice, and each time he'd been heading into danger or trouble. The fact was dauntingly coincidental with Brink's comment after giving him a scrap of plastic from the bottom of that crazy machine. These things were on his mind. He couldn't bring himself to plan to mention them, but he needed to talk to Brink again. Brink could testify to threats. He could justify arrests. Sergeant Fitzgerald had a fine conviction that with a chance to apply pressure, he could make some of Big Jake's hoods and collectors talk, and so bust things wide open. He only needed Brink's co-operation. He drove toward the Elite Cleaners and Dyers to put pressure on Brink toward that happy end. But he brooded over his own eyebrow-twitchings.

When the cleaning establishment came into view, there was a car parked before it. Two men from that car were in the act of entering the Elite plant through the same door the detective had used earlier. He parked his car behind the other. Fuming, he crossed the sidewalk and entered the building. As he entered, he heard a scream from the back. He heard a crashing sound and more screams.

He bolted ahead, through the outer office and into the working area he had not visited before. He burst through swinging doors into a two-story, machinery-filled cleaning-and-dyeing plant. Tables and garment racks and five separate people appeared as proper occupants of the place. But something had happened. There was a flood of liquid--detergent solution--flowing toward the open back doors of the big room. It obviously came from a large carboy which had been smashed as if to draw attention to some urgent matter.

The people in the room seemed to have frozen at their work, except that Brink had apparently been interrupted in some supervisory task. He was not working at any machine to clean, dye, dry, or press clothing. He looked at the two individuals whom Fitzgerald had seen enter only fractions of a minute earlier. His jaw clenched, and Fitzgerald was close enough behind the bottle-breakers to see him take an angry, purposeful step toward them. Then he checked himself very deliberately, and put his hands in his pockets, and watched. After an instant he even grinned at the two figures who had preceded the detective.

They were an impressive pair. They were dressed in well-pressed garments of extravagantly fashionable cut. They wore expensive soft hats, tilted to jaunty angles. Even from the rear, Fitzgerald knew that handkerchiefs would show tastefully in the breast pockets of their coats. Their shoes had been polished until they not only shone, but glittered. But by professional instinct Fitzgerald noted one cauliflower ear, and the barest fraction of a second later he saw a squat revolver being waved negligently at the screaming women.

He reached for his service revolver. And things happened.

* * * * *

The situation was crystal-clear. Big Jake Connors was displeased with Brink. In all the city whose rackets he was developing and consolidating, Brink was the only man who resisted Big Jake's civic enterprise--and got away with it! And nobody who runs rackets can permit resistance. It is contagious. So Big Jake had ordered that Brink be brought into line or else. The or else alternative had run into snags, before, but it was being given a big new try.

There was the shrill high clamor of two women screaming at the tops of their voices because revolvers were waved at them. One Elite employee, at the pressing machine, took his foot off the treadle and steam billowed wildly. Another man, at a giant sheet-iron box which rumbled, stared with his mouth open and blood draining from his cheeks. Brink, alone, looked--quite impossibly--amused and satisfied.

"Get outside!" snarled a voice as Fitzgerald's revolver came out ready for action. "This joint is finished!"

The companion of the snarling man rubbed suddenly at his eye. He rubbed again, as if it twitched violently. But it was, after all, only a twitching eyelid. He reached negligently down and picked up a wooden box. By its markings, it was a dozen-bottle box of spot-remover--the stuff used to get out spots the standard cleaning fluid in the dry-cleaning machine did not remove.

The man heaved the box, with the hand with which he had rubbed his twitching eye. The other man raised a hand--the one not holding a revolver--to rub at his own eye, which also seemed to twitch agitatedly.

Detective Sergeant Fitzgerald had his revolver out. He drew in his breath for a stentorian command for them to drop their weapons. But he didn't have time to shout. The hurtling small box of spot-remover struck the large sheet-iron case from which loud rumblings came. It was a dryer; a device for spinning clothes which were wet with liquid from the dry-cleaning washer. A perforated drum revolved at high speed within it. The box of spot-remover hit the door. The door dented in, hit the high-speed drum inside, and flew frantically out again, free from its hinges and turning end-for-end as it flew. It slammed into the thrower's companion, spraining three fingers as it knocked his revolver to the floor. The weapon slid merrily away to the outer office between Detective Fitzgerald's feet.

But this was not all. The dryer-door, having disposed of one threatening revolver, slammed violently against the wall. The wall was merely a thin partition, neatly paneled on the office side, but with shelves containing cleaning-and-dyeing supplies on the other. The impact shook the partition. Dust fell from the shelves and supplies. The hood who hadn't lost his gun sneezed so violently that his hat came off. He bent nearly double, and in the act he jarred the partition again.

Things fell from it. Many things. A two-gallon jar of extra-special detergent, used only for laces, conked him and smashed on the floor before him. It added to the stream of fluid already flowing with singular directness for the open, double, back-door of the workroom. The hood staggered, sneezed again, and convulsively pulled the trigger of his gun. The bullet hit something which was solid heavy metal, ricocheted, ricocheted again and the second hood howled and leaped wildly into the air. He came down in the flowing flood of spilled detergent, flat on his stomach, and with marked forward momentum. He slid. The floor of the plant had recently been oiled to keep down dust. The coefficient of friction of a really good detergent on top of floor-oil is remarkably low,--somewhere around point oh-oh-nine. Hood number two slid magnificently on his belly on the superb lubrication afforded by detergent on top of floor-oil.

The first hood staggered. Something else fell from the shelf. It was a carton of electric-light bulbs. Despite the protecting carton, they went off with crackings like gunfire. Technically, they did not explode but implode, but the hood with the revolver did not notice the difference. He leaped--and also landed in the middle of the wide streak of detergent-over-oil which might have been arranged to receive him.

He remained erect, but he slid slowly along that shining path. His relatively low speed was not his fault, because he went through all the motions of frenzied flight. His legs twinkled as he ran. But his feet slid backward. He moved with a sort of dignified celerity, running fast enough for ten times the speed, upon a surface which had a frictional coefficient far below that of the smoothest possible ice.

Detective Sergeant Fitzgerald gaped, his mouth dropped open and his gun held laxly in a practically nerveless hand.

The thing developed splendidly. The prone gunman slid out of the wide double door, pushing a bow-wave of detergent before him. He slid across the cement just outside, into the open garage whose delivery-truck was absent, and slammed with a sort of deliberate violence into a stack of four cardboard drums of that bone-black which is used to filter cleaning-fluid so it can be used over again in the dry-cleaning machine. The garage was used for storage as well as shelter for the establishment's truck.

The four drums were not accurately piled. They were three and a half feet high and two feet in diameter. They toppled sedately, falling with a fine precision upon the now hatless, running, sliding hood. One of them burst upon him. A second burst upon the prone man--who had butted through the cardboard of the bottom one on his arrival. There was a dense black cloud which filled all the interior of the garage. It was bone-black, which cannot be told from lamp-black or soot by the uninitiated.

From the cloud came a despairing revolver shot. It was pure reflex action by a man who had been whammed over the head by a hundred-and-fifty-pound drum of yielding--in fact bursting--material. There was a metallic clang. Then silence.

In a very little while the dust-cloud cleared. One figure struggled insanely. Upon him descended--from an oil drum of cylinder-oil stored above the rafters--a tranquil, glistening rod of opalescent cylinder-oil. His last bullet had punctured the drum. Oil turned the bone-black upon him into a thick, sticky goo which instantly gathered more bone-black to become thicker, stickier, and gooier. He fought it, while his unconscious companion lay with his head in a crumpled cardboard container of more black stuff.

The despairing, struggling hood managed to get off one more shot, as if defying even fate and chance. This bullet likewise found a target. It burst a container of powdered dye-stuff, also stored overhead. The container practically exploded and its contents descended in a widespread shower which coated all the interior of the garage with a lovely layer of bright heliotrope.

Maybe the struggling hood saw it. If so, it broke him utterly. What had happened was starkly impossible. The only sane explanation was that he had died and was in hell. He accepted that explanation and broke into sobs.

* * * * *

Detective Sergeant Fitzgerald had witnessed every instant of the happening, but he did not believe it. Nevertheless, he said in a strange voice: "I'll phone for the paddy-wagon. It'll do for a ambulance, in case of need."

He put away his unused service revolver. Thinking strange, dizzy thoughts of twitching eyelids and plastic scraps and starkly incredible happenings, he managed to call for the police patrol. When he hung up, he gazed blankly at the wall. He gazed, in fact, at a spot where a peculiar small machine with no visible function reposed--somewhat dusty--on a shelf.

Brink stepped over briskly and closed the door between the scene of catastrophe and the immaculate shop. Somehow, none of the mess had spilled back through the doorway. Then he came in, frowning a little.

"The fight's out of them," he said cheerfully. "One's got a bad cut on his head. The other's completely unnerved. Tsk! Tsk! I hate to have such things happen!"

Sergeant Fitzgerald shook himself, as if trying to come back to a normal and a reasonable world.

"Look!" he said in a hoarse voice. "I saw it, an' I still don't believe it! Things like this don't happen! I thought you might be lucky. It ain't that. I thought I might be crazy. It ain't that! What has been goin' on?"

Brink sat down. His air was one of wry contemplation.

"I told you I had a special kind of luck you couldn't believe. Did your eyelids twitch any time today?"

Fitzgerald swallowed.

"They did. And I stopped short an' something that should've knocked my cranium down my windpipe missed me by inches. An' again--But no matter. Yes."

"Maybe you can believe it, then," said Brink. "Did you ever hear of a man named Hieronymus?"

"No," said Fitzgerald in a numbed voice. "Who's he?"

"He got a patent once," said Brink, matter-of-factly, "on a machine he believed detected something he called eloptic radiation. He thought it was a kind of radiation nobody had noticed before. He was wrong. It worked by something called psi."

Sergeant Fitzgerald shook his head. It still needed clearing.

"Psi still isn't fully understood," explained Brink, "but it will do a lot of things. For instance, it can change probability as magnetism can change temperature. You can establish a psi field in a suitable material, just as you can establish a magnetic field in steel or alnico. Now, if you spin a copper disk in a magnetic field, you get eddy currents. Keep it up, and the disk gets hot. If you're obstinate about it, you can melt the copper. It isn't the magnet, as such, that does the melting. It's the energy of the spinning disk that is changed into heat. The magnetic field simply sets up the conditions for the change of motion into heat. In the same way ... am I boring you?"

"Confusing me," said Fitzgerald, "maybe. But keep on. Maybe I'll catch a glimmer presently."

"In the same way," said Brink, "you can try to perform violent actions in a strong psi field--a field made especially to act on violence. When you first try it you get something like eddy currents. Warnings. It can be arranged that such psi eddy currents make your eyelids twitch. Keep it up, and probability changes to shift the most-likely consequences of the violence. This is like a spinning copper disk getting hot. Then, if you're obstinate about it, you get the equivalent of the copper disk melting. Probability gets so drastically changed that the violent thing you're trying to do becomes something that can't happen. Hm-m-m. ... You can't spin a copper disk in a magnetic field when it melts. You can't commit a murder in a certain kind of psi field when probability goes hog-wild. Any other thing can happen to anybody else--to you, for example--but no violence can happen to the thing or person you're trying to do something violent to. The psi field has melted down ordinary probabilities. The violence you intend has become the most improbable of all conceivable things. You see?"

"I'm beginnin'," said Detective Sergeant Fitzgerald dizzily, "I'm beginnin' to get a toehold on what you mean. I'd hate to have to testify about it in court, but I'm receptive."

"So my special kind of luck," said Brink, "comes from antiviolence psi fields, set up in psi units of suitable material. They don't use up energy any more than a magnet does. But they transfer it, like a magnet does. My brother-in-law thought he had to lose his business because Big Jake threatened violent things. I offered to take it over and protect it--with psi units. So far, I have. When four hoods intended to shoot up the place and moved to do it, they were warned. Psi 'eddy currents' made their eyelids twitch. They went ahead. Probability changed. Quite unlikely things became more likely than not. They were obstinate about it, and what they intended became perhaps the only thing in the world that simply couldn't happen. So they crashed into a telephone pole. That wasn't violence. That was accident."

The detective blinked, and then nodded, somehow painfully.

"I see," he said uncertainly.

* * * * *

"Somebody set a bomb in my delivery truck," added Brink. "I'm sure his eyelids twitched, but he didn't stop. So probability changed. The explosion of that bomb in my truck became the most unlikely of all possible things. In fact, it became impossible. So some electric connection went bad, and it didn't go off. Again, when Jacaro intended to plant a time fire-bomb to set the plant on fire--why--his eyelids must have twitched but he didn't give up the intention. So the psi unit naturally made the burning of the plant impossible. For it to be impossible, the fire-bomb had to go off where it would do next to no harm. Jacaro lost his pants."

He stopped. Detective Sergeant Fitzgerald swallowed carefully.

"I don't question it," he said dizzily, "even if I don't believe it. Will you now tell me that what just happened was a psi something keepin' violent things from happening?"

"That's it," agreed Brink. "The psi unit made the dryer-door fly off and knock a pistol out of a man's hand. If they'd dropped the idea of violence, that would have ended the matter. They didn't."

"I accept it," said Fitzgerald. He gulped. "Because I saw it. A court wouldn't believe it, though, Mr. Brink!"

"Well?"

"I've been tryin' for months," said Fitzgerald in sudden desperation, "to find a way to stop what Big Jake's doin'. But he's tricky. He's organized. He's got smart lawyers. Mr. Brink, if the cops could use what you've got--" Then he stopped. "It'd never be authorized," he said bitterly. "They'd never let a cop try it."

"No," agreed Brink. "Until it's believed in it can only be used privately, for private purposes. Like I've used it. Or Hm-m-m. Do you fish, or bowl, or play golf, sergeant? I could give you a psi unit that'd help you quite a bit in such a private purpose."

Detective Sergeant Fitzgerald shook his head.

"Dry-fly fishin's my specialty," he said bitterly, "but no thank you! When I'm pittin' myself against a trout, it's my private purpose to be a better fisherman than he's a fish. Usin' what you've got would be like dynamitin' a stream. No sport in that! No! But this Big Jake, he doesn't act sporting with the public. I'd give a lot to stop him."

"You'd get no credit for it," said Brink. "No credit at all."

"I'd get the job done!" said Fitzgerald indignantly. "A man likes credit, but he likes a lot better to get a good job done!"

Brink grinned suddenly.

"Good man!" he said approvingly. "I'll buy your idea, sergeant. If you'll play fair with a trout, you'll play fair with a crook, and an Irishman, anyhow, has a sort of inheritance--I'll give you what help I can, and you'll do things your grandfather would swear was the work of the Little People. And for a first lesson--"

"What?"

"Big Jake discourages me," said Brink. "So I'll call him up and say I'm coming to see him. I'll say if he wants this business I'll sell it to him at a fair price. But I'll say otherwise I'll tell the newspapers about his threats and the four of his hoods in the hospital and the two others on the way there. Want to come along?"

Detective Sergeant Fitzgerald reached his hand to where his service revolver reposed in its holster. Then he drew it away.

"He's a very violent man," he said hopefully. "I wouldn't wonder he tried to get pretty rough--him and the characters he has on his payroll. If they have to be stopped from bein' violent by--what is it? Psi units? Sure I'll come along! It'd ought to be most edifyin' to watch!"

* * * * *

There was a clanging outside. Brink and Detective Sergeant Fitzgerald delayed while the two unnerved, helpless, and formerly immaculate gunmen were loaded into the paddy-wagon and carried away--to the hospital that already held four of their ilk. Then Brink called Big Jake on the telephone.

Detective Sergeant Fitzgerald listened with increasing appreciation as Brink made his proposition and explained matter-of-factly what had happened to Big Jake's minions who should have wrecked the Elite Cleaners and Dyers. When Brink hung up, Fitzgerald had a look of zestful anticipation on his face.

"He said to come right over," said Brink. "But he was grinding his teeth."

"Ah-h-h!" said Fitzgerald pleasurably. "I'm thinkin' of the cab-drivers an' truck drivers that've been beat up. I'm thinkin' of property smashed and honest people scared.... Do you know, I'm terrible afraid Big Jake's too much in the habit of violence to stop, even if his eyelids twitch? It's deplorable! But on a strictly personal basis I think I'll enjoy seein' Big Jake an' his hoods discouraged by ... what is it Psi units? Yes!"

And he did. Big Jake's eyelids undoubtedly did twitch while he was preparing a reception for Brink and Detective Sergeant Fitzgerald. But he did not heed the warning. He did not even think of the legal aspect of violent things attempted against his visitors. So he tried violence--he and his associates. They started out with fists and clubs, regardless of discretion. They tried to beat up Brink and Fitzgerald. From that they went on to sawed-off shotguns. Their efforts were still unsuccessful. Then they went to extremes.

Fitzgerald wore an expression of pious joy as Big Jake Connors and his aides, obstinately attempting violent actions, were prevented by psi units.

When it was all over, the ambulance had to make two trips.

THE END

Contents

THE LEADER

By Murray Leinster

The trouble with being a Superman, with Super powers, and knowing it, is it's so easy to overlook the unpleasant possibility of a super-superman!

... The career of The Leader remains one of the mysteries of history. This man, illegitimate and uneducated, hysterical and superstitious, gathered about him a crowded following of those who had been discontented, but whom he turned into fanatics. Apparently by pure force of personality he seized without resistance the government of one of the world's great nations. So much is unlikely enough. But as the ruler of a civilized country he imposed upon its people the absolute despotism of a primitive sultanate. He honeycombed its society with spies. He imprisoned, tortured, and executed without trial or check. And while all this went on he received the most impassioned loyalty of his subjects! Morality was abandoned at his command with as much alacrity as common sense. He himself was subject to the grossest superstitions. He listened to astrologers and fortunetellers--and executed them when they foretold disaster. But it is not enough to be amazed at the man himself. The great mystery is that people of the Twentieth Century, trained in science and technically advanced, should join in this orgy of what seems mere madness ...

Concise History of Europe. Blaisdell.

* * * * *

Letter from Professor Albrecht Aigen, University of Brunn, to the Herr General Johann von Steppberg, retired.

My dear General von Steppberg:

It is with reluctance that I intrude upon your retirement, but at the request of the Government I have undertaken a scientific examination of the causes which brought about The Leader's rise to power, the extraordinary popularity of his regime, the impassioned loyalty he was able to evoke, and the astounding final developments.

If you can communicate to me any memories of The Leader which may aid in understanding this most bewildering period of our history, I assure you that it will be appreciated by myself, by the authorities who wish the investigation made, and I dare to hope by posterity.

I am, my dear general, (Et cetera.)

* * * * *

Letter from General Johann von Steppberg (Retired) to Professor Albrecht Aigen, University of Brunn.

Herr Professor:

The official yearbooks of the army contain the record of my military career. I have nothing to add to that information. You say the authorities wish more. I refuse it. If they threaten my pension, I will renounce it. If they propose other pressures, I will leave the country. In short, I refuse to discuss in any manner the subject of your recent communication.

I am, Herr Professor, (Et cetera.)

* * * * *

Letter from Professor Albrecht Aigen to Dr. Karl Thurn, Professor of Psychology at University of Laibach.

My dear Karl:

I hope your psionic research goes better than my official project! My business goes nowhere! I have written to generals, ministers, and all kinds of persons who held high office under The Leader. Each and every one refuses to discuss The Leader or his own experiences under him. Why? Surely no one would blame them now! We have had to agree to pretend that no one did anything improper under The Leader, or else that what anyone did was proper at the time. So why should the nabobs of that incredible period refuse to discuss what they should know better than anyone else? I am almost reduced to asking the aid of the astrologers and soothsayers The Leader listened to. Actually, I must make a note to do so in sober earnest. At least they had their own viewpoint of events.

Speaking of viewpoints, I have had some hope of clarifying The Leader's career by comparing it with that of Prime Minister Winston, in power in his country when The Leader ruled ours. His career is splendidly documented. There is astonishingly little documentation about The Leader as a person, however. That is one of the difficulties of my task. Even worse, those who should know him best lock their lips while those--

Here is an unsolicited letter from the janitor of a building in which a former Minister of Education now has his law offices. I have many letters equally preposterous....

* * * * *

Enclosure in letter to Dr. Karl Thurn, University of Laibach.

Herr Professor:

I am the janitor of the building in which Herr Former Minister of Education Werfen has his offices. In cleaning there I saw a letter crumpled into a ball and thrown into a corner. I learned in the time of The Leader that angry actions often mean evil intentions, so I read the letter to see if the police should be notified. It was a letter from you in which you asked Herr Former Minister of Education Werfen for his memories of The Leader.

I remember The Leader, Herr Professor. He was the most holy man who ever lived, if indeed he was only a man. Once I passed the open door of an office in the building I then worked in. I looked in the door--it was the office of the then-struggling Party The Leader had founded--and I saw The Leader sitting in a chair, thinking. There was golden light about his head, Herr Professor. I have told this to other people and they do not believe me. There were shadowy other beings in the room. I saw, very faintly, great white wings. But the other beings were still because The Leader was thinking and did not wish to be disturbed. I assure you that this is true, Herr Professor. The Leader was the holiest of men--if he was only a man.

I am most respectfully, Herr Professor, (Et cetera.)

* * * * *

Letter from Fraulein Lise Grauer, nurse, in the city of Bludenz, to Professor Aigen at Brunn University.

Most respected Herr Professor:

I write this at the request of the Herr Former Police Inspector Grieg, to whom you directed a letter shortly before his death. The Herr Former Police Inspector had been ill for some time. I was his nurse. I had cared for him for months and did many small services for him, such as writing letters at his direction.

When your letter came he read it and went into a black mood of deep and bitter recollection. He would not speak for hours, and I had great difficulty in getting him to take his medicines. Just before his bedtime he called me and said sardonically;

"Lise, write to this Herr Professor for me. Say to him that I was once a decent man. When The Leader took power, I received orders that I would not accept. I submitted my resignation. Then I received orders to come to The Leader. I obeyed these orders because my resignation was not yet accepted. I was received in his office. I entered it with respect and defiance--respect because he was admitted to be the ruler of our nation; defiance because I would not obey such orders as had been sent me in his name.

"The Leader spoke to me, kindly, and as he spoke all my views changed. It suddenly seemed that I had been absurd to refuse the orders sent me. They seemed right and reasonable and even more lenient than would have been justified.... I left The Leader in a state in which I could not possibly fail to do anything he wished. From that moment I obeyed his orders. I was promoted. Eventually, as you know, I was in command of the Neusatz prison camp. And you know what orders I carried out there!"

I wept, Herr Professor, because the Herr Grieg's eyes were terrible to look at. He was a gentle and kindly man, Herr Professor! I was his nurse, and he was a good patient and a good man in every way. I had heard of the things that were done at Neusatz, but I could not believe that my patient had commanded them. Now, in his eyes I saw that he remembered them and that the memory was intolerable. He said very bitterly:

"Tell the Herr Professor that I can tell him nothing more. I have no other memories that would be of service to him. I have resolved, anyhow, to get rid even of these. I have kept them too long. Say to him that his letter has decided me."

I did not understand what he meant, Herr Professor. I helped him prepare for the night, and when he seemed to be resting quietly I retired, myself. I was wakened by a very loud noise. I went to see what was the matter. The Herr Former Police Inspector Grieg had managed to get out of his bed and across the room to a bureau. He opened a drawer and took out a revolver. He made his way back to his bed. He blew out his brains.

I called the police, and after investigation they instructed me to carry out his request, which I do.

Herr Professor, I do not myself remember the times of The Leader, but they must have been very terrible. If the Herr Former Police Inspector Grieg was actually in command of the Neusatz prison camp, and did actually order the things done there,--I cannot understand it, Herr Professor! Because he was a good and kindly man! If you write of him, I beg that you will mention that he was a most amiable man. I was only his nurse, but I assure you--(Et cetera.)

* * * * *

Letter from Dr. Karl Thurn, University of Laibach, to Professor Albrecht Aigen, University of Brunn.

My dear friend:

I could have predicted your failure to secure co-operation from eminent figures in The Leader's regime. So long as they keep silent, together, they can pretend to be respectable. And nobody longs so passionately to be respectable as a man who has prospered by being a swine, while he awaits an opportunity to prosper again by more swinishness. I would advise you to expect your best information from little people who suffered most and most helplessly looked on or helped while enormities were committed. Such little people will either yearn over the past like your janitor, or want most passionately to understand so that nothing of the sort can ever happen again.

Winston as a parallel to The Leader? Or as a contrast? Which? I can name one marked contrast. I doubt that anybody really and passionately wishes that Winston had never been born.

You mention my researches. You should see some of our results! I have found a rat with undeniable psychokinetic power. I have seen him move a gram-weight of cheese nearly three centimeters to where he could reach it through the cage bars. I begin to suspect a certain female dog of abilities I would prefer not to name just yet. If you can find any excuse to come to Laibach, I promise you amazing demonstrations of psi phenomena. (Et cetera.)

* * * * *

Quotations from, "Recollections of the Earl of Humber, formerly Prime Minister Winston," by the Hon. Charles Wilberforce.

Page 231; "... This incredible event took place even while it seemed most impossible. The Prime Minister took it with his usual aplomb. I asked him what he thought of the matter a week later, at a house party in Hertfordshire. He said, 'I consider it most unfortunate. This Leader of theirs is an inherently nasty individual. Therefore he'll make nastiness the avenue to distinction so long as he's in power. The results will be tragic, because when you bottle up decency men seem to go mad. What a pity one can't bottle up nastiness! The world might become a fit place to live in!'"

Page 247; "The Prime Minister disagreed. 'There was Napoleon,' he observed. 'You might despise him, but after he talked to you you served him. He seemed to throw a spell over people. Alexander probably had the same sort of magic personality. When his personality ceased to operate, as a result of too much wine too continuously, his empire fell immediately to pieces. I've known others personally; an Afghan whom I've always thought did us a favor by getting killed by a sniper. He could have caused a great deal of trouble. I'd guess at the Khalifa. Most of the people who have this incredible persuasiveness, however, seem to set up as successful swindlers. What a pity The Leader had no taste for simple crime, and had to go in for crimes of such elaboration!'"

* * * * *

Letter from Professor Albrecht Aigen, University of Brunn, to Dr. Karl Thurn, University of Laibach.

My dear Karl:

You make me curious with your talk of a rat which levitates crumbs of cheese and a she-dog who displays other psi abilities. I assume that you have found the experimental conditions which let psi powers operate without hindrance. I shall hope some day to see and conceivably to understand.

My own affairs are in hopeless confusion. At the moment I am overwhelmed with material about The Leader, the value of which I cannot estimate. Strange! I ask people who should know what I am commissioned to discover, and they refuse to answer. But it becomes known that I ask, and thousands of little people write me to volunteer impassioned details of their experiences while The Leader ruled. Some are bitter because they did what they did and felt as they felt. These seem to believe in magic or demoniac possession as the reason they behaved with such conspicuous insanity. Others gloat over their deeds, which they recount with gusto--and then express pious regret with no great convincingness. Some of these accounts nauseate me. But something utterly abnormal was in operation, somehow, to cause The Leader's ascendancy!

I wish I could select the important data with certainty. Almost anything, followed up, might reveal the key. But I do not know what to follow! I plan to go to Bozen, where the new monstrous computer has been set up, and see if there is any way in which it could categorize my data and detect a pattern of more than bewildered and resentful frenzy.

On the way back to Brunn I shall stop by to talk to you. There is so much to say! I anticipate much of value from your detached and analytic mind. I confess, also, that I am curious about your research. This she-dog with psi powers, of which you give no account ... I am intrigued.

As always, I am, (Et cetera.)

* * * * *

Letter from Professor Albrecht Aigen, written from The Mathematical Institute at Bozen, to Dr. Karl Thurn, University of Laibach.

My dear Karl:

This is in haste. There is much agitation among the computer staff at the Institute. An assistant technician has been discovered to be able to predict the answer the computer will give to problems set up at random. He is one Hans Schweeringen and it is unbelievable.

Various numerals are impressed on the feed-in tape of the computer. Sections of the tape are chosen at random by someone who is blindfolded. They are fed unread into the computer, together with instructions to multiply, subtract, extract roots, et cetera, which are similarly chosen at random and not known to anyone. Once in twenty times or so, Schweeringen predicts the result of this meaningless computation before the computer has made it. This is incredible! The odds are trillions to one against it! Since nobody knows the sums or instructions given to the computer, it cannot be mind-reading in any form. It must be pure precognition. Do you wish to talk to him?

He is uneasy at the attention he attracts, perhaps because his father was one of The Leader's secretaries and was executed, it is presumed, for knowing too much. Telegraph me if you wish me to try to bring him to you.

Your friend--

* * * * *

Telegram from Dr. Karl Thurn, Professor of Psychology at Laibach University, to Professor Albrecht Aigen, in care of The Mathematical Institute at Bozen:

Take tapes which produced answers Schweeringen predicted. Run them through computer when he knows nothing of it. Wire result.

Thurn.

* * * * *

Telegram. Professor Albrecht Aigen, at The Mathematical Institute in Bozen, to Dr. Karl Thurn, University of Laibach.

How did you know? The tapes do not give the same answers when run through the computer without Schweeringen's knowledge. The only possible answer is that the computer sometimes errs to match his predictions. But this is more impossible than precognition. This is beyond the conceivable. It cannot be! What now?

Aigen.

* * * * *

Telegram from Dr. Karl Thurn, University of Laibach, to Professor Albrecht Aigen, care Mathematical Institute, Bozen.

Naturally I suspect psi. He belongs with my rat and she-dog. Try to arrange it.

Thurn.

* * * * *

Telegram from Professor Albrecht Aigen, Mathematical Institute, Bozen, to Dr. Karl Thurn, University of Laibach.

Schweeringen refuses further tests. Fears proof he causes malfunctioning of computer will cause unemployment here and may destroy all hope of hoped-for career in mathematics.

Aigen.

* * * * *

Telegram from Professor Albrecht Aigen, at Mathematical Institute, to Dr. Karl Thurn, University of Laibach.

Terrible news. Riding bus to Institute this morning, Schweeringen was killed when bus was involved in accident.

Aigen.

* * * * *

Telegram from Dr. Karl Thurn, University of Laibach, to Professor Albrecht Aigen, care Mathematical Institute, Bozen.

Deeply regret death Schweeringen. When you come here please try to bring all known family history. Psi ability sometimes inherited. Could be tie-in his father's execution and use of psi ability.

Thurn.

* * * * *

Letter from Professor Albrecht Aigen, at Brunn University, to Dr. Karl Thurn, University of Laibach.

My dear Karl:

I have first to thank you for your warm welcome and to express my gratitude for your attention while I was your guest. Since my return I have written many inquiries about Schweeringen's father. There are so far no replies, but I have some hope that people who will not tell of their own experiences may tell about someone else--especially someone now dead. This may be a useful device to get at least some information from people who so far have refused any. Naturally I will pass on to you anything I learn.

I try to work again upon the task assigned me--to investigate the rise and power of The Leader. I find it hard to concentrate. My mind goes back to your laboratory. I am deeply shaken by my experience there. I had thought nothing could be more bewildering than my own work. Consider: Today I received a letter in which a man tells me amazedly of the life he led in a slave-labor camp during the time of The Leader's rule. He describes the attempt of another prisoner to organize a revolt of the prisoners. While he spoke of the brutality of the guards and the intolerably hard labor and the deliberately insufficient food, they cheered him. But when he accused The Leader of having ordered these things--the prisoners fell upon him with cries of fury. They killed him. I had this information verified. It was true.

I cannot hope for a sane explanation of such things. But a sane explanation for my experience seems even less probable. I am impressed by your rat who levitates crumbs of cheese. But I am appalled; I am horrified; I am stupefied by what I did! You asked me to wait for you in a certain laboratory beyond a door. I entered. I saw a small, fat, mangy she-dog in a dog-run. She looked at me and wagged her tail. I thereupon went to the other end of the laboratory, opened a box, and took out a handful of strange objects you later told me are sweetmeats to a dog. I gave them to the animal.

Why did I do it? How was it that I went directly to a box of which I knew nothing, opened it as a matter of course, and took out objects I did not even recognize, to give them to that unpleasant small beast? How did I know where to go? Why did I go? Why should I give those then-meaningless objects to the dog? It is as if I were enchanted!

You say that it is a psi phenomenon. The rat causes small objects to move. The dog, you say, causes persons to give it canine candy. I revolt against the conclusion, which I cannot reason away. If you are right, we are at the mercy of our domestic animals! Dog-lovers are not people who love dogs, but people who are enslaved by dogs. Cat-lovers are merely people who have been seized upon by cats to support and pet and cater to them. This is intolerable! I shall fear all pets from now on! I throw myself back into my own work to avoid thinking of it. I--

* * *

Later. I did not mail this letter because an appalling idea occurred to me. This could bear upon my investigation! Do you think The Leader--No! It could not be! It would be madness....

* * * * *

Extract from a letter from Dr. Karl Thurn to Professor Albrecht Aigen.

... I deplore your reaction. It has the emotional quality of a reaction to witchcraft or magic, but psi is not witchcraft. It is a natural force. No natural force is either nonexistent or irresistible. No natural force is invariably effective. Psi is not irresistible under all circumstances. It is not always effective. My rat cannot levitate cheese-crumbs weighing more than 1.7 grams. My she-dog could not make you give her dog-candy once you were on guard. When you went again into the laboratory she looked at you and wagged her tail as before. You say that you thought of the box and of opening it, but you did not. It was not even an effort of will to refrain.

A lesser will or a lower grade of personality cannot overwhelm a greater one. Not ever! Lesser beings can only urge. The astrologers used to say that the stars incline, but they do not compel. The same can be said of psi--or of magnetism or gravitation or what you will. Schweeringen could not make the computer err when it had to err too egregiously. A greater psi ability was needed than he had. A greater psi power than was available would have been needed to make you give the dog candy, once you were warned.

I do not apply these statements to your so-called appalling idea. I carefully refrain from doing so. It is your research, not mine....

* * * * *

Extract from letter to Professor Albrecht Aigen from the Herr Friedrich Holm, supervisor of electrical maintenance, municipal electrical service, Untersberg.

Herr Professor:

You have written to ask if I knew a certain Herr Schweeringen, attached to The Leader's personal staff during his regime. I did know such a person. I was then in charge of electrical maintenance in The Leader's various residences. Herr Schweeringen was officially one of The Leader's secretaries, but his actual task was to make predictions for The Leader, like a soothsayer or a medium. He had a very remarkable gift. There were times when it was especially needful that there be no electrical failures--when The Leader was to be in residence, for example. On such occasions it was my custom to ask Herr Schweeringen if there was apt to be any failure of apparatus under my care. At least three times he told me yes. In one case it was an elevator, in another refrigeration, in a third a fuse would blow during a State dinner.

I overhauled the elevator, but it failed nevertheless. I replaced the refrigeration motor, and the new motor failed. In the third case I changed the fuse to a new and tested one, and then placed a new, fused line around the fuse Herr Schweeringen had said would blow, and placed a workman beside it. When the fuse did blow as predicted, my workman instantly closed the extra-line switch, so that the lights of the State dinner barely flickered. But I shudder when I think of the result if Herr Schweeringen had not warned me.

He was executed a few days before the period of confusion began, which ended as everyone knows. I do not know the reason for his execution. It was said, however, that The Leader executed him personally. This, Herr Professor, is all that I know of the matter.

Very respectfully, (Et cetera.)

* * * * *

Letter from Herr Theophrastus Paracelsus Bosche, astrologer, to Professor Albrecht Aigen, Brunn University.

Most respected Herr Professor:

I am amused that a so-eminent scientist like yourself should ask information from a so-despised former astrologer to The Leader. It is even more amusing that you ask about a mere soothsayer--a man who displayed an occult gift of prophecy--whom you should consider merely one of the charlatans like myself whom The Leader consulted, and who are unworthy of consideration by a scientific historian. We have no effect upon history, most respected Herr Professor! None at all. Oh, none! I am much diverted.

You ask about the Herr Schweeringen. He was a predictor, using his occult gift of second sight to foreknow events and tell The Leader about them. You will remember that The Leader considered himself to have occult powers of leadership and decision, and that all occult powers should contribute to his greatness. At times of great stress, such as when The Leader demanded ever-increasing concessions from other nations on threat of war, he was especially concerned that occult predictions promise him success.

At a certain time the international tension was greater than ever before. If The Leader could doubt the rightness of any of his actions, he doubted it then. There was great danger of war. Prime Minister Winston had said flatly that The Leader must withdraw his demands or fight. The Leader was greatly agitated. He demanded my prediction. I considered the stars and predicted discreetly that war would be prevented by some magnificent achievement by The Leader. Truly, if he got out of his then situation it would be a magnificent achievement. But astrology, of course, could only indicate it but not describe what it would be.

The Leader was confident that he could achieve anything he could imagine, because he had convinced even himself that only treason or disloyalty could cause him to fail in any matter. He demanded of his generals what achievement would prevent the war. They were not encouraging. He demanded of his civilian political advisers. They dared not advise him to retreat. They offered nothing. He demanded of his occult advisers.

The Herr Schweeringen demanded of me that I tell him my exact prediction. His nerves were bad, then, and he twitched with the strain. Someone had to describe the great achievement The Leader would make. It would be dangerous not to do so. I told him the prediction, I found his predicament diverting. He left me, still twitching and desperately sunk in thought.

I now tell you exact, objective facts, Herr Professor, with no interpretation of my own upon them. The Herr Schweeringen was closeted with The Leader. I am told that his face was shining with confidence when he went to speak to The Leader. It was believed among us charlatans that he considered that he foreknew what The Leader would do to prevent war at this time.

Two hours later there were shots in The Leader's private quarters. The Leader came out, his eyes glaring, and ordered Herr Schweeringen's body removed. He ordered the execution of the four senior generals of the General Staff, of the Minister of Police, and several other persons. He then went into seclusion, from which he emerged only briefly to give orders making the unthinkable retreat that Prime Minister Winston had demanded. No one spoke to him for a week. Confusion began. These are objective facts. I now add one small boast.

My discreet prediction had come true, and it is extremely diverting to think about it. The Leader had achieved magnificently. The war was prevented not only for the moment but for later times, too. The Leader's achievement was the destruction of his regime by destroying the brains that had made it operate!

It is quite possible that you will consider this information a lie. That will be quite droll. However, I am, most respected Herr Professor, (Et cetera.)

* * * * *

Letter from Dr. Karl Thurn, University of Laibach, to Professor Albrecht Aigen, Brunn University.

My dear friend:

Your information about the elder Schweeringen received. The information about his prediction is interesting. I could wish that it were complete, but that would seem to be hopeless. Your question, asked in a manner suggesting great disturbance, is another matter. I will answer it as well as I can, my friend, but please remember that you asked. I volunteer nothing. The question of the rise and power of The Leader is your research, not mine.

Here is my answer. Years back an American researcher named Rhine obtained seemingly conclusive proof that telepathy took place. Tonight he would have a "sender," here, attempt to transmit some item telepathically to a "receiver," there. Tomorrow morning he would compare the record of what the "sender" had attempted to transmit, with the record of what the "receiver" considered he had received. The correspondence was far greater than chance. He considered that telepathy was proven.

But then Rhine made tests for precognition. He secured proof that some persons could predict with greater-than-probability frequency that some particular event, to be determined by chance, would take place tomorrow. He secured excellent evidence for precognition.

Then it was realized that if one could foresee what dice would read tomorrow--dice not yet thrown--one should be able to read what a report would read tomorrow--a report not yet written. In short, if one can foreknow what a comparison will reveal, telepathy before the comparison is unproven. In proving precognition, he had destroyed his evidence for telepathy.

It appears that something similar has happened, which our correspondence has brought out. Young Schweeringen predicted what a computer would report from unknown numerals and instructions. In order for the computer to match his predictions, it had to err. It did. Therefore one reasons that he did not predict what the computer would produce. The computer produced what he predicted. In effect, what appeared to be foreknowledge was psychokinesis--the same phenomenon as the movement of crumbs of cheese by my rat. One may strongly suspect that when young Herr Schweeringen knew in advance what the computer would say, he actually knew in advance what he could make it say. It is possible that one can consciously know in advance only what one can unconsciously bring about. If one can bring about only minor happenings, one can never predict great ones.

This is my answer to your question. I would like very much to know what the elder Schweeringen predicted that The Leader would accomplish!

My she-dog has died. We had a new attendant in the laboratory. He fed her to excess. She died of it. (Et cetera.)

* * * * *

Letter from Professor Albrecht Aigen to Dr. Thurn.

My dear Karl:

I have resolved to dismiss psionic ability from my investigation into The Leader's rise to power. This much I will concede: The Leader could enslave--englamour--enchant anyone who met him personally. He did. To a lesser degree, this irresistible persuasiveness is a characteristic of many successful swindlers. But he could not have englamoured the whole nation. He did not meet enough persons personally to make his regime possible, unless he could cause other persons to apply their own magnetism to further his ambitions, and they others and others and so on--like an endless series of magnets magnetized originally from one. This is not possible. I restrict myself to normal, plausible hypotheses--of which so far I have no faintest trace.

You agree with me, do you not--that it was impossible for The Leader to weave a web of enchantment over the whole nation by his own psi energies controlling the psi energies of others? I would welcome your assurance that it could not be.

* * * * *

Letter from Professor Albrecht Aigen to Dr. Karl Thurn.

My dear Karl:

Did you receive my last letter? I am anxious to have your assurance that it was impossible that The Leader could englamour the whole nation by his psionic gifts.

* * * * *

Telegram, Dr. Albrecht Aigen to Dr. Karl Thurn.

Karl, as you are my friend, answer me!

* * * * *

Letter, Dr. Karl Thurn to Professor Albrecht Aigen.

... But what have you discovered, my friend, that you are afraid to face?

* * * * *

Letter. Professor Albrecht Aigen to Dr. Karl Thurn.

My dear Karl:

I appeal to you because I have discovered how nearly our nation and the whole world escaped horrors beside which those of The Leader's actual regime would seem trivial. Give me reasons, arguments, proofs beyond question, which I can put into my report on his career! I must demonstrate beyond question that psi ability did not cause his ascendancy! Help me to contrive a lie which will keep anyone, ever, from dreaming that psi ability can be used to seize a government and a nation. It could seize the world more terribly....

I cannot express the urgency of this need! There are others who possess The Leader's powers in a lesser degree. They must remain only swindlers and such, without ambitions to rule, or they might study The Leader's career as Napoleon studied Alexander's. There must be no hint, anywhere, of the secret I have discovered. There must be nothing to lead to the least thought of it! The Leader could have multiplied his power ten-thousand-fold! Another like him must never learn how it could be done!

I beg your help, Karl! I am shaken. I am terrified. I wish that I had not undertaken this research. I wish it almost as desperately as I wish that The Leader had never been born!

* * * * *

Letter from Colonel Sigmund Knoeller, retired, to Professor Albrecht Aigen, Brunn University.

Herr Professor:

In response to your authorized request for information about certain events; I have the honor to inform you that at the time you mention I was Major in command of the Second Battalion of the 161st Infantry Regiment, assigned to guard duty about the residence of The Leader. Actual guard duty was performed by the secret police. My battalion merely provided sentries around the perimeter of the residence, and at certain places within.

On August 19th I received a command to march three companies of my men into the residence, to receive orders from The Leader in person. This command was issued by the Herr General Breyer, attached to The Leader as a military aide.

I led my men inside according to the orders, guided by the orderly who had brought them. I entered an inner courtyard. There was disturbance. People moved about in a disorderly fashion and chattered agitatedly. This was astonishing in The Leader's residence. I marched up to General Breyer, who stood outside a group biting his nails. I saluted and said: "Major Knoeller reporting for orders, Herr General."

There was then confusion in the nearby squabbling group. A man burst out of it and waved his arms at me. He looked like The Leader. He cried shrilly:

"Arrest these men! All of them! Then shoot them!"

I looked at the Herr General Breyer. He bit his nails. The man who looked so much like The Leader foamed at the mouth. But he was not The Leader. That is, in every respect he resembled The Leader to whom I owed loyalty as did everyone. But no one who was ever in The Leader's presence failed to know it. There was a feeling. One knew to the inmost part of one's soul that he was The Leader who must be reverenced and obeyed. But one did not feel that way about this man, though he resembled The Leader so strongly.

"Arrest them!" shrilled the man ferociously. "I command it! I am The Leader! Shoot them!"

When I still waited for General Breyer to give me orders, the man shrieked at the troopers. He commanded them to kill General Breyer and all the rest, including me. And if he had been The Leader they would have obeyed. But he was not. So my men stood stiffly at attention, waiting for my orders or General Breyer's.

There was now complete silence in the courtyard. The formerly squabbling men watched as if astonished. As if they did not believe their eyes. But I waited for General Breyer to give his commands.

The man screamed in a terrible, frustrated rage. He waved his arms wildly. He foamed at the mouth and shrieked at me. I waited for orders from General Breyer. After a long time he ceased to bite his nails and said in a strange voice:

"You had better have this man placed in confinement, Major Knoeller. See that he is not injured. Double all guards and mount machine guns in case of rioting outside. Dismiss!"

I obeyed my commands. My men took the struggling, still-shrieking man and put him in a cell in the guardhouse. There was a drunken private there, awaiting court-martial. He was roused and annoyed when his new companion shrieked and screamed and shook the bars of the door. He kicked the man who looked so much like The Leader. I then had the civilian placed in a separate cell, but he continued to rave incoherently until I had the regimental surgeon give him an injection to quiet him. He sank into drugged sleep with foam about his lips.

He looked remarkably like The Leader. I have never seen such a resemblance! But he was not The Leader or we would have known him.

There was no disturbance outside the residence. The doubled guards and the mounted machine guns were not needed.

I am, Herr Professor, (Et cetera.)

* * * * *

Letter, with enclosure, from Professor Albrecht Aigen, Brunn University, to Dr. Karl Thurn, University of Laibach.

My dear Karl:

Because of past sharing in my research, you will realize what the enclosed means. It is part of the report of the physicians who examined The Leader three days after his confinement in a military prison. He had recovered much of his self-control. He spoke with precision. He appeared even calm, though he was confused in some matters. The doctors addressed him as "My Leader" because he refused to reply otherwise.

(Enclosure)

Dr. Kundmann: But, My Leader, we do not understand what has happened! You were terribly disturbed. You were even ... even confused in your behavior! Can you tell us what took place?

The Leader: I suffered a great danger and a temporary damage. That villain Schweeringen--I shot him. It was a mistake. I should have had him worked over--at length!

Dr. Messner: My Leader, will you be so good as to tell us the nature of the danger and the damage?

The Leader: Schweeringen probably told someone what he would propose to me. It was his conviction that because of my special gifts I could cause anyone, not only to obey me, but to pour out to me, directly, his inmost thoughts and memories. Of course this is true. The danger was that of the contact of my mind with an inferior one. But I allowed Schweeringen to persuade me that I should risk even this for the service of my people. Therefore I contacted the mind of Prime Minister Winston, so I could know every scheme and every plan he might have or know to exist to injure my people. I intended, however, to cause him to become loyal to me--though I would later have had him shot. Schweeringen had betrayed me, though. When I made contact with Winston's mind, it was not only inferior, but diseased! There was a contagion which temporarily affected the delicate balance of my intuition. For a short time I could not know, as ordinarily, what was best for my people.

(End of Enclosure)

You will see, my dear Karl, what took place. To you and to me this explains everything. In the background of my research and your information it is clear. Fortunately, The Leader's mind was unstable. The strain and shock of so unparalleled experience as complete knowledge of another brain's contents destroyed his rationality. He became insane. Insane, he no longer had the psi gifts by which he had seized and degraded our nation. He ceased to be The Leader.

But you will see that this must be hidden! Another monster like The Leader, or Napoleon--perhaps even lesser monsters--could attempt the same feat. But they might be less unstable! They might be able to invade the mind of any human being, anywhere, and drain it of any secret or impress upon it any desire or command, however revolting. You see, Karl, why this must never become known! It must be hidden forever.

* * * * *

Letter from Dr. Karl Thurn, University of Laibach, to Professor Albrecht Aigen, Brunn University.

My dear friend:

I am relieved! I feared for your judgment. I thought that perhaps overwork and frustration had set up an anxiety-block to make you cease your work. But you are quite right. Your analysis is brilliant. And now that you have pointed it out, unquestionably a man with The Leader's psi powers could force another man's brain to transmit all its contents to him.

But consider the consequences! Consider the conditions of such an event. One's brain is designed to work within one's own skull, dealing with sensory messages and the like. Very occasionally it acts outside, shifting crumbs of cheese and confusing computers--and securing candy. But even when one's will controls outside actions, it does not fuse with the outside brain or thing. It molds or moves the recipient mind, but there is never a sharing of memory. You have explained why.

Consider what must happen if a brain of limited power and essentially emotional operation is linked to another and more powerful one. Assume for a moment that my she-dog had linked her brain to yours, even momentarily. Do you realize that she would not have gotten your memories, much less your power to reason? She would not even have acquired your knowledge of the meaning of words! When a bright light shines in your eyes, you see nothing else. When thunder rolls in your ears, you do not hear the ticking of a clock. When you suffer pain, you do not notice a feather's tickle. If my she-dog had linked her mind to yours, she would have experienced something which is knowledge more firmly fixed and more continuously known than anything else in your conscious life. This overwhelmingly strong conviction would have been so powerful and so positive that it would be imprinted--branded--burned into every cell of her brain. She could never get it out.

But in receiving this overwhelming experience she would not get your memories or power to reason or even your personality. She would have experienced only your identity. She would have received only the conviction that she was yourself! She would have been like those poor lunatics who believe that they are Napoleon, though they have nothing of Napoleon in them but the conviction of identity. They do not know when he was born or have more than the vaguest notion of what he did, but they try to act as who he was--according to their own ideas of how Napoleon would act in their situation. This is how my she-dog would have behaved.

I am relieved. You have explained everything. Your letter gave me the suspicion. I secured a transcript of the Herr Doctor's report for myself. My suspicion became a certainty. You will find the clue in the report. Consider: The Leader had had the experience I imagined for my she-dog. He had linked his mind with a stronger one and a greater personality--if it must be said, a greater man. For a moment The Leader knew what that man knew most certainly, with most profound conviction, with most positive knowledge. It was burned into his brain. He could never get it out. He did not secure that other man's memories or knowledge or ability. He was blinded, deafened, dazed by the overwhelming conviction that, the other man had of his own identity. It would not be possible for him to get anything else from a stronger mind and a greater person. Nor could anyone else succeed where he failed, my friend! There is no danger of any man seizing the world by seizing the minds of all his fellows! One who tries will meet the fate of The Leader.

You realize what that fate was, of course. He suddenly ceased to be the monster who could cast a spell of blind adoration for himself. He ceased to be The Leader! So the doctors gave him truth-serum so he would not try to conceal anything from them. The result is in the transcript on the third page beyond the place you quoted to me. There the doctors asked The Leader who he was. Read his answer, my friend! It proves everything! He said:

"I am Prime Minister Winston."

THE END

Contents

THE MISSISSIPPI SAUCER

By Frank Belknap Long

Something of the wonder that must have come to men seeking magic in the sky in days long vanished.

Jimmy watched the Natchez Belle draw near, a shining eagerness in his stare. He stood on the deck of the shantyboat, his toes sticking out of his socks, his heart knocking against his ribs. Straight down the river the big packet boat came, purpling the water with its shadow, its smokestacks belching soot.

Jimmy had a wild talent for collecting things. He knew exactly how to infuriate the captains without sticking out his neck. Up and down the Father of Waters, from the bayous of Louisiana to the Great Sandy other little shantyboat boys envied Jimmy and tried hard to imitate him.

But Jimmy had a very special gift, a genius for pantomime. He'd wait until there was a glimmer of red flame on the river and small objects stood out with a startling clarity. Then he'd go into his act.

Nothing upset the captains quite so much as Jimmy's habit of holding a big, croaking bullfrog up by its legs as the riverboats went steaming past. It was a surefire way of reminding the captains that men and frogs were brothers under the skin. The puffed-out throat of the frog told the captains exactly what Jimmy thought of their cheek.

Jimmy refrained from making faces, or sticking out his tongue at the grinning roustabouts. It was the frog that did the trick.

In the still dawn things came sailing Jimmy's way, hurled by captains with a twinkle of repressed merriment dancing in eyes that were kindlier and more tolerant than Jimmy dreamed.

Just because shantyboat folk had no right to insult the riverboats Jimmy had collected forty empty tobacco tins, a down-at-heels shoe, a Sears Roebuck catalogue and--more rolled up newspapers than Jimmy could ever read.

Jimmy could read, of course. No matter how badly Uncle Al needed a new pair of shoes, Jimmy's education came first. So Jimmy had spent six winters ashore in a first-class grammar school, his books paid for out of Uncle Al's "New Orleans" money.

Uncle Al, blowing on a vinegar jug and making sweet music, the holes in his socks much bigger than the holes in Jimmy's socks. Uncle Al shaking his head and saying sadly, "Some day, young fella, I ain't gonna sit here harmonizing. No siree! I'm gonna buy myself a brand new store suit, trade in this here jig jug for a big round banjo, and hie myself off to the Mardi Gras. Ain't too old thataway to git a little fun out of life, young fella!"

Poor old Uncle Al. The money he'd saved up for the Mardi Gras never seemed to stretch far enough. There was enough kindness in him to stretch like a rainbow over the bayous and the river forests of sweet, rustling pine for as far as the eye could see. Enough kindness to wrap all of Jimmy's life in a glow, and the life of Jimmy's sister as well.

Jimmy's parents had died of winter pneumonia too soon to appreciate Uncle Al. But up and down the river everyone knew that Uncle Al was a great man.

* * * * *

Enemies? Well, sure, all great men made enemies, didn't they?

The Harmon brothers were downright sinful about carrying their feuding meanness right up to the doorstep of Uncle Al, if it could be said that a man living in a shantyboat had a doorstep.

Uncle Al made big catches and the Harmon brothers never seemed to have any luck. So, long before Jimmy was old enough to understand how corrosive envy could be the Harmon brothers had started feuding with Uncle Al.

"Jimmy, here comes the Natchez Belle! Uncle Al says for you to get him a newspaper. The newspaper you got him yesterday he couldn't read no-ways. It was soaking wet!"

Jimmy turned to glower at his sister. Up and down the river Pigtail Anne was known as a tomboy, but she wasn't--no-ways. She was Jimmy's little sister. That meant Jimmy was the man in the family, and wore the pants, and nothing Pigtail said or did could change that for one minute.

"Don't yell at me!" Jimmy complained. "How can I get Captain Simmons mad if you get me mad first? Have a heart, will you?"

But Pigtail Anne refused to budge. Even when the Natchez Belle loomed so close to the shantyboat that it blotted out the sky she continued to crowd her brother, preventing him from holding up the frog and making Captain Simmons squirm.

But Jimmy got the newspaper anyway. Captain Simmons had a keen insight into tomboy psychology, and from the bridge of the Natchez Belle he could see that Pigtail was making life miserable for Jimmy.

True--Jimmy had no respect for packet boats and deserved a good trouncing. But what a scrapper the lad was! Never let it be said that in a struggle between the sexes the men of the river did not stand shoulder to shoulder.

The paper came sailing over the shining brown water like a white-bellied buffalo cat shot from a sling.

Pigtail grabbed it before Jimmy could give her a shove. Calmly she unwrapped it, her chin tilted in bellicose defiance.

As the Natchez Belle dwindled around a lazy, cypress-shadowed bend Pigtail Anne became a superior being, wrapped in a cosmopolitan aura. A wide-eyed little girl on a swaying deck, the great outside world rushing straight toward her from all directions.

Pigtail could take that world in her stride. She liked the fashion page best, but she was not above clicking her tongue at everything in the paper.

"Kidnap plot linked to airliner crash killing fifty," she read. "Red Sox blank Yanks! Congress sits today, vowing vengeance! Million dollar heiress elopes with a clerk! Court lets dog pick owner! Girl of eight kills her brother in accidental shooting!"

"I ought to push your face right down in the mud," Jimmy muttered.

"Don't you dare! I've a right to see what's going on in the world!"

"You said the paper was for Uncle Al!"

"It is--when I get finished with it."

Jimmy started to take hold of his sister's wrist and pry the paper from her clasp. Only started--for as Pigtail wriggled back sunlight fell on a shadowed part of the paper which drew Jimmy's gaze as sunlight draws dew.

Exciting wasn't the word for the headline. It seemed to blaze out of the page at Jimmy as he stared, his chin nudging Pigtail's shoulder.

NEW FLYING MONSTER REPORTED BLAZING GULF STATE SKIES

Jimmy snatched the paper and backed away from Pigtail, his eyes glued to the headline.

* * * * *

He was kind to his sister, however. He read the news item aloud, if an account so startling could be called an item. To Jimmy it seemed more like a dazzling burst of light in the sky.

"A New Orleans resident reported today that he saw a big bright object 'roundish like a disk' flying north, against the wind. 'It was all lighted up from inside!' the observer stated. 'As far as I could tell there were no signs of life aboard the thing. It was much bigger than any of the flying saucers previously reported!'"

"People keep seeing them!" Jimmy muttered, after a pause. "Nobody knows where they come from! Saucers flying through the sky, high up at night. In the daytime, too! Maybe we're being watched, Pigtail!"

"Watched? Jimmy, what do you mean? What you talking about?"

Jimmy stared at his sister, the paper jiggling in his clasp. "It's way over your head, Pigtail!" he said sympathetically. "I'll prove it! What's a planet?"

"A star in the sky, you dope!" Pigtail almost screamed. "Wait'll Uncle Al hears what a meanie you are. If I wasn't your sister you wouldn't dare grab a paper that doesn't belong to you."

Jimmy refused to be enraged. "A planet's not a star, Pigtail," he said patiently. "A star's a big ball of fire like the sun. A planet is small and cool, like the Earth. Some of the planets may even have people on them. Not people like us, but people all the same. Maybe we're just frogs to them!"

"You're crazy, Jimmy! Crazy, crazy, you hear?"

Jimmy started to reply, then shut his mouth tight. Big waves were nothing new in the wake of steamboats, but the shantyboat wasn't just riding a swell. It was swaying and rocking like a floating barrel in the kind of blow Shantyboaters dreaded worse than the thought of dying.

Jimmy knew that a big blow could come up fast. Straight down from the sky in gusts, from all directions, banging against the boat like a drunken roustabout, slamming doors, tearing away mooring planks.

* * * * *

The river could rise fast too. Under the lashing of a hurricane blowing up from the gulf the river could lift a shantyboat right out of the water, and smash it to smithereens against a tree.

But now the blow was coming from just one part of the sky. A funnel of wind was churning the river into a white froth and raising big swells directly offshore. But the river wasn't rising and the sun was shining in a clear sky.

Jimmy knew a dangerous floodwater storm when he saw one. The sky had to be dark with rain, and you had to feel scared, in fear of drowning.

Jimmy was scared, all right. That part of it rang true. But a hollow, sick feeling in his chest couldn't mean anything by itself, he told himself fiercely.

Pigtail Anne saw the disk before Jimmy did. She screamed and pointed skyward, her twin braids standing straight out in the wind like the ropes on a bale of cotton, when smokestacks collapse and a savage howling sends the river ghosts scurrying for cover.

Straight down out of the sky the disk swooped, a huge, spinning shape as flat as a buckwheat cake swimming in a golden haze of butterfat.

But the disk didn't remind Jimmy of a buckwheat cake. It made him think instead of a slowly turning wheel in the pilot house of a rotting old riverboat, a big, ghostly wheel manned by a steersman a century dead, his eye sockets filled with flickering swamp lights.

It made Jimmy want to run and hide. Almost it made him want to cling to his sister, content to let her wear the pants if only he could be spared the horror.

For there was something so chilling about the downsweeping disk that Jimmy's heart began leaping like a vinegar jug bobbing about in the wake of a capsizing fishboat.

Lower and lower the disk swept, trailing plumes of white smoke, lashing the water with a fearful blow. Straight down over the cypress wilderness that fringed the opposite bank, and then out across the river with a long-drawn whistling sound, louder than the air-sucking death gasps of a thousand buffalo cats.

Jimmy didn't see the disk strike the shining broad shoulders of the Father of Waters, for the bend around which the Natchez Belle had steamed so proudly hid the sky monster from view. But Jimmy did see the waterspout, spiraling skyward like the atom bomb explosion he'd goggled at in the pages of an old Life magazine, all smudged now with oily thumbprints.

Just a roaring for an instant--and a big white mushroom shooting straight up into the sky. Then, slowly, the mushroom decayed and fell back, and an awful stillness settled down over the river.

* * * * *

The stillness was broken by a shrill cry from Pigtail Anne. "It was a flying saucer! Jimmy, we've seen one! We've seen one! We've--"

"Shut your mouth, Pigtail!"

Jimmy shaded his eyes and stared out across the river, his chest a throbbing ache.

He was still staring when a door creaked behind him.

Jimmy trembled. A tingling fear went through him, for he found it hard to realize that the disk had swept around the bend out of sight. To his overheated imagination it continued to fill all of the sky above him, overshadowing the shantyboat, making every sound a threat.

Sucking the still air deep into his lungs, Jimmy swung about.

Uncle Al was standing on the deck in a little pool of sunlight, his gaunt, hollow-cheeked face set in harsh lines. Uncle Al was shading his eyes too. But he was staring up the river, not down.

"Trouble, young fella," he grunted. "Sure as I'm a-standin' here. A barrelful o' trouble--headin' straight for us!"

Jimmy gulped and gestured wildly toward the bend. "It came down over there, Uncle Al!" he got out. "Pigtail saw it, too! A big, flying--"

"The Harmons are a-comin', young fella," Uncle Al drawled, silencing Jimmy with a wave of his hand. "Yesterday I rowed over a Harmon jug line without meanin' to. Now Jed Harmon's tellin' everybody I stole his fish!"

Very calmly Uncle Al cut himself a slice of the strongest tobacco on the river and packed it carefully in his pipe, wadding it down with his thumb.

He started to put the pipe between his teeth, then thought better of it.

"I can bone-feel the Harmon boat a-comin', young fella," he said, using the pipe to gesture with. "Smooth and quiet over the river like a moccasin snake."

Jimmy turned pale. He forgot about the disk and the mushrooming water spout. When he shut his eyes he saw only a red haze overhanging the river, and a shantyboat nosing out of the cypresses, its windows spitting death.

* * * * *

Jimmy knew that the Harmons had waited a long time for an excuse. The Harmons were law-respecting river rats with sharp teeth. Feuding wasn't lawful, but murder could be made lawful by whittling down a lie until it looked as sharp as the truth.

The Harmon brothers would do their whittling down with double-barreled shotguns. It was easy enough to make murder look like a lawful crime if you could point to a body covered by a blanket and say, "We caught him stealing our fish! He was a-goin' to kill us--so we got him first."

No one would think of lifting the blanket and asking Uncle Al about it. A man lying stiff and still under a blanket could no more make himself heard than a river cat frozen in the ice.

"Git inside, young 'uns. Here they come!"

Jimmy's heart skipped a beat. Down the river in the sunlight a shantyboat was drifting. Jimmy could see the Harmon brothers crouching on the deck, their faces livid with hate, sunlight glinting on their arm-cradled shotguns.

The Harmon brothers were not in the least alike. Jed Harmon was tall and gaunt, his right cheek puckered by a knife scar, his cruel, thin-lipped mouth snagged by his teeth. Joe Harmon was small and stout, a little round man with bushy eyebrows and the flabby face of a cottonmouth snake.

"Go inside, Pigtail," Jimmy said, calmly. "I'm a-going to stay and fight!"

* * * * *

Uncle Al grabbed Jimmy's arm and swung him around. "You heard what I said, young fella. Now git!"

"I want to stay here and fight with you, Uncle Al," Jimmy said.

"Have you got a gun? Do you want to be blown apart, young fella?"

"I'm not scared, Uncle Al," Jimmy pleaded. "You might get wounded. I know how to shoot straight, Uncle Al. If you get hurt I'll go right on fighting!"

"No you won't, young fella! Take Pigtail inside. You hear me? You want me to take you across my knee and beat the livin' stuffings out of you?"

Silence.

Deep in his uncle's face Jimmy saw an anger he couldn't buck. Grabbing Pigtail Anne by the arm, he propelled her across the deck and into the dismal front room of the shantyboat.

The instant he released her she glared at him and stamped her foot. "If Uncle Al gets shot it'll be your fault," she said cruelly. Then Pigtail's anger really flared up.

"The Harmons wouldn't dare shoot us 'cause we're children!"

For an instant brief as a dropped heartbeat Jimmy stared at his sister with unconcealed admiration.

"You can be right smart when you've got nothing else on your mind, Pigtail," he said. "If they kill me they'll hang sure as shooting!"

Jimmy was out in the sunlight again before Pigtail could make a grab for him.

Out on the deck and running along the deck toward Uncle Al. He was still running when the first blast came.

* * * * *

It didn't sound like a shotgun blast. The deck shook and a big swirl of smoke floated straight toward Jimmy, half blinding him and blotting Uncle Al from view.

When the smoke cleared Jimmy could see the Harmon shantyboat. It was less than thirty feet away now, drifting straight past and rocking with the tide like a topheavy flatbarge.

On the deck Jed Harmon was crouching down, his gaunt face split in a triumphant smirk. Beside him Joe Harmon stood quivering like a mound of jelly, a stick of dynamite in his hand, his flabby face looking almost gentle in the slanting sunlight.

There was a little square box at Jed Harmon's feet. As Joe pitched Jed reached into the box for another dynamite stick. Jed was passing the sticks along to his brother, depending on wad dynamite to silence Uncle Al forever.

Wildly Jimmy told himself that the guns had been just a trick to mix Uncle Al up, and keep him from shooting until they had him where they wanted him.

Uncle Al was shooting now, his face as grim as death. His big heavy gun was leaping about like mad, almost hurling him to the deck.

Jimmy saw the second dynamite stick spinning through the air, but he never saw it come down. All he could see was the smoke and the shantyboat rocking, and another terrible splintering crash as he went plunging into the river from the end of a rising plank, a sob strangling in his throat.

Jimmy struggled up from the river with the long leg-thrusts of a terrified bullfrog, his head a throbbing ache. As he swam shoreward he could see the cypresses on the opposite bank, dark against the sun, and something that looked like the roof of a house with water washing over it.

Then, with mud sucking at his heels, Jimmy was clinging to a slippery bank and staring out across the river, shading his eyes against the glare.

Jimmy thought, "I'm dreaming! I'll wake up and see Uncle Joe blowing on a vinegar jug. I'll see Pigtail, too. Uncle Al will be sitting on the deck, taking it easy!"

But Uncle Al wasn't sitting on the deck. There was no deck for Uncle Al to sit upon. Just the top of the shantyboat, sinking lower and lower, and Uncle Al swimming.

Uncle Al had his arm around Pigtail, and Jimmy could see Pigtail's white face bobbing up and down as Uncle Al breasted the tide with his strong right arm.

Closer to the bend was the Harmon shantyboat. The Harmons were using their shotguns now, blasting fiercely away at Uncle Al and Pigtail. Jimmy could see the smoke curling up from the leaping guns and the water jumping up and down in little spurts all about Uncle Al.

There was an awful hollow agony in Jimmy's chest as he stared, a fear that was partly a soundless screaming and partly a vision of Uncle Al sinking down through the dark water and turning it red.

It was strange, though. Something was happening to Jimmy, nibbling away at the outer edges of the fear like a big, hungry river cat. Making the fear seem less swollen and awful, shredding it away in little flakes.

There was a white core of anger in Jimmy which seemed suddenly to blaze up.

He shut his eyes tight.

In his mind's gaze Jimmy saw himself holding the Harmon brothers up by their long, mottled legs. The Harmon brothers were frogs. Not friendly, good natured frogs like Uncle Al, but snake frogs. Cottonmouth frogs.

All flannel red were their mouths, and they had long evil fangs which dripped poison in the sunlight. But Jimmy wasn't afraid of them no-ways. Not any more. He had too firm a grip on their legs.

"Don't let anything happen to Uncle Al and Pigtail!" Jimmy whispered, as though he were talking to himself. No--not exactly to himself. To someone like himself, only larger. Very close to Jimmy, but larger, more powerful.

"Catch them before they harm Uncle Al! Hurry! Hurry!"

There was a strange lifting sensation in Jimmy's chest now. As though he could shake the river if he tried hard enough, tilt it, send it swirling in great thunderous white surges clear down to Lake Pontchartrain.

* * * * *

But Jimmy didn't want to tilt the river. Not with Uncle Al on it and Pigtail, and all those people in New Orleans who would disappear right off the streets. They were frogs too, maybe, but good frogs. Not like the Harmon brothers.

Jimmy had a funny picture of himself much younger than he was. Jimmy saw himself as a great husky baby, standing in the middle of the river and blowing on it with all his might. The waves rose and rose, and Jimmy's cheeks swelled out and the river kept getting angrier.

No--he must fight that.

"Save Uncle Al!" he whispered fiercely. "Just save him--and Pigtail!"

It began to happen the instant Jimmy opened his eyes. Around the bend in the sunlight came a great spinning disk, wrapped in a fiery glow.

Straight toward the Harmon shantyboat the disk swept, water spurting up all about it, its bottom fifty feet wide. There was no collision. Only a brightness for one awful instant where the shantyboat was twisting and turning in the current, a brightness that outshone the rising sun.

Just like a camera flashbulb going off, but bigger, brighter. So big and bright that Jimmy could see the faces of the Harmon brothers fifty times as large as life, shriveling and disappearing in a magnifying burst of flame high above the cypress trees. Just as though a giant in the sky had trained a big burning glass on the Harmon brothers and whipped it back quick.

Whipped it straight up, so that the faces would grow huge before dissolving as a warning to all snakes. There was an evil anguish in the dissolving faces which made Jimmy's blood run cold. Then the disk was alone in the middle of the river, spinning around and around, the shantyboat swallowed up.

And Uncle Al was still swimming, fearfully close to it.

The net came swirling out of the disk over Uncle Al like a great, dew-drenched gossamer web. It enmeshed him as he swam, so gently that he hardly seemed to struggle or even to be aware of what was happening to him.

Pigtail didn't resist, either. She simply stopped thrashing in Uncle Al's arms, as though a great wonder had come upon her.

Slowly Uncle Al and Pigtail were drawn into the disk. Jimmy could see Uncle Al reclining in the web, with Pigtail in the crook of his arm, his long, angular body as quiet as a butterfly in its deep winter sleep inside a swaying glass cocoon.

Uncle Al and Pigtail, being drawn together into the disk as Jimmy stared, a dull pounding in his chest. After a moment the pounding subsided and a silence settled down over the river.

Jimmy sucked in his breath. The voices began quietly, as though they had been waiting for a long time to speak to Jimmy deep inside his head, and didn't want to frighten him in any way.

"Take it easy, Jimmy! Stay where you are. We're just going to have a friendly little talk with Uncle Al."

"A t-talk?" Jimmy heard himself stammering.

"We knew we'd find you where life flows simply and serenely, Jimmy. Your parents took care of that before they left you with Uncle Al.

"You see, Jimmy, we wanted you to study the Earth people on a great, wide flowing river, far from the cruel, twisted places. To grow up with them, Jimmy--and to understand them. Especially the Uncle Als. For Uncle Al is unspoiled, Jimmy. If there's any hope at all for Earth as we guide and watch it, that hope burns most brightly in the Uncle Als!"

The voice paused, then went on quickly. "You see, Jimmy, you're not human in the same way that your sister is human--or Uncle Al. But you're still young enough to feel human, and we want you to feel human, Jimmy."

"W--Who are you?" Jimmy gasped.

"We are the Shining Ones, Jimmy! For wide wastes of years we have cruised Earth's skies, almost unnoticed by the Earth people. When darkness wraps the Earth in a great, spinning shroud we hide our ships close to the cities, and glide through the silent streets in search of our young. You see, Jimmy, we must watch and protect the young of our race until sturdiness comes upon them, and they are ready for the Great Change."

* * * * *

For an instant there was a strange, humming sound deep inside Jimmy's head, like the drowsy murmur of bees in a dew-drenched clover patch. Then the voice droned on. "The Earth people are frightened by our ships now, for their cruel wars have put a great fear of death in their hearts. They watch the skies with sharper eyes, and their minds have groped closer to the truth.

"To the Earth people our ships are no longer the fireballs of mysterious legend, haunted will-o'-the-wisps, marsh flickerings and the even more illusive distortions of the sick in mind. It is a long bold step from fireballs to flying saucers, Jimmy. A day will come when the Earth people will be wise enough to put aside fear. Then we can show ourselves to them as we really are, and help them openly."

The voice seemed to take more complete possession of Jimmy's thoughts then, growing louder and more eager, echoing through his mind with the persuasiveness of muted chimes.

"Jimmy, close your eyes tight. We're going to take you across wide gulfs of space to the bright and shining land of your birth."

Jimmy obeyed.

It was a city, and yet it wasn't like New York or Chicago or any of the other cities Jimmy had seen illustrations of in the newspapers and picture magazines.

The buildings were white and domed and shining, and they seemed to tower straight up into the sky. There were streets, too, weaving in and out between the domes like rainbow-colored spider webs in a forest of mushrooms.

* * * * *

There were no people in the city, but down the aerial streets shining objects swirled with the swift easy gliding of flat stones skimming an edge of running water.

Then as Jimmy stared into the depths of the strange glow behind his eyelids the city dwindled and fell away, and he saw a huge circular disk looming in a wilderness of shadows. Straight toward the disk a shining object moved, bearing aloft on filaments of flame a much smaller object that struggled and mewed and reached out little white arms.

Closer and closer the shining object came, until Jimmy could see that it was carrying a human infant that stared straight at Jimmy out of wide, dark eyes. But before he could get a really good look at the shining object it pierced the shadows and passed into the disk.

There was a sudden, blinding burst of light, and the disk was gone.

Jimmy opened his eyes.

"You were once like that baby, Jimmy!" the voice said. "You were carried by your parents into a waiting ship, and then out across wide gulfs of space to Earth.

"You see, Jimmy, our race was once entirely human. But as we grew to maturity we left the warm little worlds where our infancy was spent, and boldly sought the stars, shedding our humanness as sunlight sheds the dew, or a bright, soaring moth of the night its ugly pupa case.

"We grew great and wise, Jimmy, but not quite wise enough to shed our human heritage of love and joy and heartbreak. In our childhood we must return to the scenes of our past, to take root again in familiar soil, to grow in power and wisdom slowly and sturdily, like a seed dropped back into the loam which nourished the great flowering mother plant.

"Or like the eel of Earth's seas, Jimmy, that must be spawned in the depths of the great cold ocean, and swim slowly back to the bright highlands and the shining rivers of Earth. Young eels do not resemble their parents, Jimmy. They're white and thin and transparent and have to struggle hard to survive and grow up.

"Jimmy, you were planted here by your parents to grow wise and strong. Deep in your mind you knew that we had come to seek you out, for we are all born human, and are bound one to another by that knowledge, and that secret trust.

"You knew that we would watch over you and see that no harm would come to you. You called out to us, Jimmy, with all the strength of your mind and heart. Your Uncle Al was in danger and you sensed our nearness.

"It was partly your knowledge that saved him, Jimmy. But it took courage too, and a willingness to believe that you were more than human, and armed with the great proud strength and wisdom of the Shining Ones."

* * * * *

The voice grew suddenly gentle, like a caressing wind.

"You're not old enough yet to go home, Jimmy! Or wise enough. We'll take you home when the time comes. Now we just want to have a talk with Uncle Al, to find out how you're getting along."

Jimmy looked down into the river and then up into the sky. Deep down under the dark, swirling water he could see life taking shape in a thousand forms. Caddis flies building bright, shining new nests, and dragonfly nymphs crawling up toward the sunlight, and pollywogs growing sturdy hindlimbs to conquer the land.

But there were cottonmouths down there too, with death behind their fangs, and no love for the life that was crawling upward. When Jimmy looked up into the sky he could see all the blazing stars of space, with cottonmouths on every planet of every sun.

Uncle Al was like a bright caddis fly building a fine new nest, thatched with kindness, denying himself bright little Mardi Gras pleasures so that Jimmy could go to school and grow wiser than Uncle Al.

"That's right, Jimmy. You're growing up--we can see that! Uncle Al says he told you to bide from the cottonmouths. But you were ready to give your life for your sister and Uncle Al."

"Shucks, it was nothing!" Jimmy heard himself protesting.

"Uncle Al doesn't think so. And neither do we!"

* * * * *

A long silence while the river mists seemed to weave a bright cocoon of radiance about Jimmy clinging to the bank, and the great circular disk that had swallowed up Uncle Al.

Then the voices began again. "No reason why Uncle Al shouldn't have a little fun out of life, Jimmy. Gold's easy to make and we'll make some right now. A big lump of gold in Uncle Al's hand won't hurt him in any way."

"Whenever he gets any spending money he gives it away!" Jimmy gulped.

"I know, Jimmy. But he'll listen to you. Tell him you want to go to New Orleans, too!"

Jimmy looked up quickly then. In his heart was something of the wonder he'd felt when he'd seen his first riverboat and waited for he knew not what. Something of the wonder that must have come to men seeking magic in the sky, the rainmakers of ancient tribes and of days long vanished.

Only to Jimmy the wonder came now with a white burst of remembrance and recognition.

It was as though he could sense something of himself in the two towering spheres that rose straight up out of the water behind the disk. Still and white and beautiful they were, like bubbles floating on a rainbow sea with all the stars of space behind them.

Staring at them, Jimmy saw himself as he would be, and knew himself for what he was. It was not a glory to be long endured.

"Now you must forget again, Jimmy! Forget as Uncle Al will forget--until we come for you. Be a little shantyboat boy! You are safe on the wide bosom of the Father of Waters. Your parents planted you in a rich and kindly loam, and in all the finite universes you will find no cosier nook, for life flows here with a diversity that is infinite and--Pigtail! She gets on your nerves at times, doesn't she, Jimmy?"

"She sure does," Jimmy admitted.

"Be patient with her, Jimmy. She's the only human sister you'll ever have on Earth."

"I--I'll try!" Jimmy muttered.

* * * * *

Uncle Al and Pigtail came out of the disk in an amazingly simple way. They just seemed to float out, in the glimmering web. Then, suddenly, there wasn't any disk on the river at all--just a dull flickering where the sky had opened like a great, blazing furnace to swallow it up.

"I was just swimmin' along with Pigtail, not worryin' too much, 'cause there's no sense in worryin' when death is starin' you in the face," Uncle Al muttered, a few minutes later.

Uncle Al sat on the riverbank beside Jimmy, staring down at his palm, his vision misted a little by a furious blinking.

"It's gold, Uncle Al!" Pigtail shrilled. "A big lump of solid gold--"

"I just felt my hand get heavy and there it was, young fella, nestling there in my palm!"

Jimmy didn't seem to be able to say anything.

"High school books don't cost no more than grammar school books, young fella," Uncle Al said, his face a sudden shining. "Next winter you'll be a-goin' to high school, sure as I'm a-sittin' here!"

For a moment the sunlight seemed to blaze so brightly about Uncle Al that Jimmy couldn't even see the holes in his socks.

Then Uncle Al made a wry face. "Someday, young fella, when your books are all paid for, I'm gonna buy myself a brand new store suit, and hie myself off to the Mardi Gras. Ain't too old thataway to git a little fun out of life, young fella!"

Contents

SUMMER SNOW STORM

By Stephen Marlowe

Snow in summer is of course impossible. Any weather expert will tell you so. Weather Bureau Chief Botts was certain no such absurdity could occur. And he would have been right except for one thing. It snowed that summer.

It was, as the expression goes, raining cats and dogs. Since the Weather Bureau had predicted fair and warmer, the Weather Bureau was not particularly happy about the meteorological state of affairs. No one, however was shocked.

Until it started to snow.

This was on the twenty-fifth of July in the U.S.A....

Half an hour before the fantastic meteorological turn of events, Bureau Chief Botts dangled the forecast sheet before Johnny Sloman's bloodshot eyes and barked, "It's all over the country by now, you dunderhead!" Then, as an afterthought: "Did you write this?"

"Yes," said Sloman miserably.

Slowly, Botts said, "Temperature, eighty degrees. Precipitation expected: snow. Snow, Sloman. Well, that's what it says."

"It was a mistake, Chief. Just--heh-heh--a mistake."

"The prediction should have been for fair and warmer!" Botts screamed.

"But it's raining," Sloman pointed out.

"We make mistakes," said Botts in a suddenly velvety voice. Then, as if that had been a mistake, bellowed: "But not this kind of mistake, Sloman! Snow in July! We have a reputation to maintain! If not for accuracy, at least for credulity."

"Yes, sir," said Johnny Sloman. One of the troubles was, he had a hangover. Although, actually, that was a consequence of the real trouble. The real trouble was his fiancee. Make that his ex-fiancee. Because last night Jo-Anne had left him. "You--you're just going no place at all, Johnny Sloman," she had said. "You're on a treadmill and--not even running very fast." She had given him back the quarter-carat ring tearfully, but Johnny hadn't argued. Jo-Anne had a stubborn streak and he knew when Jo-Anne's mind was made up. So Johnny had gone and gotten drunk for the first time since the night after college graduation, not too many years ago, and the result was a nationally-distributed forecast of snow.

Chief Botts' first flush of anger had now been replaced by self-pity. His red, loose-jowled face was sagging and his eyes became watery as he said, "At least you could have double-checked it. As a member of this Bureau you only have to fill out the forecast once every ten days. Is that so hard? Is there any reason why you should predict snow for July 25th?" His voice became silky soft as he added, "You realize, of course, Sloman, that if this was anything but a civil service job you'd be out on your ear for a stunt like this! Well, there are other ways. I can pass over you for promotion. I intend to pass over you until the crack of doom. You'll be a GS-5 the rest of your working life. Are you satisfied, Sloman? Snow in July ..." Chief Botts' voice trailed off, the Chief following it.

Johnny sat with his head in his hands until Harry Bettis, the GS-5 weatherman who shared his small office with him, came in. Naturally, hangover or no, Johnny had reported for work first. Johnny was always first in the office, but it didn't seem to do any good. Now, Harry Bettis could come in an hour late and read the funnies half the day and flirt with the secretarial staff the other half and still be Chief Botts' odds-on favorite for the promotion that was opening next month. Harry Bettis was like that.

He came in and gave Johnny the full treatment. First the slow spreading smile. Then the chuckle. Then the loud, roaring belly-laugh. "Gals outside told me!" he shouted, loud enough so the girls outside would know he knew they had told him. "Snow! Snow in July! Sloman, you kill me! You really do!"

"Do you have to shout?" Johnny said.

"Do I? We all ought to shout this. To the rooftops! Sloman, my foot. You have a new name, sonny. Snowman! Johnny Snowman."

Johnny groaned. Instinctively, he knew the name would stick.

"Hear you had a little trouble with the gal-friend this past p.m.," Harry Bettis clucked in a voice which managed to be both derisive and sympathetic.

"How did you find out?" Johnny asked, but knew the answer at once. Jo-Anne was a roommate of one of the Bureau Secretaries. It was how Johnny had met her.

"You know how I found out, Snowman. Well, that's tough luck, kiddo. But tell me, does that mean the field is wide open? I always thought your gal-friend--your ex-gal-friend--had the cutest pair of--"

"I have nothing to do with whether the field is open or not open, I'm afraid."

"Well, don't be. Afraid, I mean," Harry Bettis advised jovially. "If the gal could make you pull a boner like that, you're better off without her. But I forgot to ask Maxine: can I have little Jo-Anne's phone number? Huh, boy?"

Before Johnny could answer, the three-girl staff of secretaries entered the small office. Entered--and stared.

"That's all right, girls," Harry Bettis said. "You didn't have to follow me in here. I'd have been right out."

But they weren't staring at Harry Bettis. They were staring at Johnny. Their mouths had flapped open, their eyes were big and round. Johnny didn't, but Harry Bettis knew that look on a girl's face. Without any trouble at all, Johnny could have made any of those girls, right there, right then, without even trying.

They gawked and gawked. One of them pointed at the window. The others tried to, but their hands were trembling.

The one who was pointing squawked: "Look!"

The second one said, "Out the window!"

The third one said, "Will you!"

Outside the window on the twenty-fifth of July it was snowing.

* * * * *

It was an hour later. Telephones were ringing. Long-distance calls from all over the country now that the ticker had gone out with the incredible fact that it was snowing in the Northeast in July. Most of the calls, though, were from Washington. Chief Botts disconnected the PBX and walked in a dazed, staggering fashion to Johnny, smiling weakly and saying:

"Sloman, I misjudged you. Genius, right here, right now, in this office, and we never knew it. Sloman, I have to admit I was wrong about you. But how did you know? How did you ever know?"

"Hell's bells," Harry Bettis said before Johnny could say it was all a mistake. "That's easy, Chief. Anyone knows that all rain starts out as snow. It's got to. You see, the droplets of moisture in the cold upper regions of a cloud condense around dust particles because the air up there is too cold to hold them as vapor. Since it's below freezing, snow is formed--snow which warms up as it passes through hotter air en route to the ground, and--"

"That will be quite enough, Bettis," Chief Botts said. "I am a weatherman too, you know. You don't have to tell me the most elementary of--"

"In this case, Chief," Bettis persisted, "the biggest inversion layer you ever saw kept the surface air down and brought the cold upper air very close to the surface. Result: the snowflakes didn't have a chance to melt, not even to freezing rain. Result: snow!"

"The chances of that happening," said Chief Botts coldly, "are about one in a billion. Aren't they, Sloman, dear fellow?"

"One in two billion," Johnny said.

"He is modest," Chief Botts told the staff. "He seems so unconcerned."

Just then Maxine came into the little office. The look of awe on her face had been replaced by one of sheer amazement. "Well, I checked it, Chief," she said. "Wait until I tell Jo-Anne!"

"Won't you please tell us first?" Chief Botts asked.

"Yes, sir," said Maxine, and read from the memo pad in her hand. "Since coming to work for the Bureau, Johnny Sloman has once every ten days made our official forecast. I have checked back on his forecast, Chief, as you directed. Johnny has made fifty-five forecasts. While only one of them--startlingly--has called for snow in July--every single one of them has been right."

There was a shocked silence. "But--but the Weather Bureau average is only eighty-eight percent!" Harry Bettis gasped.

"You mean," Chief Botts corrected him, "eighty-eight percent is the figure we try to foist on the unsuspecting public. Actually, the Weather Bureau averages a bare seventy-five percent, and you know it."

"But Sloman's got a hundred percent accuracy--up to and including snow in July," Harry Bettis said in a shocked voice.

"It was only an accident," Johnny said in a mild voice. "I didn't mean to write snow."

"Accident, smaccident," said Harry Bettis. "It was no accident with a record like that. You have the uncanny ability to forecast weather with complete accuracy, Johnny-boy. You realize what that means, old pal?"

"I'd better call Washington and tell them," Chief Botts said, but Harry Bettis held his arm while Johnny mused:

"I guess I realize what it means, Harry. That is, if you're right. No more getting wet on picnics. Because I'd know. I'd know, Harry. No more going to ball games and having them rained out on you. No more being caught by a thunderstorm at the beach ..."

"Johnny!" Harry Bettis said. "Think, pal. Think!"

"I'm calling Washington," Chief Botts said. "This is too much for me."

But Harry Bettis was still holding his arm. "Now, just a minute, bucko," he said. "You're not calling anyone--not without his manager's permission."

"Whose manager's permission?"

"Why, Mr. Sloman's manager's permission, of course. In a word, me."

"This is preposterous!" Chief Botts cried.

"Is it?" Bettis asked. "Listen, Johnny, don't let anyone sell you a bill of goods--like the Civil Service Commission giving you a GS-8 rating and sending you to Washington. Because stick with me, kid, and there'll be great things in store for you, you'll see."

"Such," said Maxine dubiously, "as what?"

"Are you on our side?" Harry Bettis asked her suspiciously.

"I'm on Jo-Anne's side. If old Johnny here has something she ought to have, I want to know it."

* * * * *

"You mean, if she ought to change her mind and marry him? I'll admit it even if I think Jo-Anne's a real cute trick: she'd be nuts if she didn't." Women, Harry Bettis did not add, never came between Harry Bettis and ten percent of a gold mine. But that's what he was thinking. He went on: "Just think of it, Johnny. Drought in the Midwest. They call Sloman. Sloman predicts rain. It rains. Have any idea what they'd pay for a stunt like that? Or swollen rivers in New England, or California. Looks like another big flood is on the way, but they call Sloman. Looks like rain, kiddo? That don't matter. Predict a dry spell and it won't rain. Do you know," Harry Bettis said in a devout whisper, "what a stunt like that would be worth? Millions."

"Yeah, wise guy," said Maxine. "So what's in it for you?"

Harry Bettis did not look at Maxine when he answered. He looked at Johnny and said, "I'll be frank, kiddo. You have the talent, but you don't have the salesmanship to promote it. Do you want a mediocre job while the weather boys exploit you for the rest of your life or--do you want greatness, riches, and Jo-Anne?"

"Jo-Anne," Johnny said.

Harry Bettis nodded. "My price is twenty-five percent."

"Of Jo-Anne?" Maxine asked suspiciously.

"Of everything Johnny makes as the world's first real Weather Man. Not a forecaster--a commander. Because when my client forecasts the weather, it happens. Brothers and sisters, it happens." He turned abruptly to Johnny, said, "You have any money saved up?"

"A few hundred dollars, but--"

"An ad in the papers. Alongside the article telling how it snowed on July twenty-fifth. Saying that your services are for hire. We're a shoo-in, kid!"

"Well, if you say so," Johnny said doubtfully.

"So don't call D.C.," Bettis told Chief Botts.

"But Sloman's an employee of this Bureau."

"Was, you mean."

"What did you say?"

"Was an employee. He ain't an employee now. He's quitting--with his manager," said Harry Bettis, and walked out of the office, steering a dazed Johnny Sloman with him.

"Wait until I call Jo-Anne," Maxine said.

During the next six months, Johnny Sloman--known to the world as The Weather Man--made fifty million dollars. Since it had taken a whole lifetime for him to develop his remarkable talent, his lawyers were trying to have capital gains declared on the earnings rather than straight income tax. The odds seemed to be in their favor.

How had Johnny made his fifty million dollars? By predicting the weather. He predicted:

A flood in the Texas panhandle--in time to save the dry lands from going entirely arid.

An end of the snowstorms in northern Canada--which had trapped the five hundred residents of a small uranium-mining town without food or adequate drinking water.

The break-up of Hurricane Anita--which had threatened to be the most destructive ever to strike the Carolina Coast.

No frost for Florida that winter--a prediction still to be ascertained, but a foregone conclusion.

Every prediction had come true. In time, the world began to realize that his predictions were not predictions at all: they were sure things. That is, they predicted nothing--they made things happen. Johnny was in demand everywhere and naturally could not fill all engagements. Harry Bettis hired a whole squad of corresponding secretaries, whose job it was to turn down, with regret, some ninety percent of the jobs requested. Johnny, in fact, was in such demand, that his engagement to Jo-Anne--which, of course, had been reinstated at her insistence--remained only an engagement. The nuptials were put off, and put off again.

This suited Harry Bettis, who saw to it that Johnny kept putting off the marriage. Because, ultimately, Jo-Anne would reach the end of her proverbial tether and decide that Harry's twenty-five percent, if it could be shared as a wife, was better than Johnny's seventy-five percent, if it could not.

Jo-Anne, though, was not that kind of girl. Harry Bettis, knowing no other kind of girl, never understood that.

The scientists, meanwhile, had a field day with Johnny. His strange talent obeyed no natural law, they said, and at first attributed it to random chance. Soon, though, this became patently impossible. And so a new natural law was sought. All types of hair-brained theories were proposed, none of them accepted, until an osteopathic physician in Duluth, Minn., hit upon the theory that staggered the world with its simplicity and, eventually, was accepted as that which explained the strange phenomenon of Johnny Sloman.

The osteopath, many of whose patients suffered from rheumatism which was aggravated by the bitter Minnesota winters, suggested that Johnny Sloman was a case of rheumatism in reverse. The weather, he pointed out, had an adverse effect upon the symptoms of his patients. Conversely, why couldn't some human being--a Johnny Sloman, for example--affect the weather in precisely the same way that the weather invariably affected his rheumatic patients?

It was clear, simple, lucid. It was the only theory which could not be disproven by the weight of scientific knowledge. It thus became the accepted theory.

* * * * *

"The Under-Secretary of Defense to see you," Maxine said one day during the winter following Johnny's July snowfall.

"Don't see him," Harry Bettis said. "You don't want to see him."

"But why not?" Johnny asked.

"Because they'll make you a dollar-a-year man and we're not in this to make any stinking dollar a year," Harry Bettis said.

"Well, I think I ought to see him, anyway. At least see him." He turned to Jo-Anne, who was sitting at the next desk, writing up some reports. "What do you think, Jo?"

"If the country needs you, Johnny," she said, "it's your duty to help."

Johnny told Maxine, "Show the Under-Secretary in, please."

He was a small man with a big brief case. He spoke slowly, earnestly, backing up his statements with reams of paper from the brief case. The Defense Department had not contacted Johnny right away, he said, because they wanted to compile all the facts. They had all the facts now.

Johnny Sloman could be the biggest single factor for peace the world had ever known.

Item. In the event of aggression, he could so bog down the aggressor's supply lines and troop movements with continuous rains and snowstorms that it would be all but impossible for the aggressor to maintain hostilities.

Item. In the event that such tactical weather-war failed, he could cause a drought in the aggressor's food-producing regions, forcing the aggressor to surrender or face starvation.

Item. He could always, conversely, see to it that the defensive force's supply lines were never hampered by the weather and that the precipitation over the defensive country's breadbasket was ideal.

Item. He could render aggressor communication difficult with heavy fog and/or icy roads.

Item. He could cover defensive troop movements with low, dense clouds.

In short, concluded the Under-Secretary, Johnny Sloman could be a one-man world police-force practically guaranteeing peace. He stopped talking. He looked at Johnny. His eyes said, the call of duty is clear.

Harry Bettis said, "Well, thank you for your time, Mr. Secretary. Naturally, we'll think about what you said."

"Think about it!" gasped the Under-Secretary. "Think about it!"

"My client is a busy man--the busiest man in his field," Harry Bettis said.

The Under-Secretary smiled bleakly. "The only man in his field, you mean. That's why we need him."

"We'll send you a report in a few weeks," Harry said indifferently, "after we've had an opportunity to study the situation."

"But, Harry--" Johnny began.

"Johnny," Harry said. He did not have to finish the statement. It had happened before--"Johnny, I've made you a tremendous success. I'm your manager, aren't I? Let's leave it that way."

"If Johnny thinks he ought to help--" Jo-Anne said.

"Now, Jo-Anne," Harry Bettis scolded, and led the Under-Secretary to the door.

* * * * *

Three days later, the assistant chief of the F.B.I. came to see them. "We regret this, Sloman," he said.

"You regret what?" Harry Bettis asked.

"Defense allowed a report on its findings out. That was unwise. We'll have to give you around-the-clock protection, Sloman."

"Protection from what?" Johnny wanted to know.

"Enemy agents. The enemy is desperate. At all costs, according to their intelligence reports, they're out to get you."

"Get him?" said Harry Bettis. "You mean, kill him?"

"I mean, get him. Get him on their side. Because everything Johnny could do for the forces of peace and democracy, he could be made to do for the forces of aggression. You see?"

"Yes," said Johnny.

"No," said Harry Bettis. "This sounds like a government trick--to make Johnny go to work. To make him think it's his patriotic duty--"

"Well," said Jo-Anne sharply, "isn't it?"

Harry Bettis smiled. "When he gets as big as Universal Motors, he can become patriotic."

"Mr. Sloman," the assistant F.B.I. chief said, "they will either try to kidnap you outright, or work on you through someone you love. Therefore, our bodyguards--"

"Well, let them keep their distance, that's all," Bettis said. "Bad for business. Nobody wants enemy agents hanging around."

"That's your final decision?" the F.B.I. man asked.

"Well--" began Johnny.

"Yes, it's our final decision," said Harry Bettis, showing the F.B.I. man to the door.

"I don't think you should have done that," Johnny said after he had gone.

"You just make the weather, Johnny-boy. I'll take care of business."

"Well--" said Johnny.

"Johnny!" cried Jo-Anne. "Oh, Johnny! Why don't you act like a man?" And she ran from the room, slamming the door.

After that, Johnny didn't see her again.

She was gone.

Really gone, for certain, not simply walking off in a huff.

Two weeks later, Johnny got the letter--unofficial--from the Enemy.

* * * * *

The F.B.I. was sympathetic, but the Chief said, "You can understand, Mr. Sloman, how our hands are tied. It is not an official letter. We can't prove anything. We don't doubt it for a minute, of course. The cold war enemy has kidnapped your fiancee and taken her to their motherland. But--we can't prove it. Not being able to prove it, we can't do a thing about it. You're aware, of course, of how readily the rest of the world condemns our actions. Not that they wouldn't be on our side if we could prove that this kidnap letter was the real thing, but you realize we won't be able to prove it at all."

"Oh," said Johnny. He went home. He saw Harry Bettis, who said he was shocked. The note read:

Mr. Johnny Sloman:

We have Miss Jo-Anne Davis here in the motherland. The only way she can live a normal life here is if you join her and work for us. We believe you know what the other kind of life is like here.

Bettis said, "It stumps the hell out of me, Johnny."

"I'm just waking up," said Johnny slowly. "In a way, it's your fault."

"Now, don't be a jackass, Johnny."

Jackass or no, Johnny hit him. His knuckles went crunch and Harry Bettis' nose went crunch and Bettis fell down. He lay there, his nose not looking so good.

Now, when it was apparently too late, Johnny knew what his course of action should have been. Get rid of the money-grubbing Bettis. Go to work for the government unselfishly. Insure world peace.

Too late ... too late ...

Because unless he could somehow save Jo-Anne, he would never predict the weather again--for anyone.

* * * * *

"But what you ask is impossible!" the Secretary of Defense said a few days later.

"If I come back, if I'm successful," Johnny said quietly, "I'm your man, for as long as you want me, without pay."

"You mean that?" the Secretary asked slowly.

"I mean it."

The Secretary nodded grimly, touched a button on his desk. "Get me Air Force Chief of Staff Burns," he said, and, a moment later: "Bernie? Chuck here. We need a plane. A jet-transport to go you-know-where. Cargo? One man, in a parachute. Can you manage it? Immediately, if not sooner. Good boy, Bernie. No ... no, I'm sorry, I can't tell you a thing about it." The Secretary cut the connection, turned to Johnny:

"You leave this afternoon, Sloman. You realize, of course, there isn't a thing we can do to get you out. Not a thing."

"Yes," said Johnny.

"You're a very brave man, or very much in love."

Hours later, the jet transport took off with Johnny in it.

He came down near what had been the border of the motherland and Poland. He began to walk. A farmer and his son spotted the parachute, came after him. The son was a Red Army man on leave. The son had a gun. He fired prematurely, and Johnny ran. It was hopeless, he decided. He would never make it. He would never even reach the capital alive, where they were holding Jo-Anne.

He ran.

He wished for rain. A blinding rainstorm. The clouds scudded in. The rain fell in buckets. The farmer and his son soon lost sight of Johnny.

Just to make sure, Johnny ran and let it go on raining.

* * * * *

"Floods in their motherland," the Secretary of Defense told the President. "Naturally, their news broadcasts are trying to keep the reports to a minimum, but these are the biggest floods we've ever heard of over there."

"Our man is there?" the President asked.

"He was dropped by parachute, sir!"

* * * * *

It was snowing when Johnny reached the capital. He had been parachuted into the enemy's motherland, naturally, because propinquity alone assured the success of his strange talent.

He was tired. His feet ached. He'd been the only one heading for the capital. Hundreds of thousands had been fleeing from the floods ...

"There he is!" a voice cried in the enemy language. He didn't understand the language, but he understood the tone. His picture had been flashed across the length and breadth of the motherland. He had been spotted.

He ran. Down an alley, across a muddy yard, floundering to his knees, then his thighs, in thick mud. They came floundering in pursuit. They fired a warning volley of shots. He stumbled and fell face down in the black, stinking mud.

They took him ...

* * * * *

Dark room. One light, on his face. A voice: "We can kill you."

"Kill me," he said. "My last wish will be for rain. Rain, forever."

"We can torture you."

"And I will say, before you start, let it rain and go on raining. Let me be powerless to prevent it. Rain!"

"We can kill the girl."

"Your country will float away."

A fist came at him out of the darkness. Hit him. It was tentative torture. He sobbed and thought: rain, harder. Rain, rain, rain ...

Water seeped into the dungeon. This had never happened before. The fist went away.

Outside it rained and rained.

* * * * *

"What does he want, comrade?"

"We don't know, comrade."

"Give it to him--whatever it is. He has disrupted our entire economy. We face economic disaster unless he--and his rain--leave us in peace."

"Perhaps that is what he wants. Peace."

"You fool! We are supposed to want peace. Shut up!"

"Yes, sir. Comrade."

"Better ask the party secretary."

"Yes, comrade."

The party secretary was asked. The party secretary sighed and nodded.

Johnny saw the light of day. And Jo-Anne.

* * * * *

A month later, the Secretary of Defense told him. "Thanks to you, they agreed to a German settlement, stopped sending arms to their Red ally in Asia, withdrew their promise of aid to the Arab fanatics, and have freed all foreigners held in their motherland illegally."

Johnny listened, smiling at Jo-Anne. They had been married two weeks. Naturally, the enemy had been only too glad to see them leave.

"Just stay available, Sloman," the President beamed from alongside the Secretary of Defense. "As long as they know we can always send you over there again, they'll never try anything. Right?"

"Yes, sir," said Johnny.

They called him the Weather Man. They went on calling him the Weather Man, although he retired more or less--except during cases of dire emergency.

The world called him that, the Weather Man. And, because he had retired to enjoy life with his new wife, they began to suspect, as could be expected, that he had been a fraud.

But the enemy did not think so. Ever again.

And that was enough for Johnny.

THE END

Contents

THE ATTACK FROM SPACE

By Captain S. P. Meek

"No one knows what unrevealed horrors space holds and the world will never rest entirely easy until the slow process of time again heals the protective layer."--From "Beyond the Heaviside Layer."

Over a year has passed since I wrote those lines. When they were written the hole which Jim Carpenter had burned with his battery of infra-red lamps through the heaviside layer, that hollow sphere of invisible semi-plastic organic matter which encloses the world as a nutshell does a kernel, was gradually filling in as he had predicted it would: every one thought that in another ten years the world would be safely enclosed again in its protective layer as it had been since the dawn of time. There were some adventurous spirits who deplored this fact, as it would effectually bar interplanetary travel, for Hadley had proved with his life that no space flyer could force its way through the fifty miles of almost solid material which barred the road to space, but they were in the minority. Most of humanity felt that it would rather be protected against the denizens of space than to have a road open for them to travel to the moon if they felt inclined.

To be sure, during the five years that the hole had been open, nothing more dangerous to the peace and well-being of the world had appeared from space than a few hundreds of the purple amoeba which we had found so numerous on the outer side of the layer, when we had traveled in a Hadley space ship up through the hole into the outer realms of space, and one lone specimen of the green dragons which we had also encountered. The amoeba had been readily destroyed by the disintegrating rays of the guarding space-ships which were stationed inside the layer at the edge of the hole and the lone dragon had fallen a ready victim to the machine-gun bullets which had been poured into it. At first the press had damned Jim Carpenter for opening the road for these horrors, but once their harmlessness had been clearly established, the row had died down and the appearance of an amoeba did not merit over a squib on the inside pages of the daily papers.

* * * * *

While the hole in the heaviside layer was no longer news for the daily press, a bitter controversy still waged in the scientific journals as to the reason why no observer on earth, even when using the most powerful telescopes, could see the amoeba before they entered the hole, and then only when their telescopes were set up directly under the hole. When a telescope of even small power was mounted in the grounds back of Carpenter's laboratory, the amoeba could be detected as soon as they entered the hole, or when they passed above it through space; but, aside from that point of vantage, they were entirely invisible.

Carpenter's theory of the absorptive powers of the material of which the heaviside layer was composed was laughed to scorn by most scientists, who pointed out the fact that the sun, moon and stars could be readily seen through it. Carpenter replied that the rays of colored or visible light could only pass through the layer when superimposed upon a carrier wave of ultra-violet or invisible light. He stated dogmatically that the amoeba and the other denizens of space absorbed all the ultra-violet light which fell on them and reflected only the visible rays which could not pass through the heaviside layer because of the lack of a synchronized carrier wave of shorter wave-length.

Despetier replied at great length and showed by apparently unimpeachable mathematics that Carpenter was entirely wrong and that his statements showed an absolute lack of knowledge of the most elementary and fundamental laws of light transmission. Carpenter replied briefly that he could prove by mathematics that two was equal to one and he challenged Despetier or anyone else to satisfactorily explain the observed facts in any other way. While they vainly tried to do so, Carpenter lapsed into silence in his Los Angeles laboratory and delved ever deeper into the problems of science. Such was the situation when the attack came from space.

My first knowledge of the attack came when McQuarrie, the city editor of the San Francisco Clarion, sent for me. When I entered his office he tossed a Los Angeles dispatch on the desk before me and with a growl ordered me to read it. It told of the unexplained disappearance of an eleven year old boy the night before. It looked like a common kidnapping.

"Well?" I asked as I handed him back the dispatch.

With another growl he tossed down a second telegram. I read it with astonishment, for it told of a second disappearance which had happened about an hour after the first. The similarity of the two cases was at once apparent.

"Coincidence or connection?" I asked as I returned it.

"Find out!" he replied. "If I knew which it was I wouldn't be wasting the paper's money by sending you to Los Angeles. I don't doubt that I am wasting it anyway, but as long as I am forced to keep you on as a reporter, I might as well try to make you earn the money the owner wastes on paying you a salary, even although I know it to be a hopeless task. Go on down there and see what you can find out, if anything."

I jotted down in my notebook the names and addresses of the missing children and turned to leave. A boy entered and handed McQuarrie a yellow slip. He glanced at it and called me back.

"Wait a minute, Bond," he said as he handed me the dispatch. "I doubt but you'd better fly down to Los Angeles. Another case has just been reported."

I hastily copied down the dispatch he handed me, which was almost a duplicate of the first two with the exception of the time and the name. Three unexplained disappearances in one day was enough to warrant speed; I drew some expense money and was on my way south in a chartered plane within an hour.

On my arrival I went to the Associated Press office and found a message waiting for me, directing me to call McQuarrie on the telephone at once.

"Hello, Bond," came his voice over the wire, "have you just arrived? Well, forget all about that disappearance case. Prince is on his way to Los Angeles to cover it. You hadn't been gone an hour before a wire came in from Jim Carpenter. He says, 'Send Bond to me at once by fastest conveyance. Chance for a scoop on the biggest story of the century.' I don't know what it's about, but Jim Carpenter is always front page news. Get in touch with him at once and stay with him until you have the story. Don't risk trying to telegraph it when you get it--telephone. Get moving!"

I lost no time in getting Carpenter on the wire.

"Hello, First Mortgage," he greeted me. "You made good time getting down here. Where are you?"

"At the A. P. Office."

"Grab a taxi and come out to the laboratory. Bring your grip with you: you may have to stay over night."

"I'll be right out, Jim. What's the story?"

His voice suddenly grew grave.

"It's the biggest thing you ever handled," he replied. "The fate of the whole world may hang on it. I don't want to talk over the phone; come on out and I'll give you the whole thing."

* * * * *

An hour later I shook hands with Tim, the guard at the gate of the Carpenter laboratory, and passed through the grounds to enter Jim's private office. He greeted me warmly and for a few minutes we chatted of old times when I worked with him as an assistant in his atomic disintegration laboratory and of the stirring events we had passed through together when we had ventured outside the heaviside layer in his space ship.

"Those were stirring times," he said, "but I have an idea, First Mortgage, that they were merely a Sunday school picnic compared to what we are about to tackle."

"I guessed that you had something pretty big up your sleeve from your message." I replied. "What's up now? Are we going to make a trip to the moon and interview the inhabitants?"

"We may interview them without going that far," he said. "Have you seen a morning paper?"

"No."

"Look at this."

He handed me a copy of the Gazette. Streamer headlines told of the three disappearances which I had come to Los Angeles to cover, but they had grown to five during the time I had been flying down. I looked at Jim in surprise.

"We got word of that in San Francisco," I told him, "and I came down here to cover the story. When I got here, McQuarrie telephoned me your message and told me to come and see you instead. Has your message anything to do with this?"

"It has everything to do with it, First Mortgage; in fact, it is it. Have you any preconceived ideas on the disappearance epidemic?"

"None at all."

"All the better--you'll be able to approach the matter with an unbiased viewpoint. Don't read that hooey put out by an inspired reporter who blames the laxness of the city government; I'll give you the facts without embellishment. Nothing beyond the bare fact of the disappearance is known about the first case. Robert Prosser, aged eleven, was sent to the grocery store by his mother about six-thirty last night and failed to return. That's all we know about it, except that it happened in Eagle Rock. The second case we have a little more data on. William Hill, aged twelve, was playing in Glendale last night with some companions. They were playing 'hide and go seek' and William hid. He could not be found by the boy who was searching and has not been found since. His companions became frightened and reported it about eight o'clock. They saw nothing, but mark this! Four of them agree that they heard a sound in the air like a motor humming."

"That proves nothing."

"Taken alone it does not, but in view of the third case, it is quite significant. The third case happened about nine-thirty last night. This time the victim was a girl, aged ten. She was returning home from a moving picture with some companions and she disappeared. This time the other children saw her go. They say she was suddenly taken straight up into the air and then disappeared from sight. They, also claim to have heard a sound like a big electric fan in the air at the time, although they could see nothing."

"Had they heard the details of the second disappearance?"

"They had not. I can see what you are thinking; that they were unconsciously influenced by the account given of the other case."

"Consciously or unconsciously."

"I doubt it, for the fourth case was almost a duplicate of the third. The fourth and fifth cases happened this morning. In the fourth case the child, for it was a nine year old girl this time, was lifted into the air in broad daylight and disappeared. This disappearance was witnessed, not only by children, but also by two adults, and their testimony agrees completely with that of the children. The fifth case is similar to the first: a ten year old boy disappeared without trace. The whole city is in a reign of terror."

* * * * *

The telephone at Carpenter's elbow rang and he answered it. A short conversation took place and he turned to me with a grim face as he hung up the receiver.

"Another case has just been reported to police headquarters from Beverly Hills," he said. "Again the child was seen to be lifted into the air by some invisible means and disappeared. The sound of a motor was plainly heard by five witnesses, who all agree that it was just, above their heads, but that nothing could be seen."

"Was it in broad daylight?"

"Less than an hour ago."

"But, Jim, that's impossible!"

"Why is it impossible?"

"It would imply the invisibility of a tangible substance; of a solid."

"What of it?"

"Why, there isn't any such substance. Nothing of the sort exists."

Carpenter pointed to one of the windows of his laboratory.

"Does that window frame contain glass or not?" he asked.

I strained my eyes. Certainly nothing was visible.

"Yes," I said at a venture.

He rose and thrust his hand through the space where the glass should have been.

"Has this frame glass in it?" he asked, pointing to another.

"No."

He struck the glass with his knuckle.

"I'll give up," I replied. "I am used to thinking of glass as being transparent but not invisible; yet I can see that under certain light conditions it may be invisible. Granted that such is the case, do you believe that living organisms can be invisible?"

"Under the right conditions, yes. Has any observer been able to see any of the purple amoeba which we know are so numerous on the outer side of the heaviside layer?"

"Not until they have entered the hole through the layer."

"And yet those amoeba are both solid and opaque, as you know. Why is it not possible that men, or intelligences of some sort, are in the air about us and yet are invisible to our eyes!"

"If they are, why haven't we received evidence of it years ago?"

"Because there has only been a hole through the heaviside layer for six years. Before that time they could not penetrate it any more than poor Hadley could with his space ship. They have not entered the hole earlier because it is a very small one, at present only some two hundred and fifty yards in diameter in a sphere of over eight thousand miles diameter. The invaders have just found the entrance."

"The invaders? Do you think that the world has been invaded?"

"I do. How else can you explain the very fact which you have just quoted, that no evidence of the presence on these invisible entities has previously been recorded?"

"Where did they come from?"

"They may have come from anywhere in the solar system, or even from outside it but I fancy, that they are from Mars or Venus."

"Why so?"

"Because they are the two planets nearest to the earth and are the ones where conditions are the most like they are on the earth. Venus, for example, has an atmosphere and a gravity about .83 of earthly gravity, and life of a sort similar to that of the earth might well live there. Further, it seems more probable that the invaders have come from one of the nearby planets than from the realms of space beyond the solar system."

"What about the moon?"

"We can dismiss that because of the lack of an atmosphere."

"It sounds logical, Jim, but the idea of living organisms of sufficient size to lift a child into the air who are invisible seems a little absurd."

"I never said they were invisible. I don't think they are."

"But they must be, else why weren't they seen?"

"Use your head, First Mortgage. Those purple amoeba we encountered were quite visible to us, yet they are invisible to observers on the earth."

"Yes, but that is because the heaviside layer is between them and the earth. As soon as they come below it they can be seen."

* * * * *

"Exactly. Why is it not possible that the Venetians, or Martians, or whoever our invaders are, have encased themselves and their space flyer in a layer of some substance similar to the heaviside layer, a substance which is permeable to light rays only when a large proportion of ultra-violet rays accompany the visible rays? If they did this and then constructed the walls of their ship of some substance which absorbed all the ultra-violet rays which fell on it; not only would the ship itself be invisible, but also everything contained in it--and yet they could see the outside world easily. That such is the case is proved by the disappearance of those children in mid-air. They were taken into a space ship behind an ultra-violet absorbing wall and so became invisible."

"If the walls absorbed all the ultra-violet and were impermeable to light without ultra-violet, the ship would appear as a black opaque substance and could be seen."

"That would be true except for one thing which you are forgetting. The heaviside layer, as I have repeatedly proved, is a splendid conductor of ultra-violet. The rays falling on it are probably bent along the line of the covering layer so that they open up and bend around the ship in the same manner as flowing water will open up and flow around a stone and then come together again. The light must flow around the solid ship and then join again in such a manner that the eye can detect no interruption."

"Jim, all that sounds reasonable, but have you any proof of it?"

"No, First Mortgage, I haven't--yet; but if the Lord is good to us we'll have definite proof this afternoon and be in a position to successfully combat this new menace to the world."

"Do you expect me to go on another one of your crack-brained expeditions into the unknown with you?"

* * * * *

"Certainly I do, but this time we won't go out of the known. I have our old space flyer which we took beyond the heaviside layer six years ago ready for action and we're going to look for the invaders this afternoon."

"How will we see them if they are invisible?"

"They are invisible to ordinary light but not to ultra-violet light. While most of the ultra-violet is deflected and flows around the ship of else is absorbed, I have an idea that, if we bathe it in a sufficient concentration of ultra-violet, some would be reflected. We are going to look for the reflected portion."

"Ultra-violet light is invisible."

"It is to the eye, but it can be detected. You know that radium is activated and glows under ultra-violet?"

"Yes."

"Mounted on our flyer are six ultra-violet searchlights. By the side of each one is a wide angle telescopic concentrator which will focus any reflected ultra-violet onto a radium coated screen and thus make it visible to us. In effect the apparatus is a camera obscura with all lens made of rock crystal or fused quartz, both of which allow free passage to ultra-violet."

"What will we do if we find them?"

"Mounted beneath the telescope is a one-pounder gun with radite shells. If we locate them, we will use our best efforts to shoot them down."

"Suppose they are armed too?"

* * * * *

"In that case I hope that you shoot faster and straighter than they do. If you don't--well, old man, it'll just be too damned bad."

"I don't know that the Clarion hires me to go out and shoot at invisible invaders from another planet, but if I don't go with you, I expect you'd just about call up the Echo or the Gazette and ask them for a gunner."

"Just about."

"In that case, I may as well be sacrificed as anyone else. When do we start?"

"You old faker!" cried Jim, pounding me on the back. "You wouldn't miss the trip for anything. If you're ready we'll start right now. Everything is ready."

"Including the sacrifice," I replied, rising. "All right, Jim, let's go and get it over with. If we live, I'll have to get back in time to telephone the story to McQuarrie for the first edition."

I followed Jim out of the laboratory and to a large open space behind the main building where the infra-red generators with which he had pierced the hole through the heaviside layer had been located. The reflectors were still in place, but the bank of generators had been removed. A gang of men were hard at work erecting a huge parabolic reflector in the center of the circle, about the periphery of which the infra-red reflectors were placed. In an open space near the center stood a Hadley space ship, toward which Jim led the way.

* * * * *

I wondered at the activity and meant to ask what it portended, but in the excitement of boarding the flyer forgot it. I followed Jim in; he closed the door and started the air conditioner.

"Here, First Mortgage," he said as he turned from the control board and faced me, "here are the fluoroscopic screens. They are arranged in a bank, so that you can keep an eye on all of them readily. Beneath each telescope is an automatic one-pounder gun with its mount geared to the telescope and the light, so that the gun bears continually on the point in space represented by the center of the fluoroscopic screen which belongs to that light. If we locate anything, turn your beam until the object is in the exact center of the screen where these two cross-hairs are. When you have it lined up, push this button and the gun will fire."

"What about reloading?"

"The guns are self-loading. Each one has twenty shells in its magazine and will fire one shot each time the button is pushed until it is empty. If you empty one magazine, I can turn the ship so that another gun will bear. This gives you a total of one hundred and twenty shots quickly available; there are sixty extra pounds, which we can break out and load into the magazines in a few seconds. Do you understand everything?"

"I guess so. Everything seems clear enough."

"All right; sit down and we'll start."

* * * * *

I took my seat, and Jim pulled the starting lever. I was glued to the seat and the heavy springs in the cushion were compressed almost to their limit by the sudden acceleration. As soon as we were well clear of the ground Jim reduced his power, and in a few moments we were floating motionless in the air, a thousand feet up. He left the control board and came to my side.

"Start your ultra lights," he said as he joined me. "We may be able to spot something from here."

I started the lights and we stared at the screens before us. Nothing appeared on any of them except the one pointing directly down, and only an image of the ground, appeared on it. Under Jim's tutelage I swung the beams in wide circles, covering the space around us, but nothing appeared.

"Those beams won't project over five miles in this atmosphere," he said, "and the ship we are looking for may be so small that we would have trouble locating it at any great distance. I am going to move over near the scene of the last disappearance. Keep your lights swinging and sing out if you see anything on the screens."

I could feel the ship start to move slowly under the force of a side discharge from the rocket motor, and I swung the beams of the six lights around, trying to cover the entire area about us. Nothing appeared on the screens for an hour, and my head began to ache from the strain of unremitting close observation of the glowing screens. A buzz sounding over the hum of the rocket motor attracted my attention; Jim pulled his levers to neutral with the exception of the one which maintained our elevation and stepped to an instrument on the wall of the flyer.

"Hello," he called. "What? Where did it happen? All right, thanks, we'll move over that way at once."

* * * * *

He turned from the radio telephone and spoke.

"Another disappearance has just been reported," he said. "It happened on the outskirts of Pasadena. Keep your eyes open: I'm going to head in that direction."

A few minutes later we were floating over Pasadena. Jim stopped the flyer and joined me at the screens. We swung our beams in wide circles to cover the entire area around us, but no image on the screens rewarded us.

"Doggone it, they must have left here in a hurry," grumbled Jim.

Even as he spoke the flyer gave a lurch which nearly threw me off my seat and which sent Jim sprawling on the floor. With a white face he leaped to the control board and pulled the lever controlling our one working stern motor to full power. For a moment the ship moved upward and then came to a dead stop, although the motor still roared at full speed.

"Can't you see anything, Pete?" cried Jim as he threw our second stern motor into gear.

Again the ship moved upward for a few feet and then stopped. I swung the searchlights frantically in all directions, but five of the screens remained blank and the sixth showed only the ground below us.

"Not a thing," I replied.

"Something ought to show," he muttered, and suddenly shut off both motors. The flyer gave a sickening lurch toward the ground, but we fell only a hundred yards before our motion stopped. We hung suspended in the air with no motors working. Jim joined me at the screens and we swung the lights rapidly without success.

"Look, Pete!" Jim cried hoarsely.

* * * * *

My gaze followed his pointing finger and I saw the door of our flyer springing out as though some force from the outside were trying to wrench it open. The pull ceased for an instant, then came again; the sturdy latches burst and the door was torn from its hinges. Jim swung one of the searchlights until the beam was at right angles to the hull of the flyer and pressed the gun button. A crash filled the confined space of the flyer as a one-pounder radite shell tore out into space.

"They're there but still invisible," he exclaimed as he shifted the direction of the gun and fired again. "I am shooting by guess-work, but I might score a hit."

He changed the direction of the gun again, but before he could press the button he was lifted into the air and drawn rapidly toward the open door.

"Shoot, Pete!" he shouted. "Shoot and keep on shooting--it's your only chance!"

I turned to the knobs controlling the guns and lights, but, before I could make a move, something hard and cold grasped me about the middle and I was lifted into the air and drawn toward the open door after Jim. I tore at the thing holding me with my hands, but it was a smooth round thing like a two-inch thick wire, and I could get no grip on it to loosen it. Out through the door I went and was drawn through the air a few feet behind Jim. He moved ahead of me for fifteen or twenty feet and then vanished in mid-air. I dared not struggle in mid-air and I was drawn through a door into a large space flyer which became visible as I entered it. The flexible wire or rod which had held me uncoiled and I was free on the floor beside Jim Carpenter. This much was clear and understandable, but when I looked at the crew of that space ship, I was sure that I had lost my mind or was seeing visions. I had naturally expected men, or at least something in semi-human form, but instead of anything of the sort, before me stood a dozen gigantic beetles!

* * * * *

I rubbed my eyes and looked again. There was no mistaking the fact that we had been captured by a race of gigantic beetles flying an invisible space ship. When I had time later to examine them critically, I could see marked differences between our captors and the beetles we were accustomed to see on the earth besides the mere matter of size. To begin with, their bodies were relatively much smaller, the length of shell of the largest specimen not being over four feet, while the head of the same insect, exclusive of the horns or pinchers, was a good eighteen inches in length. The pinchers, which by all beetle proportions should have been a couple of feet long at the least, did not extend over the head a distance greater than eight inches, although they were sturdy and powerful.

Instead of traveling with their shells horizontal as do earthly beetles, these insects stood erect on their two lower pairs of legs, which were of different lengths so that all four feet touched the ground when the shell was vertical. The two upper pairs of legs were used as arms, the topmost pair[A] being quite short and splitting out at the end into four flexible claws about five inches long, which they used as fingers. These upper arms, which sprouted from a point near the top of the head, were peculiar in that they apparently had no joints like the other three pairs but were flexible like an elephant's trunk. The second pair of arms were armed with long, vicious-looking hooks. The backplates concealed only very rudimentary wings, not large enough to enable the insects to fly, although Jim told me later that they could fly on their own planet, where the lessened gravity made such extensive wing supports as would be needed on earth unnecessary.

[Footnote A: Mr. Bond has made a laughable error in his description. Like all of the coleoptera, the Mercurians were hexapoda (six legged). What Mr. Bond continually refers to in his narrative as "upper arms" were really the antenna of the insects which split at the end into four flexible appendages resembling fingers. His mistake is a natural one, for the Mercurians used their antenna as extra arms.--James S. Carpenter.]

The backplates were a brilliant green in color, with six-inch stripes of chrome yellow running lengthwise and crimson spots three inches in diameter arranged in rows between the stripes. Their huge-faceted eyes sparkled like crystal when the light fell on them, and from time to time waves of various colors passed over them, evidently reflecting the insect's emotions. Although they gave the impression of great muscular power, their movements were slow and sluggish, and they seemed to have difficulty in getting around.

* * * * *

As my horrified gaze took in these monstrosities I turned with a shudder to Jim Carpenter.

"Am I crazy, Jim," I asked, "or do you see these things too?"

"I see them all right, Pete," he replied. "It isn't as surprising as it seems at first glance. You expected to find human beings; so did I, but what reason had we for doing so? It is highly improbable, when you come to consider the matter, that evolution should take the same course elsewhere as it did on earth. Why not beetles, or fish, or horned toads, for that matter?"

"No reason, I guess," I answered; "I just hadn't expected anything of the sort. What do you suppose they mean to do with us?"

"I haven't any idea, old man. We'll just have to wait and see. I'll try to talk to them, although I don't expect much luck at it."

He turned to the nearest beetle and slowly and clearly spoke a few words. The insect gave no signs of comprehension, although it watched the movement of Jim's lips carefully. It is my opinion, and Jim agrees with me, that the insects were both deaf and dumb, for during the entire time we were associated with them, we never heard them give forth a sound under any circumstances, nor saw them react to any sound that we made. Either they had some telepathic means of communication or else they made and heard sounds beyond the range of the human ear, for it was evident from their actions that they frequently communicated with one another.

* * * * *

When Jim failed in his first attempt to communicate he looked around for another method. He noticed my notebook, which had fallen on the floor when I was set down; he picked it up and drew a pencil from his pocket. The insects watched his movements carefully, and when he had made a sketch in the book, the nearest one took it from him and examined it carefully and then passed it to another one, who also examined it. The sketch which Jim had drawn showed the outline of the Hadley space flyer from which he had been taken. When the beetles had examined the sketch, one of them stepped to an instrument board in the center of the ship and made an adjustment. Then he pointed with one of his lower arms.

We looked in the direction in which he pointed; to our astonishment, the walls of the flyer seemed to dissolve, or at least to become perfectly transparent. The floor of the space ship was composed of some silvery metal, and from it had risen walls of the same material, but now the effect was as though we were suspended in mid-air, with nothing either around us or under us. I gasped and grabbed at the instrument board for support. Then I felt foolish as I realized that there was no change in the feel of the floor for all its transparency and that we were not falling.

* * * * *

A short distance away we could see our flyer suspended in the air, held up by two long flexible rods or wires similar to those which had lifted us from our ship into our prison. I saw a dozen more of these rods coiled up, hanging in the air, evidently, but really on the floor near the edge of the flyer, ready for use. Jim suddenly grasped me by the arm.

"Look behind you in a moment," he said, "but don't start!"

He took the notebook in his hand and started to draw a sketch. I looked behind as he had told me to. Hanging in the air in a position which told me that they must have been in a different compartment of the flyer, were five children. They were white as marble, and lay perfectly motionless.

"Are they dead, Jim?" I asked in a low voice without looking at him.

"I don't know," he replied, "but we'll find out a little later. I am relieved to find them here, and I doubt if they are harmed."

The sketch which he was making was one of the solar system, and, when he had finished, he marked the earth with a cross and handed the notebook to one of the beetles. The insect took it and showed it to his companions; so far as I was able to judge expressions, they were amazed to find that we had knowledge of the heavenly bodies. The beetle took Jim's pencil in one of its hands and, after examining it carefully, made a cross on the circle which Jim had drawn to represent the planet Mercury.

* * * * *

"They come from Mercury," exclaimed Jim in surprise as he showed me the sketch. "That accounts for a good many things; why they are so lethargic, for one thing. Mercury is much smaller than the earth and the gravity is much less. According to Mercurian standards, they must weigh a ton each. It is quite a tribute to their muscular development that they can move and support their weight against our gravity. They can understand a drawing all right, so we have a means of communicating with them, although a pretty slow one and dependent entirely on my limited skill as a cartoonist. I wonder if we are free to move about?"

"The only way to find out is to try," I replied and stood erect. The beetles offered no objection and Jim stood up beside me. We walked, or rather edged, our way toward the side of the ship. The insects watched us when we started to move and then evidently decided that we were harmless. They turned from us to the working of the ship. One of them manipulated some dials on the instrument board. One of the rods which held our flyer released its grip, came in toward the Mercurian ship and coiled itself up on the floor, or the place where the floor should have been. The insect touched another dial. Jim threw caution to the winds, raced across the floor and grasped the beetle by the arm.

The insect looked at him questioningly; Jim produced the notebook and drew a sketch representing our flyer falling. On the level be had used to represent the ground he made another sketch of it lying in ruins. The beetle nodded comprehendingly and turned to another dial; the ship sank slowly toward the ground.

* * * * *

We sank until we hung only a few feet from the ground when our flyer was gently lowered down. When it rested on the ground, the wire which had held it uncoiled, came aboard and coiled itself up beside the others. As the Mercurian ship rose I noticed idly that the door which had been torn from our ship and dropped lay within a few yards of the ship itself. The Mercurian ship rose to an elevation of a hundred feet, drifting gently over the city.

As we rose I determined to try the effect of my personality on the beetles. I approached the one who seemed to be the leader and, putting on the most woeful expression I could muster, I looked at the floor. He did not understand me and I pretended that I was falling and grasped at him. This time he nodded and stepped to the instrument board. In a moment the floor became visible. I thanked him as best I could in pantomime and approached the walls. They were so transparent that I felt an involuntary shrinking as I approached them. I edged my way cautiously forward until my outstretched hand encountered a solid substance. I looked out.

At the slow speed we were traveling the drone of our motors was hardly audible to us, and I felt sure that it could not be heard on the ground. Once their curiosity was satisfied, our captors paid little or no attention to me and left me free to come and go as I wished. I made my way cautiously toward the children, but ran into a solid wall. Remembering Jim's words, I made my way back toward him without displaying any interest.

* * * * *

Jim could probably have wandered around as I did had he wished, but he chose to occupy his time differently. With his notebook and pencil he carried on an extensive conversation, if that term can be applied to a crudely executed set of drawings, with the leader of the beetles. I was not especially familiar with the methods of control of space ships and I could make nothing of the maze of dials and switches on the instrument board.

For half an hour we drifted slowly along. Presently one of the beetles approached, seized my arm and turned me about. With one of his arms he pointed ahead. A mile away I could see another space flyer similar to the one we were on.

"Here comes another one, Jim." I called.

"Yes, I saw it some time ago. I don't know where the third one is."

"Are there three of them?"

"Yes. Three of them came here yesterday and are exploring the country round about here. They are scouts sent out from the fleet of our brother planet to see if the road was clear and what the world was like. They spotted the hole through the layer with their telescope and sent their fleet out to pay us a visit. He tells me that the scouts have reported favorably and that the whole fleet, several thousand ships, as near as I can make out, are expected here this evening."

"Have you solved the secret of their invisibility?"

* * * * *

"Partly. It is as I expected. The walls of the ship are double, the inner one of metal and the outer one of vitrolene or some similar perfectly transparent substance. The space between the walls is filled with some substance which will bend both visible and ultra-violet rays along a path around the ship and then lets them go in their original direction. The reason why we can see through the walls and see the protective coating of that ship coming is that they are generating some sort of a ray here which acts as a carrier for the visible light rays. I don't know what sort of a ray it is, but when I get a good look at their generators, I may be able to tell. Are you beginning to itch and burn?"

"Yes, I believe that I am, although I hadn't noticed it until you spoke."

"I have been noticing it for some time. From its effects on the skin, I am inclined to believe it to be a ray of very short wave-length, possibly something like our X-ray, or even shorter."

"Have you found out what they intend to do with us?"

"I don't think they have decided yet. Possibly they are going to take us up to the leader of their fleet and let him decide. The cuss that is in command of this ship seems surprised to death to find out that I can comprehend the principles of his ship. He seems to think that I am a sort of a rara avis, a freak of nature. He intimated that he would recommend that we be used for vivisection."

"Good Lord!"

"It's not much more worse than the fate they design for the rest of their captives, at that."

"What is that?"

"It's a long story that I'll have to tell you later. I want to watch this meeting."

* * * * *

The other ship had approached to within a few yards and floated stationary, while some sort of communication was exchanged between the two. I could not fathom the method used, but the commander of our craft clamped what looked like a pair of headphones against his body and plugged the end of a wire leading from them into his instrument board. From time to time various colored lights glowed on the board before him. After a time he uncoupled his device from the board, and one of the long rods shot out from our ship to the other. It returned in a moment clamped around the body of a young girl. As the came on board, she was lowered onto the deck beside the other children. Like them, she was stiff and motionless. I gave an exclamation and sprang forward.

"Pete!"

Jim's voice recalled me to myself, and I watched the child laid with the others with as disinterested an expression as I could muster. I had never made a mistake in following Jim Carpenter's lead and I knew that somewhere in his head a plan was maturing which might offer us some chance of escape.

Our ship moved ahead down a long slant, gradually dropping nearer to the ground. I watched the maneuver with interest while Jim, with his friend the beetle commander, went over the ship. The insect was evidently amused at Jim and was determined to find out the limits of his intelligence, for he pointed out various controls and motors of the ship and made elaborate sketches which Jim seemed to comprehend fairly well.

* * * * *

One of the beetles approached the control board and motioned me back. I stepped away from the board; evidently a port in the side of the vessel opened, for I felt a breath of air and could hear the hum of the city. I walked to the side and glanced down, and found that we were floating about twenty feet off the ground over a street on the edge of the city. On the street a short distance ahead of us two children, evidently returning from school, to judge by the books under their arms, were walking unsuspectingly along. A turn of the dial sped up our motors, and as the hum rang out in a louder key the children looked upward. Two of the long flexible wires shot out and wrapped themselves about the children; screaming, they were lifted into the space flyer. The port through which they came in shut with a clang and the ship rose rapidly into the air. The children were released from the wires which coiled themselves up on deck and the beetle who had operated them stepped forward and grasped the nearer of the children, a boy of about eleven, by the arm. He raised the boy, who was paralyzed with terror, up toward his head and gazed steadily into his eyes. Slowly the boy ceased struggling and became white and rigid. The beetle laid him on the deck and turned to the girl. Involuntarily I gave a shout and sprang forward, but Jim grasped me by the arm.

"Keep quiet, you darned fool!" he cried. "We can do nothing now. Wait for a chance!"

"We can't stand here and see murder done!" I protested.

"It's not murder. Pete, those children aren't being hurt. They are being hypnotized so that they can be transported to Mercury."

"Why are they taking them to Mercury?" I demanded.

"As nearly as I can make out, there is a race of men up there who are subject to these beetles. This ship is radium propelled, and the men and women are the slaves who work in the radium mines. Of course the workers soon become sexless, but others are kept for breeding purposes to keep the race alive. Through generations of in-breeding, the stock is about played out and are getting too weak to be of much value.

"The Mercurians have been studying the whole universe to find a race which will serve their purpose and they have chosen us to be the victims. When their fleet gets here, they plan to capture thousands of selected children and carry them to Mercury in order to infuse their blood into the decadent race of slaves they have. Those who are not suitable for breeding when they grow up will die as slaves in the radium mines."

* * * * *

"Horrible!" I gasped. "Why are they taking children, Jim? Wouldn't adults suit their purpose better?"

"They are afraid to take adults. On Mercury an earthman would have muscles of unheard of power and adults would constantly strive to rise against their masters. By getting children, they hope to raise them to know nothing else than a life of slavery and get the advantage of their strength without risk. It is a clever scheme."

"And are we to stand here and let them do it?"

"Not on your life, but we had better hold easy for a while. If I can get a few minutes more with that brute I'll know enough about running this ship that we can afford to do away with them. You have a pistol, haven't you?"

"No."

"The devil! I thought you had. I have an automatic, but it only carries eight shells. There are eleven of these insects and unless we can get the jump on them, they'll do us. I saw what looks like a knife lying near the instrument board; get over near it and get ready to grab it as soon as you hear my pistol. These things are deaf and if I work it right I may be able to do several of them in before they know what's happening. When you attack, don't try to ram them in the back; their backplates are an inch thick and will be proof against a knife thrust. Aim at their eyes; if you can blind them, they'll be helpless. Do you understand?"

"I'll do my best, Jim," I replied. "Since you have told me their plans I am itching to get at them."

* * * * *

I edged over toward the knife, but as I did so I saw a better weapon. On the floor lay a bar of silvery metal about thirty inches long and an inch in diameter. I picked it up and toyed with it idly, meanwhile edging around to get behind the insect which I had marked for my first attentions. Jim was talking again by means of the notebook with his beetle friend. They walked around the ship, examining everything in it.

"Are you ready, Pete?" came Jim's voice at last.

"All set," I replied, getting a firmer grasp on my bar and edging toward one of the insects.

"Well, don't start until I fire. You notice the bug I am talking to? Don't kill him unless you have to. This ship is a little too complicated for me to fathom, so I want this fellow taken prisoner. We'll use him as our engineer when we take control."

"I understand."

"All right, get ready."

I kept my eye on Jim. He had drawn the beetle with whom he was talking to a position where they were behind the rest. Jim pointed at something behind the insect's back and the beetle turned. As it did so, Jim whipped out his pistol and, taking careful aim, fired at one of the insects.

As the sound of the shot rang out I raised my bar and leaped forward. I brought it down with crushing force on the head of the nearest beetle. My victim fell forward, and I heard Jim's pistol bark again; but I had no time to watch him. As the beetle I struck fell the others turned and I had two of them coming at me with outstretched arms, ready to grasp me. I swung my bar, and the arm of one of them fell limp; but the other seized me with both its hands, and I felt the cruel hooks of its lower arms against the small of my back.

* * * * *

One of my arms was still free; I swung my bar again, and it struck my captor on the back of the head. It was stunned by the blow and fell. I seized the knife from the floor, and threw myself down beside it and struck at its eyes, trying to roll it over so as to protect me from the other who was trying to grasp me.

I felt hands clutch me from behind; I was wrenched loose from the body of my victim and lifted into the air. I was turned about and stared hard into the implacable crystalline eyes of one of the insects. For a moment my senses reeled and then, without volition, I dropped my bar. I remembered the children and realized that I was being hypnotized. I fought against the feeling, but my senses reeled and I almost went limp, when the sound of a pistol shot, almost in my ear, roused me. The spell of the beetle was momentarily broken. I thrust the knife which I still grasped at the eyes before me. My blow went home, but the insect raised me and bent me toward him until my head lay on top of his and the huge horns which adorned his head began to close. Another pistol shot sounded, and I was suddenly dropped.

I grasped my bar as I fell and leaped up. The flyer was a shambles. Dead insects lay on all sides while Jim, smoking pistol in hand, was staring as though fascinated into the eyes of one of the surviving beetles. I ran forward and brought my bar down on the insect's head, but as I did so I was grasped from behind.

"Jim, help!" I cried as I was swung into the air. The insect whirled me around and then threw me to the floor. I had an impression of falling; then everything dissolved in a flash of light. I was unconscious only for a moment, and I came to to find Jim Carpenter standing over me, menacing my assailant with his gun.

"Thanks, Jim," I said faintly.

"If you're conscious again, get up and get your bar," he replied. "My pistol is empty and I don't know how long I can run a bluff on this fellow."

* * * * *

I scrambled to my feet and grasped the bar. Jim stepped behind me and reloaded his pistol.

"All right," he said when he had finished. "I'll take charge of this fellow. Go around and see if the rest are dead. If they aren't when you find them, see that they are when you leave them. We're taking no prisoners."

I went the rounds of the prostrate insects. None of them were beyond moving except two whose heads had been crushed by my bar, but I obeyed Jim's orders. When I rejoined him with my bloody bar, the only beetle left alive was the commander, whom Jim was covering with his pistol.

"Take the gun," he said when I reported my actions, "and give me the bar."

We exchanged weapons and Jim turned to the captive.

"Now, old fellow," he said grimly, "either you run this ship as I want you to, or you're a dead Indian. Savvy?"

He took his pencil and notebook from his pocket and drew a sketch of our Hadley space ship. On the other end of the sheet he drew a picture of the Mercurian ship, and then drew a line connecting the two. The insect looked at the sketch but made no movement.

"All right, if that's the way you feel about it," said Jim. He raised the bar and brought it down with crushing force on one of the insect's lower arms. The arm fell as though paralyzed and a blue light played across the beetle's eyes. Jim extended the sketch again and raised the bar threateningly. The beetle moved over to the control board, Jim following closely, and set the ship in motion. Ten minutes later it rested on the ground beside the ship in which we had first taken the air.

* * * * *

Following Jim's pictured orders the beetle opened the door of the Mercurian ship and followed Jim into the Hadley. As we emerged from the Mercurian ship I looked back. It had vanished completely.

"The children, Jim!" I gasped.

"I haven't forgotten them," he replied, "but they are all right for the present. If we turned them loose now, we'd have ninety reporters around us in ten minutes. I want to get our generators modified first."

He pointed toward the spot where the Mercurian ship had stood and then toward our generators. The beetle hesitated, but Jim swung his bar against the insect's side in a vicious blow. Again came the play of blue light over the eyes; the beetle bent over our generaters and set to work. Jim handed me the bar and bent over to help. They were both mechanics of a high order and they worked well together; in an hour the beetle started the generators and swung one of the searchlights toward his old ship. It leaped into view on the radium coated screen.

"Good business!" ejaculated Jim. "We'll repair this door; then we'll be ready to release the children and start out."

* * * * *

We followed the beetle into the Mercurian ship, which it seemed to be able to see. It opened a door leading into another compartment of the flyer, and before us lay the bodies of eight children. The beetle lifted the first one, a little girl, up until his many-faceted eyes looked full into the closed ones of the child. There was a flicker of an eyelash, a trace of returning color, and then a scream of terror from the child. The beetle set the girl down and Jim bent over her.

"It's all right now, little lady," he said, clumsily smoothing her hair.

"You're safe now. Run along to your mother. First Mortgage, take charge of her and take her outside. It isn't well for children to see these things."

The child clung to my hand: I led her out of the ship, which promptly vanished as we left it. One by one, seven other children joined us, the last one, a miss of not over eight, in Jim's arms. The beetle followed behind him.

"Do any of you know where you are?" asked Jim as he came out.

"I do, sir," said one of the boys. "I live close to here."

"All right, take these youngsters to your house and tell your mother to telephone their parents to come and get them. If anyone asks you what happened, tell them to see Jim Carpenter to-morrow. Do you understand?"

"Yes, sir."

"All right, run along then. Now, First Mortgage, let's go hunting."

* * * * *

We wired our captive up so securely that I felt that there was no possible chance of his escape; then, with Jim at the controls and me at the guns, we fared forth in search of the invaders. Back and forth over the city we flew without sighting another spaceship in the air. Jim gave an exclamation of impatience and swung on a wider circle, which took us out over the water. I kept the searchlights working. Presently, far ahead over the water, a dark spot came into view. I called to Jim and we approached it at top speed.

"Don't shoot until we are within four hundred yards," cautioned Jim.

I held my fire until we were within the specified distance. The newcomer was another of the Mercurian space-ships; with a feeling of joy I swung my beam until the cross-hairs of the screen rested full on the invader.

"All ready!" I sung out.

"If you are ready, Gridley, you may fire!" replied Jim. I pressed the gun button. The crash of the gun was followed by another report from outside as the radite shell burst against the Mercurian flyer. The deadly explosive did its work, and the shattered remains of the wreck fell, to be engulfed in the sea below.

"That's one!" cried Jim. "I'm afraid we won't have time to hunt up the other right now. This bug told me that the other Mercurians are due here to-day, and I think we had better form ourselves into a reception committee and go up to the hole to meet them."

* * * * *

He sent the ship at high speed over the city until we hovered over the laboratory. We stopped for a moment, and Jim stepped to the radio telephone.

"Hello, Williams," he said, "how are things going? That's fine. In an hour, you say? Well, speed it up as much as you can; we may call for it soon."

He turned both stern motors to full power, and we shot up like a rocket toward the hole in the protective layer through which the invaders had entered. In ten minutes we were at the altitude of the guard ships and Jim asked if anything had been seen. The report was negative; Jim left them below the layer and sent our flyer up through the hole into space. We reached the outer surface in another ten minutes and we were none too soon. Hardly had we debouched from the hole than ahead of us we saw another Mercurian flyer. It was a lone one, and Jim bent over the captive and held a hastily made sketch before him. The sketch showed three Mercurian flyers, one on the ground, one wrecked and the third one in the air. He touched the drawing of the one in the air and pointed toward our port hole and looked questioningly at the beetle. The insect inspected the flyer in space and nodded.

"Good!" cried Jim. "That's the third of the trio who came ahead as scouts. Get your gun ready, First Mortgage: we're going to pick him off."

Our ship approached the doomed Mercurian. Again I waited until we were within four hundred yards; then I pressed the button which hurled it, a crumpled wreck, onto the outer surface of the heaviside layer.

"Two!" cried Jim as we backed away.

"Here come plenty more," I cried as I swung the searchlight. Jim left his controls, glanced at the screen and whistled softly. Dropping toward us from space were hundreds of the Mercurian ships.

"We got here just in time," he said. "Break out your extra ammunition while I take to the hole. We can't hope to do that bunch alone, so we'll fight a rearguard action."

* * * * *

Since our bow gun would be the only one in action, I hastily moved the spare boxes of ammunition nearer to it while Jim maneuvered the Hadley over the hole. As the Mercurian fleet came nearer he started a slow retreat toward the earth. The Mercurians overtook us rapidly; Jim locked his controls at slow speed down and hurried to the bow gun.

"Start shooting as soon as you can," he said. "I'll keep the magazine filled."

I swung the gun until the cross-hairs of the screen rested full on the leading ship and pressed the button. My aim was true, and the shattered fragments of the ship fell toward me. The balance of the fleet slowed down for an instant; I covered another one and pressed my button. The ship at which I had aimed was in motion and I missed it, but I had the satisfaction of seeing another one fall in fragments. Jim was loading the magazine as fast as I fired. I covered another ship and fired again. A third one of our enemies fell in ruins. The rest paused and drew off.

"They're retreating, Jim!" I cried.

"Cease firing until they come on again," he replied is he took the shells from the magazines of the other guns and piled them near the bow gun.

I held my fire for a few minutes. The Mercurians retreated a short distance and then came on again with a rush. Twenty times my gun went off as fast as I could align it and press the trigger, and eighteen of the enemy ships were in ruins. Again the Mercurians retreated. I held my fire. We were falling more rapidly now and far below we could see the black spots which were the guard ships. I told Jim that they were in sight; he stepped to the radio telephone and ordered them to keep well away from the hole.

* * * * *

Again the Mercurian ships came on with a rush, this time with beams of orange light stabbing a way before them. When I told Jim of this he jumped to the controls and shot our ship down at breakneck speed.

"I don't know what sort of fighting apparatus they have, but I don't care to face it," he said to me. "Fire if they get close; but I hope to get out of the hole before they are in range."

Fast as we fell, the Mercurians were coming faster, and they were not over eight hundred yards from us when he reached the level of the guard ships. Jim checked our speed; I managed to pick off three more of the invaders before we moved away from the hole. Jim stopped the side motion and jumped to the radio telephone.

"Hello, Williams!" he shouted into the instrument. "Are you ready down there? Thank God! Full power at once, please!

"Watch what happens," he said to me, as he turned from the instrument.

Some fifty of the Mercurian flyers had reached our level and had started to move toward us before anything happened. Then from below came a beam of intolerable light. Upward it struck, and the Mercurian ships on which it impinged disappeared in a flash of light.

"A disintegrating ray," explained Jim. "I suspected that it might be needed and I started Williams to rigging it up early this morning. I hated to use it because it may easily undo the work that six years have done in healing the break in the layer, but it was necessary. That ends the invasion, except for those ten or twelve ships ahead of us. How is your marksmanship? Can you pick off ten in ten shots?"

"Watch me," I said grimly as the ship started to move.

* * * * *

Pride goeth ever before a fall: it took me sixteen shots to demolish the eleven ships which had escaped destruction from the ray. As the last one fell in ruins, Jim ordered the ray shut off. We fell toward the ground.

"What are we going to do with our prisoner?" I asked.

Jim looked at the beetle meditatively.

"He would make a fine museum piece if he were stuffed," he said, "but on the whole, I think we'll let him go. He is an intelligent creature and will probably be happier on Mercury than anywhere else. What do you say that we put him on his ship and turn him loose?"

"To lead another invasion?" I asked.

"I think not. He has seen what has happened to this one and is more likely to warn them to keep away. In any event, if we equip the guard ships with a ray that will show the Mercurian ships up and keep the disintegrating ray ready for action, we needn't fear another invasion. Let's let him go."

"It suits me all right, Jim, but I hold out for one thing. I will never dare to face McQuarrie again if I fail to get a picture of him. I insist on taking his photograph before we turn him loose."

"All right, go ahead," laughed Jim. "He ought to be able to stand that, if you'll spare him an interview."

An hour later we watched the Mercurian flyer disappear into space.

"I hope I've seen the last of those bugs," I said as the flyer faded from view.

"I don't know," said Jim thoughtfully. "If I have interpreted correctly the drawings that creature made, there is a race of manlike bipeds on Mercury who are slaves to those beetles and who live and die in the horrible atmosphere of a radium mine. Some of these days I may lead an expedition to our sister planet and look into that matter."

Contents

THE GREAT DROUGHT

By Capt. S. P. Meek

"Is the maneuver progressing as you wish. Dr. Bird?" asked the Chief of the Air Corps.

The famous scientist lowered his binoculars and smiled.

"Exactly, General," he replied. "They are keeping a splendid line."

"It is the greatest concentration of air force that this country has ever seen," said General Merton proudly.

With a nod, Dr. Bird raised his glasses to his eyes and resumed his steady gaze. Five thousand feet below and two miles ahead of the huge transport plane which flew the flag of the Chief of the Air Corps, a long line of airplanes stretched away to the north and to the south. Six hundred and seventy-two planes, the entire First Air Division of the United States Army, were deployed in line at hundred-yard intervals, covering a front of nearly forty miles. Fifteen hundred feet above the ground, the line roared steadily westward over Maryland at ninety miles an hour. At ten-second intervals, a puff of black dust came from a discharge tube mounted on the rear of each plane. The dust was whirled about for a moment by the exhaust, and then spread out in a thin layer, marking the path of the fleet.

"I hope the observers on the planes are keeping careful notes of the behavior of those dust clouds," said Dr. Bird after an interval of silence. "We are crossing the Chesapeake now, and things may start to happen at any moment."

"They're all on their toes, Doctor," replied General Merton. "I understood in a general way from the President that we are gathering some important meteorological data for you, but I am ignorant of just what this data is. Is it a secret?"

Dr. Bird hesitated.

"Yes," he said slowly, "it is. However, I can see no reason why this secret should not be entrusted to you. We are seeking a means of ending the great drought which has ravaged the United States for the past two years."

* * * * *

Before General Merton had time to make a reply, his executive officer hastened forward from the radio set which was in constant communication with the units of the fleet.

"Two of the planes on the north end of the line are reporting engine trouble, sir," he said.

Dr. Bird dropped his glasses and sat bolt upright.

"What kind of engine trouble?" he demanded sharply.

"Their motors are slowing down for no explainable reason. I can't understand it."

"Are their motors made with sheet steel cylinders or with duralumin engine blocks?"

"Sheet steel."

"The devil! I hadn't foreseen this, although it was bound to happen if my theory was right. Tell them to climb! Climb all they know! Don't let them shut off their motors for any reason, unless they are about to crash. Turn this ship to the north and have the pilot climb--fast!"

A nod from General Merton confirmed the doctor's orders. The line of planes kept on to the west, but the flagplane turned to the north and climbed at a sharp angle, her three motors roaring at full speed. With the aid of binoculars, the two ships in trouble could be picked out, falling gradually behind the line. They were flying so slowly that it seemed inevitable that they would lose flying speed and crash to the ground.

"More speed!" cried the doctor. "We've elevation enough!"

The altimeter stood at eight thousand feet when the pilot leveled out the flagplane and tore at full speed toward the laboring ships. The main fleet was twenty miles to the west.

* * * * *

They were almost above the point where the two planes had first began to slow down. As they winged along, the three motors of the flagplane took on a different note. It was a laboring note, pitched on a lower scale. Gradually the air-speed meter of the ship began to show a lower reading.

"Locate us on the map, Carnes!" snapped Dr. Bird.

Operative Carnes of the United States Secret Service bent over a large-scale map of Maryland, spread open on a table. With the aid of the navigating officer, he spotted on the map the point over which the plane was flying.

"There goes Burleigh's ship!" cried the executive officer.

There was a gasp from the occupants of the flagplane's cabin. Far below them, one of the crippled planes had slowed down until it had lost flying speed. Whirling like a leaf, it plunged toward the ground. Two small specks detached themselves from the falling mass. They hovered over the falling plane for an instant. Suddenly a patch of white appeared in the air, and then another. The two specks fell more slowly.

"Good work!" exclaimed General Merton. "They took to their 'chutes just in time."

"We'll be taking them in a few minutes if our motors don't pick up!" replied the executive officer.

Far below them, the doomed plane crashed to the ground. As it struck there was a blinding flash followed by vivid flames as the gasoline from the bursted tank ignited. The two members of the crew were drifting to the east as they fell. It was evident that they were in no danger.

"Where is Lightwood's plane?" asked General Merton anxiously.

"It's still aloft and making its way slowly north. He intends to try for an emergency landing at the Aberdeen Proving Ground field," replied the executive officer.

"That's where we had better head for," said Dr. Bird. "I hope that the charge on Captain Lightwood's plane discharges through the tail skid when he lands. If it doesn't, he'll be in serious danger. Follow him and we'll watch."

* * * * *

Five thousand feet below them, the crippled plane limped slowly along toward Aberdeen. It was gradually losing elevation. Two specks suddenly appeared in the air, followed by white patches as the parachutes opened. Captain Lightwood and his gunner had given up the unequal fight and taken to the air. As the ship struck the ground, again there was a blinding flash, followed by an inferno of roaring flames.

"We're not in much better shape than they were, General," said the executive officer as he came back from the control room where the pilots were heroically striving to keep their motors turning over fast enough to keep up flying speed. "We'd better get into our 'chutes."

"The Proving Ground is just ahead," said the doctor. "Can't we make it by sacrificing our elevation?"

"We're trying to do that, Doctor, but we're down to four thousand now and falling fast. Get ready to jump."

Dr. Bird buckled on the harness of the pack parachute which the executive officer offered him. The rest of the crew had hurriedly donned their packs and stood ready.

For another five minutes the plane struggled on. Suddenly a large flat expanse of open ground which had been in sight for some time, seemed to approach with uncanny rapidity.

"There's the landing field!" cried the General. "We'll make it yet!"

Lower and lower the plane sank with the landing field still too far away for comfort. The pilot leveled off as much as he dared and drove on. The motors were laboring and barely turning over at idling speed. They passed the nearer edge of the field with the flagplane barely thirty feet off the ground. In another moment the wheels touched and the plane rolled to a halt.

"Don't get out!" cried Dr. Bird.

He looked around the cabin and picked up a coil of bare antenna wire which hung near the radio set. He wrapped one end of the wire around the frame of the plane. To the other end, he attached his pack 'chute.

"Open the door!" he cried.

* * * * *

As the door swung open, he threw the 'chute out toward the ground. As it touched, there was a blinding flash, followed by a report which shook the plane. A strong odor of garlic permeated the air.

"All right!" cried the doctor cheerfully. "All out for Aberdeen. The danger is past."

He set the example by jumping lightly from the plane. General Merton followed more slowly, his face white and his hands shaking.

"What was it, Doctor," he asked. "I have been flying since 1912, yet I have never seen or heard of anything like that."

"Just a heavy charge of static electricity," replied the doctor. "That was what magnetized your cylinder walls and your piston rings and slowed your motors down. It was the same thing that wrecked those two ships. Unless it leaks off, the men of some of your other ships are due to get a nasty shock when they land to-night. I discharged the charge we had collected through a ground wire. Here comes a car, we'll go up to Colonel Wesley's office. Carnes, you have these maps?"

"Surely, Doctor."

"All right, let's go."

"But what about this ship, Doctor?" objected the General. "Can't something be done about it?"

"Certainly. I hadn't forgotten it. Have your crew stand by. I'll telephone Washington and have some men with apparatus sent right down from the Bureau of Standards. They'll have it ready for flying in the morning. We'll also have search parties sent out in cars to locate the crews of those abandoned ships and bring them in. Now let's go."

* * * * *

Colonel Wesley, the commanding officer of the Aberdeen Proving Ground, welcomed Carnes and Dr. Bird warmly.

"I'll tell you, General Merton," he said to the Chief of the Air Corps, "if you ever get up against something that is beyond all explanation, you want to get these two men working on it. They are the ones who settled that poisoning case here, you know."

"Yes, I read of that," replied the general. "I am inclined to think that they are up against something even queerer right now."

Colonel Wesley's eyes sparkled.

"Give your orders, Dr. Bird!" he cried. "Since our last experience with you, you can't give an order on this post that won't be obeyed!"

"Thank you, Colonel," said Dr. Bird warmly. "One reason why I came here was that I knew that I could count on your hearty cooperation. The first thing I want is two cars. I want them sent out to bring in the crews of two ships which were abandoned some eight miles south of here. Carnes will locate them on the map for your drivers."

"They'll be ready to start in five minutes, Doctor. What next?"

"Turn out every man and every piece of transportation you have to-morrow morning. I want the men armed. They will have to search a stretch of swamp south of here, inch by inch, until they find what I'm looking for."

"They'll be ready, Doctor. Would it be indiscreet for me to ask what it's all about?"

"Not at all, Colonel. I was about to explain to General Merton when trouble started. I am searching for the cause of the great drought which has been afflicting this country for the past two years. If I can find the cause, I hope to end it."

"Oh! I had a sneaking hope that we were in for another skirmish with that Russian chap, Saranoff, whose men started that poison here."

"I rather think we are, Colonel Wesley."

General Merton laughed.

"I'll swallow a good deal, Dr. Bird," he said, "but when you talk of an individual being responsible for the great drought, it's a little too much. A man can't control the weather, you know!"

* * * * *

"Yet a man, or an incarnate devil--I don't know which he is--did control the weather once, as well as the sun. But for the humble efforts of two Americans, aided by a Russian girl whose brother Saranoff had murdered, he might be still controlling it."

General Merton was silent now.

"Carnes, let me have that map," went on the doctor. When the detective had unrolled a map of the United States on Colonel Wesley's table, Dr. Bird continued, pointing to the map as he spoke.

"On this map," he said, "is plotted the deficiency in rainfall for the past year, from every reporting station in the United States. These red lines divide the country into areas of equal deficiency. The area most affected, as you can see, is longer east and west, than it is north and south. It is worst in the east, in fact in this very neighborhood. Even a casual glance at the map will show you that the center of the drought area, from an intensity standpoint, lies in Maryland, a few miles south of here."

"In fact, just about where those two planes went down," added Carnes.

"Precisely, old dear. That was why we went over that section with the fleet. Now, gentlemen, note a few other things about this drought. The areas of drought follow roughly the great waterways, the Ohio and the Potomac valleys being especially affected. In other words, the drought follows the normal air currents from this point. If something were to be added to the air which would tend to prevent rain, it would in time drift, just as the drought areas have drifted."

* * * * *

General Merton and Colonel Wesley bent over the map.

"I believe you're right, Doctor," admitted the general.

"Thank you. The President was convinced that I was before he placed the First Air Division under my orders. Frankly, that search was the real object of assembling the fleet. The maneuvers are a mere blind."

General Merton colored slightly.

"Now, I'll try to give you some idea of what I think is the method being used," went on the doctor, ignoring General Merton's rising color. "In the past, rain has been produced in several cases where conditions were right--that is, when the air held plenty of moisture which refused to fall--by the discharge from a plane of a cloud of positively charged dust particles. Ergo, a heavy negative charge in the air, which will absorb rather than discharge a positive charge, should tend to prevent rain from falling. I believe that a stream of negative particles is being liberated into the air near here, and allowed to drift where it will. That was my theory when I had the First Air Division equipped with those dust ejector tubes.

"I knew that if such a condition existed, the positively charged dust would be pulled down toward the source of the negative particle stream, which must, in many ways, resemble a cathode ray. That was why I wanted the behavior of the dust clouds watched and reported. What I did not foresee was that the iron and steel parts of the plane, accumulating a heavy negative charge, would be magnetized enough to slow down the motors and eventually wreck the ships."

"We have had eight ships wrecked unexplainably within twenty miles of here, all of them to the south, during the past year," said Colonel Wesley.

"It had slipped my notice. At any rate, the behavior of the ships this afternoon showed me that my theory is correct, and that some such device exists and is in active operation. Our next task is to locate it and destroy it."

"You shall have every man on the Proving Ground!" cried Colonel Wesley.

"Thank you. General Merton, will you detach three ships from the First Air Division by radio and have them report here? I want two pursuit ships and one bomber, with a rack of hundred-pound demolition bombs. All three must have duralumin cylinder blocks."

"I'll do it at once, Doctor," the general agreed.

"Thank you. Carnes, telephone Washington for me. Tell Dr. Burgess that I want Tracy, Fellows and Von Amburgh, with three more men down here by the next train. Also tell him to have Davis rig up a demagnetizer large enough to demagnetize the motors of a transport plane and bring it down here to fix up General Merton's ship. When you have finished that, get hold of Bolton and ask for a dozen secret service men. I want selected men with Haggerty in charge."

"All right, Doctor. Shall I tell Miss Andrews to come down as well?"

* * * * *

Dr. Bird frowned.

"Certainly not. Why would she come down here?"

"I thought she might be useful, Doctor."

"Carnes, as you know, I dislike using women because they can't control their emotions or their expressions. She would just be in the way."

"It seems to me that she saved both our lives in Russia, Doctor, and but for her, you wouldn't have come out so well in your last adventure on the Aberdeen marshes."

"She did the first through uncontrolled emotions, and the second through a flagrant disobedience of my orders. No, don't tell her to come. Tell her not to come if she asks."

Carnes turned away, but hesitated.

"Doctor, I wish you'd let me have her come down here. I didn't trust her at first when you did, but she has proved her loyalty and worth. Besides, I don't like the idea of leaving her unguarded in Washington with you and me down here, and with Haggerty coming down."

Dr. Bird looked thoughtful.

"There's something in that, Carnes," he reflected. "All right, tell her to come along, but remember, she is not in on this case. She is being brought here merely for safety, not to mix up in our work."

"Thanks, Doctor."

The detective returned in ten minutes with a worried expression.

"She wasn't in your office, Doctor," he reported.

"Who? Oh, Thelma. Where was she?"

"No one seems to know. She left yesterday afternoon and hasn't returned."

"Oh, well, since I am out of the city, I expect she decided to take a vacation. Women are always undependable. Did you get hold of the rest?"

"They'll be down at midnight, all but Davis. He'll come down in the morning."

"Good enough! Now, Colonel, if you'll have the officers who are going out to-morrow assembled, we'll divide the territory and make our plans for the search."

* * * * *

A week later, the situation was unchanged. Secret service operatives and soldiers from the Proving Ground had covered, foot by foot, square miles of territory south of the Proving Ground, but without result. Not a single unexplainable thing had been found. Sensitive instruments sent down from the Bureau of Standards, instruments so sensitive that they would detect an electric light burning a mile away, had yielded no results. As a final measure, General Merton had ordered a dozen planes with steel-cylindered motors to the Proving Ground and they had repeatedly crisscrossed the suspected territory, but had acquired no static charge large enough to affect them. It was evident that Saranoff's device, if it existed, had been moved, or else was not in operation.

Also, to Carnes' openly expressed and Dr. Bird's secret worry, Thelma Andrews had not returned to the Bureau of Standards. The Russian girl, formerly known as Feodrovna Androvitch, a tool and follower of Ivan Saranoff, had acted with Carnes and the doctor in their long drawn-out fight with the arch-communist often enough to be a marked woman.

Urged by Carnes, Bolton, the head of the Secret Service, put a dozen of his best men on her trail, but they found nothing. She had disappeared as thoroughly as if the earth had opened and swallowed her up. At last, as the combing of the Aberdeen marshes yielded no results, Dr. Bird acceded to Carnes' request, and the detective left for Washington to take personal charge of the search. Dr. Bird sat alone in his quarters at the Officers' Club, futilely wracking his brains for a clue to his further procedure.

The telephone rang loudly. With a grunt, he took down the receiver.

A feminine voice spoke with a strong foreign accent.

"I vant der Herr Doktor Vogel, plees!"

"You want who? Oh, yes. Vogel--bird! This is Dr. Bird speaking."

The voice instantly lost both its foreign accent and its guttural quality.

"I thought so when you spoke, Doctor, but I wanted to make sure. This is Thelma Andrews."

"Where the devil have you been? Half the Secret Service is looking for you, including Carnes, who deserted me and is in Washington."

* * * * *

"He is? I'm sorry. Listen, Doctor, it's a long story and I can't go into details now. I got a clue on the day you left. As I couldn't get in touch with you, I followed it myself. I've located Saranoff's main base in the Bush River marshes."

"You have! Where is it?"

"It's underground and you've passed over it a dozen times during the past week. It's unoccupied now and the machines are idle until your search is over. I know the way to it. If you'll join me now, we can get in and hopelessly wreck the device in a short time. To-morrow you can bring your men down here and take charge of it."

Dr. Bird's eyes glistened.

"I'll come at once, Thelma!" he cried. "Where are you?"

"I'm down on Romney Creek. Come down to the Water Impact Range below Michaelville, and I'll meet you at the wharf. You'd better come alone, because we'll have to sneak."

"Good for you!" cried the doctor. "I'll be down in an hour."

"All right, Doctor. I'll be waiting for you."

At Michaelville, Dr. Bird left his car and stepped on the scooter which ran on the narrow gauge track connecting the range house with the wharf on Romney Creek. He started it with no difficulty and it coughed away into the night. For three and a half miles, nothing broke the monotony of the trip. Dr. Bird, his hand on the throttle, kept his eyes on the twin ribbons of steel which slid along under the headlight. The road made a sharp turn and emerged from the thick wood through which it had been traveling. Hardly had the lights shot along the track in the new direction than Dr. Bird closed the throttle and applied the brakes rapidly. A heavy barricade of logs was piled across the track.

* * * * *

The doctor pressed home on the brake lever until the steel shoes screamed in protest, but no brakes could bring the heavy scooter to a stop as swiftly as was needful to avoid a crash. It was still traveling at a good rate of speed when it rammed into the barricade and overturned.

Dr. Bird was thrown clear of the wrecked scooter. He landed on soft mud beside the track. As he strove to rise, the beam of a flashlight struck him in the eyes and a guttural, sneering voice spoke through the darkness.

"Don't move, Dr. Bird. It will be useless and will only lead to your early death, a thing I should regret."

"Saranoff!" cried Dr. Bird.

"I am flattered, Doctor, that you know my voice. Yes, it is I, Ivan Saranoff, the man whom you have so often foiled. You drove me from America and tried to bar the road against my return, but I only laughed at your efforts. I returned here only for one purpose, to capture you and to compass your death."

Dr. Bird rose to his feet and laughed lightly.

"You've got me, Saranoff," he said, "but the game isn't played out yet. I represent an organization which won't end with my death, you know."

A series of expletives in guttural Russian answered him. In response to a command from their leader, two men came forward and searched the doctor quickly and expertly, removing the automatic pistol which he carried under his left armpit.

"As for your organization, as you call it--pouf!" said the Russian scornfully. "Carnes, a brainless fool who does only as you tell him, a few half-wits in the Bureau of Standards, some of them already in my pay, and one renegade girl. She shall learn what it means to betray the Soviets and their leader."

"You'll have to catch her first," replied Dr. Bird, a sardonic grin on his face.

"I have but to snap my fingers and she will come whining back, licking my hand and imploring mercy," boasted the Russian. "Bring him along!"

* * * * *

TWO men approached and Seized the doctor by his arms. Dr. Bird shook them off contemptuously.

"Keep your filthy paws off me!" he cried. "I know when I'm bested, and I'll come quietly, but I won't be dragged."

The men looked at their leader for orders. From behind his light, the Russian studied his opponent. He gave vent to a stream of guttural Russian. The men fell back.

"For your information, Doctor," he said in a sneering tone. "I have told my men to follow you closely, gun in hand. At the slightest sign of hesitation, or at the first attempt to escape, they will fire. They are excellent shots."

"Lead on, Saranoff," was Dr. Bird's cheery comment.

With a shrug of his shoulders, the leader of the Young Labor party turned and made his way along the track toward the wharf. Dr. Bird looked anxiously ahead as they approached, fearing that Feodrovna Androvitch would be discerned in her hiding place. Saranoff correctly interpreted his gaze.

"Does der Herr Doktor Vogel eggspect somevun?" he asked in the voice which had first come over Dr. Bird's telephone. The doctor started and the Russian went on in the voice of the doctor's secretary. "I'm so glad you came, Dr. Bird. I am going to take you directly to the main base of our dearly beloved friend, Ivan Saranoff."

An expression that was a mixture of chagrin and relief spread over Dr. Bird's face.

"Sold, by thunder!" he cried.

The Russian laughed sardonically and tramped on in silence. Tied to the Romney Creek wharf was a boat with powerful electric motors, driven by storage batteries. At a nudge from his captors, Dr. Bird took his place in the craft. It glided silently away down the creek toward the Chesapeake's mouth.

* * * * *

In the bay, the boat veered to the south and ran along the shore until the mouth of Bush River opened before them. It turned west up the river, coming to a halt at one of the occasional bits of high ground which bordered the river.

"We get off here, Doctor," said Saranoff. "My base, which you have wasted so much time seeking, lies within a hundred yards of this point. Before I take you there, you may be interested in watching us conceal our boat."

Before the doctor's surprised gaze, the edges of a huge box rose above the surface of the water, around the electric boat. The boat was raised and water could be heard running out of the box which held it. When the box was drained, a man leaped in and made some adjustments. A cover, hinged on one side, swung over and closed the box tightly with the boat inside. Men closed clamps which held it in position. As they sprang to shore, the box sunk silently out of sight below the surface of the water.

"It is now beneath a foot of mud, Doctor," laughed the Russian, "and there is nothing to lead a searching party to suspect its existence. Now I will take you to my base."

He led the way for a hundred yards over the ground. Before them loomed an old abandoned fisherman's shack. They entered to find merely a barren room. The Russian stepped to the far side and manipulated a hidden lever. Half of the floor slid to one side, disclosing a flight of steps leading down into Stygian darkness.

Flashlight in hand, Saranoff descended, Dr. Bird following closely on his heels. They went down twenty-one steps before the stairs came to an end. Above them, the floor could be heard closing. There was a sharp click and the cavern was flooded with light.

* * * * *

Dr. Bird looked around him with keen interest. Before him stood a static generator of gigantic proportions and of a totally unfamiliar design. Attached to it was an elliptic reflector of silvery metal, from which rose a short, stubby projector tube.

"I suppose, Dr. Saranoff--" began Dr. Bird.

"Ivan Saranoff, if you please, Doctor," interrupted the Russian. "I have renounced the trumpery distinctions of your bourgeois civilization as far as I am concerned."

"I suppose, Ivan Saranoff," said Dr. Bird obligingly, "that this is the apparatus with which you send out a stream of negative particles."

"It is, Doctor. I had no idea that the nature of it would ever be discovered; at least not until I had changed the United States to a second Sahara desert. I reckoned without you. In point of fact, at the time that I built this device and started it in operation, I had not clashed with you. Now, I know that my plan is a failure. You have left data on which other men can work, have you not?"

"Surely."

"I would not have believed you had you said otherwise," replied the Russian with a sigh. "Yet this device has done much good. Now it shall be destroyed. It has not been a failure, for its destruction will accomplish both yours and that of your friend, Carnes."

"You haven't caught Carnes yet."

"That is easy. The same bait which caught you has caught him even more easily. I have a real sense of humor, Doctor, and before I went out of my way to bring you here, my plans were carefully laid. Mr. Carnes is now on his way here from Washington, lured by my voice. He is rushing, he thinks, to your rescue."

"What--"

Dr. Bird was suddenly silent.

* * * * *

"I am glad you comprehend my plan so readily, Doctor. Yes, indeed, Mr. Carnes knows that I have captured you. He knows the exact location of this cavern and, more important, he knows the location of the power line which feeds my device when it is in operation. He also knows that there is stored in this cavern, fifty pounds of radite, your ultra-explosive. He knows that you are chained close to the explosive and that it is rigged with a detonator, connected with the power line. In only one thing is he in error.

"He thinks, that if he can sever the power line before he attempts to penetrate the cavern, that the charge will be rendered harmless, and that you will be safe. In point of fact, the charge is set with an interrupter detonator which will explode as soon at the power line is severed. It pleases my sense of humor that it will be the hand of your faithful friend, Carnes, that will send you in fragments to eternity."

Beads of sweat shone on Dr. Bird's head as the Russian finished his speech, but his expression of amused interest did not change. Neither did his voice, when he spoke, betray any nervousness.

"And I presume that Carnes is also to be blown into bits by the explosion?" he asked.

"No, indeed, Doctor, that would frustrate one of the most humorous angles of the whole affair. He will cut the line at the base of a large rock, some two hundred yards from here, far enough away that he will not be seriously injured by the force of the explosion. Thus he will witness the explosion and realize what he has done. In order to be sure that he knows, as soon as he cuts the wire, my men will capture him. I, personally, will tell him of it. I wish to see his face when he realizes what he has unwittingly done."

"Then, I presume, you'll kill him?"

"I doubt it. I rather think I'll let him live. He should be useful to me."

"Carnes will never work for you!"

"With Feodrovna in my power, I rather think that Mr. Carnes will be an efficient and loyal servant. If not, he shall have the pleasure of watching me wreak my vengeance on her before he, himself, takes his last long trip."

* * * * *

"Saranoff," said Dr. Bird in a level voice, his piercing eyes boring straight into the Russian's, "I will remember this. Later, when you grovel at my feet and beg for mercy, it will be my friend, Operative Carnes, who will read your doom to you and choose the manner of it. I can promise you that your death will not be an easy one."

The Russian laughed, albeit the laugh had more of uneasiness than humor in it.

"When you have me in your power, Doctor, you may do as you like," he said, "but I do not fear dead men. In another two hours, you will be among the dead."

He turned to the three Russians who stood behind him.

"Seize him!" he cried.

The Russians leaped forward, but Dr. Bird was not caught napping. The first one went down like a felled tree before the doctor's fist. The other two came in cautiously. Dr. Bird sprang forward, feinting. As he leaped back, his foot struck a rod which Ivan Saranoff had thrust behind him. He staggered and fell. Before he could recover his balance, the two burly Russians were on him.

Even then, they had no easy task. Dr. Bird weighed over two hundred and there was not an ounce of fat or surplus flesh on him. First one, and then the other, of the Russians was thrown off him, but they returned to the attack, unsubdued by the crashing blows which the doctor landed on their faces and heads.

Gradually their ardor began to evaporate. With a sudden effort, Dr. Bird strove to regain his feet. A crash as of all the thunders of the universe sounded in his ears, and flashes of vivid light played before his eyes. He felt himself falling down ... down....

* * * * *

He recovered consciousness to find his feet shackled and fastened to rings set in the concrete of the cavern wall. His head throbbed horribly. He raised his hands and found a huge bump on his head, from which thickened blood trickled sluggishly down his cheek. The cavern was flooded with light. On the wall before him, a clock told off the seconds with a metallic tick. He bent down and examined his shackles.

"I'm afraid you can't unfasten them, Doctor," said a sardonic voice.

He looked up to see Saranoff.

"I'm sorry I had to hit you so hard," went on the Russian. "Your half hour of unconsciousness has lessened by that much the time which is yours to indulge in an agony of apprehension. Look."

Dr. Bird's gaze followed the Russian's finger. On the floor, twenty feet from where he was shackled, stood a yellow can with the mark of the Bureau of Standards on its side. He recognized it at once as a radite container, a can of the terrible ultra-explosive which he himself had perfected. He shuddered at the thought of the havoc which its detonation would cause.

"Yes, Doctor, that is a can of radite," said the Russian. "Allow me also to call your attention to the interrupter fuse which is attached to it. When Mr. Carnes cuts the wire outside, you know well enough what will happen. Now, let me invite your attention to the clock on the wall before you. Mr. Carnes arrived at the Bush River station of the P. B. and W. at 2:15 A.M. He had a little trouble getting a boat, but he is now on his way here. It is 2:25. I think he will arrive between 3:30 and 4:00. Perhaps five minutes later, he will find the wire.

"You have a little over an hour in which to contemplate your total extinction, an extinction which will remove from my path the one great obstacle to my domination of the world. I hope you will enjoy your remaining moments. In order to help you to enjoy them, and to realize the futility of human endeavor, I have placed the key of your shackles on the floor here in plain sight, but, alas, out of your reach. I would like to stay and watch your struggle, to see the self-control on which you pride yourself vanish, and to watch you whimper and pray for the mercy you would not find; but I am deprived of that pleasure. I must take personal charge of my men to be sure that there is no slip. Good-by, Doctor, we will never meet again, I fear."

* * * * *

"We will meet again, Saranoff," said Dr. Bird in even tones of cold ferocity which made even Saranoff shiver. "We will meet again, and when you whimper and beg for mercy, remember this moment!"

The Russian started forward with an oath, his hand raised to strike. He recovered himself and essayed a sickly smile.

"I will remember, Doctor," he said in a voice which, despite himself, had a tremor of fear in it. "I will remember--when we meet again."

He ran lightly up the stairs and Dr. Bird heard the floor close above him. With a grunt, he bent down and examined his shackles closely. They were tight fitting and made of hardened steel. A cursory examination showed the doctor that he could neither force them nor slip them. He turned his attention to the key which Saranoff had pointed out. It lay on the floor, about ten feet, as nearly as he could judge, from where he stood.

He knelt and then stretched himself out at full length on the floor. By straining to the uttermost, his groping fingers were still six inches from the key. Saranoff had calculated the distance well.

Convinced that he could not reach the key by any effort of stretching, Dr. Bird wasted none of his precious time in vain regrets or in useless efforts to accomplish the impossible. He rose to his feet and calmly took stock of the room, searching for other means of freeing himself. The shackles themselves offered no hope. He searched his pockets. The search yielded a pocket knife, a bunch of keys, a flashlight, a handkerchief, a handful of loose change, and a wallet. He examined the miscellany thoughtfully.

* * * * *

A light broke over his face. He tied one end of the handkerchief to the knife and again took a prone position on the floor. Cautiously he tossed the knife out before him. It fell to one side of the key. He drew it back and tried again. The knife fell beyond the key. Slowly he drew it back toward him by the handkerchief. When it reached his hand, he saw to his joy, that the key was a good inch nearer. With a lighter heart, he tried again.

His toss was good. The knife fell over the key, and again he drew it to him. To his disgust, the key had not moved. Again and again he tried it, but the knife slid over the key without moving it. He looked more carefully and saw that the key was caught on an obstruction in the flooring.

With careful aim, he threw his knife so as to drive the key further away. He threw the knife again and tried to draw the key to him from its new position. It came readily until it reached the inequality in the floor which had stopped it the first time. All of his efforts to draw it nearer were fruitless. He give vent to a muttered oath as he looked at the clock. Thirty minutes of his time had gone.

A second time he knocked the key away and strove to draw it to him with no success. The clock bore witness to the fact that another ten minutes had been wasted. He rose to his feet and carefully surveyed his surroundings.

A cry of joy burst from his lips. On the floor was a tiny metallic thread which he knew for a wire. He bent down and picked it up. It was fine and very flexible. He doubled it three times and strove to bend a hook in it. The wire was too short to offer much hope, but he threw himself prone and began to fish for the key.

The wire reached it readily enough, but it did not have rigidity enough to pull the key over the little bump which held it. A glance at the clock threw him into an agony of despair. A full hour had passed since Saranoff had left him. Carnes might even now be walking into the trap which had been laid for him.

He rose to his feet and thought rapidly, twisting the wire idly around the knife as he did so. He glanced at the work of his hands, and an oath broke from his lip.

"Fool!" he exclaimed. "I deserve to die! The means for liberation were in my hands all the time."

* * * * *

With feverish activity, he ripped open the flashlight. He held the two ends of the wire against the terminals of the light battery and touched the knife to his steel key ring. To his joy, the ring adhered to the knife. Under the influence of the battery, the wire-wrapped knife had become a small electromagnet.

In a moment the doctor was prone on the floor. He tossed the knife out to the key. His aim was good and it fell directly beyond. With trembling hands he drew the knife toward him. It reached the key. Scarcely daring to breathe, he pulled it closer. The key had risen over the ridge which had held it, and was adhering to the knife. In another moment, he stood erect, freed from the shackles which had bound him.

He made for the door at a run, but a sudden thought stopped him. The clock showed him that an hour and twenty minutes had passed.

"Carnes must be nearly here!" he cried. "If I go blundering out, I'm liable to run right into the trap they have laid for him, and then we're both gone. If I yell to warn him, the fool will come ahead at full tilt. What the dickens can I do?"

His gaze fell on the can of radite. The wires leading to the interrupter fuse gleamed a dull gold with a malign significance.

"If Carnes and I are both washed out, there will be only Thelma left. She can't fight Saranoff alone. Carnes knows the man and his methods. There is only one way that I can see to warn him out of the trap."

He shuddered a moment. With a steady step he walked across the cave to the can of deadly explosive. A pair of pliers lay on a nearby bench. He picked them up. He dashed his hand across his face for a moment, but looked up with steady eyes. With hands that did not tremble, he bent down over the can. With a quick snip, he severed the wires leading to the can of radite.

* * * * *

Operative Carnes jumped ashore as the boat reached the bank of Bush River. Before him stretched a dismal swamp, interspersed with occasional bits of higher ground. He looked back over the river for a moment, taking his bearings with great care. A luminous lensatic compass gave him the orientation of the points he had chosen for markers.

"Are you sure we are at the right place?" he asked in an undertone.

"Sure as shootin', Mister," replied the boatman. "It's the only place of its kind in five miles. The rock you're hunting for is about a hundred rods due east."

"It looks right," said Carnes. "Come on, men."

Operatives Haggerty and Dillon scrambled out of the boat and stood by his side.

"Follow me," said Carnes in a whisper.

Both detectives nodded silently. They drew their pistols and fell in behind their leader. Keeping his direction with the aid of his compass, Carnes led the way forward, counting his steps. At five hundred he paused.

"It should be right here," he whispered.

Haggerty pointed in silence. In the starlight, a large rock loomed up a few yards away. With an exclamation of satisfaction, Carnes led the way to it.

"Dig on the south side," he whispered, "and hurry! The damned thing is due to go off in less than twenty minutes. Unless we can find and cut the wire before then, the doctor is a gone gosling."

The two detectives drew intrenching shovels from their pockets and dug feverishly. For five minutes they labored. Dillon gave an exclamation.

"Here it is, Chief!" he said.

Carnes bent down and ventured a short flash from a carefully guarded light. The detective's shovel had unearthed a powerful cable running through the earth.

"Get something to cut on!" cried Carnes.

Haggerty lifted a rock which they had unearthed and thrown to one side. Carnes raised the cable and laid it on the rock.

"Now for your ax, Dillon!" he exclaimed.

He turned on his flashlight. Dillon raised a hand-ax and took careful aim. Sparks flew as the ax fell on the rock, severing the cable cleanly. Carnes rose to his feet.

"The doctor's safe!" he cried.

* * * * *

He started at a run toward the north. He had gone only a few feet when a beam of light flashed across the marsh, picking him out of the darkness. He paused in amazement.

A flash of orange light stabbed the darkness and a heavy pistol bullet sang past his head. The detective raised his weapon to reply, but three more flashes from the darkness were followed by the vicious cracks of large caliber automatics.

"Down, Chief!" cried Haggerty.

Carnes dropped to the ground, the beam of light following his movements. Four more flashes came from the darkness. Mud was thrown up into his face. Dillon's gun joined Haggerty's in barking defiance into the night.

A groan came from Haggerty.

"Hit, Tom?" asked Carnes anxiously.

"A little, but don't let that bother you. Get that damned light!"

He fired again, groaning at he did so. There was a crash from over the marsh and the light went out.

"Good work, Tom!" cried Carnes.

He raised his pistol and fired again and again into the darkness, from which still came the flashes of orange light. A cry of pain rewarded him.

"Come on, men, rush them!" he cried.

He jumped to his feet and dashed forward. A fresh beam of light stabbed a path through the darkness. A volley of fire came from behind it. Haggerty stumbled and fell.

"They've got me, Chief!" he cried faintly.

Disregarding the storm of bullets, Carnes charged ahead, Dillon at his heels. A sudden shout came from his left. A fresh beam of light made a path through the darkness and Carnes could see his opponents lying prone on the marsh. A cry of dismay came from them. Carnes fired again as he rushed forward. The men leaped to their feet and fled away into the darkness.

"Your light, Dillon!" he cried.

Dillon's light shone out and picked up one of the fleeing figures. The beam from the left was centered on another.

"Halt!" came a stern voice from behind the light. "You are surrounded! If I give the word to fire, you are dead men!"

"Dr. Bird!" cried Carnes in amazement.

* * * * *

The fleeing man in the beam of Dillon's light paused.

"Drop your gun!" cried Carnes sharply.

There was a moment of hesitation before the man's gun fell and his hands went up.

"Get him, Carnes!" came Dr. Bird's voice. "I've got another one held out here. I hope one of them is the man we want."

As Dillon slipped handcuffs on his prisoner, Dr. Bird came forward, driving another Russian before him. In his hand was a piece of iron pipe.

"Cuff him, Carnes!" he said.

The detective slipped handcuffs on the man while Dr. Bird bent down and examined the face of each of the prisoners with his light. He straightened up with an exclamation of anger.

"These are nothing but tools," he said bitterly. "We had the arch-conspirator himself in our hands and let him escape."

"The arch-conspirator!" gasped Carnes. "You don't mean Saranoff?"

"Yes, Ivan Saranoff. He was here on this marsh to-night. There were four of his men and we got two, letting the most important one get away."

"You've got four, Dr. Bird," said a guttural voice from the dark.

Dr. Bird whirled around and shot out the beam of his light. A third Russian was revealed in its gleam.

"Hands up!" cried the doctor.

"I'm willing to be captured, Doctor," said the Russian. "Your search for Saranoff is useless. He has been gone for an hour. He is not one to risk his own skin when others will risk theirs for him. He fled after he left the cave."

"Do you know where he has gone?"

"I wish I did, Doctor. If I knew, we'd soon have him, I hope."

The Russian's voice had changed entirely. Gone were the heavy guttural tones. In their place was a rich, rather throaty contralto. Carnes gave a cry of astonishment and turned his light on the prisoner.

"Thelma!" he gasped.

* * * * *

The Russian smiled.

"Surely, Mr. Carnes," she said. "Congratulations on your acumen. Dr. Bird saw me for half an hour this evening, but he didn't recognize me. He even knocked me out with his fist back in the cavern."

"The devil I did!" gasped the doctor. "What were you doing there?"

"Helping Saranoff capture you, Doctor," she replied. "The day you left, I saw one of his men on the street. I dared not summon help lest he should escape, so I followed him. I captured him and learned from him the location of the gang headquarters.

"I disguised myself and took his place for a week, fooling them all, even Saranoff himself. I was one of those chosen to carry out your capture and your murder. This afternoon, unknown to Saranoff, I tampered with that radite can and removed the fuse. That was why there was no explosion when Mr. Carnes cut the wire. I had no chance to warn him. I managed to shoot one of Saranoff's men when they broke and ran."

Her voice trembled in the darkness.

"I hated to kill him--" she said with a half sob.

A faint hail came from the night.

"Haggerty!" cried Carnes.

"All right, Chief," came Dillon's voice. "He's got a bullet in his shoulder and one through his leg, but no bones broken. He'll be all right."

Carnes turned again to the girl.

"What about that Russian whose place you took?" he asked. "Maybe we can pump something out of him."

Thelma swayed for a moment.

"Don't, Mr. Carnes," she cried, her voice rising almost to a shriek. "Don't make me think of it! I--I had to--to stab him!"

She swayed again. Carnes started toward her, his arms outstretched. Dr. Bird's voice stopped him.

"Miss Andrews," said the doctor sternly, "you know that I demand control of the emotions from all my subordinates. You are crying like a hysterical schoolgirl. Unless you can learn to control your feelings instead of giving way to them on every occasion, I will have to dispense with your further services."

The girl swayed toward him for a moment, a look of pain in her eyes. She shuddered and then recovered herself. She straightened up and faced Dr. Bird boldly.

"Yes, Doctor," came in level expressionless tones from her lips.

Contents

DEATH OF A SPACEMAN

BY WALTER M. MILLER, JR.

The manner in which a man has lived is often the key to the way he will die. Take old man Donegal, for example. Most of his adult life was spent in digging a hole through space to learn what was on the other side. Would he go out the same way?

Old Donegal was dying. They had all known it was coming, and they watched it come--his haggard wife, his daughter, and now his grandson, home on emergency leave from the pre-astronautics academy. Old Donegal knew it too, and had known it from the beginning, when he had begun to lose control of his legs and was forced to walk with a cane. But most of the time, he pretended to let them keep the secret they shared with the doctors--that the operations had all been failures, and that the cancer that fed at his spine would gnaw its way brainward until the paralysis engulfed vital organs, and then Old Donegal would cease to be. It would be cruel to let them know that he knew. Once, weeks ago, he had joked about the approaching shadows.

"Buy the plot back where people won't walk over it, Martha," he said. "Get it way back under the cedars--next to the fence. There aren't many graves back there yet. I want to be alone."

"Don't talk that way, Donny!" his wife had choked. "You're not dying."

His eyes twinkled maliciously. "Listen, Martha, I want to be buried face-down. I want to be buried with my back to space, understand? Don't let them lay me out like a lily."

"Donny, please!"

"They oughta face a man the way he's headed," Donegal grunted. "I been up--way up. Now I'm going straight down."

Martha had fled from the room in tears. He had never done it again, except to the interns and nurses, who, while they insisted that he was going to get well, didn't mind joking with him about it.

Martha can bear my death, he thought, can bear pre-knowledge of it. But she couldn't bear thinking that he might take it calmly. If he accepted death gracefully, it would be like deliberately leaving her, and Old Donegal had decided to help her believe whatever would be comforting to her in such a troublesome moment.

"When'll they let me out of this bed again?" he complained.

"Be patient, Donny," she sighed. "It won't be long. You'll be up and around before you know it."

"Back on the moon-run, maybe?" he offered. "Listen, Martha, I been planet-bound too long. I'm not too old for the moon-run, am I? Sixty-three's not so old."

That had been carrying things too far. She knew he was hoaxing, and dabbed at her eyes again. The dead must humor the mourners, he thought, and the sick must comfort the visitors. It was always so.

But it was harder, now that the end was near. His eyes were hazy, and his thoughts unclear. He could move his arms a little, clumsily, but feeling was gone from them. The rest of his body was lost to him. Sometimes he seemed to feel his stomach and his hips, but the sensation was mostly an illusion offered by higher nervous centers, like the "ghost-arm" that an amputee continues to feel. The wires were down, and he was cut off from himself.

* * * * *

He lay wheezing on the hospital bed, in his own room, in his own rented flat. Gaunt and unshaven, gray as winter twilight, he lay staring at the white net curtains that billowed gently in the breeze from the open window. There was no sound in the room but the sound of breathing and the loud ticking of an alarm clock. Occasionally he heard a chair scraping on the stone terrace next door, and the low mutter of voices, sometimes laughter, as the servants of the Keith mansion arranged the terrace for late afternoon guests.

With considerable effort, he rolled his head toward Martha who sat beside the bed, pinch-faced and weary.

"You ought to get some sleep," he said.

"I slept yesterday. Don't talk, Donny. It tires you."

"You ought to get more sleep. You never sleep enough. Are you afraid I'll get up and run away if you go to sleep for a while?"

She managed a brittle smile. "There'll be plenty of time for sleep when ... when you're well again." The brittle smile fled and she swallowed hard, like swallowing a fish-bone. He glanced down, and noticed that she was squeezing his hand spasmodically.

There wasn't much left of the hand, he thought. Bones and ugly tight-stretched hide spotted with brown. Bulging knuckles with yellow cigaret stains. My hand. He tried to tighten it, tried to squeeze Martha's thin one in return. He watched it open and contract a little, but it was like operating a remote-control mechanism. Goodbye, hand, you're leaving me the way my legs did, he told it. I'll see you again in hell. How hammy can you get, Old Donegal? You maudlin ass.

"Requiescat," he muttered over the hand, and let it lie in peace.

Perhaps she heard him. "Donny," she whispered, leaning closer, "won't you let me call the priest now? Please."

He rattled a sigh and rolled his head toward the window again. "Are the Keiths having a party today?" he asked. "Sounds like they're moving chairs out on the terrace."

"Please, Donny, the priest?"

He let his head roll aside and closed his eyes, as if asleep. The bed shook slightly as she quickly caught at his wrist to feel for a pulse.

"If I'm not dying, I don't need a priest," he said sleepily.

"That's not right," she scolded softly. "You know that's not right, Donny. You know better."

Maybe I'm being too rough on her? he wondered. He hadn't minded getting baptized her way, and married her way, and occasionally priest-handled the way she wanted him to when he was home from a space-run, but when it came to dying, Old Donegal wanted to do it his own way.

* * * * *

He opened his eyes at the sound of a bench being dragged across the stone terrace. "Martha, what kind of a party are the Keiths having today?"

"I wouldn't know," she said stiffly. "You'd think they'd have a little more respect. You'd think they'd put it off a few days."

"Until--?"

"Until you feel better."

"I feel fine, Martha. I like parties. I'm glad they're having one. Pour me a drink, will you? I can't reach the bottle anymore."

"It's empty."

"No, it isn't, Martha, it's still a quarter full. I know. I've been watching it."

"You shouldn't have it, Donny. Please don't."

"But this is a party, Martha. Besides, the doctor says I can have whatever I want. Whatever I want, you hear? That means I'm getting well, doesn't it?"

"Sure, Donny, sure. Getting well."

"The whiskey, Martha. Just a finger in a tumbler, no more. I want to feel like it's a party."

Her throat was rigid as she poured it. She helped him get the tumbler to his mouth. The liquor seared his throat, and he gagged a little as the fumes clogged his nose. Good whiskey, the best--but he couldn't take it any more. He eyed the green stamp on the neck of the bottle on the bed-table and grinned. He hadn't had whiskey like that since his space-days. Couldn't afford it now, not on a blastman's pension.

* * * * *

He remembered how he and Caid used to smuggle a couple of fifths aboard for the moon-run. If they caught you, it meant suspension, but there was no harm in it, not for the blastroom men who had nothing much to do from the time the ship acquired enough velocity for the long, long coaster ride until they started the rockets again for Lunar landing. You could drink a fifth, jettison the bottle through the trash lock, and sober up before you were needed again. It was the only way to pass the time in the cramped cubicle, unless you ruined your eyes trying to read by the glow-lamps. Old Donegal chuckled. If he and Caid had stayed on the run, Earth would have a ring by now, like Saturn--a ring of Old Granddad bottles.

"You said it, Donny-boy," said the misty man by the billowing curtains. "Who else knows the gegenschein is broken glass?"

Donegal laughed. Then he wondered what the man was doing there. The man was lounging against the window, and his unzipped space rig draped about him in an old familiar way. Loose plug-in connections and hose-ends dangled about his lean body. He was freckled and grinning.

"Caid," Old Donegal breathed softly.

"What did you say, Donny?" Martha answered.

Old Donegal blinked hard and shook his head. Something let go with a soggy snap, and the misty man was gone. I'd better take it easy on the whiskey, he thought. You got to wait, Donegal, old lush, until Nora and Ken get here. You can't get drunk until they're gone, or you might get them mixed up with memories like Caid's.

Car doors slammed in the street below. Martha glanced toward the window.

"Think it's them? I wish they'd get here. I wish they'd hurry."

Martha arose and tiptoed to the window. She peered down toward the sidewalk, put on a sharp frown. He heard a distant mutter of voices and occasional laughter, with group-footsteps milling about on the sidewalk. Martha murmured her disapproval and closed the window.

"Leave it open," he said.

"But the Keiths' guests are starting to come. There'll be such a racket." She looked at him hopefully, the way she did when she prompted his manners before company came.

Maybe it wasn't decent to listen in on a party when you were dying, he thought. But that wasn't the reason. Donegal, your chamber-pressure's dropping off. Your brains are in your butt-end, where a spacer's brains belong, but your butt-end died last month. She wants the window closed for her own sake, not yours.

"Leave it closed," he grunted. "But open it again before the moon-run blasts off. I want to listen."

She smiled and nodded, glancing at the clock. "It'll be an hour and a half yet. I'll watch the time."

"I hate that clock. I wish you'd throw it out. It's loud."

"It's your medicine-clock, Donny." She came back to sit down at his bedside again. She sat in silence. The clock filled the room with its clicking pulse.

"What time are they coming?" he asked.

"Nora and Ken? They'll be here soon. Don't fret."

"Why should I fret?" He chuckled. "That boy--he'll be a good spacer, won't he, Martha?"

Martha said nothing, fanned at a fly that crawled across his pillow. The fly buzzed up in an angry spiral and alighted on the ceiling. Donegal watched it for a time. The fly had natural-born space-legs. I know your tricks, he told it with a smile, and I learned to walk on the bottomside of things before you were a maggot. You stand there with your magnasoles hanging to the hull, and the rest of you's in free fall. You jerk a sole loose, and your knee flies up to your belly, and reaction spins you half-around and near throws your other hip out of joint if you don't jam the foot down fast and jerk up the other. It's worse'n trying to run through knee-deep mud with snow-shoes, and a man'll go nuts trying to keep his arms and legs from taking off in odd directions. I know your tricks, fly. But the fly was born with his magnasoles, and he trotted across the ceiling like Donegal never could.

"That boy Ken--he ought to make a damn good space-engineer," wheezed the old man.

Her silence was long, and he rolled his head toward her again. Her lips tight, she stared down at the palm of his hand, unfolded his bony fingers, felt the cracked calluses that still welted the shrunken skin, calluses worn there by the linings of space gauntlets and the handles of fuel valves, and the rungs of get-about ladders during free fall.

"I don't know if I should tell you," she said.

"Tell me what, Martha?"

She looked up slowly, scrutinizing his face. "Ken's changed his mind, Nora says. Ken doesn't like the academy. She says he wants to go to medical school."

Old Donegal thought it over, nodded absently. "That's fine. Space-medics get good pay." He watched her carefully.

She lowered her eyes, rubbed at his calluses again. She shook her head slowly. "He doesn't want to go to space."

The clock clicked loudly in the closed room.

"I thought I ought to tell you, so you won't say anything to him about it," she added.

Old Donegal looked grayer than before. After a long silence, he rolled his head away and looked toward the limp curtains.

"Open the window, Martha," he said.

Her tongue clucked faintly as she started to protest, but she said nothing. After frozen seconds, she sighed and went to open it. The curtains billowed, and a babble of conversation blew in from the terrace of the Keith mansion. With the sound came the occasional brassy discord of a musician tuning his instrument. She clutched the window-sash as if she wished to slam it closed again.

"Well! Music!" grunted Old Donegal. "That's good. This is some shebang. Good whiskey and good music and you." He chuckled, but it choked off into a fit of coughing.

"Donny, about Ken--"

"No matter, Martha," he said hastily. "Space-medic's pay is good."

"But, Donny--" She turned from the window, stared at him briefly, then said, "Sure, Donny, sure," and came back to sit down by his bed.

He smiled at her affectionately. She was a man's woman, was Martha--always had been, still was. He had married her the year he had gone to space--a lissome, wistful, old-fashioned lass, with big violet eyes and gentle hands and gentle thoughts--and she had never complained about the long and lonely weeks between blast-off and glide-down, when most spacers' wives listened to the psychiatrists and soap-operas and soon developed the symptoms that were expected of them, either because the symptoms were chic, or because they felt they should do something to earn the pity that was extended to them. "It's not so bad," Martha had assured him. "The house keeps me busy till Nora's home from school, and then there's a flock of kids around till dinner. Nights are a little empty, but if there's a moon, I can always go out on the porch and look at it and know where you are. And Nora gets out the telescope you built her, and we make a game of it. 'Seeing if Daddy's still at the office,' she calls it."

* * * * *

"Those were the days," he muttered.

"What, Donny?"

"Do you remember that Steve Farran song?"

She paused, frowning thoughtfully. There were a lot of Steve Farran songs, but after a moment she picked the right one, and sang it softly ...

"O moon whereo'er the clouds fly, Beyond the willow tree, There is a ramblin' space guy I wish you'd save for me.

"Mare Tranquillitatis, O dark and tranquil sea, Until he drops from heaven, Rest him there with thee ..."

Her voice cracked, and she laughed. Old Donegal chuckled weakly.

"Fried mush," he said. "That one made the cats wilt their ears and wail at the moon.

"I feel real crazy," he added. "Hand me the king kong, fluff-muff."

"Keep cool, Daddy-O, you've had enough." Martha reddened and patted his arm, looking pleased. Neither of them had talked that way, even in the old days, but the out-dated slang brought back memories--school parties, dances at the Rocketport Club, the early years of the war when Donegal had jockeyed an R-43 fighter in the close-space assaults against the Soviet satellite project. The memories were good.

A brassy blare of modern "slide" arose suddenly from the Keith terrace as the small orchestra launched into its first number. Martha caught an angry breath and started toward the window.

"Leave it," he said. "It's a party. Whiskey, Martha. Please--just a small one."

She gave him a hurtful glance.

"Whiskey. Then you can call the priest."

"Donny, it's not right. You know it's not right--to bargain for such as that."

"All right. Whiskey. Forget the priest."

She poured it for him, and helped him get it down, and then went out to make the phone-call. Old Donegal lay shuddering over the whiskey taste and savoring the burn in his throat. Jesus, but it was good.

You old bastard, he thought, you got no right to enjoy life when nine-tenths of you is dead already, and the rest is foggy as a thermal dust-rise on the lunar maria at hell-dawn. But it wasn't a bad way to die. It ate your consciousness away from the feet up; it gnawed away the Present, but it let you keep the Past, until everything faded and blended. Maybe that's what Eternity was, he thought--one man's subjective Past, all wrapped up and packaged for shipment, a single space-time entity, a one-man microcosm of memories, when nothing else remains.

"If I've got a soul, I made it myself," he told the gray nun at the foot of his bed.

The nun held out a pie pan, rattled a few coins in it. "Contribute to the Radiation Victims' Relief?" the nun purred softly.

"I know you," he said. "You're my conscience. You hang around the officers' mess, and when we get back from a sortie, you make us pay for the damage we did. But that was forty years ago."

The nun smiled, and her luminous eyes were on him softly. "Mother of God!" he breathed, and reached for the whiskey. His arm obeyed. The last drink had done him good. He had to watch his hand to see where it was going, and squeezed the neck until his fingers whitened so that he knew that he had it, but he got it off the table and onto his chest, and he got the cork out with his teeth. He had a long pull at the bottle, and it made his eyes water and his hands grow weak. But he got it back to the table without spilling a bit, and he was proud of himself.

The room was spinning like the cabin of a gyro-gravved ship. By the time he wrestled it to a standstill, the nun was gone. The blare of music from the Keith terrace was louder, and laughing voices blended with it. Chairs scraping and glasses rattling. A fine party, Keith, I'm glad you picked today. This shebang would be the younger Keith's affair. Ronald Tonwyler Keith, III, scion of Orbital Engineering and Construction Company--builders of the moon-shuttle ships that made the run from the satellite station to Luna and back.

It's good to have such important neighbors, he thought. He wished he had been able to meet them while he was still up and about. But the Keiths' place was walled-in, and when a Keith came out, he charged out in a limousine with a chauffeur at the wheel, and the iron gate closed again. The Keiths built the wall when the surrounding neighborhood began to grow shabby with age. It had once been the best of neighborhoods, but that was before Old Donegal lived in it. Now it consisted of sooty old houses and rented flats, and the Keith place was really not a part of it anymore. Nevertheless, it was really something when a pensioned blastman could say, "I live out close to the Keiths--you know, the Ronald Keiths." At least, that's what Martha always told him.

The music was so loud that he never heard the doorbell ring, but when a lull came, he heard Nora's voice downstairs, and listened hopefully for Ken's. But when they came up, the boy was not with them.

"Hello, skinny-britches," he greeted his daughter.

Nora grinned and came over to kiss him. Her hair dangled about his face, and he noticed that it was blacker than usual, with the gray streaks gone from it again.

"You smell good," he said.

"You don't, Pops. You smell like a sot. Naughty!"

"Where's Ken?"

She moistened her lips nervously and looked away. "He couldn't come. He had to take a driver's lesson. He really couldn't help it. If he didn't go, he'd lose his turn, and then he wouldn't finish before he goes back to the academy." She looked at him apologetically.

"It's all right, Nora."

"If he missed it, he wouldn't get his copter license until summer."

"It's okay. Copters! Hell, the boy should be in jets by now!"

Several breaths passed in silence. She gazed absently toward the window and shook her head. "No jets, Pop. Not for Ken."

He glowered at her. "Listen! How'll he get into space? He's got to get his jet licenses first. Can't get in rockets without 'em."

Nora shot a quick glance at her mother. Martha rolled her eyes as if sighing patiently. Nora went to the window to stare down toward the Keith terrace. She tucked a cigaret between scarlet lips, lit it, blew nervous smoke against the pane.

"Mom, can't you call them and have that racket stopped?"

"Donny says he likes it."

Nora's eyes flitted over the scene below. "Female butterflies and puppy-dogs in sport jackets. And the cadets." She snorted. "Cadets! Imagine Ron Keith the Third ever going to space. The old man buys his way into the academy, and they throw a brawl as if Ronny passed the Compets."

"Maybe he did," growled Old Donegal.

"Hah!"

"They live in a different world, I guess," Martha sighed.

"If it weren't for men like Pops, they'd never've made their fortune."

"I like the music, I tell you," grumbled the old man.

"I'm half-a-mind to go over there and tell them off," Nora murmured.

"Let them alone. Just so they'll stop the racket for blast-away."

"Look at them!--polite little pattern-cuts, all alike. They take pre-space, because it's the thing to do. Then they quit before the pay-off comes."

"How do you know they'll quit?"

"That party--I bet it cost six months' pay, spacer's pay," she went on, ignoring him. "And what do real spacers get? Oley gets killed, and Pop's pension wouldn't feed the Keiths' cat."

"You don't understand, girl."

"I lost Oley. I understand enough."

* * * * *

He watched her silently for a moment, then closed his eyes. It was no good trying to explain, no good trying to tell her the dough didn't mean a damn thing. She'd been a spacer's wife, and that was bad enough, but now she was a spacer's widow. And Oley? Oley's tomb revolved around the sun in an eccentric orbit that spun-in close to Mercury, then reached out into the asteroid belt, once every 725 days. When it came within rocket radius of Earth, it whizzed past at close to fifteen miles a second.

You don't rescue a ship like that, skinny-britches, my darling daughter. Nor do you salvage it after the crew stops screaming for help. If you use enough fuel to catch it, you won't get back. You just leave such a ship there forever, like an asteroid, and it's a damn shame about the men trapped aboard. Heroes all, no doubt--but the smallness of the widow's monthly check failed to confirm the heroism, and Nora was bitter about the price of Oley's memory, perhaps.

Ouch! Old Donegal, you know she's not like that. It's just that she can't understand about space. You ought to make her understand.

But did he really understand himself? You ride hot in a roaring blastroom, hands tense on the mixer controls and the pumps, eyes glued to instruments, body sucked down in a four-gravity thrust, and wait for the command to choke it off. Then you float free and weightless in a long nightmare as the beast coasts moonward, a flung javelin.

The "romance" of space--drivel written in the old days. When you're not blasting, you float in a cramped hotbox, crawl through dirty mazes of greasy pipe and cable to tighten a lug, scratch your arms and bark your shins, get sick and choked up because no gravity helps your gullet get the food down. Liquid is worse, but you gag your whiskey down because you have to.

Stars?--you see stars by squinting through a viewing lens, and it's like a photo-transparency, and if you aren't careful, you'll get an eyeful of Old Blinder and back off with a punch-drunk retina.

Adventure?--unless the skipper calls for course-correction, you float around in the blast-cubicle with damn little to do between blast-away and moon-down, except sweat out the omniscient accident statistics. If the beast blows up or gets gutted in space, a statistic had your name on it, that's all, and there's no fighting back. You stay outwardly sane because you're a hog for punishment; if you weren't, you'd never get past the psychologists.

"Did you like horror movies when you were a kid?" asked the psych. And you'd damn well better answer "yes," if you want to go to space.

* * * * *

Tell her, old man, you're her pop. Tell her why it's worth it, if you know. You jail yourself in a coffin-size cubicle, and a crazy beast thunders berserk for uncontrollable seconds, and then you soar in ominous silence for the long, long hours. Grow sweaty, filthy, sick, miserable, idle--somewhere out in Big Empty, where Man's got no business except the trouble he always makes for himself wherever he goes. Tell her why it's worth it, for pay less than a good bricklayer's. Tell her why Oley would do it again.

"It's a sucker's run, Nora," he said. "You go looking for kicks, but the only kicks you get to keep is what Oley got. God knows why--but it's worth it."

Nora said nothing. He opened his eyes slowly. Nora was gone. Had she been there at all?

He blinked around at the fuzzy room, and dissolved the shifting shadows that sometimes emerged as old friendly faces, grinning at him. He found Martha.

"You went to sleep," said Martha. "She had to go. Kennie called. He'll be over later, if you're not too tired."

"I'm not tired. I'm all head. There's nothing much to get tired."

"I love you, Old Donegal."

"Hold my hand again."

"I'm holding it, old man."

"Then hold me where I can feel it."

She slid a thin arm under his neck, and bent over his face to kiss him. She was crying a little, and he was glad she could do it now without fleeing the room.

"Can I talk about dying now?" he wondered aloud.

She pinched her lips together and shook her head.

"I lie to myself, Martha. You know how much I lie to myself?"

She nodded slowly and stroked his gray temples.

"I lie to myself about Ken, and about dying. If Ken turned spacer, I wouldn't die--that's what I told myself. You know?"

She shook her head. "Don't talk, Donny, please."

"A man makes his own soul, Martha."

"That's not true. You shouldn't say things like that."

"A man makes his own soul, but it dies with him, unless he can pour it into his kids and his grandchildren before he goes. I lied to myself. Ken's a yellow-belly. Nora made him one, and the boots won't fit."

"Don't, Donny. You'll excite yourself again."

"I was going to give him the boots--the over-boots with magnasoles. But they won't fit him. They won't ever fit him. He's a lily-livered lap-dog, and he whines. Bring me my boots, woman."

"Donny!"

"The boots, they're in my locker in the attic. I want them."

"What on earth!"

"Bring me my goddam space boots and put them on my feet. I'm going to wear them."

"You can't; the priest's coming."

"Well, get them anyway. What time is it? You didn't let me sleep through the moon-run blast, did you?"

She shook her head. "It's half an hour yet ... I'll get the boots if you promise not to make me put them on you."

"I want them on."

"You can't, until Father Paul's finished."

"Do I have to get my feet buttered?"

She sighed. "I wish you wouldn't say things like that. I wish you wouldn't, Donny. It's sacrilege, you know it is."

"All right--'anointed'," he corrected wearily.

"Yes, you do."

"The boots, woman, the boots."

She went to get them. While she was gone, the doorbell rang, and he heard her quick footsteps on the stairs, and then Father Paul's voice asking about the patient. Old Donegal groaned inwardly. After the priest, the doctor would come, at the usual time, to see if he were dead yet. The doctor had let him come home from the hospital to die, and the doctor was getting impatient. Why don't they let me alone? he growled. Why don't they let me handle it in my own way, and stop making a fuss over it? I can die and do a good job of it without a lot of outside interference, and I wish they'd quit picking at me with syringes and sacraments and enemas. All he wanted was a chance to listen to the orchestra on the Keith terrace, to drink the rest of his whiskey, and to hear the beast blast-away for the satellite on the first lap of the run to Luna.

* * * * *

It's going to be my last day, he thought. My eyes are going fuzzy, and I can't breathe right, and the throbbing's hurting my head. Whether he lived through the night wouldn't matter, because delirium was coming over him, and then there would be the coma, and the symbolic fight to keep him pumping and panting. I'd rather die tonight and get it over with, he thought, but they probably won't let me go.

He heard their voices coming up the stairs ...

"Nora tried to get them to stop it, Father, but she couldn't get in to see anybody but the butler. He told her he'd tell Mrs. Keith, but nothing happened. It's just as loud as before."

"Well, as long as Donny doesn't mind--"

"He just says that. You know how he is."

"What're they celebrating, Martha?"

"Young Ronald's leaving--for pre-space training. It's a going-away affair." They paused in the doorway. The small priest smiled in at Donegal and nodded. He set his black bag on the floor inside, winked solemnly at the patient.

"I'll leave you two alone," said Martha. She closed the door and her footsteps wandered off down the hall.

Donegal and the young priest eyed each other warily.

"You look like hell, Donegal," the padre offered jovially. "Feeling nasty?"

"Skip the small talk. Let's get this routine over with."

The priest humphed thoughtfully, sauntered across to the bed, gazed down at the old man disinterestedly. "What's the matter? Don't want the 'routine'? Rather play it tough?"

"What's the difference?" he growled. "Hurry up and get out. I want to hear the beast blast off."

"You won't be able to," said the priest, glancing at the window, now closed again. "That's quite a racket next door."

"They'd better stop for it. They'd better quiet down for it. They'll have to turn it off for five minutes or so."

"Maybe they won't."

It was a new idea, and it frightened him. He liked the music, and the party's gaiety, the nearness of youth and good times--but it hadn't occurred to him that it wouldn't stop so he could hear the beast.

"Don't get upset, Donegal. You know what a blast-off sounds like."

"But it's the last one. The last time. I want to hear."

"How do you know it's the last time?"

"Hell, don't I know when I'm kicking off?"

"Maybe, maybe not. It's hardly your decision."

"It's not, eh?" Old Donegal fumed. "Well, bigawd you'd think it wasn't. You'd think it was Martha's and yours and that damfool medic's. You'd think I got no say-so. Who's doing it anyway?"

"I would guess," Father Paul grunted sourly, "that Providence might appreciate His fair share of the credit."

Old Donegal made a surly noise and hunched his head back into the pillow to glower.

"You want me?" the priest asked. "Or is this just a case of wifely conscience?"

"What's the difference? Give me the business and scram."

"No soap. Do you want the sacrament, or are you just being kind to your wife? If it's for Martha, I'll go now."

Old Donegal glared at him for a time, then wilted. The priest brought his bag to the bedside.

"Bless me, father, for I have sinned."

"Bless you, son."

"I accuse myself ..."

* * * * *

Tension, anger, helplessness--they had piled up on him, and now he was feeling the after-effects. Vertigo, nausea, and the black confetti--a bad spell. The whiskey--if he could only reach the whiskey. Then he remembered he was receiving a Sacrament, and struggled to get on with it. Tell him, old man, tell him of your various rottennesses and vile transgressions, if you can remember some. A sin is whatever you're sorry for, maybe. But Old Donegal, you're sorry for the wrong things, and this young jesuitical gadget wouldn't like listening to it. I'm sorry I didn't get it instead of Oley, and I'm sorry I fought in the war, and I'm sorry I can't get out of this bed and take a belt to my daughter's backside for making a puny whelp out of Ken, and I'm sorry I gave Martha such a rough time all these years--and wound up dying in a cheap flat, instead of giving her things like the Keiths had. I wish I had been a sharpster, contractor, or thief ... instead of a common laboring spacer, whose species lost its glamor after the war.

Listen, old man, you made your soul yourself, and it's yours. This young dispenser of oils, substances, and mysteries wishes only to help you scrape off the rough edges and gouge out the bad spots. He will not steal it, nor distort it with his supernatural chisels, nor make fun of it. He can take nothing away, but only cauterize and neutralize, he says, so why not let him try? Tell him the rotten messes.

"Are you finished, my son?"

Old Donegal nodded wearily, and said what he was asked to say, and heard the soft mutter of Latin that washed him inside and behind his ghostly ears ... ego te absolvo in Nomine Patris ... and he accepted the rest of it lying quietly in the candlelight and the red glow of the sunset through the window, while the priest anointed him and gave him bread, and read the words of the soul in greeting its spouse: "I was asleep, but my heart waked; it is the voice of my beloved calling: come to me my love, my dove, my undefiled ..." and from beyond the closed window came the sarcastic wail of a clarinet painting hot slides against a rhythmic background.

It wasn't so bad, Old Donegal thought when the priest was done. He felt like a schoolboy in a starched shirt on Sunday morning, and it wasn't a bad feeling, though it left him weak.

The priest opened the window for him again, and repacked his bag. "Ten minutes till blast-off," he said. "I'll see what I can do about the racket next door."

When he was gone, Martha came back in, and he looked at her face and was glad. She was smiling when she kissed him, and she looked less tired.

"Is it all right for me to die now?" he grunted.

"Donny, don't start that again."

"Where's the boots? You promised to bring them?"

"They're in the hall. Donny, you don't want them."

"I want them, and I want a drink of whiskey, and I want to hear them fire the beast." He said it slow and hard, and he left no room for argument.

When she had got the huge boots over his shrunken feet, the magnasoles clanged against the iron bedframe and clung there, and she rolled him up so that he could look at them, and Old Donegal chuckled inside. He felt warm and clean and pleasantly dizzy.

"The whiskey, Martha, and for God's sake, make them stop the noise till after the firing. Please!"

She went to the window and looked out for a long time. Then she came back and poured him an insignificant drink.

"Well?"

"I don't know," she said. "I saw Father Paul on the terrace, talking to somebody."

"Is it time?"

She glanced at the clock, looked at him doubtfully, and nodded. "Nearly time."

The orchestra finished a number, but the babble of laughing voices continued. Old Donegal sagged. "They won't do it. They're the Keiths, Martha. Why should I ruin their party?"

She turned to stare at him, slowly shook her head. He heard someone shouting, but then a trumpet started softly, introducing a new number. Martha sucked in a hurt breath, pressed her hands together, and hurried from the room.

"It's too late," he said after her.

Her footsteps stopped on the stairs. The trumpet was alone. Donegal listened; and there was no babble of voices, and the rest of the orchestra was silent. Only the trumpet sang--and it puzzled him, hearing the same slow bugle-notes of the call played at the lowering of the colors.

The trumpet stopped suddenly. Then he knew it had been for him.

A brief hush--then thunder came from the blast-station two miles to the west. First the low reverberation, rattling the windows, then the rising growl as the sleek beast knifed skyward on a column of blue-white hell. It grew and grew until it drowned the distant traffic sounds and dominated the silence outside.

Quit crying, you old fool, you maudlin ass ...

"My boots," he whispered, "my boots ... please ..."

"You've got them on, Donny."

He sank quietly then. He closed his eyes and let his heart go up with the beast, and he sank into the gravity padding of the blastroom, and Caid was with him, and Oley. And when Ronald Keith, III, instructed the orchestra to play Blastroom Man, after the beast's rumble had waned, Old Donegal was on his last moon-run, and he was grinning. He'd had a good day.

Martha went to the window to stare out at the thin black trail that curled starward above the blast-station through the twilight sky. Guests on the terrace were watching it too.

The doorbell rang. That would be Ken, too late. She closed the window against the chill breeze, and went back to the bed. The boots, the heavy, clumsy boots--they clung to the bedframe, with his feet half out of them. She took them off gently and set them out of company's sight. Then she went to answer the door.

Contents

THE PEOPLE OF THE CRATER

By Andre Norton

"Send the Black Throne to dust; conquer the Black Ones, and bring the Daughter from the Caves of Darkness." These were the tasks Garin must perform to fulfill the prophecy of the Ancient Ones--and establish his own destiny in this hidden land!

CHAPTER ONE

Through the Blue Haze

Six months and three days after the Peace of Shanghai was signed and the great War of 1965-1970 declared at an end by an exhausted world, a young man huddled on a park bench in New York, staring miserably at the gravel beneath his badly worn shoes. He had been trained to fill the pilot's seat in the control cabin of a fighting plane and for nothing else. The search for a niche in civilian life had cost him both health and ambition.

A newcomer dropped down on the other end of the bench. The flyer studied him bitterly. He had decent shoes, a warm coat, and that air of satisfaction with the world which is the result of economic security. Although he was well into middle age, the man had a compact grace of movement and an air of alertness.

"Aren't you Captain Garin Featherstone?"

Startled, the flyer nodded dumbly.

From a plump billfold the man drew a clipping and waved it toward his seat mate. Two years before, Captain Garin Featherstone of the United Democratic Forces had led a perilous bombing raid into the wilds of Siberia to wipe out the vast expeditionary army secretly gathering there. It had been a spectacular affair and had brought the survivors some fleeting fame.

"You're the sort of chap I've been looking for," the stranger folded the clipping again, "a flyer with courage, initiative and brains. The man who led that raid is worth investing in."

"What's the proposition?" asked Featherstone wearily. He no longer believed in luck.

"I'm Gregory Farson," the other returned as if that should answer the question.

"The Antarctic man!"

"Just so. As you have probably heard, I was halted on the eve of my last expedition by the sudden spread of war to this country. Now I am preparing to sail south again."

"But I don't see--"

"How you can help me? Very simple, Captain Featherstone. I need pilots. Unfortunately the war has disposed of most of them. I'm lucky to contact one such as yourself--"

* * * * *

And it was as simple as that. But Garin didn't really believe that it was more than a dream until they touched the glacial shores of the polar continent some months later. As they brought ashore the three large planes, he began to wonder at the driving motive behind Farson's vague plans.

When the supply ship sailed, not to return for a year, Farson called them together. Three of the company were pilots, all war veterans, and two were engineers who spent most of their waking hours engrossed in the maps Farson produced.

* * * * *

"Tomorrow," the leader glanced from face to face, "we start inland. Here--" On a map spread before him he indicated a line marked in purple.

"Ten years ago I was a member of the Verdane expedition. Once, when flying due south, our plane was caught by some freakish air current and drawn off its course. When we were totally off our map, we saw in the distance a thick bluish haze. It seemed to rise in a straight line from the ice plain to the sky. Unfortunately our fuel was low and we dared not risk a closer investigation. So we fought our way back to the base.

"Verdane, however, had little interest in our report and we did not investigate it. Three years ago that Kattack expedition, hunting oil deposits by the order of the Dictator, reported seeing the same haze. This time we are going to explore it!"

"Why," Garin asked curiously, "are you so eager to penetrate this haze?--I gather that's what we're to do--"

Farson hesitated before answering. "It has often been suggested that beneath the ice sheeting of this continent may be hidden mineral wealth. I believe that the haze is caused by some form of volcanic activity, and perhaps a break in the crust."

Garin frowned at the map. He wasn't so sure about that explanation, but Farson was paying the bills. The flyer shrugged away his uneasiness. Much could be forgiven a man who allowed one to eat regularly again.

Four days later they set out. Helmly, one of the engineers, Rawlson, a pilot, and Farson occupied the first plane. The other engineer and pilot were in the second and Garin, with the extra supplies, was alone in the third.

He was content to be alone as they took off across the blue-white waste. His ship, because of its load, was loggy, so he did not attempt to follow the other two into the higher lane. They were in communication by radio and Garin, as he snapped on his earphones, remembered something Farson had said that morning:

"The haze affects radio. On our trip near it the static was very bad. Almost," with a laugh, "like speech in some foreign tongue."

As they roared over the ice Garin wondered if it might have been speech--from, perhaps, a secret enemy expedition, such as the Kattack one.

In his sealed cockpit he did not feel the bite of the frost and the ship rode smoothly. With a little sigh of content he settled back against the cushions, keeping to the course set by the planes ahead and above him.

Some five hours after they left the base, Garin caught sight of a dark shadow far ahead. At the same time Farson's voice chattered in his earphones.

"That's it. Set course straight ahead."

The shadow grew until it became a wall of purple-blue from earth to sky. The first plane was quite close to it, diving down into the vapor. Suddenly the ship rocked violently and swung earthward as if out of control. Then it straightened and turned back. Garin could hear Farson demanding to know what was the matter. But from the first plane there was no reply.

As Farson's plane kept going Garin throttled down. The actions of the first ship indicated trouble. What if that haze were a toxic gas?

"Close up, Featherstone!" barked Farson suddenly.

He obediently drew ahead until they flew wing to wing. The haze was just before them and now Garin could see movement in it, oily, impenetrable billows. The motors bit into it. There was clammy, foggy moisture on the windows.

Abruptly Garin sensed that he was no longer alone. Somewhere in the empty cabin behind him was another intelligence, a measuring power. He fought furiously against it--against the very idea of it. But, after a long, terrifying moment while it seemed to study him, it took control. His hands and feet still manipulated the ship, but it flew!

On the ship hurtled through the thickening mist. He lost sight of Farson's plane. And, though he was still fighting against the will which over-rode his, his struggles grew weaker. Then came the order to dive into the dark heart of the purple mists.

* * * * *

Down they whirled. Once, as the haze opened, Garin caught a glimpse of tortured gray rock seamed with yellow. Farson had been right: here the ice crust was broken.

Down and down. If his instruments were correct the plane was below sea level now. The haze thinned and was gone. Below spread a plain cloaked in vivid green. Here and there reared clumps of what might be trees. He saw, too, the waters of a yellow stream.

But there was something terrifyingly alien about that landscape. Even as he circled above it, Garin wrested to break the grip of the will that had brought him there. There came a crackle of sound in his earphones and at that moment the Presence withdrew.

The nose of the plane went up in obedience to his own desire. Frantically he climbed away from the green land. Again the haze absorbed him. He watched the moisture bead on the windows. Another hundred feet or so and he would be free of it--and that unbelievable world beneath.

Then, with an ominous sputter, the port engine conked out. The plane lurched and slipped into a dive. Down it whirled again into the steady light of the green land.

Trees came out of the ground, huge fern-like plants with crimson scaled trunks. Toward a clump of these the plane swooped.

Frantically Garin fought the controls. The ship steadied, the dive became a fast glide. He looked for an open space to land. Then he felt the landing gear scrape some surface. Directly ahead loomed one of the fern trees. The plane sped toward the long fronds. There came a ripping crash, the splintering of metal and wood. The scarlet cloud gathering before Garin's eyes turned black.

CHAPTER TWO

The Folk of Tav

Garin returned to consciousness through a red mist of pain. He was pinned in the crumpled mass of metal which had once been the cabin. Through a rent in the wall close to his head thrust a long spike of green, shredded leaves still clinging to it. He lay and watched it, not daring to move lest the pain prove more than he could bear.

It was then that he heard the pattering sound outside. It seemed as if soft hands were pushing and pulling at the wreck. The tree branch shook and a portion of the cabin wall dropped away with a clang.

Garin turned his head slowly. Through the aperture was clambering a goblin figure.

It stood about five feet tall, and it walked upon its hind legs in human fashion, but the legs were short and stumpy, ending in feet with five toes of equal length. Slender, shapely arms possessed small hands with only four digits. The creature had a high, well-rounded forehead but no chin, the face being distinctly lizard-like in contour. The skin was a dull black, with a velvety surface. About its loins it wore a short kilt of metallic cloth, the garment being supported by a jeweled belt of exquisite workmanship.

For a long moment the apparition eyed Garin. And it was those golden eyes, fixed unwinkingly on his, which banished the flyer's fear. There was nothing but great pity in their depths.

The lizard-man stooped and brushed the sweat-dampened hair from Garin's forehead. Then he fingered the bonds of metal which held the flyer, as if estimating their strength. Having done so, he turned to the opening and apparently gave an order, returning again to squat by Garin.

Two more of his kind appeared to tear away the ruins of the cockpit. Though they were very careful, Garin fainted twice before they had freed him. He was placed on a litter swung between two clumsy beasts which might have been small elephants, except that they lacked trunks and possessed four tusks each.

They crossed the plain to the towering mouth of a huge cavern where the litter was taken up by four of the lizard-folk. The flyer lay staring up at the roof of the cavern. In the black stone had been carved fronds and flowers in bewildering profusion. Shining motes, giving off faint light, sifted through the air. At times as they advanced, these gathered in clusters and the light grew brighter.

Midway down a long corridor the bearers halted while their leader pulled upon a knob on the wall. An oval door swung back and the party passed through.

They came into a round room, the walls of which had been fashioned of creamy quartz veined with violet. At the highest point in the ceiling a large globe of the motes hung, furnishing soft light below.

Two lizard-men, clad in long robes, conferred with the leader of the flyer's party before coming to stand over Garin. One of the robed ones shook his head at the sight of the flyer's twisted body and waved the litter on into an inner chamber.

Here the walls were dull blue and in the exact center was a long block of quartz. By this the litter was put down and the bearers disappeared. With sharp knives the robed men cut away furs and leather to expose Garin's broken body.

They lifted him to the quartz table and there made him fast with metal bonds. Then one of them went to the wall and pulled a gleaming rod. From the dome of the roof shot an eerie blue light to beat upon Garin's helpless body. There followed a tingling through every muscle and joint, a prickling sensation in his skin, but soon his pain vanished as if it had never been.

The light flashed off and the three lizard-men gathered around him. He was wrapped in a soft robe and carried to another room. This, too, was circular, shaped like the half of a giant bubble. The floor sloped toward the center where there was a depression filled with cushions. There they laid Garin. At the top of the bubble, a pinkish cloud formed. He watched it drowsily until he fell asleep.

Something warm stirred against his bare shoulder. He opened his eyes, for a moment unable to remember where he was. Then there was a plucking at the robe twisted about him and he looked down.

If the lizard-folk had been goblin in their grotesqueness this visitor was elfin. It was about three feet high, its monkey-like body completely covered with silky white hair. The tiny hands were human in shape and hairless, but its feet were much like a cat's paws. From either side of the small round head branched large fan-shaped ears. The face was furred and boasted stiff cat whiskers on the upper lip. These Anas, as Garin learned later, were happy little creatures, each one choosing some mistress or master among the Folk, as this one had come to him. They were content to follow their big protector, speechless with delight at trifling gifts. Loyal and brave, they could do simple tasks or carry written messages for their chosen friend, and they remained with him until death. They were neither beast nor human, but rumored to be the result of some experiment carried out eons ago by the Ancient Ones.

After patting Garin's shoulder the Ana touched the flyer's hair wonderingly, comparing the bronze lengths with its own white fur. Since the Folk were hairless, hair was a strange sight in the Caverns. With a contented purr, it rubbed its head against his hand.

With a sudden click a door in the wall opened. The Ana got to its feet and ran to greet the newcomers. The chieftain of the Folk, he who had first discovered Garin, entered, followed by several of his fellows.

The flyer sat up. Not only was the pain gone but he felt stronger and younger than he had for weary months. Exultingly, he stretched wide his arms and grinned at the lizard-being who murmured happily in return.

Lizard-men busied themselves about Garin, girding on him the short kilt and jewel-set belt which were the only clothing of the Caverns. When they were finished, the chieftain took his hand and drew him to the door.

They traversed a hallway whose walls were carved and inlaid with glittering stones and metalwork, coming, at last, into a huge cavern, the outer walls of which were hidden by shadows. On a dais stood three tall thrones and Garin was conducted to the foot of these.

The highest throne was of rose crystal. On its right was one of green jade, worn smooth by centuries of time. At the left was the third, carved of a single block of jet. The rose throne and that of jet were unoccupied, but in the seat of jade reposed one of the Folk. He was taller than his fellows, and in his eyes, as he stared at Garin, was wisdom--and a brooding sadness.

"It is well!" The words resounded in the flyer's head. "We have chosen wisely. This youth is fit to mate with the Daughter. But he will be tried, as fire tries metal. He must win the Daughter forth and strive with Kepta--"

A hissing murmur echoed through the hall. Garin guessed that hundreds of the Folk must be gathered there.

"Urg!" the being on the throne commanded.

The chieftain moved a step toward the dais.

"Do you take this youth and instruct him. And then will I speak with him again. For--" sadness colored the words now--"we would have the rose throne filled again and the black one blasted into dust. Time moves swiftly."

The Chieftain led a wondering Garin away.

CHAPTER THREE

Garin Hears of the Black Ones

Urg brought the flyer into one of the bubble-shaped rooms which contained a low, cushioned bench facing a metal screen--and here they seated themselves.

What followed was a language lesson. On the screen appeared objects which Urg would name, to have his sibilant uttering repeated by Garin. As the American later learned, the ray treatment he had undergone had quickened his mental powers, and in an incredibly short time he had a working vocabulary.

Judging by the pictures the lizard folk were the rulers of the crater world, although there were other forms of life there. The elephant-like Tand was a beast of burden, the squirrel-like Eron lived underground and carried on a crude agriculture in small clearings, coming shyly twice a year to exchange grain for a liquid rubber produced by the Folk.

Then there was the Gibi, a monstrous bee, also friendly to the lizard people. It supplied the cavern dwellers with wax, and in return the Folk gave the Gibi colonies shelter during the unhealthful times of the Great Mists.

Highly civilized were the Folk. They did no work by hand, except the finer kinds of jewel setting and carving. Machines wove their metal cloth, machines prepared their food, harvested their fields, hollowed out new dwellings.

Freed from manual labor they had turned to acquiring knowledge. Urg projected on the screen pictures of vast laboratories and great libraries of scientific lore. But all they knew in the beginning, they had learned from the Ancient Ones, a race unlike themselves, which had preceded them in sovereignty over Tav. Even the Folk themselves were the result of constant forced evolution and experimentation carried on by these Ancient Ones.

All this wisdom was guarded most carefully, but against what or whom, Urg could not tell, although he insisted that the danger was very real. There was something within the blue wall of the crater which disputed the Folk's rule.

As Garin tried to probe further a gong sounded. Urg arose.

"It is the hour of eating," he announced. "Let us go."

They came to a large room where a heavy table of white stone stretched along three walls, benches before it. Urg seated himself and pressed a knob on the table, motioning Garin to do likewise. The wall facing them opened and two trays slid out. There was a platter of hot meat covered with rich sauce, a stone bowl of grain porridge and a cluster of fruit, still fastened to a leafy branch. This the Ana eyed so wistfully that Garin gave it to the creature.

The Folk ate silently and arose quietly when they had finished, their trays vanishing back through the wall. Garin noticed only males in the room and recalled that he had, as yet, seen no females among the Folk. He ventured a question.

Urg chuckled. "So, you think there are no women in the Caverns? Well, we shall go to the Hall of Women that you may see."

To the Hall of Women they went. It was breath-taking in its richness, stones worth a nation's ransom sparkling from its domed roof and painted walls. Here were the matrons and maidens of the Folk, their black forms veiled in robes of silver net, each cross strand of which was set with a tiny gem, so that they appeared to be wrapped in glittering scales.

There were not many of them--a hundred perhaps. And a few led by the hand smaller editions of themselves, who stared at Garin with round yellow eyes and chewed black fingertips shyly.

The women were intrusted with the finest jewel work, and with pride they showed the stranger their handiwork. At the far end of the hall was a wonderous thing in the making. One of the silver nets, which were the foundations of their robes, was fastened there and three of the women were putting small rose jewels into each microscopic setting. Here and there they had varied the pattern with tiny emeralds or flaming opals, so that the finished portion was a rainbow.

One of the workers smoothed the robe and glanced up at Garin, a gentle teasing in her voice as she explained:

"This is for the Daughter when she comes to her throne."

The Daughter! What had the Lord of the Folk said? "This youth is fit to mate with the Daughter." But Urg had said that the Ancient Ones had gone from Tav.

"Who is the Daughter?" he demanded.

"Thrala of the Light."

"Where is she?"

The woman shivered and there was fear in her eyes. "Thrala lies in the Caves of Darkness."

"The Caves of Darkness!" Did she mean Thrala was dead? Was he, Garin Featherstone, to be the victim of some rite of sacrifice which was designed to unite him with the dead?

Urg touched his arm. "Not so. Thrala has not yet entered the Place of Ancestors."

"You know my thoughts?"

Urg laughed. "Thoughts are easy to read. Thrala lives. Sera served the Daughter as handmaiden while she was yet among us. Sera, do you show us Thrala as she was."

The woman crossed to a wall where there was a mirror such as Urg had used for his language lesson. She gazed into it and then beckoned the flyer to stand beside her.

The mirror misted and then he was looking, as if through a window, into a room with walls and ceiling of rose quartz. On the floor were thick rugs of silver rose. And a great heap of cushions made a low couch in the center.

"The inner chamber of the Daughter," Sera announced.

* * * * *

A circular panel in the wall opened and a woman slipped through. She was very young, little more than a girl. There were happy curves in her full crimson lips, joyous lights in her violet eyes.

She was human of shape, but her beauty was unearthly. Her skin was pearl white and other colors seemed to play faintly upon it, so that it reminded Garin of mother-of-pearl with its lights and shadows. The hair, which veiled her as a cloud, was blue-black and reached below her knees. She was robed in the silver net of the Folk and there was a heavy girdle of rose-shaded jewels about her slender waist.

"That was Thrala before the Black Ones took her," said Sera.

Garin uttered a cry of disappointment as the picture vanished. Urg laughed.

"What care you for shadows when the Daughter herself waits for you? You have but to bring her from the Caves of Darkness--"

"Where are these Caves--" Garin's question was interrupted by the pealing of the Cavern gong. Sera cried out:

"The Black Ones!"

Urg shrugged. "When they spared not the Ancient Ones how could we hope to escape? Come, we must go to the Hall of Thrones."

Before the jade throne of the Lord of the Folk stood a small group of the lizard-men beside two litters. As Garin entered the Lord spoke.

"Let the outlander come hither that he may see the work of the Black Ones."

Garin advanced unwillingly, coming to stand by those struggling things which gasped their message between moans and screams of agony. They were men of the Folk but their black skins were green with rot.

The Lord leaned forward on his throne. "It is well," he said. "You may depart."

As if obeying his command, the tortured things let go of the life to which they had clung and were still.

"Look upon the work of the Black Ones," the ruler said to Garin. "Jiv and Betv were captured while on a mission to the Gibi of the Cliff. It seems that the Black Ones needed material for their laboratories. They seek even to give the Daughter to their workers of horror!"

A terrible cry of hatred arose from the hall, and Garin's jaw set. To give that fair vision he had just seen to such a death as this--!

"Jiv and Betv were imprisoned close to the Daughter and they heard the threats of Kepta. Our brothers, stricken with foul disease, were sent forth to carry the plague to us, but they swam through the pool of boiling mud. They have died, but the evil died with them. And I think that while we breed such as they, the Black Ones shall not rest easy. Listen now, outlander, to the story of the Black Ones and the Caves of Darkness, of how the Ancient Ones brought the Folk up from the slime of a long dried sea and made them great, and of how the Ancient Ones at last went down to their destruction."

CHAPTER FOUR

The Defeat of the Ancient Ones

"In the days before the lands of the outer world were born of the sea, before even the Land of the Sun (Mu) and the Land of the Sea (Atlantis) arose from molten rock and sand, there was land here in the far south. A sere land of rock plains, and swamps where slimy life mated, lived and died.

"Then came the Ancient Ones from beyond the stars. Their race was already older than this earth. Their wise men had watched its birth-rending from the sun. And when their world perished, taking most of their blood into nothingness, a handful fled hither.

"But when they climbed from their space ship it was into hell. For they had gained, in place of their loved home, bare rock and stinking slime.

"They blasted out this Tav and entered into it with the treasures of their flying ships and also certain living creatures captured in the swamps. From these, they produced the Folk, the Gibi, the Tand, and the land-tending Eron.

"Among these, the Folk were eager for wisdom and climbed high. But still the learning of the Ancient Ones remained beyond their grasp.

"During the eons the Ancient Ones dwelt within their protecting wall of haze the outer world changed. Cold came to the north and south; the Land of Sun and the Land of Sea arose to bear the foot of true man. On their mirrors of seeing the Ancient Ones watched man-life spread across the world. They had the power of prolonging life, but still the race was dying. From without must come new blood. So certain men were summoned from the Land of the Sun. Then the race flourished for a space.

"The Ancient Ones decided to leave Tav for the outer world. But the sea swallowed the Land of Sun. Again, in the time of the Land of Sea, the stock within Tav was replenished and the Ancient Ones prepared for exodus; again the sea cheated them.

"Those men left in the outer world reverted to savagery. Since the Ancient Ones would not mingle their blood with that of almost beasts, they built the haze wall stronger and remained. But a handful of them were attracted by the forbidden, and secretly they summoned the beast men. Of that monstrous mating came the Black Ones. They live but for the evil they may do, and the power which they acquired is debased and used to forward cruelty.

"At first their sin was not discovered. When it was, the others would have slain the offspring but for the law which forbids them to kill. They must use their power for good or it departs from them. So they drove the Black Ones to the southern end of Tav and gave them the Caves of Darkness. Never were the Black Ones to come north of the River of Gold--nor were the Ancient Ones to go south of it.

"For perhaps two thousand years the Black Ones kept the law. But they worked, building powers of destruction. While matters rested thus, the Ancient Ones searched the world, seeking men by whom they could renew the race. Once there came men from an island far to the north. Six lived to penetrate the mists and take wives among the Daughters. Again, they called the yellow-haired men of another breed, great sea rovers.

"But the Black Ones called too. As the Ancient Ones searched for the best, the Black Ones brought in great workers of evil. And, at last, they succeeded in shutting off the channels of sending thought so that the Ancient Ones could call no more.

"Then did the Black Ones cross the River of Gold and enter the land of the Ancient Ones. Thran, Dweller in the Light and Lord of the Caverns, summoned the Folk to him.

"'There will come one to aid you,' he told us. 'Try the summoning again after the Black Ones have seemed to win. Thrala, Daughter of the Light, will not enter into the Room of Pleasant Death with the rest of the women, but will give herself into the hands of the Black Ones, that they may think themselves truly victorious. You of the Folk withdraw into the Place of Reptiles until the Black Ones are gone. Nor will all the Ancient Ones perish--more will be saved, but the manner of their preservation I dare not tell. When the sun-haired youth comes from the outer world, send him into the Caves of Darkness to rescue Thrala and put an end to evil.'

"And then the Lady Thrala arose and said softly, 'As the Lord Thran has said, so let it be. I shall deliver myself into the hands of the Black Ones that their doom may come upon them.'

"Lord Thran smiled upon her as he said: 'So will happiness be your portion. After the Great Mists, does not light come again?'

"The women of the Ancient Ones then took their leave and passed into the place of Pleasant Death while the men made ready for battle with the Black Ones. For three days they fought, but a new weapon of the Black Ones won the day, and the chief of the Black Ones set up this throne of jet as proof of his power. Since, however, the Black Ones were not happy in the Caverns, longing for the darkness of their caves, they soon withdrew and we, the Folk, came forth again.

"But now the time has come when the dark ones will sacrifice the Daughter to their evil. If you can win her free, outlander, they shall perish as if they had not been."

"What of the Ancient Ones?" asked Garin--"those others Thran said would be saved?"

"Of those we know nothing save that when we bore the bodies of the fallen to the Place of Ancestors there were some missing. That you may see the truth of this story, Urg will take you to the gallery above the Room of Pleasant Death and you may look upon those who sleep there."

Urg guiding, Garin climbed a steep ramp leading from the Hall of Thrones. This led to a narrow balcony, one side of which was clear crystal. Urg pointed down.

They were above a long room whose walls were tinted jade green. On the polished floor were scattered piles of cushions. Each was occupied by a sleeping woman and several of these clasped a child in their arms. Their long hair rippled to the floor, their curved lashes made dark shadows on pale faces.

"But they are sleeping!" protested Garin.

Urg shook his head. "It is the sleep of death. Twice each ten hours vapors rise from the floor. Those breathing them do not wake again, and if they are undisturbed they will lie thus for a thousand years. Look there--"

He pointed to the closed double doors of the room. There lay the first men of the Ancient Ones Garin had seen. They, too, seemed but asleep, their handsome heads pillowed on their arms.

"Thran ordered those who remained after the last battle in the Hall of Thrones to enter the Room of Pleasant Death that the Black Ones might not torture them for their beastly pleasures. Thran himself remained behind to close the door, and so died."

There were no aged among the sleepers. None of the men seemed to count more than thirty years and many of them appeared younger. Garin remarked upon this.

"The Ancient Ones appeared thus until the day of their death, though many lived twice a hundred years. The light rays kept them so. Even we of the Folk can hold back age. But come now, our Lord Trar would speak with you again."

CHAPTER FIVE

Into the Caves of Darkness

Again Garin stood before the jade throne of Trar and heard the stirring of the multitude of the Folk in the shadows. Trar was turning a small rod of glittering, greenish metal around in his soft hands.

"Listen well, outlander," he began, "for little time remains to us. Within seven days the Great Mists will be upon us. Then no living thing may venture forth from shelter and escape death. And before that time Thrala must be out of the Caves. This rod will be your weapon; the Black Ones have not its secret. Watch."

Two of the Folk dragged an ingot of metal before him. He touched it with the rod. Great flakes of rust appeared to spread across the entire surface. It crumpled away and one of the Folk trod upon the pile of dust where it had been.

"Thrala lies in the heart of the Caves but Kepta's men have grown careless with the years. Enter boldly and trust to fortune. They know nothing of your coming or of Thran's words concerning you."

Urg stood forward and held out his hands in appeal.

"What would you, Urg?"

"Lord, I would go with the outlander. He knows nothing of the Forest of the Morgels or of the Pool of Mud. It is easy to go astray in the woodland--"

Trar shook his head. "That may not be. He must go alone, even as Thran said."

The Ana, which had followed in Garin's shadow all day, whistled shrilly and stood on tiptoe to tug at his hand. Trar smiled. "That one may go, its eyes may serve you well. Urg will guide you to the outer portal of the Place of Ancestors and set you upon the road to the Caves. Farewell, outlander, and may the spirits of the Ancient Ones be with you."

Garin bowed to the ruler of the Folk and turned to follow Urg. Near the door stood a small group of women. Sera pressed forward from them, holding out a small bag.

"Outlander," she said hurriedly, "when you look upon the Daughter speak to her of Sera, for I have awaited her many years."

He smiled. "That I will."

"If you remember, outlander. I am a great lady among the Folk and have my share of suitors, yet I think I could envy the Daughter. Nay, I shall not explain that," she laughed mockingly. "You will understand in due time. Here is a packet of food. Now go swiftly that we may have you among us again before the Mists."

So a woman's farewell sped them on their way. Urg chose a ramp which led downward. At its foot was a niche in the rock, above which a rose light burned dimly. Urg reached within the hollow and drew out a pair of high buskins which he aided Garin to lace on. They were a good fit, having been fashioned for a man of the Ancient Ones.

The passage before them was narrow and crooked. There was a thick carpet of dust underfoot, patterned by the prints of the Folk. They rounded a corner and a tall door loomed out of the gloom. Urg pressed the surface, there was a click and the stone rolled back.

"This is the Place of Ancestors," he announced as he stepped within.

They were at the end of a colossal hall whose domed roof disappeared into shadows. Thick pillars of gleaming crystal divided it into aisles, all leading inward to a raised dais of oval shape. Filling the aisles were couches and each soft nest held its sleeper. Near to the door lay the men and women of the Folk, but closer to the dais were the Ancient Ones. Here and there a couch bore a double burden, upon the shoulder of a man was pillowed the drooping head of a woman. Urg stopped beside such a one.

"See, outlander, here was one who was called from your world. Marena of the House of Light looked with favor upon him and their days of happiness were many."

The man on the couch had red-gold hair and on his upper arm was a heavy band of gold whose mate Garin had once seen in a museum. A son of pre-Norman Ireland. Urg traced with a crooked finger the archaic lettering carved upon the stone base of the couch.

"Lovers in the Light sleep sweetly. The Light returns on the appointed day."

"Who lies there?" Garin motioned to the dais.

"The first Ancient Ones. Come, look upon those who made this Tav."

On the dais the couches were arranged in two rows and between them, in the center, was a single couch raised above the others. Fifty men and women lay as if but resting for the hour, smiles on their peaceful faces but weary shadows beneath their eyes. There was an un-human quality about them which was lacking in their descendents.

Urg advanced to the high couch and beckoned Garin to join him. A man and a woman lay there, the woman's head upon the man's breast. There was that in their faces which made Garin turn away. He felt as if he had intruded roughly where no man should go.

"Here lies Thran, Son of Light, first Lord of the Caverns, and his lady Thrala, Dweller in the Light. So have they lain a thousand thousand years, and so will they lie until this planet rots to dust beneath them. They led the Folk out of the slime and made Tav. Such as they we shall never see again."

They passed silently down the aisles of the dead. Once Garin caught sight of another fair-haired man, perhaps another outlander, since the Ancient Ones were all dark of hair. Urg paused once more before they left the hall. He stood by the couch of a man, wrapped in a long robe, whose face was ravaged with marks of agony.

Urg spoke a single name: "Thran."

So this was the last Lord of the Caverns. Garin leaned closer to study the dead face but Urg seemed to have lost his patience. He hurried his charge on to a panel door.

"This is the southern portal of the Caverns," he explained. "Trust to the Ana to guide you and beware of the boiling mud. Should the morgels scent you, kill quickly, they are the servants of the Black Ones. May fortune favor you, outlander."

The door was open and Garin looked out upon Tav. The soft blue light was as strong as it had been when he had first seen it. With the Ana perched on his shoulder, the green rod and the bag of food in his hands, he stepped out onto the moss sod.

Urg raised his hand in salute and the door clicked into place. Garin stood alone, pledged to bring the Daughter out of the Caves of Darkness.

There is no night or day in Tav since the blue light is steady. But the Folk divide their time by artificial means. However Garin, being newly come from the rays of healing, felt no fatigue. As he hesitated, the Ana chattered and pointed confidently ahead.

Before them was a dense wood of fern trees. It was quiet in the forest as Garin made his way into its gloom and for the first time he noted a peculiarity of Tav. There were no birds.

The portion of the woodland they had to traverse was but a spur of the forest to the west. After an hour of travel they came out upon the bank of a sluggish river. The turbid waters of the stream were a dull saffron color. This, thought Garin, must be the River of Gold, the boundary of the lands of the Black Ones.

He rounded a bend to come upon a bridge, so old that time itself had worn its stone angles into curves. The bridge gave on a wide plain where tall grass grew sere and yellow. To the left was a hissing and bubbling, and a huge wave of boiling mud arose in the air. Garin choked in a wind, thick with chemicals, which blew from it. He smelled and tasted the sulphur-tainted air all across the plain.

And he was glad enough to plunge into a small fern grove which half-concealed a spring. There he bathed his head and arms while the Ana pulled open Sera's food bag.

Together they ate the cakes of grain and the dried fruit. When they were done the Ana tugged at Garin's hand and pointed on.

Cautiously Garin wormed his way through the thick underbrush until, at last, he looked out into a clearing and at its edge the entrance of the Black Ones' Caves. Two tall pillars, carved into the likeness of foul monsters, guarded a rough-edged hole. A fine greenish mist whirled and danced in its mouth.

The flyer studied the entrance. There was no life to be seen. He gripped the destroying rod and inched forward. Before the green mist he braced himself and then stepped within.

CHAPTER SIX

Kepta's Second Prisoner

The green mist enveloped Garin. He drew into his lungs hot moist air faintly tinged with a scent of sickly sweetness, as from some hidden corruption. Green motes in the air gave forth little light and seemed to cling to the intruder.

With the Ana pattering before him, the American started down a steep ramp, the soft soles of his buskins making no sound. At regular intervals along the wall, niches held small statues. And about each perverted figure was a crown of green motes.

The Ana stopped, its large ears outspread as if to catch the faintest murmur of sound. From somewhere under the earth came the howls of a maddened dog. The Ana shivered, creeping closer to Garin.

Down led the ramp, growing narrower and steeper. And louder sounded the insane, coughing howls of the dog. Then the passage was abruptly barred by a grill of black stone. Garin peered through its bars at a flight of stairs leading down into a pit. From the pit arose snarling laughter.

Padding back and forth were things which might have been conceived by demons. They were sleek, rat-like creatures, hairless, and large as ponies. Red saliva dripped from the corners of their sharp jaws. But in the eyes, which they raised now and then toward the grill, there was intelligence. These were the morgels, watchdogs and slaves of the Black Ones.

From a second pair of stairs directly across the pit arose a moaning call. A door opened and two men came down the steps. The morgels surged forward, but fell back when whips were cracked over their heads.

The masters of the morgels were human in appearance. Black loin cloths were twisted about them and long, wing-shaped cloaks hung from their shoulders. On their heads, completely masking their hair, were cloth caps which bore ragged crests not unlike cockscombs. As far as Garin could see they were unarmed except for their whips.

A second party was coming down the steps. Between two of the Black Ones struggled a prisoner. He made a desperate and hopeless fight of it, but they dragged him to the edge of the pit before they halted. The morgels, intent upon their promised prey, crouched before them.

Five steps above were two figures to whom the guards looked for instructions. One was a man of their race, of slender, handsome body and evil, beautiful face. His hand lay possessively upon the arm of his companion.

It was Thrala who stood beside him, her head proudly erect. The laughter curves were gone from her lips; there was only sorrow and resignation to be read there now. But her spirit burned like a white flame in her eyes.

"Look!" her warder ordered. "Does not Kepta keep his promises? Shall we give Dandtan into the jaws of our slaves, or will you unsay certain words of yours, Lady Thrala?"

The prisoner answered for her. "Kepta, son of vileness, Thrala is not for you. Remember, beloved one," he spoke to the Daughter, "the day of deliverance is at hand--"

Garin felt a sudden emptiness. The prisoner had called Thrala "beloved" with the ease of one who had the right.

"I await Thrala's answer," Kepta returned evenly. And her answer he got.

"Beast among beasts, you may send Dandtan to his death, you may heap all manner of insult and evil upon me, but still I say the Daughter is not for your touch. Rather will I cut the line of life with my own hands, taking upon me the punishment of the Elder Ones. To Dandtan," she smiled down upon the prisoner, "I say farewell. We shall meet again beyond the Curtain of Time." She held out her hands to him.

"Thrala, dear one--!" One of his guards slapped a hand over the prisoner's mouth putting an end to his words.

But now Thrala was looking beyond him, straight at the grill which sheltered Garin. Kepta pulled at her arm to gain her attention. "Watch! Thus do my enemies die. To the pit with him!"

The guards twisted their prisoner around and the morgels crept closer, their eyes fixed upon that young, writhing body. Garin knew that he must take a hand in the game. The Ana was tugging him to the right, and there was an open archway leading to a balcony running around the side of the pit.

Those below were too entranced by the coming sport to notice the invader. But Thrala glanced up and Garin thought that she sighted him. Something in her attitude attracted Kepta, he too looked up. For a moment he stared in stark amazement, and then he thrust the Daughter through the door behind him.

"Ho, outlander! Welcome to the Caves. So the Folk have meddled--"

"Greeting, Kepta." Garin hardly knew whence came the words which fell so easily from his tongue. "I have come as was promised, to remain until the Black Throne is no more."

"Not even the morgels boast before their prey lies limp in their jaws," flashed Kepta. "What manner of beast are you?"

"A clean beast, Kepta, which you are not. Bid your two-legged morgels loose the youth, lest I grow impatient." The flyer swung the green rod into view.

Kepta's eyes narrowed but his smile did not fade. "I have heard of old that the Ancient Ones do not destroy--"

"As an outlander I am not bound by their limits," returned Garin, "as you will learn if you do not call off your stinking pack."

The master of the Caves laughed. "You are as the Tand, a fool without a brain. Never shall you see the Caverns again--"

"You shall own me master yet, Kepta."

The Black Chief seemed to consider. Then he waved to his men. "Release him," he ordered. "Outlander, you are braver than I thought. We might bargain--"

"Thrala goes forth from the Caves and the black throne is dust, those are the terms of the Caverns."

"And if we do not accept?"

"Then Thrala goes forth, the throne is dust and Tav shall have a day of judging such as it has never seen before."

"You challenge me?"

Again words, which seemed to Garin to have their origin elsewhere, came to him. "As in Yu-Lac, I shall take--"

Before Kepta could reply there was trouble in the pit. Dandtan, freed by his guards, was crossing the floor in running leaps. Garin threw himself belly down on the balcony and dropped the jeweled strap of his belt over the lip.

A moment later it snapped taut and he stiffened to an upward pull. Already Dandtan's heels were above the snapping jaws of a morgel. The flyer caught the youth around the shoulders and heaved. They rolled together against the wall.

"They are gone! All of them!" Dandtan cried, as he regained his feet. He was right; the morgels howled below, but Kepta and his men had vanished.

"Thrala!" Garin exclaimed.

Dandtan nodded. "They have taken her back to the cells. They believe her safe there."

"Then they think wrong." Garin stooped to pick up the green rod. His companion laughed.

"We'd best start before they get prepared for us."

Garin picked up the Ana. "Which way?"

Dandtan showed him a passage leading from behind the other door. Then he dodged into a side chamber to return with two of the wing cloaks and cloth hoods, so that they might pass as Black Ones.

They went by the mouths of three side tunnels, all deserted. None disputed their going. All the Black Ones had withdrawn from this part of the Caves.

Dandtan sniffed uneasily. "All is not well. I fear a trap."

"While we can pass, let us."

The passage curved to the right and they came into an oval room. Again Dandtan shook his head but ventured no protest. Instead he flung open a door and hurried down a short hall.

It seemed to Garin that there were strange rustlings and squeakings in the dark corners. Then Dandtan stopped so short that the flyer ran into him.

"Here is the guard room--and it is empty!"

Garin looked over his shoulder into a large room. Racks of strange weapons hung on the walls and the sleeping pallets of the guards were stacked evenly, but the men were nowhere to be seen.

They crossed the room and passed beneath an archway.

"Even the bars are not down," observed Dandtan. He pointed overhead. There hung a portcullis of stone. Garin studied it apprehensively. But Dandtan drew him on into a narrow corridor where were barred doors.

"The cells," he explained, and withdrew a bar across one door. The portal swung back and they pushed within.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Kepta's Trap

Thrala arose to face them. Forgetting the disguise he wore, Garin drew back, chilled by her icy demeanor. But Dandtan sprang forward and caught her in his arms. She struggled madly until she saw the face beneath her captor's hood, and then she gave a cry of delight and her arms were about his neck.

"Dandtan!"

He smiled. "Even so. But it is the outlander's doing."

She came to the American, studying his face. "Outlander? So cold a name is not for you, when you have served us so." She offered him her hands and he raised them to his lips.

"And how are you named?"

Dandtan laughed. "Thus the eternal curiosity of women!"

"Garin."

"Garin," she repeated. "How like--" A faint rose glowed beneath her pearl flesh.

Dandtan's hand fell lightly upon his rescuer's shoulder. "Indeed he is like him. From this day let him bear that other's name. Garan, Son of Light."

"Why not?" she returned calmly. "After all--"

"The reward which might have been Garan's may be his? Tell him the story of his namesake when we are again in the Caverns--"

Dandtan was interrupted by a frightened squeak from the Ana. Then came a mocking voice.

"So the prey has entered the trap of its own will. How many hunters may boast the same?"

Kepta leaned against the door, the light of vicious mischief dancing in his eyes. Garin dropped his cloak to the floor, but Dandtan must have read what was in the flyer's mind, for he caught him by the arm.

"On your life, touch him not!"

"So you have learned that much wisdom while you have dwelt among us, Dandtan? Would that Thrala had done the same. But fair women find me weak." He eyed her proud body in a way that would have sent Garin at his throat had Dandtan not held him. "So shall Thrala have a second chance. How would you like to see these men in the Room of Instruments, Lady?"

"I do not fear you," she returned. "Thran once made a prophecy, and he never spoke idly. We shall win free--"

"That will be as fate would have it. Meanwhile, I leave you to each other." He whipped around the door and slammed it behind him. They heard the grating of the bar he slid into place. Then his footsteps died away.

"There goes evil," murmured Thrala softly. "Perhaps it would have been better if Garin had killed him as he thought to do. We must get away...."

Garin drew the rod from his belt. The green light-motes gathered and clung about its polished length.

"Touch not the door," Thrala advised; "only its hinges."

Beneath the tip of the rod the stone became spongy and flaked away. Dandtan and the flyer caught the door and eased it to the floor. With one quick movement Thrala caught up Garin's cloak and swirled it about her, hiding the glitter of her gem-encrusted robe.

There was a curious cold lifelessness about the air of the corridor, the light-bearing motes vanishing as if blown out.

"Hurry!" the Daughter urged. "Kepta is withdrawing the living light, so that we will have to wander in the dark."

When they reached the end of the hall the light was quite gone, and Garin bruised his hands against the stone portcullis which had been lowered. From somewhere on the other side of the barrier came rippling laughter.

"Oh, outlander," called Kepta mockingly, "you will get through easily enough when you remember your weapon. But the dark you can not conquer so easily, nor that which runs the halls."

Garin was already busy with the rod. Within five minutes their way was clear again. But Thrala stopped them when they would have gone through. "Kepta has loosed the hunters."

"The hunters?"

"The morgels and--others," explained Dandtan. "The Black Ones have withdrawn and only death comes this way. And the morgels see in the dark...."

"So does the Ana."

"Well thought of," agreed the son of the Ancient Ones.

"It will lead us out."

As if in answer, there came a tug at Garin's belt. Reaching back, he caught Thrala's hand and knew that she had taken Dandtan's. So linked they crossed the guard room. Then the Ana paused for a long time, as if listening. There was nothing to see but the darkness which hung about them like the smothering folds of a curtain.

"Something follows us," whispered Dandtan.

"Nothing to fear," stated Thrala. "It dare not attack. It is, I think, of Kepta's fashioning. And that which has not true life dreads death above all things. It is going--"

There came sounds of something crawling slowly away.

"Kepta will not try that again," continued the Daughter, disdainfully. "He knew that his monstrosities would not attack. Only in the light are they to be dreaded--and then only because of the horror of their forms."

Again the Ana tugged at its master's belt. They shuffled into the narrow passage beyond. But there remained the sense of things about them in the dark, things which Thrala continued to insist were harmless and yet which filled Garin with loathing.

Then they entered the far corridor into which led the three halls and which ended in the morgel pit. Here, Garin believed, was the greatest danger from the morgels.

The Ana stopped short, dropping back against Garin's thigh. In the blackness appeared two yellow disks, sparks of saffron in their depths. Garin thrust the rod into Thrala's hands.

"What do you?" she demanded.

"I'm going to clear the way. It's too dark to use the rod against moving creatures...." He flung the words over his shoulder as he moved toward the unwinking eyes.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Escape from the Caves

Keeping his eyes upon those soulless yellow disks, Garin snatched off his hood, wadding it into a ball. Then he sprang. His fingers slipped on smooth hide, sharp fangs ripped his forearm, blunt nails scraped his ribs. A foul breath puffed into his face and warm slaver trickled down his neck and chest. But his plan succeeded.

The cap was wedged into the morgel's throat and the beast was slowly choking. Blood dripped from the flyer's torn flesh, but he held on grimly until he saw the light fade from those yellow eyes. The dying morgel made a last mad plunge for freedom, dragging his attacker along the rock floor. Then Garin felt the heaving body rest limply against his own. He staggered against the wall, panting.

"Garin!" cried Thrala. Her questing hand touched his shoulder and crept to his face. "It is well with you?"

"Yes," he panted, "let us go on."

Thrala's fingers had lingered on his arm and now she walked beside him, her cloak making whispering sounds as it brushed against the wall and floor.

"Wait," she cautioned suddenly. "The morgel pit...."

Dandtan slipped by them. "I will try the door."

In a moment he was back. "It is open," he whispered.

"Kepta believes," mused Thrala, "that we will keep to the safety of the gallery. Therefore let us go through the pit. The morgels will be gone to better hunting grounds."

Through the pit they went. A choking stench arose from underfoot and they trod very carefully. They climbed the stairs on the far side unchallenged, Dandtan leading.

"The rod here, Garin," he called; "this door is barred."

Garin pressed the weapon into the other's hand and leaned against the rock. He was sick and dizzy. The long, deep wounds on his arm and shoulder were stiffening and ached with a biting throb.

When they went on he panted with effort. They still moved in darkness and his distress passed unnoticed.

"This is wrong," he muttered, half to himself. "We go too easily--"

And he was answered out of the blackness. "Well noted, outlander. But you go free for the moment, as does Thrala and Dandtan. Our full accounting is not yet. And now, farewell, until we meet again in the Hall of Thrones. I could find it in me to applaud your courage, outlander. Perhaps you will come to serve me yet."

Garin turned and threw himself toward the voice, bringing up with bruising force against rock wall. Kepta laughed.

"Not with the skill of the bull Tand will you capture me."

His second laugh was cut cleanly off, as if a door had been closed. In silence the three hurried up the ramp. Then, as through a curtain, they came into the light of Tav.

Thrala let fall her drab cloak, stood with arms outstretched in the crater land. Her sparkling robe sheathed her in glory and she sang softly, rapt in her own delight. Then Dandtan put his arm about her; she clung to him, staring about as might a beauty-bewildered child.

Garin wondered dully how he would be able to make the journey back to the Caverns when his arm and shoulder were eaten with a consuming fire. The Ana crept closer to him, peering into his white face.

They were aroused by a howl from the Caves. Thrala cried out and Dandtan answered her unspoken question. "They have set the morgels on our trail!"

The howl from the Caves was echoed from the forest. Morgels before and behind them! Garin might set himself against one, Dandtan another, and Thrala could defend herself with the rod, but in the end the pack would kill them.

"We shall claim protection from the Gibi of the cliff. By the law they must give us aid," said Thrala, as, turning up her long robe, she began to run lightly. Garin picked up her cloak and drew it across his shoulder to hide his welts. When he could no longer hold her pace she must not guess the reason for his falling behind.

Of that flight through the forest the flyer afterward remembered little. At last the gurgle of water broke upon his pounding ears, as he stumbled along a good ten lengths behind his companions. They had come to the edge of the wood along the banks of the river.

Without hesitation Thrala and Dandtan plunged into the oily flood, swimming easily for the other side. Garin dropped the cloak, wondering if, once he stepped into the yellow stream, he would ever be able to struggle out again. Already the Ana was in, paddling in circles near the shore and pleading with him to follow. Wearily Garin waded out.

The water, which washed the blood and sweat from his aching body, was faintly brackish and stung his wounds to life. He could not fight the sluggish current and it bore him downstream, well away from where the others landed.

But at last he managed to win free, crawling out near where a smaller stream joined the river. There he lay panting, face down upon the moss. And there they found him, water dripping from his bedraggled finery, the Ana stroking his muddied hair. Thrala cried out with concern and pillowed his head on her knees while Dandtan examined his wounds.

"Why did you not tell us?" demanded Thrala.

He did not try to answer, content to lie there, her arms supporting him. Dandtan disappeared into the forest, returning soon, his hands filled with a mass of crushed leaves. With these he plastered Garin's wounds.

"You'd better go on," Garin warned.

Dandtan shook his head. "The morgels can not swim. If they cross, they must go to the bridge, and that is half the crater away."

The Ana dropped into their midst, its small hands filled with clusters of purple fruit. And so they feasted, Garin at ease on a fern couch, accepting food from Thrala's hand.

There seemed to be some virtue in Dandtan's leaf plaster for, after a short rest, Garin was able to get to his feet with no more than a twinge or two in his wounds. But they started on at a more sober pace. Through mossy glens and sunlit glades where strange flowers made perfume, the trail led. The stream they followed branched twice before, on the edge of meadow land, they struck away from the guiding water toward the crater wall.

Suddenly Thrala threw back her head and gave a shrill, sweet whistle. Out of the air dropped a yellow and black insect, as large as a hawk. Twice it circled her head and then perched itself on her outstretched wrist.

Its swollen body was jet black, its curving legs, three to a side, chrome yellow. The round head ended in a sharp beak and it had large, many-faceted eyes. The wings, which lazily tested the air, were black and touched with gold.

Thrala rubbed the round head while the insect nuzzled affectionately at her cheek. Then she held out her wrist again and it was gone.

"We shall be expected now and may pass unmolested."

Shortly they became aware of a murmuring sound. The crater wall loomed ahead, dwarfing the trees at its base.

"There is the city of the Gibi," remarked Dandtan.

Clinging to the rock were the towers and turrets of many eight-sided cells.

"They are preparing for the Mists," observed Thrala. "We shall have company on our journey to the Caverns."

They passed the trees and reached the foot of the wax skyscrapers which towered dizzily above their heads. A great cloud of the Gibi hovered about them. Garin felt the soft brush of their wings against his body. And they crowded each other jealously to be near Thrala.

The soft hush-hush of their wings filled the clearing as one large Gibi of outstanding beauty approached. The commoners fluttered off and Thrala greeted the Queen of the cells as an equal. Then she turned to her companions with the information the Gibi Queen had to offer.

"We are just in time. Tomorrow the Gibi leave. The morgels have crossed the river and are out of control. Instead of hunting us they have gone to ravage the forest lands. All Tav has been warned against them. But they may be caught by the Mist and so destroyed. We are to rest in the cliff hollows, and one shall come for us when it is time to leave."

The Gibi withdrew to the cell-combs after conducting their guests to the rock-hollows.

CHAPTER NINE

Days of Preparation

Garin was awakened by a loud murmuring. Dandtan knelt beside him.

"We must go. Even now the Gibi seal the last of the cells."

They ate hurriedly of cakes of grain and honey, and, as they feasted, the Queen again visited them. The first of the swarm were already winging eastward.

With the Gibi nation hanging like a storm cloud above them, the three started off across the meadow. The purple-blue haze was thickening and, here and there, curious formations, like the dust devils of the desert, arose and danced and disappeared again. The tropic heat of Tav increased; it was as if the ground itself were steaming.

"The Mists draw close; we must hurry," panted Dandtan.

They traversed the tongue of forest which bordered the meadow and came to the central plain of Tav. There was a brooding stillness there. The Ana, perched on Garin's shoulder, shivered.

Their walk became a trot; the Gibi bunched together. Once Thrala caught her breath in a half sob.

"They are flying slowly because of us. And it's so far--"

"Look!" Dandtan pointed at the plain. "The morgels!"

The morgel pack, driven by fear, ran in leaping bounds. They passed within a hundred yards of the three, yet did not turn from their course, though several snarled at them.

"They are already dead," observed Dandtan. "There is no time for them to reach the shelter of the Caves."

Splashing through a shallow brook, the three began to run. For the first time Thrala faltered and broke pace. Garin thrust the Ana into Dandtan's arms and, before she could protest, swept the girl into his arms.

The haze was denser now, settling upon them as a curtain. Black hair, finer than silk, whipped across Garin's throat. Thrala's head was on his shoulder, her heaving breasts arched as she gasped the sultry air.

"They--keep--watch...!" shouted Dandtan.

Piercing the gloom were pin-points of light. A dark shape grazed Garin's head--one of the Gibi Queen's guards.

Then abruptly they stumbled into a throng of the Folk, one of whom reached for Thrala with a crooning cry. It was Sera welcoming her mistress.

Thrala was borne away by the women, leaving Garin with a feeling of desolation.

"The Mists, Outlander." It was Urg, pointing toward the Cavern mouth. Two of the Folk swung their weight on a lever. Across the opening a sheet of crystal clicked into place. The Caverns were sealed.

The haze was now inky black outside and billows of it beat against the protecting barrier. It might have been midnight of the blackest, starless night.

"So will it be for forty days. What is without--dies," said Urg.

"Then we have forty days in which to prepare," Garin spoke his thought aloud. Dandtan's keen face lightened.

"Well said, Garin. Forty days before Kepta may seek us. And we have much to do. But first, our respects to the Lord of the Folk."

Together they went to the Hall of Thrones where, when he saw Dandtan, Trar arose and held out his jade-tipped rod of office. The son of the Ancient Ones touched it.

"Hail! Dweller in the Light, and Outlander who has fulfilled the promise of Thran. Thrala is once more within the Caverns. Now send you to dust this black throne...."

Garin, nothing loath, drew the destroying rod from his belt, but Dandtan shook his head. "The time is not yet, Trar. Kepta must finish the pattern he began. Forty days have we and then the Black Ones come."

Trar considered thoughtfully. "So that be the way of it. Thran did not see another war...."

"But he saw an end to Kepta!"

Trar straightened as if some burden had rolled from his thin shoulders. "Well do you speak, Lord. When there is one to sit upon the Rose Throne, what have we to fear? Listen, O ye Folk, the Light has returned to the Caverns!"

His cry was echoed by the gathering of the Folk.

"And now, Lord--" he turned to Dandtan with deference--"what are your commands?"

"For the space of one sleep I shall enter the Chamber of Renewing with this outlander, who is no longer an outlander but one, Garin, accepted by the Daughter according to the Law. And while we rest let all be made ready...."

"The Dweller in the Light has spoken!" Trar himself escorted them from the Hall.

They came, through many winding passages, to a deep pool of water, in the depths of which lurked odd purple shadows. Dandtan stripped and plunged in, Garin following his example. The water was tinglingly alive and they did not linger in it long. From it they went to a bubble room such as the one Garin had rested in after the bath of light rays, and on the cushions in its center stretched their tired bodies.

When Garin awoke he experienced the same exultation he had felt before. Dandtan regarded him with a smile. "Now to work," he said, as he reached out to press a knob set in the wall.

Two of the Folk appeared, bringing with them clean trappings. After they dressed and broke their fast, Dandtan started for the laboratories. Garin would have gone with him, but Sera intercepted them.

"There is one would speak with Lord Garin...."

Dandtan laughed. "Go," he ordered the American. "Thrala's commands may not be slighted."

The Hall of Women was deserted. And the corridor beyond, roofed and walled with slabs of rose-shot crystal, was as empty. Sera drew aside a golden curtain and they were in the audience chamber of the Daughter.

A semi-circular dais of the clearest crystal, heaped with rose and gold cushions, faced them. Before it, a fountain, in the form of a flower nodding on a curved stem, sent a spray of water into a shallow basin. The walls of the room were divided into alcoves by marble pillars, each one curved in semblance of a fern frond.

From the domed ceiling, on chains of twisted gold, seven lamps, each wrought from a single yellow sapphire, gave soft light. The floor was a mosaic of gold and crystal.

Two small Anas, who had been playing among the cushions, pattered up to exchange greetings with Garin's. But of the mistress of the chamber there was no sign. Garin turned to Sera, but before he could phrase his question, she asked mockingly:

"Who is the Lord Garin that he can not wait with patience?" But she left in search of the Daughter.

Garin glanced uneasily about the room. This jeweled chamber was no place for him. He had started toward the door when Thrala stepped within.

"Greetings to the Daughter." His voice sounded formal and cold, even to himself.

Her hands, which had been outheld in welcome, dropped to her sides. A ghost of a frown dimmed her beauty.

"Greetings, Garin," she returned slowly.

"You sent for me--" he prompted, eager to escape from this jewel box and the unattainable treasure it held.

"Yes," the coldness of her tone was an order of exile. "I would know how you fared and whether your wounds yet troubled you."

He looked down at his own smooth flesh, cleanly healed by the wisdom of the Folk. "I am myself again and eager to be at such work as Dandtan can find for me...."

Her robe seemed to hiss across the floor as she turned upon him. "Then go!" she ordered. "Go quickly!"

And blindly he obeyed. She had spoken as if to a servant, one whom she could summon and dismiss by whim. Even if Dandtan held her love, she might have extended him her friendship. But he knew within him that friendship would be a poor crumb beside the feast his pulses pounded for.

There was a pattering of feet behind him. So, she would call him back! His pride sent him on. But it was Sera. Her head thrust forward until she truly resembled a reptile.

"Fool! Morgel!" she spat. "Even the Black Ones did not treat her so. Get you out of the Place of Women lest they divide your skin among them!"

Garin broke free, not heeding her torrent of reproach. Then he seized upon one of the Folk as a guide and sought the laboratories. Far beneath the surface of Tav, where the light-motes shone ghostly in the gloom, they came into a place of ceaseless activity, where there were tables crowded with instruments, coils of glass and metal tubing, and other equipment and supplies. These were the focusing point for ceaseless streams of the Folk. On a platform at the far end, Garin saw the tall son of the Ancient Ones working on a framework of metal and shining crystal.

He glanced up as Garin joined him. "You are late," he accused. "But your excuse is a good one. Now get you to work. Hold this here--and here--while I fasten these clamps."

So Garin became extra hands and feet for Dandtan, and they worked feverishly to build against the lifting of the Mists. There was no day or night in the laboratories. They worked steadily without rest, and without feeling fatigue.

Twice they went to the Chamber of Renewing, but except for these trips to the upper ways they were not out of the laboratories through all those days. Of Thrala there was no sign, nor did any one speak of her.

The Cavern dwellers were depending upon two defenses: an evil green liquid, to be thrown in frail glass globes, and a screen charged with energy. Shortly before the lifting of the Mists, these arms were transported to the entrance and installed there. Dandtan and Garin made a last inspection.

"Kepta makes the mistake of under-rating his enemies," Dandtan reflected, feeling the edge of the screen caressingly. "When I was captured, on the day my people died, I was sent to the Black Ones' laboratories so that their seekers after knowledge might learn the secrets of the Ancient Ones. But I proved a better pupil than teacher and I discovered the defense against the Black Fire. After I had learned that, Kepta grew impatient with my supposed stupidity and tried to use me to force Thrala to his will. For that, as for other things, shall he pay--and the paying will not be in coin of his own striking. Let us think of that...." He turned to greet Urg and Trar and the other leaders of the Folk, who had approached unnoticed.

Among them stood Thrala, her gaze fixed upon the crystal wall between them and the thinning Mist. She noticed Garin no more than she did the Anas playing with her train and the women whispering behind her. But Garin stepped back into the shadows--and what he saw was not weapons of war, but cloudy black hair and graceful white limbs veiled in splendor.

Urg and one of the other chieftains bore down upon the door lever. With a protesting squeak, the glass wall disappeared into the rock. The green of Tav beckoned them out to walk in its freshness; it was renewed with lusty life. But in all that expanse of meadow and forest there was a strange stillness.

"Post sentries," ordered Dandtan. "The Black Ones will come soon."

He beckoned Garin forward as he spoke to Thrala:

"Let us go to the Hall of Thrones."

But the Daughter did not answer his smile. "It is not meet that we should spend time in idle talk. Let us go instead to call upon the help of those who have gone before us." So speaking, she darted a glance at Garin as chill as the arctic lands beyond the lip of Tav, and then swept away with Sera bearing her train.

Dandtan stared at Garin. "What has happened between you two?"

The flyer shook his head. "I don't know. No man is born with an understanding of women--"

"But she is angered with you. What has happened?"

For a moment Garin was tempted to tell the truth: that he dared not break any barrier she chose to raise, lest he seize what in honor was none of his. But he shook his head mutely. Neither of them saw Thrala again until Death entered the Caverns.

CHAPTER TEN

Battle and Victory

Garin stood with Dandtan looking out into the plain of Tav. Some distance away were two slender, steel-tipped towers, which were, in reality, but hollow tubes filled with the Black Fire. Before these dark-clad figures were busy.

"They seem to believe us already defeated. Let them think so," commented Dandtan, touching the screen they had erected before the Cavern entrance.

As he spoke Kepta swaggered through the tall grass to call a greeting:

"Ho, rock dweller, I would speak with you--"

Dandtan edged around the screen, Garin a pace behind.

"I see you, Kepta."

"Good. I trust that your ears will serve you as well as your eyes. These are my terms: Give Thrala to me to dwell in my chamber and the outlander to provide sport for my captains. Make no resistance but throw open the Caverns so that I may take my rightful place in the Hall of Thrones. Do this and we shall be at peace...."

"And this is our reply:"--Dandtan stood unmovingly before the screen--"Return to the Caves; break down the bridge between your land and ours. Let no Black One come hither again, ever...."

Kepta laughed. "So, that be the way of it! Then this shall we do: take Thrala, to be mine for a space, and then to go to my captains--"

Garin hurled himself forward, felt Kepta's lips mash beneath his fist; his fingers were closing about the other's throat as Dandtan, who was trying to pull him away from his prey, shouted a warning: "Watch out!"

A morgel had leaped from the grass, its teeth snapping about Garin's wrist, forcing him to drop Kepta. Then Dandtan laid it senseless by a sharp blow with his belt.

On hands and knees Kepta crawled back to his men. The lower part of his face was a red and dripping smear. He screamed an order with savage fury.

Dandtan drew the still raging flyer behind the screen. "Be a little prudent," he panted. "Kepta can be dealt with in other ways than with bare hands."

The towers were swinging their tips toward the entrance. Dandtan ordered the screen wedged tightly into place.

Outside, the morgel Dandtan had stunned got groggily to its feet. When it had limped half the distance back to its master, Kepta gave the order to fire. The broad beam of black light from the tip of the nearest tower caught the beast head on. There was a chilling scream of agony, and where the morgel had stood gray ashes drifted on the wind.

A hideous crackling arose as the black beam struck the screen. Green grass beneath seared away, leaving only parched earth and naked blue soil. Those within the Cavern crouched behind their frail protection, half blinded by the light from the seared grass, coughing from the chemical-ridden fumes which curled about the cracks of the rock.

Then the beam faded out. Thin smoke plumed from the tips of the towers, steam arose from the blackened ground. Dandtan drew a deep breath.

"It held!" he cried, betraying at last the fear which had ridden him.

Men of the Folk dragged engines of tubing before the screen, while others brought forth the globes of green liquid. Dandtan stood aside, as if this matter were the business of the Folk alone, and Garin recalled that the Ancient Ones were opposed to the taking of life.

Trar was in command now. At his orders the globes were posed on spoon-shaped holders. Loopholes in the screen clicked open. Trar brought down his hand in signal. The globes arose lazily, sliding through the loopholes and floating out toward the towers.

One, aimed short, struck the ground where the fire had burned it bare, and broke. The liquid came forth, sluggishly, forming a gray-green gas as the air struck it. Another spiral of gas arose almost at the foot of one of the towers--and then another ... and another.

There quickly followed a tortured screaming, which soon dwindled to a weak yammering. They could see shapes, no longer human or animal, staggering about in the fog.

Dandtan turned away, his face white with horror. Garin's hands were over his ears to shut out that crying.

At last it was quiet; there was no more movement by the towers. Urg placed a sphere of rosy light upon the nearest machine and flipped it out into the camp of the enemy. As if it were a magnet it drew the green tendrils of gas, to leave the air clear. Here and there lay shrunken, livid shapes, the towers brooding over them.

One of the Folk burst into their midst, a woman of Thrala's following.

"Haste!" She clawed at Garin. "Kepta takes Thrala!"

She ran wildly back the way she had come, with the American pounding at her heels. They burst into the Hall of Thrones and saw a struggling group before the dais.

Garin heard someone howl like an animal, became aware the sound came from his own throat. For the second time his fist found its mark on Kepta's face. With a shriek of rage the Black One threw Thrala from him and sprang at Garin, his nails tearing gashes in the flyer's face. Twice the American twisted free and sent bone-crushing blows into the other's ribs. Then he got the grip he wanted, and his fingers closed around Kepta's throat. In spite of the Black One's struggles he held on until a limp body rolled beneath him.

Panting, the American pulled himself up from the blood-stained floor and grabbed the arm of the Jade Throne for support.

"Garin!" Thrala's arms were about him, her pitying fingers on his wounds. And in that moment he forgot Dandtan, forgot everything he had steeled himself to remember. She was in his arms and his mouth sought hers possessively. Nor was she unresponsive, but yielded, as a flower yields to the wind.

"Garin!" she whispered softly. Then, almost shyly, she broke from his hold.

Beyond her stood Dandtan, his face white, his mouth tight. Garin remembered. And, a little mad with pain and longing, he dropped his eyes, trying not to see the loveliness which was Thrala.

"So, Outlander, Thrala flies to your arms--"

Garin whirled about. Kepta was hunched on the broad seat of the jet throne.

"No, I am not dead, Outlander--nor shall you kill me, as you think to do. I go now, but I shall return. We have met and hated, fought and died before--you and I. You were a certain Garan, Marshall of the air fleet of Yu-Lac on a vanished world, and I was Lord of Koom. That was in the days before the Ancient Ones pioneered space. You and I and Thrala, we are bound together and even fate can not break those bonds. Farewell, Garin. And do you, Thrala, remember the ending of that other Garan. It was not an easy one."

With a last malicious chuckle, he leaned back in the throne. His battered body slumped. Then the sharp lines of the throne blurred; it shimmered in the light. Abruptly then both it and its occupant were gone. They were staring at empty space, above which loomed the rose throne of the Ancient Ones.

"He spoke true," murmured Thrala. "We have had other lives, other meetings--so will we meet again. But for the present he returns to the darkness which sent him forth. It is finished."

Without warning, a low rumbling filled the Cavern; the walls rocked and swayed. Lizard and human, they huddled together until the swaying stopped. Finally a runner appeared with news that one of the Gibi had ventured forth and discovered that the Caves of Darkness had been sealed by an underground quake. The menace of the Black Ones was definitely at an end.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Thrala's Mate

Although there were falls of rock within the Caverns and some of the passages were closed, few of the Folk suffered injury. Gibi scouts reported that the land about the entrance to the Caves had sunk, and that the River of Gold, thrown out of its bed, was fast filling this basin to form a lake.

As far as they could discover, none of the Black Ones had survived the battle and the sealing of the Caves. But they could not be sure that there was not a handful of outlaws somewhere within the confines of Tav.

The Crater itself was changed. A series of raw hills had appeared in the central plain. The pool of boiling mud had vanished and trees in the forest lay flat, as if cut by a giant scythe.

Upon their return to the cliff city, the Gibi found most of their wax skyscrapers in ruins, but they set about rebuilding without complaint. The squirrel farmers emerged from their burrows and were again busy in the fields.

Garin felt out of place in all the activity that filled the Caverns. More than ever he was the outlander with no true roots in Tav. Restlessly, he explored the Caverns, spending many hours in the Place of Ancestors, where he studied those men of the outer world who had preceded him into this weird land.

One night when he came back to his chamber he found Dandtan and Trar awaiting him there. There was a curious hardness in Dandtan's attitude, a somber sobriety in Trar's carriage.

"Have you sought the Hall of Women since the battle?" demanded the son of the Ancient Ones abruptly.

"No," retorted Garin shortly. Did Dandtan accuse him of double dealing?

"Have you sent a message to Thrala?"

Garin held back his rising temper. "I have not ventured where I can not."

Dandtan nodded to Trar as if his suspicions had been confirmed. "You see how it stands, Trar."

Trar shook his head slowly. "But never has the summoning been at fault--"

"You forget," Dandtan reminded him sharply. "It was once--and the penalty was exacted. So shall it be again."

Garin looked from one to the other, confused. Dandtan seemed possessed of a certain ruthless anger, but Trar was manifestly unhappy.

"It must come after council, the Daughter willing," the Lord of the Folk said.

Dandtan strode toward the door. "Thrala is not to know. Assemble the Council tonight. Meanwhile, see that he," he jerked his thumb toward Garin, "does not leave this room."

Thus Garin became a prisoner under the guard of the Folk, unable to discover of what Dandtan accused him, or how he had aroused the hatred of the Cavern ruler. Unless Dandtan's jealousy had been aroused and he was determined to rid himself of a rival.

Believing this, the flyer went willingly to the chamber where the judges waited. Dandtan sat at the head of a long table, Trar at his right hand and lesser nobles of the Folk beyond.

"You know the charge," Dandtan's words were tipped with venom as Garin came to stand before him. "Out of his own mouth has this outlander condemned himself. Therefore I ask that you decree for him the fate of that outlander of the second calling who rebelled against the summoning."

"The outlander has admitted his fault?" questioned one of the Folk.

Trar inclined his head sadly. "He did."

As Garin opened his mouth to demand a stating of the charge against him, Dandtan spoke again:

"What say you, Lords?"

For a long moment they sat in silence and then they bobbed their lizard heads in assent. "Do as you desire, Dweller in the Light."

Dandtan smiled without mirth. "Look, outlander." He passed his hand over the glass of the seeing mirror set in the table top. "This is the fate of him who rebels--"

In the shining surface Garin saw pictured a break in Tav's wall. At its foot stood a group of men of the Ancient Ones, and in their midst struggled a prisoner. They were forcing him to climb the crater wall. Garin watched him reach the lip and crawl over, to stagger across the steaming rock, dodging the scalding vapor of hot springs, until he pitched face down in the slimy mud.

"Such was his ending, and so will you end--"

The calm brutality of that statement aroused Garin's anger. "Rather would I die that way than linger in this den," he cried hotly. "You, who owe your life to me, would send me to such a death without even telling me of what I am accused. Little is there to choose between you and Kepta, after all--except that he was an open enemy!"

Dandtan sprang to his feet, but Trar caught his arm.

"He speaks fairly. Ask him why he will not fulfill the summoning."

While Dandtan hesitated, Garin leaned across the table, flinging his words, weapon-like, straight into that cold face.

"I'll admit that I love Thrala--have loved her since that moment when I saw her on the steps of the morgel pit in the caves. Since when has it become a crime to love that which may not be yours--if you do not try to take it?"

Trar released Dandtan, his golden eyes gleaming.

"If you love her, claim her. It is your right."

"Do I not know," Garin turned to him, "that she is Dandtan's. Thran had no idea of Dandtan's survival when he laid his will upon her. Shall I stoop to holding her to an unwelcome bargain? Let her go to the one she loves...."

Dandtan's face was livid, and his hands, resting on the table, trembled. One by one the lords of the Folk slipped away, leaving the two face-to-face.

"And I thought to order you to your death." Dandtan's whisper was husky as it emerged between dry lips. "Garin, we thought you knew--and, knowing, had refused her."

"Knew what?"

* * * * *

"That I am Thran's son--and Thrala's brother."

The floor swung beneath Garin's unsteady feet. Dandtan's hands were warm on his shoulders.

"I am a fool," said the American slowly.

Dandtan smiled. "A very honorable fool! Now get you to Thrala, who deserves to hear the full of this tangle."

So it was that, with Dandtan by his side, Garin walked for the second time down that hallway, to pass the golden curtains and stand in the presence of the Daughter. She came straight from her cushions into his arms when she read what was in his face. They needed no words.

And in that hour began Garin's life in Tav.

Contents

AN OUNCE OF CURE

By Alan Nourse

The doctor's office was shiny and modern. Behind the desk the doctor smiled down at James Wheatley through thick glasses. "Now, then! What seems to be the trouble?"

Wheatley had been palpitating for five days straight at the prospect of coming here. "I know it's silly," he said. "But I've been having a pain in my toe."

"Indeed!" said the doctor. "Well, now! How long have you had this pain, my man?"

"About six months now, I'd say. Just now and then, you know. It's never really been bad. Until last week. You see--"

"I see," said the doctor. "Getting worse all the time, you say."

Wheatley wiggled the painful toe reflectively. "Well--you might say that. You see, when I first--"

"How old did you say you were, Mr. Wheatley?"

"Fifty-five."

"Fifty-five!" The doctor leafed through the medical record on his desk. "But this is incredible. You haven't had a checkup in almost ten years!"

"I guess I haven't," said Wheatley, apologetically. "I'd been feeling pretty well until--"

"Feeling well!" The doctor stared in horror. "But my dear fellow, no checkup since January 1963! We aren't in the Middle Ages, you know. This is 1972."

"Well, of course--"

"Of course you may be feeling well enough, but that doesn't mean everything is just the way it should be. And now, you see, you're having pains in your toes!"

"One toe," said Wheatley. "The little one on the right. It seemed to me--"

"One toe today, perhaps," said the doctor heavily. "But tomorrow--" He heaved a sigh. "How about your breathing lately? Been growing short of breath when you hurry upstairs?"

"Well--I have been bothered a little."

"I thought so! Heart pound when you run for the subway? Feel tired all day? Pains in your calves when you walk fast?"

"Uh--yes, occasionally, I--" Wheatley looked worried and rubbed his toe on the chair leg.

"You know that fifty-five is a dangerous age," said the doctor gravely. "Do you have a cough? Heartburn after dinner? Prop up on pillows at night? Just as I thought! And no checkup for ten years!" He sighed again.

"I suppose I should have seen to it," Wheatley admitted. "But you see, it's just that my toe--"

"My dear fellow! Your toe is part of you. It doesn't just exist down there all by itself. If your toe hurts, there must be a reason."

Wheatley looked more worried than ever. "There must? I thought--perhaps you could just give me a little something--"

"To stop the pain?" The doctor looked shocked. "Well, of course I could do that, but that's not getting at the root of the trouble, is it? That's just treating symptoms. Medieval quackery. Medicine has advanced a long way since your last checkup, my friend. And even treatment has its dangers. Did you know that more people died last year of aspirin poisoning than of cyanide poisoning?"

Wheatley wiped his forehead. "I--dear me! I never realized--"

"We have to think about those things," said the doctor. "Now, the problem here is to find out why you have the pain in your toe. It could be inflammatory. Maybe a tumor. Perhaps it could be, uh, functional ... or maybe vascular!"

"Perhaps you could take my blood pressure, or something," Wheatley offered.

"Well, of course I could. But that isn't really my field, you know. It wouldn't really mean anything, if I did it. But there's nothing to worry about. We have a fine Hypertensive man at the Diagnostic Clinic." The doctor checked the appointment book on his desk. "Now, if we could see you there next Monday morning at nine--"

* * * * *

"Very interesting X rays," said the young doctor with the red hair. "Very interesting. See this shadow in the duodenal cap? See the prolonged emptying time? And I've never seen such beautiful pylorospasm!"

"This is my toe?" asked Wheatley, edging toward the doctors. It seemed he had been waiting for a very long time.

"Toe! Oh, no," said the red-headed doctor. "No, that's the Orthopedic Radiologist's job. I'm a Gastro-Intestinal man, myself. Upper. Dr. Schultz here is Lower." The red-headed doctor turned back to his consultation with Dr. Schultz. Mr. Wheatley rubbed his toe and waited.

Presently another doctor came by. He looked very grave as he sat down beside Wheatley. "Tell me, Mr. Wheatley, have you had an orthodiagram recently?"

"No."

"An EKG?"

"No."

"Fluoroaortogram?"

"I--don't think so."

The doctor looked even graver, and walked away, muttering to himself. In a few moments he came back with two more doctors. "--no question in my mind that it's cardiomegaly," he was saying, "but Haddonfield should know. He's the best Left Ventricle man in the city. Excellent paper in the AMA Journal last July: 'The Inadequacies of Modern Orthodiagramatic Techniques in Demonstrating Minimal Left Ventricular Hypertrophy.' A brilliant study, simply brilliant! Now this patient--" He glanced toward Wheatley, and his voice dropped to a mumble.

Presently two of the men nodded, and one walked over to Wheatley, cautiously, as though afraid he might suddenly vanish. "Now, there's nothing to be worried about, Mr. Wheatley," he said. "We're going to have you fixed up in just no time at all. Just a few more studies. Now, if you could see me in Valve Clinic tomorrow afternoon at three--"

Wheatley nodded. "Nothing serious, I hope?"

"Serious? Oh, no! Dear me, you mustn't worry. Everything is going to be all right," the doctor said.

"Well--I--that is, my toe is still bothering me some. It's not nearly as bad, but I wondered if maybe you--"

Dawn broke on the doctor's face. "Give you something for it? Well now, we aren't Therapeutic men, you understand. Always best to let the expert handle the problem in his own field." He paused, stroking his chin for a moment. "Tell you what we'll do. Dr. Epstein is one of the finest Therapeutic men in the city. He could take care of you in a jiffy. We'll see if we can't arrange an appointment with him after you've seen me tomorrow."

Mr. Wheatley was late to Mitral Valve Clinic the next day because he had gone to Aortic Valve Clinic by mistake, but finally he found the right waiting room. A few hours later he was being thumped, photographed, and listened to. Substances were popped into his right arm, and withdrawn from his left arm as he marveled at the brilliance of modern medical techniques. Before they were finished he had been seen by both the Mitral men and the Aortic men, as well as the Great Arteries man and the Peripheral Capillary Bed man.

The Therapeutic man happened to be in Atlantic City at a convention and the Rheumatologist was on vacation, so Wheatley was sent to Functional Clinic instead. "Always have to rule out these things," the doctors agreed. "Wouldn't do much good to give you medicine if your trouble isn't organic, now, would it?" The Psychoneuroticist studied his sex life, while the Psychosociologist examined his social milieu. Then they conferred for a long time.

Three days later he was waiting in the hallway downstairs again. Heads met in a huddle; words and phrases slipped out from time to time as the discussion grew heated.

"--no doubt in my mind that it's a--"

"But we can't ignore the endocrine implications, doctor--"

"You're perfectly right there, of course. Bittenbender at the University might be able to answer the question. No better Pituitary Osmoreceptorologist in the city--"

"--a Tubular Function man should look at those kidneys first. He's fifty-five, you know."

"--has anyone studied his filtration fraction?"

"--might be a peripheral vascular spasticity factor--"

After a while James Wheatley rose from the bench and slipped out the door, limping slightly as he went.

* * * * *

The room was small and dusky, with heavy Turkish drapes obscuring the dark hallway beyond. A suggestion of incense hung in the air.

In due course a gaunt, swarthy man in mustache and turban appeared through the curtains and bowed solemnly. "You come with a problem?" he asked, in a slight accent.

"As a matter of fact, yes," James Wheatley said hesitantly. "You see, I've been having a pain in my right little toe...."

Contents

IMAGE OF THE GODS

By Alan E. Nourse

It was nearly winter when the ship arrived. Pete Farnam never knew if the timing had been planned that way or not. It might have been coincidence that it came just when the colony was predicting its first real bumper crop of all time. When it was all over, Pete and Mario and the rest tried to figure it out, but none of them ever knew for sure just what had happened back on Earth, or when it had actually happened. There was too little information to go on, and practically none that they could trust. All Pete Farnam really knew, that day, was that this was the wrong year for a ship from Earth to land on Baron IV.

Pete was out on the plantation when it landed. As usual, his sprayer had gotten clogged; tarring should have been started earlier, before it got so cold that the stuff clung to the nozzle and hardened before the spray could settle into the dusty soil. The summer past had been the colony's finest in the fourteen years he'd been there, a warm, still summer with plenty of rain to keep the dirt down and let the taaro get well rooted and grow up tall and gray against the purple sky. But now the taaro was harvested. It was waiting, compressed and crated, ready for shipment, and the heavy black clouds were scudding nervously across the sky, faster with every passing day. Two days ago Pete had asked Mario to see about firing up the little furnaces the Dusties had built to help them fight the winter. All that remained now was tarring the fields, and then buckling down beneath the wind shields before the first winter storms struck.

Pete was trying to get the nozzle of the tar sprayer cleaned out when Mario's jeep came roaring down the rutted road from the village in a cloud of dust. In the back seat a couple of Dusties were bouncing up and down like happy five-year-olds. The brakes squealed and Mario bellowed at him from the road. "Pete! The ship's in! Better get hopping!"

Pete nodded and started to close up the sprayer. One of the Dusties tumbled out of the jeep and scampered across the field to give him a hand. It was an inexpert hand to say the least, but the Dusties seemed so proud of the little they were able to learn about mechanized farming that nobody had the heart to shoo them away. Pete watched the fuzzy brown creature get its paws thoroughly gummed up with tar before he pulled him loose and sent him back to the jeep with a whack on the backside. He finished the job himself, grabbed his coat from the back of the sprayer, and pulled himself into the front seat of the jeep.

Mario started the little car back down the road. The young colonist's face was coated with dust, emphasizing the lines of worry around his eyes. "I don't like it, Pete. There isn't any ship due this year."

"When did it land?"

"About twenty minutes ago. Won't be cool for a while yet."

Pete laughed. "Maybe Old Schooner is just getting lonesome to swap tall stories with us. Maybe he's even bringing us a locker of T-bones. Who knows?"

"Maybe," said Mario without conviction.

Pete looked at him, and shrugged. "Why complain if they're early? Maybe they've found some new way to keep our fields from blowing away on us every winter." He stared across at the heavy windbreaks between the fields--long, ragged structures built in hope of outwitting the vicious winds that howled across the land during the long winter. Pete picked bits of tar from his beard, and wiped the dirt from his forehead with the back of his hand. "This tarring is mean," he said wearily. "Glad to take a break."

"Maybe Cap Schooner will know something about the rumors we've been hearing," Mario said gloomily.

Pete looked at him sharply. "About Earth?"

Mario nodded. "Schooner's a pretty good guy, I guess. I mean, he'd tell us if anything was really wrong back home, wouldn't he?"

Pete nodded, and snapped his fingers. One of the Dusties hopped over into his lap and began gawking happily at the broad fields as the jeep jogged along. Pete stroked the creature's soft brown fur with his tar-caked fingers. "Maybe someday these little guys will show us where they go for the winter," he said. "They must have it down to a science."

Somehow the idea was funny, and both men roared. If the Dusties had anything down to a science, nobody knew what. Mario grinned and tweaked the creature's tail. "They sure do beat the winter, though," he said.

"So do we. Only we have to do it the human way. These fellas grew up in the climate." Pete lapsed into silence as the village came into view. The ship had landed quite a way out, resting on its skids on the long shallow groove the colonists had bulldozed out for it years before, the first year they had arrived on Baron IV. Slowly Pete turned Mario's words over in his mind, allowing himself to worry a little. There had been rumors of trouble back on Earth, persistent rumors he had taken care to soft-pedal, as mayor of the colony. There were other things, too, like the old newspapers and magazines that had been brought in by the lad from Baron II, and the rare radio message they could pick up through their atmospheric disturbance. Maybe something was going wrong back home. But somehow political upheavals on Earth seemed remote to these hardened colonists. Captain Schooner's visits were always welcome, but they were few and far between. The colony was small; one ship every three years could supply it, and even then the taaro crates wouldn't half fill up the storage holds. There were other colonies far closer to home that sent back more taaro in one year than Baron IV could grow in ten.

But when a ship did come down, it was a time of high excitement. It meant fresh food from Earth, meat from the frozen lockers, maybe even a little candy and salt. And always for Pete a landing meant a long evening of palaver with the captain about things back home and things on Baron IV.

Pete smiled to himself as he thought of it. He could remember Earth, of course, with a kind of vague nostalgia, but Baron IV was home to him now and he knew he would never leave it. He had too many hopes invested there, too many years of heartache and desperate hard work, too much deep satisfaction in having cut a niche for himself on this dusty, hostile world, ever to think much about Earth any more.

Mario stopped in front of the offices, and one of the Dusties hopped out ahead of Pete. The creature strode across the rough gravel to the door, pulling tar off his fingers just as he had seen Pete do. Pete followed him to the door, and then stopped, frowning. There should have been a babble of voices inside, with Captain Schooner's loud laugh roaring above the excitement. But Pete could hear nothing. A chill of uneasiness ran through him; he pushed open the door and walked inside. A dozen of his friends looked up silently, avoiding the eyes of the uniformed stranger in the center of the room. When he saw the man, Pete Farnam knew something was wrong indeed.

It wasn't Captain Schooner. It was a man he'd never seen before.

* * * * *

The Dustie ran across the room in front of Pete and hopped up on the desk as though he owned it, throwing his hands on his hips and staring at the stranger curiously. Pete took off his cap and parka and dropped them on a chair. "Well," he said. "This is a surprise. We weren't expecting a ship so soon."

The man inclined his head stiffly and glanced down at the paper he held in his hand. "You're Peter Farnam, I suppose? Mayor of this colony?"

"That's right. And you?"

"Varga is the name," the captain said shortly. "Earth Security and Supply." He nodded toward the small, frail-looking man in civilian clothes, sitting beside him. "This is Rupert Nathan, of the Colonial Service. You'll be seeing a great deal of him." He held out a small wallet of papers. "Our credentials, Farnam. Be so good as to examine them."

Pete glanced around the room. John Tegan and Hank Mario were watching him uneasily. Mary Turner was following the proceedings with her sharp little eyes, missing nothing, and Mel Dorfman stood like a rock, his heavy face curiously expressionless as he watched the visitors. Pete reached out for the papers, flipped through them, and handed them back with a long look at Captain Varga.

He was younger than Captain Schooner, with sandy hair and pale eyes that looked up at Pete from a soft baby face. Clean-shaven, his whole person seemed immaculate as he leaned back calmly in the chair. His civilian companion, however, had indecision written in every line of his pink face. His hands fluttered nervously, and he avoided the colonist's eyes.

Pete turned to the captain. "The papers say you're our official supply ship," he said. "You're early, but an Earth ship is always good news." He clucked at the Dustie, who was about to go after one of the shiny buttons on the captain's blouse. The little brown creature hopped over and settled on Pete's knee. "We've been used to seeing Captain Schooner."

The captain and Nathan exchanged glances. "Captain Schooner has retired from Security Service," the captain said shortly. "You won't be seeing him again. But we have a cargo for your colony. You may send these people over to the ship to start unloading now, if you wish--" his eye swept the circle of windburned faces--"while Nathan and I discuss certain matters with you here."

Nobody moved for a moment. Then Pete nodded to Mario. "Take the boys out to unload, Jack. We'll see you back here in an hour or so."

"Pete, are you sure--"

"Don't worry. Take Mel and Hank along to lend a hand." Pete turned back to Captain Varga. "Suppose we go inside to more comfortable quarters," he said. "We're always glad to have word from Earth."

They passed through a dark, smelly corridor into Pete's personal quarters. For a colony house, if wasn't bad--good plastic chairs, a hand-made rug on the floor, even one of Mary Turner's paintings on the wall, and several of the weird, stylized carvings the Dusties had done for Pete. But the place smelled of tar and sweat, and Captain Varga's nose wrinkled in distaste. Nathan drew out a large silk handkerchief and wiped his pink hands, touching his nose daintily.

The Dustie hopped into the room ahead of them and settled into the biggest, most comfortable chair. Pete snapped his fingers sharply, and the brown creature jumped down again like a naughty child and climbed up on Pete's knee. The captain glanced at the chair with disgust and sat down in another. "Do you actually let those horrid creatures have the run of your house?" he asked.

"Why not?" Pete said. "We have the run of their planet. They're quite harmless, really. And quite clean."

The captain sniffed. "Nasty things. Might find a use for the furs, though. They look quite soft."

"We don't kill Dusties," said Pete coolly. "They're friendly, and intelligent too, in a childish sort of way." He looked at the captain and Nathan, and decided not to put on the coffee pot. "Now what's the trouble?"

"No trouble at all," the captain said, "except the trouble you choose to make. You have your year's taaro ready for shipping?"

"Of course."

The captain took out a small pencil on a chain and began to twirl it. "How much, to be exact?"

"Twenty thousand, Earth weight."

"Tons?"

Pete shook his head. "Hundredweight."

The captain raised his eyebrows. "I see. And there are--" he consulted the papers in his hand--"roughly two hundred and twenty colonists here on Baron IV. Is that right?"

"That's right."

"Seventy-four men, eighty-one women, and fifty-nine children, to be exact?"

"I'd have to look it up. Margaret Singman had twins the other night."

"Well, don't be ridiculous," snapped the captain. "On a planet the size of Baron IV, with seventy-four men, you should be producing a dozen times the taaro you stated. We'll consider that your quota for a starter, at least. You have ample seed, according to my records. I should think, with the proper equipment--"

"Now wait a minute," Pete said softly. "We're fighting a climate here, captain. You should know that. We have only a two-planting season, and the 'proper equipment,' as you call it, doesn't operate too well out here. It has a way of clogging up with dust in the summer, and rusting in the winter."

"Really," said Captain Varga. "As I was saying, with the proper equipment, you could cultivate a great deal more land than you seem to be using. This would give you the necessary heavier yield. Wouldn't you say so, Nathan?"

The little nervous man nodded. "Certainly, captain. With the proper organization of labor."

"That's nonsense," Pete said, suddenly angry. "Nobody can get that kind of yield from this planet. The ground won't give it, and the men won't grow it."

The captain gave him a long look. "Really?" he said. "I think you're wrong. I think the men will grow it."

Pete stood up slowly. "What are you trying to say? This business about quotas and organization of labor--"

"You didn't read our credentials as we instructed you, Farnam. Mr. Nathan is the official governor of the colony on Baron IV, as of now. You'll find him most co-operative, I'm sure, but he's answerable directly to me in all matters. My job is administration of the entire Baron system. Clear enough?"

Pete's eyes were dark. "I think you'd better draw me a picture," he said tightly. "A very clear picture."

"Very well. Baron IV is not paying for its upkeep. Taaro, after all, is not the most necessary of crops in the universe. It has value, but not very much value, all things considered. If the production of taaro here is not increased sharply, it may be necessary to close down the colony altogether."

"You're a liar," said Pete shortly. "The Colonization Board makes no production demands on the colonies. Nor does it farm out systems for personal exploitation."

The captain smiled. "The Colonization Board, as you call it, has undergone a slight reorganization," he said.

"Reorganization! It's a top-level board in the Earth Government! Nothing could reorganize it but a wholesale--" He broke off, his jaw sagging as the implication sank in.

"You're rather out on a limb, you see," said the captain coolly. "Poor communications and all that. The fact is that the entire Earth Government has undergone a slight reorganization also."

* * * * *

The Dustie knew that something had happened.

Pete didn't know how he knew. The Dusties couldn't talk, couldn't make any noise, as far as Pete knew. But they always seemed to know when something unusual was happening. It was wrong, really, to consider them unintelligent animals. There are other sorts of intelligence than human, and other sorts of communication, and other sorts of culture. The Baron IV colonists had never understood the queer perceptive sense that the Dusties seemed to possess, any more than they knew how many Dusties there were, or what they ate, or where on the planet they lived. All they knew was that when they landed on Baron IV, the Dusties were there.

At first the creatures had been very timid. For weeks the men and women, busy with their building, had paid little attention to the skittering brown forms that crept down from the rocky hills to watch them with big, curious eyes. They were about half the size of men, and strangely humanoid in appearance, not in the sense that a monkey is humanoid (for they did not resemble monkeys) but in some way the colonists could not quite pin down. It may have been the way they walked around on their long, fragile hind legs, the way they stroked their pointed chins as they sat and watched and listened with their pointed ears lifted alertly, watching with soft gray eyes, or the way they handled objects with their little four-fingered hands. They were so remarkably human-like in their elfin way that the colonists couldn't help but be drawn to the creatures.

That whole first summer, when the colonists were building the village and the landing groove for the ships, the Dusties were among them, trying pathetically to help, so eager for friendship that even occasional rebuffs failed to drive them away. They liked the colony. They seemed, somehow, to savor the atmosphere, moving about like solemn, fuzzy overseers as the work progressed through the summer. Pete Farnam thought that they had even tried to warn the people about the winter. But the colonists couldn't understand, of course. Not until later. The Dusties became a standing joke, and were tolerated with considerable amusement--until the winter struck.

It had come with almost unbelievable ferocity. The houses had not been completed when the first hurricanes came, and they were smashed into toothpicks. The winds came, vicious winds full of dust and sleet and ice, wild erratic twisting gales that ripped the village to shreds, tearing off the topsoil that had been broken and fertilized--merciless, never-ending winds that wailed and screamed the planet's protest. The winds drove sand and dirt and ice into the heart of the generators, and the heating units corroded and jammed and went dead. The jeeps and tractors and bulldozers were scored and rusted. The people began dying by the dozens as they huddled down in the pitiful little pits they had dug to try to keep the winds away.

Few of them were still conscious when the Dusties had come silently, in the blizzard, eyes closed tight against the blast, to drag the people up into the hills, into caves and hollows that still showed the fresh marks of carving tools. They had brought food--what kind of food nobody knew, for the colony's food had been destroyed by the first blast of the hurricane--but whatever it was it had kept them alive. And somehow, the colonists had survived the winter which seemed never to end. There were frozen legs and ruined eyes; there was pneumonia so swift and virulent that even the antibiotics they managed to salvage could not stop it; there was near-starvation--but they were kept alive, until the winds began to die, and they walked out of their holes in the ground to see the ruins of their first village.

From that winter on, nobody considered the Dusties funny any more. What had motivated them no one knew, but the colony owed them their lives. The Dusties tried to help the people rebuild. They showed them how to build windshields that would keep houses intact and anchored to the ground when the winds came again. They built little furnaces out of dirt and rock which defied the winds and gave great heat. They showed the colonists a dozen things they needed to know for life on the rugged planet. The colonists in turn tried to teach the Dusties something about Earth, and how the colonists had lived, and why they had come. But there was a barrier of intelligence that could not be crossed. The Dusties learned simple things, but only slowly and imperfectly. They seemed content to take on their mock overseer's role, moving in and about the village, approving or disapproving, but always trying to help. Some became personal pets, though "pet" was the wrong word, because it was more of a strange personal friendship limited by utter lack of communication, than any animal-and-master relationship. The colonists made sure that the Dusties were granted the respect due them as rightful masters of Baron IV. And somehow the Dusties perceived this attitude, and were so grateful for the acceptance and friendship that there seemed nothing they wouldn't do for the colonists.

There had been many discussions about them. "You'd think they'd resent our moving in on them," Jack Mario had said one day. "After all, we are usurpers. And they treat us like kings. Have you noticed the way they mimic us? I saw one chewing tobacco the other day. He hated the stuff, but he chewed away, and spat like a trooper."

One of the Dusties had been sitting on Pete's knee when Captain Varga had been talking, and he had known that something terrible was wrong. Now he sat on the desk in the office, moving uneasily back and forth as Pete looked up at Mario's dark face, and then across at John Tegan and Mel Dorfman. John's face was dark with anger as he ran his fingers through the heavy gray beard that fell to his chest. Mel sat stunned, shaking his head helplessly. Mario was unable to restrain himself. His face was bitter as he stomped across the room, then returned to shake his fist under Pete's nose. "But did you see him?" he choked. "Governor of the colony! What does he know about growing taaro in this kind of soil? Did you see those hands? Soft, dainty, pink! How could a man with hands like that govern a colony?"

Pete looked over at John Tegan. "Well, John?"

The big man looked up, his eyes hollow under craggy brows. "It's below the belt, Pete. But if the government's been overthrown, then the captain is right. It leaves us out on a limb."

Pete shook his head. "I can't give him an answer," he said. "The answer has got to come from the colony. All I can do is speak for the colony."

Tegan stared at the floor. "We're an Earth colony," he said softly. "I know that. I was born in New York. I lived there for many years. But Earth isn't my home any more. This is." He looked at Pete. "I built it, and so did you. All of us built it, even when things were getting stormy back home. Maybe that's why we came, maybe somehow we saw the handwriting on the wall."

"But when did it happen?" Mel burst out suddenly. "How could anything so big happen so fast?"

"Speed was the secret," Pete said gloomily. "It was quick, it was well organized, and the government was unstable. We're just caught in the edge of it. Pity the ones living there, now. But the new government considers the colonies as areas for exploitation instead of development."

"Well, they can't do it," Mario cried. "This is our land, our home. Nobody can tell us what to grow in our fields."

Pete's fist slammed down on the desk. "Well, how are you going to stop them? The law of the land is sitting out there in that ship. Tomorrow morning he's coming back here to install his fat little friend as governor. He has guns and soldiers on that ship to back him up. What are you going to do about it?"

"Fight it," Mario said.

"How?"

Jack Mario looked around the room. "There are only a dozen men on that ship," he said softly. "We've got seventy-four. When Varga comes back to the village tomorrow, we tell him to take his friend back to the ship and shove off. We give him five minutes to get turned around, and if he doesn't, we start shooting."

"Just one little thing," said Pete quietly. "What about the supplies? Even if we fought them off and won, what about the food, the clothing, the replacement parts for the machines?"

"We don't need machinery to farm this land," said Mario eagerly. "There's food here, food we can live on; the Dusties showed us that the first winter. And we can farm the land for our own use and let the machinery rust. There's nothing they can bring us from Earth that we can't do without."

"We couldn't get away with it!" Mel Dorfman shook his head bitterly. "You're asking us to cut ourselves off from Earth completely. But they'd never let us. They'd send ships to bomb us out."

"We could hide, and rebuild after they had finished."

Pete Farnam sighed. "They'd never leave us alone, Jack. Didn't you see that captain? His kind of mind can't stand opposition. We'd just be a thorn in the side of the new Earth Government. They don't want any free colonies."

"Well, let's give them one." Mario sat down tiredly, snapping his fingers at the Dustie. "Furs!" he snarled. He looked up, his dark eyes burning. "It's no good, Pete. We can't let them get away with it. Produce for them, yes. Try to raise the yield for them, yes. But not a governor. If they insist on that we can throw them out, and keep them out."

"I don't think so. They'd kill every one of us first."

John Tegan sat up, and looked Pete Farnam straight in the eye. "In that case, Peter, it might just be better if they did."

Pete stared at him for a moment and slowly stood up. "All right," he said. "Call a general colony meeting. We'll see what the women think. Then we'll make our plans."

* * * * *

The ship's jeep skidded to a halt in a cloud of dust. Captain Varga peered through the windshield. Then he stood up, staring at the three men blocking the road at the edge of the village. The little pink-faced man at his side turned white when he saw their faces, and his fingers began to tremble. Each of the men had a gun.

"You'd better clear the road," the captain snapped. "We're driving through."

Pete Farnam stepped forward. He pointed to Nathan. "Take your friend there back to the ship. Leave him there. We don't want him here."

Nathan turned to Varga. "I told you," he said viciously. "Too big for their boots. Go on through."

The captain laughed and gunned the motor, started straight for the men blocking the road. Then Jack Mario shot a hole in his front tire. The jeep lurched to a stop. Captain Varga stood up, glaring at the men. "Farnam, step out here," he said.

"You heard us," Pete said, without moving. "Crops, yes. We'll try to increase our yield. But no overseer. Leave him here and we'll kill him."

"Once more," said the captain, "clear the way. This man is your new governor. He will be regarded as the official agent of the Earth Government until the final production capacity of this colony is determined. Now clear out."

The men didn't move. Without another word, the captain threw the jeep into reverse, jerked back in a curve, and started the jeep, flat tire and all, back toward the ship in a billow of dust.

Abruptly the village exploded into activity. Four men took up places behind the row of windbreaks beyond the first row of cabins. Pete turned and ran back into the village. He found John Tegan commandeering a squad of ten dirty-faced men. "Are the women and children all out?" he shouted.

"All taken care of." Tegan spat tobacco juice, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

"Where's Mel?"

"Left flank. He'll try to move in behind them. Gonna be tough, Pete, they've got good weapons."

"What about the boys last night?"

John was checking the bolt on his ancient rifle. "Hank and Ringo? Just got back an hour ago. If Varga wants to get his surface planes into action, he's going to have to dismantle them and rebuild them outside. The boys jammed up the launching ports for good." He spat again. "Don't worry, Pete. This is going to be a ground fight."

"Okay." Pete held out his hand to the old man. "This may be it. And if we turn them back, there's bound to be more later."

"There's a lot of planet to hide on," said Tegan. "They may come back, but after a while they'll go again."

Pete nodded. "I just hope we'll still be here when they do."

They waited. It seemed like hours. Pete moved from post to post among the men, heavy-faced men he had known all his life, it seemed. They waited with whatever weapons they had available--pistols, home-made revolvers, ortho-guns, an occasional rifle, even knives and clubs. Pete's heart sank. They were bitter men, but they were a mob with no organization, no training for fighting. They would be facing a dozen of Security's best-disciplined shock troops, armed with the latest weapons from Earth's electronics laboratories. The colonists didn't stand a chance.

Pete got his rifle and made his way up the rise of ground overlooking the right flank of the village. Squinting, he could spot the cloud of dust rising up near the glistening ship, moving toward the village. And then, for the first time, he realized that he hadn't seen any Dusties all day.

It puzzled him. They had been in the village in abundance an hour before dawn, while the plans were being laid out. He glanced around, hoping to see one of the fuzzy brown forms at his elbow, but he saw nothing. And then, as he stared at the cloud of dust coming across the valley, he thought he saw the ground moving.

He blinked, and rubbed his eyes. With a gasp he dragged out his binoculars and peered down at the valley floor. There were thousands of them, hundreds of thousands, their brown bodies moving slowly out from the hills surrounding the village, converging into a broad, liquid column between the village and the ship. Even as he watched, the column grew thicker, like a heavy blanket being drawn across the road, a multitude of Dusties lining up.

Pete's hair prickled on the back of his neck. They knew so little about the creatures, so very little. As he watched the brown carpet rolling out, he tried to think. Could there be a weapon in their hands, could they somehow have perceived the evil that came from the ship, somehow sensed the desperation in the men's voices as they had laid their plans? Pete stared, a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. They were there in the road, thousands upon thousands of them, standing there, waiting--for what?

Three columns of dust were coming from the road now. Through the glasses Pete could see the jeeps, filled with men in their gleaming gray uniforms, crash helmets tight about their heads, blasters glistening in the pale light. They moved in deadly convoy along the rutted road, closer and closer to the crowd of Dusties overflowing the road.

The Dusties just stood there. They didn't move. They didn't shift, or turn. They just waited.

The captain's car was first in line. He pulled up before the line with a screech of brakes, and stared at the sea of creatures before him. "Get out of there!" he shouted.

The Dusties didn't move.

The captain turned to his men. "Fire into them," he snapped. "Clear a path."

There was a blaze of fire, and a half a dozen Dusties slid to the ground, convulsing. Pete felt a chill pass through him, staring in disbelief. The Dusties had a weapon, he kept telling himself, they must have a weapon, something the colonists had never dreamed of. The guns came up again, and another volley echoed across the valley, and a dozen more Dusties fell to the ground. For every one that fell, another moved stolidly into its place.

With a curse the captain sat down in the seat, gunned the motor, and started forward. The jeep struck the fallen bodies, rolled over them, and plunged straight into the wall of Dusties. Still they didn't move. The car slowed and stopped, mired down. The other cars picked up momentum and plunged into the brown river of creatures. They too ground to a stop.

The captain started roaring at his men. "Cut them down! We're going to get through here!" Blasters began roaring into the faces of the Dusties, and as they fell the jeeps moved forward a few feet until more of the creatures blocked their path.

Pete heard a cry below him, and saw Jack Mario standing in the road, gun on the ground, hands out in front of him, staring in horror as the Dusties kept moving into the fire. "Do you see what they're doing!" he screamed. "They'll be slaughtered, every one of them!" And then he was running down the road, shouting at them to stop, and so were Pete and Tegan and the rest of the men.

Something hit Pete in the shoulder as he ran. He spun around and fell into the dusty road. A dozen Dusties closed in around him, lifted him up bodily, and started back through the village with him. He tried to struggle, but vaguely he saw that the other men were being carried back also, while the river of brown creatures held the jeeps at bay. The Dusties were hurrying, half carrying and half dragging him back through the village and up a long ravine into the hills beyond. At last they set Pete on his feet again, plucking urgently at his shirt sleeve as they hurried him along.

He followed them willingly, then, with the rest of the colonists at his heels. He didn't know what the Dusties were doing, but he knew they were trying to save him. Finally they reached a cave, a great cleft in the rock that Pete knew for certain had not been there when he had led exploring parties through these hills years before. It was a huge opening, and already a dozen of the men were there, waiting, dazed by what they had witnessed down in the valley, while more were stumbling up the rocky incline, tugged along by the fuzzy brown creatures.

Inside the cavern, steps led down the side of the rock, deep into the dark coolness of the earth. Down and down they went, until they suddenly found themselves in a mammoth room lit by blazing torches. Pete stopped and stared at his friends who had already arrived. Jack Mario was sitting on the floor, his face in his hands, sobbing. Tegan was sitting, too, blinking at Pete as if he were a stranger, and Dorfman was trembling like a leaf. Pete stared about him through the dim light, and then looked where Tegan was pointing at the end of the room.

He couldn't see it clearly, at first. Finally, he made out a raised platform with four steps leading up. A torch lighted either side of a dais at the top, and between the torches, rising high into the gloom, stood a statue.

It was a beautifully carved thing, hewn from the heavy granite that made up the core of this planet, with the same curious styling as other carving the Dusties had done. The design was intricate, the lines carefully turned and polished. At first Pete thought it was a statue of a Dustie, but when he moved forward and squinted in the dim light, he suddenly realized that it was something else indeed. And in that moment he realized why they were there and why the Dusties had done this incredible thing to protect them.

The statue was weirdly beautiful, the work of a dedicated master sculptor. It was a figure, standing with five-fingered hands on hips, head raised high. Not a portrait, but an image seen through other eyes than human, standing high in the room with the lights burning reverently at its feet.

Unmistakably it was the statue of a man.

* * * * *

They heard the bombs, much later. The granite roof and floor of the cavern trembled, and the men and women stared at each other, helpless and sick as they huddled in that great hall. But presently the bombing stopped. Later, when they stumbled out of that grotto into the late afternoon light, the ship was gone.

They knew it would be back. Possibly it would bring back search parties to hunt down the rebels in the hills; perhaps it would just wait and again bomb out the new village when it rose. But searching parties would never find their quarry, and the village would rise again and again, if necessary.

And in the end, somehow, Pete knew that the colonists would find a way to survive here and live free as they had always lived. It might be a bitter struggle, but no matter how hard the fight, there would be one strange and wonderful thing they could count on.

No matter what they had to do, he knew the Dusties would help them.

Contents

A SLAVE IS A SLAVE

BY H. BEAM PIPER

There has always been strong sympathy for the poor, meek, downtrodden slave--the kindly little man, oppressed by cruel and overbearing masters. Could it possibly have been misplaced...?

Jurgen, Prince Trevannion, accepted the coffee cup and lifted it to his lips, then lowered it. These Navy robots always poured coffee too hot; spacemen must have collapsium-lined throats. With the other hand, he punched a button on the robot's keyboard and received a lighted cigarette; turning, he placed the cup on the command-desk in front of him and looked about. The tension was relaxing in Battle-Control, the purposeful pandemonium of the last three hours dying rapidly. Officers of both sexes, in red and blue and yellow and green coveralls, were rising from seats, leaving their stations, gathering in groups. Laughter, a trifle loud; he realized, suddenly, that they had been worried, and wondered if he should not have been a little so himself. No. There would have been nothing he could have done about anything, so worry would not have been useful. He lifted the cup again and sipped cautiously.

"That's everything we can do now," the man beside him said. "Now we just sit and wait for the next move."

Like all the others, Line-Commodore Vann Shatrak wore shipboard battle-dress; his coveralls were black, splashed on breast and between shoulders with the gold insignia of his rank. His head was completely bald, and almost spherical; a beaklike nose carried down the curve of his brow, and the straight lines of mouth and chin chopped under it enhanced rather than spoiled the effect. He was getting coffee; he gulped it at once.

"It was very smart work, Commodore. I never saw a landing operation go so smoothly."

"Too smooth," Shatrak said. "I don't trust it." He looked suspiciously up at the row of viewscreens.

"It was absolutely unnecessary!"

That was young Obray, Count Erskyll, seated on the commodore's left. He was a generation younger than Prince Trevannion, as Shatrak was a generation older; they were both smooth-faced. It was odd, how beards went in and out of fashion with alternate generations. He had been worried, too, during the landing, but for a different reason from the others. Now he was reacting with anger.

"I told you, from the first, that it was unnecessary. You see? They weren't even able to defend themselves, let alone...."

His personal communication-screen buzzed; he set down the coffee and flicked the switch. It was Lanze Degbrend. On the books, Lanze was carried as Assistant to the Ministerial Secretary. In practice, Lanze was his chess-opponent, conversational foil, right hand, third eye and ear, and, sometimes, trigger-finger. Lanze was now wearing the combat coveralls of an officer of Navy Landing-Troops; he had a steel helmet with a transpex visor shoved up, and there was a carbine slung over his shoulder. He grinned and executed an exaggeratedly military salute. He chuckled.

"Well, look at you; aren't you the perfect picture of correct diplomatic dress?"

"You know, sir, I'm afraid I am, for this planet," Degbrend said. "Colonel Ravney insisted on it. He says the situation downstairs is still fluid, which I take to mean that everybody is shooting at everybody. He says he has the main telecast station, in the big building the locals call the Citadel."

"Oh, good. Get our announcement out as quickly as you can. Number Five. You and Colonel Ravney can decide what interpolations are needed to fit the situation."

"Number Five; the really tough one," Degbrend considered. "I take it that by interpolations you do not mean dilutions?"

"Oh, no; don't water the drink. Spike it."

Lanze Degbrend grinned at him. Then he snapped down the visor of his helmet, unslung his carbine, and presented it. He was still standing at present arms when Trevannion blanked the screen.

* * * * *

"That still doesn't excuse a wanton and unprovoked aggression!" Erskyll was telling Shatrak, his thin face flushed and his voice quivering with indignation. "We came here to help these people, not to murder them."

"We didn't come here to do either, Obray," he said, turning to face the younger man. "We came here to annex their planet to the Galactic Empire, whether they wish it annexed or not. Commodore Shatrak used the quickest and most effective method of doing that. It would have done no good to attempt to parley with them from off-planet. You heard those telecasts of theirs."

"Authoritarian," Shatrak said, then mimicked pompously: "'Everybody is commanded to remain calm; the Mastership is taking action. The Convocation of the Lords-Master is in special session; they will decide how to deal with the invaders. The administrators are directed to reassure the supervisors; the overseers will keep the workers at their tasks. Any person disobeying the orders of the Mastership will be dealt with most severely.'"

"Static, too. No spaceships into this system for the last five hundred years; the Convocation--equals Parliament, I assume--hasn't been in special session for two hundred and fifty."

"Yes. I've taken over planets with that kind of government before," Shatrak said. "You can't argue with them. You just grab them by the center of authority, quick and hard."

Count Erskyll said nothing for a moment. He was opposed to the use of force. Force, he believed, was the last resort of incompetence; he had said so frequently enough since this operation had begun. Of course, he was absolutely right, though not in the way he meant. Only the incompetent wait until the last extremity to use force, and by then, it is usually too late to use anything, even prayer.

But, at the same time, he was opposed to authoritarianism, except, of course, when necessary for the real good of the people. And he did not like rulers who called themselves Lords-Master. Good democratic rulers called themselves Servants of the People. So he relapsed into silence and stared at the viewscreens.

One, from an outside pickup on the Empress Eulalie herself, showed the surface of the planet, a hundred miles down, the continent under them curving away to a distant sun-reflecting sea; beyond the curved horizon, the black sky was spangled with unwinking stars. Fifty miles down, the sun glinted from the three thousand foot globes of the two transport-cruisers, Canopus and Mizar.

Another screen, from Mizar, gave a clearer if more circumscribed view of the surface--green countryside, veined by rivers and wrinkled with mountains; little towns that were mere dots; a scatter of white clouds. Nothing that looked like roads. There had been no native sapient race on this planet, and in the thirteen centuries since it had been colonized the Terro-human population had never completely lost the use of contragravity vehicles. In that screen, farther down, the four destroyers, Irma, Irene, Isobel and Iris, were tiny twinkles.

* * * * *

From Irene, they had a magnified view of the city. On the maps, none later than eight hundred years old, it was called Zeggensburg; it had been built at the time of the first colonization under the old Terran Federation. Tall buildings, rising from wide interspaces of lawns and parks and gardens, and, at the very center, widely separated from anything else, the mass of the Citadel, a huge cylindrical tower rising from a cluster of smaller cylinders, with a broad circular landing stage above, topped by the newly raised flag of the Galactic Empire.

There was a second city, a thick crescent, to the south and east. The old maps placed the Zeggensburg spaceport there, but not a trace of that remained. In its place was what was evidently an industrial district, located where the prevailing winds would carry away the dust and smoke. There was quite a bit of both, but the surprising thing was the streets, long curved ones, and shorter ones crossing at regular intervals to form blocks. He had never seen a city with streets before, and he doubted if anybody else on the Empire ships had. Long boulevards to give unobstructed passage to low-level air-traffic, of course, and short winding walkways, but not things like these. Pictures, of course, of native cities on planets colonized at the time of the Federation, and even very ancient ones of cities on pre-Atomic Terra. But these people had contragravity; the towering, wide-spaced city beside this cross-gridded anachronism proved that.

They knew so little about this planet which they had come to bring under Imperial rule. It had been colonized thirteen centuries ago, during the last burst of expansion before the System States War and the disintegration of the Terran Federation, and it had been named Aditya, in the fashion of the times, for some forgotten deity of some obscure and ancient polytheism. A century or so later, it had seceded from or been abandoned by the Federation, then breaking up. That much they had gleaned from old Federation records still existing on Baldur. After that, darkness, lighted only by a brief flicker when more records had turned up on Morglay.

Morglay was one of the Sword-Worlds, settled by refugee rebels from the System States planets. Mostly they had been soldiers and spacemen; there had been many women with them, and many were skilled technicians, engineers, scientists. They had managed to carry off considerable equipment with them, and for three centuries they had lived in isolation, spreading over a dozen hitherto undiscovered planets. Excalibur, Tizona, Gram, Morglay, Durendal, Flamberge, Curtana, Quernbiter; the names were a roll-call of fabulous blades of Old Terran legend.

Then they had erupted, suddenly and calamitously, into what was left of the Terran Federation as the Space Vikings, carrying pillage and destruction, until the newborn Empire rose to vanquish them. In the sixth Century Pre-Empire, one of their fleets had come from Morglay to Aditya.

The Adityans of that time had been near-barbarians; the descendants of the original settlers had been serfs of other barbarians who had come as mercenaries in the service of one or another of the local chieftains and had remained to loot and rule. Subjugating them had been easy; the Space Vikings had taken Aditya and made it their home. For several centuries, there had been communication between them and their home planet. Then Morglay had become involved in one of the interplanetary dynastic wars that had begun the decadence of the Space Vikings, and again Aditya dropped out of history.

Until this morning, when history returned in the black ships of the Galactic Empire.

* * * * *

He stubbed out the cigarette and summoned the robot to give him another. Shatrak was speaking:

"You see, Count Erskyll, we really had to do it this way, for their own good." He wouldn't have credited the commodore with such guile; anything was justified, according to Obray of Erskyll, if done for somebody else's good. "What we did, we just landed suddenly, knocked out their army, seized the center of government, before anybody could do anything. If we'd landed the way you'd wanted us to, somebody would have resisted, and the next thing, we'd have had to kill about five or six thousand of them and blow down a couple of towns, and we'd have lost a lot of our own people doing it. You might say, we had to do it to save them from themselves."

Obray of Erskyll seemed to have doubts, but before he could articulate them, Shatrak's communication-screen was calling attention to itself. The commodore flicked the switch, and his executive officer, Captain Patrique Morvill, appeared in it.

"We've just gotten reports, sir, that some of Ravney's people have captured a half-dozen missile-launching sites around the city. His air-reconn tells him that that's the lot of them. I have an officer of one of the parties that participated. You ought to hear what he has to say, sir."

"Well, good!" Vann Shatrak whooshed out his breath. "I don't mind admitting, I was a little on edge about that."

"Wait till you hear what Lieutenant Carmath has to say." Morvill seemed to be strangling a laugh. "Ready for him, Commodore?"

Shatrak nodded; Morvill made a hand-signal and vanished in a flicker of rainbow colors; when the screen cleared, a young Landing-Troop lieutenant in battle-dress was looking out of it. He saluted and gave his name, rank and unit.

"This missile-launching site I'm occupying, sir; it's twenty miles north-west of the city. We took it thirty minutes ago; no resistance whatever. There are four hundred or so people here. Of them, twelve, one dozen, are soldiers. The rest are civilians. Ten enlisted men, a non-com of some sort, and something that appears to be an officer. The officer had a pistol, fully loaded. The non-com had a submachine gun, empty, with two loaded clips on his belt. The privates had rifles, empty, and no ammunition. The officer did not know where the rifle ammunition was stored."

Shatrak swore. The second lieutenant nodded. "Exactly my comment when he told me, sir. But this place is beautifully kept up. Lawns all mowed, trees neatly pruned, everything policed up like inspection morning. And there is a headquarters office building here adequate for an army division...."

"How about the armament, Lieutenant?" Shatrak asked with forced patience.

"Ah, yes; the armament, sir. There are eight big launching cradles for panplanetary or off-planet missiles. They are all polished up like the Crown Jewels. But none, repeat none, of them is operative. And there is not a single missile on the installation."

Shatrak's facial control didn't slip. It merely intensified, which amounted to the same thing.

"Lieutenant Carmath, I am morally certain I heard you correctly, but let's just check. You said...."

He repeated the lieutenant back, almost word for word. Carmath nodded.

"That was it, sir. The missile-crypts are stacked full of old photoprints and recording and microfilm spools. The sighting-and-guidance systems for all the launchers are completely missing. The letoff mechanisms all lack major parts. There is an elaborate set of detection equipment, which will detect absolutely nothing. I saw a few pairs of binoculars about; I suspect that that is what we were first observed with."

"This office, now; I suppose all the paperwork is up to the minute in quintulplicate, and initialed by everybody within sight or hearing?"

"I haven't checked on that yet, sir. If you're thinking of betting on it, please don't expect me to cover you, though."

"Well, thank you, Lieutenant Carmath. Stick around; I'm sending down a tech-intelligence crew to look at what's left of the place. While you're waiting, you might sort out whoever seems to be in charge and find out just what in Nifflheim he thinks that launching-station was maintained for."

"I think I can tell you that, now, Commodore," Prince Trevannion said as Shatrak blanked the screen. "We have a petrified authoritarianism. Quite likely some sort of an oligarchy; I'd guess that this Convocation thing they talk about consists of all the ruling class, everybody has equal voice, and nobody will take the responsibility for doing anything. And the actual work of government is probably handled by a corps of bureaucrats entrenched in their jobs, unwilling to exert any effort and afraid to invite any criticism, and living only to retire on their pensions. I've seen governments like that before." He named a few. "One thing; once a government like that has been bludgeoned into the Empire, it rarely makes any trouble later."

"Just to judge by this missileless non-launching station," Shatrak said, "they couldn't even decide on what kind of trouble to make, or how to start it. I think you're going to have a nice easy Proconsulate here, Count Erskyll."

Count Erskyll started to say something. No doubt he was about to tell Shatrak, cuttingly, that he didn't want an easy Proconsulate, but an opportunity to help these people. He was saved from this by the buzzing of Shatrak's communication-screen.

It was Colonel Pyairr Ravney, the Navy Landing-Troop commander. Like everybody else who had gone down to Zeggensburg, he was in battle-dress and armed; the transpex visor of his helmet was pushed up. Between Shatrak's generation and Count Erskyll's, he sported a pointed mustache and a spiky chin-beard, which, on his thin and dark-eyed face, looked distinctly Mephistophelean. He was grinning.

"Well, sir, I think we can call it a done job," he said. "There's a delegation here who want to talk to the Lords-Master of the ships on behalf of the Lords-Master of the Convocation. Two of them, with about a dozen portfolio-bearers and note-takers. I'm not too good in Lingua Terra, outside Basic, at best, and their brand is far from that. I gather that they're some kind of civil-servants, personal representatives of the top Lords-Master."

"Do we want to talk to them?" Shatrak asked.

"Well, we should only talk to the actual, titular, heads of the government--Mastership," Erskyll, suddenly protocol-conscious, objected. "We can't negotiate with subordinates."

"Oh, who's talking about negotiating; there isn't anything to negotiate. Aditya is now a part of the Galactic Empire. If this present regime assents to that, they can stay in power. If not, we will toss them out and install a new government. We will receive this delegation, inform them to that effect, and send them back to relay the information to their Lords-Master." He turned to the Commodore. "May I speak to Colonel Ravney?"

Shatrak assented. He asked Ravney where these Lords-Master were.

"Here in the Citadel, in what they call the Convocation Chamber. Close to a thousand of them, screaming recriminations at one another. Sounds like feeding time at the Imperial Zoo. I think they all want to surrender, but nobody dares propose it first. I've just put a cordon around it and placed it off limits to everybody. And everything outside off limits to the Convocation."

"Well thought of, Colonel. I suppose the Citadel teems with bureaucrats and such low life-forms?"

"Bulging with them. Literally thousands. Lanze Degbrend and Commander Douvrin and a few others are trying to get some sensible answers out of some of them."

"This delegation; how had you thought of sending them up?"

"Landing-craft to Isobel; Isobel will bring them the rest of the way."

He looked at his watch. "Well, don't be in too much of a rush to get them here, Colonel. We don't want them till after lunch. Delay them on Isobel; the skipper can see that they have their own lunch aboard. And entertain them with some educational films. Something to convince them that there is slightly more to the Empire than one ship-of-the-line, two cruisers and four destroyers."

Count Erskyll was dissatisfied about that, too. He wanted to see the delegation at once and make arrangements to talk to their superiors. Count Erskyll, among other things, was zealous, and of this he disapproved. Zealous statesmen perhaps did more mischief than anything in the Galaxy--with the possible exception of procrastinating soldiers. That could indicate the fundamental difference between statecraft and war. He'd have to play with that idea a little.

* * * * *

An Empire ship-of-the-line was almost a mile in diameter. It was more than a battle-craft; it also had political functions. The grand salon, on the outer zone where the curvature of the floors was less disconcerting, was as magnificent as any but a few of the rooms of the Imperial Palace at Asgard on Odin, the floor richly carpeted and the walls alternating mirrors and paintings. The movable furniture varied according to occasion; at present, it consisted of the bare desk at which they sat, the three chairs they occupied, and the three secretary-robots, their rectangular black casts blazened with the Sun and Cogwheel of the Empire. It faced the door, at the far end of the room; on either side, a rank of spacemen, in dress uniform and under arms, stood.

In principle, annexing a planet to the Empire was simplicity itself, but like so many things simple in principle, it was apt to be complicated in practice, and to this, he suspected, the present instance would be no exception.

In principle, one simply informed the planetary government that it was now subject to the sovereignty of his Imperial Majesty, the Galactic Emperor. This information was always conveyed by a Ministerial Secretary, directly under the Prime Minister and only one more step down from the Emperor, in the present instance Jurgen, Prince Trevannion. To make sure that the announcement carried conviction, the presumedly glad tidings were accompanied by the Imperial Space Navy, at present represented by Commodore Vann Shatrak and a seven ship battle-line unit, and two thousand Imperial Landing-Troops.

When the locals had been properly convinced--with as little bloodshed as necessary, but always beyond any dispute--an Imperial Proconsul, in this case Obray, Count Erskyll, would be installed. He would by no means govern the planet. The Imperial Constitution was definite on that point; every planetary government should be sovereign as to intraplanetary affairs. The Proconsul, within certain narrow and entirely inelastic limits, would merely govern the government.

Unfortunately, Obray, Count Erskyll, appeared not to understand this completely. It was his impression that he was a torch-bearer of Imperial civilization, or something equally picturesque and metaphorical. As he conceived it, it was the duty of the Empire, as represented by himself, to make over backward planets like Aditya in the image of Odin or Marduk or Osiris or Baldur or, preferably, his own home world of Aton.

This was Obray of Erskyll's first proconsular appointment, it was due to family influence, and it was a mistake. Mistakes, of course, were inevitable in anything as large and complex as the Galactic Empire, and any institution guided by men was subject to one kind of influence or another, family influence being no worse than any other kind. In this case, the ultra-conservative Erskylls of Aton, from old Errol, Duke of Yorvoy, down, had become alarmed at the political radicalism of young Obray, and had, on his graduation from the University of Nefertiti, persuaded the Prime Minister to appoint him to a Proconsulate as far from Aton as possible, where he would not embarrass them. Just at that time, more important matters having been gotten out of the way, Aditya had come up for annexation, and Obray of Erskyll had been named Proconsul.

That had been the mistake. He should have been sent to some planet which had been under Imperial rule for some time, where the Proconsulate ran itself in a well-worn groove, and where he could at leisure learn the procedures and unlearn some of the unrealisms absorbed at the University from professors too well insulated from the realities of politics.

* * * * *

There was a stir among the guards; helmet-visors were being snapped down; feet scuffed. They stiffened to attention, the great doors at the other end of the grand salon slid open, and the guards presented arms as the Adityan delegation was ushered in.

There were fourteen of them. They all wore ankle-length gowns, and they all had shaven heads. The one in the lead carried a staff and wore a pale green gown; he was apparently a herald. Behind him came two in white gowns, their empty hands folded on their breasts; one was a huge bulk of obesity with a bulging brow, protuberant eyes and a pursey little mouth, and the other was thin and cadaverous, with a skull-like, almost fleshless face. The ones behind, in dark green and pale blue, carried portfolios and slung sound-recorder cases. There was a metallic twinkle at each throat; as they approached, he could see that they all wore large silver gorgets. They came to a halt twenty feet from the desk. The herald raised his staff.

"I present the Admirable and Trusty Tchall Hozhet, personal chief-slave of the Lord-Master Olvir Nikkolon, Chairman of the Presidium of the Lords-Master's Convocation, and Khreggor Chmidd, chief-slave in office to the Lord-Master Rovard Javasan, Chief of Administration of Management of the Mastership," he said. Then he stopped, puzzled, looking from one to another of them. When his eyes fell on Vann Shatrak, he brightened.

"Are you," he asked, "the chief-slave of the chief Lord-Master of this ship?"

Shatrak's face turned pink; the pink darkened to red. He used a word; it was a completely unprintable word. So, except for a few scattered pronouns, conjunctions and prepositions, were the next fifty words he used. The herald stiffened. The two delegates behind him were aghast. The subordinate burden-bearers in the rear began looking around apprehensively.

"I," Shatrak finally managed, "am an officer of his Imperial Majesty's Space Navy. I am in command of this battle-line unit. I am not"--he reverted briefly to obscenity--"a slave."

"You mean, you are a Lord-Master, too?" That seemed to horrify the herald even more that the things Shatrak had been calling him. "Forgive me, Lord-Master. I did not think...."

"That's right; you didn't," Shatrak agreed. "And don't call me Lord-Master again, or I'll...."

"Just a moment, Commodore." He waved the herald aside and addressed the two in white gowns, shifting to Lingua Terra. "This is a ship of the Galactic Empire," he told them. "In the Empire, there are no slaves. Can you understand that?"

Evidently not. The huge one, Khreggor Chmidd, turned to the skull-faced Tchall Hozhet, saying: "Then they must all be Lords-Master." He saw the objection to that at once. "But how can one be a Lord-Master if there are no slaves?"

The horror was not all on the visitors' side of the desk, either. Obray of Erskyll was staring at the delegation and saying, "Slaves!" under his breath. Obray of Erskyll had never, in his not-too-long life, seen a slave before.

"They can't be," Tchall Hozhet replied. "A Lord-Master is one who owns slaves." He gave that a moment's consideration. "But if they aren't Lords-Master, they must be slaves, and...." No. That wouldn't do, either. "But a slave is one who belongs to a Lord-Master."

Rule of the Excluded Third; evidently Pre-Atomic formal logic had crept back to Aditya. Chmidd, looking around, saw the ranks of spacemen on either side, now at parade-rest.

"But aren't they slaves?" he asked.

"They are spacemen of the Imperial Navy," Shatrak roared. "Call one a slave to his face and you'll get a rifle-butt in yours. And I shan't lift a finger to stop it." He glared at Chmidd and Hozhet. "Who had the infernal impudence to send slaves to deal with the Empire? He needs to be taught a lesson."

"Why, I was sent by the Lord-Master Olvir Nikkolon, and...."

"Tchall!" Chmidd hissed at him. "We cannot speak to Lords-Master. We must speak to their chief-slaves."

"But they have no slaves," Hozhet objected. "Didn't you hear the ... the one with the small beard ... say so?"

"But that's ridiculous, Khreggor. Who does the work, and who tells them what to do? Who told these people to come here?"

* * * * *

"Our Emperor sent us. That is his picture, behind me. But we are not his slaves. He is merely the chief man among us. Do your Masters not have one among them who is chief?"

"That's right," Chmidd said to Hozhet. "In the Convocation, your Lord-Master is chief, and in the Mastership, my Lord-Master, Rovard Javasan, is chief."

"But they don't tell the other Lords-Master what to do. In Convocation, the other Lords-Master tell them...."

"That's what I meant about an oligarchy," he whispered, in Imperial, to Erskyll.

"Suppose we tell Ravney to herd these Lords-Master onto a couple of landing-craft and bring them up here?" Shatrak suggested. He made the suggestion in Lingua Terra Basic, and loudly.

"I think we can manage without that." He raised his voice, speaking in Lingua Terra Basic:

"It does not matter whether these slaves talk to us or not. This planet is now under the rule of his Imperial Majesty, Rodrik III. If this Mastership wants to govern the planet under the Emperor, they may do so. If not, we will make an end of them and set up a new government here."

He paused. Chmidd and Hozhet were looking at one another in shocked incredulity.

"Tchall, they mean it," Chmidd said. "They can do it, too."

"We have nothing more to say to you slaves," he continued. "Hereafter, we will speak directly to the Lords-Master."

"But.... The Lords-Master never do business directly," Hozhet said. "It is un-Masterly. Such discussions are between chief-slaves."

"This thing they call the Convocation," Shatrak mentioned. "I wonder if the members have the business done entirely through their slaves."

"Oh, no!" That shocked Chmidd into direct address. "No slave is allowed in the Convocation Chamber."

He wondered how they kept the place swept out. Robots, no doubt. Or else, what happened when the Masters weren't there didn't count.

"Very well. Your people have recorders; are they on?"

Hozhet asked Chmidd; Chmidd asked the herald, who asked one of the menials in the rear, who asked somebody else. The reply came back through the same channels; they were.

"Very well. At this time tomorrow, we will speak to the Convocation of Lords-Master. Commodore Shatrak, see to it that Colonel Ravney has them in the Convocation Chamber, and that preparations in the room are made, so that we may address them in the dignity befitting representatives of his Imperial Majesty." He turned to the Adityan slaves. "That is all. You have permission to go."

They watched the delegation back out, with the honor-guard following. When the doors had closed behind them, Shatrak ran his hand over his bald head and laughed.

"Shaved heads, every one of them. That's probably why they thought I was your slave. Bet those gorgets are servile badges, too." He touched the Knight's Star of the Order of the Empire at his throat. "Probably thought that was what this was. We would have to draw something like this!"

"They simply can't imagine anybody not being either a slave or a slave-owner," Erskyll was saying. "That must mean that there is no free non-slave-holding class at all. Universal slavery! Well, we'll have to do something about that. Proclaim total emancipation, immediately."

"Oh, no; we can't do anything like that. The Constitution won't permit us to. Section Two, Article One: Every Empire planet shall be self-governed as to its own affairs, in the manner of its own choice, and without interference."

"But slavery.... Section Two, Article Six," Erskyll objected. "There shall be no chattel slavery or serfdom anywhere in the Empire; no sapient being of any race whatsoever shall be the property of any being but himself."

"That's correct," he agreed. "If this Mastership intends to remain the planetary government under the Empire, they will be obliged to abolish slavery, but they will have to do it by their own act. We cannot do it for them."

"You know what I'd do, Prince Trevannion?" Shatrak said. "I'd just heave this Mastership thing out, and set up a nice tight military dictatorship. We have the planet under martial rule now; let's just keep it that way for about five years, till we can train a new government."

That suggestion seemed to pain Count Erskyll almost as much as the existing situation.

* * * * *

They dined late, in Commodore Shatrak's private dining room. Beside Shatrak, Erskyll and himself, there were Lanze Degbrend, and Count Erskyll's charge-d'affaires, Sharll Ernanday, and Patrique Morvill and Pyairr Ravney and the naval intelligence officer, Commander Andrey Douvrin. Ordinarily, he deplored serious discussion at meals, but under the circumstances it was unavoidable; nobody could think or talk of anything else. The discussion which he had hoped would follow the meal began before the soup-course.

"We have a total population of about twenty million," Lanze Degbrend reported. "A trifle over ten thousand Masters, all ages and both sexes. The remainder are all slaves."

"I find that incredible," Erskyll declared promptly. "Twenty million people, held in slavery by ten thousand! Why do they stand for it? Why don't they rebel?"

"Well, I can think of three good reasons," Douvrin said. "Three square meals a day."

"And no responsibilities; no need to make decisions," Degbrend added. "They've been slaves for seven and a half centuries. They don't even know the meaning of freedom, and it would frighten them if they did."

"Chain of command," Shatrak said. When that seemed not to convey any meaning to Erskyll, he elaborated: "We have a lot of dirty-necked working slaves. Over every dozen of them is an overseer with a big whip and a stungun. Over every couple of overseers there is a guard with a submachine gun. Over them is a supervisor, who doesn't need a gun because he can grab a handphone and call for troops. Over the supervisors, there are higher supervisors. Everybody has it just enough better than the level below him that he's afraid of losing his job and being busted back to fieldhand."

"That's it exactly, Commodore," Degbrend said. "The whole society is a slave hierarchy. Everybody curries favor with the echelon above, and keeps his eye on the echelon below to make sure he isn't being undercut. We have something not too unlike that, ourselves. Any organizational society is, in some ways, like a slave society. And everything is determined by established routine. The whole thing has simply been running on momentum for at least five centuries, and if we hadn't come smashing in with a situation none of the routines covered, it would have kept on running for another five, till everything wore out and stopped. I heard about those missile-stations, by the way. They're typical of everything here."

"That's another thing," Erskyll interrupted. "These Lords-Master are the descendants of the old Space-Vikings, and the slaves of the original inhabitants. The Space Vikings were a technologically advanced people; they had all the old Terran Federation science and technology, and a lot they developed for themselves on the Sword-Worlds."

"Well? They still had a lot of it, on the Sword-Worlds, two centuries ago when we took them over."

"But technology always drives out slavery; that's a fundamental law of socio-economics. Slavery is economically unsound; it cannot compete with power-industry, let alone cybernetics and robotics."

He was tempted to remind young Obray of Erskyll that there were no such things as fundamental laws of socio-economics; merely usually reliable generalized statements of what can more or less be depended upon to happen under most circumstances. He resisted the temptation. Count Erskyll had had enough shocks, today, without adding to them by gratuitous blasphemy.

"In this case, Obray, it worked in reverse. The Space Vikings enslaved the Adityans to hold them in subjugation. That was a politico-military necessity. Then, being committed to slavery, with a slave population who had to be made to earn their keep, they found cybernetics and robotics economically unsound."

"And almost at once, they began appointing slave overseers, and the technicians would begin training slave assistants. Then there would be slave supervisors to direct the overseers, slave administrators to direct them, slave secretaries and bookkeepers, slave technicians and engineers."

"How about the professions, Lanze?"

"All slave. Slave physicians, teachers, everything like that. All the Masters are taught by slaves; the slaves are educated by apprenticeship. The courts are in the hands of slaves; cases are heard by the chief slaves of judges who don't even know where their own courtrooms are; every Master has a team of slave lawyers. Most of the lawsuits are estate-inheritance cases; some of them have been in litigation for generations."

"What do the Lords-Master do?" Shatrak asked.

"Masterly things," Degbrend replied. "I was only down there since noon, but from what I could find out, that consists of feasting, making love to each other's wives, being entertained by slave performers, and feuding for social precedence like wealthy old ladies on Odin."

"You got this from the slaves? How did you get them to talk, Lanze?"

* * * * *

Degbrend and Ravney exchanged amused glances. Ravney said:

"Well, I detailed a sergeant and six privates to accompany Honorable Degbrend," Ravney said. "They.... How would you put it, Lanze?"

"I asked a slave a question. If he refused to answer, somebody knocked him down with a rifle-butt," Degbrend replied. "I never had to do that more than once in any group, and I only had to do it three times in all. After that, when I asked questions, I was answered promptly and fully. It is surprising how rapidly news gets around the Citadel."

"You mean you had those poor slaves beaten?" Erskyll demanded.

"Oh, no. Beating implies repeated blows. We only gave one to a customer; that was enough."

"Well, how about the army, if that's what those people in the long red-brown coats were?" Shatrak changed the subject by asking Ravney.

"All slave, of course, officers and all. What will we do about them, sir? I have about three thousand, either confined to their barracks or penned up in the Citadel. I requisitioned food for them, paid for it in chits. There were a few isolated companies and platoons that gave us something of a fight; most of them just threw away their weapons and bawled for quarter. I've segregated the former; with your approval, I'll put them under Imperial officers and noncoms for a quickie training in our tactics, and then use them to train the rest."

"Do that, Pyairr. We only have two thousand men of our own, and that's not enough. Do you think you can make soldiers out of any of them?"

"Yes, I believe so, sir. They are trained, organized and armed for civil-order work, which is what we'll need them for ourselves. In the entire history of this army, all they have done has been to overawe unarmed slaves; I am sure they have never been in combat with regular troops. They have an elaborate set of training and field regulations for the sort of work for which they were intended. What they encountered today was entirely outside those regulations, which is why they behaved as they did."

"Did you have any trouble getting cooperation from the native officers?" Shatrak asked.

"Not in the least. They cooperated quite willingly, if not always too intelligently. I simply told them that they were now the personal property of his Imperial Majesty, Rodrik III. They were quite flattered by the change of ownership. If ordered to, I believe that they would fire on their former Lords-Master without hesitation."

"You told those slaves that they ... belonged ... to the Emperor?"

Count Erskyll was aghast. He stared at Ravney for an instant, then snatched up his brandy-glass--the meal had gotten to that point--and drained it at a gulp. The others watched solicitously while he coughed and spluttered over it.

"Commodore Shatrak," he said sternly. "I hope that you will take severe disciplinary action; this is the most outrageous...."

"I'll do nothing of the sort," Shatrak retorted. "The colonel is to be commended; did the best thing he could, under the circumstances. What are you going to do when slavery is abolished here, Colonel?"

"Oh, tell them that they have been given their freedom as a special reward for meritorious service, and then sign them up for a five year enlistment."

"That might work. Again, it might not."

"I think, Colonel, that before you do that, you had better disarm them again. You might possibly have some trouble, otherwise."

Ravney looked at him sharply. "They might not want to be free? I'd thought of that."

"Nonsense!" Erskyll declared. "Who ever heard of slaves rebelling against freedom?"

Freedom was a Good Thing. It was a Good Thing for everybody, everywhere and all the time. Count Erskyll knew it, because freedom was a Good Thing for him.

He thought, suddenly, of an old tomcat belonging to a lady of his acquaintance at Paris-on-Baldur, a most affectionate cat, who insisted on catching mice and bringing them as presents to all his human friends. To this cat's mind, it was inconceivable that anybody would not be most happy to receive a nice fresh-killed mouse.

"Too bad we have to set any of them free," Vann Shatrak said. "Too bad we can't just issue everybody new servile gorgets marked, Personal Property of his Imperial Majesty and let it go at that. But I guess we can't."

"Commodore Shatrak, you are joking," Erskyll began.

"I hope I am," Shatrak replied grimly.

* * * * *

The top landing-stage of the Citadel grew and filled the forward viewscreen of the ship's launch. It was only when he realized that the tiny specks were people, and the larger, birdseed-sized, specks vehicles, that the real size of the thing was apparent. Obray of Erskyll, beside him, had been silent. He had been looking at the crescent-shaped industrial city, like a servile gorget around Zeggensburg's neck.

"The way they've been crowded together!" he said. "And the buildings; no space between. And all that smoke! They must be using fossil-fuel!"

"It's probably too hard to process fissionables in large quantities, with what they have."

"You were right, last evening. These people have deliberately halted progress, even retrogressed, rather than give up slavery."

Halting progress, to say nothing of retrogression, was an unthinkable crime to him. Like freedom, progress was a Good Thing, anywhere, at all times, and without regard to direction.

Colonel Ravney met them when they left the launch. The top landing-stage was swarming with Imperial troops.

"Convocation Chamber's three stages down," he said. "About two thousand of them there now; been coming in all morning. We have everything set up." He laughed. "They tell me slaves are never permitted to enter it. Maybe, but they have the place bugged to the ceiling all around."

"Bugged? What with?" Shatrak asked, and Erskyll was wanting to know what he meant. No doubt he thought Ravney was talking about things crawling out of the woodwork.

"Screen pickups, radio pickups, wired microphones; you name it and it's there. I'll bet every slave in the Citadel knows everything that happens in there while it's happening."

Shatrak wanted to know if he had done anything about them. Ravney shook his head.

"If that's how they want to run a government, that's how they have a right to run it. Commander Douvrin put in a few of our own, a little better camouflaged than theirs."

There were more troops on the third stage down. They formed a procession down a long empty hallway, a few scared-looking slaves peeping from doorways at them. There were more troops where the corridor ended in great double doors, emblazoned with a straight broad-sword diagonally across an eight-pointed star. Emblematology of planets conquered by the Space Vikings always included swords and stars. An officer gave a signal; the doors started to slide apart, and within, from a screen-speaker, came a fanfare of trumpets.

At first, all he could see was the projection-screen, far ahead, and the tessellated aisle stretching toward it. The trumpets stopped, and they advanced, and then he saw the Lords-Master.

They were massed, standing among benches on either side, and if anything Pyairr Ravney had understated their numbers. They all wore black, trimmed with gold; he wondered if the coincidence that these were also the Imperial colors might be useful. Queer garments, tightly fitted tunics at the top which became flowing robes below the waist, deeply scalloped at the edges. The sleeves were exaggeratedly wide; a knife or a pistol, and not necessarily a small one, could be concealed in every one. He was sure that thought had entered Vann Shatrak's mind. They were armed, not with dress-daggers, but with swords; long, straight cross-hilted broadswords. They were the first actual swords he had ever seen, except in museums or on the stage.

There was a bench of gold and onyx at the front, where, normally the seven-man Presidium sat, and in front of it were thronelike seats for the Chiefs of Managements, equivalent to the Imperial Council of Ministers. Because of the projection screen that had been installed, they had all been moved to an improvised dais on the left. There was another dais on the right, under a canopy of black and gold velvet, emblazoned with the gold sun and superimposed black cogwheel of the Empire. There were three thrones, for himself, Shatrak, and Erskyll, and a number of lesser but still imposing chairs for their staffs.

* * * * *

They took their seats. He slipped the earplug of his memophone into his left ear and pressed the stud in the middle of his Grand Star of the Order of Odin. The memophone began giving him the names of the Presidium and of the Chiefs of Managements. He wondered how many upper-slaves had been gunbutted to produce them.

"Lords and Gentlemen," he said, after he had greeted them and introduced himself and the others, "I speak to you in the name of his Imperial Majesty, Rodrik III. His Majesty will now greet you in his own voice, by recording."

He pressed a button on the arm of his chair. The screen lighted, flickered, and steadied, and the trumpets blared again. When the fanfare ended, a voice thundered:

"The Emperor speaks!"

Rodrik III compromised on the beard question with a small mustache. He wore the stern but kindly expression the best theatrical directors in Asgard had taught him; Public Face Number Three. He inclined his head slightly and stiffly, as a man wearing a seven-pound crown must.

"We greet our subjects of Aditya to the fellowship of the Empire. We have long had good reports of you, and we are happy now to speak to you. Deserve well of us, and prosper under the Sun and Cogwheel."

Another fanfare, as the image vanished. Before any of the Lords-Master could find voice, he was speaking to them:

"Well, Lords and Gentlemen, you have been welcomed into the Empire by his Majesty. I know, there hasn't been a ship in or out of this system for five centuries, and I suppose you have a great many questions to ask about the Galactic Empire. Members of the Presidium and Chiefs of Managements may address me directly; others will please address the chairman."

Olvir Nikkolon, the owner of Tchall Hozhet, was on his feet at once. He had a loose-lipped mouth and a not entirely straight nose and pale eyes that were never entirely still.

"What I want to know is; why did you people have to come here to take our planet away from us? Isn't the rest of the Galaxy big enough for you?"

"No, Lord Nikkolon. The Galaxy is not big enough for any competition of sovereignty. There must be one and only one completely sovereign power. The Terran Federation was once such a power. It failed, and vanished; you know what followed. Darkness and anarchy. We are clawing our way up out of that darkness. We will not fail. We will create a peaceful and unified Galaxy."

He talked to them, about the collapse of the old Federation, about the interstellar wars, about the Neobarbarians, about the long night. He told them how the Empire had risen on a few planets five thousand light-years away, and how it had spread.

"We will not repeat the mistakes of the Terran Federation. We will not attempt to force every planetary government into a common pattern, or dictate the ways in which they govern themselves. We will foster in every way peaceful trade and communication. But we will not again permit the plague of competing sovereignties, the condition under which war is inevitable. The first attempt to set up such a sovereignty in competition with the Empire will be crushed mercilessly, and no planet inhabited by any sapient race will be permitted to remain outside the Empire.

"Lords and Gentlemen, permit me to show you a little of what we have already accomplished, in the past three hundred years."

He pressed another button. The screen flickered, and the show started. It lasted for almost two hours; he used a handphone to interject comments and explanations. He showed them planet after planet--Marduk, where the Empire had begun, Baldur, Vishnu, Belphegor, Morglay, whence their ancestors had come, Amaterasu, Irminsul, Fafnir, finally Odin, the Imperial Planet. He showed towering cities swarming with aircars; spaceports where the huge globes of interstellar ships landed and lifted out; farms and industries; vast crowds at public celebrations; troop-reviews and naval bases and fleet-maneuvers; historical views of the battles that had created Imperial power.

"That, Lords and Gentlemen, is what you have an opportunity to bring your planet into. If you accept, you will continue to rule Aditya under the Empire. If you refuse, you will only put us to the inconvenience of replacing you with a new planetary government, which will be annoying for us and, probably, fatal for you."

Nobody said anything for a few minutes. Then Rovard Javasan, the Chief of Administration and the owner of the mountainous Khreggor Chmidd, rose.

"Lords and Gentlemen, we cannot resist anything like this," he said. "We cannot even resist the force they have here; that was tried yesterday, and you all saw what happened. Now, Prince Trevannion; just to what extent will the Mastership retain its sovereignty under the Empire?"

"To practically the same extent as at present. You will, of course, acknowledge the Emperor as your supreme ruler, and will govern subject to the Imperial Constitution. Have you any colonies on any of the other planets of this system?"

"We had a shipyard and docks on the inner moon, and we had mines on the fourth planet of this system, but it is almost airless and the colony was limited to a couple of dome-cities. Both were abandoned years ago."

"Both will be reopened before long, I daresay. We'd better make the limits of your sovereignty the orbit of the outer planet of this system. You may have your own normal-space ships, but the Empire will control all hyperdrive craft, and all nuclear weapons. I take it you are the sole government on this planet? Then no other will be permitted to compete with you."

"Well, what are they taking away from us, then?" somebody in the rear asked.

"I assume that you are agreed to accept the sovereignty of his Imperial Majesty? Good. As a matter of form, Lord Nikkolon, will you take a vote? His Imperial Majesty would be most gratified if it were unanimous."

Somebody insisted that the question would have to be debated, which meant that everybody would have to make a speech, all two thousand of them. He informed them that there was nothing to debate; they were confronted with an accomplished fact which they must accept. So Nikkolon made a speech, telling them at what a great moment in Adityan history they stood, and concluded by saying:

"I take it that it is the unanimous will of this Convocation that the sovereignty of the Galactic Emperor be acknowledged, and that we, the 'Mastership of Aditya' do here proclaim our loyal allegiance to his Imperial Majesty, Rodrik the Third. Any dissent? Then it is ordered so recorded."

Then he had to make another speech, to inform the representatives of his new sovereign of the fact. Prince Trevannion, in the name of the Emperor, delivered the well-worn words of welcome, and Lanze Degbrend got the coronet out of the black velvet bag under his arm and the Imperial Proconsul, Obray, Count Erskyll, was crowned. Erskyll's charge-d'affaires, Sharll Ernanday, produced the scroll of the Imperial Constitution, and Erskyll began to read.

Section One: The universality of the Empire. The absolute powers of the Emperor. The rules of succession. The Emperor also to be Planetary King of Odin.

Section Two: Every planetary government to be sovereign in its own internal affairs.... Only one sovereign government upon any planet, or within normal-space travel distance.... All hyperspace ships, and all nuclear weapons.... No planetary government shall make war ... enter into any alliance ... tax, regulate or restrain interstellar trade or communication.... Every sapient being shall be equally protected....

Then he came to Article Six. He cleared his throat, raised his voice, and read:

"There shall be no chattel-slavery or serfdom anywhere in the Empire; no sapient being, of any race whatsoever, shall be the property of any being but himself."

The Convocation Chamber was silent, like a bomb with a defective fuse, for all of thirty seconds. Then it blew up with a roar. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the doors slide apart and an airjeep, bristling with machine guns, float in and rise to the ceiling. The first inarticulate roar was followed by a babel of voices, like a tropical cloudburst on a prefab hut. Olvir Nikkolon's mouth was working as he shouted unheard.

He pressed another of the row of buttons on the arm of his chair. Out of the screen-speaker a voice, as loud, by actual sound-meter test, as an anti-vehicle gun, thundered:

"SILENCE!"

Into the shocked stillness which it produced, he spoke, like a schoolmaster who has returned to find his room in an uproar:

"Lord Nikkolon; what is this nonsense? You are Chairman of the Presidium; is this how you keep order here? What is this, a planetary parliament or a spaceport saloon?"

"You tricked us!" Nikkolon accused. "You didn't tell us about that article when we voted. Why, our whole society is based on slavery!"

Other voices joined in:

"That's all right for you people, you have robots...."

"Maybe you don't know it, but there are twenty million slaves on this planet...."

"Look, you can't free slaves! That's ridiculous. A slave's a slave!"

"Who'll do the work? And who would they belong to? They'd have to belong to somebody!"

"What I want to know," Rovard Javasan made himself heard, is, "how are you going to free them?"

There was an ancient word, originating in one of the lost languages of Pre-Atomic Terra--sixtifor. It meant, the basic, fundamental, question. Rovard Javasan, he suspected, had just asked the sixtifor. Of course, Obray, Count Erskyll, Planetary Proconsul of Aditya, didn't realize that. He didn't even know what Javasan meant. Just free them. Commodore Vann Shatrak couldn't see much of a problem, either. He would have answered, Just free them, and then shoot down the first two or three thousand who took it seriously. Jurgen, Prince Trevannion, had no intention whatever of attempting to answer the sixtifor.

"My dear Lord Javasan, that is the problem of the Adityan Mastership. They are your slaves; we have neither the intention nor the right to free them. But let me remind you that slavery is specifically prohibited by the Imperial Constitution; if you do not abolish it immediately, the Empire will be forced to intervene. I believe, toward the last of those audio-visuals, you saw some examples of Imperial intervention."

They had. A few looked apprehensively at the ceiling, as though expecting the hellburners and planet-busters and nega-matter-bombs at any moment. Then one of the members among the benches rose.

"We don't know how we are going to do it, Prince Trevannion," he said. "We will do it, since this is the Empire law, but you will have to tell us how."

"Well, the first thing will have to be an Act of Convocation, outlawing the ownership of one being by another. Set some definite date on which the slaves must all be freed; that need not be too immediate. Then, I would suggest that you set up some agency to handle all the details. And, as soon as you have enacted the abolition of slavery, which should be this afternoon, appoint a committee, say a dozen of you, to confer with Count Erskyll and myself. Say you have your committee aboard the Empress Eulalie in six hours. We'll have transportation arranged by then. And let me point out, I hope for the last time, that we discuss matters directly, without intermediaries. We don't want any more slaves, pardon, freedmen, coming aboard to talk for you, as happened yesterday."

* * * * *

Obray, Count Erskyll, was unhappy about it. He did not think that the Lords-Master were to be trusted to abolish slavery; he said so, on the launch, returning to the ship. Jurgen, Prince Trevannion was inclined to agree. He doubted if any of the Lords-Master he had seen were to be trusted, unassisted, to fix a broken mouse-trap.

Line-Commodore Vann Shatrak was also worried. He was wondering how long it would take for Pyairr Ravney to make useful troops out of the newly-surrendered slave soldiers, and where he was going to find contragravity to shift them expeditiously from trouble-spot to trouble-spot. Erskyll thought he was anticipating resistance on the part of the Masters, and for once he approved the use of force. Ordinarily, force was a Bad Thing, but this was a Good Cause, which justified any means.

They entertained the committee from the Convocation for dinner, that evening. They came aboard stiffly hostile--most understandably so, under the circumstances--and Prince Trevannion exerted all his copious charm to thaw them out, beginning with the pre-dinner cocktails and continuing through the meal. By the time they retired for coffee and brandy to the parlor where the conference was to be held, the Lords-ex-Masters were almost friendly.

"We've enacted the Emancipation Act," Olvir Nikkolon, who was ex officio chairman of the committee, reported. "Every slave on the planet must be free before the opening of the next Midyear Feasts."

"And when will that be?"

Aditya, he knew, had a three hundred and fifty-eight day year; even if the Midyear Feasts were just past, they were giving themselves very little time. In about a hundred and fifty days, Nikkolon said.

"Good heavens!" Erskyll began, indignantly.

"I should say so, myself," he put in, cutting off anything else the new Proconsul might have said. "You gentlemen are allowing yourselves dangerously little time. A hundred and fifty days will pass quite rapidly, and you have twenty million slaves to deal with. If you start at this moment and work continuously, you'll have a little under a second apiece for each slave."

The Lords-Master looked dismayed. So, he was happy to observe, did Count Erskyll.

"I assume you have some system of slave registration?" he continued.

That was safe. They had a bureaucracy, and bureaucracies tend to have registrations of practically everything.

"Oh, yes, of course," Rovard Javasan assured him. "That's your Management, isn't it, Sesar; Servile Affairs?"

"Yes, we have complete data on every slave on the planet," Sesar Martwynn, the Chief of Servile Management, said. "Of course, I'd have to ask Zhorzh about the details...."

Zhorzh was Zhorzh Khouzhik, Martwynn's chief-slave in office.

"At least, he was my chief-slave; now you people have taken him away from me. I don't know what I'm going to do without him. For that matter, I don't know what poor Zhorzh will do, either."

"Have you gentlemen informed your chief-slaves that they are free, yet?"

Nikkolon and Javasan looked at each other. Sesar Martwynn laughed.

"They know," Javasan said. "I must say they are much disturbed."

"Well, reassure them, as soon as you're back at the Citadel," he told them. "Tell them that while they are now free, they need not leave you unless they so desire; that you will provide for them as before."

"You mean, we can keep our chief-slaves?" somebody cried.

"Yes, of course--chief-freedmen, you'll have to call them, now. You'll have to pay them a salary...."

"You mean, give them money?" Ranal Valdry, the Lord Provost-Marshal demanded, incredulously. "Pay our own slaves?"

"You idiot," somebody told him, "they aren't our slaves any more. That's the whole point of this discussion."

"But ... but how can we pay slaves?" one of the committeemen-at-large asked. "Freedmen, I mean?"

"With money. You do have money, haven't you?"

"Of course we have. What do you think we are, savages?"

"What kind of money?"

Why, money; what did he think? The unit was the star-piece, the stelly. When he asked to see some of it, they were indignant. Nobody carried money; wasn't Masterly. A Master never even touched the stuff; that was what slaves were for. He wanted to know how it was secured, and they didn't know what he meant, and when he tried to explain their incomprehension deepened. It seemed that the Mastership issued money to finance itself, and individual Masters issued money on their personal credit, and it was handled through the Mastership Banks.

"That's Fedrig Daffysan's Management; he isn't here," Rovard Javasan said. "I can't explain it, myself."

And without his chief-slave, Fedrig Daffysan probably would not be able to, either.

"Yes, gentlemen. I understand. You have money. Now, the first thing you will have to do is furnish us with a complete list of all the slave-owners on the planet, and a list of all the slaves held by each. This will be sent back to Odin, and will be the basis for the compensation to be paid for the destruction of your property-rights in these slaves. How much is a slave worth, by the way?"

Nobody knew. Slaves were never sold; it wasn't Masterly to sell one's slaves. It wasn't even heard of.

"Well, we'll arrive at some valuation. Now, as soon as you get back to the Citadel, talk at once to your former chief-slaves, and their immediate subordinates, and explain the situation to them. This can be passed down through administrative freedmen to the workers; you must see to it that it is clearly understood, at all levels, that as long as the freedmen remain at their work they will be provided for and paid, but that if they quit your service they will receive nothing. Do you think you can do that?"

"You mean, give them everything we've been giving them now, and then pay them money?" Ranal Valdry almost howled.

"Oh, no. You pay them a fixed wage. You charge them for everything you give them, and deduct that from their wages. It will mean considerable extra bookkeeping, but outside of that I believe you'll find that things will go along much as they always did."

The Masters had begun to relax, and by the time he was finished all of them were smiling in relief. Count Erskyll, on the other hand, was almost writhing in his chair. It must be horrible to be a brilliant young Proconsul of liberal tendencies and to have to sit mute while a cynical old Ministerial Secretary, vastly one's superior in the Imperial Establishment and a distant cousin of the Emperor to boot, calmly bartered away the sacred liberties of twenty million people.

"But would that be legal, under the Imperial Constitution?" Olvir Nikkolon asked.

"I shouldn't have suggested it if it hadn't been. The Constitution only forbids physical ownership of one sapient being by another; it emphatically does not guarantee anyone an unearned livelihood."

* * * * *

The Convocation committee returned to Zeggensburg to start preparing the servile population for freedom, or reasonable facsimile. The chief-slaves would take care of that; each one seemed to have a list of other chief-slaves, and the word would spread from them on an each-one-call-five system. The public announcement would be postponed until the word could be passed out to the upper servile levels. A meeting with the chief-slaves in office of the various Managements was scheduled for the next afternoon.

Count Erskyll chatted with forced affability while the departing committeemen were being seen to the launch that would take them down. When the airlock closed behind them, he drew Prince Trevannion aside out of earshot of their subordinates.

"You know what you're doing?" he raged, in a hoarse whisper. "You're simply substituting peonage for outright slavery!"

"I'd call that something of a step." He motioned Erskyll into one of the small hall-cars, climbed in beside him, and lifted it, starting toward the living-area. "The Convocation has acknowledged the principle that sapient beings should not be property. That's a great deal, for one day."

"But the people will remain in servitude, you know that. The Masters will keep them in debt, and they'll be treated just as brutally...."

"Oh, there will be abuses; that's to be expected. This Freedmen's Management, nee Servile Management, will have to take care of that. Better make a memo to talk with this chief-freedman of Martwynn's, what's his name? Zhorzh Khouzhik; that's right, let Zhorzh do it. Employment Practices Code, investigation agency, enforcement. If he can't do the job, that's not our fault. The Empire does not guarantee every planet an honest, intelligent and efficient government; just a single one."

"But...."

"It will take two or three generations. At first, the freedmen will be exploited just as they always have been, but in time there will be protests, and disorders, and each time, there will be some small improvement. A society must evolve, Obray. Let these people earn their freedom. Then they will be worthy of it."

"They should have their freedom now."

"This present generation? What do you think freedom means to them? We don't have to work, any more. So down tools and let everything stop at once. We can do anything we want to. Let's kill the overseer. And: Anything that belongs to the Masters belongs to us; we're Masters too, now. No, I think it's better, for the present, to tell them that this freedom business is just a lot of Masterly funny-talk, and that things aren't really being changed at all. It will effect a considerable saving of his Imperial Majesty's ammunition, for one thing."

He dropped Erskyll at his apartment and sent the hall-car back from his own. Lanze Degbrend was waiting for him when he entered.

"Ravney's having trouble. That is the word he used," Degbrend said. In Pyairr Ravney's lexicon, trouble meant shooting. "The news of the Emancipation Act is leaking all over the place. Some of the troops in the north who haven't been disarmed yet are mutinying, and there are slave insurrections in a number of places."

"They think the Masters have forsaken them, and it's every slave for himself." He hadn't expected that to start so soon. "The announcement had better go out as quickly as possible. And I think we're going to have some trouble. You have information-taps into Count Erskyll's numerous staff? Use them as much as you can."

"You think he's going to try to sabotage this employment programme of yours, sir?"

"Oh, he won't think of it in those terms. He'll be preventing me from sabotaging the Emancipation. He doesn't want to wait three generations; he wants to free them at once. Everything has to be at once for six-month-old puppies, six-year-old children, and reformers of any age."

* * * * *

The announcement did not go out until nearly noon the next day. In terms comprehensible to any low-grade submoron, it was emphasized that all this meant was that slaves should henceforth be called freedmen, that they could have money just like Lords-Master, and that if they worked faithfully and obeyed orders they would be given everything they were now receiving. Ravney had been shuttling troops about, dealing with the sporadic outbreaks of disorder here and there: many of these had been put down, and the rest died out after the telecast explaining the situation.

In addition, some of Commander Douvrin's intelligence people had discovered that the only source of fissionables and radioactives for the planet was a complex of uranite mines, separation plants, refineries and reaction-plants on the smaller of Aditya's two continents, Austragonia. In spite of other urgent calls on his resources, Ravney landed troops to seize these, and a party of engineers followed them down from the Empress Eulalie to make an inspection.

At lunch, Count Erskyll was slightly less intransigent on the subject of the wage-employment proposals. No doubt some of his advisors had been telling him what would happen if any appreciable number of Aditya's labor-force stopped work suddenly, and the wave of uprisings that had broken out before any public announcement had been made puzzled him. He was also concerned about finding a suitable building for a proconsular palace; the business of the Empire on Aditya could not be conducted long from shipboard.

Going down to the Citadel that afternoon, they found the chief-freedmen of the non-functional Chiefs of Management assembled in a large room on the fifth level down. There was a cluster of big tables and communication-screens and wired telephones in the middle, with smaller tables around them, at which freedmen in variously colored gowns sat. The ones at the central tables, a dozen and a half, all wore chief-slaves' white gowns.

Trevannion and Erskyll and Patrique Morvill and Lanze Degbrend joined these; subordinates guided the rest of the party--a couple of Ravney's officers and Erskyll's numerous staff of advisors and specialists--to distribute themselves with their opposite numbers in the Mastership. Everybody on the Adityan side seemed uneasy with these strange hermaphrodite creatures who were neither slaves nor Lords-Master.

"Well, gentlemen," Count Erskyll began, "I suppose you have been informed by your former Lords-Master of how relations between them and you will be in the future?"

"Oh, yes, Lord Proconsul," Khreggor Chmidd replied happily. "Everything will be just as before, except that the Lords-Master will be called Lords-Employer, and the slaves will be called freedmen, and any time they want to starve to death, they can leave their Employers if they wish."

Count Erskyll frowned. That wasn't just exactly what he had hoped Emancipation would mean to these people.

"Nobody seems to understand about this money thing, though," Zhorzh Khouzhik, Sesar Martwynn's chief-freedman said. "My Lord-Master--" He slapped himself across the mouth and said, "Lord-Employer!" five times, rapidly. "My Lord-Employer tried to explain it to me, but I don't think he understands very clearly, himself."

"None of them do."

The speaker was a small man with pale eyes and a mouth like a rat-trap; Yakoop Zhannar, chief-freedman to Ranal Valdry, the Provost-Marshal.

"Its really your idea, Prince Trevannion," Erskyll said. "Perhaps you can explain it."

"Oh, it's very simple. You see...."

At least, it had seemed simple when he started. Labor was a commodity, which the worker sold and the employer purchased; a "fair wage" was one which enabled both to operate at a profit. Everybody knew that--except here on Aditya. On Aditya, a slave worked because he was a slave, and a Master provided for him because he was a Master, and that was all there was to it. But now, it seemed, there weren't any more Masters, and there weren't any more slaves.

"That's exactly it," he replied, when somebody said as much. "So now, if the slaves, I mean, freedmen, want to eat, they have to work to earn money to buy food, and if the Employers want work done, they have to pay people to do it."

"Then why go to all the trouble about the money?" That was an elderly chief-freedman, Mykhyl Eschkhaffar, whose Lord-Employer, Oraze Borztall, was Manager of Public Works. "Before your ships came, the slaves worked for the Masters, and the Masters took care of the slaves, and everybody was content. Why not leave it like that?"

"Because the Galactic Emperor, who is the Lord-Master of these people, says that there must be no more slaves. Don't ask me why," Tchall Hozhet snapped at him. "I don't know, either. But they are here with ships and guns and soldiers; what can we do?"

"That's very close to it," he admitted. "But there is one thing you haven't considered. A slave only gets what his master gives him. But a free worker for pay gets money which he can spend for whatever he wants, and he can save money, and if he finds that he can make more money working for somebody else, he can quit his employer and get a better job."

"We hadn't thought of that," Khreggor Chmidd said. "A slave, even a chief-slave, was never allowed to have money of his own, and if he got hold of any, he couldn't spend it. But now...." A glorious vista seemed to open in front of him. "And he can accumulate money. I don't suppose a common worker could, but an upper slave.... Especially a chief-slave...." He slapped his mouth, and said, "Freedman!" five times.

"Yes, Khreggor." That was Ridgerd Schferts (Fedrig Daffysan; Fiscal Management). "I am sure we could all make quite a lot of money, now that we are freedmen."

Some of them were briefly puzzled; gradually, comprehension dawned. Obray, Count Erskyll, looked distressed; he seemed to be hoping, vainly, that they weren't thinking of what he suspected they were.

"How about the Mastership freedmen?" another asked. "We, here, will be paid by our Lords-Mas- ... Lords-Employer. But everybody from the green robes down were provided for by the Mastership. Who will pay them, now?"

"Why, the Mastership, of course," Ridgerd Schferts said. "My Management--my Lord-Employer's, I mean--will issue the money to pay them."

"You may need a new printing-press," Lanze Degbrend said. "And an awful lot of paper."

"This planet will need currency acceptable in interstellar trade," Erskyll said.

Everybody looked blankly at him. He changed the subject:

"Mr. Chmidd, could you or Mr. Hozhet tell me what kind of a constitution the Mastership has?"

"You mean, like the paper you read in the Convocation?" Hozhet asked. "Oh, there is nothing at all like that. The former Lords-Master simply ruled."

No. They reigned. This servile tammanihal--another ancient Terran word, of uncertain origin--ruled.

"Well, how is the Mastership organized, then?" Erskyll persisted. "How did the Lord Nikkolon get to be Chairman of the Presidium, and the Lord Javasan to be Chief of Administration?"

That was very simple. The Convocation, consisting of the heads of all the Masterly families, actually small clans, numbered about twenty-five hundred. They elected the seven members of the Presidium, who drew lots for the Chairmanship. They served for life. Vacancies were filled by election on nomination of the surviving members. The Presidium appointed the Chiefs of Managements, who also served for life.

At least, it had stability. It was self-perpetuating.

"Does the Convocation make the laws?" Erskyll asked.

Hozhet was perplexed. "Make laws, Lord Proconsul? Oh, no. We have laws."

There were planets, here and there through the Empire, where an attitude like that would have been distinctly beneficial; planets with elective parliaments, every member of which felt himself obligated to get as many laws enacted during his term of office as possible.

"But this is dreadful; you must have a constitution!" Obray of Erskyll was shocked. "We will have to get one drawn up and adopted."

"We don't know anything about that at all," Khreggor Chmidd admitted. "This is something new. You will have to help us."

"I certainly will, Mr. Chmidd. Suppose you form a committee--yourself, and Mr. Hozhet, and three or four others; select them among yourselves--and we can get together and talk over what will be needed. And another thing. We'll have to stop calling this the Mastership. There are no more Masters."

"The Employership?" Lanze Degbrend dead-panned.

Erskyll looked at him angrily. "This is something," he told the chief-freedmen, "that should not belong to the Employers alone. It should belong to everybody. Let us call it the Commonwealth. That means something everybody owns in common."

"Something everybody owns, nobody owns," Mykhyl Eschkhaffar objected.

"Oh, no, Mykhyl; it will belong to everybody," Khreggor Chmidd told him earnestly. "But somebody will have to take care of it for everybody. That," he added complacently, "will be you and me and the rest of us here."

"I believe," Yakoop Zhannar said, almost smiling, "that this freedom is going to be a wonderful thing. For us."

"I don't like it!" Mykhyl Eschkhaffar said stubbornly. "Too many new things, and too much changing names. We have to call slaves freedmen; we have to call Lords Master Lords-Employer; we have to call the Management of Servile Affairs the Management for Freedmen. Now we have to call the Mastership this new name, Commonwealth. And all these new things, for which we have no routine procedures and no directives. I wish these people had never heard of this planet."

"That makes at least two of us," Patrique Morvill said, sotto voce.

"Well, the planetary constitution can wait just a bit," Prince Trevannion suggested. "We have a great many items on the agenda which must be taken care of immediately. For instance, there's this thing about finding a proconsular palace...."

* * * * *

A surprising amount of work had been done at the small tables where Erskyll's staff of political and economic and technological experts had been conferring with the subordinate upper-freedmen. It began coming out during the pre-dinner cocktails aboard the Empress Eulalie, continued through the meal, and was fully detailed during the formal debriefing session afterward.

Finding a suitable building for the Proconsular Palace would present difficulties. Real estate was not sold on Aditya, any more than slaves were. It was not only un-Masterly but illegal; estates were all entailed and the inalienable property of Masterly families. What was wanted was one of the isolated residential towers in Zeggensburg, far enough from the Citadel to avoid an appearance of too close supervision. The last thing anybody wanted was to establish the Proconsul in the Citadel itself. The Management of Business of the Mastership, however, had promised to do something about it. That would mean, no doubt, that the Empress Eulalie would be hanging over Zeggensburg, serving as Proconsular Palace, for the next year or so.

The Servile Management, rechristened Freedmen's Management, would undertake to safeguard the rights of the newly emancipated slaves. There would be an Employment Code--Count Erskyll was invited to draw that up--and a force of investigators, and an enforcement agency, under Zhorzh Khouzhik.

One of Commander Douvrin's men, who had been at the Austragonia nuclear-industries establishment, was present and reported:

"Great Ghu, you ought to see that place! They've people working in places I wouldn't send an unshielded robot, and the hospital there is bulging with radiation-sickness cases. The equipment must have been brought here by the Space Vikings. What's left of it is the damnedest mess of goldbergery I ever saw. The whole thing ought to be shut down and completely rebuilt."

Erskyll wanted to know who owned it. The Mastership, he was told.

"That's right," one of his economics men agreed. "Management of Public Works." That would be Mykhyl Eschkhaffar, who had so bitterly objected to the new nomenclature. "If anybody needs fissionables for a power-reactor or radioactives for nuclear-electric conversion, his chief business slave gets what's needed. Furthermore, doesn't even have to sign for it."

"Don't they sell it for revenue?"

"Nifflheim, no! This government doesn't need revenue. This government supports itself by counterfeiting. When the Mastership needs money, they just have Ridgerd Schferts print up another batch. Like everybody else."

"Then the money simply isn't worth anything!" Erskyll was horrified, which was rapidly becoming his normal state.

"Who cares about money, Obray," he said. "Didn't you hear them, last evening? It's un-Masterly to bother about things like money. Of course, everybody owes everybody for everything, but it's all in the family."

"Well, something will have to be done about that!"

That was at least the tenth time he had said that, this evening.

* * * * *

It came practically as a thunderbolt when Khreggor Chmidd screened the ship the next afternoon to report that a Proconsular Palace had been found, and would be ready for occupancy in a day or so. The chief-freedmen of the Management of Business of the Mastership and of the Lord Chief Justiciar had found one, the Elegry Palace, which had been unoccupied except for what he described as a small caretaking staff for years, while two Masterly families disputed inheritance rights and slave lawyers quibbled endlessly before a slave judge. The chief freedman of the Lord Chief Justiciar had simply summoned judge and lawyers into his office and ordered them to settle the suit at once. The settlement had consisted of paying both litigants the full value of the building; this came to fifty million stellies apiece. Arbitrarily, the stelly was assigned a value in Imperial crowns of a hundred for one. A million crowns was about what the building would be worth, with contents, on Odin. It would be paid for with a draft on the Imperial Exchequer.

"Well, you have some hard currency on the planet, now," he told Count Erskyll, while they were having a pre-dinner drink together that evening. "I hope it doesn't touch off an inflation, if the term is permissible when applied to Adityan currency."

Erskyll snapped his fingers. "Yes! And there's the money we've been spending for supplies. And when we start compensation payments.... Excuse me for a moment."

He dashed off, his drink in his hand. After a long interval, he was back, carrying a fresh one he had gotten from a bartending robot en route.

"Well, that's taken care of," he said. "My fiscal man's getting in touch with Ridgerd Schferts; the Elegry heirs will be paid in Adityan stellies, and the Imperial crowns will be held in the Commonwealth Bank, or, better, banked in Asgard, to give Aditya some off-planet credit. And we'll do the same with our other expenditures, and with the slave-compensation. This is going to be wonderful; this planet needs everything in the way of industrial equipment; this is how they're going to get it."

"But, Obray; the compensations are owing to the individual Masters. They should be paid in crowns. You know as well as I do that this hundred-for-one rate is purely a local fiction. On the interstellar exchange, these stellies have a crown value of precisely zero-point-zero."

"You know what would happen if these ci-devant Masters got hold of Imperial crowns," Erskyll said. "They'd only squander them back again for useless imported luxuries. This planet needs a complete modernization, and this is the only way the money to pay for it can be gotten." He was gesturing excitedly with the almost-full glass in his hand; Prince Trevannion stepped back out of the way of the splash he anticipated. "I have no sympathy for these ci-devant Masters. They own every stick and stone and pinch of dust on this planet, as it is. Is that fair?"

"Possibly not. But neither is what you're proposing to do."

Obray, Count Erskyll, couldn't see that. He was proposing to secure the Greatest Good for the Greatest Number, and to Nifflheim with any minorities who happened to be in the way.

* * * * *

The Navy took over the Elegry Palace the next morning, ran up the Imperial Sun and Cogwheel flag, and began transmitting views of its interior up to the Empress Eulalie. It was considerably smaller than the Imperial Palace at Asgard on Odin, but room for room the furnishings were rather more ornate and expensive. By the next afternoon, the counter-espionage team that had gone down reported the Masterly living quarters clear of pickups, microphones, and other apparatus of servile snooping, of which they had found many. The Canopus was recalled from her station over the northern end of the continent and began sending down the proconsulate furnishings stowed aboard, including several hundred domestic robots.

The skeleton caretaking staff Chmidd had mentioned proved to number five hundred.

"What are we going to do about them?" Erskyll wanted to know. "There's a limit to the upkeep allowance for a proconsulate, and we can't pay five hundred useless servants. The chief-freedman, and about a dozen assistants, and a few to operate the robots, when we train them, but five hundred...!"

"Let Zhorzh do it," Prince Trevannion suggested. "Isn't that what this Freedmen's Management is for; to find employment for emancipated slaves? Just emancipate them and turn them over to Khouzhik."

Khouzhik promptly placed all of them on the payroll of his Management. Khouzhik was having his hands full. He had all his top mathematical experts, some of whom even understood the use of the slide-rule, trying to work up a scale of wages. Erskyll loaned him a few of his staff. None of the ideas any of them developed proved workable. Khouzhik had also organized a corps of investigators, and he was beginning to annex the private guard-companies of the Lords-ex-Master, whom he was organizing into a police force.

* * * * *

The nuclear works on Austragonia were closed down. Mykhyl Eschkhaffar ordered a programme of rationing and priorities to conserve the stock of plutonium and radioactive isotopes on hand, and he decided that henceforth nuclear-energy materials would be sold instead of furnished freely. He simply found out what the market quotations on Odin were, translated that into stellies, and adopted it. This was just a base price; there would have to be bribes for priority allocations, rakeoffs for the under-freedmen, and graft for the business-freedmen of the Lords-ex-Masters who bought the stuff. The latter were completely unconcerned; none of them even knew about it.

The Convocation adjourned until the next regular session, at the Midyear Feasts, an eight-day intercalary period which permitted dividing the 358-day Adityan year into ten months of thirty-five days each. Count Erskyll was satisfied to see them go. He was working on a constitution for the Commonwealth of Aditya, and was making very little progress with it.

"It's one of these elaborate check-and-balance things," Lanze Degbrend reported. "To begin with, it was the constitution of Aton, with an elective president substituted for a hereditary king. Of course, there are a lot of added gadgets; Atonian Radical Democrat stuff. Chmidd and Hozhet and the other chief-slaves don't like it, either."

"Slap your mouth and say, 'Freedmen,' five times."

"Nuts," his subordinate retorted insubordinately. "I know a slave when I see one. A slave is a slave, with or without a gorget; if he doesn't wear it around his neck, he has it tattooed on his soul. It takes at least three generations to rub it off."

"I could wish that Count Erskyll...." he began. "What else is our Proconsul doing?"

"Well, I'm afraid he's trying to set up some kind of a scheme for the complete nationalization of all farms, factories, transport facilities, and other means of production and distribution," Degbrend said.

"He's not going to try to do that himself, is he?" He was, he discovered, speaking sharply, and modified his tone. "He won't do it with Imperial authority, or with Imperial troops. Not as long as I'm here. And when we go back to Odin, I'll see to it that Vann Shatrak understands that."

"Oh, no. The Commonwealth of Aditya will do that," Degbrend said. "Chmidd and Hozhet and Yakoop Zhannar and Zhorzh Khouzhik and the rest of them, that is. He wants it done legitimately and legally. That means, he'll have to wait till the Midyear Feasts, when the Convocation assembles, and he can get his constitution enacted. If he can get it written by then."

Vann Shatrak sent two of the destroyers off to explore the moons of Aditya, of which there were two. The outer moon, Aditya-Ba', was an irregular chunk of rock fifty miles in diameter, barely visible to the naked eye. The inner, Aditya-Alif, however, was an eight-hundred-mile sphere; it had once been the planetary ship-station and shipyard-base. It seemed to have been abandoned when the Adityan technology and economy had begun sagging under the weight of the slave system. Most of the installations remained, badly run down but repairable. Shatrak transferred as many of his technicians as he could spare to the Mizar and sent her to recondition the shipyard and render the underground city inhabitable again so that the satellite could be used as a base for his ships. He decided, then, to send the Irma back to Odin with reports of the annexation of Aditya, a proposal that Aditya-Alif be made a permanent Imperial naval-base, and a request for more troops.

Prince Trevannion taped up his own reports, describing the general situation on the newly annexed planet, and doing nothing to minimize the problems facing its Proconsul.

"Count Erskyll" he finished, "is doing the best possible under circumstances from which I myself would feel inclined to shrink. If not carried to excess, perhaps youthful idealism is not without value in Empire statecraft. I understand that Commodore Shatrak, who is also coping with some very trying problems, is requesting troop reenforcements. I believe this request amply justified, and would recommend that they be gotten here as speedily as possible.

"I understand that he is also recommending a permanent naval base on the larger of this planet's two satellites. This I also endorse unreservedly. It would have a most salutary effect on the local government. I would further recommend that Commodore Shatrak be placed in command of it, with suitable promotion, which he has long ago earned."

Erskyll was surprised that he was not himself returning to Odin on the destroyer, and evidently disturbed. He mentioned it during pre-dinner cocktails that evening.

"I know, my own work here is finished; was the moment the Convocation voted acknowledgment of Imperial rule." Prince Trevannion replied. "I would like to stay on for the Midyear Feasts, though. The Convocation will vote on your constitution, and I would like to be able to report their action to the Prime Minister. How is it progressing, by the way?"

"Well, we have a rough draft. I don't care much for it, myself, but Citizen Hozhet and Citizen Chmidd and Citizen Zhannar and the others are most enthusiastic, and, after all, they are the ones who will have to operate under it."

The Masterly estates would be the representative units; from each, the freedmen would elect representatives to regional elective councils, and these in turn would elect representatives to a central electoral council which would elect a Supreme People's Legislative Council. This would not only function as the legislative body, but would also elect a Manager-in-Chief, who would appoint the Chiefs of Management, who, in turn, would appoint their own subordinates.

"I don't like it, myself," Erskyll said. "It's not democratic enough. There should be a direct vote by the people. Well," he grudged, "I suppose it will take a little time for them to learn democracy." This was the first time he had come out and admitted that. "There is to be a Constituent Convention in five years, to draw up a new constitution."

"How about the Convocation? You don't expect them to vote themselves out of existence, do you?"

"Oh, we're keeping the Convocation, in the present constitution, but they won't have any power. Five years from now, we'll be rid of them entirely. Look here; you're not going to work against this, are you? You won't advise these ci-devant Lords-Master to vote against it, when it comes up?"

"Certainly not. I think your constitution--Khreggor Chmidd's and Tchall Hozhet's, to be exact--will be nothing short of a political disaster, but it will insure some political stability, which is all that matters from the Imperial point of view. An Empire statesman must always guard against sympathizing with local factions and interests, and I can think of no planet on which I could be safer from any such temptation. If these Lords-Master want to vote their throats cut, and the slaves want to re-enslave themselves, they may all do so with my complete blessing."

If he had been at all given to dramatic gestures he would then have sent for water and washed his hands.

* * * * *

Metaphorically, he did so at that moment; thereafter his interest in Adityan affairs was that of a spectator at a boring and stupid show, watching only because there is nothing else to watch, and wishing that it had been possible to have returned to Odin on the Irma. The Prime Minister, however, was entitled to a full and impartial report, which he would scarcely get from Count Erskyll, on this new jewel in the Imperial Crown. To be able to furnish that, he would have to remain until the Midyear Feasts, when the Convocation would act on the new constitution. Whether the constitution was adopted or rejected was, in itself, unimportant; in either case, Aditya would have a government recognizable as such by the Empire, which was already recognizing some fairly unlikely-looking governments. In either case, too, Aditya would make nobody on any other planet any trouble. It wouldn't have, at least for a long time, even if it had been left unannexed, but no planet inhabited by Terro-humans could be trusted to remain permanently peaceful and isolated. There is a spark of aggressive ambition in every Terro-human people, no matter how debased, which may smoulder for centuries or even millennia and then burst, fanned by some random wind, into flame. To shift the metaphor slightly, the Empire could afford to leave no unwatched pots around to boil over unexpectedly.

Occasionally, he did warn young Erskyll of the dangers of overwork and emotional over-involvement. Each time, the Proconsul would pour out some tale of bickering and rivalry among the chief-freedmen of the Managements. Citizen Khouzhik and Citizen Eschkhaffar--they were all calling each other Citizen, now--were contesting overlapping jurisdictions. Khouzhik wanted to change the name of his Management--he no longer bothered mentioning Sesar Martwynn--to Labor and Industry. To this, Mykhyl Eschkhaffar objected vehemently; any Industry that was going to be managed would be managed by his--Oraze Borztall was similarly left unmentioned--management of Public Works. And they were also feuding about the robotic and remote-controlled equipment that had been sent down from the Empress Eulalie to the Austragonia nuclear-power works.

Khouzhik was also in controversy with Yakoop Zhannar, who was already calling himself People's Provost-Marshal. Khouzhik had taken over all the private armed-guards on the Masterly farms and in the factories, and assimilated them into something he was calling the People's Labor Police, ostensibly to enforce the new Code of Employment Practice. Zhannar insisted that they should be under his Management; when Chmidd and Hozhet supported Khouzhik, he began clamoring for the return of the regular army to his control.

Commodore Shatrak was more than glad to get rid of the Adityan army, and so was Pyairr Ravney, who was in immediate command of them. The Adityans didn't care one way or the other. Zhannar was delighted, and so were Chmidd and Hozhet. So, oddly, was Zhorzh Khouzhik. At the same time, the state of martial law proclaimed on the day of the landing was terminated.

The days slipped by. There were entertainments at the new Proconsular Palace for the Masterly residents of Zeggensburg, and Erskyll and his staff were entertained at Masterly palaces. The latter affairs pained Prince Trevannion excessively--hours on end of gorging uninspired cooking and guzzling too-sweet wine and watching ex-slave performers whose acts were either brutal or obscene and frequently both, and, more unforgivable, stupidly so. The Masterly conversation was simply stupid.

He borrowed a reconn-car from Ravney; he and Lanze Degbrend and, usually, one or another of Ravney's young officers, took long trips of exploration. They fished in mountain streams, and hunted the small deerlike game, and he found himself enjoying these excursions more than anything he had done in recent years; certainly anything since Aditya had come into the viewscreens of the Empress Eulalie. Once in a while, they claimed and received Masterly hospitality at some large farming estate. They were always greeted with fulsome cordiality, and there was always surprise that persons of their rank and consequence should travel unaccompanied by a retinue of servants.

He found things the same wherever he stopped. None of the farms were producing more than a quarter of the potential yield per acre, and all depleting the soil outrageously. Ten slaves--he didn't bother to think of them as freedmen--doing the work of one, and a hundred of them taking all day to do what one robot would have done before noon. White-gowned chief-slaves lording it over green and orange gowned supervisors and clerks; overseers still carrying and frequently using whips and knouts and sandbag flails.

Once or twice, when a Masterly back was turned, he caught a look of murderous hatred flickering into the eyes of some upper-slave. Once or twice, when a Master thought his was turned, he caught the same look in Masterly eyes, directed at him or at Lanze.

The Midyear Feasts approached; each time he returned to the city he found more excitement as preparations went on. Mykhyl Eschkhaffar's Management of Public Works was giving top priority to redecorating the Convocation Chamber and the lounges and dining-rooms around it in which the Masters would relax during recesses. More and more Masterly families flocked in from outlying estates, with contragravity-flotillas and retinues of attendants, to be entertained at the city palaces. There were more and gaudier banquets and balls and entertainments. By the time the Feasts began, every Masterly man, woman and child would be in the city.

There were long columns of military contragravity coming in, too; troop-carriers and combat-vehicles. Yakoop Zhannar was bringing in all his newly recovered army, and Zhorzh Khouzhik his newly organized People's Labor Police. Vann Shatrak, who was now commanding his battle-line unit by screen from the Proconsular Palace, began fretting.

"I wish I hadn't been in such a hurry to terminate martial rule," he said, once. "And I wish Pyairr hadn't been so confoundedly efficient in retraining those troops. That may cost us a few extra casualties, before we're through."

Count Erskyll laughed at his worries.

"It's just this rivalry between Citizen Khouzhik and Citizen Zhannar," he said, "They're like a couple of ci-devant Lords-Master competing to give more extravagant feasts. Zhannar's going to hold a review of his troops, and of course, Khouzhik intends to hold a review of his police. That's all there is to it."

"Well, just the same, I wish some reenforcements would get here from Odin," Shatrak said.

Erskyll was busy, in the days before the Midyear Feasts, either conferring at the Citadel with the ex-slaves who were the functional heads of the Managements or at the Proconsular Palace with Hozhet and Chmidd and the chief-freedmen of the influential Convocation leaders and Presidium members. Everybody was extremely optimistic about the constitution.

He couldn't quite understand the optimism, himself.

"If I were one of these Lords-Master, I wouldn't even consider the thing," he told Erskyll. "I know, they're stupid, but I can't believe they're stupid enough to commit suicide, and that's what this amounts to."

"Yes, it does," Erskyll agreed, cheerfully. "As soon as they enact it, they'll be of no more consequence than the Assemblage of Peers on Aton; they'll have no voice in the operation of the Commonwealth, and none in the new constitution that will be drawn up five years from now. And that will be the end of them. All the big estates, and the factories and mines and contragravity-ship lines will be nationalized."

"And they'll have nothing at all, except a hamper-full of repudiated paper stellies," he finished. "That's what I mean. What makes you think they'll be willing to vote for that?"

"They don't know they're voting for it. They'll think they're voting to keep control of the Mastership. People like Olvir Nikkolon and Rovard Javasan and Ranal Valdry and Sesar Martwynn think they still own their chief-freedmen; they think Hozhet and Chmidd and Zhannar and Khouzhik will do exactly what they tell them. And they believe anything the Hozhets and Chmidds and Zhannars tell them. And every chief-freedman is telling his Lord-Employer that the only way they can keep control is by adopting the constitution; that they can control the elections on their estates, and hand-pick the People's Legislative Council. I tell you, Prince Trevannion, the constitution is as good as enacted."

Two days before the opening of the Convocation, the Irma came into radio-range, five light-hours away, and began transmitting in taped matter at sixty-speed. Erskyll's report and his own acknowledged; a routine "well done" for the successful annexation. Commendation for Shatrak's handling of the landing operation. Orders to take over Aditya-Alif and begin construction of a permanent naval base. Notification of promotion to base-admiral, and blank commission as line-commodore; that would be Patrique Morvill. And advice that one transport-cruiser, Algol, with an Army contragravity brigade aboard, and two engineering ships, would leave Odin for Aditya in fifteen days. The last two words erased much of the new base-admiral's pleasure.

"Fifteen days, great Ghu! And those tubs won't make near the speed of Irma, getting here. We'll be lucky to see them in twenty. And Beelzebub only knows what'll be going on here then."

* * * * *

Four times, the big screen failed to respond. They were all crowded into one of the executive conference-rooms at the Proconsular Palace, the batteries of communication and recording equipment incongruously functional among the gold-encrusted luxury of the original Masterly furnishings. Shatrak swore.

"Andrey, I thought your people had planted those pickups where they couldn't be found," he said to Commander Douvrin.

"There is no such place, sir," the intelligence officer replied. "Just places where things are hard to find."

"Did you mention our pickups to Chmidd or Hozhet or any of the rest of the shaveheads?" Shatrak asked Erskyll.

"No. I didn't even know where they were. And it was the freedmen who found them," Erskyll said. "I don't know why they wouldn't want us looking in."

Lanze Degbrend, at the screen, twisted the dial again, and this time the screen flickered and cleared, and they were looking into the Convocation Chamber from the extreme rear, above the double doors. Far away, in front, Olvir Nikkolon was rising behind the gold and onyx bench, and from the speaker the call bell tolled slowly, and the buzz of over two thousand whispering voices diminished. Nikkolon began to speak:

"Seven and a half centuries ago, our fathers went forth from Morglay to plant upon this planet a new banner...."

It was evidently a set speech, one he had recited year after year, and every Lord Chairman of the Presidium before him. The splendid traditions. The glories of the Masterly race. The all-conquering Space Vikings. The proud heritage of the Sword-Worlds. Lanze was fiddling with the control knobs, stepping up magnification and focusing on the speaker's head and shoulders. Then everybody laughed; Nikkolon had a small plug in one ear, with a fine wire running down to vanish under his collar. Degbrend brought back the full view of the Convocation Chamber.

Nikkolon went on and on. Vann Shatrak summoned a robot to furnish him with a cold beer and another cigar. Erskyll was drumming an impatient devil's tattoo with his fingernails on the gold-encrusted table in front of him. Lanze Degbrend began interpolating sarcastic comments. And finally, Pyairr Ravney, who came from Lugaluru, reverted to the idiom of his planet's favorite sport:

"Come on, come on; turn out the bull! What's the matter, is the gate stuck?"

If so, it came quickly unstuck, and the bull emerged, pawing and snorting.

"This year, other conquerors have come to Aditya, here to plant another banner, the Sun and Cogwheel of the Galactic Empire, and I blush to say it, we are as helpless against these conquerors as were the miserable barbarians and their wretched serfs whom our fathers conquered seven hundred and sixty-two years ago, whose descendants, until this black day, had been our slaves."

He continued, his voice growing more impassioned and more belligerent. Count Erskyll fidgeted. This wasn't the way the Chmidd-Hozhet Constitution ought to be introduced.

"So, perforce, we accepted the sovereignty of this alien Empire. We are now the subjects of his Imperial Majesty, Rodrik III. We must govern Aditya subject to the Imperial Constitution." (Groans, boos; catcalls, if the Adityan equivalent of cats made noises like that.) "At one stroke, this Constitution has abolished our peculiar institution, upon which is based our entire social structure. This I know. But this same Imperial Constitution is a collapsium-strong shielding; let me call your attention to Article One, Section Two: Every Empire planet shall be self-governed as to its own affairs, in the manner of its own choice and without interference. Mark this well, for it is our guarantee that this government, of the Masters, by the Masters, and for the Masters, shall not perish from Aditya." (Prolonged cheering.)

"Now, these arrogant conquerors have overstepped their own supreme law. They have written for this Mastership a constitution, designed for the sole purpose of accomplishing the liquidation of the Masterly class and race. They have endeavored to force this planetary constitution upon us by threats of force, and by a shameful attempt to pervert the fidelity of our chief-slaves--I will not insult these loyal servitors with this disgusting new name, freedmen--so that we might, a second time, be tricked into voting assent to our own undoing. But in this, they have failed. Our chief-slaves have warned us of the trap concealed in this constitution written by the Proconsul, Count Erskyll. My faithful Tchall Hozhet has shown me all the pitfalls in this infamous document...."

Obray, Count Erskyll, was staring in dismay at the screen. Then he began cursing blasphemously, the first time he had ever been heard to do so, and, as he was at least nominally a Pantheist, this meant blaspheming the entire infinite universe.

"The rats! The dirty treacherous rats! We came here to help them, and look; they've betrayed us...!" He lost his voice in a wheezing sob, and then asked: "Why did they do it? Do they want to go on being slaves?"

Perhaps they did. It wasn't for love of their Lords-Master; he was sure of that. Even from the beginning, they had found it impossible to disguise their contempt....

Then he saw Olvir Nikkolon stop short and thrust out his arm, pointing directly below the pickup, and as he watched, something green-gray, a remote-control contragravity lorry, came floating into the field of the screen. One of the vehicles that had been sent down from the Empress Eulalie for use at the uranium mines. As it lifted and advanced toward the center of the room, the other Lords-Master were springing to their feet.

Vann Shatrak also sprang to his feet, reaching the controls of the screen and cutting the sound. He was just in time to save them from being, at least temporarily, deafened, for no sooner had he silenced the speaker than the lorry vanished in a flash that filled the entire room.

When the dazzle left their eyes, and the smoke and dust began to clear, they saw the Convocation Chamber in wreckage, showers of plaster and bits of plastiboard still falling from above. The gold and onyx bench was broken in a number of places; the Chiefs of Management in front of it, and the Presidium above, had vanished. Among the benches lay black-clad bodies, a few still moving. Smoke rose from burning clothing. Admiral Shatrak put on the sound again; from the screen came screams and cries of pain and fright.

Then the doors on the two long sides opened, and red-brown uniforms appeared. The soldiers advanced into the Chamber, unslinging rifles and submachine guns. Unheeding the still falling plaster, they moved forward, firing as they came. A few of them slung their firearms and picked up Masterly dress swords, using them to finish the wounded among the benches. The screams grew fewer, and then stopped.

Count Erskyll sat frozen, staring white-faced and horror-sick into the screen. Some of the others had begun to recover and were babbling excitedly. Vann Shatrak was at a communication-screen, talking to Commodore Patrique Morvill, aboard the Empress Eulalie:

"All the Landing-Troops, and all the crewmen you can spare and arm. And every vehicle you have. This is only the start of it; there'll be a general massacre of Masters next. I don't doubt it's started already."

At another screen, Pyairr Ravney was saying, to the officer of the day of the Palace Guard: "No, there's no telling what they'll do next. Whatever it is, be ready for it ten minutes ago."

He stubbed out his cigarette and rose, and as he did, Erskyll came out of his daze and onto his feet.

"Commodore Shatrak! I mean, Admiral," he corrected himself. "We must re-impose martial rule. I wish I'd never talked you into terminating it. Look at that!" He pointed at the screen; big dump-lorries were already coming in the doors under the pickup, with a mob of gowned civil-service people crowding in under them. They and the soldiers began dragging bodies out from among the seats to be loaded and hauled away. "There's the planetary government, murdered to the last man!"

"I'm afraid we can't do anything like that," he said. "This seems to be a simple transfer of power by coup-d'etat; rather more extreme than usual, but normal political practice on this sort of planet. The Empire has no right to interfere."

Erskyll turned on him indignantly. "But it's mass murder!"

"It's an accomplished fact. Whoever ordered this, Citizen Chmidd and Citizen Hozhet and Citizen Zhannar and the rest of your good democratic citizens, are now the planetary government of Aditya. As long as they don't attack us, or repudiate the sovereignty of the Emperor, you'll have to recognize them as such."

"A bloody-handed gang of murderers; recognize them?"

"All governments have a little blood here and there on their hands; you've seen this by screen instead of reading about it in a history book, but that shouldn't make any difference. And you've said, yourself, that the Masters would have to be eliminated. You've told Chmidd and Hozhet and the others that, repeatedly. Of course, you meant legally, by constitutional and democratic means, but that seemed just a bit too tedious to them. They had them all together in one room, where they could be eliminated easily, and ... Lanze; see if you can get anything on the Citadel telecast."

Degbrend put on another communication-screen and fiddled for a moment. What came on was a view, from another angle, of the Convocation Chamber. A voice was saying:

"... not one left alive. The People's Labor Police, acting on orders of People's Manager of Labor Zhorzh Khouzhik and People's Provost-Marshal Yakoop Zhannar, are now eliminating the rest of the ci-devant Masterly class, all of whom are here in Zeggensburg. The people are directed to cooperate; kill them all, men, women and children. We must allow none of these foul exploiters of the people live to see today's sun go down...."

"You mean, we sit here while those animals butcher women and children?" Shatrak demanded, looking from the Proconsul to the Ministerial Secretary. "Well, by Ghu, I won't! If I have to face a court for it, all well and good, but...."

"You won't, Admiral. I seem to recall, some years ago, a Commodore Hastings, who got a baronetcy for stopping a pogrom on Anath...."

"And broadcast an announcement that any of the Masterly class may find asylum here at the Proconsular Palace. They're political fugitives; scores of precedents for that," Erskyll added.

Shatrak was back at the screen to the Empress Eulalie.

"Patrique, get a jam-beam focussed on that telecast station at the Citadel; get it off the air. Then broadcast on the same wavelength; announce that anybody claiming sanctuary at the Proconsular Palace will be taken in and protected. And start getting troops down, and all the spacemen you can spare."

At the same time, Ravney was saying, into his own screen:

"Plan Four. Variation H-3; this is a rescue operation. This is not, repeat, underscore, not an intervention in planetary government. You are to protect members of the Masterly class in danger from mob violence. That's anybody with hair on his head. Stay away from the Citadel; the ones there are all dead. Start with the four buildings closest to us, and get them cleared out. If the shaveheads give you any trouble, don't argue with them, just shoot them...."

Erskyll, after his brief moment of decisiveness, was staring at the screen to the Convocation Chamber, where bodies were still being heaved into the lorries like black sacks of grain. Lanze Degbrend summoned a robot, had it pour a highball, and gave it to the Proconsul.

"Go ahead, Count Erskyll; drink it down. Medicinal," he was saying. "Believe me you certainly need it."

Erskyll gulped it down. "I think I could use another, if you please," he said, handing the glass back to Lanze. "And a cigarette." After he had tasted his second drink and puffed on the cigarette, he said: "I was so proud. I thought they were learning democracy."

"We don't, any of us, have too much to be proud about," Degbrend told him. "They must have been planning and preparing this for a couple of months, and we never caught a whisper of it."

That was correct. They had deluded Erskyll into thinking that they were going to let the Masters vote themselves out of power and set up a representative government. They had deluded the Masters into believing that they were in favor of the status quo, and opposed to Erkyll's democratization and socialization. There must be only a few of them in the conspiracy. Chmidd and Hozhet and Zhannar and Khouzhik and Schferts and the rest of the Citadel chief-slave clique. Among them, they controlled all the armed force. The bickering and rivalries must have been part of the camouflage. He supposed that a few of the upper army commanders had been in on it, too.

A communication-screen began making noises. Somebody flipped the switch, and Khreggor Chmidd appeared in it. Erskyll swore softly, and went to face the screen-image of the elephantine ex-slave of the ex-Lord Master, the late Rovard Javasan.

"Citizen Proconsul; why is our telecast station, which is vitally needed to give information to the people, jammed off the air, and why are you broadcasting, on our wavelength, advice to the criminals of the ci-devant Masterly class to take refuge in your Proconsular Palace from the just vengeance of the outraged victims of their century-long exploitation?" he began. "This is a flagrant violation of the Imperial Constitution; our Emperor will not be pleased at this unjustified intervention in the affairs, and this interference with the planetary authority, of the People's Commonwealth of Aditya!"

Obray of Erskyll must have realized, for the first time, that he was still holding a highball glass in one hand and a cigarette in the other. He flung both of them away.

"If the Imperial troops we are sending into the city to rescue women and children in danger from your hoodlums meet with the least resistance, you won't be in a position to find out what his Majesty thinks about it, because Admiral Shatrak will have you and your accomplices shot in the Convocation Chamber, where you massacred the legitimate government of this planet," he barked.

So the real Obray, Count Erskyll, had at last emerged. All the liberalism and socialism and egalitarianism, all the Helping-Hand, Torch-of-Democracy, idealism, was merely a surface stucco applied at the university during the last six years. For twenty-four years before that, from the day of his birth, he had been taught, by his parents, his nurse, his governess, his tutors, what it meant to be an Erskyll of Aton and a grandson of Errol, Duke of Yorvoy. As he watched Khreggor Chmidd in the screen, he grew angrier, if possible.

"Do you know what you blood-thirsty imbeciles have done?" he demanded. "You have just murdered, along with two thousand men, some five billion crowns, the money needed to finance all these fine modernization and industrialization plans. Or are you crazy enough to think that the Empire is going to indemnify you for being emancipated and pay that money over to you?"

"But, Citizen Proconsul...."

"And don't call me Citizen Proconsul! I am a noble of the Galactic Empire, and on this pigpen of a planet I represent his Imperial Majesty. You will respect, and address, me accordingly."

Khreggor Chmidd no longer wore the gorget of servility, but, as Lanze Degbrend had once remarked, it was still tattooed on his soul. He gulped.

"Y-yes, Lord-Master Proconsul!"

They were together again in the big conference-room, which Vann Shatrak had been using, through the day, as an extemporised Battle-Control. They slumped wearily in chairs; they smoked and drank coffee; they anxiously looked from viewscreen to viewscreen, wondering when, and how soon, the trouble would break out again. It was dark, outside, now. Floodlights threw a white dazzle from the top of the Proconsular Palace and from the tops of the four buildings around it that Imperial troops had cleared and occupied, and from contragravity vehicles above. There was light and activity at the Citadel, and in the Servile City to the south-east; the rest of Zeggensburg was dark and quiet.

"I don't think we'll have any more trouble," Admiral Shatrak was saying. "They won't be fools enough to attack us here, and all the Masters are dead, except for the ones we're sheltering."

"How many did we save?" Count Erskyll asked.

Eight hundred odd, Shatrak told him. Erskyll caught his breath.

"So few! Why, there were almost twelve thousand of them in the city this morning."

"I'm surprised we saved so many," Lanze Degbrend said. He still wore combat coveralls, and a pistol-belt lay beside his chair. "Most of them were killed in the first hour."

And that had been before the landing-craft from the ships had gotten down, and there had only been seven hundred men and forty vehicles available. He had gone out with them, himself; it had been the first time he had worn battle-dress and helmet or carried a weapon except for sport in almost thirty years. It had been an ugly, bloody, business; one he wanted to forget as speedily as possible. There had been times, after seeing the mutilated bodies of Masterly women and children, when he had been forced to remind himself that he had come out to prevent, not to participate in, a massacre. Some of Ravney's men hadn't even tried. Atrocity has a horrible facility for begetting atrocity.

"What'll we do with them?" Erskyll asked. "We can't turn them loose; they'd all be murdered in a matter of hours, and in any case, they'd have nowhere to go. The Commonwealth,"--he pronounced the name he had himself selected as though it were an obscenity--"has nationalized all the Masterly property."

That had been announced almost as soon as the Citadel telecast-station had been unjammed, and shortly thereafter they had begun encountering bodies of Yakoop Zhannar's soldiers and Zhorzh Khouzhik's police who had been sent out to stop looting and vandalism and occupy the Masterly palaces. There had been considerable shooting in the Servile City; evidently the ex-slaves had to be convinced that they must not pillage or destroy their places of employment.

"Evacuate them off-planet," Shatrak said. "As soon as Algol gets here, we'll load the lot of them onto Mizar or Canopus and haul them somewhere. Ghu only knows how they'll live, but...."

"Oh, they won't be paupers, or public charges, Admiral," he said. "You know, there's an estimated five billion crowns in slave-compensation, and when I return to Odin I shall represent most strongly that these survivors be paid the whole sum. But I shall emphatically not recommend that they be resettled on Odin. They won't be at all grateful to us for today's business, and on Odin they could easily stir up some very adverse public sentiment."

"My resignation will answer any criticism of the Establishment the public may make," Erskyll began.

"Oh, rubbish; don't talk about resigning, Obray. You made a few mistakes here, though I can't think of a better planet in the Galaxy on which you could have made them. But no matter what you did or did not do, this would have happened eventually."

"You really think so?" Obray, Count Erskyll, was desperately anxious to be assured of that. "Perhaps if I hadn't been so insistent on this constitution...."

"That wouldn't have made a particle of difference. We all made this inevitable simply by coming here. Before we came, it would have been impossible. No slave would have been able even to imagine a society without Lords-Master; you heard Chmidd and Hozhet, the first day, aboard the Empress Eulalie. A slave had to have a Master; he simply couldn't belong to nobody at all. And until you started talking socialization, nobody could have imagined property without a Masterly property-owning class. And a massacre like this would have been impossible to organize or execute. For one thing, it required an elaborate conspiratorial organization, and until we emancipated them, no slave would have dared trust any other slave; every one would have betrayed any other to curry favor with his Lord-Master. We taught them that they didn't need Lords-Master, or Masterly favor, any more. And we presented them with a situation their established routines didn't cover, and forced them into doing some original thinking, which must have hurt like Nifflheim at first. And we retrained the army and handed it over to Yakoop Zhannar, and inspired Zhorzh Khouzhik to organize the Labor Police, and fundamentally, no government is anything but armed force. Really, Obray, I can't see that you can be blamed for anything but speeding up an inevitable process slightly."

"You think they'll see it that way at Asgard?"

"You mean the Prime Minister and His Majesty? That will be the way I shall present it to them. That was another reason I wanted to stay on here. I anticipated that you might want a credible witness to what was going to happen," he said. "Now, you'll be here for not more than five years before you're promoted elsewhere. Nobody remains longer than that on a first Proconsular appointment. Just keep your eyes and ears and, especially, your mind, open while you are here. You will learn many things undreamed-of by the political-science faculty at the University of Nefertiti."

"You said I made mistakes," Erskyll mentioned, ready to start learning immediately.

"Yes. I pointed one of them out to you some time ago: emotional involvement with local groups. You began sympathizing with the servile class here almost immediately. I don't think either of us learned anything about them that the other didn't, yet I found them despicable, one and all. Why did you think them worthy of your sympathy?"

"Why, because...." For a moment, that was as far as he could get. His motivation had been thalamic rather than cortical and he was having trouble externalizing it verbally. "They were slaves. They were being exploited and oppressed...."

"And, of course, their exploiters were a lot of heartless villains, so that made the slaves good and virtuous innocents. That was your real, fundamental, mistake. You know, Obray, the downtrodden and long-suffering proletariat aren't at all good or innocent or virtuous. They are just incompetent; they lack the abilities necessary for overt villainy. You saw, this afternoon, what they were capable of doing when they were given an opportunity. You know, it's quite all right to give the underdog a hand, but only one hand. Keep the other hand on your pistol--or he'll try to eat the one you gave him! As you may have noticed, today, when underdogs get up, they tend to turn out to be wolves."

"What do you think this Commonwealth will develop into, under Chmidd and Hozhet and Khouzhik and the rest?" Lanze Degbrend asked, to keep the lecture going.

"Oh, a slave-state, of course; look who's running it, and whom it will govern. Not the kind of a slave-state we can do anything about," he hastened to add. "The Commonwealth will be very definite about recognizing that sapient beings cannot be property. But all the rest of the property will belong to the Commonwealth. Remember that remark of Chmidd's: 'It will belong to everybody, but somebody will have to take care of it for everybody. That will be you and me.'"

Erskyll frowned. "I remember that. I didn't like it, at the time. It sounded...."

Out of character, for a good and virtuous proletarian; almost Masterly, in fact. He continued:

"The Commonwealth will be sole employer as well as sole property-owner, and anybody who wants to eat will have to work for the Commonwealth on the Commonwealth's terms. Chmidd's and Hozhet's and Khouzhik's, that is. If that isn't substitution of peonage for chattel slavery, I don't know what the word peonage means. But you'll do nothing to interfere. You will see to it that Aditya stays in the empire and adheres to the Constitution and makes no trouble for anybody off-planet. I fancy you won't find that too difficult. They'll be good, as long as you deny them the means to be anything else. And make sure that they continue to call you Lord-Master Proconsul."

Lecturing, he found, was dry work. He summoned a bartending robot:

"Ho, slave! Attend your Lord-Master!"

Then he had to use his ultraviolet pencil-light to bring it to him, and dial for the brandy-and-soda he wanted. As long as that was necessary, there really wasn't anything to worry about. But some of these days, they'd build robots that would anticipate orders, and robots to operate robots, and robots to supervise them, and....

No. It wouldn't quite come to that. A slave is a slave, but a robot is only a robot. As long as they stuck to robots, they were reasonably safe.

Contents

DAY OF THE MORON

BY H. BEAM PIPER

It's natural to trust the unproven word of the fellow who's "on my side"--but the emotional moron is on no one's side, not even his own. Once, such an emotional moron could, at worst, hurt a few. But with the mighty, leashed forces Man employs now....

There were still, in 1968, a few people who were afraid of the nuclear power plant. Oldsters, in whom the term "atomic energy" produced semantic reactions associated with Hiroshima. Those who saw, in the towering steam-column above it, a tempting target for enemy--which still meant Soviet--bombers and guided missiles. Some of the Central Intelligence and F.B.I. people, who realized how futile even the most elaborate security measures were against a resourceful and suicidally determined saboteur. And a minority of engineers and nuclear physicists who remained unpersuaded that accidental blowups at nuclear-reaction plants were impossible.

Scott Melroy was among these last. He knew, as a matter of fact, that there had been several nasty, meticulously unpublicized, near-catastrophes at the Long Island Nuclear Reaction Plant, all involving the new Doernberg-Giardano breeder-reactors, and that there had been considerable carefully-hushed top-level acrimony before the Melroy Engineering Corporation had been given the contract to install the fully cybernetic control system intended to prevent a recurrence of such incidents.

That had been three months ago. Melroy and his people had moved in, been assigned sections of a couple of machine shops, set up an assembly shop and a set of plyboard-partitioned offices in a vacant warehouse just outside the reactor area, and tried to start work, only to run into the almost interminable procedural disputes and jurisdictional wranglings of the sort which he privately labeled "bureau bunk". It was only now that he was ready to begin work on the reactors.

He sat at his desk, in the inner of three successively smaller offices on the second floor of the converted warehouse, checking over a symbolic-logic analysis of a relay system and, at the same time, sharpening a pencil, his knife paring off tiny feathery shavings of wood. He was a tall, sparely-built, man of indeterminate age, with thinning sandy hair, a long Gaelic upper lip, and a wide, half-humorous, half-weary mouth; he wore an open-necked shirt, and an old and shabby leather jacket, to the left shoulder of which a few clinging flecks of paint showed where some military emblem had been, long ago. While his fingers worked with the jackknife and his eyes traveled over the page of closely-written symbols, his mind was reviewing the eight different ways in which one of the efficient but treacherous Doernberg-Giardano reactors could be allowed to reach critical mass, and he was wondering if there might not be some unsuspected ninth way. That was a possibility which always lurked in the back of his mind, and lately it had been giving him surrealistic nightmares.

"Mr. Melroy!" the box on the desk in front of him said suddenly, in a feminine voice. "Mr. Melroy, Dr. Rives is here."

Melroy picked up the handphone, thumbing on the switch.

"Dr. Rives?" he repeated.

"The psychologist who's subbing for Dr. von Heydenreich," the box told him patiently.

"Oh, yes. Show him in," Melroy said.

"Right away, Mr. Melroy," the box replied.

* * * * *

Replacing the handphone, Melroy wondered, for a moment, why there had been a hint of suppressed amusement in his secretary's voice. Then the door opened and he stopped wondering. Dr. Rives wasn't a him; she was a her. Very attractive looking her, too--dark hair and eyes, rather long-oval features, clear, lightly tanned complexion, bright red lipstick put on with a micrometric exactitude that any engineer could appreciate. She was tall, within four inches of his own six-foot mark, and she wore a black tailored outfit, perfectly plain, which had probably cost around five hundred dollars and would have looked severe and mannish except that the figure under it curved and bulged in just the right places and to just the right degree.

Melroy rose, laying down knife and pencil and taking his pipe out of his mouth.

"Good afternoon," he greeted. "Dr. von Heydenreich gave me quite a favorable account of you--as far as it went. He might have included a few more data and made it more so.... Won't you sit down?"

The woman laid her handbag on the desk and took the visitor's chair, impish mirth sparking in her eyes.

"He probably omitted mentioning that the D. is for Doris," she suggested. "Suppose I'd been an Englishman with a name like Evelyn or Vivian?"

Melroy tried to visualize her as a male Englishman named Vivian, gave up, and grinned at her.

"Let this be a lesson," he said. "Inferences are to be drawn from objects, or descriptions of objects; never from verbal labels. Do you initial your first name just to see how people react when they meet you?"

"Well, no, though that's an amusing and sometimes instructive by-product. It started when I began contributing to some of the professional journals. There's still a little of what used to be called male sex-chauvinism among my colleagues, and some who would be favorably impressed with an article signed D. Warren Rives might snort in contempt at the same article signed Doris Rives."

"Well, fortunately, Dr. von Heydenreich isn't one of those," Melroy said. "How is the Herr Doktor, by the way, and just what happened to him? Miss Kourtakides merely told me that he'd been injured and was in a hospital in Pittsburgh."

"The Herr Doktor got shot," Doris Rives informed him. "With a charge of BB's, in a most indelicate portion of his anatomy. He was out hunting, the last day of small-game season, and somebody mistook him for a turkey. Nothing really serious, but he's face down in bed, cursing hideously in German, English, Russian, Italian and French, mainly because he's missing deer hunting."

"I might have known it," Melroy said in disgust. "The ubiquitous lame-brain with a dangerous mechanism.... I suppose he briefed you on what I want done, here?"

"Well, not too completely. I gathered that you want me to give intelligence tests, or aptitude tests, or something of the sort, to some of your employees. I'm not really one of these so-called industrial anthropologists," she explained. "Most of my work, for the past few years, has been for public-welfare organizations, with subnormal persons. I told him that, and he said that was why he selected me. He said one other thing. He said, 'I used to think Melroy had an obsession about fools; well, after stopping this load of shot, I'm beginning to think it's a good subject to be obsessed about.'"

Melroy nodded. "'Obsession' will probably do. 'Phobia' would be more exact. I'm afraid of fools, and the chance that I have one working for me, here, affects me like having a cobra crawling around my bedroom in the dark. I want you to locate any who might be in a gang of new men I've had to hire, so that I can get rid of them."

* * * * *

"And just how do you define the term 'fool', Mr. Melroy?" she asked. "Remember, it has no standard meaning. Republicans apply it to Democrats, and vice versa."

"Well, I apply it to people who do things without considering possible consequences. People who pepper distinguished Austrian psychologists in the pants-seat with turkey-shot, for a starter. Or people who push buttons to see what'll happen, or turn valves and twiddle with dial-knobs because they have nothing else to do with their hands. Or shoot insulators off power lines to see if they can hit them. People who don't know it's loaded. People who think warning signs are purely ornamental. People who play practical jokes. People who--"

"I know what you mean. Just day-before-yesterday, I saw a woman toss a cocktail into an electric heater. She didn't want to drink it, and she thought it would just go up in steam. The result was slightly spectacular."

"Next time, she won't do that. She'll probably throw her drink into a lead-ladle, if there's one around. Well, on a statistical basis, I'd judge that I have three or four such dud rounds among this new gang I've hired. I want you to put the finger on them, so I can bounce them before they blow the whole plant up, which could happen quite easily."

"That," Doris Rives said, "is not going to be as easy as it sounds. Ordinary intelligence-testing won't be enough. The woman I was speaking of has an I.Q. well inside the meaning of normal intelligence. She just doesn't use it."

"Sure." Melroy got a thick folder out of his desk and handed it across. "Heydenreich thought of that, too. He got this up for me, about five years ago. The intelligence test is based on the new French Sûreté test for mentally deficient criminals. Then there's a memory test, and tests for judgment and discrimination, semantic reactions, temperamental and emotional makeup, and general mental attitude."

She took the folder and leafed through it. "Yes, I see. I always liked this Sûreté test. And this memory test is a honey--'One hen, two ducks, three squawking geese, four corpulent porpoises, five Limerick oysters, six pairs of Don Alfonso tweezers....' I'd like to see some of these memory-course boys trying to make visual images of six pairs of Don Alfonso tweezers. And I'm going to make a copy of this word-association list. It's really a semantic reaction test; Korzybski would have loved it. And, of course, our old friend, the Rorschach Ink-Blots. I've always harbored the impious suspicion that you can prove almost anything you want to with that. But these question-suggestions for personal interview are really crafty. Did Heydenreich get them up himself?"

"Yes. And we have stacks and stacks of printed forms for the written portion of the test, and big cards to summarize each subject on. And we have a disk-recorder to use in the oral tests. There'll have to be a pretty complete record of each test, in case--"

* * * * *

The office door opened and a bulky man with a black mustache entered, beating the snow from his overcoat with a battered porkpie hat and commenting blasphemously on the weather. He advanced into the room until he saw the woman in the chair beside the desk, and then started to back out.

"Come on in, Sid," Melroy told him. "Dr. Rives, this is our general foreman, Sid Keating. Sid, Dr. Rives, the new dimwit detector. Sid's in direct charge of personnel," he continued, "so you two'll be working together quite a bit."

"Glad to know you, doctor," Keating said. Then he turned to Melroy. "Scott, you're really going through with this, then?" he asked. "I'm afraid we'll have trouble, then."

"Look, Sid," Melroy said. "We've been all over that. Once we start work on the reactors, you and Ned Puryear and Joe Ricci and Steve Chalmers can't be everywhere at once. A cybernetic system will only do what it's been assembled to do, and if some quarter-wit assembles one of these things wrong--" He left the sentence dangling; both men knew what he meant.

Keating shook his head. "This union's going to bawl like a branded calf about it," he predicted. "And if any of the dear sirs and brothers get washed out--" That sentence didn't need to be completed, either.

"We have a right," Melroy said, "to discharge any worker who is, quote, of unsound mind, deficient mentality or emotional instability, unquote. It says so right in our union contract, in nice big print."

"Then they'll claim the tests are wrong."

"I can't see how they can do that," Doris Rives put in, faintly scandalized.

"Neither can I, and they probably won't either," Keating told her. "But they'll go ahead and do it. Why, Scott, they're pulling the Number One Doernberg-Giardano, tonight. By oh-eight-hundred, it ought to be cool enough to work on. Where will we hold the tests? Here?"

"We'll have to, unless we can get Dr. Rives security-cleared." Melroy turned to her. "Were you ever security-cleared by any Government agency?"

"Oh, yes. I was with Armed Forces Medical, Psychiatric Division, in Indonesia in '62 and '63, and I did some work with mental fatigue cases at Tonto Basin Research Establishment in '64."

Melroy looked at her sharply. Keating whistled.

"If she could get into Tonto Basin, she can get in here," he declared.

"I should think so. I'll call Colonel Bradshaw, the security officer."

"That way, we can test them right on the job," Keating was saying. "Take them in relays. I'll talk to Ben about it, and we'll work up some kind of a schedule." He turned to Doris Rives. "You'll need a wrist-Geiger, and a dosimeter. We'll furnish them," he told her. "I hope they don't try to make you carry a pistol, too."

"A pistol?" For a moment, she must have thought he was using some technical-jargon term, and then it dawned on her that he wasn't. "You mean--?" She cocked her thumb and crooked her index finger.

"Yeah. A rod. Roscoe. The Equalizer. We all have to." He half-lifted one out of his side pocket. "We're all United States deputy marshals. They don't bother much with counterespionage, here, but they don't fool when it comes to countersabotage. Well, I'll get an order cut and posted. Be seeing you, doctor."

* * * * *

"You think the union will make trouble about these tests?" she asked, after the general foreman had gone out.

"They're sure to," Melroy replied. "Here's the situation. I have about fifty of my own men, from Pittsburgh, here, but they can't work on the reactors because they don't belong to the Industrial Federation of Atomic Workers, and I can't just pay their initiation fees and union dues and get union cards for them, because admission to this union is on an annual quota basis, and this is December, and the quota's full. So I have to use them outside the reactor area, on fabrication and assembly work. And I have to hire through the union, and that's handled on a membership seniority basis, so I have to take what's thrown at me. That's why I was careful to get that clause I was quoting to Sid written into my contract.

"Now, here's what's going to happen. Most of the men'll take the test without protest, but a few of them'll raise the roof about it. Nothing burns a moron worse than to have somebody question his fractional intelligence. The odds are that the ones that yell the loudest about taking the test will be the ones who get scrubbed out, and when the test shows that they're deficient, they won't believe it. A moron simply cannot conceive of his being anything less than perfectly intelligent, any more than a lunatic can conceive of his being less than perfectly sane. So they'll claim we're framing them, for an excuse to fire them. And the union will have to back them up, right or wrong, at least on the local level. That goes without saying. In any dispute, the employer is always wrong and the worker is always right, until proven otherwise. And that takes a lot of doing, believe me!"

"Well, if they're hired through the union, on a seniority basis, wouldn't they be likely to be experienced and competent workers?" she asked.

"Experienced, yes. That is, none of them has ever been caught doing anything downright calamitous ... yet," Melroy replied. "The moron I'm afraid of can go on for years, doing routine work under supervision, and nothing'll happen. Then, some day, he does something on his own lame-brained initiative, and when he does, it's only at the whim of whatever gods there be that the result isn't a wholesale catastrophe. And people like that are the most serious threat facing our civilization today, atomic war not excepted."

Dr. Doris Rives lifted a delicately penciled eyebrow over that. Melroy, pausing to relight his pipe, grinned at her.

"You think that's the old obsession talking?" he asked. "Could be. But look at this plant, here. It generates every kilowatt of current used between Trenton and Albany, the New York metropolitan area included. Except for a few little storage-battery or Diesel generator systems, that couldn't handle one tenth of one per cent of the barest minimum load, it's been the only source of electric current here since 1962, when the last coal-burning power plant was dismantled. Knock this plant out and you darken every house and office and factory and street in the area. You immobilize the elevators--think what that would mean in lower and midtown Manhattan alone. And the subways. And the new endless-belt conveyors that handle eighty per cent of the city's freight traffic. And the railroads--there aren't a dozen steam or Diesel locomotives left in the whole area. And the pump stations for water and gas and fuel oil. And seventy per cent of the space-heating is electric, now. Why, you can't imagine what it'd be like. It's too gigantic. But what you can imagine would be a nightmare.

"You know, it wasn't so long ago, when every home lighted and heated itself, and every little industry was a self-contained unit, that a fool couldn't do great damage unless he inherited a throne or was placed in command of an army, and that didn't happen nearly as often as our leftist social historians would like us to think. But today, everything we depend upon is centralized, and vulnerable to blunder-damage. Even our food--remember that poisoned soft-drink horror in Chicago, in 1963; three thousand hospitalized and six hundred dead because of one man's stupid mistake at a bottling plant." He shook himself slightly, as though to throw off some shadow that had fallen over him, and looked at his watch. "Sixteen hundred. How did you get here? Fly your own plane?"

"No; I came by T.W.A. from Pittsburgh. I have a room at the new Midtown City hotel, on Forty-seventh Street: I had my luggage sent on there from the airport and came out on the Long Island subway."

"Fine. I have a room at Midtown City, myself, though I sleep here about half the time." He nodded toward a door on the left. "Suppose we go in and have dinner together. This cafeteria, here, is a horrible place. It's run by a dietitian instead of a chef, and everything's so white-enamel antiseptic that I swear I smell belladonna-icthyol ointment every time I go in the place. Wait here till I change clothes."

* * * * *

At the Long Island plant, no one was concerned about espionage--neither the processes nor the equipment used there were secret--but the countersabotage security was fantastically thorough. Every person or scrap of material entering the reactor area was searched; the life-history of every man and woman employed there was known back to the cradle. A broad highway encircled it outside the fence, patrolled night and day by twenty General Stuart cavalry-tanks. There were a thousand soldiers, and three hundred Atomic Power Authority police, and only God knew how many F.B.I, and Central Intelligence undercover agents. Every supervisor and inspector and salaried technician was an armed United States deputy marshal. And nobody, outside the Department of Defense, knew how much radar and counter-rocket and fighter protection the place had, but the air-defense zone extended from Boston to Philadelphia and as far inland as Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.

The Long Island Nuclear Power Plant, Melroy thought, had all the invulnerability of Achilles--and no more.

The six new Doernberg-Giardano breeder-reactors clustered in a circle inside a windowless concrete building at the center of the plant. Beside their primary purpose of plutonium production, they furnished heat for the sea-water distillation and chemical extraction system, processing the water that was run through the steam boilers at the main power reactors, condensed, redistilled, and finally pumped, pure, into the water mains of New York. Safe outside the shielding, in a corner of a high-ceilinged room, was the plyboard-screened on-the-job office of the Melroy Engineering Corporation's timekeepers and foremen. Beyond, along the far wall, were the washroom and locker room and lunch room of the workmen.

Sixty or seventy men, mostly in white coveralls and all wearing identification badges and carrying dosimeters in their breast pockets and midget Geigers strapped to their wrists, were crowded about the bulletin-board in front of the makeshift office. There was a hum of voices--some perplexed or angry, but mostly good-humored and bantering. As Melroy and Doris Rives approached, the talking died out and the men turned. In the sudden silence, one voice, harshly strident, continued:

"... do they think this is, anyhow? We don't hafta take none of that."

Somebody must have nudged the speaker, trying without success to hush him. The bellicose voice continued, and Melroy spotted the speaker--short, thick-set, his arms jutting out at an angle from his body, his heavy features soured with anger.

"Like we was a lotta halfwits, 'r nuts, 'r some'n! Well, we don't hafta stand for this. They ain't got no right--"

Doris Rives clung tighter to Melroy's arm as he pushed a way for himself and her through the crowd and into the temporary office. Inside, they were met by a young man with a deputy marshal's badge on his flannel shirt and a .38 revolver on his hip.

"Ben Puryear: Dr. Rives," Melroy introduced. "Who's the mouthy character outside?"

"One of the roustabouts; name's Burris," Puryear replied. "Wash-room lawyer."

Melroy nodded. "You always get one or two like that. How're the rest taking it?"

Puryear shrugged. "About how you'd expect. A lot of kidding about who's got any intelligence to test. Burris seems to be the only one who's trying to make an issue out of it."

"Well, what are they doing ganged up here?" Melroy wanted to know. "It's past oh-eight-hundred; why aren't they at work?"

"Reactor's still too hot. Temperature and radioactivity both too high; radioactivity's still up around eight hundred REM's."

"Well, then, we'll give them all the written portion of the test together, and start the personal interviews and oral tests as soon as they're through." He turned to Doris Rives. "Can you give all of them the written test together?" he asked. "And can Ben help you--distributing forms, timing the test, seeing that there's no fudging, and collecting the forms when they're done?"

"Oh, yes; all they'll have to do is follow the printed instructions." She looked around. "I'll need a desk, and an extra chair for the interview subject."

"Right over here, doctor." Puryear said. "And here are the forms and cards, and the sound-recorder, and blank sound disks."

"Yes," Melroy added. "Be sure you get a recording of every interview and oral test; we may need them for evidence."

He broke off as a man in white coveralls came pushing into the office. He was a scrawny little fellow with a wide, loose-lipped mouth and a protuberant Adam's apple; beside his identity badge, he wore a two-inch celluloid button lettered: I.F.A.W. STEWARD.

"Wanta use the phone," he said. "Union business."

Melroy gestured toward a telephone on the desk beside him. The newcomer shook his head, twisting his mouth into a smirk.

"Not that one; the one with the whisper mouthpiece," he said. "This is private union business."

* * * * *

Melroy shrugged and indicated another phone. The man with the union steward's badge picked it up, dialed, and held a lengthy conversation into it, turning his head away in case Melroy might happen to be a lip reader. Finally he turned.

"Mr. Crandall wants to talk to you," he said, grinning triumphantly, the phone extended to Melroy.

The engineer picked up another phone, snapping a button on the base of it.

"Melroy here," he said.

Something on the line started going bee-beep-beep softly.

"Crandall, executive secretary, I.F.A.W.," the man on the other end of the line identified himself. "Is there a recorder going on this line?"

"Naturally," Melroy replied. "I record all business conversations; office routine."

"Mr. Melroy, I've been informed that you propose forcing our members in your employ to submit to some kind of a mental test. Is that correct?"

"Not exactly. I'm not able to force anybody to submit to anything against his will. If anybody objects to taking these tests, he can say so, and I'll have his time made out and pay him off."

"That's the same thing. A threat of dismissal is coercion, and if these men want to keep their jobs they'll have to take this test."

"Well, that's stated more or less correctly," Melroy conceded. "Let's just put it that taking--and passing--this test is a condition of employment. My contract with your union recognizes my right to establish standards of intelligence; that's implied by my recognized right to dismiss any person of 'unsound mind, deficient mentality or emotional instability.' Psychological testing is the only means of determining whether or not a person is classifiable in those terms."

"Then, in case the test purports to show that one of these men is, let's say, mentally deficient, you intend dismissing him?"

"With the customary two weeks' severance-pay, yes."

"Well, if you do dismiss anybody on those grounds, the union will have to insist on reviewing the grounds for dismissal."

"My contract with your union says nothing whatever about any right of review being reserved by the union in such cases. Only in cases of disciplinary dismissal, which this is not. I take the position that certain minimum standards of intelligence and mental stability are essentials in this sort of work, just as, say, certain minimum standards of literacy are essential in clerical work."

"Then you're going to make these men take these tests, whatever they are?"

"If they want to work for me, yes. And anybody who fails to pass them will be dropped from my payroll."

"And who's going to decide whether or not these men have successfully passed these tests?" Crandall asked. "You?"

"Good Lord, no! I'm an electronics engineer, not a psychologist. The tests are being given, and will be evaluated, by a graduate psychologist, Dr. D. Warren Rives, who has a diploma from the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology and is a member of the American Psychological Association. Dr. Rives will be the final arbiter on who is or is not disqualified by these tests."

"Well, our man Koffler says you have some girl there to give the tests," Crandall accused.

"I suppose he means Dr. Rives," Melroy replied. "I can assure you, she is an extremely competent psychologist, however. She came to me most highly recommended by Dr. Karl von Heydenreich, who is not inclined to be careless with his recommendations."

"Well, Mr. Melroy, we don't want any more trouble with you than we have to have," Crandall told him, "but we will insist on reviewing any dismissals which occur as a result of these tests."

"You can do that. I'd advise, first, that you read over the contract you signed with me. Get a qualified lawyer to tell you what we've agreed to and what we haven't. Was there anything else you wanted to talk about?... No?... Then good morning, Mr. Crandall."

He hung up. "All right; let's get on with it," he said. "Ben, you get them into the lunch room; there are enough tables and benches in there for everybody to take the written test in two relays."

"The union's gotta be represented while these tests is going on," the union steward announced. "Mr. Crandall says I'm to stay here an' watch what you do to these guys."

"This man working for us?" Melroy asked Puryear.

"Yes. Koffler, Julius. Electrical fitter; Joe Ricci's gang."

"All right. See to it that he gets placed in the first relay for the written test, and gets first turn for the orals. That way he can spend the rest of his time on duty here for the union, and will know in advance what the test is like." He turned to Koffler. "But understand this. You keep your mouth out of it. If you see anything that looks objectionable, make a note of it, but don't try to interfere."

The written tests, done on printed forms, required about twenty minutes. Melroy watched the process of oral testing and personal interviewing for a while, then picked up a big flashlight and dropped it into his overcoat pocket, preparatory to going out to inspect some equipment that had been assembled outside the reactor area and brought in. As he went out, Koffler was straddling a chair, glowering at Doris Rives and making occasional ostentatious notes on a pad.

* * * * *

For about an hour, he poked around the newly assembled apparatus, checking the wiring, and peering into it. When he returned to the temporary office, the oral testing was still going on; Koffler was still on duty as watcher for the union, but the sport had evidently palled on him, for he was now studying a comic book.

Melroy left the reactor area and returned to the office in the converted area. During the midafternoon, somebody named Leighton called him from the Atomic Power Authority executive office, wanting to know what was the trouble between him and the I.F.A.W. and saying that a protest against his alleged high-handed and arbitrary conduct had been received from the union.

Melroy explained, at length. He finished: "You people have twenty Stuart tanks, and a couple of thousand soldiers and cops and undercover-men, here, guarding against sabotage. Don't you realize that a workman who makes stupid or careless or impulsive mistakes is just as dangerous to the plant as any saboteur? If somebody shoots you through the head, it doesn't matter whether he planned to murder you for a year or just didn't know the gun was loaded; you're as dead one way as the other. I should think you'd thank me for trying to eliminate a serious source of danger."

"Now, don't misunderstand my position, Mr. Melroy," the other man hastened to say. "I sympathize with your attitude, entirely. But these people are going to make trouble."

"If they do, it'll be my trouble. I'm under contract to install this cybernetic system for you; you aren't responsible for my labor policy," Melroy replied. "Oh, have you had much to do with this man Crandall, yourself?"

"Have I had--!" Leighton sputtered for a moment. "I'm in charge of personnel, here; that makes me his top-priority target, all the time."

"Well, what sort of a character is he, anyhow? When I contracted with the I.F.A.W., my lawyer and their lawyer handled everything; I never even met him."

"Well--He has his job to do, the same as I have," Leighton said. "He does it conscientiously. But it's like this--anything a workman tells him is the truth, and anything an employer tells him is a dirty lie. Until proven differently, of course, but that takes a lot of doing. And he goes off half-cocked a lot of times. He doesn't stop to analyze situations very closely."

"That's what I was afraid of. Well, you tell him you don't have any control over my labor relations. Tell him to bring his gripes to me."

* * * * *

At sixteen-thirty, Doris Rives came in, finding him still at his desk.

"I have the written tests all finished, and I have about twenty of the tests and interviews completed," she said. "I'll have to evaluate the results, though. I wonder if there's a vacant desk around here, anywhere, and a record player."

"Yes, sure. Ask Joan to fix you up; she'll find a place for you to work. And if you're going to be working late, I'll order some dinner for you from the cafeteria. I'm going to be here all evening, myself."

Sid Keating came in, a short while later, peeling out of his overcoat, jacket and shoulder holster.

"I don't think they got everything out of that reactor," he said. "Radioactivity's still almost active-normal--about eight hundred REM's--and the temperature's away up, too. That isn't lingering radiation; that's prompt radiation."

"Radioactivity hasn't dropped since morning; I'd think so, too," Melroy said. "What are they getting on the breakdown counter?"

"Mostly neutrons and alpha-particles. I talked to Fred Hausinger, the maintenance boss; he doesn't like it, either."

"Well, I'm no nuclear physicist," Melroy disclaimed, "but all that alpha stuff looks like a big chunk of Pu-239 left inside. What's Fred doing about it?"

"Oh, poking around inside the reactor with telemetered scanners and remote-control equipment. When I left, he had a gang pulling out graphite blocks with RC-tongs. We probably won't get a chance to work on it much before thirteen-hundred tomorrow." He unzipped a bulky brief case he had brought in under his arm and dumped papers onto his desk. "I still have this stuff to get straightened out, too."

"Had anything to eat? Then call the cafeteria and have them send up three dinners. Dr. Rives is eating here, too. Find out what she wants; I want pork chops."

"Uh-huh; Li'l Abner Melroy; po'k chops unless otherwise specified." Keating got up and went out into the middle office. As he opened the door. Melroy could hear a recording of somebody being given a word-association test.

Half an hour later, when the food arrived, they spread their table on a relatively clear desk in the middle office. Doris Rives had finished evaluating the completed tests; after dinner, she intended going over the written portions of the uncompleted tests.

"How'd the finished tests come out?" Melroy asked her.

"Better than I'd expected. Only two washouts," she replied. "Harvey Burris and Julius Koffler."

"Oh, no!" Keating wailed. "The I.F.A.W. steward, and the loudest-mouthed I-know-my-rights boy on the job!"

"Well, wasn't that to be expected?" Melroy asked. "If you'd seen the act those two put on--"

"They're both inherently stupid, infantile, and deficient in reasoning ability and judgment," Doris said. "Koffler is a typical adolescent problem-child show-off type, and Burris is an almost perfect twelve-year-old schoolyard bully. They both have inferiority complexes long enough to step on. If the purpose of this test is what I'm led to believe it is, I can't, in professional good conscience, recommend anything but that you get rid of both of them."

"What Bob's getting at is that they're the very ones who can claim, with the best show of plausibility, that the test is just a pretext to fire them for union activities," Melroy explained. "And the worst of it is, they're the only ones."

"Maybe we can scrub out a couple more on the written tests alone. Then they'll have company," Keating suggested.

"No, I can't do that." Doris was firm on the point. "The written part of the test was solely for ability to reason logically. Just among the three of us, I know some university professors who'd flunk on that. But if the rest of the tests show stability, sense of responsibility, good judgment, and a tendency to think before acting, the subject can be classified as a safe and reliable workman."

"Well, then, let's don't say anything till we have the tests all finished," Keating proposed.

"No!" Melroy cried. "Every minute those two are on the job, there's a chance they may do something disastrous. I'll fire them at oh-eight-hundred tomorrow."

"All right," Keating shook his head. "I only work here. But don't say I didn't warn you."

* * * * *

By 0930 the next morning, Keating's forebodings began to be realized. The first intimation came with a phone call to Melroy from Crandall, who accused him of having used the psychological tests as a fraudulent pretext for discharging Koffler and Burris for union activities. When Melroy rejected his demand that the two men be reinstated, Crandall demanded to see the records of the tests.

"They're here at my office," Melroy told him. "You're welcome to look at them, and hear recordings of the oral portions of the tests. But I'd advise you to bring a professional psychologist along, because unless you're a trained psychologist yourself, they're not likely to mean much to you."

"Oh, sure!" Crandall retorted. "They'd have to be unintelligible to ordinary people, or you couldn't get away with this frame-up! Well, don't worry, I'll be along to see them."

Within ten minutes, the phone rang again. This time it was Leighton, the Atomic Power Authority man.

"We're much disturbed about this dispute between your company and the I.F.A.W.," he began.

"Well, frankly, so am I," Melroy admitted. "I'm here to do a job, not play Hatfields and McCoys with this union. I've had union trouble before, and it isn't fun. You're the gentleman who called me last evening, aren't you? Then you understand my position in the matter."

"Certainly, Mr. Melroy. I was talking to Colonel Bradshaw, the security officer, last evening. He agrees that a stupid or careless workman is, under some circumstances, a more serious threat to security than any saboteur. And we realize fully how dangerous those Doernberg-Giardanos are, and how much more dangerous they'd be if these cybernetic controls were improperly assembled. But this man Crandall is talking about calling a strike."

"Well, let him. In the first place, it'd be against me, not against the Atomic Power Authority. And, in the second place, if he does and it goes to Federal mediation, his demand for the reinstatement of those men will be thrown out, and his own organization will have to disavow his action, because he'll be calling the strike against his own contract."

"Well, I hope so." Leighton's tone indicated that the hope was rather dim. "I wish you luck; you're going to need it."

* * * * *

Within the hour, Crandall arrived at Melroy's office. He was a young man; he gave Melroy the impression of having recently seen military service; probably in the Indonesian campaign of '62 and '63; he also seemed a little cocky and over-sure of himself.

"Mr. Melroy, we're not going to stand for this," he began, as soon as he came into the room. "You're using these so-called tests as a pretext for getting rid of Mr. Koffler and Mr. Burris because of their legitimate union activities."

"Who gave you that idea?" Melroy wanted to know. "Koffler and Burris?"

"That's the complaint they made to me, and it's borne out by the facts," Crandall replied. "We have on record at least half a dozen complaints that Mr. Koffler has made to us about different unfair work-assignments, improper working conditions, inequities in allotting overtime work, and other infractions of union-shop conditions, on behalf of Mr. Burris. So you decided to get rid of both of them, and you think you can use this clause in our contract with your company about persons of deficient intelligence. The fact is, you're known to have threatened on several occasions to get rid of both of them."

"I am?" Melroy looked at Crandall curiously, wondering if the latter were serious, and deciding that he was. "You must believe anything those people tell you. Well, they lied to you if they told you that."

"Naturally that's what you'd say," Crandall replied. "But how do you account for the fact that those two men, and only those two men, were dismissed for alleged deficient intelligence?"

"The tests aren't all made," Melroy replied. "Until they are, you can't say that they are the only ones disqualified. And if you look over the records of the tests, you'll see where Koffler and Burris failed and the others passed. Here." He laid the pile of written-test forms and the summary and evaluation sheets on the desk. "Here's Koffler's, and here's Burris'; these are the ones of the men who passed the test. Look them over if you want to."

Crandall examined the forms and summaries for the two men who had been discharged, and compared them with several random samples from the satisfactory pile.

"Why, this stuff's a lot of gibberish!" he exclaimed indignantly. "This thing, here: ... five Limerick oysters, six pairs of Don Alfonso tweezers, seven hundred Macedonian warriors in full battle array, eight golden crowns from the ancient, secret crypts of Egypt, nine lymphatic, sympathetic, peripatetic old men on crutches, and ten revolving heliotropes from the Ipsy-Wipsy Institute!' Great Lord, do you actually mean that you're using this stuff as an excuse for depriving men of their jobs?"

"I warned you that you should have brought a professional psychologist along," Melroy reminded him. "And maybe you ought to get Koffler and Burris to repeat their complaints on a lie-detector, while you're at it. They took the same tests, in the same manner, as any of the others. They just didn't have the mental equipment to cope with them and the others did. And for that reason, I won't run the risk of having them working on this job."

"That's just your word against theirs," Crandall insisted obstinately. "Their complaint is that you framed this whole thing up to get rid of them."

"Why, I didn't even know who either of them were, until yesterday morning."

"That's not the way they tell it," Crandall retorted. "They say you and Keating have been out to get them ever since they were hired. You and your supervisors have been persecuting both of those men systematically. The fact that Burris has had grounds for all these previous complaints proves that."

"It proves that Burris has a persecution complex, and that Koffler's credulous enough to believe him," Melroy replied. "And that tends to confirm the results of the tests they failed to pass."

"Oh, so that's the line you're taking. You persecute a man, and then say he has a persecution complex if he recognizes the fact. Well, you're not going to get away with it, that's all I have to say to you." Crandall flung the test-sheet he had been holding on to the desk. "That stuff's not worth the paper it's scribbled on!" He turned on his heel in an automatically correct about-face and strode out of the office.

* * * * *

Melroy straightened out the papers and put them away, then sat down at his desk, filling and lighting his pipe. He was still working at 1215 when Ben Puryear called him.

"They walked out on us," he reported. "Harry Crandall was out here talking to them, and at noon the whole gang handed in their wrist-Geigers and dosimeters and cleared out their lockers. They say they aren't coming back till Burris and Koffler come back to work with them."

"Then they aren't coming back, period," Melroy replied. "Crandall was to see me, a couple of hours ago. He tells me that Burris and Koffler told him that we've been persecuting Burris; discriminating against him. You know of anything that really happened that might make them think anything like that?"

"No. Burris is always yelling about not getting enough overtime work, but you know how it is: he's just a roustabout, a common laborer. Any overtime work that has to be done is usually skilled labor on this job. We generally have a few roustabouts to help out, but he's been allowed to make overtime as much as any of the others."

"Will the time-records show that?"

"They ought to. I don't know what he and Koffler told Crandall, but whatever it was, I'll bet they were lying."

"That's all right, then. How's the reactor, now?"

"Hausinger says the count's down to safe limits, and the temperature's down to inactive normal. He and his gang found a big chunk of plutonium, about one-quarter CM, inside. He got it out."

"All right. Tell Dr. Rives to gather up all her completed or partially completed test records and come out to the office. You and the others stay on the job; we may have some men for you by this afternoon; tomorrow morning certainly."

He hung up, then picked up the communicator phone and called his secretary.

"Joan, is Sid Keating out there? Send him in, will you?"

Keating, when he entered, was wearing the lugubriously gratified expression appropriate to the successful prophet of disaster.

"All right, Cassandra," Melroy greeted him. "I'm not going to say you didn't warn me. Look. This strike is illegal. It's a violation of the Federal Labor Act of 1958, being called without due notice of intention, without preliminary negotiation, and without two weeks' time-allowance."

"They're going to claim that it isn't a strike. They're going to call it a 'spontaneous work-stoppage.'"

"Aah! I hope I can get Crandall on record to that effect; I'll fire every one of those men for leaving their work without permission and absence from duty without leave. How many of our own men, from Pittsburgh, do we have working in these machine shops and in the assembly shop here? About sixty?"

"Sixty-three. Why? You're not going to use them to work on the reactor, are you?"

"I just am. They're all qualified cybernetics technicians; they can do this work better than this gang we've had to hire here. Just to be on the safe side, I'm promoting all of them, as of oh-eight-hundred this morning, to assistant gang-foremen, on salaries. That'll take them outside union jurisdiction."

"But how about our contract with the I.F.A.W.?"

"That's been voided, by Crandall's own act, in interfering with the execution of our contract with the Atomic Power Authority. You know what I think? I think the I.F.A.W. front office is going to have to disavow this. It'll hurt them to do it, but they'll have to. Crandall's put them in the middle on this."

"How about security clearance for our own men?"

"Nothing to that," Melroy said. "Most of them are security-cleared, already, from the work we did installing that counter-rocket control system on the U.S.S. Alaska, and the work we did on that symbolic-logic computer for the Philadelphia Project. It may take all day to get the red tape unwound, but I think we can be ready to start by oh-eight-hundred tomorrow."

* * * * *

By the time Keating had rounded up all the regular Melroy Engineering Corporation employees and Melroy had talked to Colonel Bradshaw about security-clearance, it was 1430. A little later, he was called on the phone by Leighton, the Atomic Power Authority man.

"Melroy, what are you trying to do?" the Power Authority man demanded. "Get this whole plant struck shut? The I.F.A.W.'s madder than a shot-stung bobcat. They claim you're going to bring in strike-breakers; they're talking about picketing the whole reactor area."

"News gets around fast, here, doesn't it?" Melroy commented. He told Leighton what he had in mind. The Power Authority man was considerably shaken before he had finished.

"But they'll call a strike on the whole plant! Have you any idea what that would mean?"

"Certainly I have. They'll either call it in legal form, in which case the whole thing will go to mediation and get aired, which is what I want, or they'll pull a Pearl Harbor on you, the way they did on me. And in that case, the President will have to intervene, and they'll fly in technicians from some of the Armed Forces plants to keep this place running. And in that case, things'll get settled that much quicker. This Crandall thinks these men I fired are martyrs, and he's preaching a crusade. He ought to carry an advocatus diaboli on his payroll, to scrutinize the qualifications of his martyrs, before he starts canonizing them."

A little later, Doris Rives came into the office, her hands full of papers and cards.

"I have twelve more tests completed," she reported. "Only one washout."

Melroy laughed. "Doctor, they're all washed out," he told her. "It seems there was an additional test, and they all flunked it. Evinced willingness to follow unwise leadership and allow themselves to be talked into improper courses of action. You go on in to New York, and take all the test-material, including sound records, with you. Stay at the hotel--your pay will go on--till I need you. There'll be a Federal Mediation hearing in a day or so."

He had two more telephone calls. The first, at 1530, was from Leighton. Melroy suspected that the latter had been medicating his morale with a couple of stiff drinks: his voice was almost jaunty.

"Well, the war's on," he announced. "The I.F.A.W.'s walking out on the whole plant, at oh-eight-hundred tomorrow."

"In violation of the Federal Labor Act, Section Eight, paragraphs four and five," Melroy supplemented. "Crandall really has stuck his neck in the guillotine. What's Washington doing?"

"President Hartley is ordering Navy personnel flown in from Kennebunkport Reaction Lab; they will be here by about oh-three-hundred tomorrow. And a couple of Federal mediators are coming in to La Guardia at seventeen hundred; they're going to hold preliminary hearings at the new Federal Building on Washington Square beginning twenty hundred. A couple of I.F.A.W. negotiators are coming in from the national union headquarters at Oak Ridge: they should be getting in about the same time. You'd better be on hand, and have Dr. Rives there with you. There's a good chance this thing may get cleared up in a day or so."

"I will undoubtedly be there, complete with Dr. Rives," Melroy replied. "It will be a pleasure!"

* * * * *

An hour later, Ben Puryear called from the reactor area, his voice strained with anger.

"Scott, do you know what those--" He gargled obscenities for a moment. "You know what they've done? They've re-packed the Number One Doernberg-Giardano; got a chain-reaction started again."

"Who?"

"Fred Hausinger's gang. Apparently at Harry Crandall's orders. The excuse was that it would be unsafe to leave the reactor in its dismantled condition during a prolonged shutdown--they were assuming, I suppose, that the strike would be allowed to proceed unopposed--but of course the real reason was that they wanted to get a chain-reaction started to keep our people from working on the reactor."

"Well, didn't Hausinger try to stop them?"

"Not very hard. I asked him what he had that deputy marshal's badge on his shirt and that Luger on his hip for, but he said he had orders not to use force, for fear of prejudicing the mediators."

Melroy swore disgustedly. "All right. Gather up all our private papers, and get Steve and Joe, and come on out. We only work here--when we're able."

* * * * *

Doris Rives was waiting on the street level when Melroy reached the new Federal Building, in what had formerly been the Greenwich Village district of Manhattan, that evening. She had a heavy brief case with her, which he took.

"I was afraid I'd keep you waiting," she said. "I came down from the hotel by cab, and there was a frightful jam at Fortieth Street, and another one just below Madison Square."

"Yes, it gets worse every year. Pardon my obsession, but nine times out of ten--ninety-nine out of a hundred--it's the fault of some fool doing something stupid. Speaking about doing stupid things, though--I did one. Forgot to take that gun out of my overcoat pocket, and didn't notice that I had it till I was on the subway, coming in. Have a big flashlight in the other pocket, but that doesn't matter. What I'm worried about is that somebody'll find out I have a gun and raise a howl about my coming armed to a mediation hearing."

The hearing was to be held in one of the big conference rooms on the forty-second floor. Melroy was careful to remove his overcoat and lay it on a table in the corner, and then help Doris off with hers and lay it on top of his own. There were three men in the room when they arrived: Kenneth Leighton, the Atomic Power Authority man, fiftyish, acquiring a waistline bulge and losing his hair: a Mr. Lyons, tall and slender, with white hair; and a Mr. Quillen, considerably younger, with plastic-rimmed glasses. The latter two were the Federal mediators. All three had been lounging in arm-chairs, talking about the new plays on Broadway. They all rose when Melroy and Doris Rives came over to join them.

"We mustn't discuss business until the others get here," Leighton warned. "It's bad enough that all three of us got here ahead of them; they'll be sure to think we're trying to take an unfair advantage of them. I suppose neither of you have had time to see any of the new plays."

Fortunately, Doris and Melroy had gone to the theater after dinner, the evening-before-last; they were able to join the conversation. Young Mr. Quillen wanted Doris Rives' opinion, as a psychologist, of the mental processes of the heroine of the play they had seen; as nearly as she could determine, Doris replied, the heroine in question had exhibited nothing even loosely describable as mental processes of any sort. They were still on the subject when the two labor negotiators, Mr. Cronnin and Mr. Fields, arrived. Cronnin was in his sixties, with the nearsighted squint and compressed look of concentration of an old-time precision machinist; Fields was much younger, and sported a Phi Beta Kappa key.

Lyons, who seemed to be the senior mediator, thereupon called the meeting to order and they took their places at the table.

* * * * *

"Now, gentlemen--and Dr. Rives--this will be simply an informal discussion, so that everybody can see what everybody else's position in the matter is. We won't bother to make a sound recording. Then, if we have managed to reach some common understanding of the question this evening, we can start the regular hearing say at thirteen hundred tomorrow. Is that agreeable?"

It was. The younger mediator, Quillen, cleared his throat.

"It seems, from our information, that this entire dispute arises from the discharge, by Mr. Melroy, of two of his employees, named Koffler and Burris. Is that correct?"

"Well, there's also the question of the Melroy Engineering Corporation's attempting to use strike-breakers, and the Long Island Atomic Power Authority's having condoned this unfair employment practice," Cronnin said, acidly.

"And there's also the question of the I.F.A.W.'s calling a Pearl Harbor strike on my company," Melroy added.

"We resent that characterization!" Cronnin retorted.

"It's a term in common usage; it denotes a strike called without warning or declaration of intention, which this was," Melroy told him.

"And there's also the question of the I.F.A.W. calling a general strike, in illegal manner, at the Long Island Reaction Plant," Leighton spoke up. "On sixteen hours' notice."

"Well, that wasn't the fault of the I.F.A.W. as an organization," Fields argued. "Mr. Cronnin and I are agreed that the walk-out date should be postponed for two weeks, in accordance with the provisions of the Federal Labor Act."

"Well, how about my company?" Melroy wanted to know. "Your I.F.A.W. members walked out on me, without any notice whatever, at twelve hundred today. Am I to consider that an act of your union, or will you disavow it so that I can fire all of them for quitting without permission?"

"And how about the action of members of your union, acting on instructions from Harry Crandall, in re-packing the Number One Doernberg-Giardano breeder-reactor at our plant, after the plutonium and the U-238 and the neutron-source containers had been removed, in order to re-initiate a chain reaction to prevent Mr. Melroy's employees from working on the reactor?" Leighton demanded. "Am I to understand that the union sustains that action, too?"

"I hadn't known about that," Fields said, somewhat startled.

"Neither had I," Cronnin added. "When did it happen?"

"About sixteen hundred today," Melroy told him.

"We were on the plane from Oak Ridge, then," Fields declared. "We know nothing about that."

"Well, are you going to take the responsibility for it, or aren't you?" Leighton insisted.

Lyons, who had been toying with a small metal paperweight, rapped on the table with it.

"Gentlemen," he interrupted. "We're trying to cover too many subjects at once. I suggest that we confine ourselves, at the beginning, to the question of the dismissal of these men, Burris and Koffler. If we find that the I.F.A.W. has a legitimate grievance in what we may call the Burris-Koffler question, we can settle that and then go on to these other questions."

"I'm agreeable to that," Melroy said.

"So are we," Cronnin nodded.

"All right, then. Since the I.F.A.W. is the complaining party in this question, perhaps you gentlemen should state the grounds for your complaints."

Fields and Cronnin exchanged glances: Cronnin nodded to Fields and the latter rose. The two employees in question, he stated, had been the victims of discrimination and persecution because of union activities. Koffler was the union shop-steward for the men employed by the Melroy Engineering Corporation, and Burris had been active in bringing complaints about unfair employment practices. Furthermore, it was the opinion of the I.F.A.W. that the psychological tests imposed on their members had been a fraudulent pretext for dismissing these two men, and, in any case, the practice of compelling workers to submit to such tests was insulting, degrading, and not a customary condition of employment.

With that, he sat down. Melroy was on his feet at once.

"I'll deny those statements, categorically and seriatim," he replied. "They are based entirely upon misrepresentations made by the two men who were disqualified by the tests and dropped from my payroll because of being, in the words of my contract with your union, 'persons of unsound mind, deficient intelligence and/or emotional instability.' What happened is that your local official, Crandall, accepted everything they told him uncritically, and you accepted everything Crandall told you, in the same spirit.

"Before I go on," Melroy continued, turning to Lyons, "have I your permission to let Dr. Rives explain about these tests, herself, and tell how they were given and evaluated?"

* * * * *

Permission granted by Lyons, Doris Rives rose. At some length, she explained the nature and purpose of the tests, and her method of scoring and correlating them.

"Well, did Mr. Melroy suggest to you that any specific employee or employees of his were undesirable and ought to be eliminated?" Fields asked.

"Certainly not!" Doris Rives became angry. "And if he had, I'd have taken the first plane out of here. That suggestion is insulting! And for your information, I never met Mr. Melroy before day-before-yesterday afternoon; I am not dependent upon him for anything; I took this job as an accommodation to Dr. Karl von Heydenreich, who ordinarily does such work for the Melroy company, and I'm losing money by remaining here. Does that satisfy you?"

"Yes, it does," Fields admitted. He was obviously impressed by mention of the distinguished Austrian psychologist's name. "If I may ask Mr. Melroy a question: I gather that these tests are given to all your employees. Why do you demand such an extraordinary level of intelligence from your employees, even common laborers?"

"Extraordinary?" Melroy echoed. "If the standards established by those tests are extraordinary, then God help this country; we are becoming a race of morons! I'll leave that statement to Dr. Rives for confirmation; she's already pointed out that all that is required to pass those tests is ordinary adult mental capacity.

"My company specializes in cybernetic-control systems," he continued. "In spite of a lot of misleading colloquial jargon about 'thinking machines' and 'giant brains', a cybernetic system doesn't really think. It only does what it's been designed and built to do, and if somebody builds a mistake into it, it will automatically and infallibly repeat that mistake in practice."

"He's right," Cronnin said. "The men that build a machine like that have got to be as smart as the machine's supposed to be, or the machine'll be as dumb as they are."

Fields turned on him angrily. "Which side are you supposed to be on, anyhow?" he demanded.

"You're probably a lawyer," Melroy said. "But I'll bet Mr. Cronnin's an old reaction-plant man." Cronnin nodded unthinkingly in confirmation. "All right, then. Ask him what those Doernberg-Giardanos are like. And then let me ask you: Suppose some moron fixed up something that would go wrong, or made the wrong kind of a mistake himself, around one of those reactors?"

It was purely a rhetorical question, but, much later, when he would have time to think about it, Scott Melroy was to wonder if ever in history such a question had been answered so promptly and with such dramatic calamitousness.

Three seconds after he stopped speaking, the lights went out.

* * * * *

For a moment, they were silent and motionless. Then somebody across the table from Melroy began to say, "What the devil--?" Doris Rives, beside him, clutched his arm. At the head of the table, Lyons was fuming impatiently, and Kenneth Leighton snapped a pocket-lighter and held it up.

The Venetian-screened windows across the room faced east. In the flicker of the lighter, Melroy made his way around to them and drew open the slats of one, looking out. Except for the headlights of cars, far down in the street, and the lights of ships in the harbor, the city was completely blacked out. But there was one other, horrible, light far away at the distant tip of Long Island--a huge ball of flame, floating upward at the tip of a column of fiery gas. As he watched, there were twinkles of unbearable brightness at the base of the pillar of fire, spreading into awesome sheet-flashes, and other fireballs soared up. Then the sound and the shock-wave of the first blast reached them.

"The main power-reactors, too," Melroy said to himself, not realizing that he spoke audibly. "Too well shielded for the blast to get them, but the heat melted the fissionables down to critical mass."

Leighton, the lighter still burning, was beside him, now.

"That's not--God, it can't be anything else! Why, the whole plant's gone! There aren't enough other generators in this area to handle a hundredth of the demand."

"And don't blame that on my alleged strike-breakers," Melroy warned. "They hadn't got security-cleared to enter the reactor area when this happened."

"What do you think happened?" Cronnin asked. "One of the Doernberg-Giardanos let go?"

"Yes. Your man Crandall. If he survived that, it's his bad luck," Melroy said grimly. "Last night, while Fred Hausinger was pulling the fissionables and radioactives out of the Number One breeder, he found a big nugget of Pu-239, about one-quarter CM. I don't know what was done with it, but I do know that Crandall had the maintenance gang repack that reactor, to keep my people from working on it. Nobody'll ever find out just what happened, but they were in a hurry; they probably shoved things in any old way. Somehow, that big subcritical nugget must have got back in, and the breeding-cans, which were pretty ripe by that time, must have been shoved in too close to it and to one another. You know how fast those D-G's work. It just took this long to build up CM for a bomb-type reaction. You remember what I was saying before the lights went out? Well, it happened. Some moron--some untested and undetected moron--made the wrong kind of a mistake."

"Too bad about Crandall. He was a good kid, only he didn't stop to think often enough," Cronnin said. "Well, I guess the strike's off, now; that's one thing."

"But all those people, out there!" Womanlike, Doris Rives was thinking particularly rather than generally and of humans rather than abstractions. "It must have killed everybody for miles around."

Sid Keating, Melroy thought. And Joe Ricci, and Ben Puryear, and Steve Chalmers, and all the workmen whom he had brought here from Pittsburgh, to their death. Then he stopped thinking about them. It didn't do any good to think of men who'd been killed; he'd learned that years ago, as a kid second lieutenant in Korea. The people to think about were the millions in Greater New York, and up the Hudson Valley to Albany, and as far south as Trenton, caught without light in the darkness, without heat in the dead of winter, without power in subways and skyscrapers and on railroads and interurban lines.

He turned to the woman beside him.

"Doris, before you could get your Board of Psychiatry and Neurology diploma, you had to qualify as a regular M.D., didn't you?" he asked.

"Why, yes--"

"Then you'd better report to the nearest hospital. Any doctor at all is going to be desperately needed, for the next day or so. Me, I still have a reserve major's commission in the Army Corps of Engineers. They're probably calling up reserve officers, with any radios that are still working. Until I hear differently, I'm ordering myself on active duty as of now." He looked around. "Anybody know where the nearest Army headquarters is?"

"There's a recruiting station down on the thirty-something floor," Quillen said. "It's probably closed, now, though."

"Ground Defense Command; Midtown City," Leighton said. "They have a medical section of their own; they'll be glad to get Dr. Rives, too."

Melroy helped her on with her coat and handed her her handbag, then shrugged into his own overcoat and belted it about him, the weight of the flashlight and the automatic sagging the pockets. He'd need both, the gun as much as the light--New York had more than its share of vicious criminals, to whom this power-failure would be a perfect devilsend. Handing Doris the light, he let her take his left arm. Together, they left the room and went down the hallway to the stairs and the long walk to the darkened street below, into a city that had suddenly been cut off from its very life-energy. A city that had put all its eggs in one basket, and left the basket in the path of any blundering foot.

THE END

Contents

PYTHIAS

by Frederik Pohl

Sure, Larry Connaught saved my life--but it was how he did it that forced me to murder him!

I am sitting on the edge of what passes for a bed. It is made of loosely woven strips of steel, and there is no mattress, only an extra blanket of thin olive-drab. It isn't comfortable; but of course they expect to make me still more uncomfortable.

They expect to take me out of this precinct jail to the District prison and eventually to the death house.

Sure, there will be a trial first, but that is only a formality. Not only did they catch me with the smoking gun in my hand and Connaught bubbling to death through the hole in his throat, but I admitted it.

I--knowing what I was doing, with, as they say, malice aforethought--deliberately shot to death Laurence Connaught.

They execute murderers. So they mean to execute me.

Especially because Laurence Connaught had saved my life.

Well, there are extenuating circumstances. I do not think they would convince a jury.

Connaught and I were close friends for years. We lost touch during the war. We met again in Washington, a few years after the war was over. We had, to some extent, grown apart; he had become a man with a mission. He was working very hard on something and he did not choose to discuss his work and there was nothing else in his life on which to form a basis for communication. And--well, I had my own life, too. It wasn't scientific research in my case--I flunked out of med school, while he went on. I'm not ashamed of it; it is nothing to be ashamed of. I simply was not able to cope with the messy business of carving corpses. I didn't like it, I didn't want to do it, and when I was forced to do it, I did it badly. So--I left.

Thus I have no string of degrees, but you don't need them in order to be a Senate guard.

* * * * *

Does that sound like a terribly impressive career to you? Of course not; but I liked it. The Senators are relaxed and friendly when the guards are around, and you learn wonderful things about what goes on behind the scenes of government. And a Senate guard is in a position to do favors--for newspapermen, who find a lead to a story useful; for government officials, who sometimes base a whole campaign on one careless, repeated remark; and for just about anyone who would like to be in the visitors' gallery during a hot debate.

Larry Connaught, for instance. I ran into him on the street one day, and we chatted for a moment, and he asked if it was possible to get him in to see the upcoming foreign relations debate. It was; I called him the next day and told him I had arranged for a pass. And he was there, watching eagerly with his moist little eyes, when the Secretary got up to speak and there was that sudden unexpected yell, and the handful of Central American fanatics dragged out their weapons and began trying to change American policy with gunpowder.

You remember the story, I suppose. There were only three of them, two with guns, one with a hand grenade. The pistol men managed to wound two Senators and a guard. I was right there, talking to Connaught. I spotted the little fellow with the hand grenade and tackled him. I knocked him down, but the grenade went flying, pin pulled, seconds ticking away. I lunged for it. Larry Connaught was ahead of me.

The newspaper stories made heroes out of both of us. They said it was miraculous that Larry, who had fallen right on top of the grenade, had managed to get it away from himself and so placed that when it exploded no one was hurt.

For it did go off--and the flying steel touched nobody. The papers mentioned that Larry had been knocked unconscious by the blast. He was unconscious, all right.

He didn't come to for six hours and when he woke up, he spent the next whole day in a stupor.

I called on him the next night. He was glad to see me.

"That was a close one, Dick," he said. "Take me back to Tarawa."

I said, "I guess you saved my life, Larry."

"Nonsense, Dick! I just jumped. Lucky, that's all."

"The papers said you were terrific. They said you moved so fast, nobody could see exactly what happened."

He made a deprecating gesture, but his wet little eyes were wary. "Nobody was really watching, I suppose."

"I was watching," I told him flatly.

He looked at me silently for a moment.

"I was between you and the grenade," I said. "You didn't go past me, over me, or through me. But you were on top of the grenade."

He started to shake his head.

I said, "Also, Larry, you fell on the grenade. It exploded underneath you. I know, because I was almost on top of you, and it blew you clear off the floor of the gallery. Did you have a bulletproof vest on?"

* * * * *

He cleared his throat. "Well, as a matter of--"

"Cut it out, Larry! What's the answer?"

He took off his glasses and rubbed his watery eyes. He grumbled, "Don't you read the papers? It went off a yard away."

"Larry," I said gently, "I was there."

He slumped back in his chair, staring at me. Larry Connaught was a small man, but he never looked smaller than he did in that big chair, looking at me as though I were Mr. Nemesis himself.

Then he laughed. He surprised me; he sounded almost happy. He said, "Well, hell, Dick--I had to tell somebody about it sooner or later. Why not you?"

I can't tell you all of what he said. I'll tell most of it--but not the part that matters.

I'll never tell that part to anybody.

Larry said, "I should have known you'd remember." He smiled at me ruefully, affectionately. "Those bull sessions in the cafeterias, eh? Talking all night about everything. But you remembered."

"You claimed that the human mind possessed powers of psychokinesis," I said. "You argued that just by the mind, without moving a finger or using a machine, a man could move his body anywhere, instantly. You said that nothing was impossible to the mind."

I felt like an absolute fool saying those things; they were ridiculous notions. Imagine a man thinking himself from one place to another! But--I had been on that gallery.

I licked my lips and looked to Larry Connaught for confirmation.

"I was all wet," Larry laughed. "Imagine!"

I suppose I showed surprise, because he patted my shoulder.

He said, becoming sober, "Sure, Dick, you're wrong, but you're right all the same. The mind alone can't do anything of the sort--that was just a silly kid notion. But," he went on, "but there are--well, techniques--linking the mind to physical forces--simple physical forces that we all use every day--that can do it all. Everything! Everything I ever thought of and things I haven't found out yet.

"Fly across the ocean? In a second, Dick! Wall off an exploding bomb? Easily! You saw me do it. Oh, it's work. It takes energy--you can't escape natural law. That was what knocked me out for a whole day. But that was a hard one; it's a lot easier, for instance, to make a bullet miss its target. It's even easier to lift the cartridge out of the chamber and put it in my pocket, so that the bullet can't even be fired. Want the Crown Jewels of England? I could get them, Dick!"

I asked, "Can you see the future?"

He frowned. "That's silly. This isn't supersti--"

"How about reading minds?"

* * * * *

Larry's expression cleared. "Oh, you're remembering some of the things I said years ago. No, I can't do that either, Dick. Maybe, some day, if I keep working at this thing-- Well, I can't right now. There are things I can do, though, that are just as good."

"Show me something you can do," I asked.

He smiled. Larry was enjoying himself; I didn't begrudge it to him. He had hugged this to himself for years, from the day he found his first clue, through the decade of proving and experimenting, almost always being wrong, but always getting closer.... He needed to talk about it. I think he was really glad that, at last, someone had found him out.

He said, "Show you something? Why, let's see, Dick." He looked around the room, then winked. "See that window?"

I looked. It opened with a slither of wood and a rumble of sash weights. It closed again.

"The radio," said Larry. There was a click and his little set turned itself on. "Watch it."

It disappeared and reappeared.

"It was on top of Mount Everest," Larry said, panting a little.

The plug on the radio's electric cord picked itself up and stretched toward the baseboard socket, then dropped to the floor again.

"No," said Larry, and his voice was trembling, "I'll show you a hard one. Watch the radio, Dick. I'll run it without plugging it in! The electrons themselves--"

He was staring intently at the little set. I saw the dial light go on, flicker, and hold steady; the speaker began to make scratching noises. I stood up, right behind Larry, right over him.

I used the telephone on the table beside him. I caught him right beside the ear and he folded over without a murmur. Methodically, I hit him twice more, and then I was sure he wouldn't wake up for at least an hour. I rolled him over and put the telephone back in its cradle.

I ransacked his apartment. I found it in his desk: All his notes. All the information. The secret of how to do the things he could do.

I picked up the telephone and called the Washington police. When I heard the siren outside, I took out my service revolver and shot him in the throat. He was dead before they came in.

* * * * *

For, you see, I knew Laurence Connaught. We were friends. I would have trusted him with my life. But this was more than just a life.

Twenty-three words told how to do the things that Laurence Connaught did. Anyone who could read could do them. Criminals, traitors, lunatics--the formula would work for anyone.

Laurence Connaught was an honest man and an idealist, I think. But what would happen to any man when he became God? Suppose you were told twenty-three words that would let you reach into any bank vault, peer inside any closed room, walk through any wall? Suppose pistols could not kill you?

They say power corrupts; and absolute power corrupts absolutely. And there can be no more absolute power than the twenty-three words that can free a man of any jail or give him anything he wants. Larry was my friend. But I killed him in cold blood, knowing what I did, because he could not be trusted with the secret that could make him king of the world.

But I can.

--FREDERIK POHL

Contents

THE HUNTERS

By Joseph Samachson

To all who didn't know him, Curt George was a mighty hunter and actor. But this time he was up against others who could really act, and whose business was the hunting of whole worlds.

There were thirty or more of the little girls, their ages ranging apparently from nine to eleven, all of them chirping away like a flock of chicks as they followed the old mother hen past the line of cages. "Now, now, girls," called Miss Burton cheerily. "Don't scatter. I can't keep my eye on you if you get too far away from me. You, Hilda, give me that water pistol. No, don't fill it up first at that fountain. And Frances, stop bouncing your ball. You'll lose it through the bars, and a polar bear may get it and not want to give it back."

Frances giggled. "Oh, Miss Burton, do you think the polar bear would want to play catch?"

The two men who were looking on wore pleased smiles. "Charming," said Manto. "But somewhat unpredictable, despite all our experiences, muy amigo."

"No attempts at Spanish, Manto, not here. It calls attention to us. And you are not sure of the grammar anyway. You may find yourself saying things you do not intend."

"Sorry, Palit. It wasn't an attempt to show my skill, I assure you. It's that by now I have a tendency to confuse one language with another."

"I know. You were never a linguist. But about these interesting creatures—"

"I suggest that they could stand investigation. It would be good to know how they think."

"Whatever you say, Manto. If you wish, we shall join the little ladies."

"We must have our story prepared first."

Palit nodded, and the two men stepped under the shade of a tree whose long, drooping, leaf-covered branches formed a convenient screen. For a moment, the tree hid silence. Then there came from beneath the branches the chatter of girlish voices, and two little girls skipped merrily away. Miss Burton did not at first notice that now she had an additional two children in her charge.

"Do you think you will be able to keep your English straight?" asked one of the new little girls.

The other one smiled with amusement and at first did not answer. Then she began to skip around her companion and chant, "I know a secret, I know a secret."

There was no better way to make herself inconspicuous. For some time, Miss Burton did not notice her.

The polar bears, the grizzlies, the penguins, the reptiles, all were left behind. At times the children scattered, but Miss Burton knew how to get them together again, and not one was lost.

"Here, children, is the building where the kangaroos live. Who knows where kangaroos come from?"

"Australia!" clanged the shrill chorus.

"That's right. And what other animals come from Australia?"

"I know, Miss Burton!" cried Frances, a dark-haired nine-year-old with a pair of glittering eyes that stared like a pair of critics from a small heart-shaped face. "I've been here before. Wallabies and wombats!"

"Very good, Frances."

Frances smirked at the approbation. "I've been to the zoo lots of times," she said to the girl next to her. "My father takes me."

"I wish my father would take me too," replied the other little girl, with an air of wistfulness.

"Why don't you ask him to?" Before the other little girl could answer, Frances paused, cocked her head slightly, and demanded, "Who are you? You aren't in our class."

"I'm in Miss Hassel's class."

"Miss Hassel? Who is she? Is she in our school?"

"I don't know," said the other little girl uncertainly. "I go to P. S. 77—"

"Oh, Miss Burton," screamed Frances. "Here's a girl who isn't in our class! She got lost from her own class!"

"Really?" Miss Burton seemed rather pleased at the idea that some other teacher had been so careless as to lose one of her charges. "What's your name, child?"

"I'm Carolyn."

"Carolyn what?"

"Carolyn Manto. Please, Miss Burton, I had to go to the bathroom, and then when I came out—"

"Yes, yes, I know."

A shrill cry came from another section of her class. "Oh, Miss Burton, here's another one who's lost!"

The other little girl was pushed forward. "Now, who are you?" Miss Burton asked.

"I'm Doris Palit. I went with Carolyn to the bathroom—"

Miss Burton made a sound of annoyance. Imagine losing two children and not noticing it right away. The other teacher must be frantic by now, and serve her right for being so careless.

"All right, you may stay with us until we find a policeman—" She interrupted herself. "Frances, what are you giggling at now?"

"It's Carolyn. She's making faces just like you!"

"Really, Carolyn, that isn't at all nice!"

Carolyn's face altered itself in a hurry, so as to lose any resemblance to Miss Burton's. "I'm sorry, Miss Burton, I didn't really mean to do anything wrong."

"Well, I'd like to know how you were brought up, if you don't know that it's wrong to mimic people to their faces. A big girl like you, too. How old are you, Carolyn?"

Carolyn shrank, she hoped imperceptibly, by an inch. "I'm two—"

An outburst of shrill laughter. "She's two years old, she's two years old!"

"I was going to say, I'm towelve. Almost, anyway."

"Eleven years old," said Miss Burton. "Old enough to know better."

"I'm sorry, Miss Burton. And honest, Miss Burton, I didn't mean anything, but I'm studying to be an actress, and I imitate people, like the actors you see on television—"

"Oh, Miss Burton, please don't make her go home with a policeman. If she's going to be an actress, I'll bet she'd love to see Curt George!"

"Well, after the way she's behaved, I don't know whether I should let her. I really don't."

"Please, Miss Burton, it was an accident. I won't do it again."

"All right, if you're good, and cause no trouble. But we still have plenty of time before seeing Mr. George. It's only two now, and we're not supposed to go to the lecture hall until four."

"Miss Burton," called Barbara Willman, "do you think he'd give us his autograph?"

"Now, children, I've warned you about that. You mustn't annoy him. Mr. George is a famous movie actor, and his time is valuable. It's very kind of him to offer to speak to us, especially when so many grown-up people are anxious to hear him, but we mustn't take advantage of his kindness."

"But he likes children, Miss Burton! My big sister read in a movie magazine where it said he's just crazy about them."

"I know, but—he's not in good health, children. They say he got jungle fever in Africa, where he was shooting all those lions, and rhinoceroses, and elephants for his new picture. That's why you mustn't bother him too much."

"But he looks so big and strong, Miss Burton. It wouldn't hurt him to sign an autograph!"

"Oh, yes, it would," asserted one little girl. "He shakes. When he has an attack of fever, his hand shakes."

"Yes, Africa is a dangerous continent, and one never knows how the dangers will strike one," said Miss Burton complacently. "So we must all remember how bravely Mr. George is fighting his misfortune, and do our best not to tire him out."

In the bright light that flooded the afternoon breakfast table, Curt George's handsome, manly face wore an expression of distress. He groaned dismally, and muttered, "What a head I've got, what a head. How do you expect me to face that gang of kids without a drink to pick me up?"

"You've had your drink," said Carol. She was slim, attractive, and efficient. At the moment she was being more efficient than attractive, and she could sense his resentment. "That's all you get. Now, lay off, and try to be reasonably sober, for a change."

"But those kids! They'll squeal and giggle—"

"They're about the only audience in the world that won't spot you as a drunk. God knows where I could find any one else who'd believe that your hand shakes because of fever."

"I know that you're looking out for my best interests, Carol. But one more drink wouldn't hurt me."

She said wearily, but firmly, "I don't argue with drunks, Curt. I just go ahead and protect them from themselves. No drinks."

"Afterwards?"

"I can't watch you the way a mother watches a child."

The contemptuous reply sent his mind off on a new tack. "You could if we were married."

"I've never believed in marrying weak characters to reform them."

"But if I proved to you that I could change—"

"Prove it first, and I'll consider your proposal afterwards."

"You certainly are a cold-blooded creature, Carol. But I suppose that in your profession you have to be."

"Cold, suspicious, nasty—and reliable. It's inevitable when I must deal with such warm-hearted, trusting, and unreliable clients."

He watched her move about the room, clearing away the dishes from his meager breakfast. "What are you humming, Carol?"

"Was I humming?"

"I thought I recognized it—"All of Me, Why Not Take All of Me"? That's it! Your subconscious gives you away. You really want to marry me!"

"A mistake," she said coolly. "My subconscious doesn't know what it's talking about. All I want of you is the usual ten per cent."

"Can't you forget for a moment that you're an agent, and remember that you're a woman, too?"

"No. Not unless you forget that you're a drunk, and remember that you're a man. Not unless you make me forget that you drank your way through Africa—"

"Because you weren't there with me!"

"—with hardly enough energy to let them dress you in that hunter's outfit and photograph you as if you were shooting lions."

"You're so unforgiving, Carol. You don't have much use for me, do you—consciously, that is?"

"Frankly, Curt, no. I don't have much use for useless people."

"I'm not entirely useless. I earn you that ten per cent—"

"I'd gladly forego that to see you sober."

"But it's your contempt for me that drives me to drink. And when I think of having to face those dear little kiddies with nothing inside me—"

"There should be happiness inside you at the thought of your doing a good deed. Not a drop, George, not a drop."

The two little girls drew apart from the others and began to whisper into each other's ears. The whispers were punctuated by giggles which made the entire childish conversation seem quite normal. But Palit was in no laughing mood. He said, in his own language, "You're getting careless, Manto. You had no business imitating her expression."

"I'm sorry, Palit, but it was so suggestive. And I'm a very suggestible person."

"So am I. But I control myself."

"Still, if the temptation were great enough, I don't think you'd be able to resist either."

"The issues are important enough to make me resist."

"Still, I thought I saw your own face taking on a bit of her expression too."

"You are imagining things, Manto. Another thing, that mistake in starting to say you were two hundred years old—"

"They would have thought it a joke. And I think I got out of that rather neatly."

"You like to skate on thin ice, don't you, Manto? Just as you did when you changed your height. You had no business shrinking right out in public like that."

"I did it skillfully. Not a single person noticed."

"I noticed."

"Don't quibble."

"I don't intend to. Some of these children have very sharp eyes. You'd be surprised at what they see."

Manto said tolerantly, "You're getting jittery, Palit. We've been away from home too long."

"I am not jittery in the least. But I believe in taking due care."

"What could possibly happen to us? If we were to announce to the children and the teacher, and to every one in this zoo, for that matter, exactly who and what we were, they wouldn't believe us. And even if they did, they wouldn't be able to act rapidly enough to harm us."

"You never can tell about such things. Wise—people—simply don't take unnecessary chances."

"I'll grant that you're my superior in such wisdom."

"You needn't be sarcastic, Manto, I know I'm superior. I realize what a godsend this planet is—you don't. It has the right gravity, a suitable atmosphere, the proper chemical composition—everything."

"Including a population that will be helpless before us."

"And you would take chances of losing all this."

"Don't be silly, Palit. What chances am I taking?"

"The chance of being discovered. Here we stumble on this place quite by accident. No one at home knows about it, no one so much as suspects that it exists. We must get back and report—and you do all sorts of silly things which may reveal what we are, and lead these people to suspect their danger."

This time, Manto's giggle was no longer mere camouflage, but expressed to a certain degree how he felt. "They cannot possibly suspect. We have been all over the world, we have taken many forms and adapted ourselves to many customs, and no one has suspected. And even if danger really threatened, it would be easy to escape. I could take the form of the school teacher herself, of a policeman, of any one in authority. However, at present there is not the slightest shadow of danger. So, Palit, you had better stop being fearful."

Palit said firmly, "Be careful, and I won't be fearful. That's all there is to it."

"I'll be careful. After all, I shouldn't want us to lose these children. They're so exactly the kind we need. Look how inquiring they are, how unafraid, how quick to adapt to any circumstances—"

Miss Burton's voice said, "Good gracious, children, what language are you using? Greek?"

They had been speaking too loud, they had been overheard. Palit and Manto stared at each other, and giggled coyly. Then, after a second to think, Palit said, "Onay, Issmay Urtonbay!"

"What?"

Frances shrilled triumphantly, "It isn't Greek, Miss Burton, it's Latin—Pig-Latin. She said, 'No, Miss Burton.'"

"Good heavens, what is Pig-Latin?"

"It's a kind of way of talking where you talk kind of backwards. Like, you don't say, Me, you say, Emay."

"You don't say, Yes, you say Esyay," added another little girl.

"You don't say, You, you say, Ouyay. You don't say—"

"All right, all right, I get the idea."

"You don't say—"

"That'll do," said Miss Burton firmly. "Now, let's get along to the lion house. And please, children, do not make faces at the lions. How would you like to be in a cage and have people make faces at you? Always remember to be considerate to others."

"Even lions, Miss Burton?"

"Even lions."

"But Mr. George shot lots of lions. Was he considerate of them too?"

"There is no time for silly questions," said Miss Burton, with the same firmness. "Come along."

They all trouped after her, Palit and Manto bringing up the rear. Manto giggled, and whispered with amusement, "That Pig-Latin business was quick thinking, Palit. But in fact, quite unnecessary. The things that you do to avoid being suspected!"

"It never hurts to take precautions. And I think that now it is time to leave."

"No, not yet. You are always anxious to learn details before reporting. Why not learn a few more details now?"

"Because they are not necessary. We already have a good understanding of human customs and psychology."

"But not of the psychology of children. And they, if you remember, are the ones who will have to adapt. We shall be asked about them. It would be nice if we could report that they are fit for all-purpose service, on a wide range of planets. Let us stay awhile longer."

"All right," conceded Palit, grudgingly.

So they stayed, and out of some twigs and leaves they shaped the necessary coins with which to buy peanuts, and popcorn, and ice cream, and other delicacies favored by the young. Manto wanted to win easy popularity by treating a few of the other children, but Palit put his girlish foot down. No use arousing suspicion. Even as it was—

"Gee, your father gives you an awful lot of spending money," said Frances enviously. "Is he rich?"

"We get as much as we want," replied Manto carelessly.

"Gosh, I wish I did."

Miss Burton collected her brood. "Come together, children, I have something to say to you. Soon it will be time to go in and hear Mr. George. Now, if Mr. George is so kind as to entertain us, don't you think that it's only proper for us to entertain him?"

"We could put on our class play!" yelled Barbara.

"Barbara's a fine one to talk," said Frances. "She doesn't even remember her lines."

"No, children, we mustn't do anything we can't do well. That wouldn't make a good impression. And besides, there is no time for a play. Perhaps Barbara will sing—"

"I can sing a 'Thank You' song," interrupted Frances.

"That would be nice."

"I can recite," added another little girl.

"Fine. How about you, Carolyn? You and your little friend, Doris. Can she act too?"

Carolyn giggled. "Oh, yes, she can act very well. I can act like people. She can act like animals." The laughing, girlish eyes evaded a dirty look from the little friend. "She can act like any kind of animal."

"She's certainly a talented child. But she seems so shy!"

"Oh, no," said Carolyn. "She likes to be coaxed."

"She shouldn't be like that. Perhaps, Carolyn, you and Doris can do something together. And perhaps, too, Mr. George will be pleased to see that your teacher also has talent."

"You, Miss Burton?"

Miss Burton coughed modestly. "Yes, children, I never told you, but I was once ambitious to be an actress too. I studied dramatics, and really, I was quite good at it. I was told that if I persevered I might actually be famous. Just think, your teacher might actually have been a famous actress! However, in my day, there were many coarse people on the stage, and the life of the theater was not attractive—but perhaps we'd better not speak of that. At any rate, I know the principles of the dramatic art very well."

"God knows what I'll have to go through," said Curt. "And I don't see how I can take it sober."

"I don't see how they can take you drunk," replied Carol.

"Why go through with it at all? Why not call the whole thing quits?"

"Because people are depending on you. You always want to call quits whenever you run into something you don't like. You may as well call quits to your contract if that's the way you feel."

"And to your ten per cent, darling."

"You think I'd mind that. I work for my ten per cent, Curt, sweetheart. I work too damn hard for that ten per cent."

"You can marry me and take it easy. Honest, Carol, if you treated me better, if you showed me I meant something to you, I'd give up drinking."

She made a face. "Don't talk nonsense. Take your outfit, and let's get ready to go. Unless you want to change here, and walk around dressed as a lion hunter."

"Why not? I've walked around dressed as worse. A drunk."

"Drunks don't attract attention. They're too ordinary."

"But a drunken lion hunter—that's something special." He went into the next room and began to change. "Carol," he called. "Do you like me?"

"At times."

"Would you say that you liked me very much?"

"When you're sober. Rarely."

"Love me?"

"Once in a blue moon."

"What would I have to do for you to want to marry me?"

"Amount to something."

"I like that. Don't you think I amount to something now? Women swoon at the sight of my face on the screen, and come to life again at the sound of my voice."

"The women who swoon at you will swoon at anybody. Besides, I don't consider that making nitwits swoon is a useful occupation for a real man."

"How can I be useful, Carol? No one ever taught me how."

"Some people manage without being taught."

"I suppose I could think how if I had a drink inside me."

"Then you'll have to do without thinking."

He came into the room again, powerful, manly, determined-looking. There was an expression in his eye which indicated courage without end, a courage that would enable him to brave the wrath of man, beast, or devil.

"How do I look?"

"Your noble self, of course. A poor woman's edition of Rudolph Valentino."

"I feel terrified. I don't know how I'm going to face those kids. If they were boys it wouldn't be so bad, but a bunch of little girls!"

"They'll grow up to be your fans, if you're still alive five years from now. Meanwhile, into each life some rain must fall."

"You would talk of water, when you know how I feel."

"Sorry. Come on, let's go."

The lecture hall resounded with giggles. And beneath the giggles was a steady undercurrent of whispers, of girlish confidences exchanged, of girlish hopes that would now be fulfilled. Miss Burton's class was not the only one which had come to hear the famous actor-hunter describe his brave exploits. There were at least five others like it, and by some mistake, a class of boys, who also whispered to each other, in manly superiority, and pretended to find amusement in the presence of so many of the fairer sex.

In this atmosphere of giggles and whispers, Manto and Palit could exchange confidences without being noticed. Palit said savagely, "Why did you tell her that I could act too?"

"Why, because it's the truth. You're a very good animal performer. You make a wonderful dragon, for instance. Go on, Palit, show her what a fine dragon you can—"

"Stop it, you fool, before you cause trouble!"

"Very well, Palit. Did I tempt you?"

"Did you tempt me! You and your sense of humor!"

"You and your lack of it! But let's not argue now, Palit. Here, I think, comes the lion-hunter. Let's scream, and be as properly excited as every one else is."

My God, he thought, how can they keep their voices so high so long? My eardrums hurt already. How do they stand a lifetime of it? Even an hour?

"Go ahead," whispered Carol. "You've seen the script—go into your act. Tell them what a hero you are. You have the odds in your favor to start with."

"My lovely looks," he said, with some bitterness.

"Lovely is the word for you. But forget that. If you're good—you'll get a drink afterwards."

"Will it be one of those occasions when you love me?"

"If the moon turns blue."

He strode to the front of the platform, an elephant gun swinging easily at his side, an easy grin radiating from his confident, rugged face. The cheers rose to a shrill fortissimo, but the grin did not vanish. What a great actor he really was, he told himself, to be able to pretend he liked this.

An assistant curator of some collection in the zoo, a flustered old woman, was introducing him. There were a few laudatory references to his great talents as an actor, and he managed to look properly modest as he listened. The remarks about his knowledge of wild and ferocious beasts were a little harder to take, but he took them. Then the old woman stepped back, and he was facing his fate alone.

"Children," he began. A pause, a bashful grin. "Perhaps I should rather say, my friends. I'm not one to think of you as children. Some people think of me as a child myself, because I like to hunt, and have adventures. They think that such things are childish. But if they are, I'm glad to be a child. I'm glad to be one of you. Yes, I think I will call you my friends.

"Perhaps you regard me, my friends, as a very lucky person. But when I recall some of the narrow escapes I have had, I don't agree with you. I remember once, when we were on the trail of a rogue elephant—"

He told the story of the rogue elephant, modestly granting a co-hero's role to his guide. Then another story illustrating the strange ways of lions. The elephant gun figured in still another tale, this time of a vicious rhinoceros. His audience was quiet now, breathless with interest, and he welcomed the respite from shrillness he had won for his ears.

"And now, my friends, it is time to say farewell." He actually looked sad and regretful. "But it is my hope that I shall be able to see you again—"

Screams of exultation, shrill as ever, small hands beating enthusiastically to indicate joy. Thank God that's over with, he thought. Now for those drinks—and he didn't mean drink, singular. Talk of being useful, he'd certainly been useful now. He'd made those kids happy. What more can any reasonable person want?

But it wasn't over with. Another old lady had stepped up on the platform.

"Mr. George," she said, in a strangely affected voice, like that of the first dramatic teacher he had ever had, the one who had almost ruined his acting career. "Mr. George, I can't tell you how happy you have made us all, young and old. Hasn't Mr. George made us happy, children?"

"Yes, Miss Burton!" came the shrill scream.

"And we feel that it would be no more than fair to repay you in some small measure for the pleasure you have given us. First, a 'Thank You' song by Frances Heller—"

He hadn't expected this, and he repressed a groan. Mercifully, the first song was short. He grinned the thanks he didn't feel. To think that he could take this, while sober as a judge! What strength of character, what will-power!

Next, Miss Burton introduced another kid, who recited. And then, Miss Burton stood upright and recited herself.

That was the worst of all. He winced once, then bore up. You can get used even to torture, he told himself. An adult making a fool of herself is always more painful than a kid. And that affected elocutionist's voice gave him the horrors. But he thanked her too. His good deed for the day. Maybe Carol would have him now, he thought.

A voice shrilled, "Miss Burton?"

"Yes, dear?"

"Aren't you going to call on Carolyn to act?"

"Oh, yes, I was forgetting. Come up here, Carolyn, come up, Doris. Carolyn and Doris, Mr. George, are studying how to act. They act people and animals. Who knows? Some day they, too, may be in the movies, just as you are, Mr. George. Wouldn't that be nice, children?"

What the devil do you do in a case like that? You grin, of course—but what do you say, without handing over your soul to the devil? Agree how nice it would be to have those sly little brats with faces magnified on every screen all over the country? Like hell you do.

"Now, what are we going to act, children?"

"Please, Miss Burton," said Doris. "I don't know how to act. I can't even imitate a puppy. Really I can't, Miss Burton—"

"Come, come, mustn't be shy. Your friend says that you act very nicely indeed. Can't want to go on the stage and still be shy. Now, do you know any movie scenes? Shirley Temple used to be a good little actress, I remember. Can you do any scenes that she does?"

The silence was getting to be embarrassing. And Carol said he didn't amount to anything, he never did anything useful. Why, if thanks to his being here this afternoon, those kids lost the ambition to go on the stage, the whole human race would have cause to be grateful to him. To him, and to Miss Burton. She'd kill ambition in anybody.

Miss Burton had an idea. "I know what to do, children. If you can act animals—Mr. George has shown you what the hunter does; you show him what the lions do. Yes, Carolyn and Doris, you're going to be lions. You are waiting in your lairs, ready to pounce on the unwary hunter. Crouch now, behind that chair. Closer and closer he comes—you act it out, Mr. George, please, that's the way—ever closer, and now your muscles tighten for the spring, and you open your great, wide, red mouths in a great, great big roar—"

A deep and tremendous roar, as of thunder, crashed through the auditorium. A roar—and then, from the audience, an outburst of terrified screaming such as he had never heard. The bristles rose at the back of his neck, and his heart froze.

Facing him across the platform were two lions, tensed as if to leap. Where they had come from he didn't know, but there they were, eyes glaring, manes ruffled, more terrifying than any he had seen in Africa. There they were, with the threat of death and destruction in their fierce eyes, and here he was, terror and helplessness on his handsome, manly, and bloodless face, heart unfrozen now and pounding fiercely, knees melting, hands—

Hands clutching an elephant gun. The thought was like a director's command. With calm efficiency, with all the precision of an actor playing a scene rehearsed a thousand times, the gun leaped to his shoulder, and now its own roar thundered out a challenge to the roaring of the wild beasts, shouted at them in its own accents of barking thunder.

The shrill screaming continued long after the echoes of the gun's speech had died away. Across the platform from him were two great bodies, the bodies of lions, and yet curiously unlike the beasts in some ways, now that they were dead and dissolving as if corroded by some invisible acid.

Carol's hand was on his arm, Carol's thin and breathless voice shook as she said, "A drink—all the drinks you want."

"One will do. And you."

"And me. I guess you're kind of—kind of useful after all."

Contents

THE JUDAS VALLEY

By ROBERT SILVERBERG

Why did everybody step off the ship in this strange valley and promptly drop dead? How could a well-equipped corps of tough spacemen become a field of rotting skeletons in this quiet world of peace and contentment? It was a mystery Peter and Sherri had to solve. If they could live long enough!

Peter Wayne took the letter out of the machine, broke the seal, and examined it curiously. It was an official communication from the Interstellar Exploration Service. It read:

FROM: Lieutenant General Martin Scarborough, I.E.S.

TO: Captain Peter Wayne, Preliminary Survey Corps

Report immediately to this office for assignment to I.E.S. Lord Nelson. Full briefing will be held at 2200 hours, 14 April 2103.

By order of the Fleet Commandant.

It was short, brief, and to the point. And it gave no information whatsoever. Peter Wayne shrugged resignedly, put the letter down on his bed, walked over to the phone, and dialed a number.

A moment later, a girl's face appeared—blonde-haired, with high cheekbones, deep blue-green eyes, and an expression of the lips that intriguingly combined desirability and crisp military bearing.

"Lieutenant James speaking," she said formally. Then, as Wayne's image appeared on her screen, she grinned. "Hi, Pete. What's up?"

"Listen, Sherri," Wayne said quickly. "I'm going to have to cancel that date we had for tomorrow night. I just got my orders."

The girl laughed. "I was just going to call you, I got a fac-sheet too. Looks as though we won't see each other for a while, Pete."

"What ship are you getting?"

"The Lord Nelson."

It was Wayne's turn to laugh. "It looks as though we will be seeing each other. That's my ship too. We can keep our date in the briefing room."

Her face brightened. "Good! I'll see you there, then," she said. "I've got to get my gear packed."

"Okay," Wayne said. "Let's be on time, you know how General Scarborough is."

She smiled. "Don't worry, Peter. I'll be there. So long for now."

"Bye, Sherri." He cut the connection, watched the girl's face melt away into a rainbow-colored diamond of light, and turned away. There were a lot of things to do before he would be ready to leave Earth for an interstellar tour of duty.

He wondered briefly as he started to pack just what was going on. There was usually much more notice on any big jump of this order. Something special was up, he thought, as he dragged his duffle-bag out of the closet.

He was at the briefing room at 2158 on the nose. The Interstellar Exploration Service didn't much go for tardiness, but they didn't pay extra if you got there a half-hour early. Captain Peter Wayne made it a point of being at any appointment two minutes early—no more, no less.

The room was starting to fill up, with men and women Wayne knew well, had worked with on other expeditions, had lived with since he'd joined the IES. They looked just as puzzled as he probably did, he saw; they knew they were being called in on something big, and in the IES big meant big.

At precisely 2200, Lieutenant General Scarborough emerged from the inner office, strode briskly up the aisle of the briefing room, and took his customary stance on the platform in front. His face looked stern, and he held his hands clasped behind his back. His royal blue uniform was neat and trim. Over his head, the second hand of the big clock whirled endlessly. In the silence of the briefing room, it seemed to be ticking much too loudly.

The general nodded curtly and said, "Some of you are probably wondering why the order to report here wasn't more specific. There are two reasons for that. In the first place, we have reason to believe that we have found a substantial deposit of double-nucleus beryllium."

There was a murmur of sound in the briefing room. Wayne felt his heart starting to pound; D-N beryllium was big. So big that a whole fleet of IES ships did nothing but search the galaxy for it, full time.

"Naturally," the general continued, "we don't want any of this information to leak out, just in case it should prove false. The prospect of enough D-N beryllium to make fusion power really cheap could cause a panic if we didn't handle it properly. The Economics Board has warned us that we'll have to proceed carefully if there actually is a big deposit on this planet."

Captain Wayne stared uneasily at Sherri James, who frowned and chewed her lip. To his left, a short, stubby private named Manetti murmured worriedly, "That means trouble. D-N beryllium always means trouble. There's a catch somewhere."

General Scarborough, on the platform, said, "There's a second reason for secrecy. I think it can better be explained by a man who has the evidence first-hand."

He paused and looked around the room. "Four weeks ago, the Scout Ship Mavis came back from Fomalhaut V." There was a dead silence in the briefing room.

"Lieutenant Jervis, will you tell the crew exactly what happened on Fomalhaut V?"

Lieutenant Jervis stepped forward and took his place on the platform. He was small and wiry, with a hawk nose and piercingly intense eyes. He cleared his throat and smiled a little sheepishly.

"I've told this story so many times that it doesn't even sound real to me any more. I've told it to the Supreme Senate Space Committee, to half the top brass in the IES, and to a Board of Physicians from the Medical Department.

"As well as I can remember it, it goes something like this."

Laughter rippled through the room.

"We orbited around Fomalhaut V for a Scouting Survey," Jervis said. "The planet is hot and rocky, but it has a breathable atmosphere. The detectors showed various kinds of metals in the crust, some of them in commercially feasible concentration. But the crust is so mountainous and rocky that there aren't very many places to land a ship.

"Then we picked up the double-nucleus beryllium deposit on our detectors. Nearby, there was a small, fairly level valley, so we brought the ship down for a closer check. We wanted to make absolutely positive that it was double-nucleus beryllium before we made our report."

He paused, as if arranging the story he wanted to tell in his mind, and went on. "The D-N beryllium deposit lies at the top of a fairly low mountain about five miles from the valley. We triangulated it first, and then we decided we ought to send up a party to get samples of the ore if it were at all possible.

"I was chosen to go, along with another member of the crew, a man named Lee Bellows. We left the ship at about five in the morning, and spent most of the day climbing up to the spot where we had detected the beryllium. We couldn't get a sample; the main deposit is located several feet beneath the surface of the mountaintop, and the mountain is too rough and rocky to climb without special equipment. We got less than halfway before we had to stop."

Wayne felt Sherri nudge him, and turned to nod. He knew what she was thinking. This was where he came in; it was a job that called for a specialist, a trained mountaineer—such as Captain Peter Wayne. He frowned and turned his attention back to the man on the platform.

"We made all the readings we could," Jervis continued. "Then we headed back to our temporary base."

His face looked troubled. "When we got back, every man at the base was dead."

Silence in the room. Complete, utter, deafening silence.

"There were only nine of us in the ship," Jervis said. He was obviously still greatly affected by whatever had taken place on Fomalhaut V. "With seven of us dead, that left only Bellows and myself. We couldn't find out what had killed them. They were lying scattered over the valley floor for several yards around the ship. They looked as though they had suddenly dropped dead at whatever they were doing."

Peter Wayne made use of his extra few inches of height to glance around the briefing room. He saw row on row of tense faces—faces that reflected the same emotions he was feeling. Space exploration was something still new and mostly unknown, and even the experienced men of IES still knew fear occasionally. The galaxy was a big place; unknown terrors lurked on planets unimaginably distant. Every now and then, something like this would come up—something to give you pause, before you ventured into space again.

"We couldn't find out what had killed them," Jervis said again. "They were lying scattered every which way, with no clues at all." The small man's fingers were trembling from relived fright. "Bellows and I were pretty scared, I'll have to admit. We couldn't find a sign of what had killed the men—they'd just—just died."

There was a quiver in his voice. It was obvious he could never take the story lightly, no matter how many times he had to tell it.

Wayne heard Private Manetti mutter, "There's always a price for D-N beryllium."

"The Scout Ship hadn't been molested," Jervis went on. "I went inside and checked it over. It was untouched, undisturbed in every way. I checked the control panel, the cabins, everything. All unbothered. The ship was empty and dead. And—outside—

"When I came out, Bellows was dead too." He took a deep breath. "I'm afraid I panicked then. I locked myself inside the ship, set the autocontrols, and headed back to Earth at top velocity. I set the ship in an orbit around the moon and notified headquarters. I was quarantined immediately, of course, to make sure I wasn't carrying anything. The medics checked me over carefully. I wasn't and am not now carrying any virus or bacteria unknown to Terrestrial medicine.

"Since I'm the only one who knows exactly where this valley is, the general has asked me to guide the Lord Nelson to the exact spot. Actually, it could be found eventually with the D-N beryllium as a guide. But the Mavis was in orbit around Fomalhaut V for two weeks before we found the D-N beryllium deposit, and the Service feels that we shouldn't waste any time."

The lieutenant sat down, and General Scarborough resumed his place on the platform.

"That's the situation," Scarborough said bluntly. "You know the setup, now—and I think some of you see how your specialities are going to fit into the operation. As Lieutenant Jervis pointed out, we don't know what killed the crew of the Mavis; therefore, we are going to take every possible precaution. As far as we know, there are no inimical life forms on Fomalhaut V—but it's possible that there are things we don't know about, such as airborne viruses that kill in a very short time. If so, then Lieutenant Jervis is immune to the virus and is not a transmitter or carrier of it.

"However, to guard against such a possibility, no one will leave the Lord Nelson, once it has landed, without wearing a spacesuit. The air is breathable, but we're taking no chances. Also, no one will go out alone; scouting parties will always be in pairs, with wide open communication with the ship. And at no time will more than ten percent of the ship's company be outside at any one time."

Wayne made a rough mental computation. The Lord Nelson holds sixty. That means no more than six out at any single time. They really must be worried.

"Aside from those orders, which were decided on by the Service Command, you'll be under the direct orders of Colonel Nels Petersen. Colonel Petersen."

Petersen was a tall, hard-faced man with a touch of gray at his temples. He stepped forward and stared intently at the assembled crew.

"Our job is to make the preliminary preparations for getting D-N beryllium out of the crust of Fomalhaut V. We're supposed to stay alive while we do it. Therefore, our secondary job is to find out what it was that killed the scouting expedition of the Mavis. There are sixty of us going aboard the Lord Nelson tomorrow, and I'd like to have sixty aboard when we come back. Got that?"

He leaned forward, stretched upward on his toes, and smiled mechanically. "Fine. Now, you all know your jobs, but we're going to have to work together as a team. We're going to have to correlate our work so that we'll know what we're doing. So don't think we won't have anything to do during the two weeks it will take us to get to Fomalhaut V. We're going to work it as though it were a shakedown cruise. If anyone doesn't work out, he'll be replaced, even if we have to turn around and come back to Earth. On a planet which has wiped out a whole scouting expedition, we can't afford to have any slip-ups. And that means we can't afford to have anyone aboard who doesn't know what he's doing or doesn't care. Is that clear?"

It was.

"All right," said the colonel. "Let's go out and get acquainted with the Lord Nelson."

The briefing session broke up well past midnight, and the group that shortly would become the crew of the Lord Nelson filtered out of the building and into the cool spring air. Each man had a fairly good idea of his job and each man knew the dangers involved. No one had backed out.

"What d'ye think of it, Pete?" Sherri James asked, as they left together. "Sounds pretty mean."

"I wish we knew what the answers were beforehand," Wayne said. He glanced down at Sherri. The moon was full, and its rays glinted brightly off her golden hair. "It's a risky deal, as Petersen said. Nine men go out, and eight die—of what? Just dead, that's all."

"It's the way the game goes," Sherri said. "You knew that when you joined the corps." They turned down the main road of the IES compound and headed for the snack bar.

Wayne nodded. "I know, kid. It's a job, and it has to be done. But nobody likes to walk into an empty planet like that knowing that eight of the last nine guys who did didn't come back."

He put his arm around her and they entered the snack bar that way. Most of the other crew-members were there already; Wayne sensed the heightening tenseness on their faces.

"Two nuclear fizzes," he said to the pfc at the bar. "With all the trimmings."

"What's the matter, Captain?" said a balding, potbellied major a few stools down, who was nursing a beer. "How come the soft drinks tonight, Wayne?"

Peter grinned. "I'm in training, Major Osborne. Gotta kill the evil green horde from Rigel Seven, and I don't dare drink anything stronger than sarsaparilla."

"How about the amazon, then?" Osborne said, gesturing at Sherri. "Her too?"

"Me too," Sherri said.

Osborne stared at his beer. "You two must be in Scarborough's new project, then." He squinted at Peter, who nodded almost imperceptibly.

"You'll need luck," Osborne said.

"No we won't," Wayne said. "Not luck. We'll need more than just luck to pull us through."

The nuclear fizzes arrived. He began to sip it quietly. A few more members of the crew entered the snack bar. Their faces were drawn tensely.

He guzzled the drink and looked up at Sherri, who was sucking down the last of the soda. "Let's get going, Lieutenant James. The noncoms are coming, and we don't want them to make nasty remarks about us."

The Lord Nelson blasted off the next evening, after a frenzied day of hurried preparations. The crew of sixty filed solemnly aboard, Colonel Petersen last, and the great hatch swung closed.

There was the usual routine loudspeaker-business while everyone quickly and efficiently strapped into his acceleration cradle, and then the ship leaped skyward. It climbed rapidly, broke free of Earth's grasp, and, out past the moon, abruptly winked out of normal space into overdrive. It would spend the next two weeks in hyperspace, short-cutting across the galaxy to Fomalhaut V.

It was a busy two weeks for everyone involved. Captain Peter Wayne, as a central part of the team, spent much of his time planning his attack. His job would be the actual climbing of the mountain where the double-nucleus beryllium was located. It wasn't going to be an easy job; the terrain was rough, the wind, according to Jervis, whipped ragingly through the hills, and the jagged peaks thrust into the air like the teeth of some mythical dragon.

Study of the three-dimensional aerial photographs taken from the Mavis showed that the best route was probably up through one end of the valley, through a narrow pass that led around the mountain, and up the west slope, which appeared to offer better handholds and was less perpendicular than the other sides of the mountain.

This time, the expedition would have the equipment to make the climb. There were ropes, picks, and crampons, and sets of metamagnetic boots and grapples. With metamagnetic boots, Wayne thought, they'd be able to walk up the side of the mountain almost as easily as if it were flat.

He studied the thick, heavy soles of the boots for a moment, then set to work polishing. Wayne liked to keep his boots mirror-bright; it wasn't required, but it was a habit of his nonetheless.

He set to work vigorously. Everyone aboard the ship was working that way. Sherri James, who was in charge of the Correlation Section, had noticed the same thing the day before. Her job was to co-ordinate all the information from various members of the expedition, run them through the computers, and record them. She had been busy since blastoff, testing the computers, checking and rechecking them, being overly efficient.

"I know why we're doing it," she said. "It keeps our mind off the end of the trip. When we spend the whole day working out complicated circuits for the computers, or polishing mountain boots, or cleaning the jet tubes, it's just so we don't have to think about Fomalhaut V. It helps to concentrate on details."

Wayne nodded and said nothing. Sherri was right. There was one thought in everyone's mind: what was the deadly secret of the valley?

There was another thought, after that:

Will we find it out in time?

After two weeks of flight through the vast blackness of interstellar space, the Lord Nelson came out of overdrive and set itself in an orbit around Fomalhaut V. Lieutenant Jervis, the sole survivor of the ill-fated Mavis, located the small valley between the giant crags that covered the planet, and the huge spherical bulk of the spaceship settled gently to the floor of the valley.

They were gathered in the central room of the ship ten minutes after the all-clear rang through the corridors, informing everyone that the landing had been safely accomplished. From the portholes they could see the white bones of the Mavis's crew lying on the reddish sand of the valley bottom.

"There they are," Jervis said quietly. "Just bones. Those were my shipmates."

Wayne saw Sherri repress a shudder. Little heaps of bones lay here and there on the sand, shining brightly in the hot sun. That was the crew of the Mavis—or what was left of them.

Colonel Petersen entered the room and confronted the crew. "We're here," he said. "You know the schedule from now on. No one's to leave the ship until we've made a check outside, and after that—assuming it's OK to go out—no more than six are to leave the ship at any one time."

He pointed to a row of metal magnetic tabs clinging to the wall nearest the corridor that led to the airlock. "When you go out, take one of those tabs and touch it on your suit. There are exactly six tabs. If none are there, don't go out. It's as simple as that."

Four men in spacesuits entered the room, followed by two others. The leader of the group saluted. "We're ready, sir," he said.

"Go out and get a look at the bodies," the colonel told the men, who were Medical Corpsmen. "You know the procedure. Air and sand samples too, of course."

The leader saluted again, turned, and left. Wayne watched the six spacesuited figures step one at a time to the wall, withdraw one of the metal tabs, and affix it to the outer skin of his suit. Then they went outside.

Captain Wayne and Sherri James stood by one of the portholes and watched the six medics as they bent over the corpses outside. "I don't get it, I just don't understand," Wayne said quietly.

"What don't you get?" Sherri asked.

"Those skeletons. Those men have only been dead for two months, and they've been reduced to nothing but bones already. Even the fabric of their clothing is gone. Why? There must be something here that causes human flesh to deteriorate much faster than normal."

"It does look pretty gruesome," Sherri agreed. "I'm glad we've been ordered to keep our spacesuits on. I wouldn't want to be exposed to anything that might be out there."

"I wonder—" Wayne muttered.

"What? What's the matter?"

Wayne pointed to one figure lying on the sand. "See that? What's that over his head?"

"Why—it's a space helmet!"

"Yeah," said Wayne. "The question is: was he wearing just the helmet, or the whole suit? If he was wearing the whole suit, we're not going to be as well protected as we thought, even with our fancy suits."

Fifteen minutes passed slowly before the medics returned, and five minutes more before they had passed through the decontamination chambers and were allowed into the ship proper. A ring of tense faces surrounded them as they made their report.

The leader, a tall, bespectacled doctor named Stevelman, was the spokesman. He shrugged when Colonel Petersen put forth the question whose answer everyone waited for.

"I don't know," the medic replied. "I don't know what killed them. There's dry bones out there, but no sign of anything that might have done it. It's pretty hard to make a quick diagnosis on a skeleton, Colonel."

"What about the one skeleton with the bubble helmet?" Peter Wayne asked. "Did you see any sign of a full suit on him?"

Stevelman shook his head. "Not a sign, sir."

Colonel Petersen turned and glanced at Lieutenant Jervis. "Do you remember what the circumstances were, Lieutenant?"

Jervis shrugged. "I don't recall it very clearly, sir. I honestly couldn't tell you whether they were wearing suits or bubble-helmets or anything. I was too upset at the time to make careful observations."

"I understand," Petersen said.

But the medic had a different theory. He pointed at Jervis and said, "That's a point I've meant to make, Lieutenant. You're a trained space scout. Your psychological records show that you're not the sort of man given to panic or to become confused."

"Are you implying that there's something improper about my statement, Dr. Stevelman?"

The medic held up a hand. "Nothing of the sort, Lieutenant. But since you're not the sort to panic, even in such a crisis as the complete destruction of the entire crew of your scout ship, you must have been ill—partly delirious from fever. Not delirious enough to cause hallucinations, but just enough to impair your judgment."

Jervis nodded. "That is possible," he said.

"Good," said Stevelman. "I have two tentative hypotheses, then." He turned to the colonel. "Should I state them now, Colonel Petersen?"

"There's to be no secrecy aboard this ship, Doctor. I want every man and woman on the ship to know all the facts at all times."

"Very well," the medic said. "I'd suggest the deaths were caused by some unknown virus—or, perhaps, by some virulent poison that occurred occasionally, a poisonous smog of some kind that had settled in the valley for a time and then dissipated."

Wayne frowned and shook his head. Both hypotheses made sense.

"Do you have any suggestions, Doctor?" Petersen said.

"Since we don't have any direct information about why those men died, Colonel, I can't make any definite statements. But I can offer one bit of advice to everyone: wear your suits and be alert."

During the week that followed, several groups went out without suffering any ill effects. A short service was held for the eight of the Mavis and then the skeletons were buried in the valley.

They ran a check on the double-nucleus beryllium toward the end of the week, after it had been fairly safely established that no apparent harm was going to come to them. Wayne and Sherri were both in the crew that went outside to set up the detector.

"You man the detector plate," said Major MacDougal, who was in charge of the group, turning to Wayne.

He put his hand on the plate and waited for the guide coordinates to be set. MacDougal fumbled at the base of the detector for a moment, and the machine began picking up eloptic radiations.

Wayne now looked down at the detector plate. "Here we are," he said. "The dial's oscillating between four and eight, all right. The stuff's here."

MacDougal whistled gently. "It's really sending, isn't it!" He pointed toward the mountaintop. "From up there, too. It's going to be a nice climb. Okay, pack the detector up and let's get back inside."

They entered the airlock and passed on into the ship.

"The D-N beryllium up there, sir," Major MacDougal said. "It's going to be a devil of a job to get up to find the stuff."

"That's what Captain Wayne's here for," Petersen said. "Captain, what do you think? Can you get up here?"

"It would have been easier to bring along a helicopter," Wayne said wryly. "Pity the things don't fit into spaceships. But I think I can get up there. I'd like to try surveying the lay of the land, first. I want to know all the possible routes before I start climbing."

"Good idea," Petersen said. "I'll send you out with three men to do some preliminary exploring. Boggs! Manetti! MacPherson! Suit up and get with it!"

Wayne strode toward the spacesuit locker, took out his suit, and donned it. Instead of the normal space boots, he put on the special metamagnetic boots for mountain climbing. The little reactors in the back of the calf activated the thick metal sole of each boot so that it would cling tightly to the metallic rock of the mountain. Unlike ordinary magnetism, the metamagnetic field acted on all metals, even when they were in combination with other elements.

His team of three stood before him in the airlock room. He knew all three of them fairly well from Earthside; they were capable, level-headed men, and at least one—Boggs—had already been out in the valley surveying once, and so knew the area pretty well.

He pulled on the boots and looked up. "We're not going to climb the mountain this time, men. We'll just take a look around it to decide which is the best way."

"You have any ideas, sir?" Sergeant Boggs asked.

"From looking at the photographs, I'd guess that the western approach is the best. But I may be wrong. Little details are hard to see from five hundred miles up, even with the best of instruments, and there may be things in our way that will make the west slope impassible. If so, we'll try the southern side. It looks pretty steep, but it also seems rough enough to offer plenty of handholds."

"Too bad we couldn't have had that helicopter you were talking about," said Boggs.

Wayne grinned. "With these winds? They'd smash us against the side of the mountain before we'd get up fifty feet. You ought to know, Sergeant—you've been out in them once already."

"They're not so bad down in this valley, sir," Boggs said. "The only time you really notice them is when you climb the escarpment at the northern end. They get pretty rough up there."

Wayne nodded. "You can see what kind of a job we'll have. Even with metamagnetic boots and grapples, we'll still have to use the old standbys." He looked at the men. "Okay; we're all ready. Let's go."

They unhooked four of the six tabs from the wall and donned them. Then they moved on into the airlock and closed the inner door. The air was pumped out, just as though the ship were in space or on a planet with a poisonous atmosphere. As far as anyone knew, the atmosphere of Fomalhaut V actually was poisonous. Some of the tension had relaxed after a week spent in safety, but there was always the first expedition to consider; no one took chances.

When all the air had been removed, a bleeder valve allowed the outer air to come into the chamber. Then the outer door opened, and the four men went down the ladder to the valley floor.

Wayne led the way across the sand in silence. The four men made their way toward the slope on the western side of the valley. Overhead, the bright globe of Fomalhaut shed its orange light over the rugged landscape.

When they reached the beginning of the slope, Wayne stopped and looked upwards. "Doesn't look easy," he grunted. "Damned rough hill, matter of fact. MacPherson, do you think you could make it to the top?"

Corporal MacPherson was a small, wiry man who had the reputation of being a first-rank mountaineer. He had been a member of the eighteenth Mount Everest Party, and had been the second of that party to reach the summit of the towering peak.

"Sure I can, sir," he said confidently. "Shall I take the rope?"

"Go ahead. You and Manetti get the rope to the top, and Sergeant Boggs and I will follow up."

"Righto, sir."

Corporal MacPherson reached his gloved hands forward and contracted his fingers. The tiny microswitches in his gloves actuated the relays, and his hands clung to the rock. Then he put his boots against the wall and began to move up the steep escarpment.

Private Manetti followed after him. The two men were lashed together by the light plastisteel cable. The sergeant held the end of the cable in his hands, waiting for the coil to be paid out.

Wayne watched the two men climb, while a chill wind whipped down out of the mountains and raised the sand in the valley. It was less than eighty feet to the precipice edge above, but it was almost perpendicular, and as they climbed, the buffeting winds began to press against their bodies with ever-increasing force.

They reached the top and secured the rope, and then they peered over the edge and signalled that Wayne and the sergeant should start up.

"We're coming," Wayne shouted, and returned the signal. It was at that instant that he felt something slam against the sole of his heavy metamagnetic boot. It was as though something had kicked him savagely on the sole of his right foot.

He winced sharply at the impact. Then, somewhat puzzled he looked down at the boot. He felt something move under the sand. He tried to step back, and almost tripped. It was as though his right foot were stuck firmly to the sand!

He pushed himself back, and with a tremendous heave managed to pull himself free. He braced his body against the cliff, lifted his foot, and looked at it.

Hanging from his boot sole was one of the ugliest monstrosities he had ever seen, unusually grotesque.

It was about the size and shape of a regulation football, and was covered with a wrinkled, reddish hide. At one end was a bright red gash of a mouth studded with greenish, gnashing teeth. From the other end of the creature's body protruded a long, needle-like projection which had imbedded itself in the metal sole of Wayne's boot.

"Good God! If I'd been wearing ordinary boots, that thing would have stuck clear into my foot!"

He hefted the weighted pick with one hand and swung, catching the monster with the point. It sank in and ripped through the creature, spilling red-orange blood over the sand. Shuddering a little, Wayne put his other foot on the dead thing and pulled his right boot free of the needle beak.

He started to say something, but he had a sudden premonition that made him look up in time. Sergeant Boggs put both hands against the Captain's shoulder and pushed.

"What the hell?" Wayne asked in surprise as he felt the shove. He almost fell to the sand, but he had had just enough warning to allow him to keep his balance. He put out a foot and staggered wildly.

A sudden strange noise caused him to turn and look back. Five needles were jabbing viciously up out of the sand in the spot where he would have fallen.

"You out of your head, Boggs?" he started to ask—but before the last word was out of his mouth, the sergeant charged in madly and tried to push him over again. He was fighting like a man gone berserk—which he was.

Wayne grabbed him by the wrist and flipped him desperately aside. The sergeant fell, sprawled out for a moment on the sand, then bounced to his feet again. His eyes were alight with a strange, terrifying flame.

Silently, he leaped for Wayne. The captain slammed his fist forward, sending it crashing into Boggs's midsection. The sergeant came back with a jab to the stomach that pushed Wayne backward. Again the deadly needles flicked up from the ground, but they did not strike home.

Wayne gasped for breath and reached out for Boggs. Boggs leaped on him, trying to push Wayne down where the beaks could get to him. Wayne sidestepped, threw Boggs off balance, and clubbed down hard with his fist.

Boggs wandered dizzily for a second before Wayne's other fist came blasting in, knocking the breath out of him. A third blow, and the sergeant collapsed on the sand.

Wayne paused and caught his breath. The sergeant remained unconscious. Wayne shook his head uncertainly, wondering what had come over the mild-mannered Boggs. A chilling thought struck him: was this what happened to the crew of the Mavis?

He looked up the cliff, where the other two men were still peering over the edge.

"MacPherson! Manetti! Come down! We're going back to the ship!"

He heaved the unconscious body of Sergeant Boggs over his shoulder like a potato-sack, and waited for the two men to come down. They drew near.

"Boggs must have gone out of his head," Wayne said. "He jumped me like a madman."

They had nothing to say, so he turned and began to trudge back to the Lord Nelson, trying to assemble the facts in his mind. They followed alongside.

What was behind the attack? After seeing the monster, why had Boggs attempted to push his superior officer over into the sand? There were other little beasts under that sand; why would Boggs want one of them—there seemed to be dozens—to jab him with its needle of a beak?

And what were the beastly little animals, anyway?

There were no answers. But the answers would have to come, soon.

He tossed Boggs into the airlock and waited for the others to catch up. They climbed up the ladder and said nothing as the airlock went through its cycle and the antibacterial spray covered them.

Colonel Petersen looked at him across the desk and put the palms of his hands together. "Then, as I understand it, Captain, Sergeant Boggs tried to push you over into the sand when this—ah—monster jabbed you in the foot?"

"That's right, sir," Wayne said. He felt uncomfortable. This wasn't a formal court-martial; it was simply an inquiry into the sergeant's actions. Charges would be preferred later, if there were any to be preferred.

Sergeant Boggs stood stolidly on the far side of the room. A livid bruise along his jaw testified to the struggle that had taken place. One eye was puffed, and his expression was an unhappy one. Near him, MacPherson and Private Manetti stood stiffly at attention.

The colonel looked at Boggs. "What's your side of the story, Sergeant?"

The non-com's face didn't change. "Sir, the captain's statement isn't true."

"What's that?" Wayne asked angrily.

"Quiet, Captain," Petersen said. "Go ahead, Boggs."

The sergeant licked his bruised lips. "I was about to start up the rope when, for no reason at all, he struck me in the stomach. Then he hit me again a few more times, and I passed out."

"Did he say anything when he did this?" the Colonel asked.

"No, sir."

Wayne frowned. What was the sergeant trying to do? What the devil was he up to?

"Corporal MacPherson," the colonel said, "Did you witness the fight?"

"Yes, sir," the small man said, stepping a pace forward.

"Describe it."

"Well, sir, we were up on top of the cliff, and we called—or rather, I called for the captain and the sergeant to come on up. Sergeant Boggs took a hold of the rope and then the captain hit him in the belly, sir. He hit him twice more and the sergeant fell down. Then the captain told us to come down, which we did, sir. That was all." He gestured with his hands to indicate he had no more to say.

Wayne could hardly believe his ears. Making an effort, he managed to restrain himself.

"Private Manetti, do you have anything to add to that?" the colonel asked.

"No, sir. It happened just like that, sir. We both seen the entire thing. That's the way it happened. The captain hauled off and let him have it."

The colonel swivelled around and let his cold eyes rest on Wayne. "Captain, you have stated that Sergeant Boggs did not talk to either of these two men after you struck him. That eliminates any collusion."

"Yes, sir," Wayne said stonily.

"I talked to both men separately, and they tell substantially the same story. The records of all three of these men are excellent. The sergeant claims he never saw any monster of the type you describe, and the group I sent out to check says that there is no body of any alien animal anywhere near the spot. How do you explain the discrepancies between your story and theirs?"

Wayne glared angrily at the three men. "They're lying, sir," he said evenly. "I don't know why they're doing it. The whole thing took place exactly as I told you."

"I find that very difficult to believe, Captain."

"Is that a formal accusation, sir?"

Petersen shrugged and rubbed his hands against his iron-grey temples. "Captain," he said finally, "you have a very fine record. You have never before been known to strike an enlisted man for any cause whatever. I hold that in your favor."

"Thank you, sir."

"On the other hand, the evidence here definitely indicates that your story is not quite true. Now, we know that Lieutenant Jervis acted peculiarly after the crew of the Mavis met its mysterious end, and the Medical Corps thinks that whatever is causing the deaths could also cause mental confusion. Therefore, I am remanding you to the custody of the Medical Corps for observation. You'll be kept in close confinement until this thing is cleared up."

Wayne frowned bitterly. "Yes, sir," he said.

Peter Wayne sat in his cell in the hospital sector and stared at the wall in confusion. What in blazes was going on? What possible motive would three enlisted men have to frame him in this way? It didn't make any sense.

Was it possible that he really had gone off his rocker? Had he imagined the little beast under the sand?

He lifted his foot and looked again at the sole. There it was: a little pit about an eighth of an inch deep.

The colonel had explained it away easily enough, saying that he might possibly have stepped on a sharp rock. Wayne shook his head. He knew he wasn't nuts. But what the hell was going on?

There were no answers. But he knew that the eventual answer, when it came, would have something to do with the mystery of the Mavis's eight corpses.

It was late that afternoon when Sherri James came storming into the hospital sector. She was wearing a spacesuit, and she was brandishing a pass countersigned by Colonel Petersen himself. She was determined to enter.

"The medics didn't want to let me in," she explained. "But I told them I'd wear a spacesuit if it would make them any happier."

"Sherri! What the devil are you doing here?"

"I just wanted to check on you," she said. Her voice sounded oddly distorted coming over the speaker in the helmet. "You're supposed to have blown your wig or something. Did you?"

"No. Of course not."

"I didn't think so." She unscrewed her helmet quickly. "Listen, Peter, there's something funny going on aboard this ship."

"I've known that a long time," he said.

"I think Boggs and those other two are trying to frame you," she said, her voice low. "Do you know of anyone aboard named Masters?"

"Masters?" Wayne repeated. "Not that I know of—why?"

"Well, I overheard Boggs talking to one of the other men. I didn't hear very clearly, but it sounded as though he said: 'We've got to get Moore out and turn him over to Masters.' Bill Moore is one of my computermen—tall, skinny fellow."

Wayne nodded, frowning. "Yeah, but who is Masters? This is the queerest thing I ever heard of."

Footsteps sounded in the corridor outside.

"Better put your helmet on," Wayne advised. "Whoever's coming might not like to see you this way."

Quickly, she slipped the helmet back on. "I don't know what's going on," she said. "But I intend to find out."

One of the medics entered the cell without knocking and came up to Sherri. "You'll have to go now, Lieutenant," he said. "We're going to perform some tests on the captain now."

Sherri bristled. "Tests? What kind of tests?"

"Nothing very serious," the medic said. "Just a routine checkup to clarify some points we're interested in."

"All right," Sherri said. "You won't find anything the matter with him." She left.

"Come with me, Captain," said the medic politely. He unlocked the cell door and, equally politely, drew a needle-beam pistol. "Don't try anything, please, sir. I have my orders."

Silently, Wayne followed the medic into the lab. Several other medics were standing around watching him, with Stevelman, the head man, in the back.

"Over this way, Captain," Stevelman called.

There was a box sitting on a table in the middle of the room. It was full of sand.

"Give me your hand, please, Captain," the medic said tonelessly.

In a sudden flash of insight, Wayne realized what was in the box. He thought fast but moved slowly. He held out his hand, but just as the medic took it, he twisted suddenly away.

His hand flashed out and grasped the other's wrist in a steely grip. The medic's fingers tightened on the needle-beam, and managed to pull the trigger. A bright beam flared briefly against the lab's plastalloy floor, doing nothing but scorching it slightly. Wayne's other hand balled into a fist and came up hard against the medic's jaw.

He grabbed the needle-beam pistol from the collapsing man's limp hand and had the other three men covered before the slugged medic had finished sagging to the floor.

"All of you! Raise your hands!"

They paid no attention to him. Instead of standing where they were, they began to move toward him. Wayne swore and, with a quick flip of his thumb, turned the beam down to low power and pulled the trigger three times in quick succession.

The three men fell as though they'd been pole-axed, knocked out by the low-power beam.

"The whole ship's gone crazy," he murmured softly, looking at the three men slumped together on the lab floor. "Stark, staring, raving nuts."

He took one step and someone jumped him from behind. The needle-beam pistol spun from his hand and slithered across the floor as Wayne fell under the impact of the heavy body. Apparently the whole Medical Corps was out to knock him down today.

He twisted rapidly as an arm encircled his neck, and rammed an elbow into the newcomer's midsection. Then he jerked his head back, smashing the back of his skull into his opponent's nose.

The hold around his neck weakened, and Wayne tore himself loose from the other's grasp. He jumped to his feet, but the other man was a long way from being unconscious. A stinging right smashed into Wayne's mouth, and he felt the taste of blood. Hastily he wiped the trickle away with the back of his hand.

With his nose pouring blood, Wayne's antagonist charged in. His eyes burned with the strange flame that had been gleaming in Boggs's face out on the desert in the valley. He ploughed into Wayne's stomach with a savage blow that rocked Wayne back.

He grunted and drove back with a flurry of blows. The other aimed a wild blow at Wayne's head; Wayne seized the wrist as the arm flew past his ear, and twisted, hard. The medic flipped through the air and came to rest against the wall with a brief crunching impact. He moaned and then lapsed into silence.

Quickly, Wayne grabbed the gun off the floor and planted his back to the wall, looking around for new antagonists. But there was evidently no one left who cared to tangle with him, and the four medics strewn out on the floor didn't seem to have much fight left in them.

Wayne crossed the room in a couple of strides and bolted the door. Then he walked over to the box of sand. If it contained what he suspected—

He stepped over to the lab bench and picked out a long steel support rod from the equipment drawer. He placed the rod gently against the sand, and pushed downward, hard. There was a tinny scream, and a six-inch needle shot up instantly through the surface.

"Just what I thought," Wayne murmured. "Can you talk, you nasty little brute?" He prodded into the sand—more viciously this time. There was a flurry of sand, and the football-shaped thing came to the surface, clashing its teeth and screaming shrilly.

Wayne cursed. Then he turned the needle gun back up to full power and calmly burned the thing to a crisp. An odor of singed flesh drifted up from the ashes on the sand.

He stooped and fumbled in Stevelman's pocket, pulling out a ring of keys.

"They better be the right ones," he told the unconscious medic. Holstering the needle gun, he walked over to the medical stores cabinet, hoping that the things he needed would be inside. He knew exactly what he was facing now, and what he would have to do.

He checked over the labels, peering through the neatly-arranged racks for the substance he was searching for.

Finally he picked a large plastine container filled with a white, crystalline powder. Then he selected a couple of bottles filled with a clear, faintly yellow liquid, and took a hypodermic gun from the rack. He relocked the cabinet.

Suddenly a knock sounded. He stiffened, sucked in his breath, and turned to face the door.

"Who's there?" he asked cautiously, trying to counterfeit Stevelman's voice.

"Harrenburg," said a rumbling voice. "I'm on guard duty. Heard some noise coming from in there a while back, and thought I'd look in. Everything all right, Dr. Stevelman? I mean—"

"Everything's fine, Harrenburg," Wayne said, imitating the medic's thin, dry voice. "We're running some tests on Captain Wayne. They're pretty complicated affairs, and I'd appreciate it if you didn't interrupt again."

"Sure, sir," the guard said. "Just a routine check, sir. Colonel Petersen's orders. Sorry if I've caused any trouble, sir."

"That's all right," Wayne said. "Just go away and let us continue, will you?"

There was the sound of the guard's footsteps retreating down the corridor. Wayne counted to ten and turned back to the things he had taken from the cabinet.

The bottles of liquid and the hypo gun went into his belt pouch. He tucked the big bottle of white powder under his left arm and cautiously unbolted and opened the door. There was no sign of anyone in the corridor. Good, he thought. It was a lucky thing Harrenburg had blundered along just then, and not two minutes later.

He stepped outside the Medic Section and locked the door behind him with the key he'd taken from Stevelman. After turning the needle gun back to low power again in order to keep from killing anyone, he started on tiptoe toward the stairway that led into the bowels of the ship.

After about ten paces, he saw a shadow on the stairway, and cowered in a dark recess while two crewmen passed, talking volubly. Once they were gone, he came out and continued on his way.

It took quite a while to get where he was going, since it involved hiding and ducking two or three more times along the way, but he finally reached the big compartment where the water repurifiers were. He climbed up the ladder to the top of the reserve tank, opened the hatch, and emptied the contents of the jar into the ship's water supply.

"That ought to do it," he said to himself. Smiling, he carefully smashed the jar and dropped the fragments down the waste chute. He surveyed his handiwork for a moment, then turned and headed back.

He hadn't been seen going down, and he didn't want to be seen going out. If anyone even suspected that he had tampered with the water supply, all they would have to do would be to run the water through the purifiers. That would undo everything Wayne had been carefully preparing.

He made his way safely back up to the main deck and headed through the quiet ship toward the airlock. He wasn't so lucky this time; a guard saw him.

"Where you goin', Captain?" the guard demanded, starting to lift his gun. "Seems to me you ought to be in the brig, and—"

Wayne made no reply. He brought his gun up in a rapid motion and beamed the man down. The guard toppled, a hurt expression on his face.

Wayne raced to the airlock. He didn't bother with a spacesuit—not now, when he knew that the air was perfectly harmless outside. He opened the inner door, closed it, and opened the outer door.

Then, grinning gleefully, he pressed the button that would start the pumping cycle. The outer door started to close automatically, and Wayne just barely managed to get outside and onto the ladder before it clanged shut. As soon as the great hatch had sealed itself, the pumps started exhausting the air from the airlock. No one could open the doors until the pumping cycle was over.

He climbed down the ladder and began walking over toward the western wall. He would have to keep away from the ship for a while, and the rocks were as good a place as any to hide out.

It was dark. Fomalhaut had set, leaving the moonless planet in utter blackness, broken only by the cold gleam of the stars. The lights streaming from the portholes of the Lord Nelson gave a small degree of illumination to the valley.

The valley. It was spread out before him, calm and peaceful, rippling dunes of sand curling out toward the mountains. The valley, he knew, was a betrayer—calm and quiet above, alive with an army of hideous vermin a few feet below its surface.

He started to walk, and moistened his lips. He knew he was going to get awfully thirsty in the next few hours, but there was not the slightest help for it. There hadn't been any way to carry water from the ship.

"I can wait," he told himself. He stared back at the circular bulk of the Lord Nelson behind him, and his fingers trembled a little. He had known, when he joined the Corps, that space was full of traps like this one—but this was the first time he had actually experienced anything like this. It was foul.

Something slammed into his boot sole, and this time Wayne knew what it was.

"Persistent, aren't you!" He jerked his foot up. This monster hadn't stuck as the other one had, but he saw the tip of the needle-beak thrashing around wildly in the loose sand. Wayne thumbed the gun up to full power, and there was a piercing shriek as the gun burned into the sand. There was a sharp shrill sound, and the odor of something burning. He spat.

The little beasts must be all over the floor of the valley! Scurrying frantically, like blood-red giant crabs, sidling up and down beneath the valley, searching upward for things to strike at. How they must hate his metamagnetic boots, he thought!

He kept on walking, expecting to feel the impact of another thrust momentarily, but he was not molested again. They must be getting wise, he thought. They know they can't get through my boots, and so they're leaving me alone. That way they don't call attention to themselves.

A new, more chilling question struck him:

Just how smart are they?

He had made it to the wall and was climbing up the treacherous slope when the airlock door opened, and someone stood outlined in the bright circle of light that cut into the inky blackness. An amplified voice filled the valley and ricocheted back off the walls of the mountains, casting eerie echoes down on the lone man on the desert.

"CAPTAIN WAYNE! THIS IS COLONEL PETERSEN SPEAKING. DON'T YOU REALIZE THAT YOU'RE A SICK MAN? YOU MAY DIE OUT THERE. COME BACK. THAT'S AN ORDER, CAPTAIN. REPEAT: COME BACK. THAT'S AN ORDER!"

"I'm afraid an order from you just doesn't hold much weight for me right now, Colonel," Wayne said quietly, to himself. Silently he went on climbing the escarpment, digging into the rough rock.

He kept on climbing until he found the niche for which he had been heading. He dragged himself in and sat down, as comfortably as possible. He began to wait.

Dawn came in less than three hours, as Fomalhaut burst up over the horizon and exploded in radiance over the valley. With dawn came a patrol of men, slinking surreptitiously across the valley, probably with orders to bring him in. Wayne was ensconced comfortably in his little rock niche, hidden from the men in the valley below, but with a perfect view of everything that went on. The wind whistled around the cliffs, ceaselessly moaning a tuneless song. He felt like standing up and shouting wildly, "Here I am! Here I am!" but he repressed the perverse urge.

The patrol group stood in a small clump in the valley below, seemingly waiting for something. Moments passed, and then it became apparent what that something was. Hollingwood, the metallurgist, appeared, dragging with him the detector. They were going to look for Captain Wayne with it, just as they had searched out the double-nucleus beryllium.

Wayne frowned. It was a possibility he hadn't thought about. They could easily detect the metal in his boots! And he didn't dare take them off; he'd never make it back across that hellish stretch of sand without them. He glanced uneasily at his watch. How much longer do I have to keep evading them? he wondered. It was a wearing task.

It looked as though it would be much too long.

The muzzle of the detector began to swing back and forth slowly and precisely, covering the valley inch by inch. He heard their whispered consultations drifting up from below, though he couldn't make out what they were saying.

They finished with the valley, evidently concluding he wasn't there, and started searching the walls. Wayne decided it was time to get out while the getting was good. He crawled slowly out of the niche and wriggled along the escarpment, heading south, keeping low so the men in the valley wouldn't see him.

Unfortunately, he couldn't see them either. He kept moving, hoping they wouldn't spot him with the detector. He wished he had the metamagnetic hand grapples with him. For one thing, the sharp rock outcroppings sliced his hands like so much meat. For another, he could have dropped the grapples somewhere as a decoy.

Oh, well, you can't think of everything, Wayne told himself. He glanced at his watch. How long was it going to take?

He heard the scrape of boot leather on a rock somewhere ahead of him. He glanced up sharply, seeing nothing, and scowled. They had spotted him.

They were laying a trap.

Cautiously, he climbed over a huge boulder, making no sound. There was one man standing behind it, waiting, apparently, for Wayne to step around into view. He peered down, trying to see who it was. It seemed to be Hollingwood, the dignified, austere metallurgist.

Wayne smiled grimly, picked up a heavy rock, and dropped it straight down, square on the man's helmet. The plexalloy rang like a bell through the clear early-morning air, and the man dropped to his knees, dazed by the shock.

Knowing he had just a moment to finish the job, Wayne pushed off against the side of the rock and plummeted down, landing neatly on the metallurgist's shoulders. The man reeled and fell flat. Wayne spun him over and delivered a hard punch to the solar plexus. "Sorry, Dave," he said softly. The metallurgist gasped and curled up in a tight ball. Wayne stood up. It was brutal, but it was the only place you could hit a man wearing a space helmet.

One down, Wayne thought. Fifty-eight to go. He was alone against the crew—and, for all he knew, against all fifty-nine of them.

Hollingwood groaned and stretched. Wayne bent and, for good measure, took off the man's helmet and tapped him none too gently on the skull.

There was the sound of footsteps, the harsh chitch-chitch of feet against the rock. "He's up that way," he heard a deep voice boom.

That meant the others had heard the rock hitting Hollingwood's plexalloy helmet. They were coming toward him.

Wayne sprang back defensively and glanced around. He hoped there were only five of them, that the rule of six was still being maintained. Otherwise things could become really complicated, as they hunted him relentlessly through the twisted gulleys.

He hated to have to knock out too many of the men; it just meant more trouble later. Still, there was no help for it, if he wanted there to be any later. He thought of the bleached bones of the crew of the Mavis, and shuddered.

It was something of an advantage not to be wearing a helmet. Even with the best of acoustical systems, hearing inside a helmet tended to be distorted and dimmed. The men couldn't hear him as well as he could hear them. And since they couldn't hear themselves too well, they made a little more noise than he did.

A space boot came into view around a big rock, and Wayne aimed his needle-beam at the spot where the man's head would appear.

When the head came around the rock, Wayne fired. The man dropped instantly. Sorry, friend, Wayne apologized mentally. Two down. Fifty-seven to go. The odds were still pretty heavy.

He knew he had to move quickly now; the others had seen the man drop, and by now they should have a pretty good idea exactly where Wayne was.

He picked up a rock and lobbed it over a nearby boulder, then started moving cat-like in the other direction. He climbed up onto another boulder and watched two men move away from him. They were stepping warily, their beam guns in their hands. Wayne wiped away a bead of perspiration, aimed carefully, and squeezed the firing stud twice.

Four down. Fifty-five to go.

A moment later, something hissed near his ear. Without waiting, he spun and rolled off the boulder, landing cat-like on his feet. Another crewman was standing on top of a nearby boulder. Wayne began to sweat; this pursuit seemed to be indefinitely prolonged, and it was beginning to look unlikely that he could avoid them forever.

He had dropped his pistol during the fall; it was wedged between a couple of rocks several feet away.

He heard someone call: "I got him. He fell off the rock. We'll take him back down below."

Then another voice—ominously. "He won't mind. He'll be glad we did it for him—afterwards."

"I'll go get him," said the first voice. The man stepped around the side of the boulder—just in time to have a hard-pitched rock come thunking into his midsection.

"Oof!" he grunted, took a couple of steps backwards, and collapsed.

Five down. Fifty-four to go. It could go on forever this way.

"What's the matter?" asked the man who had replied to the first one with those chilling words.

"Nothing," said Wayne, in a fair imitation of the prostrate crewman's voice. "He's heavy. Come help me."

Then he reached down and picked up the fallen man's beam gun. He took careful aim.

When the sixth man stepped around the rock, he fired. The beam went wide of the mark, slowing the other down, and Wayne charged forward. He pounded two swift punches into the amazed crewman, who responded with a woozy, wild blow. Wayne ducked and let the fist glide past his ear, then came in hard with a solid body-blow and let the man sag to the ground. He took a deep breath.

Six down and only fifty-three to go.

He crawled back to the edge of the precipice and peered down into the valley. There was no one to be seen. It was obvious that Colonel Petersen was still enforcing the six-man rule.

As he watched, he saw the airlock door open. A spacesuited figure scrambled down the ladder and sprinted across the deadly sand of the valley floor.

It was Sherri! Wayne held his breath, expecting at any moment that one of the little monsters beneath the sand would sink its vicious needle upward into Sherri's foot. But her stride never faltered.

As she neared the precipice, another figure appeared at the airlock door and took aim with a gun.

Wayne thumbed his own needle-beam pistol up to full and fired hastily at the distant figure. At that distance, even the full beam would only stun. The figure collapsed backwards into the airlock, and Wayne grinned in satisfaction.

Seven down. Fifty-two to go.

He kept an eye on the airlock door and a finger on his firing stud, waiting to see if anyone else would come out. No one else did.

As soon as Sherri was safely up to the top of the precipice, Wayne ran to meet her.

"Sherri! What the devil did you come out here for?"

"I had to see you," she said, panting for breath. "If you'll come back to the ship before they beam you down, we can prove to Colonel Petersen that you're all right. We can show them that the Masters—"

She realized suddenly what she said and uttered a little gasp. She had her pistol out before the surprised Wayne could move.

He stared coldly at the pistol, thinking bitterly that this was a hell of a way for it all to finish. "So they got you too," he said. "That little display at the airlock was a phony. You were sent out here to lure me back into the ship. Just another Judas."

She nodded slowly. "That's right," she said. "We all have to go to the Masters. It is—it—is—is—"

Her eyes glazed, and she swayed on her feet. The pistol wavered and swung in a feeble spiral, no longer pointed at Wayne. Gently, he took it from her nerveless fingers and caught her supple body as she fell.

He wiped his forehead dry. Up above, the sun was climbing toward the top of the sky, and its beams raked the planet below, pouring down heat.

He glanced at his wristwatch while waiting for his nerves to stop tingling. Sherri must have been the last one—the drug must have taken effect at last, and not a moment too soon. He decided to wait another half hour before he tried to get into the spaceship, just the same.

The huge globe of the Lord Nelson stood forlornly in the center of the valley. The airlock door stayed open; no one tried to close it.

Wayne's mouth was growing dry; his tongue felt like sandpaper. Nevertheless, he forced himself to sit quietly, watching the ship closely for the full half hour, before he picked up Sherri, tied his rope around her waist, and lowered her to the valley floor. Then he wandered around the rocks, collecting the six unconscious men, and did the same for them.

He carried them all, one by one, across the sand, burning a path before him with the needle beam.

Long before he had finished his task, the sand was churning loathsomely with the needles of hundreds and thousands of the monstrous little beasts. They were trying frantically to bring down the being that was so effectively thwarting their plans, jabbing viciously with their upthrust beaks. The expanse of sand that was the valley looked like a pincushion, with the writhing needles ploughing through the ground one after another. Wayne kept the orifice of his beam pistol hot as he cut his way back and forth from the base of the cliff to the ship.

When he had dumped the seven unconscious ones all inside the airlock, he closed the outer door and opened the inner one. There was not a sound from within.

Fifty-nine down, he thought, and none to go.

He entered the ship and dashed down the winding staircase to the water purifiers to change the water in the reservoir tanks. Thirsty as he was, he was not going to take a drink until the water had been cleared of the knockout drug he had dropped into the tanks.

After that came the laborious job of getting everyone in the ship strapped into their bunks for the takeoff. It took the better part of an hour to get all sixty of them up—they had fallen all over the ship—and nestled in the acceleration cradles. When the job was done, he went to the main control room and set the autopilot to lift the spaceship high into the ionosphere.

Then, sighting carefully on the valley far below, he dropped a flare bomb.

"Goodbye, little monsters," he said exultantly.

For a short space of time, nothing happened. Then the viewplate was filled with a deadly blue-white glare. Unlike an ordinary atomic bomb, the flare bomb would not explode violently; it simply burned, sending out a brilliant flare of deadly radiation that would crisp all life dozens of feet below the ground.

He watched the radiation blazing below. Then it began to die down, and when the glare cleared away, all was quiet below.

The valley was dead.

When it was all over, Wayne took the hypodermic gun from his pouch, filled it with the anti-hypnotic drug that he had taken from the medical cabinet, and began to make his rounds. He fired a shot into each and every one aboard. He had no way of knowing who had been injected by the small monsters and who had not, so he was taking no chances.

Then he went to the colonel's room. He wanted to be there when the Commanding Officer awoke.

The entire crew of the Lord Nelson was gathered in the big mess hall. Wayne stared down at the tired, frightened faces of the puzzled people looking up at him, and continued his explanation.

"Those of you who were under the control of the monsters know what it was like. They had the ability to inject a hypnotic drug into a human being through a normal space boot with those stingers of theirs. The drug takes effect so fast that the victim hardly has any idea of what has happened to him."

"But why do they do it?" It was Hollingwood, the metallurgist, looking unhappy with a tremendous bruise on his head where Wayne had clobbered him.

"Why does a wasp sting a spider? It doesn't kill the spider, it simply stuns it. That way, the spider remains alive and fresh so that young wasps can feed upon it at their leisure."

Wayne glanced over to his right. "Lieutenant Jervis, you've been under the effect of the drug longer than any of us. Would you explain what really happened when the Mavis landed?"

The young officer stood up. He was pale and shaken, but his voice was clear and steady.

"Just about the same thing that almost happened here," Jervis said. "We all walked around the valley floor and got stung one at a time. The things did it so quietly that none of us knew what was going on until we got hit ourselves. When we had all been enslaved, we were ready to do their bidding. They can't talk, but they can communicate by means of nerve messages when that needle is stuck into you."

Nearly half the crew nodded in sympathy. Wayne studied them, wondering what it must have been like. They knew; he could only guess.

"Naturally," Jervis went on, "those who have already been injected with the drug try to get others injected. When everyone aboard the Mavis had been stung, they ordered me to take the ship home and get another load of Earthmen. Apparently they like our taste. I had to obey; I was completely under their power. You know what it's like."

"And what happened to the others—the eight men you left behind?" asked Colonel Petersen.

Jervis clenched his teeth bitterly. "They just laid down on the sand—and waited."

"Horrible!" Sherri said.

Jervis fell silent. Wayne was picturing the sight, and knew everyone else was, too—the sight of hordes of carnivorous little aliens burrowing up through the sand and approaching the eight Earthmen who lay there, alive but helpless. Approaching them—and beginning to feed.

Just when the atmosphere began to grow too depressing, Wayne decided to break the spell. "I'd like to point out that the valley's been completely cauterized," he said. "The aliens have been wiped out. And I propose to lead a mission out to reconnoitre for the double-nucleus beryllium."

He looked around. "MacPherson? Boggs? Manetti? You three want to start over where we left off the last time?"

Sergeant Boggs came up to him. "Sir, I want you to understand that—"

"I know, Boggs," Wayne said. "Let's forget all about it. There's work to be done."

"I'm sorry I misjudged you, Wayne. If it hadn't been for your quick action, this crew would have gone the way of the Mavis."

"Just luck, Colonel," Wayne said. "If it hadn't been for those heavy-soled climbing boots, I'd probably be lying out there with the rest of you right now."

Colonel Petersen grinned. "Thanks to your boots, then."

Wayne turned to his team of three. "Let's get moving, fellows. We've wasted enough time already."

"Do we need spacesuits, sir?" Manetti asked.

"No, Manetti. The air's perfectly fine out there," Wayne said. "But I'd suggest you wear your climbing boots." He grinned. "You never can tell when they'll come in handy."

THE END

Contents

PROJECT MASTODON

By Clifford D. Simak

The chief of protocol said, "Mr. Hudson of--ah--Mastodonia."

The secretary of state held out his hand. "I'm glad to see you, Mr. Hudson. I understand you've been here several times."

"That's right," said Hudson. "I had a hard time making your people believe I was in earnest."

"And are you, Mr. Hudson?"

"Believe me, sir, I would not try to fool you."

"And this Mastodonia," said the secretary, reaching down to tap the document upon the desk. "You will pardon me, but I've never heard of it."

"It's a new nation," Hudson explained, "but quite legitimate. We have a constitution, a democratic form of government, duly elected officials, and a code of laws. We are a free, peace-loving people and we are possessed of a vast amount of natural resources and--"

"Please tell me, sir," interrupted the secretary, "just where are you located?"

"Technically, you are our nearest neighbors."

"But that is ridiculous!" exploded Protocol.

"Not at all," insisted Hudson. "If you will give me a moment, Mr. Secretary, I have considerable evidence."

He brushed the fingers of Protocol off his sleeve and stepped forward to the desk, laying down the portfolio he carried.

"Go ahead, Mr. Hudson," said the secretary. "Why don't we all sit down and be comfortable while we talk this over?"

"You have my credentials, I see. Now here is a propos--"

"I have a document signed by a certain Wesley Adams."

"He's our first president," said Hudson. "Our George Washington, you might say."

"What is the purpose of this visit, Mr. Hudson?"

"We'd like to establish diplomatic relations. We think it would be to our mutual benefit. After all, we are a sister republic in perfect sympathy with your policies and aims. We'd like to negotiate trade agreements and we'd be grateful for some Point Four aid."

The secretary smiled. "Naturally. Who doesn't?"

"We're prepared to offer something in return," Hudson told him stiffly. "For one thing, we could offer sanctuary."

"Sanctuary!"

"I understand," said Hudson, "that in the present state of international tensions, a foolproof sanctuary is not something to be sneezed at."

The secretary turned stone cold. "I'm an extremely busy man."

Protocol took Hudson firmly by the arm. "Out you go."

General Leslie Bowers put in a call to State and got the secretary.

"I don't like to bother you, Herb," he said, "but there's something I want to check. Maybe you can help me."

"Glad to help you if I can."

"There's a fellow hanging around out here at the Pentagon, trying to get in to see me. Said I was the only one he'd talk to, but you know how it is."

"I certainly do."

"Name of Huston or Hudson or something like that."

"He was here just an hour or so ago," said the secretary. "Crackpot sort of fellow."

"He's gone now?"

"Yes. I don't think he'll be back."

"Did he say where you could reach him?"

"No, I don't believe he did."

"How did he strike you? I mean what kind of impression did you get of him?"

"I told you. A crackpot."

"I suppose he is. He said something to one of the colonels that got me worrying. Can't pass up anything, you know--not in the Dirty Tricks Department. Even if it's crackpot, these days you got to have a look at it."

"He offered sanctuary," said the secretary indignantly. "Can you imagine that!"

"He's been making the rounds, I guess," the general said. "He was over at AEC. Told them some sort of tale about knowing where there were vast uranium deposits. It was the AEC that told me he was heading your way."

"We get them all the time. Usually we can ease them out. This Hudson was just a little better than the most of them. He got in to see me."

"He told the colonel something about having a plan that would enable us to establish secret bases anywhere we wished, even in the territory of potential enemies. I know it sounds crazy...."

"Forget it, Les."

"You're probably right," said the general, "but this idea sends me. Can you imagine the look on their Iron Curtain faces?"

The scared little government clerk, darting conspiratorial glances all about him, brought the portfolio to the FBI.

"I found it in a bar down the street," he told the man who took him in tow. "Been going there for years. And I found this portfolio laying in the booth. I saw the man who must have left it there and I tried to find him later, but I couldn't."

"How do you know he left it there?"

"I just figured he did. He left the booth just as I came in and it was sort of dark in there and it took a minute to see this thing laying there. You see, I always take the same booth every day and Joe sees me come in and he brings me the usual and--"

"You saw this man leave the booth you usually sit in?"

"That's right."

"Then you saw the portfolio."

"Yes, sir."

"You tried to find the man, thinking it must have been his."

"That's exactly what I did."

"But by the time you went to look for him, he had disappeared."

"That's the way it was."

"Now tell me--why did you bring it here? Why didn't you turn it in to the management so the man could come back and claim it?"

"Well, sir, it was like this. I had a drink or two and I was wondering all the time what was in that portfolio. So finally I took a peek and--"

"And what you saw decided you to bring it here to us."

"That's right. I saw--"

"Don't tell me what you saw. Give me your name and address and don't say anything about this. You understand that we're grateful to you for thinking of us, but we'd rather you said nothing."

"Mum's the word," the little clerk assured him, full of vast importance.

The FBI phoned Dr. Ambrose Amberly, Smithsonian expert on paleontology.

"We've got something, Doctor, that we'd like you to have a look at. A lot of movie film."

"I'll be most happy to. I'll come down as soon as I get clear. End of the week, perhaps?"

"This is very urgent, Doctor. Damnest thing you ever saw. Big, shaggy elephants and tigers with teeth down to their necks. There's a beaver the size of a bear."

"Fakes," said Amberly, disgusted. "Clever gadgets. Camera angles."

"That's what we thought first, but there are no gadgets, no camera angles. This is the real McCoy."

"I'm on my way," the paleontologist said, hanging up.

Snide item in smug, smartaleck gossip column: Saucers are passé at the Pentagon. There's another mystery that's got the high brass very high.

II

President Wesley Adams and Secretary of State John Cooper sat glumly under a tree in the capital of Mastodonia and waited for the ambassador extraordinary to return.

"I tell you, Wes," said Cooper, who, under various pseudonyms, was also the secretaries of commerce, treasury and war, "this is a crazy thing we did. What if Chuck can't get back? They might throw him in jail or something might happen to the time unit or the helicopter. We should have gone along."

"We had to stay," Adams said. "You know what would happen to this camp and our supplies if we weren't around here to guard them."

"The only thing that's given us any trouble is that old mastodon. If he comes around again, I'm going to take a skillet and bang him in the brisket."

"That isn't the only reason, either," said President Adams, "and you know it. We can't go deserting this nation now that we've created it. We have to keep possession. Just planting a flag and saying it's ours wouldn't be enough. We might be called upon for proof that we've established residence. Something like the old homestead laws, you know."

"We'll establish residence sure enough," growled Secretary Cooper, "if something happens to that time unit or the helicopter."

"You think they'll do it, Johnny?"

"Who do what?"

"The United States. Do you think they'll recognize us?"

"Not if they know who we are."

"That's what I'm afraid of."

"Chuck will talk them into it. He can talk the skin right off a cat."

"Sometimes I think we're going at this wrong. Sure, Chuck's got the long-range view and I suppose it's best. But maybe what we ought to do is grab a good, fast profit and get out of here. We could take in hunting parties at ten thousand a head or maybe we could lease it to a movie company."

"We can do all that and do it legally and with full protection," Cooper told him, "if we can get ourselves recognized as a sovereign nation. If we negotiate a mutual defense pact, no one would dare get hostile because we could squawk to Uncle Sam."

"All you say is true," Adams agreed, "but there are going to be questions. It isn't just a matter of walking into Washington and getting recognition. They'll want to know about us, such as our population. What if Chuck has to tell them it's a total of three persons?"

Cooper shook his head. "He wouldn't answer that way, Wes. He'd duck the question or give them some diplomatic double-talk. After all, how can we be sure there are only three of us? We took over the whole continent, remember."

"You know well enough, Johnny, there are no other humans back here in North America. The farthest back any scientist will place the migrations from Asia is 30,000 years. They haven't got here yet."

"Maybe we should have done it differently," mused Cooper. "Maybe we should have included the whole world in our proclamation, not just the continent. That way, we could claim quite a population."

"It wouldn't have held water. Even as it is, we went a little further than precedent allows. The old explorers usually laid claim to certain watersheds. They'd find a river and lay claim to all the territory drained by the river. They didn't go grabbing off whole continents."

"That's because they were never sure of exactly what they had," said Cooper. "We are. We have what you might call the advantage of hindsight."

He leaned back against the tree and stared across the land. It was a pretty place, he thought--the rolling ridges covered by vast grazing areas and small groves, the forest-covered, ten-mile river valley. And everywhere one looked, the grazing herds of mastodon, giant bison and wild horses, with the less gregarious fauna scattered hit and miss.

Old Buster, the troublesome mastodon, a lone bull which had been probably run out of a herd by a younger rival, stood at the edge of a grove a quarter-mile away. He had his head down and was curling and uncurling his trunk in an aimless sort of way while he teetered slowly in a lazy-crazy fashion by lifting first one foot and then another.

The old cuss was lonely, Cooper told himself. That was why he hung around like a homeless dog--except that he was too big and awkward to have much pet-appeal and, more than likely, his temper was unstable.

The afternoon sun was pleasantly warm and the air, it seemed to Cooper, was the freshest he had ever smelled. It was, altogether, a very pleasant place, an Indian-summer sort of land, ideal for a Sunday picnic or a camping trip.

The breeze was just enough to float out from its flagstaff before the tent the national banner of Mastodonia--a red rampant mastodon upon a field of green.

"You know, Johnny," said Adams, "there's one thing that worries me a lot. If we're going to base our claim on precedent, we may be way off base. The old explorers always claimed their discoveries for their nations or their king, never for themselves."

"The principle was entirely different," Cooper told him. "Nobody ever did anything for himself in those days. Everyone was always under someone else's protection. The explorers either were financed by their governments or were sponsored by them or operated under a royal charter or a patent. With us, it's different. Ours is a private enterprise. You dreamed up the time unit and built it. The three of us chipped in to buy the helicopter. We've paid all of our expenses out of our own pockets. We never got a dime from anyone. What we found is ours."

"I hope you're right," said Adams uneasily.

Old Buster had moved out from the grove and was shuffling warily toward the camp. Adams picked up the rifle that lay across his knees.

"Wait," said Cooper sharply. "Maybe he's just bluffing. It would be a shame to plaster him; he's such a nice old guy."

Adams half raised the rifle.

"I'll give him three steps more," he announced. "I've had enough of him."

Suddenly a roar burst out of the air just above their heads. The two leaped to their feet.

"It's Chuck!" Cooper yelled. "He's back!"

The helicopter made a half-turn of the camp and came rapidly to Earth.

Trumpeting with terror, Old Buster was a dwindling dot far down the grassy ridge.

III

They built the nightly fires circling the camp to keep out the animals.

"It'll be the death of me yet," said Adams wearily, "cutting all this wood."

"We have to get to work on that stockade," Cooper said. "We've fooled around too long. Some night, fire or no fire, a herd of mastodon will come busting in here and if they ever hit the helicopter, we'll be dead ducks. It wouldn't take more than just five seconds to turn us into Robinson Crusoes of the Pleistocene."

"Well, now that this recognition thing has petered out on us," said Adams, "maybe we can get down to business."

"Trouble is," Cooper answered, "we spent about the last of our money on the chain saw to cut this wood and on Chuck's trip to Washington. To build a stockade, we need a tractor. We'd kill ourselves if we tried to rassle that many logs bare-handed."

"Maybe we could catch some of those horses running around out there."

"Have you ever broken a horse?"

"No, that's one thing I never tried."

"Me, either. How about you, Chuck?"

"Not me," said the ex-ambassador extraordinary bluntly.

Cooper squatted down beside the coals of the cooking fire and twirled the spit. Upon the spit were three grouse and half a dozen quail. The huge coffee pot was sending out a nose-tingling aroma. Biscuits were baking in the reflector.

"We've been here six weeks," he said, "and we're still living in a tent and cooking on an open fire. We better get busy and get something done."

"The stockade first," said Adams, "and that means a tractor."

"We could use the helicopter."

"Do you want to take the chance? That's our getaway. Once something happens to it...."

"I guess not," Cooper admitted, gulping.

"We could use some of that Point Four aid right now," commented Adams.

"They threw me out," said Hudson. "Everywhere I went, sooner or later they got around to throwing me out. They were real organized about it."

"Well, we tried," Adams said.

"And to top it off," added Hudson, "I had to go and lose all that film and now we'll have to waste our time taking more of it. Personally, I don't ever want to let another saber-tooth get that close to me while I hold the camera."

"You didn't have a thing to worry about," Adams objected. "Johnny was right there behind you with the gun."

"Yeah, with the muzzle about a foot from my head when he let go."

"I stopped him, didn't I?" demanded Cooper.

"With his head right in my lap."

"Maybe we won't have to take any more pictures," Adams suggested.

"We'll have to," Cooper said. "There are sportsmen up ahead who'd fork over ten thousand bucks easy for two weeks of hunting here. But before we could sell them on it, we'd have to show them movies. That scene with the saber-tooth would cinch it."

"If it didn't scare them off," Hudson pointed out. "The last few feet showed nothing but the inside of his throat."

Ex-ambassador Hudson looked unhappy. "I don't like the whole setup. As soon as we bring someone in, the news is sure to leak. And once the word gets out, there'll be guys lying in ambush for us--maybe even nations--scheming to steal the know-how, legally or violently. That's what scares me the most about those films I lost. Someone will find them and they may guess what it's all about, but I'm hoping they either won't believe it or can't manage to trace us."

"We could swear the hunting parties to secrecy," said Cooper.

"How could a sportsman keep still about the mounted head of a saber-tooth or a record piece of ivory?" And the same thing would apply to anyone we approached. Some university could raise dough to send a team of scientists back here and a movie company would cough up plenty to use this place as a location for a caveman epic. But it wouldn't be worth a thing to either of them if they couldn't tell about it.

"Now if we could have gotten recognition as a nation, we'd have been all set. We could make our own laws and regulations and be able to enforce them. We could bring in settlers and establish trade. We could exploit our natural resources. It would all be legal and aboveboard. We could tell who we were and where we were and what we had to offer."

"We aren't licked yet," said Adams. "There's a lot that we can do. Those river hills are covered with ginseng. We can each dig a dozen pounds a day. There's good money in the root."

"Ginseng root," Cooper said, "is peanuts. We need big money."

"Or we could trap," offered Adams. "The place is alive with beaver."

"Have you taken a good look at those beaver? They're about the size of a St. Bernard."

"All the better. Think how much just one pelt would bring."

"No dealer would believe that it was beaver. He'd think you were trying to pull a fast one on him. And there are only a few states that allow beaver to be trapped. To sell the pelts--even if you could--you'd have to take out licenses in each of those states."

"Those mastodon carry a lot of ivory," said Cooper. "And if we wanted to go north, we'd find mammoths that would carry even more...."

"And get socked into the jug for ivory smuggling?"

They sat, all three of them, staring at the fire, not finding anything to say.

The moaning complaint of a giant hunting cat came from somewhere up the river.

IV

Hudson lay in his sleeping bag, staring at the sky. It bothered him a lot. There was not one familiar constellation, not one star that he could name with any certainty. This juggling of the stars, he thought, emphasized more than anything else in this ancient land the vast gulf of years which lay between him and the Earth where he had been--or would be--born.

A hundred and fifty thousand years, Adams had said, give or take ten thousand. There just was no way to know. Later on, there might be. A measurement of the stars and a comparison with their positions in the twentieth century might be one way of doing it. But at the moment, any figure could be no more than a guess.

The time machine was not something that could be tested for calibration or performance. As a matter of fact, there was no way to test it. They had not been certain, he remembered, the first time they had used it, that it would really work. There had been no way to find out. When it worked, you knew it worked. And if it hadn't worked, there would have been no way of knowing beforehand that it wouldn't.

Adams had been sure, of course, but that had been because he had absolute reliance in the half-mathematical, half-philosophic concepts he had worked out--concepts that neither Hudson nor Cooper could come close to understanding.

That had always been the way it had been, even when they were kids, with Wes dreaming up the deals that he and Johnny carried out. Back in those days, too, they had used time travel in their play. Out in Johnny's back yard, they had rigged up a time machine out of a wonderful collection of salvaged junk--a wooden crate, an empty five-gallon paint pail, a battered coffee maker, a bunch of discarded copper tubing, a busted steering wheel and other odds and ends. In it, they had "traveled" back to Indian-before-the-white-man land and mammoth-land and dinosaur-land and the slaughter, he remembered, had been wonderfully appalling.

But, in reality, it had been much different. There was much more to it than gunning down the weird fauna that one found.

And they should have known there would be, for they had talked about it often.

He thought of the bull session back in university and the little, usually silent kid who sat quietly in the corner, a law-school student whose last name had been Pritchard.

And after sitting silently for some time, this Pritchard kid had spoken up: "If you guys ever do travel in time, you'll run up against more than you bargain for. I don't mean the climate or the terrain or the fauna, but the economics and the politics."

They all jeered at him, Hudson remembered, and then had gone on with their talk. And after a short while, the talk had turned to women, as it always did.

He wondered where that quiet man might be. Some day, Hudson told himself, I'll have to look him up and tell him he was right.

We did it wrong, he thought. There were so many other ways we might have done it, but we'd been so sure and greedy--greedy for the triumph and the glory--and now there was no easy way to collect.

On the verge of success, they could have sought out help, gone to some large industrial concern or an educational foundation or even to the government. Like historic explorers, they could have obtained subsidization and sponsorship. Then they would have had protection, funds to do a proper job and they need not have operated on their present shoestring--one beaten-up helicopter and one time unit. They could have had several and at least one standing by in the twentieth century as a rescue unit, should that be necessary.

But that would have meant a bargain, perhaps a very hard one, and sharing with someone who had contributed nothing but the money. And there was more than money in a thing like this--there were twenty years of dreams and a great idea and the dedication to that great idea--years of work and years of disappointment and an almost fanatical refusal to give up.

Even so, thought Hudson, they had figured well enough. There had been many chances to make blunders and they'd made relatively few. All they lacked, in the last analysis, was backing.

Take the helicopter, for example. It was the one satisfactory vehicle for time traveling. You had to get up in the air to clear whatever upheavals and subsidences there had been through geologic ages. The helicopter took you up and kept you clear and gave you a chance to pick a proper landing place. Travel without it and, granting you were lucky with land surfaces, you still might materialize in the heart of some great tree or end up in a swamp or the middle of a herd of startled, savage beasts. A plane would have done as well, but back in this world, you couldn't land a plane--or you couldn't be certain that you could. A helicopter, though, could land almost anywhere.

In the time-distance they had traveled, they almost certainly had been lucky, although one could not be entirely sure just how great a part of it was luck. Wes had felt that he had not been working as blindly as it sometimes might appear. He had calibrated the unit for jumps of 50,000 years. Finer calibration, he had said realistically, would have to wait for more developmental work.

Using the 50,000-year calibrations, they had figured it out. One jump (conceding that the calibration was correct) would have landed them at the end of the Wisconsin glacial period; two jumps, at its beginning. The third would set them down toward the end of the Sangamon Interglacial and apparently it had--give or take ten thousand years or so.

They had arrived at a time when the climate did not seem to vary greatly, either hot or cold. The flora was modern enough to give them a homelike feeling. The fauna, modern and Pleistocenic, overlapped. And the surface features were little altered from the twentieth century. The rivers ran along familiar paths, the hills and bluffs looked much the same. In this corner of the Earth, at least, 150,000 years had not changed things greatly.

Boyhood dreams, Hudson thought, were wondrous. It was not often that three men who had daydreamed in their youth could follow it out to its end. But they had and here they were.

Johnny was on watch, and it was Hudson's turn next, and he'd better get to sleep. He closed his eyes, then opened them again for another look at the unfamiliar stars. The east, he saw, was flushed with silver light. Soon the Moon would rise, which was good. A man could keep a better watch when the Moon was up.

He woke suddenly, snatched upright and into full awareness by the marrow-chilling clamor that slashed across the night. The very air seemed curdled by the savage racket and, for a moment, he sat numbed by it. Then, slowly, it seemed--his brain took the noise and separated it into two distinct but intermingled categories, the deadly screaming of a cat and the maddened trumpeting of a mastodon.

The Moon was up and the countryside was flooded by its light. Cooper, he saw, was out beyond the watchfires, standing there and watching, with his rifle ready. Adams was scrambling out of his sleeping bag, swearing softly to himself. The cooking fire had burned down to a bed of mottled coals, but the watchfires still were burning and the helicopter, parked within their circle, picked up the glint of flames.

"It's Buster," Adams told him angrily. "I'd know that bellowing of his anywhere. He's done nothing but parade up and down and bellow ever since we got here. And now he seems to have gone out and found himself a saber-tooth."

Hudson zipped down his sleeping bag, grabbed up his rifle and jumped to his feet, following Adams in a silent rush to where Cooper stood.

Cooper motioned at them. "Don't break it up. You'll never see the like of it again."

Adams brought his rifle up.

Cooper knocked the barrel down.

"You fool!" he shouted. "You want them turning on us?"

Two hundred yards away stood the mastodon and, on his back, the screeching saber-tooth. The great beast reared into the air and came down with a jolt, bucking to unseat the cat, flailing the air with his massive trunk. And as he bucked, the cat struck and struck again with his gleaming teeth, aiming for the spine.

Then the mastodon crashed head downward, as if to turn a somersault, rolled and was on his feet again, closer to them now than he had been before. The huge cat had sprung off.

For a moment, the two stood facing one another. Then the tiger charged, a flowing streak of motion in the moonlight. Buster wheeled away and the cat, leaping, hit his shoulder, clawed wildly and slid off. The mastodon whipped to the attack, tusks slashing, huge feet stamping. The cat, caught a glancing blow by one of the tusks, screamed and leaped up, to land in spread-eagle fashion upon Buster's head.

Maddened with pain and fright, blinded by the tiger's raking claws, the old mastodon ran--straight toward the camp. And as he ran, he grasped the cat in his trunk and tore him from his hold, lifted him high and threw him.

"Look out!" yelled Cooper and brought his rifle up and fired.

For an instant, Hudson saw it all as if it were a single scene, motionless, one frame snatched from a fantastic movie epic--the charging mastodon, with the tiger lifted and the sound track one great blast of bloodthirsty bedlam.

Then the scene dissolved in a blur of motion. He felt his rifle thud against his shoulder, knowing he had fired, but not hearing the explosion. And the mastodon was almost on top of him, bearing down like some mighty and remorseless engine of blind destruction.

He flung himself to one side and the giant brushed past him. Out of the tail of his eye, he saw the thrown saber-tooth crash to Earth within the circle of the watchfires.

He brought his rifle up again and caught the area behind Buster's ear within his sights. He pressed the trigger. The mastodon staggered, then regained his stride and went rushing on. He hit one of the watchfires dead center and went through it, scattering coals and burning brands.

Then there was a thud and the screeching clang of metal.

"Oh, no!" shouted Hudson.

Rushing forward, they stopped inside the circle of the fires.

The helicopter lay tilted at a crazy angle. One of its rotor blades was crumpled. Half across it, as if he might have fallen as he tried to bull his mad way over it, lay the mastodon.

Something crawled across the ground toward them, its spitting, snarling mouth gaping in the firelight, its back broken, hind legs trailing.

Calmly, without a word, Adams put a bullet into the head of the saber-tooth.

V

General Leslie Bowers rose from his chair and paced up and down the room. He stopped to bang the conference table with a knotted fist.

"You can't do it," he bawled at them. "You can't kill the project. I know there's something to it. We can't give it up!"

"But it's been ten years, General," said the secretary of the army. "If they were coming back, they'd be here by now."

The general stopped his pacing, stiffened. Who did that little civilian squirt think he was, talking to the military in that tone of voice!

"We know how you feel about it, General," said the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff. "I think we all recognize how deeply you're involved. You've blamed yourself all these years and there is no need of it. After all, there may be nothing to it."

"Sir," said the general, "I know there's something to it. I thought so at the time, even when no one else did. And what we've turned up since serves to bear me out. Let's take a look at these three men of ours. We knew almost nothing of them at the time, but we know them now. I've traced out their lives from the time that they were born until they disappeared--and I might add that, on the chance it might be all a hoax, we've searched for them for years and we've found no trace at all.

"I've talked with those who knew them and I've studied their scholastic and military records. I've arrived at the conclusion that if any three men could do it, they were the ones who could. Adams was the brains and the other two were the ones who carried out the things that he dreamed up. Cooper was a bulldog sort of man who could keep them going and it would be Hudson who would figure out the angles.

"And they knew the angles, gentlemen. They had it all doped out.

"What Hudson tried here in Washington is substantial proof of that. But even back in school, they were thinking of those angles. I talked some years ago to a lawyer in New York, name of Pritchard. He told me that even back in university, they talked of the economic and political problems that they might face if they ever cracked what they were working at.

"Wesley Adams was one of our brightest young scientific men. His record at the university and his war work bears that out. After the war, there were at least a dozen jobs he could have had. But he wasn't interested. And I'll tell you why he wasn't. He had something bigger--something he wanted to work on. So he and these two others went off by themselves--"

"You think he was working on a temporal--" the army secretary cut in.

"He was working on a time machine," roared the general. "I don't know about this 'temporal' business. Just plain 'time machine' is good enough for me."

"Let's calm down, General," said the JCS chairman, "After all, there's no need to shout."

The general nodded. "I'm sorry, sir. I get all worked up about this. I've spent the last ten years with it. As you say, I'm trying to make up for what I failed to do ten years ago. I should have talked to Hudson. I was busy, sure, but not that busy. It's an official state of mind that we're too busy to see anyone and I plead guilty on that score. And now that you're talking about closing the project--"

"It's costing us money," said the army secretary.

"And we have no direct evidence," pointed out the JCS chairman.

"I don't know what you want," snapped the general. "If there was any man alive who could crack time, that man was Wesley Adams. We found where he worked. We found the workshop and we talked to neighbors who said there was something funny going on and--"

"But ten years, General!" the army secretary protested.

"Hudson came here, bringing us the greatest discovery in all history, and we kicked him out. After that, do you expect them to come crawling back to us?"

"You think they went to someone else?"

"They wouldn't do that. They know what the thing they have found would mean. They wouldn't sell us out."

"Hudson came with a preposterous proposition," said the man from the state department.

"They had to protect themselves!" yelled the general. "If you had discovered a virgin planet with its natural resources intact, what would you do about it? Come trotting down here and hand it over to a government that's too 'busy' to recognize--"

"General!"

"Yes, sir," apologized the general tiredly. "I wish you gentlemen could see my view of it, how it all fits together. First there were the films and we have the word of a dozen competent paleontologists that it's impossible to fake anything as perfect as those films. But even granting that they could be, there are certain differences that no one would ever think of faking, because no one ever knew. Who, as an example, would put lynx tassels on the ears of a saber-tooth? Who would know that young mastodon were black?

"And the location. I wonder if you've forgotten that we tracked down the location of Adams' workshop from those films alone. They gave us clues so positive that we didn't even hesitate--we drove straight to the old deserted farm where Adams and his friends had worked. Don't you see how it all fits together?"

"I presume," the man from the state department said nastily, "that you even have an explanation as to why they chose that particular location."

"You thought you had me there," said the general, "but I have an answer. A good one. The southwestern corner of Wisconsin is a geologic curiosity. It was missed by all the glaciations. Why, we do not know. Whatever the reason, the glaciers came down on both sides of it and far to the south of it and left it standing there, a little island in a sea of ice.

"And another thing: Except for a time in the Triassic, that same area of Wisconsin has always been dry land. That and a few other spots are the only areas in North America which have not, time and time again, been covered by water. I don't think it necessary to point out the comfort it would be to an experimental traveler in time to be certain that, in almost any era he might hit, he'd have dry land beneath him."

The economics expert spoke up: "We've given this matter a lot of study and, while we do not feel ourselves competent to rule upon the possibility or impossibility of time travel, there are some observations I should like, at some time, to make."

"Go ahead right now," said the JCS chairman.

"We see one objection to the entire matter. One of the reasons, naturally, that we had some interest in it is that, if true, it would give us an entire new planet to exploit, perhaps more wisely than we've done in the past. But the thought occurs that any planet has only a certain grand total of natural resources. If we go into the past and exploit them, what effect will that have upon what is left of those resources for use in the present? Wouldn't we, in doing this, be robbing ourselves of our own heritage?"

"That contention," said the AEC chairman, "wouldn't hold true in every case. Quite the reverse, in fact. We know that there was, in some geologic ages in the past, a great deal more uranium than we have today. Go back far enough and you'd catch that uranium before it turned into lead. In southwestern Wisconsin, there is a lot of lead. Hudson told us he knew the location of vast uranium deposits and we thought he was a crackpot talking through his hat. If we'd known--let's be fair about this--if we had known and believed him about going back in time, we'd have snapped him up at once and all this would not have happened."

"It wouldn't hold true with forests, either," said the chairman of the JCS. "Or with pastures or with crops."

The economics expert was slightly flushed. "There is another thing," he said. "If we go back in time and colonize the land we find there, what would happen when that--well, let's call it retroactive--when that retroactive civilization reaches the beginning of our historic period? What will result from that cultural collision? Will our history change? Is what has happened false? Is all--"

"That's all poppycock!" the general shouted. "That and this other talk about using up resources. Whatever we did in the past--or are about to do--has been done already. I've lain awake nights, mister, thinking about all these things and there is no answer, believe me, except the one I give you. The question which faces us here is an immediate one. Do we give all this up or do we keep on watching that Wisconsin farm, waiting for them to come back? Do we keep on trying to find, independently, the process or formula or method that Adams found for traveling in time?"

"We've had no luck in our research so far, General," said the quiet physicist who sat at the table's end. "If you were not so sure and if the evidence were not so convincing that it had been done by Adams, I'd say flatly that it is impossible. We have no approach which holds any hope at all. What we've done so far, you might best describe as flounder. But if Adams turned the trick, it must be possible. There may be, as a matter of fact, more ways than one. We'd like to keep on trying."

"Not one word of blame has been put on you for your failure," the chairman told the physicist. "That you could do it seems to be more than can be humanly expected. If Adams did it--if he did, I say--it must have been simply that he blundered on an avenue of research no other man has thought of."

"You will recall," said the general, "that the research program, even from the first, was thought of strictly as a gamble. Our one hope was, and must remain, that they will return."

"It would have been so much simpler all around," the state department man said, "if Adams had patented his method."

The general raged at him. "And had it published, all neat and orderly, in the patent office records so that anyone who wanted it could look it up and have it?"

"We can be most sincerely thankful," said the chairman, "that he did not patent it."

VI

The helicopter would never fly again, but the time unit was intact.

Which didn't mean that it would work.

They held a powwow at their camp site. It had been, they decided, simpler to move the camp than to remove the body of Old Buster. So they had shifted at dawn, leaving the old mastodon still sprawled across the helicopter.

In a day or two, they knew, the great bones would be cleanly picked by the carrion birds, the lesser cats, the wolves and foxes and the little skulkers.

Getting the time unit out of the helicopter had been quite a chore, but they finally had managed and now Adams sat with it cradled in his lap.

"The worst of it," he told them, "is that I can't test it. There's no way to. You turn it on and it works or it doesn't work. You can't know till you try."

"That's something we can't help," Cooper replied. "The problem, seems to me, is how we're going to use it without the whirlybird."

"We have to figure out some way to get up in the air," said Adams. "We don't want to take the chance of going up into the twentieth century and arriving there about six feet underground."

"Common sense says that we should be higher here than up ahead," Hudson pointed out. "These hills have stood here since Jurassic times. They probably were a good deal higher then and have weathered down. That weathering still should be going on. So we should be higher here than in the twentieth century--not much, perhaps, but higher."

"Did anyone ever notice what the altimeter read?" asked Cooper.

"I don't believe I did," Adams admitted.

"It wouldn't tell you, anyhow," Hudson declared. "It would just give our height then and now--and we were moving, remember--and what about air pockets and relative atmosphere density and all the rest?"

Cooper looked as discouraged as Hudson felt.

"How does this sound?" asked Adams. "We'll build a platform twelve feet high. That certainly should be enough to clear us and yet small enough to stay within the range of the unit's force-field."

"And what if we're two feet higher here?" Hudson pointed out.

"A fall of fourteen feet wouldn't kill a man unless he's plain unlucky."

"It might break some bones."

"So it might break some bones. You want to stay here or take a chance on a broken leg?"

"All right, if you put it that way. A platform, you say. A platform out of what?"

"Timber. There's lot of it. We just go out and cut some logs."

"A twelve-foot log is heavy. And how are we going to get that big a log uphill?"

"We drag it."

"We try to, you mean."

"Maybe we could fix up a cart," said Adams, after thinking a moment.

"Out of what?" Cooper asked.

"Rollers, maybe. We could cut some and roll the logs up here."

"That would work on level ground," Hudson said. "It wouldn't work to roll a log uphill. It would get away from us. Someone might get killed."

"The logs would have to be longer than twelve feet, anyhow," Cooper put in. "You'd have to set them in a hole and that takes away some footage."

"Why not the tripod principle?" Hudson offered. "Fasten three logs at the top and raise them."

"That's a gin-pole, a primitive derrick. It'd still have to be longer than twelve feet. Fifteen, sixteen, maybe. And how are we going to hoist three sixteen-foot logs? We'd need a block and tackle."

"There's another thing," said Cooper. "Part of those logs might just be beyond the effective range of the force-field. Part of them would have to--have to, mind you--move in time and part couldn't. That would set up a stress...."

"Another thing about it," added Hudson, "is that we'd travel with the logs. I don't want to come out in another time with a bunch of logs flying all around me."

"Cheer up," Adams told them. "Maybe the unit won't work, anyhow."

VII

The general sat alone in his office and held his head between his hands. The fools, he thought, the goddam knuckle-headed fools! Why couldn't they see it as clearly as he did?

For fifteen years now, as head of Project Mastodon, he had lived with it night and day and he could see all the possibilities as clearly as if they had been actual fact. Not military possibilities alone, although as a military man, he naturally would think of those first.

The hidden bases, for example, located within the very strongholds of potential enemies--within, yet centuries removed in time. Many centuries removed and only seconds distant.

He could see it all: The materialization of the fleets; the swift, devastating blow, then the instantaneous retreat into the fastnesses of the past. Terrific destruction, but not a ship lost nor a man.

Except that if you had the bases, you need never strike the blow. If you had the bases and let the enemy know you had them, there would never be the provocation.

And on the home front, you'd have air-raid shelters that would be effective. You'd evacuate your population not in space, but time. You'd have the sure and absolute defense against any kind of bombing--fission, fusion, bacteriological or whatever else the labs had in stock.

And if the worst should come--which it never would with a setup like that--you'd have a place to which the entire nation could retreat, leaving to the enemy the empty, blasted cities and the lethally dusted countryside.

Sanctuary--that had been what Hudson had offered the then-secretary of state fifteen years ago--and the idiot had frozen up with the insult of it and had Hudson thrown out.

And if war did not come, think of the living space and the vast new opportunities--not the least of which would be the opportunity to achieve peaceful living in a virgin world, where the old hatreds would slough off and new concepts have a chance to grow.

He wondered where they were, those three who had gone back into time. Dead, perhaps. Run down by a mastodon. Or stalked by tigers. Or maybe done in by warlike tribesmen. No, he kept forgetting there weren't any in that era. Or trapped in time, unable to get back, condemned to exile in an alien time. Or maybe, he thought, just plain disgusted. And he couldn't blame them if they were.

Or maybe--let's be fantastic about this--sneaking in colonists from some place other than the watched Wisconsin farm, building up in actuality the nation they had claimed to be.

They had to get back to the present soon or Project Mastodon would be killed entirely. Already the research program had been halted and if something didn't happen quickly, the watch that was kept on the Wisconsin farm would be called off.

"And if they do that," said the general, "I know just what I'll do."

He got up and strode around the room.

"By God," he said, "I'll show 'em!"

VIII

It had taken ten full days of back-breaking work to build the pyramid. They'd hauled the rocks from the creek bed half a mile away and had piled them, stone by rolling stone, to the height of a full twelve feet. It took a lot of rocks and a lot of patience, for as the pyramid went up, the base naturally kept broadening out.

But now all was finally ready.

Hudson sat before the burned-out campfire and held his blistered hands before him.

It should work, he thought, better than the logs--and less dangerous.

Grab a handful of sand. Some trickled back between your fingers, but most stayed in your grasp. That was the principle of the pyramid of stones. When--and if--the time machine should work, most of the rocks would go along.

Those that didn't go would simply trickle out and do no harm. There'd be no stress or strain to upset the working of the force-field.

And if the time unit didn't work?

Or if it did?

This was the end of the dream, thought Hudson, no matter how you looked at it.

For even if they did get back to the twentieth century, there would be no money and with the film lost and no other taken to replace it, they'd have no proof they had traveled back beyond the dawn of history--back almost to the dawn of Man.

Although how far you traveled would have no significance. An hour or a million years would be all the same; if you could span the hour, you could span the million years. And if you could go back the million years, it was within your power to go back to the first tick of eternity, the first stir of time across the face of emptiness and nothingness--back to that initial instant when nothing as yet had happened or been planned or thought, when all the vastness of the Universe was a new slate waiting the first chalk stroke of destiny.

Another helicopter would cost thirty thousand dollars--and they didn't even have the money to buy the tractor that they needed to build the stockade.

There was no way to borrow. You couldn't walk into a bank and say you wanted thirty thousand to take a trip back to the Old Stone Age.

You still could go to some industry or some university or the government and if you could persuade them you had something on the ball--why, then, they might put up the cash after cutting themselves in on just about all of the profits. And, naturally, they'd run the show because it was their money and all you had done was the sweating and the bleeding.

"There's one thing that still bothers me," said Cooper, breaking the silence. "We spent a lot of time picking our spot so we'd miss the barn and house and all the other buildings...."

"Don't tell me the windmill!" Hudson cried.

"No. I'm pretty sure we're clear of that. But the way I figure, we're right astraddle that barbed-wire fence at the south end of the orchard."

"If you want, we could move the pyramid over twenty feet or so."

Cooper groaned. "I'll take my chances with the fence." Adams got to his feet, the time unit tucked underneath his arm. "Come on, you guys. It's time to go."

They climbed the pyramid gingerly and stood unsteadily at its top.

Adams shifted the unit around, clasped it to his chest.

"Stand around close," he said, "and bend your knees a little. It may be quite a drop."

"Go ahead," said Cooper. "Press the button."

Adams pressed the button.

Nothing happened.

The unit didn't work.

IX

The chief of Central Intelligence was white-lipped when he finished talking.

"You're sure of your information?" asked the President.

"Mr. President," said the CIA chief, "I've never been more sure of anything in my entire life."

The President looked at the other two who were in the room, a question in his eyes.

The JCS chairman said, "It checks, sir, with everything we know."

"But it's incredible!" the President said.

"They're afraid," said the CIA chief. "They lie awake nights. They've become convinced that we're on the verge of traveling in time. They've tried and failed, but they think we're near success. To their way of thinking, they've got to hit us now or never, because once we actually get time travel, they know their number's up."

"But we dropped Project Mastodon entirely almost three years ago. It's been all of ten years since we stopped the research. It was twenty-five years ago that Hudson--"

"That makes no difference, sir. They're convinced we dropped the project publicly, but went underground with it. That would be the kind of strategy they could understand."

The President picked up a pencil and doodled on a pad.

"Who was that old general," he asked, "the one who raised so much fuss when we dropped the project? I remember I was in the Senate then. He came around to see me."

"Bowers, sir," said the JCS chairman.

"That's right. What became of him?"

"Retired."

"Well, I guess it doesn't make any difference now." He doodled some more and finally said, "Gentlemen, it looks like this is it. How much time did you say we had?"

"Not more than ninety days, sir. Maybe as little as thirty."

The President looked up at the JCS chairman.

"We're as ready," said the chairman, "as we will ever be. We can handle them--I think. There will, of course, be some--"

"I know," said the President.

"Could we bluff?" asked the secretary of state, speaking quietly. "I know it wouldn't stick, but at least we might buy some time."

"You mean hint that we have time travel?"

The secretary nodded.

"It wouldn't work," said the CIA chief tiredly. "If we really had it, there'd be no question then. They'd become exceedingly well-mannered, even neighborly, if they were sure we had it."

"But we haven't got it," said the President gloomily.

X

The two hunters trudged homeward late in the afternoon, with a deer slung from a pole they carried on their shoulders. Their breath hung visibly in the air as they walked along, for the frost had come and any day now, they knew, there would be snow.

"I'm worried about Wes," said Cooper, breathing heavily. "He's taking this too hard. We got to keep an eye on him."

"Let's take a rest," panted Hudson.

They halted and lowered the deer to the ground.

"He blames himself too much," said Cooper. He wiped his sweaty forehead. "There isn't any need to. All of us walked into this with our eyes wide open."

"He's kidding himself and he knows it, but it gives him something to go on. As long as he can keep busy with all his puttering around, he'll be all right."

"He isn't going to repair the time unit, Chuck."

"I know he isn't. And he knows it, too. He hasn't got the tools or the materials. Back in the workshop, he might have a chance, but here he hasn't."

"It's rough on him."

"It's rough on all of us."

"Yes, but we didn't get a brainstorm that marooned two old friends in this tail end of nowhere. And we can't make him swallow it when we say that it's okay, we don't mind at all."

"That's a lot to swallow, Johnny."

"What's going to happen to us, Chuck?"

"We've got ourselves a place to live and there's lots to eat. Save our ammo for the big game--a lot of eating for each bullet--and trap the smaller animals."

"I'm wondering what will happen when the flour and all the other stuff is gone. We don't have too much of it because we always figured we could bring in more."

"We'll live on meat," said Hudson. "We got bison by the million. The plains Indians lived on them alone. And in the spring, we'll find roots and in the summer berries. And in the fall, we'll harvest a half-dozen kinds of nuts."

"Some day our ammo will be gone, no matter how careful we are with it."

"Bows and arrows. Slingshots. Spears."

"There's a lot of beasts here I wouldn't want to stand up to with nothing but a spear."

"We won't stand up to them. We'll duck when we can and run when we can't duck. Without our guns, we're no lords of creation--not in this place. If we're going to live, we'll have to recognize that fact."

"And if one of us gets sick or breaks a leg or--"

"We'll do the best we can. Nobody lives forever."

But they were talking around the thing that really bothered them, Hudson told himself--each of them afraid to speak the thought aloud.

They'd live, all right, so far as food, shelter and clothing were concerned. And they'd live most of the time in plenty, for this was a fat and open-handed land and a man could make an easy living.

But the big problem--the one they were afraid to talk about--was their emptiness of purpose. To live, they had to find some meaning in a world without society.

A man cast away on a desert isle could always live for hope, but here there was no hope. A Robinson Crusoe was separated from his fellow-humans by, at the most, a few thousand miles. Here they were separated by a hundred and fifty thousand years.

Wes Adams was the lucky one so far. Even playing his thousand-to-one shot, he still held tightly to a purpose, feeble as it might be--the hope that he could repair the time machine.

We don't need to watch him now, thought Hudson. The time we'll have to watch is when he is forced to admit he can't fix the machine.

And both Hudson and Cooper had been kept sane enough, for there had been the cabin to be built and the winter's supply of wood to cut and the hunting to be done.

But then there would come a time when all the chores were finished and there was nothing left to do.

"You ready to go?" asked Cooper.

"Sure. All rested now," said Hudson.

They hoisted the pole to their shoulders and started off again.

Hudson had lain awake nights thinking of it and all the thoughts had been dead ends.

One could write a natural history of the Pleistocene, complete with photographs and sketches, and it would be a pointless thing to do, because no future scientist would ever have a chance to read it.

Or they might labor to build a memorial, a vast pyramid, perhaps, which would carry a message forward across fifteen hundred centuries, snatching with bare hands at a semblance of immortality. But if they did, they would be working against the sure and certain knowledge that it all would come to naught, for they knew in advance that no such pyramid existed in historic time.

Or they might set out to seek contemporary Man, hiking across four thousand miles of wilderness to Bering Strait and over into Asia. And having found contemporary Man cowering in his caves, they might be able to help him immeasurably along the road to his great inheritance. Except that they'd never make it and even if they did, contemporary Man undoubtedly would find some way to do them in and might eat them in the bargain.

They came out of the woods and there was the cabin, just a hundred yards away. It crouched against the hillside above the spring, with the sweep of grassland billowing beyond it to the slate-gray skyline. A trickle of smoke came up from the chimney and they saw the door was open.

"Wes oughtn't to leave it open that way," said Cooper. "No telling when a bear might decide to come visiting."

"Hey, Wes!" yelled Hudson.

But there was no sign of him.

Inside the cabin, a white sheet of paper lay on the table top. Hudson snatched it up and read it, with Cooper at his shoulder.

Dear guys--I don't want to get your hopes up again and have you disappointed. But I think I may have found the trouble. I'm going to try it out. If it doesn't work, I'll come back and burn this note and never say a word. But if you find the note, you'll know it worked and I'll be back to get you. Wes.

Hudson crumpled the note in his hand. "The crazy fool!"

"He's gone off his rocker," Cooper said. "He just thought...."

The same thought struck them both and they bolted for the door. At the corner of the cabin, they skidded to a halt and stood there, staring at the ridge above them.

The pyramid of rocks they'd built two months ago was gone!

XI

The crash brought Gen. Leslie Bowers (ret.) up out of bed--about two feet out of bed--old muscles tense, white mustache bristling.

Even at his age, the general was a man of action. He flipped the covers back, swung his feet out to the floor and grabbed the shotgun leaning against the wall.

Muttering, he blundered out of the bedroom, marched across the dining room and charged into the kitchen. There, beside the door, he snapped on the switch that turned on the floodlights. He practically took the door off its hinges getting to the stoop and he stood there, bare feet gripping the planks, nightshirt billowing in the wind, the shotgun poised and ready.

"What's going on out there?" he bellowed.

There was a tremendous pile of rocks resting where he'd parked his car. One crumpled fender and a drunken headlight peeped out of the rubble.

A man was clambering carefully down the jumbled stones, making a detour to dodge the battered fender.

The general pulled back the hammer of the gun and fought to control himself.

The man reached the bottom of the pile and turned around to face him. The general saw that he was hugging something tightly to his chest.

"Mister," the general told him, "your explanation better be a good one. That was a brand-new car. And this was the first time I was set for a night of sleep since my tooth quit aching."

The man just stood and looked at him.

"Who in thunder are you?" roared the general.

The man walked slowly forward. He stopped at the bottom of the stoop.

"My name is Wesley Adams," he said. "I'm--"

"Wesley Adams!" howled the general. "My God, man, where have you been all these years?"

"Well, I don't imagine you'll believe me, but the fact is...."

"We've been waiting for you. For twenty-five long years! Or, rather, I've been waiting for you. Those other idiots gave up. I've waited right here for you, Adams, for the last three years, ever since they called off the guard."

Adams gulped. "I'm sorry about the car. You see, it was this way...."

The general, he saw, was beaming at him fondly.

"I had faith in you," the general said.

He waved the shotgun by way of invitation. "Come on in. I have a call to make."

Adams stumbled up the stairs.

"Move!" the general ordered, shivering. "On the double! You want me to catch my death of cold out here?"

Inside, he fumbled for the lights and turned them on. He laid the shotgun across the kitchen table and picked up the telephone.

"Give me the White House at Washington," he said. "Yes, I said the White House.... The President? Naturally he's the one I want to talk to.... Yes, it's all right. He won't mind my calling him."

"Sir," said Adams tentatively.

The general looked up. "What is it, Adams? Go ahead and say it."

"Did you say twenty-five years?"

"That's what I said. What were you doing all that time?"

Adams grasped the table and hung on. "But it wasn't...."

"Yes," said the general to the operator. "Yes, I'll wait."

He held his hand over the receiver and looked inquiringly at Adams. "I imagine you'll want the same terms as before."

"Terms?"

"Sure. Recognition. Point Four Aid. Defense pact."

"I suppose so," Adams said.

"You got these saps across the barrel," the general told him happily. "You can get anything you want. You rate it, too, after what you've done and the bonehead treatment you got--but especially for not selling out."

XII

The night editor read the bulletin just off the teletype.

"Well, what do you know!" he said. "We just recognized Mastodonia."

He looked at the copy chief.

"Where the hell is Mastodonia?" he asked.

The copy chief shrugged. "Don't ask me. You're the brains in this joint."

"Well, let's get a map for the next edition," said the night editor.

XIII

Tabby, the saber-tooth, dabbed playfully at Cooper with his mighty paw.

Cooper kicked him in the ribs--an equally playful gesture.

Tabby snarled at him.

"Show your teeth at me, will you!" said Cooper. "Raised you from a kitten and that's the gratitude you show. Do it just once more and I'll belt you in the chops."

Tabby lay down blissfully and began to wash his face.

"Some day," warned Hudson, "that cat will miss a meal and that's the day you're it."

"Gentle as a dove," Cooper assured him. "Wouldn't hurt a fly."

"Well, one thing about it, nothing dares to bother us with that monstrosity around."

"Best watchdog there ever was. Got to have something to guard all this stuff we've got. When Wes gets back, we'll be millionaires. All those furs and ginseng and the ivory."

"If he gets back."

"He'll be back. Quit your worrying."

"But it's been five years," Hudson protested.

"He'll be back. Something happened, that's all. He's probably working on it right now. Could be that he messed up the time setting when he repaired the unit or it might have been knocked out of kilter when Buster hit the helicopter. That would take a while to fix. I don't worry that he won't come back. What I can't figure out is why did he go and leave us?"

"I've told you," Hudson said. "He was afraid it wouldn't work."

"There wasn't any need to be scared of that. We never would have laughed at him."

"No. Of course we wouldn't."

"Then what was he scared of?" Cooper asked.

"If the unit failed and we knew it failed, Wes was afraid we'd try to make him see how hopeless and insane it was. And he knew we'd probably convince him and then all his hope would be gone. And he wanted to hang onto that, Johnny. He wanted to hang onto his hope even when there wasn't any left."

"That doesn't matter now," said Cooper. "What counts is that he'll come back. I can feel it in my bones."

And here's another case, thought Hudson, of hope begging to be allowed to go on living.

God, he thought, I wish I could be that blind!

"Wes is working on it right now," said Cooper confidently.

XIV

He was. Not he alone, but a thousand others, working desperately, knowing that the time was short, working not alone for two men trapped in time, but for the peace they all had dreamed about--that the whole world had yearned for through the ages.

For to be of any use, it was imperative that they could zero in the time machines they meant to build as an artilleryman would zero in a battery of guns, that each time machine would take its occupants to the same instant of the past, that their operation would extend over the same period of time, to the exact second.

It was a problem of control and calibration--starting with a prototype that was calibrated, as its finest adjustment, for jumps of 50,000 years.

Project Mastodon was finally under way.

Contents

2 B R 0 2 B

by KURT VONNEGUT

Got a problem? Just pick up the phone. It solved them all--and all the same way!

Everything was perfectly swell.

There were no prisons, no slums, no insane asylums, no cripples, no poverty, no wars.

All diseases were conquered. So was old age.

Death, barring accidents, was an adventure for volunteers.

The population of the United States was stabilized at forty-million souls.

One bright morning in the Chicago Lying-in Hospital, a man named Edward K. Wehling, Jr., waited for his wife to give birth. He was the only man waiting. Not many people were born a day any more.

Wehling was fifty-six, a mere stripling in a population whose average age was one hundred and twenty-nine.

X-rays had revealed that his wife was going to have triplets. The children would be his first.

Young Wehling was hunched in his chair, his head in his hand. He was so rumpled, so still and colorless as to be virtually invisible. His camouflage was perfect, since the waiting room had a disorderly and demoralized air, too. Chairs and ashtrays had been moved away from the walls. The floor was paved with spattered dropcloths.

The room was being redecorated. It was being redecorated as a memorial to a man who had volunteered to die.

A sardonic old man, about two hundred years old, sat on a stepladder, painting a mural he did not like. Back in the days when people aged visibly, his age would have been guessed at thirty-five or so. Aging had touched him that much before the cure for aging was found.

The mural he was working on depicted a very neat garden. Men and women in white, doctors and nurses, turned the soil, planted seedlings, sprayed bugs, spread fertilizer.

Men and women in purple uniforms pulled up weeds, cut down plants that were old and sickly, raked leaves, carried refuse to trash-burners.

Never, never, never--not even in medieval Holland nor old Japan--had a garden been more formal, been better tended. Every plant had all the loam, light, water, air and nourishment it could use.

A hospital orderly came down the corridor, singing under his breath a popular song:

If you don't like my kisses, honey, Here's what I will do: I'll go see a girl in purple, Kiss this sad world toodle-oo. If you don't want my lovin', Why should I take up all this space? I'll get off this old planet, Let some sweet baby have my place.

The orderly looked in at the mural and the muralist. "Looks so real," he said, "I can practically imagine I'm standing in the middle of it."

"What makes you think you're not in it?" said the painter. He gave a satiric smile. "It's called 'The Happy Garden of Life,' you know."

"That's good of Dr. Hitz," said the orderly.

* * * * *

He was referring to one of the male figures in white, whose head was a portrait of Dr. Benjamin Hitz, the hospital's Chief Obstetrician. Hitz was a blindingly handsome man.

"Lot of faces still to fill in," said the orderly. He meant that the faces of many of the figures in the mural were still blank. All blanks were to be filled with portraits of important people on either the hospital staff or from the Chicago Office of the Federal Bureau of Termination.

"Must be nice to be able to make pictures that look like something," said the orderly.

The painter's face curdled with scorn. "You think I'm proud of this daub?" he said. "You think this is my idea of what life really looks like?"

"What's your idea of what life looks like?" said the orderly.

The painter gestured at a foul dropcloth. "There's a good picture of it," he said. "Frame that, and you'll have a picture a damn sight more honest than this one."

"You're a gloomy old duck, aren't you?" said the orderly.

"Is that a crime?" said the painter.

The orderly shrugged. "If you don't like it here, Grandpa--" he said, and he finished the thought with the trick telephone number that people who didn't want to live any more were supposed to call. The zero in the telephone number he pronounced "naught."

The number was: "2 B R 0 2 B."

It was the telephone number of an institution whose fanciful sobriquets included: "Automat," "Birdland," "Cannery," "Catbox," "De-louser," "Easy-go," "Good-by, Mother," "Happy Hooligan," "Kiss-me-quick," "Lucky Pierre," "Sheepdip," "Waring Blendor," "Weep-no-more" and "Why Worry?"

"To be or not to be" was the telephone number of the municipal gas chambers of the Federal Bureau of Termination.

* * * * *

The painter thumbed his nose at the orderly. "When I decide it's time to go," he said, "it won't be at the Sheepdip."

"A do-it-yourselfer, eh?" said the orderly. "Messy business, Grandpa. Why don't you have a little consideration for the people who have to clean up after you?"

The painter expressed with an obscenity his lack of concern for the tribulations of his survivors. "The world could do with a good deal more mess, if you ask me," he said.

The orderly laughed and moved on.

Wehling, the waiting father, mumbled something without raising his head. And then he fell silent again.

A coarse, formidable woman strode into the waiting room on spike heels. Her shoes, stockings, trench coat, bag and overseas cap were all purple, the purple the painter called "the color of grapes on Judgment Day."

The medallion on her purple musette bag was the seal of the Service Division of the Federal Bureau of Termination, an eagle perched on a turnstile.

The woman had a lot of facial hair--an unmistakable mustache, in fact. A curious thing about gas-chamber hostesses was that, no matter how lovely and feminine they were when recruited, they all sprouted mustaches within five years or so.

"Is this where I'm supposed to come?" she said to the painter.

"A lot would depend on what your business was," he said. "You aren't about to have a baby, are you?"

"They told me I was supposed to pose for some picture," she said. "My name's Leora Duncan." She waited.

"And you dunk people," he said.

"What?" she said.

"Skip it," he said.

"That sure is a beautiful picture," she said. "Looks just like heaven or something."

"Or something," said the painter. He took a list of names from his smock pocket. "Duncan, Duncan, Duncan," he said, scanning the list. "Yes--here you are. You're entitled to be immortalized. See any faceless body here you'd like me to stick your head on? We've got a few choice ones left."

She studied the mural bleakly. "Gee," she said, "they're all the same to me. I don't know anything about art."

"A body's a body, eh?" he said, "All righty. As a master of fine art, I recommend this body here." He indicated a faceless figure of a woman who was carrying dried stalks to a trash-burner.

"Well," said Leora Duncan, "that's more the disposal people, isn't it? I mean, I'm in service. I don't do any disposing."

The painter clapped his hands in mock delight. "You say you don't know anything about art, and then you prove in the next breath that you know more about it than I do! Of course the sheave-carrier is wrong for a hostess! A snipper, a pruner--that's more your line." He pointed to a figure in purple who was sawing a dead branch from an apple tree. "How about her?" he said. "You like her at all?"

"Gosh--" she said, and she blushed and became humble--"that--that puts me right next to Dr. Hitz."

"That upsets you?" he said.

"Good gravy, no!" she said. "It's--it's just such an honor."

"Ah, You admire him, eh?" he said.

"Who doesn't admire him?" she said, worshiping the portrait of Hitz. It was the portrait of a tanned, white-haired, omnipotent Zeus, two hundred and forty years old. "Who doesn't admire him?" she said again. "He was responsible for setting up the very first gas chamber in Chicago."

"Nothing would please me more," said the painter, "than to put you next to him for all time. Sawing off a limb--that strikes you as appropriate?"

"That is kind of like what I do," she said. She was demure about what she did. What she did was make people comfortable while she killed them.

* * * * *

And, while Leora Duncan was posing for her portrait, into the waitingroom bounded Dr. Hitz himself. He was seven feet tall, and he boomed with importance, accomplishments, and the joy of living.

"Well, Miss Duncan! Miss Duncan!" he said, and he made a joke. "What are you doing here?" he said. "This isn't where the people leave. This is where they come in!"

"We're going to be in the same picture together," she said shyly.

"Good!" said Dr. Hitz heartily. "And, say, isn't that some picture?"

"I sure am honored to be in it with you," she said.

"Let me tell you," he said, "I'm honored to be in it with you. Without women like you, this wonderful world we've got wouldn't be possible."

He saluted her and moved toward the door that led to the delivery rooms. "Guess what was just born," he said.

"I can't," she said.

"Triplets!" he said.

"Triplets!" she said. She was exclaiming over the legal implications of triplets.

The law said that no newborn child could survive unless the parents of the child could find someone who would volunteer to die. Triplets, if they were all to live, called for three volunteers.

"Do the parents have three volunteers?" said Leora Duncan.

"Last I heard," said Dr. Hitz, "they had one, and were trying to scrape another two up."

"I don't think they made it," she said. "Nobody made three appointments with us. Nothing but singles going through today, unless somebody called in after I left. What's the name?"

"Wehling," said the waiting father, sitting up, red-eyed and frowzy. "Edward K. Wehling, Jr., is the name of the happy father-to-be."

He raised his right hand, looked at a spot on the wall, gave a hoarsely wretched chuckle. "Present," he said.

"Oh, Mr. Wehling," said Dr. Hitz, "I didn't see you."

"The invisible man," said Wehling.

"They just phoned me that your triplets have been born," said Dr. Hitz. "They're all fine, and so is the mother. I'm on my way in to see them now."

"Hooray," said Wehling emptily.

"You don't sound very happy," said Dr. Hitz.

"What man in my shoes wouldn't be happy?" said Wehling. He gestured with his hands to symbolize care-free simplicity. "All I have to do is pick out which one of the triplets is going to live, then deliver my maternal grandfather to the Happy Hooligan, and come back here with a receipt."

* * * * *

Dr. Hitz became rather severe with Wehling, towered over him. "You don't believe in population control, Mr. Wehling?" he said.

"I think it's perfectly keen," said Wehling tautly.

"Would you like to go back to the good old days, when the population of the Earth was twenty billion--about to become forty billion, then eighty billion, then one hundred and sixty billion? Do you know what a drupelet is, Mr. Wehling?" said Hitz.

"Nope," said Wehling sulkily.

"A drupelet, Mr. Wehling, is one of the little knobs, one of the little pulpy grains of a blackberry," said Dr. Hitz. "Without population control, human beings would now be packed on this surface of this old planet like drupelets on a blackberry! Think of it!"

Wehling continued to stare at the same spot on the wall.

"In the year 2000," said Dr. Hitz, "before scientists stepped in and laid down the law, there wasn't even enough drinking water to go around, and nothing to eat but sea-weed--and still people insisted on their right to reproduce like jackrabbits. And their right, if possible, to live forever."

"I want those kids," said Wehling quietly. "I want all three of them."

"Of course you do," said Dr. Hitz. "That's only human."

"I don't want my grandfather to die, either," said Wehling.

"Nobody's really happy about taking a close relative to the Catbox," said Dr. Hitz gently, sympathetically.

"I wish people wouldn't call it that," said Leora Duncan.

"What?" said Dr. Hitz.

"I wish people wouldn't call it 'the Catbox,' and things like that," she said. "It gives people the wrong impression."

"You're absolutely right," said Dr. Hitz. "Forgive me." He corrected himself, gave the municipal gas chambers their official title, a title no one ever used in conversation. "I should have said, 'Ethical Suicide Studios,'" he said.

"That sounds so much better," said Leora Duncan.

"This child of yours--whichever one you decide to keep, Mr. Wehling," said Dr. Hitz. "He or she is going to live on a happy, roomy, clean, rich planet, thanks to population control. In a garden like that mural there." He shook his head. "Two centuries ago, when I was a young man, it was a hell that nobody thought could last another twenty years. Now centuries of peace and plenty stretch before us as far as the imagination cares to travel."

He smiled luminously.

The smile faded as he saw that Wehling had just drawn a revolver.

Wehling shot Dr. Hitz dead. "There's room for one--a great big one," he said.

And then he shot Leora Duncan. "It's only death," he said to her as she fell. "There! Room for two."

And then he shot himself, making room for all three of his children.

Nobody came running. Nobody, seemingly, heard the shots.

The painter sat on the top of his stepladder, looking down reflectively on the sorry scene.

* * * * *

The painter pondered the mournful puzzle of life demanding to be born and, once born, demanding to be fruitful ... to multiply and to live as long as possible--to do all that on a very small planet that would have to last forever.

All the answers that the painter could think of were grim. Even grimmer, surely, than a Catbox, a Happy Hooligan, an Easy Go. He thought of war. He thought of plague. He thought of starvation.

He knew that he would never paint again. He let his paintbrush fall to the dropcloths below. And then he decided he had had about enough of life in the Happy Garden of Life, too, and he came slowly down from the ladder.

He took Wehling's pistol, really intending to shoot himself.

But he didn't have the nerve.

And then he saw the telephone booth in the corner of the room. He went to it, dialed the well-remembered number: "2 B R 0 2 B."

"Federal Bureau of Termination," said the very warm voice of a hostess.

"How soon could I get an appointment?" he asked, speaking very carefully.

"We could probably fit you in late this afternoon, sir," she said. "It might even be earlier, if we get a cancellation."

"All right," said the painter, "fit me in, if you please." And he gave her his name, spelling it out.

"Thank you, sir," said the hostess. "Your city thanks you; your country thanks you; your planet thanks you. But the deepest thanks of all is from future generations."

END

Contents

THE PYGMY PLANET

By Jack Williamson

"Nothing ever happens to me!" Larry Manahan grumbled under his breath, sitting behind his desk at the advertising agency which employed his services in return for the consideration of fifty a week. "All the adventure I know is what I see in the movies, or read about in magazines. What wouldn't I give for a slice of real life!"

Unconsciously, he tensed the muscles of his six feet of lean, hard body. His crisp, flame-colored hair seemed to bristle; his blue eyes blazed. He clenched a brown hammer of a fist.

Larry felt himself an energetic, red-blooded square peg, badly afflicted with the urge for adventure, miserably wedged in a round hole. It is one of the misfortunes of our civilization that a young man who, for example, might have been an excellent pirate a couple of centuries ago, must be kept chained to a desk. And that seemed to be Larry's fate.

"Things happen to other people," he muttered. "Why couldn't an adventure come to me?"

He sat, staring wistfully at a picture of a majestic mountain landscape, soon to be used in the advertising of a railway company whose publicity was handled by his agency, when the jangle of the telephone roused him with a start.

"Oh, Larry--" came a breathless, quivering voice.

Then, with a click, the connection was broken.

The voice had been feminine and had carried a familiar ring. Larry tried to place it, as he listened at the receiver and attempted to get the broken connection restored.

"Your party hung up, and won't answer," the operator informed him.

He replaced the receiver on the hook, still seeking to follow the thin thread of memory given him by the familiar note in that eager excited voice. If only the girl had spoken a few more words!

* * * * *

Then it came to him.

"Agnes Sterling!" he exclaimed aloud.

Agnes Sterling was a slender, elfish, dark-haired girl--lovely, he had thought her, on the occasions of their few brief meetings. Larry knew her as the secretary and laboratory assistant of Dr. Travis Whiting, a retired college professor known for his work on the structure of the atom. Larry had called at the home-laboratory of the savant, months before, to check certain statistics to be used for advertising purposes and had met the girl there. Only a few times since had he seen her.

Now she had called him in a voice that fairly trembled with excitement--and, he thought, dread! And she had been interrupted before she had time to give him any message.

For a few seconds Larry stared at the telephone. Then he rose abruptly to his feet, crammed his hat on his head, and started for the door.

"The way to find adventure is to go after it," he murmured. "And this is the invitation!"

It was not many minutes later that he sprang out of a taxi at the front of the building in which Dr. Travis Whiting made his home and maintained a private experimental laboratory. It was a two-story stucco house, rather out of date, set well back from the sidewalk, with a scrap of lawn and a few straggling shrubs before it. The door was closed, the windows curtained blankly. The place seemed deserted and forbidding.

Larry ran up the uneven brick walk to the door and rang the bell. Impatiently, he waited a few moments. No sound came from within. He felt something ominous, fateful, about the silent mystery that seemed to shroud the old house. For the first time, it occurred to him that Agnes might be in physical danger, as a result of some incautious experiment on the part of Dr. Whiting.

* * * * *

Instinctively, his hand sought the door knob. To his surprise, the door was unlocked. It swung open before him. For a moment he stared, hesitating, into the dark hall revealed beyond. Then, driven by the thought that Agnes might be in danger, he advanced impulsively.

The several doors opening into the hall were closed. The one at the back, he knew, gave admittance to the laboratory. Impelled by some vague premonition, he hastened toward it down the long hall and threw it open.

As he stepped inside the room, his foot slipped on a spot of something red. Recovering his balance with difficulty, he peered about.

Bending down, Larry briefly examined the red spot on which he had slipped. It was a pool of fresh blood which had not yet darkened. Lying beside it, crimson-splashed, was a revolver. As he picked up the weapon, he cried out in astonishment.

Something had happened to the gun. The trigger guard was torn from it, and the cylinder crushed as if in some resistless grasp; the stock was twisted, and the barrel bent almost into a circle. The revolver had been crumpled by some terrific force--as a soft clay model of it might have been broken by the pressure of a man's hand.

"Crimson shades of Caesar!" he muttered, and dropped the crushed weapon to the floor again.

His eyes swept the silent laboratory.

It was a huge room, taking up all the rear part of the house, from the first floor to the roof. Gray daylight streamed through a sky-light, twenty feet overhead. The ends of the vast room were cluttered with electrical and chemical apparatus; but Larry's eye was caught at once by a strange and complex device, which loomed across from him, in the center of the floor.

* * * * *

Two pillars of intense light, a ray of crimson flame and another of deeply violet radiance, beat straight down from a complicated array of enormous, oddly shaped electron tubes, of mirrors and lenses and prisms, of coils and whirling disks, which reached almost to the roof. Upright, a yard in diameter and almost a yard apart, the strange columns of light were sharp-edged as two transparent cylinders filled with liquid light of ruby and of amethyst. Each ray poured down upon a circular platform of glass or polished crystal.

Hanging between those motionless cylinders of red and violet light was a strange-looking, greenish globe. A round ball, nearly a yard in diameter, hung between the rays, almost touching them. Its surface was oddly splotched with darker and lighter areas. It was spinning steadily, at a low rate of speed. Larry did not see what held it up; it seemed hanging free, several feet above the crystal platforms.

Reluctantly he withdrew his eyes from the mysterious sphere and looked about the room once more. No, the laboratory was vacant of human occupants. No one was hidden among the benches that were cluttered with beakers and test tubes and stills, or among the dynamos and transformers in the other end of the room.

A confusion of questions beat through Larry's brain.

What danger could be haunting this quiet laboratory? Was this the blood of Agnes Sterling or the scientist who employed her that was now clotting on the floor? What terrific force had crumpled up the revolver? What had become of Agnes and Dr. Whiting? And of whatever had attacked them? Had Agnes called him after the attack, or before?

* * * * *

Despite himself, his attention was drawn back to the little globe spinning so regularly, floating in the air between the pillars of red and violet flame. Floating alone, like a little world in space, without a visible support, it might be held up by magnetic attraction, he thought.

A tiny planet!

His mind quickened at the idea, and he half forgot the weird mystery gathering about him. He stepped nearer the sphere. It was curiously like a miniature world. The irregular bluish areas would be seas; the green and the brown spaces land. In some parts, the surface appeared mistily obscured--perhaps, by masses of cloud.

Larry saw an odd-looking lamp, set perhaps ten feet behind the slowly spinning, floating ball, throwing upon it a bright ray of vividly blue light. Half the strange sphere was brilliantly illuminated by it; the rest was in comparative darkness. That blue lamp, it came to Larry, lit the sphere as the sun lights the earth.

"Nonsense!" he muttered. "It's impossible!"

Aroused by the seeming wonder of it, he was drawn nearer the ball. It spun rather slowly, Larry noted, and each rotation consumed several seconds. He could distinguish green patches that might be forests, and thin, silvery lines that looked like rivers, and broad, red-brown areas that must be deserts, and the broad blue stretches that suggested oceans.

"A toy world!" he cried. "A laboratory planet! What an experiment--"

Then his eyes, looking up, caught the glistening, polished lens of a powerful magnifying glass which hung by a black ribbon from a hook on one of the heavy steel beams which supported the huge mass of silently whirring apparatus.

* * * * *

Eagerly, he unfastened the magnifier. Holding it before his eyes, he bent toward the strange sphere spinning steadily in the air.

"Suffering shades of Caesar!" he ejaculated.

Beneath the lens a world was racing. He could see masses of vividly green forest; vast expanses of bare, cracked, ocherous desert; wastes of smooth blue ocean.

Then he was gazing at--a city?

Larry could not be sure that he had seen correctly. It had slipped very swiftly beneath his lens. But he had a momentary impression of tiny, fantastic buildings, clustered in an elflike city.

A pygmy planet, spinning in the laboratory like a world in the gulf of space! What could it mean? Could it be connected with the strange call from Agnes, with the blood on the floor, with the strange and ominous silence that shrouded the deserted room?

"Oh, Larry!" a clear, familiar voice rang suddenly from the door. "You came!"

Startled, Larry leaped back from the tiny, whirling globe and turned to the door. A girl had come silently into the room. It was Agnes Sterling. Her dark hair was tangled. Her small face was flushed, and her brown eyes were wide with fear! In a white hand, which shook a little, she carried a small, gold-plated automatic pistol.

She ran nervously across the wide floor to Larry, with relief dawning in her eyes.

"I'm so glad you came!" she gasped, panting with excitement. "I started to call you on the phone, but then I was afraid it would kill you if you came! Please be careful! It may come back, any minute! You'd better go away! It just took Dr. Whiting!"

"Wait a minute," Larry put in. "Just one thing at a time. Let's get this straight. To begin with, what is it that might kill me, and that got the doctor?"

"It's terrible!" she gasped, trembling. "A monster! You must go away before it comes back!"

* * * * *

Larry drew a tall stool from beside one of the crowded tables and placed it beside her.

"Don't get excited," he urged. "I'm sure everything will be all right. Just sit down, and tell me about it. The whole story. Just what is going on here, and what happened to Dr. Whiting."

He helped her upon the stool. She looked up at him gratefully, and began to speak in a rapid voice.

"You see that little planet? The monster came from that and carried the doctor back there. And I know it will soon be back for another victim--for sacrifice!"

She had pointed across the great room, toward the strange little globe which hung between the pillars of red and violet light.

"Please go slow!" Larry broke in. "You're too fast for me. Are you trying to tell me that that spinning ball is really a planet?"

Agnes seemed a little more composed, though she was still flushed and breathing rapidly. Her small hand still gripped the bright automatic.

"Yes, it is a planet. The Pygmy Planet, Dr. Whiting called it. He said it was the great experiment of the century. You see, he was testing evolution. We began with the planet, young and hot, and watched it until it is now almost as old as Mars. We watched the change and development of life upon it. And the rise and decay of a strange civilization. Until now its people are strange things, with human brains in mechanical bodies, worshiping a rusty machine like a god--"

"Go slow!" Larry pleaded again. "I don't see--Did the doctor build--create--that planet himself?"

"Yes. It began with his work on atomic structure. He discovered that certain frequencies of the X-ray--so powerful that they are almost akin to the cosmic ray--have the power of altering electronic orbits. Every atom, you know, is a sort of solar system, with electrons revolving about a proton.

"And these rays would cause the electrons to fall into incredibly smaller orbits, causing vast reduction in the size of the atoms, and in the size of any object which the atoms formed. They would cause anything, living or dead, to shrink to inconceivably microscopic dimensions--or restore it to its former size, depending upon the exact wave-length used.

"And time passes far more swiftly for the tiny objects--probably because the electrons move faster in their smaller orbits. That is what suggested to Dr. Whiting that he would be able to watch the entire life of a planet, in the laboratory. And so, at first, we experimented merely with solitary specimens or colonies of animals.

"But on the Pygmy Planet, we have watched the life of a world--the whole panorama of evolution--"

* * * * *

"It seems too wonderful!" Larry muttered. "Could Dr. Whiting actually decrease his size and become a dwarf?"

"No trick at all," Agnes assured him. "All you have to do is stand in the violet beam, to shrink. And move over in the red one, when you want to grow. I have been several times with Dr. Whiting to the Pygmy Planet."

"Been--" Larry stopped, breathless with astonishment.

"See the little airplane," Agnes said, pointing under the table.

Larry gasped.

Beneath the table stood a toy airplane. The spread of its glistening, perfect wings was hardly three feet. A wonderful, delicate toy, accurate in every detail of propeller, motor and landing gear, of brace and rudder and aileron. Then he realized that it was no toy at all, but a faithful miniature of a commercial plane. A complete, tiny copy of one of the latest single-motor, cabin monoplane models.

"It looks like it would fly," he said "a friend of mine his a big one, just like it! Taught me to fly it, last summer vacation. This is the very image of it!"

"It will fly!" Agnes assured him, now composed enough to smile at his amazement. "I have been with the doctor to the Pygmy Planet in it.

"You stand in the violet ray until you're about three inches high," she explained, "and then get into the plane. Then you fly up and into the violet ray at the point where it touches the planet, and remain there while you grow smaller. When you are the right size, all you have to do is drop to the surface, and land. To come away, you rise into the red ray and stay in it till you grow to proper size, when you come down and land."

"You--you've actually done that?" he gasped. "It sounds like a fairy story!"

* * * * *

"Yes, I've done it," she assured him. Then she shuddered apprehensively. "And the things--the machine-monsters, Dr. Whiting called them--have learned to do it, too. One of them came down the red ray, and attacked him. The doctor had a gun--but what could he do against one of those?" She shivered.

"It carried him back up the violet beam. Just a few minutes ago, I started to phone you. Then I was afraid you would be hurt--"

"Me, hurt?" Larry burst out. "What about you, here alone?"

"It was my business. Dr. Whiting told me there might be danger, when he hired me."

"And now, what can we do?" Larry demanded.

"I don't know," she said slowly. "I'm afraid one of the monsters will be back after a new victim. We could smash the apparatus, but it is too wonderful to be destroyed. And besides, Dr. Whiting may have escaped. He may be alive there, in the deserts!"

"We might fly up, in the little plane," Larry proposed, doubtfully. "I think I could pilot it. If you want--"

The girl's body stiffened. Her brown eyes widened with sudden dread, and her small face went pale. She slipped quickly from the stool, drawing in her breath with a sort of gasp. The hand that gripped the automatic trembled a little.

"What's the matter?" Larry cried.

"I thought--" she gasped, "I think I see something in the ray! The machine-monster is coming back!"

Her lips tightened. She lifted the little automatic and began to shoot into the pillar of crimson fire beside the tiny, spinning globe.

Larry, watching tensely, saw a curious, bird-like something fluttering about in the red ray, swiftly growing larger!

Deliberately, and pausing to aim carefully for each shot, the girl emptied the little gun at the figure. Her body was rigid, her small face was firmly set, though she was breathing very fast.

* * * * *

A curious numbness had come over Larry. His only physical sensations were the quick hammering of his heart, and a parching dryness in his throat. Terror stiffened him. Though he would not have admitted it, he was paralyzed with fear.

The glittering thing that fluttered about in the crimson ray was not an easy target. When the gun was empty, it seemed still unharmed. And its wings had increased to a span of a foot.

"Too late!" Agnes gasped. "Why didn't we do something?"

Trembling, horror-stricken, she shrank toward Larry.

He was staring at the thing in the pillar of scarlet light.

It had dropped to the crystal disk upon which the red ray fell from the huge, glowing tube above. It stood there, motionless except for the swift increase of its size.

Larry gazed at it, lost in fear and wonder. It was like nothing he had ever seen. What was it that Agnes had said, of machine-monsters, of human brains in mechanical bodies? His brain reeled. He strained his eyes to distinguish the monstrosity more clearly. It was veiled in crimson flame; he could not see it distinctly.

But suddenly, when it was as tall as himself, it sprang out into the room, toward Larry and the shuddering girl. Just off the crystal disk, beyond the scarlet pillar of fire, it paused for long seconds, seeming to regard them with malevolent eyes.

For the first time, Larry could see it plainly.

Its body, or its central part, was a tube of transparent crystal; an upright cylinder, rounded at upper and lower ends. It was nearly a foot in diameter, and four feet long. It seemed filled with a luminous, purple liquid.

About the cylinder were three bands of greenish, glistening metal. Attached to the lower band were four jointed legs of the same bright green metal, upon which the strange thing stood.

Set in the middle band were two glittering, polished lenses, which seemed to serve as eyes, and Larry felt that they were gazing at him with malevolent menace. Behind the eyes, two wings sprang from the green band. Ingenious, folding wings, of thin plates and bars of green metal.

And from the upper band sprang four slender, glistening, whip-like tentacles, metallic and brilliantly green, two yards in length. They writhed with strange life!

* * * * *

It seemed a long time to Larry that the thing stood, motionless, seeming to stare evilly at them with eye-like lenses. Then, lurching forward a little, it moved toward them upon legs of green metal. And now Larry saw another amazing thing about it.

Floating in the brilliant violet liquid that filled the crystal tube was a gray mass, wrinkled and corrugated. This was divided by deep clefts into right and left hemispheres, which, in turn were separated into larger upper and smaller lower segments. White filaments ran through the violet liquid from its base toward the three rings or bands of green metal that encircled the cylinder.

In an instant, Larry realized that the gray mass was a human brain. The larger, upper part the cerebrum, the smaller mass at the back the cerebellum. And the white filaments were nerves, by means of which this brain controlled its astounding, mechanical body!

A brain in a machine!

The violet liquid, it came to Larry in his trance of wonder, must take the place of blood, feeding the brain-cells, absorbing waste.

An eternal mind, within a machine! Free from the ills and weaknesses of the body. And devoid, too, of any pity, of any tender feelings. A cold and selfish mind, without emotion--unless it might worship itself or its mechanical body.

It was this monster that had spilt the pool of blood drying on the floor, near the door. And it was these glistening, green, snake-like tentacles that had crumpled the revolver into a broken mass of steel!

Abruptly the machine-monster darted forward, running swiftly upon its four legs of green metal. Slender tentacles reached out toward the shuddering girl at Larry's shoulder.

"Run!" Agnes gasped to him, quickly. "It will kill you!"

The girl tried to push him back.

As she touched him, Larry recovered from his daze of wondering fear. Agnes was in frightful danger, and facing it with quiet courage. He must find a weapon!

* * * * *

Wildly, he looked about him. His eyes fell upon the tall, heavy wooden stool, upon which Agnes had been sitting.

"Get back!" he shouted to her.

He snatched up the stool, and, swinging it over his head, sprang toward the machine of violet-filled crystal and glittering green metal.

"Stop!" Agnes screamed, in a terrified voice. "You can't--"

She had run before him. He seized her arm and swung her back behind him. Then he advanced warily toward the machine-monster, which had paused and seemed to be regarding him with sinister intentness, through its glistening crystal eye-lenses.

With all his strength, Larry struck at the crystal cylinder, swinging the stool like an ax. A slender, metallic green tentacle whipped out, tore the stool from his hands, and sent it crashing across the room, to splinter into fragments on the opposite wall.

Larry, sent off his balance, staggered toward the glittering machine. As he stumbled against the transparent tube that contained the brain, he clenched his fist to strike futilely at it.

A snake-like metal tentacle wrapped itself about him; he was hurled to the floor, to sprawl grotesquely among broken apparatus.

His head came against the leg of a bench. For a few moments he was dazed. But it seemed only a few seconds to him before he had staggered to his feet, rubbing his bruised head. Anxiously, he peered about the room.

The machine-monster and Agnes were gone!

He stumbled back to the mass of apparatus in the center of the huge laboratory. Intently, he gazed into the upright pillar of crimson flame. Nothing was visible there.

"No, the other!" he gasped. "The violet is the way they went."

* * * * *

He turned to the companion ray of violet radiance that beat straight down on the opposite side of the tiny, whirling planet. And in that motionless torrent of chill violet flame he saw them.

Tiny, already, and swiftly dwindling!

With green wings outspread, the machine-monster was beating swiftly upward through the pillar of purple-blue flame. And close against the crystal tube that contained its brain, was Agnes, held fast by the whip-like tentacles of glistening green metal.

Larry moved to spring after them, into the torrent of violet light. But sudden caution restrained him.

"I'd shrink, too!" he muttered. "And then where would I be? I'd be standing on the glass platform, I guess. And the thing flying off over my head!"

He gazed at the rapidly dwindling forms of Agnes Sterling and her amazing abductor. As it grew smaller, the machine-monster flew higher in the violet beam, until it was opposite the tiny, spinning planet.

The distance between the red and the violet rays was just slightly more than the diameter of the pygmy world. The sphere hung between them, one side of it a fraction of an inch from the red, the other as near the violet.

Opposite the elfin planet, the monster ceased to climb. It hung there in the violet ray, an inch from the surface of the little world.

And still it swiftly dwindled. It was no larger than a fly, and Larry could barely distinguish the form of the girl, helpless in the green tentacles.

Soon she and the monster became a mere greenish speck.... Suddenly they were gone.

* * * * *

For a little time he stood watching the point where they had vanished, watching the red and the violet rays that poured straight down upon the crystal disks, watching the tiny, green-blue planet spinning so steadily between the bright rays.

Abruptly, he recovered from his fascination of wonder.

"What did she say?" he muttered. "Something about the monsters carrying off people to sacrifice to a rusty machine that they worship as a god! It took her--for that!"

He clenched his fists; his lips became a straight line of determination.

"Then I guess we try a voyage in the little plane. A slim chance, maybe. But decidedly better than none!"

He returned to the table, dropped on his knees, inspected the tiny airplane. A perfect miniature, delicately beautiful; its slim, small wings were bright as silver foil. Carefully, he opened the door and peered into the diminutive cabin. Two minute rifles, several Lilliputian pistols, and boxes of ammunition to match, lay on the rear seat of the plane.

"So we are prepared for war," he remarked, grinning in satisfaction. "And the next trick, I suppose, is to get shrunk to fit the plane. About three inches, she said. Lord, it's a queer thing to think about!"

He got to his feet, walked back to the machine in the center of the room, with its twin pillars of red and violet flame, and the tiny world floating between them. He started to step into the violet ray, then hesitated, shivering involuntarily, like a swimmer about to dive into icy cold water.

Turning back to one of the benches, he picked up a wooden funnel-rack, and tossed it to the crystal disk beneath the violet ray. Slowly it decreased in size, until it had vanished from sight.

"Safe, I suppose," he muttered. "But how do I know when I'm small enough?"

* * * * *

After a moment he picked up a glass bottle which measured about three inches in height, set it on the floor, beside the crystal disk.

"I dive out when I get to be the size of the bottle," he murmured.

With that, he leaped into the violet beam.

He felt no unusual sensation, except one of pleasant, tingling warmth, as if the direct rays of the sun were bearing down upon him. For a moment he feared that his size was not being affected. Then he noticed, not that he appeared to become smaller, but that the laboratory seemed to be growing immensely larger.

The walls seemed to race away from him. The green-blue sphere of the tiny planet which he proposed to visit expanded and drew away above his head.

Abruptly fearful, alarmed at the hugeness of the room, he turned to look at the bottle he had placed to serve as a standard of size. It had grown with everything else, until it seemed to be about three feet high.

And it was swiftly expanding. It reached to the level of his shoulder. And higher!

He ran to the edge of the crystal disk, which now seemed a floor many yards across, and leaped from its edge. It was a dozen steps to where he had left the bottle. And it was as tall as himself!

He started across the floor of the laboratory toward the table under which the toy plane stood. The incredible immensity of his surroundings awed him strangely. The walls of the room seemed distant, Cyclopean cliffs; the roof was like a sky. Table legs towered up like enormous columns.

It seemed a hundred yards across the strangely rough floor to the plane. As he drew near it, it gave him huge satisfaction to see that it was of normal size, correctly proportioned to his own dimensions.

"Great luck," he muttered, "that I can fly!"

* * * * *

He paused, as he reached the cabin's open door, to wonder at the astounding fact that a little while ago he had opened that door with a hand larger than his entire body now was.

"I guess this is my day of wonders!" he muttered. "Allah knows I had to wait long enough for it!"

First he examined the weapons in the cabin. There were two heavy sporting rifles and two .45 automatics. There were also two smaller automatics, which, he supposed, had been intended for Agnes' use. And there was abundant ammunition.

Then he inspected the plane. It looked to be in excellent condition in every way. The gasoline and oil tanks were full.

He set about starting the motor, using the plane's inertia starter, which was driven by an electric motor. Soon the engine coughed, sputtered, and gave rise to a roaring, rhythmic note that Larry found musical.

When the motor was warm, he opened the throttle and taxied out from beneath the colossal table, and across the laboratory floor toward the Titanic mechanism in the center of the room. The disk of crystal was set almost flush with the floor, its edge beveled. The plane rolled easily upon it, and out into the Cyclopean pillar of violet flame.

Once more, Larry felt the sensation that everything about him except the plane itself, was expanding inconceivably in size. Soon the laboratory's walls and roof were lost in hazy blue distance. He could distinguish only the broad, bright field formed by the surface of the crystal disk, with the floor stretching away beyond it like a vast plain. And above, the green-blue sphere of the tiny planet, bright on one side and dark on the other, so that it looked like a half-moon, immensely far-off.

* * * * *

As he waited, he noticed a curious little dial, in a lower corner of the instrument board, which he had not seen at first. One end of its graduated scale was marked, "Earth Normal," the other, "Pygmy Planet Normal." A tiny black needle was creeping slowly across the scale, toward "Pygmy Planet Normal."

"That's how we tell what size we are without having to look at a bottle," he muttered.

When the area of the crystal platform appeared to be about half a square mile, he decided that he would now have sufficient space to spiral up the violet ray toward the planet. If he waited too long to start, the distance would become impossibly great.

He gave the little plane the gun. The motor thundered a throbbing song; the ship rolled smoothly forward over the polished surface, gained flying speed and took the air without a shock.

"Feels good to hold the stick again!" Larry murmured.

Making small circles to keep within the upright pillar of violet radiance, he climbed steadily and as rapidly as possible, keeping his eyes upon the brilliant half-moon of the Pygmy Planet.

The strangest flight in the annals of aviation! He was flying toward a goal that, a few minutes before, he could have touched. Toward a goal that, at the beginning of his flight, was only a few lengths of his plane away. And his size dwindled so rapidly as he flew that the planet seemed to swell and draw away from him.

As Larry and the plane grew smaller, the relative size of the violet ray increased, so there was no longer much danger of flying out of it. It seemed that he flew through a world of violet flame.

He met a curious problem in time. It is evident that time passes faster for a small animal than for a large one, because nerve currents require a shorter time in transit, and all thought and action is consequently speeded up. It took a hundred-foot dinosaur nearly a second to know that his tail had been pinched. A fly can get under way in time to escape a descending swatter. The Pygmy Planet rotated in a few seconds of earth time; one of its inhabitants might have lived, aged, and died in the duration of a single day in our larger world.

* * * * *

So Larry found that time seemed to pass more rapidly, or rather that the time of the world he had left appeared to move more slowly, as he adventured into smallness. He had been flying, it seemed to him, nearly an hour when he reached the level of the planet's equator.

Now it seemed a vast world, filling half the visible universe. He flew toward it steadily, until he knew, by the fading before him of the violet flame which now seemed to fill all space, that he was near the edge of the ray. And as he flew, he watched the little scale, upon which the black needle was now nearing the line marked, "Pygmy Planet Normal."

Circling slowly, keeping always on the level of the planet's equator, and near the edge of the violet ray, so as to be as close as possible to his landing place when he reached the proper size, he watched the creeping black needle.

Too, he scanned with eager eyes the planet floating before him. Bare, red deserts; narrow strips of green vegetation; shrunken, blue oceans; silvery lines of rivers, passed in fascinating panorama beneath his eyes. The rate of the planet's spinning seemed continually to lessen, with the changing of his own sense of time.

Agnes! Larry thought of her with a curious, eager pain in his heart. She was somewhere on that strange, ancient world, a prisoner of weird machine-monsters! Intended victim of a grotesque sacrificial ceremony!

Could he find her, in the vastness of an unfamiliar world? And having found her, would there be a chance to rescue her from her hideous captors? The project seemed insane. But Larry felt a queer, unfamiliar urge, which, he knew, would drive him on until he had discovered and saved her--or until he was dead.

* * * * *

At last, when it seemed to Larry nearly three hours since he had begun this amazing flight, the crawling ebon needle reached the mark, "Pygmy Planet Normal."

He flew out of the wall of violet flame toward the planet's surface. Before, the distance between the planet and the ray's edge had seemed only the fraction of an inch. Now it appeared to be many miles.

Abruptly the Pygmy Planet, which had seemed to be beside him, appeared to swing about, so that it was beneath him. He knew that it was a change merely in his sensations. He was feeling the gravitation of the new world. It was pulling him toward it!

He cut the throttle, and settled the plane into a long glide, a glide that was to end upon the surface of a new planet!

In what seemed half an hour more, Larry had made a safe landing upon the Pygmy Planet. He had come down upon a stretch of fairly smooth, red, sandy desert, which seemed to stretch illimitably toward the rising sun, which direction Larry instinctively termed "east."

To the "west" was a line of dull green--evidently the vegetation along a stream. The ocher desert was scattered with sparse clumps of reddish, spiky scrub. Larry taxied the plane into one of those thickets. Finding canvas and rope in the cabin, he staked down the machine, and muffled the motor.

Then, selecting a rifle and a heavy automatic from the weapons in the cabin, and filling his pockets with extra ammunition, he left the plane and set out with brisk steps toward the green line of vegetation.

"I'll follow along the river," he reasoned. "It may lead me somewhere and it will show the way back to the plane. I may come across something in the way of a clue. Can't go exploring by air, or I'll burn up all the gas and be stranded here!"

* * * * *

To his surprise, the water course proved to be an ancient canal, walled with crumbling masonry. Its channel was choked with mud and thorny, thick-leaved desert shrubs of unfamiliar variety; but a feeble current still flowed along it.

After some reflection, Larry set out along the banks of the canal.

He followed it for two days.

Curious straight bars of light were visible across the sky--a band of violet in the morning; one of crimson at evening. Their apparent motion was in the same direction as that of the sun. The bars of light puzzled him considerably before it occurred to him that they must be the red and violet rays.

"So you wait till evening, and then fly up into the red ray, to go home," he muttered. "But I may not need that information," he added grimly. "Seems to be a pretty big job to search a planet on foot, for one person. And I'm not going back without Agnes!"

In the afternoon of the second day, he came within view of a city. He could discern vast, imposing walls and towers of dark stone. It stood in the barren red desert, far back from the green line of the old canal. Larry left the canal and started wearily across toward it. He had covered several miles of the distance before he saw that the lofty towers were falling, the magnificent walls crumbling. The city was ruined, dead, deserted!

The realization brought him a great flood of despair. He had hoped to find people--friends, from whom he might get food, and information about this unfamiliar planet. But the city was dead.

Larry was standing there, in the midst of the vast red plain between ruined city and ruined canal. Tired, hungry, lonely and hopeless. He was looking up at the white "sun," trying to comfort himself with the thought that the brilliant luminary was merely a queer blue lamp, that he was upon a tiny experimental world in a laboratory. But the thought brought him no relief; only confusion and a sense of incredulity.

* * * * *

Then he saw the machine-monster.

A glittering, winged thing of crystal and green metal, identical with the one he had encountered in the laboratory. It must already have seen him, for it was dropping swiftly toward him.

Larry started to run, took a few staggering steps. Then he recalled the heavy rifle slung over his shoulder. Moving with desperate haste, he got it into his hands and raised it just as the monster dropped to the red sand a dozen yards away from him.

Steadily he covered the crystal cylinder within which the thing's brain floated in luminous violet liquid. His finger tightened on the trigger, ready to send a heavy bullet crashing into it. Then he paused, swore softly, lowered the gun.

"If I kill it," he murmured, "I may never find Agnes. And if I let it carry me off, it may take me where she is."

He walked toward the monster, across the red sand.

It stood uncertainly upon green metal legs, seeming to stare at him strangely with eye-like lenses. Its wings of thin green metal plates, were folded; its four green tentacles were twitching oddly.

Abruptly, it sprang upon him.

A green tentacle seized the rifle and snatched it from his hands. He felt the automatic pistol and the ammunition being removed from his pockets.

Then, firmly held in the flexible arms of green metal, he was lifted against the cylinder of violet liquid. The monster spread its broad emerald wings, and Larry was swiftly borne into the air.

In a few moments the wide ruins of the ancient city were spread below, with the green line of the choked canal cutting the infinite red waste of the desert beyond it.

The monster flew westward.

* * * * *

For a considerable time, nothing save barren, ocherous desert was in view. Then Larry's weird captor flew near a strange city. A city of green metal. The buildings were most fantastic--pyramids of green, crowned with enormous, glistening spheres of emerald metal. An impassable wall surrounding the city.

Larry had expected the monster to drop into the city. But it carried him on, and finally settled to the ground several miles beyond. The green tentacles released him, as the thing landed, and he sprawled beside it, dizzy after his strange flight.

As Larry staggered uncertainly to his feet, he saw that the monster had released him in an open pen. It was a square area, nearly fifty yards on each side, and fenced with thin posts or rods of green metal, perhaps twenty feet high. Set very close together, and sharply pointed at the top, they formed a barrier apparently insurmountable.

In the center of the pen was a huge and strange machine, built of green metal. It looked very worn and ancient; it was covered with patches of bluish rust or corrosion. At first it looked quite strange to Larry; then he was struck by a vaguely familiar quality about it. Looking closer, he realized that it was a colossal steam hammer!

Its design, of course, was unfamiliar. But in the vast, corroded frame he quickly picked out a steam chest, cylinder, and the great hammer, weighing many tons.

He gasped when his eyes went to the anvil.

A man was chained across it.

A man in torn, grimy clothing, fastened with fetters of green metal upon wrists and ankles, so that his body was stretched beneath the massive hammer. He seemed to be unconscious; upon his head, which was turned toward Larry, was a red and swollen bruise.

The monster which had dropped Larry within the pen rose again into the air. And Larry started forward, trying to remember just what Agnes had told him of a machine to which the monsters sacrificed.

This must be the machine--this ancient steam hammer!

As he moved forward, Agnes came into view.

* * * * *

She walked around the massive base of the great machine, carrying a bowl filled with a fragrant brown liquid. She stopped at sight of Larry, and uttered a little cry. The bowl fell from her hands, and the fragrant liquid splashed out on the ground. Her brown eyes went wide with delighted surprise; then a look of pain came into them.

"Larry, Larry!" she cried. "Why did you come?"

"To get you," he answered, trying to speak as lightly as he could. "And the best way I knew to find you was to let one of the monsters bring me. Cheer up!" But even to himself, his voice had a tone of discouragement.

She smiled wanly. "I don't see anything to be cheerful about." Her small face was set and a little white. "Dr. Whiting is going to be smashed under the hammer of this dreadful machine, whenever the steam is up. Then it is my turn. And yours. That's nothing to laugh about."

"But we aren't smashed yet!" Larry insisted.

"By the way, what was that in the bowl?" he went on, glancing down. "I forgot to bring lunch." He grinned.

She looked down, startled.

"Oh. Dr. Whiting's soup. Poor fellow, I'm afraid he'll never awake to eat it. There's plenty more. Come around here."

She picked up the bowl and led him around the base of the machine; then she filled the bowl again with the fragrant, red-brown liquid, from a tall urn of green metal. Larry took the dish eagerly and gulped down the rather insipid and tasteless food.

"And the monsters worship this old steam hammer?" he inquired, when his hunger was appeased.

"Yes. I think the thing is worked by steam generated by volcanic heat. Anyhow, there isn't any boiler, and the steam pipe comes up out of the ground. You can see that. So it runs on, without any attention--though I guess the heat is dying down, since it is several days between blows of the hammer.

"And I guess the monsters have forgotten how they used to rule machines. They seem to have depended upon machines, even giving up their own bodies for mechanical ones, until the machine rules them.

"And when this old hammer kept pounding on through the ages, using volcanic steam, I guess they got to considering it alive. They began to regard it as a sort of god. And when they got the idea of giving it sacrifices, it was natural enough to place the victims under the hammer."

* * * * *

They went back to Dr. Whiting who was chained across the anvil. He was still breathing, but unconscious. He had been injured in a struggle with the monsters, and his body was much emaciated. Agnes explained that he had been a prisoner in the pen for many months of the time of this world, waiting his turn to die; she said that the monsters had just completed the extermination of another race upon the Pygmy Planet, and were just turning to the greater world for victims.

Larry noticed that the great hammer was slowly rising in its guides, as the pressure of the steam from the planet's interior increased. In a few hours--just at sunset--it reached the top of its stroke.

The air above the pen was suddenly filled with glittering swarms of the green-winged monsters, sweeping slowly about, in measured flight, with strange order in their masses. They had come to witness the sacrifice!

With an explosive rush of steam, the hammer came down!

The ground trembled beneath the terrific blow; the roaring of escaping steam and the crash of the impact were almost deafening. A heavy white cloud shrouded the corroded green machine.

When the hammer slowly lifted, only a red smear was left....

Agnes had shrunk, trembling, against Larry's shoulder. He had put his arms about her and was holding her almost fiercely.

"My turn next," she whispered. "And don't try to fight them. It will only make them hurt you!"

"I can't let them take you, Agnes!" Larry cried, in an agonized tone. And the words seemed to leap out, of themselves, "Because I love you!"

"You do?" Agnes cried, in a thin, choking voice, pressing herself against him. "Ever since the first time you came to the laboratory--"

A score of the monster forms of violet-filled crystal and gleaming green metal had dropped into the pen. They tore Agnes from Larry's arms, hurling him roughly to the ground, at the bottom of the green metal fence. For some time he was unconscious.

* * * * *

When he had staggered painfully to his feet, it was night. The monsters were gone; the starless sky was black and empty. Calling out weakly, and stumbling about the pen, he found Agnes. She was chained where Dr. Whiting had been.

She was conscious, unharmed. For a time they talked a little, exchanging broken, incoherent phrases. Then they went to sleep, lying on the anvil, beneath that mighty hammer that was slowly lifting to strike another fearful blow.

When the "sun" had risen again, Larry brought Agnes some of the brown soup from the metal urn, which had been filled again. Then, when he had satisfied himself, he started clambering up the massive frame of the hammer.

If he could put it out of commission!

It was a difficult task. He slipped back many times, and finally had to choose another place to make the ascent. Twice he slipped and almost fell from a considerable height. But finally he reached the massive wheel of the valve which seemed to control the admission of steam into the cylinder above the hammer.

If he could but close that, the steam would be confined in the chest below. And when the pressure reached a certain point, something should happen!

The valve was not easy to turn; it seemed fixed with the corrosion of ages. For hours Larry wrestled with it. Then he left it, realizing that he must find something to use for a hammer. A vigorous search of the pen's hard earth floor failed to reveal any stone that would do. He turned his attention to the machine, and presently saw a slender projecting lever, high up on the side of the vast frame, which looked as if it had been weakened by corrosion. After a perilous climb, he reached the bar of green metal and swung his weight upon it. It broke, and he plunged to the ground with the bar in his hands.

* * * * *

Clambering up once more to the great valve, he hammered it until the rust that stiffened it was loosened. Then he struggled with the valve until it was closed.

"We'll see what happens!" he muttered.

Returning to the ground, he set to work to break the green metal fetters upon Agnes' wrists and ankles, using the broken lever as hammer and file.

For the greater part of six days he toiled at that task, while the great hammer rose slowly. But the green metal seemed very hard. One arm was free at the end of the second day, the other on the fourth. He had one ankle loose on the morning of the sixth day. But as evening came on, and the great hammer reached the top of its stroke, the fourth chain still defied him.

Before sunset, a swarm of the monsters appeared, wheeling on green wings. He was forced to leave the work, hiding his improvised file.

Agnes still lay across the anvil, to conceal from the monsters the fact that the chains were broken. Larry sat close beside her, nursing hands that were blistered and sore from his days of filing at the chains.

A sudden clatter came from the huge mechanism above them, and a sharp hiss of steam, which became louder.

"It works!" Larry whispered to Agnes. "The old valve held, and the steam can't get into the cylinder to smash us! But Allah knows what will happen when the pressure rises in that old steam chest!"

Darkness came. Dusk swallowed the wheeling machine-monsters. All night Larry and Agnes waited silently, together on the great anvil, listening to the hissing of steam from above, which was slowly becoming a shrill monotonous scream; monotonous, always higher, shriller.

The "sun" rose again. Still the green-winged monsters wheeled about. They came in glittering swarms, thousands of them. They came nearer the machine now, and flew about more swiftly, is if excited.

* * * * *

Then it happened.

There was a roar like thunder, and a colossal, bellowing explosion. The air was filled suddenly with scalding steam, and with screaming fragments of the bursting steam chest. In the midst of it all, Larry felt a crushing blow upon the head. And a blanket of darkness fell upon him....

"The monsters are all gone, darling," Agnes' voice reached him. "As though they were very much frightened. And a piece of the old hammer hit the fence and knocked a hole in it. You must go. Leave me--"

"Leave you?" Larry groaned, struggling to sit up. "Not a bit of it!" He touched his head gingerly, felt a swollen bruise.

Collecting a few fragments of the wrecked machine, to serve as tools, he fell to work again upon Agnes' remaining chain. Already he had cut a deep groove in it. Two hours later, it was broken.

Carrying the metal urn of brownish liquid, they crept out through the hole in the fence, which had been torn by the flying fragment of a broken casting of green metal. They left the wreck of the machine which a strange race had worshiped as a bloody god and hurried furtively into the desert of red sand.

Making a wide circuit about the fantastic city of green metal, which Larry had seen from the air, they struck out eastward across the desolate ocherous waste. The food in the urn, eaten sparingly, lasted until the end of the eighth day.

On the morning of the ninth, they came in view of the green line of the ancient canal. It was hours later that they staggered weakly over its wall of crumbling masonry, clambered down into the muddy, weed-grown channel, and drank thirstily of green, tepid water.

Larry found his old trail, beyond the canal. They followed it back. In the middle of the afternoon they stumbled up to the thicket of spiky desert growth, in which Larry had hidden the plane.

The machine was undamaged.

* * * * *

Before sunset, Larry had removed the stake ropes, slipped the canvas cover from the motor, turned the plane around, inspected it, and examined the strip of smooth, hard red sand upon which he had landed.

Agnes pointed out the dim band of crimson across the sky, from north to south, slowly rising toward the zenith.

"That's the red ray," she said. "We fly into it."

"And a happy moment when we do," Larry rejoined.

He roused the motor to life.

As the bar of crimson light neared the zenith, the plane rolled forward across the sand and took off. Climbing steeply, Larry anxiously watched the approach of the red band. The gravitation of the Pygmy Planet seemed to diminish as he gained altitude, until presently he could fly vertically from it, without circling at all. He set the bow toward the scarlet bar across the sky before him.

And suddenly he was flying through ruby flame.

His eyes went to the little scale at the corner of the instrument board. He saw the little ebon needle waver, leave the mark designated "Pygmy Planet Normal" and start toward "Earth Normal."

For what seemed a long time, he was wheeling down the crimson ray. A few times he looked back at Agnes, in the rear seat. She had gone to sleep.

Then a vast, circular field was below--the crystal platform.

Larry landed the plane upon it, taxied to the center and stopped there, with the motor idling. The laboratory, taking shape in the blue abyss about him, seemed to contract swiftly.

* * * * *

Presently the plane covered most of the crystal disk. He taxied quickly off, stopped on the floor nearby, and cut the ignition. Agnes woke. Together they clambered from the plane's cabin and walked back into the crimson ray.

Once more the vast spaces of the room seemed to shrink, until it looked familiar once more. The Pygmy Planet, and the huge machine looming ever them, dwindled to natural size.

Agnes, watching a scale on the frame of the mechanism, which Larry had not noticed, leaped suddenly from the red ray, drawing him with her.

"We don't want to be giants!" she laughed.

Larry drew a deep breath, and looked about him. Once more he was in his own world, and surveying it in his normal size. He became aware of Agnes standing close against him. He suddenly took her in his arms and kissed her.

"Wait a minute," she objected, slipping quickly from his arms. "What are we going to do about the Pygmy Planet? Those monsters might come again, even if you did wreck their god. And Dr. Whiting, poor fellow--But we mustn't let those monsters come back!"

Larry doubled up a brown fist and drove it with all his strength against the little globe that spun so steadily between the twin, upright cylinders of crimson and of violet flame. His hand went deep into it. And it swung from its position, hung unsteadily a moment, and then crashed to the laboratory floor. It was crushed like a ball of soft brown mud. It spattered.

"Now I guess they won't come back," Agnes said. "A pity to spoil all Dr. Whiting's work, though."

Larry was standing motionless, holding up his fist and looking at it oddly. "I smashed a planet! Think of it. I smashed a planet! Just the other--why it was just this evening, at the office, I was wishing for something to happen!"

Table of Contents

A Question of Courage, J.F. Bone

The Duelling Maching, Ben Bova

Keep Out, Frederic Brown

Indirection, Everett B. Cole

The Game of Rat and Dragon, Cordwainer Smith

The World Beyond, Raymond Cummings

Victory, Lester Del Rey

The Defenders, Phillip K. Dick

The Hammer of Thor, Charles Willard Diffin

The Planetoid of Peril, Paul Ernst

The Jupiter Weapon, Charles L. Fontenay

This World Must Die, H.B. Fyfe

Psichopath, Randall Garrett

The Man Who Hated Mars, Randall Garrett

Hawk Carse, Anthony Gilmore

The Helpful Hand of God, Tom Godwin

A Scientist Rises, D.W. Hall

Monsters of Mars, Edmond Hamilton

The Sargasso of Space, Edmond Hamilton

The K-Factor, Harry Harrison

The Misplaced Battleship, Harry Harrison

Walls of Acid, Henry Hasse

Old Rambling House, Frank Herbert

Made in Tanganyika, Carl Jacobi

Sight Gag, Lawrence Janifer

Get Out of Our Skies, E. K. Jarvis

Cubs of the Wolf, Raymond F. Jones

The Cosmic Expense Account, C.M. Kornbluth

We Didn’t Do Anything Wrong, Hardly, Roger Kuykendall

The Great Potlatch Riots, Allen Kim Lang

Gambler’s World, Keith Laumer

No Great Magic, Fritz Leiber

The Ambulance Made Two Trips, Murray Leinster

The Leader, Murray Leinster

The Mississippi Saucer, Frank Belknap Long

Summer Snow Storm, Stephen Marlowe

The Attack From Space, S.P. Meek

The Great Drought, S.P. Meek

Death of Spaceman, Walter M. Miller, Jr.

The People of the Crater, Andre Norton

An Ounce of Cure, Alan Nourse

Image of the Gods, Alan Nourse

A Slave is a Slave, H. Beam Piper

Day of the Moron, H. Beam Piper

Pythias, Frederick Pohl

The Hunters, Joseph Samachson

The Judas Valley, Robert Silverberg

Project Mastodon, Clifford D. Simak

2BR02B, Kurt Vonnegut

The Pygmy Planet, Jack Williamson

Table of Contents

A Question of Courage, J.F. Bone

The Duelling Maching, Ben Bova

Keep Out, Frederic Brown

Indirection, Everett B. Cole

The Game of Rat and Dragon, Cordwainer Smith

The World Beyond, Raymond Cummings

Victory, Lester Del Rey

The Defenders, Phillip K. Dick

The Hammer of Thor, Charles Willard Diffin

The Planetoid of Peril, Paul Ernst

The Jupiter Weapon, Charles L. Fontenay

This World Must Die, H.B. Fyfe

Psichopath, Randall Garrett

The Man Who Hated Mars, Randall Garrett

Hawk Carse, Anthony Gilmore

The Helpful Hand of God, Tom Godwin

A Scientist Rises, D.W. Hall

Monsters of Mars, Edmond Hamilton

The Sargasso of Space, Edmond Hamilton

The K-Factor, Harry Harrison

The Misplaced Battleship, Harry Harrison

Walls of Acid, Henry Hasse

Old Rambling House, Frank Herbert

Made in Tanganyika, Carl Jacobi

Sight Gag, Lawrence Janifer

Get Out of Our Skies, E. K. Jarvis

Cubs of the Wolf, Raymond F. Jones

The Cosmic Expense Account, C.M. Kornbluth

We Didn’t Do Anything Wrong, Hardly, Roger Kuykendall

The Great Potlatch Riots, Allen Kim Lang

Gambler’s World, Keith Laumer

No Great Magic, Fritz Leiber

The Ambulance Made Two Trips, Murray Leinster

The Leader, Murray Leinster

The Mississippi Saucer, Frank Belknap Long

Summer Snow Storm, Stephen Marlowe

The Attack From Space, S.P. Meek

The Great Drought, S.P. Meek

Death of Spaceman, Walter M. Miller, Jr.

The People of the Crater, Andre Norton

An Ounce of Cure, Alan Nourse

Image of the Gods, Alan Nourse

A Slave is a Slave, H. Beam Piper

Day of the Moron, H. Beam Piper

Pythias, Frederick Pohl

The Hunters, Joseph Samachson

The Judas Valley, Robert Silverberg

Project Mastodon, Clifford D. Simak

2BR02B, Kurt Vonnegut

The Pygmy Planet, Jack Williamson

Table of Contents

A Question of Courage, J.F. Bone

The Duelling Maching, Ben Bova

Keep Out, Frederic Brown

Indirection, Everett B. Cole

The Game of Rat and Dragon, Cordwainer Smith

The World Beyond, Raymond Cummings

Victory, Lester Del Rey

The Defenders, Phillip K. Dick

The Hammer of Thor, Charles Willard Diffin

The Planetoid of Peril, Paul Ernst

The Jupiter Weapon, Charles L. Fontenay

This World Must Die, H.B. Fyfe

Psichopath, Randall Garrett

The Man Who Hated Mars, Randall Garrett

Hawk Carse, Anthony Gilmore

The Helpful Hand of God, Tom Godwin

A Scientist Rises, D.W. Hall

Monsters of Mars, Edmond Hamilton

The Sargasso of Space, Edmond Hamilton

The K-Factor, Harry Harrison

The Misplaced Battleship, Harry Harrison

Walls of Acid, Henry Hasse

Old Rambling House, Frank Herbert

Made in Tanganyika, Carl Jacobi

Sight Gag, Lawrence Janifer

Get Out of Our Skies, E. K. Jarvis

Cubs of the Wolf, Raymond F. Jones

The Cosmic Expense Account, C.M. Kornbluth

We Didn’t Do Anything Wrong, Hardly, Roger Kuykendall

The Great Potlatch Riots, Allen Kim Lang

Gambler’s World, Keith Laumer

No Great Magic, Fritz Leiber

The Ambulance Made Two Trips, Murray Leinster

The Leader, Murray Leinster

The Mississippi Saucer, Frank Belknap Long

Summer Snow Storm, Stephen Marlowe

The Attack From Space, S.P. Meek

The Great Drought, S.P. Meek

Death of Spaceman, Walter M. Miller, Jr.

The People of the Crater, Andre Norton

An Ounce of Cure, Alan Nourse

Image of the Gods, Alan Nourse

A Slave is a Slave, H. Beam Piper

Day of the Moron, H. Beam Piper

Pythias, Frederick Pohl

The Hunters, Joseph Samachson

The Judas Valley, Robert Silverberg

Project Mastodon, Clifford D. Simak

2BR02B, Kurt Vonnegut

The Pygmy Planet, Jack Williamson

Table of Contents

A Question of Courage, J.F. Bone

The Duelling Maching, Ben Bova

Keep Out, Frederic Brown

Indirection, Everett B. Cole

The Game of Rat and Dragon, Cordwainer Smith

The World Beyond, Raymond Cummings

Victory, Lester Del Rey

The Defenders, Phillip K. Dick

The Hammer of Thor, Charles Willard Diffin

The Planetoid of Peril, Paul Ernst

The Jupiter Weapon, Charles L. Fontenay

This World Must Die, H.B. Fyfe

Psichopath, Randall Garrett

The Man Who Hated Mars, Randall Garrett

Hawk Carse, Anthony Gilmore

The Helpful Hand of God, Tom Godwin

A Scientist Rises, D.W. Hall

Monsters of Mars, Edmond Hamilton

The Sargasso of Space, Edmond Hamilton

The K-Factor, Harry Harrison

The Misplaced Battleship, Harry Harrison

Walls of Acid, Henry Hasse

Old Rambling House, Frank Herbert

Made in Tanganyika, Carl Jacobi

Sight Gag, Lawrence Janifer

Get Out of Our Skies, E. K. Jarvis

Cubs of the Wolf, Raymond F. Jones

The Cosmic Expense Account, C.M. Kornbluth

We Didn’t Do Anything Wrong, Hardly, Roger Kuykendall

The Great Potlatch Riots, Allen Kim Lang

Gambler’s World, Keith Laumer

No Great Magic, Fritz Leiber

The Ambulance Made Two Trips, Murray Leinster

The Leader, Murray Leinster

The Mississippi Saucer, Frank Belknap Long

Summer Snow Storm, Stephen Marlowe

The Attack From Space, S.P. Meek

The Great Drought, S.P. Meek

Death of Spaceman, Walter M. Miller, Jr.

The People of the Crater, Andre Norton

An Ounce of Cure, Alan Nourse

Image of the Gods, Alan Nourse

A Slave is a Slave, H. Beam Piper

Day of the Moron, H. Beam Piper

Pythias, Frederick Pohl

The Hunters, Joseph Samachson

The Judas Valley, Robert Silverberg

Project Mastodon, Clifford D. Simak

2BR02B, Kurt Vonnegut

The Pygmy Planet, Jack Williamson