COPYRIGHT INFO

The Golden Age of Science Fiction Megapack #4: Clifford D. Simak is copyright © 2014 by Wildside Press, LLC. All rights reserved. Cover art copyright © 2014 by Diversepixel / Fotolia.

* * * *

Time Quarry originally appeared as a 3-part serial in Galaxy Science Fiction magazine, October through December 1950.

Empire appeared as part of the Galaxy Novel line, originally published in 1951.

“The Street That Wasn’t There” originally appeared in Comet, July 1941.

“The World That Couldn’t Be” originally appeared in Galaxy Science Fiction, January 1958.

“Hellhounds of the Cosmos” originally appeared in Astounding Stories, June 1932.

“Project Mastodon” originally appeared in Galaxy Science Fiction, March 1955.

A NOTE FROM THE PUBLISHER

The stories in this Megapack have been selected for your enjoyment.

—John Betancourt

Publisher, Wildside Press LLC

www.wildsidepress.com

ABOUT THE MEGAPACKS

Over the last few years, our “Megapack” series of ebook anthologies has grown to be among our most popular endeavors. (Maybe it helps that we sometimes offer them as premiums to our mailing list!) One question we keep getting asked is, “Who’s the editor?”

The Megapacks (except where specifically credited) are a group effort. Everyone at Wildside works on them. This includes John Betancourt (me), Carla Coupe, Steve Coupe, Bonner Menking, Colin Azariah-Kribbs, A.E. Warren, and many of Wildside’s authors…who often suggest stories to include (and not just their own!)

A NOTE FOR KINDLE READERS

The Kindle versions of our Megapacks employ active tables of contents for easy navigation…please look for one before writing reviews on Amazon that complain about the lack! (They are sometimes at the ends of ebooks, depending on your reader.)

RECOMMEND A FAVORITE STORY?

Do you know a great classic science fiction story, or have a favorite author whom you believe is perfect for the Megapack series? We’d love your suggestions! You can post them on our message board at http://movies.ning.com/forum (there is an area for Wildside Press comments).

Note: we only consider stories that have already been professionally published. This is not a market for new works.

TYPOS

Unfortunately, as hard as we try, a few typos do slip through. We update our ebooks periodically, so make sure you have the current version (or download a fresh copy if it’s been sitting in your ebook reader for months.) It may have already been updated.

If you spot a new typo, please let us know. We’ll fix it for everyone. You can email the publisher at wildsidepress@yahoo.com or use the message boards above.

THE GOLDEN AGE OF SCIENCE FICTION MEGAPACKS

1. Winston K. Marks

2. Mark Clifton

3. Poul Anderson

4. Clifford D. Simak

5. Lester del Rey

6. Frank Belknap Long

THE MEGAPACK SERIES

MYSTERY

The Achmed Abdullah Megapack

The Bulldog Drummond Megapack*

The Charlie Chan Megapack*

The Craig Kennedy Scientific Detective Megapack

The Detective Megapack

The Father Brown Megapack

The Girl Detective Megapack

The Second Girl Detective Megapack

The First R. Austin Freeman Megapack

The Second R. Austin Freeman Megapack*

The Third R. Austin Freeman Megapack*

The Jacques Futrelle Megapack

The Anna Katharine Green Mystery Megapack

The First Mystery Megapack

The Second Mystery Megapack

The Penny Parker Megapack

The Philo Vance Megapack*

The Pulp Fiction Megapack

The Raffles Megapack

The Sherlock Holmes Megapack

The Victorian Mystery Megapack

The Wilkie Collins Megapack

GENERAL INTEREST

The Adventure Megapack

The Baseball Megapack

The Cat Story Megapack

The Second Cat Story Megapack

The Third Cat Story Megapack

The Third Cat Story Megapack

The Christmas Megapack

The Second Christmas Megapack

The Classic American Short Stories Megapack, Vol. 1.

The Classic Humor Megapack

The Dog Story Megapack

The Doll Story Megapack

The Horse Story Megapack

The Military Megapack

The Pirate Story Megapack

The Sea-Story Megapack

SCIENCE FICTION & FANTASY

The Edward Bellamy Megapack

The First Reginald Bretnor Megapack

The Fredric Brown Megapack

The Ray Cummings Megapack

The Philip K. Dick Megapack

The Dragon Megapack

The Randall Garrett Megapack

The Second Randall Garrett Megapack

The Edmond Hamilton Megapack

The C.J. Henderson Megapack

The Murray Leinster Megapack

The Second Murray Leinster Megapack

The Jack London Science Fiction Megapack

The Martian Megapack

The A. Merritt Megapack*

The E. Nesbit Megapack

The Andre Norton Megapack

The H. Beam Piper Megapack

The Pulp Fiction Megapack

The Mack Reynolds Megapack

The Darrell Schweitzer Megapack

The Science-Fantasy Megapack

The First Science Fiction Megapack

The Second Science Fiction Megapack

The Third Science Fiction Megapack

The Fourth Science Fiction Megapack

The Fifth Science Fiction Megapack

The Sixth Science Fiction Megapack

The Seventh Science Fiction Megapack

The Eighth Science Fiction Megapack

The Robert Sheckley Megapack

The Space Opera Megapack

The Steampunk Megapack

The Time Travel Megapack

The William Hope Hodgson Megapack

The Wizard of Oz Megapack

HORROR

The Achmed Abdullah Megapack

The Second Achmed Abdullah Megapack

The E.F. Benson Megapack

The Second E.F. Benson Megapack

The Algernon Blackwood Megapack

The Second Algernon Blackwood Megapack

The Cthulhu Mythos Megapack

The Erckmann-Chatrian Megapack

The Ghost Story Megapack

The Second Ghost Story Megapack

The Third Ghost Story Megapack

The Haunts & Horrors Megapack

The Horror Megapack

The Lon Williams Weird Western Megapack

The M.R. James Megapack

The Macabre Megapack

The Second Macabre Megapack

The Third Macabre Megapack

The Arthur Machen Megapack**

The Mummy Megapack

The Occult Detective Megapack

The Darrell Schweitzer Megapack

The Vampire Megapack

The Weird Fiction Megapack

The Werewolf Megapack

The William Hope Hodgson Megapack

WESTERNS

The B.M. Bower Megapack

The Max Brand Megapack

The Buffalo Bill Megapack

The Cowboy Megapack

The Zane Grey Megapack

The Lon Williams Weird Western Megapack

The Western Megapack

The Second Western Megapack

YOUNG ADULT

The Boys’ Adventure Megapack

The Dan Carter, Cub Scout Megapack

The Dare Boys Megapack

The Doll Story Megapack

The G.A. Henty Megapack

The Girl Detectives Megapack

The E. Nesbit Megapack

The Penny Parker Megapack

The Pinocchio Megapack

The Rover Boys Megapack

The Tom Corbett, Space Cadet Megapack

The Tom Swift Megapack

The Wizard of Oz Megapack

AUTHOR MEGAPACKS

The Achmed Abdullah Megapack

The H. Bedford-Jones Pulp Fiction Megapack

The Edward Bellamy Megapack

The B.M. Bower Megapack

The E.F. Benson Megapack

The Second E.F. Benson Megapack

The Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson Megapack

The Algernon Blackwood Megapack

The Second Algernon Blackwood Megapack

The Max Brand Megapack

The First Reginald Bretnor Megapack

The Fredric Brown Megapack

The Second Fredric Brown Megapack

The Wilkie Collins Megapack

The Stephen Crane Megapack

The Ray Cummings Megapack

The Guy de Maupassant Megapack

The Philip K. Dick Megapack

The Frederick Douglass Megapack

The Erckmann-Chatrian Megapack

The F. Scott Fitzgerald Megapack

The First R. Austin Freeman Megapack

The Second R. Austin Freeman Megapack*

The Third R. Austin Freeman Megapack*

The Jacques Futrelle Megapack

The Randall Garrett Megapack

The Second Randall Garrett Megapack

The Anna Katharine Green Megapack

The Zane Grey Megapack

The Edmond Hamilton Megapack

The Dashiell Hammett Megapack

The C.J. Henderson Megapack

The M.R. James Megapack

The Selma Lagerlof Megapack

The Harold Lamb Megapack

The Murray Leinster Megapack***

The Second Murray Leinster Megapack***

The Jonas Lie Megapack

The Arthur Machen Megapack**

The Katherine Mansfield Megapack

The George Barr McCutcheon Megapack

The A. Merritt Megapack*

The Talbot Mundy Megapack

The E. Nesbit Megapack

The Andre Norton Megapack

The H. Beam Piper Megapack

The Mack Reynolds Megapack

The Rafael Sabatini Megapack

The Saki Megapack

The Darrell Schweitzer Megapack

The Robert Sheckley Megapack

The Bram Stoker Megapack

The Lon Williams Weird Western Megapack

The Virginia Woolf Megapack

The William Hope Hodgson Megapack

* Not available in the United States

** Not available in the European Union

***Out of print.

OTHER COLLECTIONS YOU MAY ENJOY

The Great Book of Wonder, by Lord Dunsany (it should have been called “The Lord Dunsany Megapack”)

The Wildside Book of Fantasy

The Wildside Book of Science Fiction

Yondering: The First Borgo Press Book of Science Fiction Stories

To the Stars—And Beyond! The Second Borgo Press Book of Science Fiction Stories

Once Upon a Future: The Third Borgo Press Book of Science Fiction Stories

Whodunit?—The First Borgo Press Book of Crime and Mystery Stories

More Whodunits—The Second Borgo Press Book of Crime and Mystery Stories

X is for Xmas: Christmas Mysteries

TIME QUARRY [Part 1]

CHAPTER I

The man came out of the twilight when the greenish-yellow of the sun’s last glow still lingered in the west. He paused at the edge of the patio and called.

“Mr. Adams, is that you?”

The chair creaked as Christopher Adams shifted his weight, startled by the voice. Then he remembered. A new neighbor had moved in across the meadow a day or two ago. Jonathon had told him…and Jonathon knew all the gossip within a hundred miles. Human gossip as well as android and robot gossip.

“Come on in,” said Adams. “Glad you dropped around.”

He hoped his voice sounded as hearty and neighborly as he had tried to make it. For he wasn’t glad. He was a little nettled, upset by this sudden shadow that came out of the twilight and walked across the patio.

This is my hour, he thought angrily. The one hour I give myself. The hour that I forget…forget the thousand problems that have to do with other star systems. Forget them and turn back to the green-blackness and the hush and the subtle sunset shadow-show that belong to my own planet. For here, on this patio, there are no mentophone reports, no robot files, no galactic coordination conferences…no psychological intrigue, no alien reaction charts. Nothing complicated or mysterious.

With half his mind, he knew the stranger had come across the patio and was reaching out a hand for a chair to sit in; and with the other half, once again, he wondered about the blackened bodies lying on the river bank on far-off Aldebaran XII, and the twisted machine that was wrapped around the tree.

Three humans had died there…three humans and two androids, and androids were almost human, different only in that they were manufactured instead of born. And humans must not die by violence unless it be by the violence of another human. Even then it must be on the field of honor, with all the formality and technicality of the code duello, or in the less polished affairs of revenge or execution.

For human life was sacrosanct. It had to be or there’d be no human life. Man was so pitifully outnumbered.

Violence or accident?

And accident was ridiculous.

There were few accidents, almost none at all. The near-perfection of mechanical performance, the almost human intelligence and reactions of machines to any known danger, long ago had cut accidents to an almost nonexistent figure.

No modern machine would be crude enough to crash into a tree. A more subtle, less apparent danger, maybe. But never a tree.

So it must be violence.

And it could not be human violence, for human violence would have advertised the fact. Human violence had nothing to fear…there was no recourse to law, scarcely a moral code to which a human killer would be answerable.

Three humans dead, fifty light years distant, and it became a thing of great importance to a man sitting on his patio on Earth. A thing of prime importance, for no human must die by other hands than human without a terrible vengeance. Human life must not be taken without a monstrous price anywhere in the galaxy, or the human race would end forever, and the great galactic brotherhood of intelligence would plummet down into the darkness and the distance that had scattered it before.

Adams slumped lower in his chair, forcing himself to relax, furious at himself for thinking…for it was his rule that in this time of twilight he thought of nothing…or as close to nothing as his restless mind could manage.

The stranger’s voice seemed to come from far away and yet Adams knew he was sitting at his side.

“Nice evening,” the stranger said.

Adams chuckled. “The evenings are always nice. The Weather boys don’t let it rain until later on, when everyone’s asleep.”

In a thicket down the hill, a thrush struck up its evensong and the liquid notes ran like a quieting hand across a drowsing world. Along the creek a frog or two were trying out their throats. Far away, in some dim other-world, a whip-poor-will began his chugging question. Across the meadow and up the climbing hills, the lights came on in houses here and there.

“This is the best part of the day,” said Adams.

He dropped his hand into his pocket, brought out tobacco pouch and pipe. “Smoke?”

The stranger shook his head. “As a matter of fact, I am here on business.”

Adams’ voice turned crisp. “See me in the morning, then. I don’t do business after hours.”

The stranger said softly: “It’s about Asher Sutton.”

Adams’ body tensed and his fingers shook as he filled his pipe. He was glad that it was dark so the stranger could not see.

“Sutton will be coming back,” the stranger said.

Adams shook his head. “No chance. He went out twenty years ago.”

“You haven’t crossed him off?”

“No,” said Adams slowly. “He still is on the payroll, if that is what you mean.”

“Why?” asked the man. “Why do you keep him on?”

Adams tamped the tobacco in the bowl, considering. “Sentiment, I guess. Faith in Asher Sutton. Although the faith is running out.”

“Just five days from now,” the stranger said, “Sutton will come back.” He paused a moment, then added: “Early in the morning.”

“There’s no way you could know a thing like that.”

“But I do. It’s recorded fact.”

Adams snorted. “It hasn’t happened yet.”

“In my time it has.”

Adams jerked upright in his chair. “In your time?”

“Yes,” said the stranger quietly. “You see, Mr. Adams, I am your successor.”

“Look here, young man…”

“Not young man. I am half again your age. I am getting old.”

“I have no successor,” said Adams coldly. “There’s been no talk of one. I’m good for another hundred years. Maybe more than that.”

“Yes,” the stranger said, “for more than a hundred years. For much more than that.”

Adams leaned back quietly in his chair. He put his pipe in his mouth and lit it with a hand that was suddenly steady.

“Let’s take this easy,” he said. “You say you are my successor…that you took over my job after I quit or died. That means you came out of the future. Not that I believe you for a moment, of course. But just for argument.…”

“There was a news item the other day,” the stranger said. “About a man named Michaelson who claimed he went into the future.”

“I read that. One second! How could a man know he went one second into time? How could he measure it and know? What difference would it make?”

“None,” the stranger agreed. “Not the first time. But the next time he will go into the future five seconds. Five seconds, Mr. Adams. Five tickings of the clock. The space of one short breath. There must be a starting point for all things.”

“Time travel?”

The stranger nodded.

“I don’t believe it,” Adams said. “In the last five thousand years we have conquered the galaxy…”

“Conquer is not the right word, Mr. Adams.”

“Well, taken over, then. Moved in. However you wish it. And we have found strange things. Stranger things than we ever dreamed. But never time travel.” He waved his hand at the stars. “In all that space out there, no one had time travel. No one.”

“You have it now,” the stranger said. “Since two weeks ago. Michaelson went into time, one second into time. A start. That is all that’s needed.”

“All right,” said Adams. “Let us say you are the man who in a hundred years or so will take my place. Let’s pretend you traveled back in time. Then why come here?”

“To tell you that Asher Sutton will return.”

“I would know it when he came,” said Adams. “Why must I know now?”

“When he returns,” the stranger said, “Sutton must be killed.”

CHAPTER II

The tiny, battered ship sank lower, slowly, like a floating feather, drifting down toward the field in the slant of morning sun. The bearded, ragged man in the pilot’s chair sat tensed, not breathing.

Tricky, said his brain. Hard and tricky to handle so much weight, to judge the distance and the speed…hard to make the tons of metal float down against the savage pull of gravity. Harder even than the lifting of it, when there had been no consideration but that it should rise and move out into space.

For a moment the ship wavered and he fought it with every shred of will and mind…and then it floated once again, hovering just a few feet above the surface of the field.

He let it down, gently, so that it scarcely bumped when it touched the ground.

He sat rigid in the seat, slowly going limp, relaxing by inches, first one muscle, then another. Tired, he told himself. The toughest job I’ve ever done. Another few miles and I would have let the whole weight of the ship crash.

Far down the field was a clump of buildings. A ground car had swung away from them and was racing down the strip toward him. A breeze curled in through the shattered vision port and touched his face, reminding him.…

Breathe, he told himself. You must be breathing when they come. You must be breathing and you must walk out and you must smile at them. There must be nothing they will notice. Right away, at least. The beard and clothes will help some. They’ll be so busy gaping at them that they will miss a little thing. But not breathing. They might notice if you weren’t breathing.

Carefully, he pulled in a breath of air, felt the sting of it run along his nostrils and gush inside his throat, felt the fire of it when it reached his lungs.

Another breath and another one and the air had scent and life and a strange exhilaration. The blood throbbed in his throat and beat against his temples and he held his fingers to one wrist and felt it pulsing there.

Sickness came, a brief, stomach-retching sickness that he fought against, holding his body rigid, remembering all the things that he must do. The power of will, he told himself, the power of mind…the power that no man uses to its full capacity. The will to tell a body the things that it must do, the power to start an engine turning after years of doing nothing.

One breath and then another. And the heart is beating now, steadier, steadier.

Be quiet, stomach.

Get going, liver.

Keep pumping, heart.

It isn’t as if you were old and rusted, for you never were. The other system took care that you were kept in shape, that you were ready at an instant’s notice to be as you were.

But the switchover was a shock. He had known that it would be. He had dreaded its coming, for he had known what it would mean: the agony of a new kind of life and metabolism.

IN HIS mind he held a blueprint of his body and all its working parts…a shifting, wobbly picture that shivered and blurred and ran color into color. But it steadied under the hardening of his mind, the driving of his will, and finally the blueprint was still and sharp and bright and he knew that the worst was over.

He clung to the ship’s controls with hands clenched so fiercely, they almost dented metal, and perspiration poured down his body, and he was limp and weak. Nerves grew quiet and the blood pumped on, and he knew that he was breathing without even thinking of it.

For a moment longer he sat quietly in the seat, relaxing. The breeze came in the shattered port and brushed against his cheek. The ground car was coming very close.

“Johnny,” he whispered, “we are home. We made it. This is my home, Johnny. The place I talked about.”

But there was no answer, just a stir of comfort deep inside his brain, a strange, nestling comfort such as one may know when one is eight years old and snuggles into bed.

“Johnny!” he cried.

And he felt the stir again…a self-assuring stir like the feel of a dog’s muzzle against a hand.

Someone was beating at the ship’s door, beating with fists and crying out.

“All right,” said Asher Sutton. “I’m coming. I’ll be right along.”

He reached down and lifted the attaché case from beside the seat, tucked it underneath his arm. He went to the lock and twirled it open and stepped out on the ground.

There was only one man.

“Hello,” said Asher Sutton.

“Welcome to Earth, sir,” said the man, and the “sir” struck a chord of memory. Sutton’s eyes went to the man’s forehead and he saw the tattooing of the serial number, the only indication that this was a synthetic human being, an android.

Sutton had forgotten about androids. Perhaps a lot of other things as well. Little habit patterns that had sloughed away with the span of twenty years.

* * * *

He saw the android staring at him, at the naked knee showing through the worn cloth, at the lack of shoes.

“Where I’ve been,” said Sutton, sharply, “you couldn’t buy a new suit every day.”

“No, sir,” said the android.

“And the beard,” said Sutton, “is because I had nothing to shave with.”

“I’ve seen beards before,” the android told him.

Sutton stood quietly and stared at the world before him…at the upthrust of towers shining in the morning sun, at the green of park and meadow, at the darker green of trees and the blue and scarlet splashes of flower gardens on sloping terraces.

He took a deep breath and felt the air flooding in his lungs, seeking out all the distant cells that had been starved so long. And it was coming back to him, coming back again…the remembrance of life on Earth, of early morning sun and flaming sunsets, of deep blue sky and dew upon the grass, the swift blur of human talk and the lilt of human music.

“The car is waiting, sir,” the android said. “I will take you to a human.”

“I’d rather walk,” said Sutton.

The android shook his head. “The human is waiting and he is most impatient.”

“Oh, all right,” said Sutton.

The seat was soft and he sank into it gratefully, cradling the attaché case carefully in his lap. He stared out of the window, fascinated by the green of Earth. The green fields of Earth, he said. Or was it the green vales? No matter now. It was a song written long ago, in the time when there had been fields on Earth, instead of parks, when Man had turned the soil for more important things than flower beds. In the day, thousands of years before, when Man had just begun to feel the stir of space within his soul. Long years before Earth had become the capital, and the center of galactic empire.

A great starship was taking off at the far end of the field, sliding down the ice-smooth plastic skidway with the red-hot flare of booster jets frothing in its tubes. Its nose slammed into the upward curve of the take-off ramp and it was away, a rumbling streak of silver that shot into the blue. For a moment it flickered a golden red in the morning sunlight, and then was gone, vanished.

* * * *

Sutton brought his gaze back to Earth again, sat soaking in the sight of it as a man soaks in the first strong sun of spring after months of winter.

Far to the north towered the twin spires of the Justice Bureau, Alien Branch. And to the east the pile of gleaming plastics and glass that was the University of North America. And other buildings that he had forgotten…buildings for which he found he had no name, miles apart, with parks and homesites in between. The homes were masked by trees and shrubbery—none sat in barren loneliness—and, through the green of the curving hills, Sutton caught the glints of color that were roofs and walls.

The car slid to a stop before the Administration Building and the android opened the door. “This way, sir.”

Only a few chairs in the lobby were occupied and most of those by humans. Humans or androids, thought Sutton, you can’t tell the difference until you see their foreheads.

The sign upon the forehead, the brand of manufacture. The telltale mark that said: “This man is not a human, although he looks like one.”

These are the ones who will listen to me. These are the ones who will pay attention. These are the ones who will save me against any future enmity that Man may raise against me.

For they are worse than the disinherited. They are not the has-beens; they are the never-weres. They are not born of woman, but of the laboratory. Their mother is a bin of chemicals and their father the ingenuity and technology of the creator race.

Android: An artificial human. A human made in the laboratory out of Man’s own knowledge of chemicals and atomic and molecular structure and the strange reaction that is known as life.

Human in all but two respects—the mark upon the forehead and the ability to reproduce biologically.

Artificial humans to help the real humans, the biological humans, to carry the load of galactic empire, to make the thin line of humanity stronger, thicker. But kept in their place. Oh, yes, most definitely kept in their rightful place by psycho-conditioning and savagely enforced rules and laws.

The corridor was empty. Sutton, his bare feet slapping on the floor, followed the android.

The door before which they stopped said:

THOMAS H. DAVIS

(Human)

Operations Chief

“In there,” the android said.

Sutton walked in and the man behind the desk looked up.

“I’m a human,” Sutton told him. “I may not look it, but I am.”

The man jerked his thumb toward a chair. “Sit down.”

Sutton sat.

“Why didn’t you answer our signals?” Davis asked.

“My set was broken.”

“Your ship has no identity.”

“The rains washed it off,” said Sutton, “and I had no paint.”

“Rain doesn’t wash off paint.”

“Not Earth rain. Where I was, it does.”

“Your motors?” asked Davis. “We could pick up nothing from them.”

“They weren’t working.”

Davis’ Adam’s apple bobbed up and down. “Weren’t working? How did you navigate?”

“With energy,” said Sutton.

“Energy.…”

Sutton stared at him icily. “Anything else you want to know?”

Davis was confused. The answers were all wrong. He fiddled with a pencil. “Just the usual things, I guess.” He drew a pad of forms before him.

“Name?”

“Asher Sutton.”

“Origin of fli— Say, wait a minute! Asher Sutton?”

“That’s right.”

Davis flung the pencil on the desk, pushed away the pad. “Why didn’t you tell me that first?”

“I didn’t have a chance.”

Davis was flustered. “If I had known.…”

“It’s the beard,” said Sutton.

“My father talked about you often. Jim Davis. Maybe you remember him.”

Sutton shook his head.

“Great friend of your father’s. That is…they more or less knew one another.”

“How is my father?” asked Sutton.

“Great,” said Davis enthusiastically. “Getting along in years, but standing up.…”

“My father and mother,” Sutton told him coldly, “died forty years ago. In the Argus pandemic.” He heaved himself to his feet, faced Davis squarely. “If you’re through, I’d like to go to my hotel. They’ll find some room for me.”

“Certainly, Mr. Sutton, certainly. Which hotel?”

“The Orion Arms.”

Davis reached into a drawer, took out a directory, flipped the pages, ran a shaking finger down a column.

“Cherry 26-3489,” he said. “The teleport is over there.”

He pointed to a booth set flush into the wall, where a dematerializer could transport matter instantly to any other teleport booth anywhere on Earth.

“Thanks,” said Sutton.

“About your father, Mr. Sutton.…”

“I know,” said Sutton. “I’m glad you tipped me off.”

He swung around and walked to the teleport. Before he closed the door, he looked back.

Davis was on the visaphone, talking rapidly.

CHAPTER III

Twenty years had not changed the Orion Arms.

To Sutton, stepping out of the teleport, it looked the same as the day he had walked away. A little shabbier, but it was home, the quiet whisper of hushed activity, the dowdy furnishings, the finger-to-the-lip, tiptoe atmosphere, the stiff respectability that he had remembered and dreamed about in the long years of alienness.

The life mural along the wall was the same as ever. A little faded now, but the same goatish Pan still chased, after twenty years, the same terror-stricken maiden across the self-same hills and dales. And the same rabbit hopped from behind a bush and watched the chase with all his customary boredom, chewing his everlasting cud of clover.

The self-adjusting furniture, bought before the management had considered throwing the hostelry open to the unhuman trade, had been out-of-date twenty years ago. But it still was there. It had been repainted, in soft, genteel pastels, its self-adjustment features still confined to human forms.

The spongy floor covering had lost some of its sponginess, and the Cetian cactus must have died at last, for a pot of frankly Terrestrial geraniums now occupied its place.

The clerk snapped off the visaphone and turned back to the room.

“Good morning, Mr. Sutton,” he said, in his cultured android voice. Then he added, almost as an afterthought: “We’ve been wondering when you would show up.”

“Twenty years,” said Sutton drily, “is a long time to wonder.”

“We’ve kept your old suite for you. We knew you would want it. Mary has kept it cleaned and ready for you ever since you left.”

“That was nice of you, Ferdinand.”

“You’ve hardly changed at all. Just the beard. I knew you the second that I turned and saw you.”

“The beard and clothes,” said Sutton. “The clothes are pretty bad.”

“I don’t suppose you have luggage, Mr. Sutton.”

“No. Could I get something to eat?”

“Breakfast, perhaps? We still are serving breakfast. You always liked scrambled eggs for breakfast.”

“That sounds all right,” said Sutton. “Send them up with a change of clothes.”

He turned slowly from the desk and walked to the elevator. He was about to close the door when a voice called: “Just a moment, please.”

The girl was running across the lobby. Rangy and copper-haired, she slid into the lift, pressed her back against the wall.

“Thanks very much,” she said. “Thanks so much for waiting.”

Her skin, Sutton saw, was magnolia-white and her eyes were granite-colored with shadows deep within them. He closed the door softly. “I was glad to wait,” he said. Her lips twitched just a little, and he added, “I don’t like shoes. They cramp my feet.”

He pressed the button savagely and the lift sprang upward. The lights ticked off the floors. Sutton stopped the cage. “This is my floor,” he said.

He had the door open and was halfway out, when she spoke to him. “Mister.”

“Yes, what is it?”

“I didn’t mean to laugh. I really-truly didn’t.”

“You had a right to laugh,” said Sutton, and closed the door behind him. He stood for a moment, fighting down a sudden tenseness that seized him like a mighty fist.

Careful, he told himself, take it easy, boy. You are home at last. This is the place you dreamed of. Just a few doors down and you are finally home. You will reach out and turn the knob and push open the door and it will be there, just as you remembered it. The favorite chair, the life-paintings on the wall, the little fountain with the mermaids from Venus, and the windows where you can sit and fill your eyes with Earth.

But you can’t get emotional. You can’t go soft and scared.

For that chap back at the spaceport lied. And hotels don’t keep rooms waiting for all of twenty years.

There is something wrong. I don’t know what, but something. Something terribly wrong.

He took a slow step…and then another, fighting down the tension, swallowing the dryness of excitement welling in his throat.

One of the paintings, he remembered, was a forest brook, with birds flitting in the trees. And at the most unexpected times one of the birds would sing, usually with the dawn or the going of the sun. And the water babbled with a happy song that held one listening.

He knew that he was running and he didn’t try to stop. His fingers curled around the door knob and turned it.

The room was there…the favorite chair, the babble of the brook, the splashing of the mermaids.…

He caught the whiff of danger as he stepped across the threshold and he tried to turn and run, but he was too late. He felt his body crumpling forward to crash toward the floor.

“Johnny!” he cried and the cry bubbled in his throat. “Johnny!”

Inside his brain a voice whispered back: “It’s all right, Ash. We’re still joined.”

Then darkness came.

CHAPTER IV

There was someone in the room and Sutton kept his eyelids down, kept his breathing slow.

Someone in the room was pacing quietly, stopping now before the window to look out, moving over to the mantelpiece to stare at the painting of the forest brook. And in the stillness of the room, Sutton heard the laughing babble of the painted stream against the splashing of the fountain, heard the faint bird notes that came from the painted trees, imagined that even from the distance that he lay he could smell the forest mold and the cool, wet perfume of the moss that grew along the stream.

The person in the room crossed back again and sat down in a chair. He whistled a tune, almost inaudibly. A funny, little lilting tune that Sutton had not heard before.

Someone gave me a going over, Sutton told himself. Knocked me out fast, with gas or powder, then gave, me an overhauling. I seem to remember some of it…hazy and far away. Lights that glowed and a probing at my brain. And I might have fought against it, but I knew it was no use. And, besides, they’re welcome to anything they found. Yes, they’re welcome to anything they pried out of my mind. But they’ve found all they’re going to find and they have gone away. They left someone to watch me and he still is in the room, waiting for me to wake up, probably.

Sutton stirred on the bed and opened his eyes, kept them glazed and only partly focused.

The man rose from the chair and Sutton saw that he was dressed in white. He crossed the room and leaned above the bed.

“All right now?” he asked. Sutton raised a hand and passed it, bewildered, across his face. “Yes, I guess I am.”

“You passed out,” the man said.

“Something I forgot to eat.”

The man shook his head. “The trip, probably. It must have been a tough one.”

“Yes,” said Sutton. “Tough.”

Go ahead, he thought. Go ahead and ask some more. Those are your instructions. Catch me while I’m groggy, pump me like a well. Go ahead and ask the questions and earn your lousy money.

But he was wrong. The man straightened up. “I think you’ll be all right,” he said. “If you aren’t, call me. My card is on the mantel.”

“Thanks, doctor,” said Sutton.

He watched him walk across the room, waited until he heard the door click, then sat up in bed. His clothing lay in a pile in the center of the floor. His case? Yes, there it was, lying on a chair. Ransacked, no doubt, probably photostated. Spy rays, too, more than likely. All over the room. Ears listening and eyes watching.

But who? he asked himself. No one knew he was returning. No one could have known. Not even Adams. There was no way to know. There had been no way that he could let them know.

Funny. Funny the way Davis at the spaceport had recognized his name and told a lie to cover up. Funny the way Ferdinand pretended his suite had been kept for him for all these twenty years. Funny, too, how Ferdinand had turned around and spoken, as if twenty years were nothing.

Organized, said Sutton. Clicking like a relay system. Set and waiting. But why should anyone be waiting? No one knew when he’d be coming back. Or if he would come at all.

And even if someone did know, why go to all the trouble?

For they could not know, he thought…they could not know the thing I have, they could not even guess. Even if they did know I was coming back, incredible as it might be that they should know, even that would be more credible by a million times than that they should know the real reason for my coming.

And knowing, he said, they would not believe.

His eyes found the attaché case lying on the chair, and stared at it.

And knowing, he said again, they would not believe.

When they look the ship over, of course, they will do some wondering. Then there might be some excuse for the thing that happened. But they didn’t have time to look at the ship. They didn’t wait a minute. They were laying for me and they gave me the works from the second that I landed.

Davis shoved me into a teleport and grabbed his phone like mad. And Ferdinand knew that I was on the way, he knew he’d see me when he turned around. And the girl—the girl with the granite eyes?

Sutton got up and stretched. A bath and shave, first of all, he told himself. And then some clothes and breakfast. A visor call or two.

Don’t act as if you’ve got the wind up, he warned himself. Act naturally. Talk to yourself. Pinch out a blackhead. Scratch your back against a door casing. Act as if you think you are alone.

But be careful.

There is someone watching.

CHAPTER V

Sutton was finishing breakfast when the android came.

“My name is Herkimer,” the android told him, “and I belong to Mr. Geoffrey Benton.”

“Mr. Benton sent you here?”

“Yes. He sends a challenge.”

“A challenge?”

“Yes. You know, a duel.”

“But I am unarmed.”

“You cannot be unarmed,” said Herkimer.

“I never fought a duel in all my life,” said Sutton. “I don’t intend to now.”

“You are vulnerable.”

“What do you mean, vulnerable? If I go unarmed…”

“But you cannot go unarmed. The code was changed just a year or two ago. No man younger than a hundred years can go unarmed.”

“But if one does?”

“Why, then,” said Herkimer, “anyone who wants to can pot him like a rabbit.”

“You are sure of this?”

Herkimer dug into his pocket, brought out a tiny book. He wet his finger and fumbled at the pages. “It’s right here.”

“Never mind,” said Sutton. “I will take your word.”

“You accept the challenge, then?”

Sutton grimaced. “I suppose I have to. Mr. Benton will wait, I presume, until I buy a gun.”

“No need of that,” Herkimer told him brightly. “I brought one along. Mr. Benton always does that. Just a courtesy, you know. In case someone hasn’t got one.”

He reached into his pocket and held out the weapon. Sutton took it and laid it on the table. “Awkward looking thing,” he said.

Herkimer stiffened. “It’s traditional. The finest weapon made. Shoots a .45 caliber slug. Hand-loaded ammunition. Sights are tested in for fifty feet.”

“You pull this?” asked Sutton, pointing.

Herkimer nodded. “It is called a trigger. And you don’t pull it. You squeeze it.”

“Just why does Mr. Benton challenge me?” asked Sutton. “I don’t even know the man.”

“You are famous,” said Herkimer.

“Not that I have heard of.”

“You are an investigator,” Herkimer pointed out. “You have just come back from a long and perilous mission. You’re carrying a mysterious attaché case. And there are reporters waiting in the lobby to interview you.”

Sutton nodded. “I see. When Benton kills someone, he likes him to be famous.”

“Of course. More publicity.”

“But I don’t know your Mr. Benton. How will I know who I’m supposed to shoot at?”

“I’ll show you,” said Herkimer, “on the televisor.” He stepped to the desk, dialed a number and stepped back. “That’s him.”

In the screen a man was sitting before a chess table. The pieces were in mid-game. Across the board stood a beautifully machined robotic. The man reached out a hand, thoughtfully played his knight. The robotic clicked and chuckled. It moved a pawn. Benton’s shoulders hunched forward and he bent above the board. One hand came around and scratched the back of his neck.

“Oscar’s got him worried,” said Herkimer. “He always has him worried. Mr. Benton hasn’t won a single game in the last ten years.”

“Why does he keep on playing?”

“Stubborn,” said Herkimer. “But Oscar’s stubborn, too.” He made a motion with his hand. “Machines can be so much more stubborn than humans. It’s the way they’re built.”

“But Benton must have known, when he had Oscar fabricated, that Oscar would beat him,” Sutton pointed out. “A human simply can’t beat a robotic expert.”

“Mr. Benton knew that,” said Herkimer, “but he didn’t believe it. He wanted to prove otherwise.”

“Egomaniac,” said Sutton.

Herkimer stared at him calmly. “I believe that you are right, sir. I’ve sometimes thought the same myself.”

Sutton brought his gaze back to Benton, who was still hunched above the board, the knuckles of one hand thrust hard against his mouth. The veined face was scrubbed and pink and chubby and the brooding eyes, thoughtful as they were, still held a fat twinkle of culture and good fellowship.

“You’ll know him now?” asked Herkimer.

Sutton nodded. “Yes, I think I can pick him out. He doesn’t look too dangerous.”

“He’s killed sixteen men,” Herkimer said stiffly. “He plans to lay away his guns when he makes it twenty-five.” He looked straight at Sutton and said: “You’re the seventeenth.”

“I’ll try to make it easy for him.”

“How would you wish it, sir?” asked Herkimer. “Formal or informal?”

“Let’s make it catch-as-catch-can.”

Herkimer was disapproving. “There are certain conventions.…”

“You can tell Mr. Benton,” said Sutton, “that I don’t plan to ambush him.”

Herkimer picked up his cap, put it on his head. “The best of luck, sir.”

“Why, thank you, Herkimer,” said Sutton.

The door closed and Sutton was alone. He turned back to the screen. Benton played to double up his rooks. Oscar chuckled at him, slid a bishop three squares along the board and put Benton’s king in check.

Sutton snapped the visor off.

He scraped a hand across his now-shaved chin.

Coincidence or plan?

One of the mermaids had climbed to the edge of the fountain and balanced her three-inch self precariously. She whistled at Sutton. He turned at the sound and she dived into the pool, swam in circles, mocking him with obscene gestures.

Sutton leaned forward, reached into the visor rack, brought out the INF-JAT directory, flipped the pages swiftly.

INFORMATION—Terrestrial

Culinary

Culture

Customs

That would be it. Customs.

He found DUELING, noted the number and put back the book. He reset the dial and snapped the tumbler for direct communication.

A robot’s streamlined, metallic face filled the plate. “At your service, sir,” it said.

“I have been challenged to a duel,” said Sutton.

The robot waited for the question.

“I don’t want to fight a duel,” said Sutton. “Is there any way, legally, for me to back out? I’d like to do it gracefully, too, but I won’t insist on that.”

“There is no way,” the robot said.

“No way at all?”

“You are under one hundred?” the robot asked.

“Yes.”

“You are sound of mind and body?”

“I think so.”

“You are or you aren’t. Make up your mind.”

“I am,” said Sutton.

“You do not belong to any bona fide religion that prohibits killing?”

“I presume I could classify myself as a Christian,” said Sutton. “Isn’t there a Commandment against killing?”

The robot shook his head. “It doesn’t count.”

“It’s clear and specific,” Sutton argued. “It says one should not kill.”

“It does,” the robot told him. “But it has been discredited. You humans never obeyed it. You either obey a law or you forfeit it.”

“I guess I’m sunk then,” said Sutton.

“According to the revision of the year 7990,” said the robot, “arrived at by convention, any human under the age of one hundred, of male sex, sound in mind and body, unhampered by religious bonds or belief, which are subject to a court of inquiry, must fight a duel whenever challenged.”

“I see.”

“The history of dueling,” said the robot, “is very interesting.”

“It’s barbaric,” said Sutton.

“Perhaps so. But you humans are still barbaric in many other ways as well.”

“You’re impertinent.”

“I’m sick and tired,” the robot said. “Sick and tired of the smugness of you humans. You say you’ve outlawed war and you haven’t, really. You’ve just fixed it so no one dares to fight you. You say you have abolished crime and you have, except for human crime. And a lot of the crime you have abolished isn’t crime at all, except by human standards.”

“You’re taking a long chance, friend,” warned Sutton, “talking the way you are.”

“You can pull the plug on me,” the robot told him, “any time you want to. Life isn’t worth it, the kind of job I have.”

He saw the look on Sutton’s face and hurried on.

“Try to see it this way, sir. Through all his history, Man has been a killer. He was smart and brutal, even from the first. He was a puny thing, but he found how to use a club and rocks, and when the rocks weren’t sharp enough, he chipped them so they were. There were things, at first, he should not by rights have killed. They should have killed him. But he was smart and he had the club and flints and he killed the mammoth and the sabertooth and other things he could not have faced barehanded. So he won the Earth from the animals. He wiped them out, except the ones he allowed to live for the service that they gave him. And even as he fought with the animals, he fought with others of his kind. After the animals were gone, he kept on fighting…man against man, nation against nation.”

“But that is past,” said Sutton. “There hasn’t been a war for more than a thousand years. Humans have no need of fighting now.”

“That is just the point,” the robot insisted. “There is no more need of fighting, no more need of killing. Oh, once in a while, perhaps, on some far-off planet, where a human must kill to protect his life or to uphold human dignity and power. But, by and large, there is no need of killing.

“And yet you kill. You must kill. The old brutality is in you. You are drunk with power and killing is a sign of power. It has become a habit with you…a thing you’ve carried from the caves. There’s nothing left to kill but one another, so you kill one another and you call it dueling. You know it’s wrong, and you’re hypocritical about it. You’ve set up a fine system of semantics to make it sound respectable and brave and noble. You call it traditional and chivalric…and even if you don’t call it that in so many words, that is what you think. You cloak it with the trappings of your vicious past, you dress it up with words, and the words are only tinsel.”

“Look,” said Sutton, “I don’t want to fight this duel. I don’t think it’s.…”

There was vindictive glee in the robot’s voice. “But you’ve got to fight it. There’s no way to back out. Maybe you would like some pointers. I have all sorts of tricks.…”

“I thought you didn’t approve of dueling.”

“I don’t,” the robot said. “But it’s my job. I’m stuck with it. I try to do it well. I can tell you the personal history of every man who ever fought a duel. I can talk for hours on the advantages of rapiers over pistols. Or if you’d rather I argued for pistols, I can do that, too. I can tell you about the old American West gun slicks and the Chicago gangsters and the handkerchief and dagger duels and.…”

“No, thanks,” said Sutton.

“You aren’t interested?”

“I haven’t got the time.”

“But, sir,” the robot pleaded, “I don’t get a chance too often. I don’t get many calls. Just an hour or so.…”

“No,” said Sutton firmly.

“All right, then. Maybe you’d tell me who has challenged you.”

“Benton. Geoffrey Benton.”

The robot whistled.

“Is he that good?” asked Sutton.

“All of it,” the robot said.

Sutton shut the visor off.

He sat quietly in his chair, staring at the gun. Slowly he reached out a hand and picked it up. The butt fitted snugly in his hand. His finger curled around the trigger. He lifted it and sighted at the door knob.

It was easy to handle. Almost like it was a part of him. There was a feel of power within it…of power and mastery. As if he suddenly were stronger and greater…and more dangerous.

He sighed and laid it down. The robot had been right.

He reached out to the visor, pushed the signal for the lobby desk. Ferdinand’s face came in.

“Anyone waiting down there for me, Ferdinand?”

“Not a soul,” said Ferdinand.

“Anyone asked for me?”

“No one, Mr. Sutton.”

“No reporters? No photographers?”

“No, Mr. Sutton. Were you expecting them?”

Sutton didn’t answer. He cut off, feeling very silly.

CHAPTER VI

Man was spread thin throughout the galaxy. A lone man here, a handful there. Slim creatures of bone and brain and muscle to hold a galaxy in check. Slight shoulders to hold up the cloak of human greatness spread across the light years.

For Man had flown too fast, had driven far beyond his physical capacity. Not by strength did he hold his starry outposts, but by something else…by depth of human character, by his colossal conceit, by his ferocious conviction that Man was the greatest living thing the galaxy had spawned. All this in spite of many evidences that he was not…evidence that he cast aside, scornful of any greatness that was not ruthless and aggressive.

Too thin, Christopher Adam told himself. Too thin and stretched too far. One man backed by a dozen androids and a hundred robots could hold a solar system. Could hold it until there were more men or until something cracked.

In time there’d be more men, if the birth rate increased. But it would be many centuries before the line could grow much thicker, for Man only held the keypoints…one planet in an entire system, and not in every system. Man had leapfrogged since there weren’t men enough, had set up strategic spheres of influence, had bypassed all but the richest, most influential systems.

There was room to spread, room for a million years. If there were any humans left by then.

If the life on those other planets let the humans live, if there never came a day when they would be willing to pay the terrible price of wiping out mankind.

The price would be high, said Adams, talking to himself, but it could be done. Just a few hours’ job. Humans in the morning, no humans left by night. What if a thousand others died for every human death…or ten thousand, or a hundred thousand? Under certain circumstances, such a price might be cheap.

There were islands of resistance even now where one walked carefully…or even walked around. Like 61 Cygni, for example.

It took judgment…and some tolerance…and a great measure of latent brutality, but, most of all, conceit, the absolute, unshakable conviction that Man was sacrosanct, that he could not be touched, that he could die only individually.

But five had died, three humans and two androids, beside a river that flowed on Aldebaran XII, just A few short miles from Andrelon, the planetary capital.

They had died of violence, of that there was no question.

Adams’ eyes sought out the paragraph of Thorne’s latest report:

Force had been applied from the outside. We found a hole burned through the atomic shielding of the engine. The force must have been controlled or it would have resulted in absolute destruction. The automatics got in their work and headed off the blast, but the machine went out of control and smashed into the tree. The area was saturated with intensive radiation.

Good man, Thorne, thought Adams. He won’t let a single thing be missed. He had those robots in there before the place was safe for humans.

But there wasn’t much to find…not much that gave an answer. Just a batch of question marks.

Five had died, and when that was said, that was the end of fact. For they were burned and battered and there were no features left, no fingerprints or eyeprints to match against the records.

A few feet away from the strewn blackness of the bodies, the machine had smashed into a tree. A machine that, like the men, was without a record. A machine without a counterpart in the known galaxy and, so far at least, a machine without a purpose.

Thorne would give it the works. He would set it up in solidographs, down to the last shattered piece of glass and plastic. He would have it analyzed and diagramed and the robots would put it in scanners that would peel it and record it molecule by molecule.

And they might find something. Just possibly they might.

Adams shoved the report to one side and leaned back in his chair. Idly, he spelled out his name lettered across the office door, reading backward slowly and with exaggerated care. As if he’d never seen the name before. As if he did not know it. Puzzling it out.

And then the line beneath it:

SUPERVISOR, ALIEN

RELATIONS BUREAU

Space Sector 16

And the line beneath that:

Department of Galactic

Investigation (Justice)

Early afternoon sunlight slanted through a window and fell across his head, highlighting the clipped silver mustache, the whitening temple hair.

Five men had died.…

He wished that he could get it out of his mind. There was other work. This Sutton thing, for instance. The reports on that would be coming in within an hour or so.

But there was a photograph…a photograph from Thorne, that he could not forget.

A smashed machine and broken bodies and a great smoking gash sliced across the turf. The silver river flowed in a silence that one knew was there even in the photograph, and far in the distance the spidery web of Andrelon rose against a pinkish sky.

Adams smiled softly to himself. Aldebaran XII, he thought, must be a lovely world. He never had been there and he never would be there…for there were too many planets for one man to even dream of seeing all.

Someday, perhaps, when the teleports would transmit matter instantly across light years instead of puny miles…perhaps then a man might just whisk across to any planet that he wished, for a day or hour, or just to say he’d been there.

But Adams didn’t need to be there. He had eyes and ears there, as he had on every occupied planet within the entire galactic sector.

Thorne was there, and Thorne was an able man. He wouldn’t rest until he’d wrung the last ounce of information from the broken wreck and bodies.

I wish I could forget it, Adams told himself. It’s important, yes, but not all-important.

A buzzer hummed at Adams and he flipped up a tumbler on his desk. “What is it?”

A female android voice answered: “It’s Mr. Thorne, sir, on the mentophone from Andrelon.”

“Thank you, Alice,” Adams said.

He clicked open a drawer and took out the mentophone cap, placed it on his head, adjusted it with steady fingers. Thoughts flickered through his brain, disjointed, random thought, enormously amplified by the Electro-Neuron Boosting Stations. Ghost thoughts drifting through the universe—residual flotsam from the minds of men and creatures back to the unguessable past.

Adams flinched. I’ll never get used to it, he told himself. I will always duck, like the kid who anticipates a cuffing.

The ghost thoughts peeped and chittered at him.

Adams closed his eyes and settled back. “Hello, Thorne,” he thought.

Thorne’s thought came in, thinned and tenuous over the distance of more than fifty light years.

“That you, Adams?”

“Yes, it’s me. What’s up?”

A high, sing-song thought came in and skipped along his brain: Spill the rattle…pinch the fish…oxygen is high-priced.

Adams forced the unwanted thought out of his brain, built up his concentration. “Start over again, Thorne. A ghost thought came along and blotted you out.”

Thorne’s thought was louder now, more distinct. “I wanted to ask you about a name. Seems to me I heard it once before, but I can’t be sure.”

“What name?”

Thorne was spacing his thoughts now, placing them slowly and with emphasis to cut through the static. “The name is Asher Sutton.”

Adams sat bolt upright in his chair. His mouth flapped open. “What?” he roared.

“Walk west,” said a voice in his brain. “Walk west and then straight up.”

Thorne’s thought came in.… “it was the name that was on the fly leaf.…”

“Start over,” Adams concentrated. “Start over and take it slow. I couldn’t hear a thing you thought.”

Thorne’s thoughts came slowly, intense mental power behind each word: “It was like this. You remember that wreck we had out here? Five men killed.…”

“Yes, yes. Of course I remember it.”

“Well, we found a book, or what once had been a book, on one of the corpses. The book was burned, scorched through and through by radiation. The robots did what they could with it, but that wasn’t much. A word here and there. Nothing you could make any sense out of.…”

The thought static purred and rumbled. Half thoughts cut through. Rambling thought-snatches that had no human sense or meaning—that could have had no human sense or meaning even if they had been heard in their entirety.

“Start over,” Adams thought desperately. “Start over.”

“You know about this wreck. Five men.…”

“Yes, yes. I got that much. Up to the part about the book. Where does Sutton come in?”

“That was about all the robotics could figure out,” Thorne told him. “Just three words. ‘By Asher Sutton.’ Like he might have been the author. Like the book might have been written by him. It was on one of the first pages. The title page, maybe. Such and such a book by Asher Sutton.”

There was silence. Even the ghost voices were still for a moment. Then a piping, lisping thought came in…a baby thought, immature and puling. And the thought was without context, untranslatable, almost meaningless…but hideous and nerve-wrenching in its alien imbecility.

Adams felt the sudden chill of fear slice into his marrow. He grasped the chair arms with both his hands and hung on tight while the degraded mindlessness babbled in his brain.

Suddenly the thought was gone. Fifty light years of space whistled in the cold.

Adams relaxed, felt the perspiration running from his armpits, trickling down his ribs. “You there, Thorne?” he asked.

“Yes. I caught some of that one, too.”

“Pretty bad, wasn’t it?”

“I’ve never heard much worse,” Thorne told him. There was a moment’s silence. Then Thorne’s thoughts took up again. “Maybe I’m just wasting time. But it seemed to me I remembered that name.”

“You have,” Adams thought back. “Sutton went to 61 Cygni.”

“Oh, he’s the one!”

“He got back this morning.”

“Couldn’t have been him, then. Someone else by the same name.”

“Must have been,” thought Adams.

“Nothing else to report,” Thorne told him. “The name just bothered me.”

“Keep at it,” Adams thought. “Let me know anything that turns up.”

“I will,” Thorne promised. “Good-bye.”

“Thanks for calling.”

* * * *

Adams lifted off the mentophone cap. He opened his eyes and the sight of the room, commonplace and Earthly, with the sun streaming through the window, was almost a physical shock.

He sat limp in his chair, thinking, remembering.

The man had come at twilight, stepping out of the shadows onto the patio, and he had sat down in the darkness and talked like any other man. Except the things he said.

When he returns, Sutton must be killed. I am your successor.

Crazy talk. Unbelievable. Impossible.

And, still, maybe I should have listened. Maybe I should have heard him out instead of flying off the handle.

Except that you don’t kill a man who comes back after twenty years.

Especially a man like Sutton.

Sutton is a good man. One of the best the Bureau has. Slick as a whistle, well grounded in alien psychology, an authority on galactic politics. No other man could have done the Cygnian job as well.

If he did it.

I don’t know that, of course. But he’ll be in tomorrow and he’ll tell me all about it.

A man is entitled to a day’s rest after twenty years.

Slowly, Adams reached out an almost reluctant hand and snapped up a tumbler.

Alice answered.

“Send me in the Asher Sutton file.”

“Yes, Mr. Adams.”

Adams settled back in his chair.

The warmth of the sun felt good across his shoulders. The ticking of the clock was comforting after the ghost voices whispering out in space. Thoughts that one could not pin down, that one could not trace back and say: “This one started here and then.”

Although we’re trying, Adams thought. He chuckled to himself at the weirdness of the project.

Thousands of listeners listening in on the random thoughts of random time and space, listening in for clues, for hints, for leads. Seeking a driblet of sense from the stream of gibberish…hunting the word or sentence or disassociated thought that might be translated into a new philosophy or a new technique or a new science…or a new something that the human race had never even dreamed of.

A new concept, said Adams, talking to himself. An entirely new concept.

Adams scowled to himself.

A new concept might be dangerous. This was not the time for anything that did not fit into human society, that did not match the pattern of human thought and action.

There must be no confusion. There must be nothing but the sheer, bulldog determination to hang on, to sink in one’s teeth and stay. To maintain the status quo.

Later, someday, many centuries from now, there would be a time and place and room for a new concept. When Man’s grip was firmer, when the line was not too thin, when a mistake or two would not spell disaster.

Man, at the moment, controlled every factor. He held the edge at every point…a slight edge, admitted, but certainly an edge. And it must stay that way. There must be nothing that would tip the scale in the wrong direction. Not a word or thought, not an action or a whisper.

The desk buzzer lighted up and snarled at him.

“Yes?” said Adams.

Alice’s words tumbled over one another. “The file, sir. The Sutton file.”

“What about the Sutton file? Bring it in here.”

“It s gone, sir.”

“Someone is using it.”

“No, sir, not that. It has been stolen.”

Adams jerked straight upright. “Stolen!”

“That is right, sir. Twenty years ago.”

“But twenty years.…”

“We checked the security points,” said Alice. “It was stolen three days after Mr. Sutton set out for 61 Cygni.”

CHAPTER VII

The lawyer told Sutton his name was Wellington. He had painted a thin coat of plastic lacquer over his forehead to hide the tattoo, but the mark of the manufacture showed through, provided one looked closely.

He laid his hat very carefully on a table, sat down meticulously in a chair and placed his briefcase across his knee. He handed Sutton a rolled-up paper.

“Your newspaper, sir,” he said. “It was outside the door. I thought that you might want it.”

“Thanks,” said Sutton.

Wellington cleared his throat. “You are Asher Sutton?” he asked. Sutton nodded.

“I represent a certain robot who commonly went by the name of Buster. You may remember him.”

Sutton leaned quickly forward. “Remember him? Why, he was a second father to me. Raised me after both my parents died. He has been with the Sutton family for almost four thousand years.”

Wellington cleared his throat again. “Quite so.”

Sutton leaned back in his chair, crushing the newspaper in his grip. “Don’t tell me…”

Wellington waved a sober hand. “No, he’s in no trouble. Not yet, that is. Not unless you choose to make it for him.”

“What has he done?” asked Sutton.

“He has run away.”

“Good Lord! Run away? Where to?”

Wellington squirmed uneasily in the chair. “To one of the Tower stars, I believe.”

“But,” protested Sutton, “that’s way out. Out almost to the edge of the galaxy.”

Wellington nodded. “He bought himself a new body and a ship and stocked it up…”

“With what?” asked Sutton. “Buster had no money.”

“Oh, yes, he had. Money he had saved over—what was it you said?—four thousand years or so. Tips from guests, Christmas presents, one thing and another. It would all count up…in four thousand years. Placed at interest, you know.”

“But why?” asked Sutton. “What does he intend to do?”

“He took out a homestead on a planet. He didn’t sneak away. He filed his claim, so you can trace him if you wish. He used the family name, sir. That worried him a little. He hoped you wouldn’t mind.”

Sutton shook his head. “Not at all. He has a right to that name, as good a right as I have myself.”

“You don’t mind, then?” asked Wellington. “About the whole thing, I mean? After all, he was your property.”

“No,” said Sutton, “I don’t mind. But I was looking forward to seeing him again. I called the old home place, but there was no answer. I thought he might be out.”

Wellington reached into the inside pocket of his coat. “He left you a letter,” he said, holding it out.

Sutton took it. It had his name written across its face. He turned it over, but there was nothing more.

“He also,” said Wellington, “left an old trunk in my custody. Said it contained some old family papers that you might find of interest,”

Sutton sat quietly staring across the room, seeing nothing.

There had been an apple tree at the gate, and each year young Ash Sutton had eaten the apples when they were green, and Buster had nursed him each time gently through the crisis and then had whaled him good and proper to teach him respect for his human metabolism. And when the kid down the road had licked him on the way home from school, it had been Buster who had taken him out in the backyard and taught him how to fight with head as well as hands.

Sutton clenched his fists unconsciously, remembering the surge of satisfaction, the red rawness of his knuckles. The kid down the road, he recalled, had nursed a black eye for a week and become his fastest friend.

“About the trunk, sir?” asked Wellington. “You will want it delivered?”

“Yes,” said Sutton, “if you please.”

“It will be here tomorrow morning.” The android picked up his hat and rose. “I want to thank you, sir, for my client. He assured me you would be reasonable.”

“Not reasonable,” said Sutton. “Just fair. He took care of us for many years. He has earned his freedom.”

“Good day, sir,” said Wellington. “Good day,” said Sutton. “And thank you very much.”

One of the mermaids whistled at Sutton. Sutton told her. “One of these days, my beauty, you’ll do that once too often.”

She thumbed her nose at him and dived into the fountain.

The door clicked shut as Wellington left.

Slowly, Sutton tore the letter open, spread out the single page:

Dear Ash—

I went to see Mr. Adams today and he told me that he was afraid that you would not come back, but I told him that I knew you would. So I’m not doing this because I think you won’t come back and that you will never know…because I know you will. Since you left me and struck out on your own, I have felt old and useless. In a galaxy where there were many things to do, I was doing nothing. You told me you just wanted me to live on at the old place and take it easy, and I knew you did that because you were kind and would not sell me even if you had no use for me. So I’m doing something I have always wanted to do. I am filing on a planet. It sounds like a pretty good planet and I should be able to do something with it. I shall fix it up and build a home and maybe someday you will come and visit me.

P. S. If you ever want me, you can find out where I am at the homestead office.

Gently, Sutton folded the sheet, put it in his pocket.

He sat idly in the chair, listening to the purling of the stream that gushed through the painting hung above the fireplace. A bird sang and a fish jumped in a quiet pool around the bend, just outside the frame.

Tomorrow, he thought, I will see Adams. Maybe I can find out if he’s behind what happened. Although why should he be? I’m working for him. I’m carrying out his orders.

He shook his head. No, it couldn’t be Adams.

But it must be someone. Someone who had been laying for him, who even now was watching.

He shrugged mental shoulders, picked up the newspaper and opened it.

It was the Galactic Press and in twenty years its format had not changed. Conservative columns of gray type ran down the page, broken only by laconic headings. Earth news started in the upper left-hand corner of the front page, followed by Martian news, by Venusian news, by the column from the asteroids, the column and a half from the Jovian moons…then the outer planets. News from the rest of the galaxy, he knew, could be found on the inside pages. A paragraph or two to each story. Like the old community personal columns in the country papers of many centuries before.

Still, thought Sutton, smoothing out the paper, it was the only way it could be handled. There was so much news…news from many worlds, from many sectors…human news, android and robot news, alien news. The items had to be boiled down, condensed, compressed, making one word do the job of a hundred.

There were other papers, of course, serving isolated sections, and these would give the local news in more detail. But on Earth there was need of galactic-wide news coverage…for Earth was the capital of the galaxy, a planet that was nothing but a capital, a planet that grew no food, allowed no industries, that made its business nothing but government. A planet whose every inch was landscaped and tended like a lawn or park or garden.

Sutton ran his eye down the Earth column. An earthquake in eastern Asia. A new underwater development for the housing of alien employees and representatives from watery worlds. Delivery of three new star ships to the Sector 19 run. And then:

Asher Sutton, special agent of the department of galactic investigation, returned today from 61 Cygni, to which he was assigned twenty years ago. Hope of his return had been abandoned. Immediately upon his landing, a guard was thrown around his ship and he was in seclusion at the Orion Arms. All attempts to reach him for a statement failed. Shortly after his arrival, he was called out by Geoffrey Benton. Mr. Sutton chose a pistol and informality.

Sutton read the item again. All attempts to reach him…

Herkimer had said there were reporters and photographers in the lobby, and ten minutes later Ferdinand had sworn there weren’t. He had had no calls. There had been no attempt to reach him. Or had there? Attempts that had been neatly stopped. Stopped by the same person who had lain in wait for him, the same power that had been inside the room when he stepped across the threshold.

He dropped the paper to the floor, sat thinking.

He had been drugged and searched, an attempt made to probe his mind. His attaché case had been ransacked. He had been challenged by one of Earth’s foremost duelists. The old family robot had run away…or been persuaded to run away. Attempts by the press to reach him had been stopped cold.

The visor purred at him.

A call. The first since he had arrived.

He swung around in his chair and flipped up the switch.

A woman’s face came in. Granite eyes and skin magnolia white, hair a copper glory.

“My name is Eva Armour,” she said. “I am the one who asked you to hold the elevator.”

“I recognized you,” said Sutton.

“I called to make amends.”

“There is no need…”

“But there is, Mr. Sutton. You thought I was laughing at you and I really wasn’t.”

“I looked funny,” Sutton told her. “It was your privilege to laugh.”

“Will you take me out to dinner?” she asked.

“Certainly,” gasped Sutton. “I would be delighted to.”

“And someplace afterward,” she suggested. “We’ll make an evening of it.”

“Gladly”

“I’ll meet you in the lobby at seven,” she said. “And I won’t be late.”

The visor faded and Sutton sat stiffly in the chair.

We’ll make an evening of it, he said, talking to himself, and you’ll be lucky if you’re alive tomorrow.

CHAPTER VIII

Adams silently faced the four men who had come into his office, trying to make out what they might be thinking. But their faces gave no indication.

Clark, the space construction engineer, clutched a field book in his hand and his face was set and stern. There was no foolishness about Clark…ever.

Anderson, anatomist, big and rough, was lighting his pipe and, for the moment, that seemed to him the most important thing in all the worlds.

Blackburn, the psychologist, frowned at the glowing tip of his cigarette, and Shulcross, the language expert, sprawled sloppily in his chair like a bored youngster.

They found something, Adams told himself. They found plenty and some of it has them tangled up.

“Clark,” said Adams, “suppose you start us out.”

“We looked the ship over,” Clark told him, “and we found it couldn’t fly.”

“But it did,” said Adams. “Sutton brought it home.”

Clark shrugged, “He might as well have used a log. Or a hunk of rock. Either one would have served the purpose. Either one would fly just as well, or better, than that heap of junk.”

“Junk?”

“The engines were washed out,” said Clark. “The safety automatics were the only things that kept them from atomizing. The ports were cracked, some of them were broken. One of the tubes was busted off and lost. The whole ship was twisted out of line.”

“That sounds like a wreck,” Adams objected.

“It had struck something.” Clark declared. “Struck it hard and fast. Seams were opened, the structural plates were bent, the whole thing was twisted out of kilter. Even if you could start the engines, the ship would never handle. Even with the tubes okay you couldn’t set a course. Give it any drive and it would simply corkscrew.”

Anderson cleared his throat. “What would have happened to Sutton if he’d been in it when it was struck?”

“He would have died,” said Clark.

“You are positive of that?”

“No question. Even a miracle wouldn’t have saved him. We thought of that, so we worked it out. We rigged up a diagram and we used the most conservative force factors to show theoretic effects…”

Adams interrupted. “But he must have been in the ship.”

Clark shook his head stubbornly. “If he was, he died. Our diagram shows he didn’t have a chance. If one force didn’t kill him, a dozen others would.”

“Sutton came back,” Adams said.

The two stared at one another, half angrily.

Anderson broke the silence. “Had he tried to fix it up?”

Clark shook his head. “Not a mark to show he did. There would have been no use trying. Sutton didn’t know a thing about mechanics. Not a single thing. I checked on that. He had no training, no natural inclination. And it takes a man with savvy to repair an atomic engine. Just to fix it, not rebuild it. And this crash would have called for complete rebuilding.”

Shulcross spoke for the first time, softly, quietly, not moving from his awkward slouch. “Maybe we’re starting in the middle. If we started at the beginning, laid the groundwork first, we might get a better idea of what really happened.”

They looked at him, all of them, wondering what he meant. Shulcross saw it was up to him to go ahead. He spoke to Adams: “Do you have any idea of what sort of place this Cygnian world might be where Sutton went?”

Adams smiled wearily. “We’ve never been able to get close enough to know. It’s the seventh planet of 61 Cygni. It might have been any one of the system’s sixteen planets, but mathematically it was figured out that the seventh planet had the best chance of sustaining life.”

He paused and looked around the circle of faces and saw that they were waiting for him to go on.

“Sixty-one,” he said, “is a near neighbor of ours. It was one of the first suns that Man headed for when he left the solar system. Ever since it has been a thorn in our sides.”

Anderson grinned. “Because we couldn’t crack it.”

Adams nodded. “That’s right. A secret system in a galaxy that held few secrets from Man anytime he wanted to go out and take the trouble to solve them. We’ve run into all sorts of weird things, of course. Planetary conditions that, to this day, we haven’t licked. Weird, dangerous life. Economic systems and psychological concepts that had us floored and still give us a headache every time we think of them. But we were always able, at the very least, to see the thing that gave us trouble, to know the thing that licked us. With Cygni it was different. We couldn’t even get there.

“The planets are either cloud-covered or screened, for we’ve never seen the surface of a single one of them. And when you get within a few billion miles of the system you start sliding.” He turned to Clark. “That’s the right word, isn’t it?”

“There’s no word for it,” Clark told him, “but sliding comes as close as any. You aren’t stopped and you aren’t slowed, but you are deflected. As if the ship had hit ice, although it feels slicker than ice. Whatever, it is, it doesn’t register. There’s no sign of it, nothing that you can see, nothing that makes even the faintest flicker on the instruments, but you hit it and you slide off course. You correct and you slide off course again. In the early days, it drove men batty trying to reach the system and never getting a mile nearer than a certain imaginary line.”

“As if,” said Adams, “someone had taken his finger and drawn a deadline around the system.”

“Something like that,” said Clark.

“But Sutton got through,” said Anderson.

“I don’t like it,” Clark declared. “I don’t like a thing about it. Someone got a brainstorm. Our ships are too big, they said. If we use smaller ships, we might squeeze through. As if the thing that kept us off was a mesh holding back the big jobs.”

“Sutton got through,” said Adams stubbornly. “They launched him in a lifeboat and he got through where the big ships couldn’t.”

Clark shook his head, just as stubbornly. “It doesn’t make sense. Smallness and bigness wouldn’t have a thing to do with it. There’s another factor somewhere, a factor we’ve never even thought of. Sutton got through, all right, and he crashed and if he was in the ship when it crashed, he died. But he didn’t get through only because his ship was small. It was for some other reason.”

The men sat tense, thinking, waiting.

“Why Sutton?” Anderson asked, finally.

Adams answered quietly. “The ship was small. We could only send one man. We picked the man we thought could do the best job if he did get through.”

“And Sutton was the best man?”

“He was,” said Adams.

Anderson said amiably: “Well, apparently he was. He got through.”

“Or was let through,” said Blackburn.

“Not necessarily,” said Anderson.

“It follows,” Blackburn contended. “Why did we want to get into the Cygnian system? To find out if it was dangerous. That was the idea, wasn’t it?”

“That was the idea,” Adams agreed. “Anything unknown is potentially dangerous. You can’t write it off until you are sure. Those were Sutton’s instructions: Find out if 61 is dangerous.”

“And, by the same token, they’d want to find out about us,” Blackburn said. “We’d been prying and poking at them for several thousand years. They might have wanted to find out about us as badly as we did about them.”

Anderson nodded. “I see what you mean. They’d chance one man, if they could haul him in, but they wouldn’t let a full-armed ship and a fighting crew get in shooting distance.”

“Exactly,” said Blackburn.

Adams dismissed the line of talk abruptly, said to Clark: “You spoke of dents. Were they made recently?”

“Twenty years ago looks right to me. There was a lot of rust. Some of the wiring was getting pretty soft.”

“Let us suppose, then,” said Anderson, “that Sutton, by some miracle, had the knowledge to fix the ship. Even so, he would have needed materials.”

“Plenty of them,” said Clark.

“The Cygnians could have supplied them,” Shulcross suggested.

“If there are any Cygnians,” said Anderson.

“I don’t believe they could,” Blackburn declared. “A race that hides behind a screen would not be mechanical. If they knew mechanics, they would go out into space instead of shielding themselves from space. I’ll make a guess the Cygnians are non-mechanical.”

“But the screen,” Anderson prompted.

“It wouldn’t have to be mechanical,” Blackburn said flatly. “Some energy force or other we don’t know about.”

Clark smacked his open palm on his knee. “What’s the use of all this speculation? Sutton didn’t repair that ship. He brought it back, somehow, without repair. He didn’t even try to fix it. There are layers of rust on everything and there’s not a wrench mark on it.”

Shulcross leaned forward. “One thing I don’t get: Clark says some of the ports were broken. That means Sutton navigated eleven light years without air to breathe.”

“He used a suit,” said Blackburn.

Clark said quietly: “There weren’t any suits.” He looked around the room, almost as if he feared someone outside the little circle might be listening. “And that isn’t all. There wasn’t any food and there wasn’t any water.”

Anderson tapped out his pipe against the palm of his hand and the hollow sound of tapping echoed in the room. Carefully, deliberately, almost as if he forced himself to concentrate upon it, he dropped the ash from his hand into a tray.

“I might have the answer to that one,” he said. “At least a clue. There is still a lot of work to do before we have the answer. And, then, we can’t be sure.” He was aware of the eyes upon him. “I hesitate to say the thing I have in mind.”

No one spoke a word.

The clock on the wall ticked the seconds off.

From far outside the open window, a locust hummed in the quiet of afternoon.

“I don’t think,” said Anderson, “that the man is human.”

The clock ticked on. The locust shrilled to tense silence.

Adams finally spoke. “But the fingerprints checked. The eyeprints, too.”

“Oh, it’s Sutton, all right,” Anderson admitted. “There is no doubt of that. Sutton on the outside. Sutton in the flesh. The same body, or at least part of the same body, that left Earth twenty years ago.”

“What are you getting at?” asked Clark. “If he’s the same, he’s human.”

“You take an old spaceship,” said Anderson, “and you juice it up. Add a gadget here and another there, eliminate one thing, modify another. What have you got?”

“A rebuilt job,” said Clark.

“That’s just the phrase I wanted,” Anderson told them. “Someone or something has done the same to Sutton. He’s a rebuilt job. And the best human job I have ever seen. He’s got two hearts and his nervous system’s haywire…well, not haywire exactly, but different. Certainly not human. And he’s got an extra circulatory system. Not a circulatory system, either, but that is what it looks like. Only it’s not connected with the heart. Right now, I’d say, it’s not being used. Like a spare system. One system starts running down and you can switch to the spare one while you tinker with the first.”

Anderson pocketed his pipe, rubbed his hands together almost as if he were washing them.

“Well, there,” he said, “you have it.”

Blackburn blurted out: “It sounds impossible.”

Anderson appeared not to have heard him, and yet answered him. “We had Sutton under for the best part of an hour and we put every inch of him on tape and film. It takes some time to analyze a job like that. We aren’t finished yet. But we failed in one thing. We used a psychonometer on his mind and we didn’t get a nibble. Not a quaver, not a thought. Not even mental seepage. His mind was closed, tight shut.”

“Some defect in the meter,” Adams suggested.

“No,” said Anderson. “We checked that.” He looked around the room, from one face to another. “Maybe you don’t realize the implication. When a man is drugged or asleep…or in any case where he is unaware, a psychonometer will turn him inside out. It will dig out things that his waking self would swear he didn’t know. Even when a man fights against it, there is a certain seepage and that seepage widens as his mental resistance wears down.”

“But it didn’t work with Sutton,” Shulcross said.

“That’s right. It didn’t work with Sutton. I tell you, the man’s not human.”

“And you think he’s different enough, physically, so that he could live in space without air, food and water?”

“I don’t know,” said Anderson. He licked his lips and stared around the room. “I don’t know. I simply don’t.”

Adams spoke softly. “We must not get upset. Alienness is no strange thing to us. Once it might have been, when the first humans went out into space. But today.…”

Clark interrupted impatiently. “Alien things themselves don’t bother me. But when a man turns alien.…” He gulped, appealed to Anderson. “Do you think he’s dangerous?”

“Possibly,” said Anderson.

“Even if he is, he can’t do much to harm us,” Adams told them calmly. “That place of his is simply clogged with spy rigs.”

“Any reports in yet?” asked Blackburn.

“Just general. Nothing specific. Sutton has been taking it easy. Had a few calls. Made a few himself. Had a visitor or two.”

“He knows he’s being watched,” said Clark. “He’s putting on an act.”

“There’s a rumor around,” said Blackburn, “that Benton challenged him.”

Adams nodded. “Yes, he did. Ash tried to back out of it. That doesn’t sound as if he’s dangerous.”

“Maybe,” speculated Clark, almost hopefully, “Benton will close our case for us.”

Adams smiled thinly. “Somehow I think Ash may have spent the afternoon thinking up a dirty deal for our Mr. Benton.”

Anderson had fished the pipe out of his pocket, was loading it from his pouch. Clark was fumbling for a cigarette.

Adams looked at Shulcross. “You have something?”

The language expert nodded. “But it’s not too exciting. We opened Sutton’s case and we found a manuscript. We photostated it and replaced it exactly as it was. But so far it hasn’t done us any good. We can’t read a word of it.”

“Code,” said Blackburn.

Shulcross shook his head. “If it was code, our robots would have cracked it in an hour or two. But it’s not a code. It’s language. And until you get a key, a language can’t be cracked.”

“You’ve checked, of course.”

Shulcross smiled glumly. “Back to the old Earth languages…back to Babylon and Crete. We crosschecked every lingo in the galaxy. None of them came close.”

“Language,” said Blackburn. “A new language. That means Sutton found something.”

“Sutton would,” said Adams. “He’s the best agent I ever had.”

Anderson stirred restlessly in his chair. “You like Sutton?” he asked.

“I do,” said Adams.

“Adams,” said Anderson, “I’ve been wondering. It’s a thing that struck me funny from the first.”

“Yes, what is it?”

“You knew Sutton was coming back. Knew almost to the minute when he would arrive. And you set a mousetrap for him. How come?”

“Just a hunch,” said Adams.

For a long moment all four of them sat looking at him. Then they saw he meant to say no more. They rose and left the room.

CHAPTER IX

Across the room a woman’s laughter floated, sharp-edged with excitement.

The lights changed from the dusk-blue of April to the purple-gray of madness, and the room was another world that floated in a hush that was not exactly silence. Perfume came down a breeze that touched the cheek with ice…perfume that called to mind black orchids in an outland of breathless terror.

The floor swayed beneath Sutton’s feet and he felt Eva’s small fist digging hard into his arm.

The Zag spoke to them—an android with specialized psychic development—and his words were dead and hollow sounds dripping from a mummied husk. “What is it that you wish? Here you live the lives you yearn for…find any escape that you may seek…possess the things you dream of.”

“There was a stream,” said Sutton. “A little creek that ran.…”

The light changed to green, a faery green that glowed with soft, quiet life, exuberant, springtime life and the hint of things to come, and there were trees, trees that were fringed and haloed with the glistening, sunkissed green of first-bursting buds.

Sutton wiggled his toes and knew the grass beneath them, the first tender grass of spring, and smelled the hepaticas and bloodroot that had almost no smell at all…and the stronger scent of sweet Williams blooming on the hill across the creek.

He told himself: “It’s too early for sweet Williams to be in bloom.”

The creek gurgled at him as it ran across the shingle down into the Big Hole, and he hurried forward across the meadow grass, cane pole tight-clutched in one hand, the can of worms in the other.

A bluebird flashed through the trees that climbed the bluff across the meadow and a robin sang high in the top of the mighty elm that grew above the Big Hole.

Sutton found the worn place in the bank, like a chair with the elm’s trunk serving as a back, and he sat down in it and leaned forward to peer into the water. The current ran strong and dark and deep.

Sutton drew in his breath and held it with pent-up anticipation. With shaking hands he found the biggest worm and pulled it from the can, baited up the hook.

Breathlessly, he dropped the hook into the water, canted the pole in front of him for easy handling. The bobber drifted down the swirling slide of water, floated in an eddy where the current turned back upon itself. It jerked, almost disappeared, then bobbed to the surface and floated once again.

Sutton leaned forward, arms aching with tension. But even through the tension, he knew the goodness of the day. The water talked to him and he felt himself grow and become a being that comprehended and became a part of the clean, white ecstasy that was the hills and stream and meadow…earth, cloud, water, sky and sun.

And the bobber went clear under!

He felt the weight and strength of the fish that he had caught. It sailed in an arc above his head and landed in the grass behind him. He laid down his pole, scrambled to his feet and ran.

The chub flopped in the grass and he grabbed the line and held it up. It was a whopper! Sobbing in excitement, he dropped to his knees and grasped the fish, removed the hook with fingers that fumbled in their trembling.

“Hello,” said a childish voice.

Sutton twisted around, still on his knees.

A little girl stood by the elm tree, and it seemed for a moment that he had seen her somewhere before. But then he realized that she was a stranger and he frowned a little, for girls were no good when it came to fishing. He hoped she wouldn’t stay. It would be just like a girl to hang around and spoil the day for him.

“I am…,” she said, speaking a name he did not catch, for she lisped a little.

He did not answer.

“I am eight years old,” she said.

“I am Asher Sutton,” he told her, “and I am ten…going on eleven.”

She stood and stared at him, one hand plucking nervously at the figured apron that she wore. The apron, he noticed, was clean and starched, very stiff and prim, and she was messing it all up with her nervous plucking.

“I am fishing,” he said and tried very hard to keep from sounding too important. “And I just caught a whopper.”

He saw her eyes go large in sudden terror at the sight of something that came up from behind him and he wheeled around, no longer on his knees, but on his feet, and his hand was snaking into the pocket of his coat.

The place was purple-gray and there was shrill woman-laughter and there was a face in front of him…a face he had seen that afternoon and never would forget.

A fat and cultured face that twinkled even now with good fellowship, twinkled despite the deadly squint, and the gun already swinging upward in his hairy, pudgy fist.

Sutton felt his own fingers touch the grip on the gun he carried, felt them tighten around it and jerk it from the pocket. But he was too late, he knew, to beat the spat of flame from a gun that had long seconds start.

Anger flamed within him, cold, desolate, deadly anger. Anger at the pudgy fist, at the smiling face…the face that would smile across a chess board or from behind a gun. The smile of an egotist who would try to beat a robotic that was designed to play a perfect game of chess…an egotist who believed that he could shoot down Asher Sutton.

The anger, he realized, was something more than anger…something greater and more devastating than the mere working of human adrenal. It was a part of him and something that was more than him, more than the mortal thing of flesh and blood that was Asher Sutton. A terrible thing, plucked from nonhumanity.

The face before him melted…or it seemed to melt. It changed and the smile was gone, and Sutton felt the anger whip from his brain and slam bullet-hard against the wilting personality that was Geoffrey Benton.

Benton’s gun coughed loudly and the muzzle-flash was blood red in the purple light. Then Sutton felt the thud of his own gun slamming back against the heel of his hand as he pulled the trigger.

Benton was falling, twisting forward, bending at the middle as if he had hinges in his stomach, and Sutton caught one glimpse of the purple-tinted face before it dropped to the floor. There were surprise and anguish and a terrible over-riding fear printed on the features that had been twisted out of shape.

The crashing of the guns had smashed the place to silence, and through the garish light that swirled with powder smoke, Sutton saw the white blobs of many faces staring at him. Faces that mostly were without expression, although some of them had mouths and the mouths were round and open.

He felt a tugging at his elbow and he moved, guided by the hand upon his arm. Suddenly he was limp and shaken and the anger was no more and he told himself: “I have just killed a man.”

“Quick,” said Eva Armour’s voice. “We must get out of here. They’ll be swarming at you now. The whole hell’s pack of them.”

“It was you,” he told her. “I remember now. I didn’t catch the name at first. You mumbled it…or I guess you lisped, and I didn’t hear it.”

The girl tugged at his arm. “They had Benton conditioned to kill you. They figured that was all they needed. They never dreamed you could match him in a duel.”

“You were the little girl,” Sutton told her blankly. “You wore a checkered apron and you kept twisting it nervously.”

“What in heaven’s name are you talking about?”

“I was fishing,” Benton said, “and I had just caught a big one when you came along…”

“You’re crazy,” said the girl. “Fishing? Here?”

She pushed open a door and pulled him out and the cool air of night slapped him briskly and shockingly across the face.

“Wait a second,” he cried. He wheeled around and caught the girl’s arms roughly in his hands. “They?” he yelled at her. “What are you talking about? Who are they…”

She stared at him wide-eyed. “You mean you don’t know?”

He shook his head, bewildered.

“Poor Ash,” she said.

Her copper hair was a reddish flame, burnished and alive in the flicker of the sign that flashed on and off above the Zag House facade:

DREAMS TO ORDER

Live the Life You Missed!

Dream Up a Tough One for Us!

An android doorman spoke to them softly. “You wished a cab, sir?” Even as he spoke, the car was there, sliding smoothly and silently up the driveway, like a black beetle winging from the night. The doorman reached out a hand and swung wide the door. “Quick is the word,” he said.

There was something in the soft, slurred tone that made Sutton move. He stepped inside the car and pulled Eva after him. The android slammed the door.

Sutton tramped on the accelerator and the car screamed down the curving driveway, slid into the highway, roared with leashed impatience as it took the long road curving toward the hills.

“Where?” asked Sutton.

“Back to the Arms,” she said. “They wouldn’t dare to try for you there. Your room is rigged with rays.”

Sutton chuckled. “I have to be careful or I would trip on them. But how come you know?”

“It is my job to know.”

“Friend or foe?” he asked.

“Friend,” she said.

He turned his head and studied her. She had slumped down in the seat and was a little girl again…but she didn’t have a checkered apron and she wasn’t nervous.

“I don’t suppose,” said Sutton, “that it would be any use for me to ask you questions?”

She shook her head.

“If I did, you’d probably lie to me.”

“If I wanted to,” she said.

“I could shake it out of you.”

“You could, but you won’t. You see, Ash, I know you very well.”

“You just met me yesterday.”

“Yes, I know,” she said, “but I’ve studied you for all of twenty years.”

CHAPTER X

The trunk came in the morning when Sutton was finishing his breakfast.

It was old and battered, the ancient rawhide covering hanging in tatters to reveal the marred steel skeleton, flecked here and there with rust. A key was in the lock and the straps were broken. Mice had gnawed the leather completely off one end.

Sutton remembered it. It was the one that had stood in the far corner of the attic when he had been a boy and gone there to play on rainy afternoons…

He picked up the neatly folded copy of the morning edition of the Galactic Press that had come with his breakfast tray and shook it out.

The article he was looking for was on the front page, the third item in the Earth news column:

Mr. Geoffrey Benton was killed last night in an informal meeting at one of the amusement centers in the university district. The victor was Mr. Asher Sutton, who returned only yesterday from a mission to 61 Cygni.

There was a final sentence, the most damning that could be written of a duelist:

Mr. Benton fired first and missed.

Sutton folded the paper again and laid it carefully on the table. He lit a cigarette.

I thought it would be me, he told himself. I never fired a gun like that before…scarcely knew such a gun existed. Of course, I didn’t really kill Benton. He killed himself. If he hadn’t missed…and there was no excuse for missing…the item would have read the other way around.

We’ll make an evening of it, the girl had said, and she probably knew. We’ll have dinner and make an evening of it and Geoffrey Benton will kill you by appointment at the Zag House.

Yes, said Sutton to himself, she might have known. She knows too many things. About the spy traps in this room, for instance. And about someone who had Benton psychologically conditioned to challenge me and kill me.

She said friend when I asked her friend or foe, but a word is an easy thing. There is no way to know if it is true or false.

She said she had studied me for twenty years and that is false, of course, for twenty years ago I was setting out for Cygni and I was unimportant. Just a cog in a great machine. I am unimportant still, unimportant to everyone but myself, and to a great idea that no human but myself could possible know about. For no matter if the manuscript was photostated; there is not a soul can read it.

He snubbed out the cigarette and rose and walked over to the trunk. The lock was rusty and the key turned hard, but he finally got it open and lifted up the lid.

The trunk was half full of papers neatly piled. Sutton, looking at them, chuckled. Buster always was a methodical soul. But, then, all robots were methodical. It was the nature of them. Methodical and—what was it Herkimer had said?—stubborn.

He squatted on the floor beside the trunk and rummaged through the contents. Old letters tied neatly in bundles. An old notebook from his college days. A sheaf of clipped-together documents that undoubtedly were outdated. A scrapbook littered with clippings that had not been pasted up. An album half filled with a cheap stamp collection.

He squatted back on his heels and turned the pages of the album lovingly, childhood memories coming back again. Cheap stamps because he had had no money to buy the better ones. Gaudy ones because they had appealed to him. The stamp craze, he remembered, had lasted two years…three years at the most. He had pored over catalogs, had traded, picked up the strange lingo of the hobby…perforate, imperforate, shades, watermarks, intaglio.

He smiled at the happiness of memory. There had been stamps he’d wanted, but could never have, and he had studied the illustrations of them until he knew each one by heart. He lifted his head and stared hard at the wall and tried to remember what some of them were like, but there was no recollection. The once all-important thing had been buried by more than fifty years of other all-important matters.

He laid the album to one side, went at the trunk again.

More notebooks and letters. Loose clippings. A curious-looking wrench. A well chewed bone that at one time probably had been the property and the solace of some loved but now forgotten family dog.

Junk, said Sutton. Buster could have saved a lot of time by simply burning it.

A couple of old newspapers. A moth-eaten pennant. A bulky letter that never had been opened. Sutton tossed it on top of the rest of the litter he had taken from the trunk, then hesitated, put out his hand and picked it up again.

That stamp looked queer. The color, for one thing.

Memory ticked within his brain and he saw the stamp as he had seen it when a lad…not the stamp itself, of course, but the illustration of it in a catalog.

He bent above the letter and caught a sudden, gasping breath.

The stamp was old, incredibly old…incredibly old and worth…good Lord, how much was it worth?

He tried to make out the postmark, but it was faint with time.

He got up slowly and carried the letter to the table, bent above it, puzzling out the town name.

BRIDGEP WIS

Bridgeport, probably. And WIS? Some political division lost in the mist of time.

July 198

July, 1980—something!

Sutton’s hand shook.

AN unopened letter, mailed 6,000 years ago. Tossed in with this heap of junk. Lying cheek by jowl with a tooth-scarred bone and a funny wrench.

An unopened letter…and with a stamp that was worth a fortune.

Sutton read the postmark again. Bridgeport, Wis. July, it looked like 11… July 11, 198—. The missing numeral in the year was too faint to make out. Maybe with a good glass it could be done.

The address, faded but still legible, said:

Mr. John H. Sutton

Bridgeport

Wisconsin

So that was what WIS was. Wisconsin.

And the name was Sutton.

Of course, it would be Sutton.

What had Buster’s android lawyer said? A trunk full of family papers.

I’ll have to look into historic geography, Sutton thought. I’ll have to find out just where Wisconsin was.

But John H. Sutton. That was another matter. Just another Sutton. One who had been dust these many years. A man who sometimes forgot to open up his mail.

Sutton turned the letter and examined the flap. There was no sign of tampering. The adhesive was flaking with age and when he ran a fingernail along one corner, the mucilage came loose in a tiny shower of powder. The paper, he saw, was brittle and would require careful handling.

A trunk full of family papers, the android Wellington had said when he came into the room and balanced himself very primly on the edge of a chair and laid his hat precisely on the table top.

And it was a trunk full of junk instead. Bones and wrenches and paper clips and clippings. Old notebooks and letters and a letter that had been mailed 6,000 years ago and never had been opened.

Did Buster know about the letter?

But even as he asked himself the question, Sutton knew that Buster did.

And he had tried to hide it…and he had succeeded. He had tossed it in with other odds and ends, knowing that it would be found, but by the man for whom it was intended. For the trunk was deliberately made to appear of no importance. It was old and battered and the key was in the lock and it said there’s nothing important inside, but if you want to waste your time, why, go ahead and look. And if anyone had looked, the clutter would have seemed worthless.

* * * *

Sutton reached out and tapped the letter lying on the table.

John H. Sutton, an ancestor sixty centuries removed. His blood runs in my veins, though many times diluted. But he was a man who lived and breathed and ate and died, who saw the sunrise against the green Wisconsin hills…if Wisconsin had any hills, wherever it was. He felt the heat of summer and shivered in the cold of winter. He worried about many things, both big and small and most of them would be small, the way worries usually are.

A man like me, although there would be minor differences. He had a vermiform appendix and it may have caused him trouble. He had wisdom teeth and they may have caused him trouble, too. And he probably died at eighty or earlier.

And when I am eighty, Sutton thought, I will be just entering my prime.

But there would be compensations. John H. Sutton would have lived closer to the Earth, for the Earth was all he had. He would have been unplagued by alien psychology and Earth would have been a living place instead of a governing place where not a thing is grown for its economic worth, not a wheel is turned for economic purpose. He could have chosen his life work from the whole broad field of human endeavor instead of being forced into governmental work, into the job of governing a thin cobweb of galactic empire.

And somewhere, lost now, there were Suttons before him, and after him—lost, too—many other Suttons. The chain of life runs smoothly from one generation to the next, and none of the links stands out, except, here and there, a link one sees by accident. By the accident of history, or the accident of myth, or the accident of not opening a letter.

The door bell chimed and Sutton, startled, scooped up the letter and slid it into the inside pocket of his coat.

“Come in,” he called.

It was Herkimer. “Good morning, sir,” he said.

Sutton glared at him. “What do you want?”

“I belong to you,” Herkimer told him blandly. “I’m part of your third of Benton’s property.”

“My third.…” And then he remembered.

It was the law. Whoever kills another in a duel inherits one third of the dead man’s property. That was a law he had forgotten.

“I hope you don’t object,” said Herkimer. “I am easy to get along with and very quick to learn and I like to work. I can cook and sew and run errands and I can read and write.”

“And put the finger on me.”

“Oh, no, I never would do that.”

“Why not?”

“Because you are my master.”

“We’ll see,” Sutton remarked sourly.

“But I’m not all,” said Herkimer. “There are other things. There’s a hunting asteroid stocked with the finest game, and a spaceship. A small one, it’s true, but very serviceable. There are several thousand dollars and an estate out on the West Coast and some wildcat planetary development stock and a number of other, small things, too numerous to mention.” Herkimer brought out a notebook. “I have them written out if you would care to listen.”

“Not now,” said Sutton. “I have work to do.”

Herkimer brightened. “Something I could do, no doubt? Something I could help with?”

“Nothing,” said Sutton. “I am going to see Adams.”

“I could carry your case. That one over there.”

“I’m not taking the case.”

“But, sir.…”

“You sit down and fold your hands and wait until I get back.”

“I’ll get into mischief,” the android warned. “I just know I will.”

“All right, then, there is something you can do. That case you mentioned. You can watch it.”

“Yes, sir,” said Herkimer, plainly disappointed.

“And don’t waste your time trying to read what’s in it,” said Sutton. “You won’t be able to.”

“Oh,” said Herkimer, still more disappointed.

“There’s another thing. A girl by the name of Eva Armour lives in this hotel. Know anything about her?”

Herkimer shook his head. “But I have a cousin.…”

“A cousin? An android with a cousin?”

“Yes, sir. She was made in the same laboratory as me and that makes her my cousin.”

“You have a lot of cousins, then.”

“Yes,” said Herkimer, “I have many thousands and we stick together. Which,” he said, very sanctimoniously, “is the way it should be with families.”

“You think this cousin might know something?”

Herkimer shrugged. “She works in the hotel. She might know something.”

Sutton turned to the door.

“You are to be congratulated, sir,” said Herkimer. “You gave a very good account of yourself last night.”

Sutton turned back to the room. “Benton missed,” he said. “I couldn’t help but kill him.”

Herkimer nodded. “But it isn’t only that, sir. This happens to be the first time I ever heard of a man being killed by a bullet in the arm.”

“In the arm?”

“Precisely, sir. The bullet smashed his arm, but it didn’t touch him otherwise. And he died.”

CHAPTER XI

Adams thumbed the lighter and waited for the flame to steady. His eyes were fixed on Sutton and there was no softness in them, but there were softness and irritability and a faint unsureness in the man himself, hidden well, but undeniably there.

That staring, Sutton told himself, is an old trick of his. He glares at you and keeps his face frozen like a sphinx and if you aren’t used to him and on to all his tricks, he’ll have you thinking that he knows everything.

But he doesn’t do the glaring quite as well as he use to do it. There’s strain in him now and there was no strain in him twenty years ago. Just granite, and the granite is beginning to weather. There’s something on his mind. There’s something that isn’t going well.

Adams passed the lighter flame over the loaded bowl of his pipe, back and forth, deliberately taking his time, making Sutton wait.

“You know, of course,” said Sutton, speaking quietly, “that I can’t be frank with you.”

The lighter flame snapped off and Adams straightened in his chair. “Eh?” he asked.

Sutton grinned mentally. A passed pawn, he told himself. That’s what Adams is…a passed pawn.

He said aloud: “You know by now, of course, that I came back in a ship that could not fly. You know I had no spacesuit and that the ports were broken and the hull was riddled. I had no food and air and water, and 61 is eleven light years away.”

Adams nodded bleakly. “Yes, we know all that.”

“How I got back or what happened to me has nothing to do with my report and I don’t intend to tell you.”

Adams rumbled at him, “Then why mention it at all?”

“Just so you won’t ask a lot of questions that will get no answer. It will save a lot of time.”

Adams leaned back and puffed his pipe contentedly. “You were sent out to get information, Ash. Any kind of information. Anything that would make Cygni more understandable. You represented Earth and you were paid by Earth and you surely owe Earth something.”

“I owe Cygni something, too,” replied Sutton. “I owe Cygni my life. My ship crashed and I was killed.”

Adams nodded. “Yes, that is what Clark said. He told me you were killed. Clark is a space construction engineer. Sleeps with ships and blueprints. He studied your ship and he calculated a graph of force coordinates. He reported that if you were inside the ship when it hit, you had to be dead.”

“It’s wonderful,” said Sutton, drily, “what a man can do with figures.”

Adams prodded him again. “Anderson said you weren’t human.”

“I suppose Anderson could tell that by looking at the ship.”

Adams nodded. “No food, nor air. It was the logical conclusion for anyone to draw.”

Sutton shook his head. “Anderson is wrong. If I weren’t human, you never would have seen me. I would not have come back at all. But I was homesick for Earth and you were expecting a report.”

“You took your time,” Adams accused.

“I had to be sure. I had to know. I had to be able to come back and tell you if the Cygnians were dangerous or if they weren’t.”

“And which is it?”

“They aren’t dangerous.”

Adams waited and Sutton was silent.

Finally Adams said: “And that is all?”

“That is all,” said Sutton.

Adams tapped his teeth with the bit of his pipe. “I’d hate to have to send another man out to check up. Especially after I had told everyone you’d bring back all the data.”

“It wouldn’t do any good,” said Sutton. “No one could get through.”

“You did.”

“Yes, and I was the first. And because I was the first, I also will be the last.”

Across the desk, Adams smiled winterly. “You were fond of those people, Ash.”

“They aren’t people.”

“Well…beings, then.”

“They aren’t even beings. It’s hard to tell you exactly what they are. You’d laugh if I said what I really think they are.”

Adams grunted. “Try me.”

“Symbiotic abstractions. That’s as close as I can come.”

Adams didn’t laugh. “You mean they really don’t exist?”

“Oh, they exist, all right. They form symbiotic relationships that help them and their alien hosts. Not like parasites, unless maybe like the bacteria that release nitrogen in the soil for plants to live on. Only the bacteria and the plants are separate. They and their hosts aren’t, and each helps the other.”

“But they’re abstractions,” Adams repeated. “They can’t exist.”

“Not as we know the word,” Sutton said. “They do, though.”

“And no one can get through again?”

Sutton leaned forward. “Why don’t you cross Cygni off your list? Pretend it isn’t there. There’s no danger from Cygni. The Cygnians will never bother Man, and Man will never get there again. There’s no use trying.”

“They aren’t mechanical?”

“No,” said Sutton. “An abstraction can’t be mechanical.”

Adams changed the subject. “How old are you, Ash?”

“Fifty-nine.”

“Just a kid,” said Adams. “Just getting started.” His pipe had gone out and he worried the tobacco with his finger, scowling at it. “What do you plan to do?” he asked.

“I have no plans.”

“You want to stay on with the Service, don’t you?”

“That depends on how you feel about it. I had presumed, of course, that you wouldn’t want me.”

“We owe you twenty years back pay,” said Adams, almost kindly. “It’s waiting for you. You can pick it up when you go out. You also have three or four years leave coming to you. Why don’t you take it now?”

Sutton said nothing.

“Come back later on,” said Adams. “We’ll have another talk.”

“I won’t change my mind.”

“No one will ask you to.”

Sutton stood up slowly.

“I’m sorry,” Adams said, “that I haven’t your confidence.”

“I went out to do a job,” Sutton told him crisply. “I’ve done that job. I’ve made my report.”

“So you have.”

“I suppose,” said Sutton, “you will keep in touch with me.”

Adams’ eyes twinkled grimly. “Certainly, Ash. I shall keep in touch with you.”

CHAPTER XII

Sutton sat quietly in the room and forty years were canceled from his life. It was like going back all of forty years…even to the teacups.

Through the open windows of Dr. Raven’s study came young voices and the sound of students’ feet tramping past along the walk. The wind talked in the elms and it was a sound with which he was familiar. Far off a chapel bell tolled and there was girlish laughter just across the way.

Dr. Raven handed him his teacup. “I think that I am right. Three lumps and no cream.”

“Yes, that’s right,” said Sutton, astonished that he should remember.

But remembering, he told himself, was easy. I seem to be able to remember almost everything. As if the old habit patterns had been kept bright and polished in my mind through all the alien years. Waiting, like a set of cherished silver standing on a shelf, until it was time for them to be used again.

“I remember little things,” said Dr. Raven. “Little, inconsequential things, like how many lumps of sugar and what a man said sixty years ago, but I don’t do so well, sometimes, at the big things…the things a man really should remember.”

The white marble fireplace flared to the vaulted ceiling and the university’s coat of arms upon its polished face was as bright as the last day Sutton had seen it.

“I suppose,” he said, “you wonder why I came.”

“Not at all,” said Dr. Raven. “All my boys come back to see me. And I am glad to see them. It makes me feel so proud.”

“I’ve been wondering myself,” said Sutton. “And I guess I know what it is, but it is hard to say.”

“Let’s take it easy, then,” said Dr. Raven. “Remember, the way we used to. We sat and talked around a thing and finally, before we knew it, we had found the core.”

Sutton laughed shortly. “Yes, I remember, doctor. Fine points of theology. The vital differences in comparative religions. Tell me this. You have spent a lifetime at it; you know more about religions, Earthly and otherwise, than any man on Earth. Have you been able to keep one faith? Have you been tempted from the teachings of your race?”

Dr. Raven set down his teacup. “I might have known you would embarrass me. You used to do it all the time. You had the uncanny ability to hit exactly on the question that a man found hardest to answer.”

“I won’t embarrass you any longer,” Sutton told him. “I take it that you have found some good—one might say superior—points in alien religions.”

“You found a new religion?”

“No,” said Sutton. “Not a religion.”

The chapel bell kept on tolling and the girl who had laughed was gone. The footsteps along the walk were far off in the distance.

“Have you ever felt,” asked Sutton, “as if you sat on God’s right hand and heard a thing you knew you were never meant to hear?”

Dr. Raven shook his head. “No, I don’t think I ever have.”

“If you did, what would you do?”

“I think,” said Dr. Raven, “that I might be as troubled by it as you are.”

“We’ve lived by faith alone,” said Sutton, “for ten thousand years at least. More—much more. For it must have been a glimmer of some sort of faith that made the Neanderthaler paint corpses shin bones red and nest the skulls so they faced toward the east.”

“Faith,” said Dr. Raven gently, “is a powerful thing.”

“Yes, powerful,” Sutton agreed, “but even in its strength it is our own confession of weakness. Our own admission that we are not strong enough to stand alone, that we must have a hope and conviction that there is some greater power which will lend us aid and guidance.”

“You haven’t grown bitter, Ash?”

“Not bitter.”

Somewhere a clock was ticking, loud in the sudden hush.

“Doctor,” said Sutton, “what do you know of destiny?”

“It’s strange to hear you talk of destiny,” said Dr. Raven. “You always were a man who never was inclined to bow to destiny.”

“I mean documentary destiny,” Sutton explained. “Not the abstraction, but the actual belief in destiny. What do the records say?”

“There always have been men who believed in destiny,” said Dr. Raven. “Some of them, it would appear, with some justification. But mostly they didn’t call it destiny. They called it luck or a hunch or inspiration or something else. There have been historians who wrote of manifest destiny, but those were no more than words. Of course, there were some fanatics who preached destiny, but practiced fatalism.”

“But there is no evidence of a thing called destiny? An actual force? A living vital thing?”

Dr. Raven shook his head. “None that I know of, Ash. Destiny, after all, is just a word. It isn’t something that you can pin down. Faith, too, at one time may have been no more than a word, just as destiny is today. But millions of people and thousands of years made it a real force, a thing that can be defined and invoked and lived by.”

“But hunches and luck,” protested Sutton. “Those are just happenstance.”

“They might be glimmerings of destiny,” Dr. Raven declared. “Flashes showing through. A hint of a broad stream of happening behavior. One cannot know, of course. Man is always blind until he has the facts. Turning points in history have rested on a hunch. Inspired belief in one’s own ability has changed the course of events more times than one can count.”

He rose and walked to a book case, stood with his head tilted back.

“Somewhere,” he said, “if I can find it, there is a book.”

He searched and did not find it.

“No matter,” he declared, “I’ll run onto it later if you are still interested. It tells about an old African tribe with a strange belief. They believed that each man’s spirit or consciousness or ego or whatever you may call it had a partner, a counterpart on some distant star. If I remember rightly, they even knew which star and could point it out in the evening sky.”

He turned around from the book case and looked evenly at Sutton.

“That might be destiny, you know,” he said. “It might, very well, at that.”

He crossed the room to stand in front of the cold fireplace, hands locked behind his back, silver head tilted to one side.

“Why are you so interested in destiny?” he asked.

“Because I found destiny,” said Sutton.

CHAPTER XIII

The face in the visiplate was masked and Adams spoke in chilly anger: “I do not receive masked calls.”

“You will this one,” said the voice from behind the mask. “I am the man you talked to on the patio. Remember?”

“Calling from the future, I presume,” said Adams.

“No, I am still in your time. I have been watching you.”

“Watching Sutton, too?”

The masked head nodded. “You have seen him now. What do you think?”

“He’s hiding something,” Adams said. “And not all of him is human.”

“You’re going to have him killed?”

“No,” said Adams. “No, I don’t think I will. He knows something that we need to know. And we won’t get it out of him by killing.”

“What he knows,” said the masked voice, “is better dead with the man who knows it.”

“Perhaps,” said Adams, “we could come to an understanding if you would tell me what this is all about.”

“I can’t tell you, Adams. I wish I could. I can’t tell you the future.”

“And until you do,” snapped Adams, “I won’t let you change the past.”

And he was thinking: The man is scared and almost desperate. He could kill Sutton any time he wished, but he is afraid to do it. Sutton has to be killed by a man of his own time…literally has to be, for time may not tolerate the intrusion of violence from future to past.

“By the way,” said the future man, “how are things on Aldebaran XII?”

Adams sat rigid in his chair, anger flaming in him.

“If it hadn’t been for Sutton,” said the masked man, “there would have been no incident on Aldebaran XII.”

“But Sutton wasn’t back yet,” argued Adams. His voice ran down, for he remembered something. The name upon the fly leaf…by Asher Sutton. “Look, tell me. For the love of heaven, if you have anything to tell, tell it.”

“You mean to say you haven’t guessed what it might be?”

Adams shook his head.

“It’s war,” the voice said.

“But there is no war.”

“Not in your time.”

“But how—”

“Remember Michaelson?”

“The man who went a second into time.”

The masked head nodded and the screen went blank. Adams sat and felt the chill of horror trickle through his body.

The visor buzzer purred at him and mechanically he snapped the toggle over.

It was Nelson in the screen. “Sutton just left the university. He spent an hour with Dr. Raven. In case you don’t recall, Dr. Raven is a professor of comparative religions.”

“Oh,” said Adams. “Oh, so that is it.”

He tapped his fingers on the desk, half irritated, half frightened.

It would be a shame, he thought, to kill a man like Sutton.

But it might be best.

Yes, he told himself, it might be for the best.

CHAPTER XIV

The road curved ahead, a silver strip shining in the moonlight, and the sounds and smells of night lay across the land. The sharp, clean smell of growing things, the mystery smell of water. A creek ran through the marsh that lay off to the right, and Sutton, from behind the wheel, caught the flashing hint of winding, moonlit water as he took a curve. Peeping frogs made a veil of pixy sound that hugged against the hills, and fireflies were swinging lanterns that signaled through the dark.

Clark said that Sutton had died, and Clark was an engineer. He had made a graph and mathematics stated that certain strains and stresses would inevitably kill a man.

And Anderson had said Sutton wasn’t human, and how was Anderson to know?

How, asked Sutton, unless he examined me? Unless he was the one who tried to probe into my mind after I had been knocked out when I walked into my room?

Adams had tipped his hand and Adams never tipped his hand unless he wanted one to see. He wanted me to know, Sutton told himself. He wanted me to know, but he couldn’t tell me. He couldn’t tell me he had me down on tape and film, that he was the one who had rigged up the room.

But he could let me know by making just one slip, a carefully calculated slip, like the one on Anderson. He knew that I would catch and he thinks he can jitter me.

The headlights caught, momentarily, the gray-black massive lines of a house that huddled on a hillside, and then there was another curve. A nightbird, black and ghostly, fluttered across the road and the shadow of its flight danced down the cone of light.

Adams was the one who was waiting for me. He knew, somehow, that I was coming, and he was ready. He had me tagged and ticketed before I hit the ground, and he gave me a going over before I knew what was going on.

And undoubtedly he found a whole lot more than he bargained for.

Sutton chuckled drily. And the chuckle merged into a scream that came slanting down the hill slope in a blaze of streaming fire…a rush of flame that ended in the marsh, that died down momentarily, then licked out in blue and red.

Brakes hissed and tires screeched on the pavement as Sutton slued the car around to bring it to a stop. Even before the machine came to a halt, he was out the door and running down the slope toward the strange, black craft that flickered in the swamp.

Water sloshed around his ankles and knife-edged grass slashed at his leg. The puddles gleamed black and oily in the light from the flaming craft. The frogs still strained their hoarse throats at the far edge of the marsh.

Something flopped and struggled in a pool of muddy, flame-stained water just a few feet from the burning ship. Sutton, plunging forward, caught the gleaming white of frightened, piteous eyeballs shining in the flame as the man lifted himself on his mud-caked arms and tried to drag his body forward. He saw the flash of teeth as pain twisted the face into grisly anguish. And his nostrils caught the smell of charred, crisped flesh.

He stooped and locked his hands beneath the armpits of the man, hauled him upright, dragged him back across the swamp. Mud sucked at his feet and he heard the splashing behind him, the horrible, dragging splash of the other’s body trailing through the water and the slime.

There was dry land beneath his feet and he began the climb back up the slope toward the car. Sounds came from the bobbing head of the man he carried, thick, slobbering sounds that might have been words.

Sutton cast a quick glance over his shoulder and saw the flames mounting straight into the sky, a pillar of blue that lighted up the night. Marsh birds, roused from their nests, flew blinded and in squawking panic through the garish light.

“The atomics,” said Sutton, aloud. “The atomics.…”

They couldn’t hold for long in a flame like that. The automatics would melt down and the marsh would suddenly be a crater and the hills would be charred from horizon to horizon.

“No,” said the bobbing head. “No…no atomics.”

Sutton’s foot caught in a root and he stumbled to his knees. The body of the man slid from his mud-caked grasp. The man struggled, trying to turn over. Sutton helped him and he lay on his back, his face toward the sky.

He was young, Sutton saw, a youth beneath the mask of mud and pain.

“No atomics,” said the man. “I dumped them.”

There was pride in the words, pride in a job well done. But the words had cost him heavily. Sutton saw the blood pumping through the temples beneath the burned and twisted skin. The man’s jaw worked and words came out, limping, tangled words.

“There was a battle…back in ’83… I saw him coming…tried to time-jump.…” The words gurgled and got lost, then gushed out again. “Got new guns…set metal afire.…”

He turned his head and apparently saw Sutton for the first time. He started up. “Asher Sutton!” The two words were a whisper.

For a moment Sutton caught the triumphant, almost fanatic gleam that washed across the eyes of the dying man, wondered at the gesture of the half-raised arm, at the cryptic sign that the fingers made.

Then the gleam faded and the arm dropped back and the fingers separated.

Sutton knew, even before he bent with his head turned against the heart, that the man was dead.

Slowly Sutton stood up. The flame was dying down and the birds had gone. The craft lay almost buried in the mud, and its lines, he noted, were none he had ever seen.

Asher Sutton, the man had said. And his eyes had lighted up and he had made a sign just before he died. And there had been a battle back in ’83.

Eighty-three what?

The man had tried to time-jump…who had ever heard of a time jump?

I never saw the man before, said Sutton. So help me, I don’t know him even now. And yet he cried my name and it sounded as if he knew me and was very glad to see me and he made a sign…a sign that went with the name.

He stared down at the dead man lying at his feet and saw the pity of it, the crumpled legs, the stiffened arms, the lolling head and the flash of moonlight on the teeth where the mouth had fallen open.

Carefully, Sutton went down on his knees, ran his hands over the body, seeking something…some bulging pocket that might give a clue to the man who lay there dead.

Because he knew me. And I must know how he knew me. And none of it makes sense.

There was a small book in the breast pocket of the coat and Sutton slipped it out. The title was in gold upon black leather, and even in the moonlight Sutton could read the letters that flamed from the cover:

THIS IS DESTINY

by Asher Sutton

Sutton did not move. He crouched there on the ground, like a cowering thing, stricken by the golden letters on the leather cover.

A book!

A book he meant to write, but hadn’t written yet!

A book he wouldn’t write for many months to come!

And yet here it was, dog-eared and limp from reading.

He felt the chill of the fog rising from the marsh, the loneliness of a wild bird’s crying.

A strange ship had plunged into the marsh, disabled and burning. A man had escaped from the ship, but on the verge of death. Before he died he had recognized Sutton and had called his name. In his pocket he had a book that was not even written.

Those were the facts. There was no explanation.

Faint sounds of human voices drifted down the night and Sutton rose swiftly to his feet, stood poised and waiting, listening. The voices came again.

Someone had heard the crash and was coming to investigate, coming down the road, calling to others who also had heard the crash.

Sutton turned and walked swiftly up the slope to the car.

There was, he told himself, no Earthly use of waiting. Those coming down the road might know the answers to his baffling questions—but they wouldn’t tell him. Nobody seemed willing to tell him anything. He had to find out the answers himself.

CHAPTER XV

A man was waiting in the clump of lilac bushes across the road and there was another one crouched in the shadow of the courtyard wall.

Sutton walked slowly forward, strolling, taking his time.

“Johnny,” he said, soundlessly.

“Yes, Ash.”

“That is all there are? Just those two?”

“I think there is another one, but I can’t place him. All of them are armed.”

Sutton felt the stir of comfort in his brain, the sense of self-assurance, the sense of aid and comradeship.

“Keep me posted, Johnny.”

He whistled a bar or two, from a tune that had been forgotten long ago, but still was fresh in his mind from twenty years before.

The rent-a-car garage was two blocks up the road, the Orion Arms two blocks farther down. Between him and the Arms were two men, waiting with guns. Two and maybe more.

Between the garage and hotel was nothing…just the landscaped beauty that was a residential, administrative Earth. An Earth dedicated to beauty and to ruling…planted with a garden’s care, every inch of it mapped out by landscape architects with clumps of shrubs and lanes of trees and carefully tended flower beds.

An ideal place, Sutton told himself, for an ambush.

Adams? he wondered. Although it hardly could be Adams. He had something that Adams expected to find out, and killing the man who holds information that you want, no matter how irate you may be at him, is downright useless.

Or those others that Eva had told him of…the ones who had Benton psychologically conditioned to kill him. They tied in better than Adams did, for Adams wanted him to stay alive and these others, whoever they might be, were quite content to kill him.

He dropped his hand in his coat pocket as if searching for a cigarette and his fingers touched the steel of the gun he had used on Benton. He let his fingers wrap around it and then took his hand out of the pocket and found the cigarettes in another pocket.

Not time yet, he told himself. Time later on to use the gun, if he had to use it—if he had a chance to use it.

He stopped to light the cigarette, playing for time. The gun would be a poor weapon, he knew, but better than none at all. In the dark, he probably couldn’t hit the broad side of a house but it would make a noise and the waiting men were not counting on noise. If they hadn’t minded noise, they could have stepped out minutes ago and shot him down.

“Ash,” said Johnny, “there is another man. Just in that bush ahead. He expects to let you pass and then they’ll have you caught in an ambush three ways.”

Sutton grunted. “Good, tell me exactly.”

“The bush with the white flowers. He’s on this edge of it. Quite close to the walk, so he can step around and be behind you when you pass.”

Sutton puffed on the cigarette, making it glow like a red eye in the dark.

“Shall we take him, Johnny?”

“Yes, before we’re taken.”

Sutton resumed his stroll and now he saw the bush, four paces away, no more.

One step.

I wonder what it’s all about.

Two steps.

Cut out your wondering. Act now and do your wondering later.

Three steps.

There he is. I see him.

Sutton was off the walk in a sudden leap. The gun whipped out of his pocket and it talked, two quick, ugly words.

The man behind the bush bent forward to his knees, swayed there for a moment, then flattened on his face. His gun fell from his fingers and in a single swoop, Sutton scooped it up. It was, he saw, an electronic device, a vicious thing that could kill even with a near miss, due to the field of distortion that its beam set up. A gun like that had been new and secret twenty years ago, but now, apparently, anyone could get it.

Gun in hand, Sutton wheeled and ran, twisting through the shrubbery, ducking overhanging branches, plowing through a tulip bed. Out of the corner of one eye, he caught a twinkle…the twinkling breath of a silent flaming gun, and the dancing path of silver that it sliced into the night.

He plunged through a ripping, tearing hedge, waded a stream, found himself in a clump of evergreen and birch. He stopped to get his breath, staring back over the way that he had come.

The countryside lay quiet and peaceful, a silvered picture painted by the moon. No one and nothing stirred. The gun long ago had ceased its flickering.

Johnny’s warning came suddenly: “Ash! Behind you. Friendly…”

Sutton wheeled, gun half lifted.

Herkimer was running in the moonlight, like a hound hunting for a trace. “Mr. Sutton, sir…”

“Yes, Herkimer.”

“We have to run for it.”

“Yes,” said Sutton, “I suppose we have. I walked into a trap. There were three of them laying for me.”

“It’s worse than that,” said Herkimer. “It’s worse even than you think. It’s not only Morgan, but it’s Adams, too.”

“Adams?”

“He has given orders that you are to be killed on sight.”

Sutton stiffened. “How do you know?”

“The girl,” said Herkimer. “Eva. The one you asked about. She told me.”

Herkimer walked forward, stood face to face with Sutton.

“You have to trust me, sir. You said this morning I’d put the finger on you, but I never would. I was with you from the very first.”

“But the girl,” said Sutton.

“Eva is with you, too, sir. We started searching for you as soon as we found out, but we were too late to catch you. Eva is waiting with the ship.”

“A ship,” Sutton grimly repeated. “A ship and everything.”

“It’s your own ship, sir. The one you received from Benton’s estate with the hunting asteroid and me.”

Sutton scowled. “And you think I’m stupid enough to come with you and get into this ship and…”

“No, sir, I didn’t think so,” said Herkimer. “I’m sorry.”

He moved so fast that Sutton couldn’t do a thing.

He saw the fist coming and he tried to raise his gun. He felt the sudden fury grow cold within his brain. But that was before there was a sudden crushing impact. His head snapped back so that for a moment, before his eyelids closed, he saw the wheel of stars against a spinning sky. He felt his knees buckle under him.

He was out, stone cold, when his body hit the ground.

CHAPTER XVI

Sutton lay with his eyes tight shut and listened, heard the muted mutter of the coasting rocket tubes, sensed the walls of a ship around him, an air-filled shell hurtling through space.

“Johnny,” Sutton’s mind called silently. “Where are we?”

There was a gentle movement within his brain, as reassuring as a cheek laid against his own, and a voiceless voice answered:

“We’re in a ship, Ash, somewhere beyond Mars.”

“How many are in the ship with us?

“The android and the girl. And they are friendly. I told you they were friendly. Why didn’t you pay attention?”

“I can’t trust anyone.”

“Not even me?”

“Not your judgment, Johnny. You’re new here.”

“Not new, Ash. I know Earth and Earthmen. Much better than you know them. You’re not the first Earthman I’ve known.”

“I’m sorry. I keep forgetting.”

“And we should be as one. We were before. Why has it been different lately?”

Sutton’s brain squirmed guiltily. “I don’t know. Things have happened. So many things.”

“One mind, Ash. One mind, one body. Not two, but one. Not you, nor I. Us, singular.”

Eva said: “You’re awake, Ash. No use playing possum.”

Sutton kept his eyes firmly shut “You understand any of this, Johnny? This Morgan business?”

“No, Ash.”

“But you see a pattern?”

“I’m beginning to.”

“Then you’re doing better than I am. Let me in on it.”

“Not yet, Ash. You’re not ready.”

Eva Armour shook him. “Wake up,” she said.

Sutton opened his eyes. He was lying on a bunk and the girl was shaking him and she was angry and not at all gentle. Herkimer stuck his head out of the door of the pilot shell. “Coming around?” he asked.

“Sure,” said Sutton. “I’m all right.”

He swung his legs off the bunk and sat on its edge. His hand went up and felt the lump on his jaw.

“I had to hit you hard,” said Herkimer regretfully. “I tried to calculate it as closely as I could. Hard enough to knock you out, not hard enough to cause any real damage.”

“You should have pasted him,” said Eva sharply, “with everything you had. I never saw a more exasperating person. He’s been lying here awake for the last five minutes.”

Herkimer squinted at the jaw with professional pride. “I do believe I got you on the button. First try, too.”

The ship, Sutton saw, was small. But it was clean and comfortable and there would have been room enough for four or five on a short trip. Herkimer, talking his precise, copybook speech, had said it was small, but serviceable.

“I suppose,” said Sutton, “you wouldn’t consider telling me where you are taking me.”

“We don’t mind at all,” said Eva. “We’re going to an asteroid.”

“The hunting asteroid,” added Herkimer. “The one you won from Benton. It has a lodge and a good supply of food and it is comfortable.”

“It will be pleasant,” Sutton said, “to do a little hunting.”

“You won’t be doing any hunting,” Herkimer replied.

Sutton raised his head, glanced sharply from one to the other.

“You’re going to write a book,” said Eva. “Surely you know about the book. The Revisionists are…”

“Yes,” Sutton told her. “I know about the book—”

He stopped, remembering, and his hand went involuntarily to his breast pocket. The book was there, all right, and something that crinkled when he touched it. He remembered that, too. The incredibly old letter that John H. Sutton had forgotten to open six thousand years before.

“No,” said Eva, “we didn’t rob you. We didn’t even search you.”

“About the book,” said Sutton, and then stopped again. He had been about to say he needn’t bother about writing the book, for he already had a copy. But something stopped him; he wasn’t certain that it was smart just then to let them know about the copy he had.

“I brought along the case,” said Herkimer. “The manuscript’s all there. I checked through it.”

“And plenty of paper?” asked Sutton, mocking him.

“Oh, yes. More than enough.”

Eva Armour leaned toward Sutton, so close that he could smell the fragrance of her copper hair. “Don’t you see,” she asked, “how important it is that you write this book? Don’t you understand?”

Sutton shook his head. Important, he thought. Important for what?

He remembered the mouth that death pried open, the teeth glittering in the moonlight, and the words of a dying man still ringing sharply in his ears.

“No, I don’t understand,” he said. “Maybe you can tell me.”

She shook her head. “You write the book. That’s your job.”

CHAPTER XVII

The asteroid was enveloped in the perpetual twilight of the far-from-Sun and its frosty peaks speared up like sharp, silvery needles stabbing at the stars.

The air was sharp and cold and thinner than on Earth and the wonder was, Sutton told himself, that any air could be kept on the place at all. Although at the cost that it had taken to make this asteroid habitable, it would seem that anything should be possible. The price of the atomic plants alone would run to the national debt of a medium-size planet, and without atomics there would be no power to run the atmosphere generators and gravity machines that supplied the air and held it in place.

Once, he thought, Man had been content—had been forced to be content—to find his solitude at a lake-shore cottage or a hunting lodge or aboard a pleasure yacht. But now, with the wealth of a galaxy to spend, Man fixed up an asteroid at a fabulous cost or bought out a solar system at a bargain price.

“There’s the lodge,” said Herkimer, and Sutton looked in the direction of the pointing finger. High up on the jigsaw horizon, he saw the shining metal building with its one pinpoint of light.

“What’s the light?” asked Eva. “Is there someone here?”

Herkimer shrugged indifferently. “Someone forgot to turn it off when they left.”

Evergreens and birches, ghostlike in the starlight, stood in ragged clumps, like marching soldiers storming the height where the lodge was set.

“The path is over here,” said Herkimer.

He led the way and they climbed, with Eva in the center and Sutton bringing up the rear. The path was steep and uneven and the light was none too good, for the thin atmosphere failed to break up the starlight. The stars themselves remained tiny, steely points of light that did not blaze or twinkle, but stood primly in the sky like dots upon a map.

The lodge, Sutton saw, apparently sat upon a small plateau, and he knew that the plateau would be the work of Man. Nowhere else in all this jumbled landscape was it likely that one would find a level spot much bigger than a pocket handkerchief.

A movement of air, so faint and tenuous that it could be scarcely called a breeze, rustled down the slope and set the evergreens to moaning. Something scuttled from the path and skittered up the rocks. From somewhere far away came a screaming sound that set Sutton’s teeth on edge.

“That’s an animal,” Herkimer said quietly. He stopped and waved his hand at the tortured, twisted rock. “Great place to hunt,” he added, “if you don’t break a leg.”

Sutton looked behind him and saw for the first time the true, savage wildness of the place. A frozen whirlpool of star-speckled terrain stretched below them…great, yawning gulfs of blackness, above which stood brooding peaks and spire-like pinnacles.

Sutton shivered at the sight. “Let’s get on,” he said.

They climbed the last hundred yards and reached the manmade plateau, then stood and stared across the nightmare landscape, and as he looked, Sutton felt the cold hand of loneliness reach down with icy fingers to take him in its grip. For here was sheer, mad loneliness such as he had never dreamed. Here was the very negation of life and motion. Here was the stark, bald beginning when there was no life, nor even thought of life. Here anything that moved was an alien thing.

A footstep crunched behind them and they swung around. A man moved out of the starry darkness. His voice was pleasant and heavy as he spoke to them: “Good evening. We heard you land and I walked out to meet you.”

Eva’s voice was cold and just a little angry. “We had not expected anyone to be here.”

The man’s tone stiffened. “I hope we are not trespassing. We are friends of Mr. Benton and he told us to use the place at our convenience.”

“Mr. Benton is dead,” said Eva frostily. “This man is the new owner.”

The man’s head turned toward Sutton. “I’m sorry, sir. We did not know. Of course, we’ll leave the first moment that we can.”

“I see no reason,” Sutton told him, “why you should not stay.”

“Mr. Sutton,” said Eva, “came here for peace and quiet. He expects to write a book.”

“A book,” the man repeated. “An author, eh?”

Sutton had the uncomfortable feeling that the man was laughing, not at him alone, but at the three of them.

“Sutton?” asked the man, apparently thinking hard. “I don’t seem to recall the name. But, then, I’m not a great reader.”

“I’ve never written anything before,” explained Sutton.

“Oh, well,” said the man, laughing as if he were relieved, “that explains it.”

“It’s cold out here,” Herkimer said abruptly. “Let us get indoors.”

“Certainly,” said the man. “Yes, it is cold, although I hadn’t noticed it. By the way, my name is Pringle. My partner’s name is Case.”

No one answered him and after a few seconds he turned around and trotted ahead of them, leading the way.

The lodge, Sutton saw as they approached it, was larger than it had seemed from the valley where they had brought the ship in. It loomed huge against the starlit backdrop. If one had not known that it was there, it might have been mistaken for an odd rock formation.

The door opened as their feet sounded on the massive stone steps which led up to it. Another man stood there, stiff and erect and tall, thin, but with whipcord strength about him, as the light from inside the room outlined his figure harshly.

“The new owner, Case,” said Pringle, and it seemed to Sutton that he emphasized the words just a bit too much. As if he meant his tone to be a warning.

“Benton died, you know,” said Pringle, and Case answered: “Oh, did he? How peculiar.”

Which, Sutton thought, was a funny thing to say.

Case stood to one side to let them enter, then pulled shut the door.

The room was immense, with only one lamp burning, and shadows pressed in upon them out of the dark corners and the cavernous arch of the raftered ceiling.

“I am afraid,” said Pringle, “that you’ll have to look out for yourselves. Case and I are roughing it and we brought along no robots, although I can fix up something if you happen to be hungry. A hot drink, perhaps, and some sandwiches?”

“We ate just before we landed,” Eva said, “and Herkimer will take care of what few things we have.”

“Then take a chair,” urged Pringle. “That one over there is comfortable. We can talk a bit.”

“Not right now, thanks. The trip was just a little rough.”

“You’re an ungracious young lady,” Pringle said, and his words were halfway between jest and anger.

“I’m a tired young lady.”

Pringle walked to a wall, flipped up toggles. Lights sprang into being. “The bedrooms are upstairs,” he said. “Off the balcony. Case and I have the first and second to the left. Take your pick from any of the rest.”

He moved forward to lead them up the stairs. But Case spoke up and Pringle stopped and waited, one hand on the lower curve of the stair rail.

“Mr. Sutton,” said Case, “it seems to me I have heard your name somewhere.”

“I don’t think so,” said Sutton. “I’m a very unimportant person.”

“But you killed Benton.”

“No one said I killed him.”

Case did not laugh, but his voice said that if he had not been Case, he would have. “Nevertheless, you must have killed him. I happen to know that is the only way anyone could get this asteroid. Benton loved it and this side of life he’d never give it up.”

“Since you insist, then I did kill Benton.”

Case shook his head, awed. “Remarkable,” he said. “Absolutely remarkable.”

“Good night, Mr. Case,” said Eva, and then turned to Pringle. “No need to trouble you. We will find our way.”

“No trouble,” Pringle rumbled back. “No trouble at all.” And, once again, he was laughing at them.

He jogged lightly up the stairs.

CHAPTER XVIII

There was something wrong about Pringle and Case. The very fact that they were here, at the lodge, was sinister.

There had been mockery in Pringle’s voice. He had been laughing at them all the time, laughing with a sneering amusement, enjoying some thinly varnished joke that they did not know.

Pringle was a talker, a buffoon…but Case was stiff and straight and correct, and when he spoke his words were clipped and sharp. There was something about Case…some point…some resemblance to something that escaped Sutton at the moment.

Sitting on the edge of his bed, Sutton frowned.

If I could just remember, he told himself. If I could put my finger on that mannerism, on the way he talks and walks and holds himself erect. If I could associate that with a certain thing I can’t identify, it would explain a lot. It might tell me who Case is, or what he is, or even why he’s here.

Case knew that I killed Benton. Case knows who I am. And he should have kept his mouth shut, but he had to let me know he knew, because that way he bolstered up his ego and even if he doesn’t look it, his ego may need boosting.

Eva didn’t trust them, either, for she tried to tell me something when we parted at her door. I couldn’t quite make out what it was from the way she moved her lips, although it looked like she was trying to say: “Don’t trust them.”

As if I would trust anyone…anyone at all.

Sutton wiggled his toes and stared at them, fascinated. He tried to wiggle them in series and they wouldn’t wiggle that way. He tried to match the wiggling of each toe on each foot and they wouldn’t match.

I can’t even control my own body, he thought, and it was a funny thing to think.

Pringle and Case were waiting for us, Sutton told himself, and wondered even as he said it if he might not be giving himself over to sheer imagery. For how could they be waiting when they could not have known that Herkimer and Eva would head for the asteroid?

He shook his head, but the belief that the two had been waiting for them stayed…

After all, it was not so strange. Adams had known that he was coming back to Earth, returning home after twenty years. Adams knew and set a trap for him…and there was no way, absolutely no way that Adams could have known.

Why had Adams set the trap?

Why had Buster run away to homestead a planet?

Why had someone conditioned Benton to kill Sutton?

Why had three men been waiting for Sutton when he came back to the Orion Arms?

Why had Eva and Herkimer brought him to the asteroid?

To write a book, they had said.

But the book was written.

The book…

He reached for his coat, which hung from the back of a chair. From it, he took out the gold-lettered copy of the book and as he pulled it out, the letter came with it and fell upon the carpet. He picked the letter up and put it on the bed beside him and opened the book to the flyleaf.

“THIS IS DESTINY,” it said, “By Asher Sutton.”

Underneath the title, at the very bottom of the page, was a line of fine print. Sutton had to hold the book a little closer so that he could read it:

Original Version

And that was all. No date of publication. No marks of copyright. No publisher’s imprint. Just the title and the author and the line of print that said Original Version.

As if, he thought…as if the book were so well known, so firm a fixture in the lives of everyone, that anything other than the title and the author would be superfluous.

He turned two pages and they were blank, and then another page, and the text began:

We are not alone.

No one ever is alone.

Not since the first faint stirring of the first flicker of life, on the first planet in the galaxy that knew the quickening of sentiency, has there ever been a single entity that walked or crawled or slithered down the path of life alone.

And that was it, he thought. That is the way I mean to write it.

That was the way I wrote it.

For I must have written it. Sometime, somewhere, I must have written it, for I hold it in my hands.

He closed the book and put it back carefully in the pocket and hung the coat back on the chair.

I must not read it, he told himself. I must not read and know the way that it will go, for then I would write the way that I had read it, and I must not do that. I must write it the way I know it is, the way I plan to write it. I must be honest, for someday the race of Man…and the races of other things as well…may know the book and read it and every word must be exactly so, and I must write so well and so simply that all can understand.

He threw back the covers of the bed and lay down, and as he did, he saw the letter and picked it up.

With a steady finger, he inserted his nail beneath the flap and ran it along the edge and the mucilage dissolved in a brittle shower of powder. He took the letter out and unfolded it carefully, so that it would not break and saw that it was typewritten, with many mistakes that were X’d out, as if the man who wrote it had found a typewriter an unhandy thing to use.

Sutton rolled over on one side and held the paper under the lamp and read the living words of a man 6,000 years dead.

CHAPTER XIX

Bridgeport, Wis.,

July 11, 1987

I write this letter to myself, so that the postmark may prove beyond controversy the day and year that it was written. I shall not open it, but shall place it among my effects against the day when someone—a far-distant member of my own family, God willing—may open it and read. And reading, know the thing that I believe and think, but dare not say while I am still alive, lest someone call me touched.

For I have not long to live. I have lasted more than a man’s average span and while I still am hale and hearty, I know full well the hand of time may miss a man at one reaping, and get him at the next. Hence, I hasten to introduce myself and the mystery I have come to know.

My name is John H. Sutton and I am a member of a numerous family which had its roots in the east, but one branch of which situated in this locality about one hundred years ago. I must ask, if the reader of this be unacquainted with the Suttons, that my word be taken at face value without substantiating proof. However, I would like to state that we Suttons are a sober lot and not given to jokes, and that our reputation for integrity and honesty is singularly unquestioned.

While I was educated for the law, I soon found it not entirely to my liking and for the last forty years or more have followed the occupation of farming, finding more contentment in it than I ever found in law. For farming is an honest and a soul-warming job that gives one contact with the first essentials of living.

For the past number of years I have not been physically able to continue with the more strenuous labor of the farm, but pride myself that I still do most of the chores and still hold active management, which means that I am in the habit of making regular tours of the acres to see how things are coming.

Of late years, as my step has slowed and I have found exertion tiring, I have fallen into the habit of arbitrarily setting for myself certain places of rest during my inspection of the farm. One spot has always had, from the very first, a sense of the special for me. If I were still a child, I might best explain it by saying that it seems to be an enchanted place.

It is a deep cleft in the bluff that runs down to the river valley and it is located at the north end of the high pasture. There is a fair-sized boulder at the top of the cleft, and this boulder is shaped appropriately for sitting, which may be one of the reasons why I like it, for I am a man who takes to comfort.

From the boulder one may see the sweep of the river valley with a stressed third-dimensional quality, due no doubt to the height of the vantage point plus the clearness of the air, although at times the whole scene is enveloped with a blue mist of particularly tantalizing and lucid clarity.

It is as if the place were tingling…waiting for something to happen…as if that one particular spot held great possibilities for drama or for revelation. There, on that one area of Earth, something could or might happen which could happen nowhere else on the entire planet. I have, at times, tried to imagine what that happening might be, and I shrink from telling some of the possibilities that I have imagined, although, in truth, in other things I am perhaps not imaginative enough.

To approach the boulder, I cut across the lower end of the bluff pasture, a place which is often in better grass than the rest of the grazing area, for the cattle, for some reason, do not often venture there. The pasture ends in a thin growth of trees, the forerunners of the mass of foliage which sweeps down the bluff side. Just a few rods inside the trees is the boulder, and because of the trees the boulder is always shaded, no matter what the time of the day, but the view is unobstructed because of the rapid shelving of the ground.

One day about ten years ago—July 4, 1977, to be exact—I approached this place and found a man and a strange machine at the lower end of the pasture, just clear of the trees.

I say machine, because that is what it appeared to be, although, to tell the truth, I could not make too much of it. It was like an egg, pointed slightly at each end, as an egg might look if someone stepped on it and did not break it, but spread it out, so that the ends became more pronounced. It had no working parts outside and so far as I could see not even a window, yet it was apparent that the operator of it sat inside.

For the man had what appeared to be a door open and was standing outside and working at what may have been the motor, although, when I ventured a look, it appeared like no motor I had ever seen before. The fact is that I never did get a good look at the motor or at anything else about the contraption. The man, as soon as he saw me, adroitly maneuvered me away from it and engaged me in such pleasant and intelligent conversation that I could not, without rudeness, change the subject long enough to pay attention to all the things that stirred my curiosity. I remember now, thinking back, that there were many things which I wanted to ask him, but which I never got around to, and it seems to me now that he must have anticipated these very questions and deliberately and skillfully steered me away from them.

The plain truth is that he never did tell me who he was or where he came from or why he happened to be in my pasture. And while that may seem rude to the reader of this account, it did not seem rude at the time, for he was such a charming person.

He seemed well informed on farming, although he looked like no farmer. Come to think of it, I do not remember exactly what he did look like, only that he was dressed in a way which I had never seen before. Not garishly, nor outlandishly, nor even in such a manner that one would think of him as foreign, but in clothing which had certain subtle differences difficult to pin down.

He complimented me on the good growth of the pasture grass and asked me how many head of cattle we ran there and how many we were milking and what was the most satisfactory manner we had found to finish off good beef. I answered him as best I could, being very interested in his line of talk, and he kept the conversation going with appropriate comment and questions, some of which I now realize were meant as subtle flattery, although at the time I did not think so.

* * * *

He had a tool of some sort in his hand and now he waved it at a field of corn across the fence and said it looked like a good stand and asked me if I thought it would be knee high by the Fourth. I told him that today was the Fourth and that it was a mite better than knee high and that I was very pleased with it, since it was a new brand of seed that I was trying for the first time. He looked a little taken aback and laughed and said, “So it’s the Fourth,” and that he had been so busy lately he had got his dates mixed. And then, before I could even wonder how a man could get his dates so mixed that he could miss the Fourth of July, he was off again on another tack.

He asked how long I had lived here and when I told him, he asked if the family hadn’t been here a long time; somewhere, he said, he had heard the name before. So I told him that we had and before I knew it, he had me telling all about the family, including some anecdotes which we usually do not tell outside the family circle, since they are not exactly the kind of stories that we would care to have known about ourselves. For while our family is conservative and honorable in the main and better in most things than many others, there is no family which does not have a skeleton or two to hide away from view.

We talked until it was long past the dinner hour and when I noticed this, I asked him if he would not take the meal with us, but he thanked me and said that in just a short while he would have the trouble fixed and would be on his way. He said that he had virtually completed whatever repair was needed when I had appeared. I apologized for delaying him, but he assured me that he did not mind at all, that it had been pleasant to spend the time with me.

As I left him, I managed to get in one question. I had been intrigued by the tool which he had held in his hand during our conversation and I asked him what it was. He showed it to me and told me it was a wrench, and it did look something like a wrench, although not very much so.

After I had eaten dinner and had a nap, I walked back to the pasture, determined to ask the stranger some of the questions which I realized, by this time, he had avoided.

The machine was gone and the stranger, too, with only a print in the pasture grass to show where the machine had stood. But the wrench was there and when I bent to pick it up, I saw that one end was discolored and upon investigation I found that the discoloration was blood. I have, many times since, berated myself for not having had an analysis made to determine whether the blood was human or from some animal.

Likewise, I have wondered many times just what happened there. Who the man was and how he came to leave the wrench and why the heavier end of the wrench was stained with blood.

I still make the boulder one of my regular stops and the boulder still is always in the shade and the view still is unobstructed and the air over the river valley still lends to the scene its strangely deep three-dimensional effect. And the sense of tingling expectancy still hangs above the spot, so I know that the place had not been waiting for this one strange happening alone, but that other strange happenings still may occur. I do not hope nor expect that I shall see another, for the life of man is but a second in comparison with the time of planets.

* * * *

The wrench which I picked up is still with us and it has proved a very useful tool. As a matter of fact, we have dispensed with most of our other tools and use it almost alone, since it will adjust itself to almost any nut or stud or will hold a shaft of almost any size from turning. There is no need of adjustment, nor is there any adjustment device that can be found. One simply applies it to whatever piece of metal one wants to take a grip upon and the tool adjusts itself. No great amount of pressure or strength is needed to operate the wrench. It appears to have the tendency to take whatever slight pressure one exerts upon it and multiply that pressure to the exact point needed.

However, we are very careful to use the wrench only when there are no outside eyes to see it, for it smacks too much of magic or of witchcraft to be allowed on public view. The general knowledge that we possessed such a wrench almost certainly would lead to unwholesome speculation among our neighbors. And since we are an honest and respectable family, such a situation is the furthest from our wish.

* * * *

None of us ever talk about the man and the machine I found in the bluff pasture, even among ourselves. We seem tactfully to recognize that it is a subject which does not befit sober farmers.

But while we do not talk about it, I do know that I, myself, think about it much. I spend more time than usual at the boulder resting place, just why, I do not know, unless it is in the feeble hope that somehow I may find a clue which either will substantiate or disprove the theory I have formed to account for the happening.

For I believe, without proof of any sort, that the man was a man who came from time and that the machine was a time machine and the wrench is a tool which will not be discovered nor manufactured for more years to come than I might possibly guess.

I believe that somewhere in the future, Man has discovered a method by which he moves through time and that undoubtedly he has evolved a very rigid code of ethics and practices, in order to prevent the paradoxes which would result from indiscriminate time traveling or meddling in the affairs of other times.

I believe that the leaving of the wrench in my time provides one of those paradoxes which in itself is simple, but which under certain circumstances might lead to many complications. For that reason, I have impressed upon the family the strict necessity of keeping it secret.

Likewise, I have come to the conclusion—also unsupported—that the cleft, at the head of which the boulder is located, may be a road through time, or at least part of a road, a single point where our present time coincides very closely through the operation of some as-yet-unknown principle with another time far removed from us. It may be a place in space-time where less resistance is encountered in traveling through time than in other places, and, having been discovered, is used quite frequently. Or it may simply be that it is a time road more deeply rutted, more frequently used than many other time roads, with the result that whatever medium separates one time from another time had been worn thin, or had bulged a bit, or whatever would happen under such a circumstance.

That reasoning might explain the strange eerie tingling of the place, the sense of expectancy.

The reader must bear in mind, of course, that I am an old, old man, that I have outlived the ordinary span of human life and that I continue to exist through some quirk of human destiny. While it does not seem so to myself, it may be that my mind is not as sharp or keen nor as analytical as it may once have been, and that as a result I am susceptible to ideas which would be rejected by a younger person.

The one bit of proof, if one may call it proof, that I have to support my theories is that the man I met could well have been a future man, might well have sprung from some civilization further advanced than ours. For it must be apparent to whoever reads this letter that in my talk with him he used me for his own purpose, that he pulled the wool over my eyes as easily as a man of my day might pull it over the eyes of a Homeric Greek or some member of Attila’s tribe. He was, I am sure, a man versed in semantics and in psychology. Certainly, he always was one long jump ahead of me.

I write this now only so that my theories, which I shrink from telling in my lifetime, may not be wholly lost, but may be available at some future time when a more enlightened knowledge than we have today may be able to make something out of them. And I hope that, reading them, one will not laugh, since I am dead. For if one did laugh, I am afraid that, dead as I might be, I would surely know it.

* * * *

That is the failing of us Suttons—we cannot bear to be made the butt of laughter.

And in case one may believe that my mind is twisted, I herewith enclose a physician’s certificate, signed just three days ago, asserting that upon examination he found me sound of body and mind.

But the story I have to tell is not yet entirely done. These additional events should have been included in earlier sequence, but I found no place in which they logically would fit.

They concern the strange incident of the stolen clothing and the coming of William Jones.

The clothing was stolen a few days after the incident in the high pasture. Martha had done the washing early in the day, before the heat of the summer sun, and hung it on the line. When she went to take in the clothes, she found that an old pair of overalls of mine, a shirt belonging to Roland and a couple pair of socks, the ownership of which I fear I have forgotten, had disappeared.

The theft made quite a stir among us, for thievery is a thing which does not often happen in our community. We talked about it off and on for several days, and finally agreed that the theft must have been the work of some passing tramp. Even that explanation was scarcely satisfactory. We are off the beaten way and tramps do not often pass, and that year, as I remember it, was a year of great prosperity and there were few tramps.

It was two weeks or so after the theft of the clothing that William Jones came to the house and asked if we might need a hand to help with the harvest. We were glad to take him on, for we were short of help and the wages that he asked were far below the going pay. We took him on for the harvest only, but he proved so capable that we have kept him all of ten years. Even as I write this, he is out in the barnyard readying the binder for the small grain cutting.

There is a funny thing about William Jones. In this country a man soon acquires a nickname or at least a variation of his own. But William Jones always has been William Jones. He never has been Will or Bill or Willie. Nor has he been Spike or Bub or Kid. Not even Jonesy. There is a quiet dignity about him that makes everyone respect him, and his love of work and his quiet, intelligent interest in farming raise him far above the usual status of a hired hand in the community.

He never drinks, a thing for which I am thankful, although at one time I had my misgivings. For when he came to us, he had a bandage on his head and he explained to me, shamefacedly, that he had been hurt in a tavern brawl across the river somewhere in Crawford County.

I don’t know when it was that I began to wonder about William Jones. Certainly it was not at first, for I accepted him for what he pretended to be, a man looking for work. If there was any resemblance to the man I had talked with down in the pasture, I did not notice it then. And, now, having seen it at this late date, I wonder if my imagination, running riot with my theories of time travel, may not have conditioned me to a point where I see a mystery crouching back of every tree.

But the conviction has grown upon me through the years I have associated with him. For all that he tries to keep his place, attempts to adapt his idiom to match our idiom, there are times when his speech hints at an education and an understanding one would not expect to find in a man who works on a farm for $75 a month and board.

* * * *

There, too, is his natural shyness, which is a thing one would expect to find if a man were deliberately attempting to adapt himself to a society that was not his own.

And there is the matter of the clothes. Thinking back, I can’t be sure about the overalls, for all overalls look alike. But the shirt was exactly like the shirt that had been stolen from the line, although I tell myself that it would not be improbable for two men to own the same kind of shirt. And he was barefooted, which seemed a funny thing even at the time, but he explained it by saying that he had been down on his luck and I remember I advanced him enough money to buy some shoes and socks. But it turned out that he didn’t need the socks, for he had two pair in his pocket.

A few years ago I decided several times that I would speak to him about the matter, but each time my resolution failed and now I know I never will. For I like William Jones and William Jones likes me and I would not for the world destroy that mutual liking by a question that might send him fleeing from the farm.

There is yet one other thing which goes to make William Jones unlike most farm hands. With his first money from his work here, he bought a typewriter and during the first two or three years that he was with us, he spent long hours of his evenings in his room using the typewriter and tramping about the room, as a man who is thinking is apt to walk.

And then one day, in the early morning, before the rest of us had gotten from our beds, he took a great sheaf of paper, apparently the result of those long hours of work, and burned it. Watching from my bedroom window, I watched him do it and he stayed until he was sure that the last scrap of the paper had been burned. Then he turned around and walked back slowly to the house.

I never mentioned to him the burning of the paper, for I felt, somehow, that it was something he did not wish another man to know.

I might go on for many pages and write down many other inconsequential, trivial things which rattle in my skull, but they would not add one iota of actual information, and might, in fact, convince the reader that I am in my dotage.

To whom this letter may reach, I wish to make one last assurance. While my theory may be wrong, I would have him or her believe that the facts I have told are true. I would have him or her know that I did see a strange machine in the high pasture and that I did talk with a strange man, that I picked up a wrench with blood upon it, that clothes were stolen from the wash line and that even now a man named William Jones is pumping himself a drink of water at the well, for the day is very hot.

Sincerely,

John H. Sutton

CHAPTER XX

Asher sutton folded the letter and the crackling of the old paper rippled across the quietness of the room unlike a spiteful snarl of thunder.

Then he recalled something and unfolded the sheaf of leaves again and found the thing that had been mentioned. It was yellow and old…not as good a quality of paper as the letter had been written on. The writing was by hand, with ink, and the lines were faded so they hardly could be read. The date was unclear, except for the final 7. Sutton puzzled it out:

John H. Sutton today has been examined by me and I find him sound of mind and body.

The signature was a scrawl that probably could not have been read even when the ink was scarcely dry, but there were two letters that stood out fairly clearly at the very end. The letters were M. D.

Sutton stared across the room and saw in his mind the scene of that long gone day.

“Doctor, I’ve a mind to make a will. Wonder if you could…”

For John H. Sutton never would have told the doctor the real reason for that slip of paper…the real reason why he wanted it established that he was not insane.

Sutton could imagine him. Ponderous in his walk, slow, deliberate, taking plenty of time to think things over, placing vast values on qualities and fictions which even in that day were shopworn and losing caste from centuries of over-glorification.

An old tyrant to his family, more likely. A fuddy-duddy among his neighbors, who laughed behind his back. A man lacking in humor and crinkling his brow over fine matters of etiquette and ethics.

He had been trained for the law and he had a lawyer’s mind; that much, at least, the letter told with clarity. A lawyer’s mind for detail, and a landed man’s quality of slowness, and an old man’s garrulity.

But there was no mistaking John Sutton’s sincerity. He believed he had seen a strange machine and had talked with a strange man and had picked up a wrench stained with…

A wrench!

Sutton sat upright on the bed.

The wrench had been in the trunk. He had held it in his hand. He had picked it up and tossed it on the pile of junk.

Sutton’s hand trembled as he slid the letter back into its envelope. First it had been the stamp that had intrigued him, a stamp that was worth Lord knew how much…then it was the letter itself and the mystery of its being sealed…and now there was the wrench. And the wrench clinched everything.

For the wrench meant that there actually had been a strange machine and a stranger man…a man who knew enough semantics and psychology to talk a talkative, self-centered oldster off his mental feet. Fast enough on the uptake to keep this inspection-tripping farmer from asking him the very questions the man was bubbling to ask.

Who are you and where did you come from and what’s that machine and how does it run and I never saw the like of it before…

Hard to answer, if they were ever asked.

They were not asked.

But Asher Sutton chuckled, thinking of John H. Sutton’s having the last word and how it had come about. It would please the old boy if he could only know, but, of course, he couldn’t.

There had been some slips naturally. The letter had been lost or mislaid…and finally, somehow, it had come into the hands of another Sutton, 6,000 years removed.

And Asher Sutton was the only Sutton for whom the letter would have done a bit of good. For the letter tied in someplace, had some significance in the mystery that involved him.

Men who traveled in time. Men whose time machines went haywire and came to landfall or timefall, whichever you might call it, in a cow pasture. And other men who fought in time and screamed through folds of time in burning ships and crashed in a swamp.

A battle back in ’83, the dying youth had said. Not a battle at Waterloo or off the Martian orbit, but back in ’83. And the man had cried his name just before he died and lifted himself to make a sign with strangely twisted fingers.

So I am known, thought Sutton, up in ’83 and beyond ’83, for the boy said back and that means that, in his time, a time three centuries yet to come is historically the past.

Sutton reached for his coat again and slid the letter into the pocket with the book, then rolled out of bed. He reached for his clothes and began to dress.

Pringle and Case had used a spaceship to get to the asteroid. Sutton had to find that ship.

CHAPTER XXI

The lodge was deserted, big and empty with an alienness in its emptiness that made Sutton, who should have been accustomed to alienness, shiver as he felt it touch him.

He stood for a moment outside his door and listened to the whispering of the place, the faint, illogical breathing of the house, the creak of frost-expanded walls, the caress of wind against a windowpane, and the noises that could not be explained by either frost or wind, the living sound of something that is not alive.

The carpeting in the hall deadened his footsteps as he went down it toward the stairs. Snores came from one of the two rooms which Pringle had said that he and Case occupied, and Sutton wondered for a moment which one of them it was that snored.

He went carefully down the stairs, trailing his hand along the bannister to guide him. When he reached the massive living space, he waited, standing motionless so that his eyes might become accustomed to the deeper dark that crouched there like lairing animals.

Slowly the animals took the shapes of chairs and couches, tables, cabinets and cases. One of the chairs, he saw, had a man sitting in it.

As if he had become aware that Sutton had seen him, the man stirred, turning his face toward him. And although it was too dark to see his features, Sutton knew that the man in the chair was Case.

Then, he thought, the man who snores is Pringle, although he knew it made no difference which it was.

“So, Mr. Sutton,” Case said slowly, “you decided to go out and try to find our ship.”

“Yes,” Sutton said, “I did.”

“Now that is fine,” said Case. “That is the way I like a man to speak up and say what’s on his mind.” He sighed. “You meet so many devious persons, so many people who try to lie to you, so many people who tell you half truths and feel, while they’re doing it, that they are being clever.”

He rose out of the chair, tall and straight and prim.

“Mr. Sutton,” he said, “I like you very much.”

Sutton felt like grinning at the absurdity of the situation, but a coldness and a half anger in him told him this was no laughing matter.

Footsteps padded softly down the stairs behind him and Pringle’s voice whispered through the room: “So he decided to make a try for it.”

“As you see,” said Case.

“I told you that he would,” said Pringle, almost triumphantly. “I told you that he would get it figured out.” Sutton choked down the gorge that rose into his throat. But the anger held, anger at the way they talked about him as if he weren’t there.

“I fear,” said Case to Sutton, “that we have disturbed you. We are most untactful people and you are sensitive. But let’s forget it all and get down to business now. You wanted, I believe, to ferret out our ship.”

Sutton shrugged his shoulders. “That’s out now, isn’t it?”

“Oh, but you misunderstand,” said Case. “We have no objection. Go ahead and ferret.”

“Meaning I can’t find it?”

“Meaning that you can,” said Case. “We didn’t try to hide it.”

“We’ll even show you the way,” said Pringle. “We’ll go along with you. It will take you a lot less time.”

Sutton felt a fine ooze of perspiration break out along his hairline.

A trap, he told himself. A trap laid out in plain sight and not even baited. And he’d walked into it without even looking.

But it was too late now. There was no backing out.

He tried to make his voice sound unconcerned.

“All right,” he said. “I’ll gamble with you.”

CHAPTER XXII

The ship was strange, but very real. And it was the only thing that was. All the rest of the situation had a vague, unrealistic, almost fairy character about it, as if it might be a bad dream and Sutton would wake up and for an agonizing moment try to distinguish between dream and reality.

“That map over there,” said Pringle, “puzzles you, no doubt. There is every reason that it should. It is a time map.” He chuckled and rubbed the back of his head with a beefy hand. “Tell the truth, I don’t understand the thing myself. Case does. Case is a military man and I’m just a propagandist. A propagandist doesn’t have to know what he is talking about, just so he talks convincingly. But a military man does. A military man has to know; some day his life may depend on knowing.”

So that was it, thought Sutton. That was the thing that had bothered him, the clue that he had told himself would explain Case, who he was and what he was and why he was here on this asteroid.

A military man.

I should have guessed, Sutton said to himself. But I was thinking in the present…not the past or future. And there are no military men, as such, in the world today. Although there were military men before my time and apparently there will be military men in ages yet to come.

He said to Case: “War in four dimensions must be slightly complicated.”

And he didn’t say it because he was interested at the moment in war, either in three or four dimensions, but because he felt that it was his turn to talk, his turn to keep this Mad Hatter tea chatter going at its proper senseless pace.

For that was what it was, he told himself…an utterly illogical situation, a madcap, slightly psychotic interlude that might have its purpose, but hidden and tangled in confusion.

The time has come, the Walrus said, to talk of many things, of sealing wax and sailing ships, of cabbages and…

Case smiled when he spoke to him, a tight, hard, clipped military smile.

“Primarily,” Case said, “it is a matter of charts and graphs and very special knowledge and some super-guessing. You figure out where the enemy may be and what he may be thinking and you get there first.”

Sutton shrugged. “Basically that always was the principle,” he said. “You got there fastest…”

“Ah,” said Pringle, “but there are now so many more places where the enemy may go.”

“You work with thought graphs and attitude charts and historic reports,” said Case, almost as if he had not been interrupted. “You trace back certain happenings and then you return and try to change some of those happenings…just a little, you understand, for you must not change them much. Only enough so the end result is slightly different, just a little less favorable to the enemy. One change here and another there and you have him on the run.”

“It drives you nuts,” said Pringle confidentially. “Because you must be sure, you see. You pick out a nice juicy historic trend and you figure it out to the finest detail and you pick a key point where change is indicated, so you go back and change it…”

“And then,” said Case, “it kicks you in the face.”

“Because, you understand,” explained Pringle, “the historian was wrong. Some of his material was wrong or his method was clumsy or his reasoning was off…”

“Somewhere along the line,” said Case, “he missed a factor.”

“That’s right,” said Pringle, “somewhere he missed a factor and you find, after you have changed it, that it affects your side more than it does your enemy’s.”

“Now, Mr. Bones,” said Sutton, his face straight, “I wonder if you could tell me why a chicken runs across the road.”

“Yes, Mr. Interlocutor,” said Pringle, also without a smile. “Because it wants to get on the other side.”

Cartoon stuff, thought Sutton. A scene jerked raw and bleeding from a crazy humorist’s routine.

But clever. Pringle was a propagandist and he was no fool. He knew semantics and he knew psychology. He knew all there was to know about the human race, so far as that knowledge could serve his sinister unknown purpose.

A man had landed in the high pasture one morning, 6,000 years before, and John H. Sutton, Esq., had come ambling down the hill, swinging a stick, for he was the sort of man who would have carried a stick—a stout, strong hickory stick, no doubt, cut and trimmed with his own jackknife. And the man had talked with him and had used the same kind of mental tactics on John H. Sutton as Pringle now was trying to use on Sutton’s far descendant.

Go ahead, said Sutton to himself. Talk yourself hoarse in the throat and dry in the tongue. And pretty soon we’ll get down to business.

As if he had read Sutton’s thoughts, Case said to Pringle: “Jake, it isn’t working out.”

“No, I guess it ain’t,” said Pringle.

“Let’s sit down,” said Case.

Sutton felt a flood of relief. Now, he told himself, he would find out what the others wanted, might get some clue to what was going on.

He sat down in a pressure chair, and from where he sat he could see the front end of the spaceship’s cabin, a tiny living space that shrieked efficiency. The control board canted in front of the pilot’s chair, but there were few controls. A row of buttons, lever or two, a panel of toggles that probably controlled lights and ports and such…and that was all. Efficient and simple, no foolishness, a minimum of manual controls. The ship, Sutton thought, must almost fly itself.

Case slid down into a chair and crossed his long legs, stretching them out in front of him, sitting on his backbone. Pringle perched on a chair’s edge, leaning forward, rubbing hairy hands.

“Sutton,” asked Case, “what is it that you want?”

“Not a thing,” said Sutton. “Not a single thing.”

“But that’s foolish,” Pringle protested. “There must be something you want.”

“A little information, maybe.”

“Like what?”

“Like what this is all about.”

“You’re going to write a book,” said Case.

“Yes,” said Sutton. “I intend to write a book.”

“And you want to sell that book.”

“I hope to see it published.”

“A book,” Case pointed out, “is a commodity. It’s a product of brain and muscle. It has a market value.”

“I suppose,” said Sutton, “that you are in the market.”

“We are publishers,” said Case, “looking for a book.”

“A best seller,” Pringle added.

Case uncrossed his legs, hitched himself higher in the chair. “It’s all quite simple,” he said. “Just a business deal. We wish you would set your price.”

“Make it high,” urged Pringle. “We are prepared to pay.”

“I have no price in mind,” said Sutton.

“We had discussed it,” Case told him, “in a rather speculative manner, wondering how much you might want and how much we might be willing to give. We figured a planet might be attractive to you.”

“We’d make it a dozen planets,” Pringle said, “but that doesn’t make sense. What would a man do with a dozen planets?”

“He might rent them out,” said Sutton.

“You mean,” asked Case, “that you might be interested in a dozen planets?”

“No, I wouldn’t,” Sutton answered. “Pringle wondered what a man would do with a dozen planets and I was being helpful. I said…”

Pringle leaned so far forward in his chair that he was almost off it. “Look, we aren’t talking about one of the backwoods planets out at the tail end of nowhere. We’re offering you a landscaped planet, free of all venomous and hostile life, with a salubrious climate and tractable natives and all the customary living accommodations and improvements.”

“And the money,” said Case, “to keep it running for the rest of your life.”

“Right spang in the middle of the galaxy,” said Pringle. “It’s an address you wouldn’t be ashamed of.”

“I’m not interested,” said Sutton.

Case’s temper cracked. “Good Lord, what is it that you want?”

“I want information,” Sutton said.

Case sighed. “All right, then. We’ll give you information.”

“Why do you want my book?”

“There are three parties interested in your book,” said Case. “One of those parties would kill you to prevent your writing it. What is more to the point, they probably will if you don’t throw in with us.”

“And the third party?”

“The third party wants you to write the book, all right, but they won’t pay you a thing for doing it. They’ll do all they can to make it easy for you to write the book and they’ll try to protect you from the ones that would like to kill you, but they’re not offering any money.”

“If I took you up,” said Sutton, “I suppose you’d help me write the book? Conferences and so forth?”

“Naturally,” said Case. “We’d have an interest in it. We’d want it done the best way possible.”

“After all,” said Pringle, “our interest would be as great as yours.”

“That’s what I thought,” Sutton told them. “My book is not for sale.”

“We’d boost the ante some,” said Pringle.

“It still is not for sale.”

“That’s your final word?” asked Case. “Your considered opinion?”

Sutton nodded.

Case sighed. “Then,” he said, “I guess we have to kill you.”

He took a gun out of his pocket.

CHAPTER XXIII

The psych-tracer ticked on, endlessly, running fast, then slow, skipping a beat now and then, like the erratic time measurement of a clock with hiccoughs.

It was the only sound in the room and to Adams it seemed as if he were listening to the beating of a heart, the breathing of a man, the throb of blood along the jugular vein.

He grimaced at the pile of dossiers which a moment before he had swept from his desk onto the floor with an angry sweep of his hand. For there was nothing in them…absolutely nothing. Every one was perfect, every one checked. Birth certificates, scholastic records, recommendations, loyalty checks, psych examinations, all of them were as they should be. There was not a single flaw.

That was the trouble…in all the records of the Service’s personnel, there was not a single flaw. Not a thing a man could point to. Not a thing on which one could anchor suspicion.

Lily white and pure.

Yet someone inside the Service had stolen Sutton’s dossier. Someone had tipped off Sutton on the gun-trap laid for him at the Orion Arms. Someone had been ready and waiting, knowing of the trap, to whisk him out of reach.

“Spies,” said Adams to himself, and he made his hand into a fist and hit the desk so hard that his knuckles stung.

For no one but an insider could have made away with Sutton’s dossier. No one but an insider could have known of the decision to destroy Sutton, nor of the three men who had been assigned to carry out the order.

Adams smiled grimly.

The tracer chuckled at him. Ker-up, it said, ker-up, clickity, click, ker-up.

That was Sutton’s heart and breath… Sutton’s life ticking away somewhere. So long as Sutton lived, no matter where he was or what he might be doing, the tracer would go on chuckling and burping.

Ker-rup, ker-rup, ker-rup…

Somewhere in the asteroid belt, the tracer had said, and that was a very general location, but it could be narrowed. Already ships with other tracers aboard were narrowing it down. Sooner or later, hours or days or weeks, Sutton would be found.

Ker-rup…

War, the man in the mask had said.

And hours later, a ship had come screaming down across the hills, like a blazing comet, to plunge into a swamp.

A ship such as no man as yet had made, carrying melted weapons that were unlike any that Man had yet invented. A ship whose thunder in the night had roused the sleeping inhabitants for miles around, whose flaming metal had been a beacon glowing in the sky.

A ship and a body, and a track that led from ship to body across three hundred yards of marsh. The trace of one man’s footprints and the furrowing trail of other feet that dragged across the mud. And the man who had carried the dead man had been Asher Sutton, for Sutton’s fingerprints were on the muddied clothing of the man lying at the swamp’s edge.

Sutton, thought Adams wearily. It is always Sutton. Sutton’s name upon the flyleaf out of Aldebaran XII. Sutton’s fingerprints upon a dead man’s clothing. The man in the mask had said there would have been no incident on Aldebaran if it had not been for Sutton. And Sutton had killed Benton, Earth’s greatest duelist—with a bullet in the arm.

Ker-up, clickity, click, ker-up…

Dr. Raven, called in by Adams, had sat in that chair across the desk and told of the afternoon Sutton had dropped in at the university.

“He found destiny,” Dr. Raven had said, and he said it as if it were commonplace, as if it were a thing that could have been expected all along.

“Not a religion,” Dr. Raven had said, with the afternoon sunlight shining on his snow white hair. “Oh, dear, no, not a religion. Actual destiny.”

DESTINY, noun. Destiny—the predetermined course in events often conceived as a resistless power or agency…

“The accepted definition,” Dr. Raven had said, as if he might be addressing a lecture hall, “may have to be modified slightly when Asher writes his book.”

But how could Sutton find destiny? Destiny was an idea, an abstract.

“You forget,” Dr. Raven had told Adams, speaking gently as one would to a child, “that part about the resistless power or agency. That is what he found…the power or agency.”

“Sutton told me about the beings he found on Cygni,” Adams had said. “He was at a loss to describe them. The nearest that he could come was symbiotic abstractions.”

Dr. Raven had nodded his head and pulled his shell-like ears and figured that maybe symbiotic abstractions would fit the bill, although it was hard for one to decide just what a symbiotic abstraction was, or what it would look like.

Under questioning, he reiterated that it was not a new religion Sutton had found. “Oh, gracious, no, not a religion.”

And Raven, Adams thought, should be the one to know, for he was one of the galaxy’s best and most widely known comparative religionists.

“Although it would be a new idea,” Dr. Raven had said. “Bless me, yes, an absolutely new idea.”

And ideas are dangerous, Adams told himself.

For Man was spread thin across the galaxy. So thin that one word—literally one spoken word or unbidden thought—might be enough to set off the train of rebellion and of violence that would sweep Man back to the solar system, back to the puny ring of circling planets that had caged him in before.

One could not take a chance. One could not gamble with an imponderable.

Better that one man die needlessly than that the whole race lose its grip upon the galaxy. Better that one new idea, however great, be blotted out than that Mankind be swept from the billion stars.

Item one: Sutton wasn’t human.

Item Two: He was not telling all he knew.

Item Three: He had a manuscript which was not decipherable.

Item Four: He meant to write a book.

Item Five: He had a new idea.

Conclusion: Sutton must be killed.

Ker-up, clickity, click…

War, the man had said. A war in time.

It would spread thin, too, like Man across the galaxy.

It would be three-dimensional chess with a million billion squares and pieces, and with the rules changing at every move.

It would reach back to win its battles. It would strike at points in time and space which would not even know that there was a war. It could, logically, go back to the silver mines of Athens, to the horse and chariot of Thutmoses III, to the sailing of Columbus. It would involve all fields of human endeavor and human speculation, and it would twist the dreams of men who had never thought of time except as a moving shadow across a sun dial’s face.

It would involve spies and propagandists—spies to learn the factors of the past so that they could be plotted in the campaign strategy, propagandists to twist the fabric of the past so that strategy could be the more effective.

It would load the personnel of the Justice Department of the year 7990 with spies and fifth columnists and saboteurs. And it would do that so cleverly one could never find the spies.

But, as in an ordinary, honest war, there would be strategic points. As in chess, there would be one key piece.

Sutton was that piece. He was the pawn that stood in the way of the sweep of bishop and of rook. He was the pawn that both sides were lining up on, bring all their pressure on a single point…and when one side was ready, when it gained a fraction of advantage, the slaughter would begin.

Adams folded his arms upon the desk and laid his head upon them. His shoulders twitched, but he had no tears.

“Ash, boy,” he said. “Ash, I counted on you so much.”

The silence brought him straight in the chair again.

For a moment, he was unable to locate it…determine what was wrong. And then he knew.

The psych-tracer had stopped its burping.

He leaned forward and bent above it and there was no sound of heart, of breath, of blood coursing in the body.

The motivating force that had operated it—Asher Sutton—has ceased to be.

Slowly, Adams rose from his chair, took down his hat and put it on.

For the first time in his life, Christopher Adams was going home before the day was over.

CHAPTER XXIV

Sutton stiffened in his chair and then relaxed. For this was a bluff, he told himself. These men wouldn’t kill him. They wanted the book and dead men do not write.

Case answered him, almost as if Sutton had spoken what he thought aloud. “You must not count on us as honorable men; neither of us ourselves would lay a claim to that. Pringle, I think, will bear me out in that.”

“Oh, certainly,” said Pringle. “I have no use for honor.”

“It would have meant a great deal to us if we could have taken you back to Trevor and…”

“Wait a second,” interrupted Sutton. “Who is this Trevor? He’s a new one.”

“Oh, Trevor,” said Pringle. “Just an oversight. Trevor is the head of the corporation,”

“The corporation,” added Case, “that wants to get your book.”

“Trevor would have heaped us with honors,” Pringle said, “and loaded us with wealth if we had pulled it off. But since you won’t cooperate, we’ll have to cast around for some other way to make ourselves a profit.”

“So we switch sides,” explained Case, “and we shoot you. Morgan will pay high for you, but he wants you dead. Your carcass will be worth a good deal to Morgan. Oh, yes, quite a lot.”

“And you will sell it to him.”

“Of course,” said Pringle. “We never miss a bet.”

Case purred at Sutton: “You do not object, I hope.”

Sutton shrugged indifferently. “What you do with my cadaver is no concern of mine.”

“Well, then,” said Case, and he raised the gun.

“Just a second,” Sutton said.

Case lowered the gun. “Now what?”

“He wants a cigaret,” said Pringle. “Men who are about to be executed always want a cigaret or a glass of wine or a chicken dinner or something of the sort.”

“I want to ask a question,” Sutton said.

Case nodded.

“I take it,” Sutton said, “that in your time I’ve already written this book.”

“That’s right,” Case told him. “An honest and efficient job.”

“Under your imprint or someone else’s?”

Pringle cackled. “Under someone else’s, of course. If you did it under ours, why do you think we’d be back here at all?”

Sutton wrinkled his brow. “I’ve already written it,” he said, “without your help and without your editing. Now if I did it a second time, and wrote it the way you wanted, there would be complications.”

“None,” said Case, “we couldn’t overcome. Nothing that could not be explained quite satisfactorily.”

“And now that you’re going to kill me, there’ll be no book at all. How will you handle that?”

Case frowned. “It will be difficult and unfortunate…unfortunate for many people. But we’ll work it out.” He raised the gun. “Sure you won’t change your mind?”

Sutton shook his head.

They won’t shoot, he told himself. It’s a bluff. The deck is cold and…

Case pulled the trigger.

A mighty force, like a striking fist, slammed into Sutton’s body and shoved him back so hard that the chair tilted and then slued around, yawing like a ship caught in magnetic stresses.

Fire flashed within his skull. He felt one swift shriek of agony that took him in its claws and lifted him and shook him, jangling every nerve, grating every bone.

There was one thought, one fleeting thought that he tried to grasp and hold, but it wriggled from his brain like an eel slipping free from bloody fingers.

Change, said the thought. Change.

He felt the change…felt it start even as he died.

And death was a soft thing, soft and black, cool and sweet and gracious. He slipped into it as a swimmer slips into the surf and it closed over him and held him. He felt the pulse and beat of it and knew the vastness and the sureness of it.

Back on Earth, the psych-tracer faltered to a stop and Christopher Adams got up and put on his hat and went home for the first time in his life before the day was done.

CHAPTER XXV

Herkimer lay on his bed and tried to sleep, but sleep was long in coming. And he wondered that he should sleep…that he should sleep and eat and drink as Man. For he was not a man and would never be a man.

His origin was chemical and Man’s was biological. He was the imitation and Man was reality. It is the method, he told himself, the method and the terminology, that keep me from being Man, for in all things else we are the same.

The method and the name of android and the tattoo mark I wear upon my brow.

I am as good as Man and as smart as Man, for all I act the clown, and could be as treacherous as Man if I had the chance. Except I wear a tattoo mark and I am owned and I have no soul…although sometimes I wonder.

Herkimer lay very quiet and gazed at the ceiling and tried to remember certain things, but it was frighteningly complicated.

First there was the tool and then the machine, which was no more than a complicated tool, and both machine and tool were no more than the extension of a hand.

Man’s hand, of course.

Then came the robot and a robot was a machine that walked like a man. That walked and looked and talked like a man and did the things Man wished, but it was a caricature. No matter how sleekly machined, no matter how cleverly designed, there never was a danger that it be mistaken for a man.

And after the robot?

We are not robots, Herkimer told himself, and we are not men. We are not machines, because we are flesh and blood. We are chemicals made into the shapes of our creators and assigned a chemical life so close to the life of our makers that some day one of them will find, to his astonishment, that there is no difference.

Made in the shape of men…and the resemblance is so close that we wear a tattoo mark so that men may know us apart.

So close to Man and yet not Man.

Although there is hope…if we can keep the Cradle secret, if we can keep it hidden from the eyes of Man. Someday there will be no difference. Someday a man will talk to an android and think he is talking to a fellow man. And he will be.

Herkimer stretched his arms and folded them over his head. He tried to examine his mind, to arrive at motives and evaluations, but it was hard to do. No rancor, certainly. No jealousy. No bitterness. Just a nagging feeling of inadequacy, of having almost reached the goal and fallen short.

But there was comfort, he thought. There was comfort if nothing else.

And that comfort must be kept. Kept for those like himself, the ones that were less than Man.

He lay for a long time, thinking about comfort, watching the dark square of the window with the rime of frost upon it and the stars shining through the frost, listening to the thin whine of the feeble, vicious weasel-wind as it snarled across the roof.

Sleep did not come and he got up at last and turned on the light. Shivering, he got into his clothes and pulled a book out of his pocket. Huddling close to the lamp, he turned the pages to a passage worn thin with reading.

There is no thing, no matter how created, how born or how conceived or made, which knows the pulse of life, that goes alone. That assurance I can give you.…

He closed the book and held it clasped between the palms of his two hands.

…how born or how conceived or made.

Made.

All that mattered was the pulse of life, the stir of sentiency.

Comfort.

And it must be kept.

I did my duty, he told himself. My willing, almost eager duty. I still am doing it.

I acted the part, he told himself, and I think I acted well. I acted a part when I carried the challenge to Asher Sutton’s room. I acted a part when I came to him as a part of the estate duello…the saucy, subservient part of any common android.

I did my duty for him…and yet not for him, but for comfort, for the privilege of knowing and believing that neither I nor any other living thing, no matter how lowly it may be, will ever be alone.

I hit him. I hit him on the button and knocked him out, and I lifted him in my arms and carried him into the spaceship.

He was angry at me, but that does not matter. His anger cannot wash away a single word of the assurance he gave me.

Thunder shook the house. The window, for a moment, flared with sudden crimson.

Herkimer came to his feet and ran for the window and stood there, gripping the ledge, watching the red twinkle of dwindling rocket tubes.

Fear hit him in the stomach and he raced out of the door and down the hall, to Sutton’s room.

He did not knock nor did he turn the knob. He hit the door and it shattered open, with a wrecked and twisted lock dangling by its screws.

The bed was empty and there was no one in the room.

CHAPTER XXVI

Sutton sensed resurrection and he fought against it, for death was so comfortable. Like a soft, warm bed. And resurrection was a strident, insistent, maddening alarm clock that shrilled across the predawn chill of a dreadful, frowsy room. Dreadful with its life and its raw reality and its sharp, sickening reminder that one must get up.

But this is not the first time, said Sutton. This is not the first time that I died and came to life again. For I did it once before and that time I was dead for a long, long time.

There was a hard, flat surface underneath him and he lay face down upon it. For what seemed an interminable stretch of time, his mind struggled to visualize the hardness and smoothness beneath him. Hard and flat and smooth, three words, but they did not help one see or understand the thing that they described.

He felt life creep back and quicken, seep along his legs and arms. But he wasn’t breathing and his heart was still.

Floor.

That was it…that was the word for the thing on which he lay. The flat, hard, smooth surface was a floor. The floor of what?

Sounds came to him, but at first he didn’t call them sounds, for he had no word for them at all, and then, a moment later, he remembered that that was the word.

Now he could move one finger. Then a second finger.

He opened his eyes and there was light.

The sounds were voices and the voices were words and the words were thoughts.

It takes so long to figure things out, Sutton wearily told himself.

“We should have tried a little harder,” said a voice, “and a little longer. The trouble with us, Case, is that we have no patience.”

“Patience wouldn’t have done a bit of good,” said Case. “He was convinced that we were bluffing. No matter what we’d done or said, he’d still have thought we were bluffing and we would have gotten nowhere. There was only one thing to do.”

“Yes, I know,” Pringle agreed. “Convince him that we weren’t bluffing.” He made a sound of blowing out his breath. “Pity, too. He was such a bright young man.”

They were silent for a time and now it was not life alone, but strength, that was flowing into Sutton. Strength to stand and walk, strength to lift his arms, strength to vent his anger. Strength to kill two men.

“We won’t do so badly,” Pringle went on. “Morgan and his crowd will pay us just as much.”

Case was squeamish. “I don’t like it, Pringle. A dead man is a dead man if you kill him and leave him. But when you sell him, that makes you a butcher.”

“That’s not the thing that’s worrying me,” Pringle answered. “What will it do to the future, Case? To our future. We had a future with many of its facets based on Sutton’s book. If we had managed to change the book a little, it wouldn’t have mattered much…wouldn’t have mattered at all, in fact, the way we had it figured out. But now Sutton’s dead. There will be no book by Sutton. The future will be completely different.”

Sutton rose to his feet.

They spun around and faced him and Case’s hand went for his gun.

“Go ahead,” invited Sutton. “Shoot me full of holes. You won’t live a minute longer for it.”

He tried to hate them, as he had hated Benton during that one fleeting moment back on Earth. Hatred so strong and primal that it had blasted the man’s mind into oblivion.… killed him with only a puzzling bullet in his arm and a hate-shattered brain.

But there was no hate. Just a ponderous, determined will to destroy a bothersome hindrance.

He moved forward on inexorable legs and his hands reached out.

Pringle ran, squealing, seeking to escape. Case’s gun spat twice and when blood oozed out and ran down Sutton’s chest and he still came on, Case threw away his weapon and backed against the wall.

It didn’t take long.

They couldn’t get away.

There was no place to go.

TIME QUARRY [Part 2]

CHAPTER XXVII

Sutton maneuvered the ship down against the tiny asteroid, a whirling piece of debris not much bigger than the ship itself. He felt it touch and his thumb reached out and snubbed over the gravity lever. The ship clamped down, to go tumbling through space with the twisting chunk of rock.

Sutton let his hands fall to his side and sat quietly in the pilot’s chair. In front of him, space was black and friendless, streaked by the pinpoint stars that spun in lines of fire across the field of vision, writing cryptic messages of cold, white light across the cosmos as the asteroid bumbled on its erratic course.

Safe, he told himself. Safe for a while, at least. Perhaps safe forever, for there might be no one looking for him.

Safe with a hole blasted through his chest, with blood running down his front and splashing on the floor.

Handy thing to have, he thought grimly, this second body of mine. This body that was grafted on me by the Cygnians. It will keep me going until…until…

Until what?

Until I can get back to Earth and walk into a doctor’s office and say: “I got shot up a little. How about a patching job?”

Sutton chuckled. He could see the doctor having a fit.

Or going back to Cygni? But they wouldn’t let me in.

Or just going back to Earth the way I am and forget about the doctor? I could get other clothes and the bleeding will stop when the blood’s all gone.

But I wouldn’t breathe, and they would notice that.

“Johnny,” he said, but there was no answer, just a feeble stir of life within his brain, a sign of recognition, like a dog wagging its tail to let you know it heard, but was too busy with a bone to let anything distract it.

“Johnny, is there any way?”

There might be. It was a hope to cling to, a thing to think about.

Not even yet, he suspected, had he begun to plumb the strange depth of abilities lodged within his body and his mind.

He had not known that his hate alone could kill, that hate could spear out from his brain like a lance of steel and strike a man dead. And yet Benton had died with a bullet in the arm…only he had been dead before the bullet hit him. For Benton had fired first and missed, and Benton, alive, never would have missed.

Sutton had not known that by mind alone he could control the energy needed to lift the dead weight of a ship from a boulder bed and fly it across eleven years of space. And yet that was what he’d done, winnowing the energy from the flaming stars so far away they dimmed to almost nothing, from the random specks of matter in the void.

And while he knew that he could change at will from one life to another, he had not known for certain that when one way of life was killed, the other way would take over automatically. Yet that was what had happened. Case had killed him and he had died and he had come to life again. But he had died before the change had started. Of that much he was sure. For he remembered death and recognized it. He knew it from the time he had died before.

He felt his body eating…sucking at the stars as a human sucks an orange, nibbling at the energy imprisoned in the bit of rock to which the ship was clamped, pouncing on the tiny leaks of power from the ship’s atomic motors.

Eating to grow strong, eating to repair…

“Johnny, is there any way?”

And there was no answer.

He let his head sag forward until it lay upon the inclined panel that housed the instruments.

His body went on eating at the stars.

He listened to the slow drip of blood falling from his body and splashing on the floor.

His mind was clouding and he let it cloud, for there was nothing to do. There was no need to use it; he did not know how to use it. He did not know what he could do or what he couldn’t do, nor how to go about it.

He had fallen, he remembered, screaming down the alien sky, knowing in a moment of wild elation that he had broken through, that the world of Cygni VII lay beneath his hand. That what all the navies of the Earth had failed to do, he’d done.

The planet was rushing up and he saw the tangled geography of it that snaked in black and gray across his vision plate.

That was twenty years ago, but he remembered it, in the dim fog of his mind, as if it were happening this very moment.

He reached out a hand and hauled back on a lever and the lever would not move. The ship plunged down and for a moment he felt a rising fear that exploded into panic.

One fact stood out, one stark, black fact in all the flashing fragments of thoughts and schemes and prayer that went screeching through his brain. One stark fact…he was about to crash.

He did not remember crashing, for he probably never knew exactly when he crashed. It was only fear and terror and then no fear nor terror. It was consciousness and awareness and then a nothingness that was a restfulness and a vast forgetting.

Awareness came back…in a moment or an eon, which, he could not tell. But an awareness that was different, a sentiency that was only partly human, just a small percentage human. And a knowledge that was new, but which, it seemed, he had held forever.

He sensed or knew, for it was not seeing, his body stretched out on the ground smashed and broken, twisted out of human shape. And although he knew it was his body and knew its every superficial function and the plan of its assembly, he felt a twinge of wonder at the thing which lay there and knew that here was a problem which would tax his utmost ingenuity.

For the body must be put together, must be straightened out and reintegrated and coordinated so that it would work and the life that had escaped be returned to it again.

He thought of Humpty Dumpty and the thought was strange, as if the nursery rhyme were something new or something long forgotten.

Humpty Dumpty, said another part of him, supplies no answer, and he knew that it was right, for Humpty, he recalled, could not be put together again.

He became aware there were two of him; one part of him had answered the other part of him. The answerer and the listener, and although they were one, they were also separate. There was a cleavage he could not understand.

“I am your destiny,” said the answerer. “I was with you when you came to life and I will stay with you till you die. I do not control you and I do not coerce you, but I try to guide you, although you do not know it.”

Sutton, the small part of him that was Sutton, said: “I know it now.”

He knew it as if he’d always known it and that was queer, for he had only just then learned it. Knowledge, he realized, was all tangled up, for there were two of him…he and destiny. He could not immediately distinguish between the things he knew as Sutton alone and those he knew as Sutton plus Sutton’s destiny.

I cannot know, he thought. I could not know then and I cannot know now. For there still is deep within me the two facets of my being, the human that I am and the destiny that would guide me to a greater glory and a greater life, if I would only let it.

For it will not coerce me and it will not stop me. It will only give me hunches; it will only whisper warnings and encouragement to me. It is the thing called conscience and the thing called judgment and the thing called intuition.

And it sits within my brain as it sits within the brain of no other thing, for I am one with it. I know of it with a dreadful certainty and others do not know at all, or, if they do, they only guess at the great immensity of its truthfulness.

And all must know. All must know each thing has destiny.

But there is something going on to keep them from knowing, or to twist their knowledge so their knowing is all wrong. I must find out what it is and I must correct it. And somehow I must strike into the future; I must set it aright for the days I will not see.

I am your destiny, the answerer had said.

Destiny, not fatalism.

Destiny, not predetermination.

Destiny, the way of men and races and of worlds.

Destiny, the way you made your life, the way you shaped your living…the way it was meant to be, the way that it would be if you listened to the still, small voice that talked to you at the many turning points and crossroads.

But if you did not listen…why, then, you did not listen and you did not hear. And there was no power that could make you listen. There was no penalty if you did not listen except the penalty of having gone against your destiny.

There were other thoughts or other voices. Sutton could not tell which they were, but they were outside the tangled thing that was he and destiny.

That is my body, he thought. And I am somewhere else. Some place where there is no seeing as I used to see…nor hearing, although I see and hear, but with another’s senses and in an alien way.

The screen let him through, said one thought, although screen was not the word it used.

And another said that the screen had served its purpose.

And another said that there was a certain technique he had picked up on a planet, the name of which blurred and ran and made a splotch and had no meaning at all, so far as Sutton could make out.

Still another pointed out the singular complexity and inefficiency of Sutton’s mangled body and spoke enthusiastically of the simplicity and perfection of direct energy intake.

Sutton tried to cry out to them for the love of God to hurry, for his body was a fragile thing, that if they waited too long it would be past all mending. But he could not say it, and, as if in a dream, he listened to the interplay of thought, the flash and flicker of individual opinion, all molding into one cohesive thought that spelled eventual decision.

He tried to wonder where he was, tried to orient himself and found that he could not even define himself. For himself no longer was a body, nor a place in space or time, nor even a personal pronoun. It was a hanging, dangling thing that had no substance, no fixture in the scheme of time and it could not recognize itself, no matter what it did. It was a vacuum that knew it existed and it was dominated by something else that might as well have been a vacuum for all the recognition he could make of it.

He was outside his body and he lived. But where or how, there was no way of knowing.

“I am your destiny,” the answerer that seemed a part of him had said.

But destiny was a word and nothing more. An idea. An abstract. A tenuous definition for something that the mind of Man had conceived, but could not prove…that the mind of Man was willing to agree was an idea only and could never be proved.

“You are wrong,” said Sutton’s destiny. “Destiny is real, although you cannot see it. It is real for you and for all other things…for every single thing that knows the surge of life. And it has always been and it will always be.”

“This is not death?” asked Sutton.

“You are the first to come to us,” said destiny. “We cannot let you die. We will give you back your body, but until then you will live with me. You will be part of me. And that is only fair, for I have always lived with you; I have always been part of you.”

“You did not want me here,” said Sutton. “You built a screen to keep me out.”

“We wanted one,” said destiny. “One only. You are that one; there will be no more.”

“But the screen?”

“It was keyed to a mind,” said destiny. “To a certain mind. The one mind we wanted.”

“But you let me die.”

“You had to die,” destiny told him. “Until you died and became one of us, you could not know. In your body we could not have reached you. You had to die so that you would be freed and I was there to take you and make you part of me so you would understand.”

“I do not understand.”

“You will,” said destiny. “You will.”

And I did, thought Sutton.

His body shook as he remembered and his mind stood awed with the vast, unexpected immensity of destiny…of trillions upon trillions of destinies to match the teeming life of the galaxy.

Destiny whispered and a thing climbed dripping from the water and in the eons to come its fins were legs and its gills were nostrils.

Destiny stirred and a shaggy ape thing stooped and picked up a broken stick. It stirred again and he struck flint together. It stirred once more and there was a bow and arrow. Again and the wheel was born.

Symbiotic abstractions. Parasites. Invisible partners. Call them what you would.

They were destiny.

And the time had come for the galaxy to know of destiny.

If parasites, then beneficial parasites, ready to give more than they could take. For all they got was the sense of living, the sense of being…and what they gave, or stood ready to give, was far more than mere living.

For many of the lives they lived must be dull, indeed. An angleworm, for instance. Or the bloated mass of instinct that crept through nauseous jungle worlds.

But because of them, someday an angleworm might be more than an angleworm…or a greater angleworm. The bloated mass of instinct might be something that would reach to greater heights than Man.

For every thing that moved, whether intelligent or mindless, across the face of any world, was not one thing, but two. It and its own individual destiny.

And sometimes destiny took hold and won…and sometimes it didn’t. But where there was destiny, there was hope forever. For destiny was hope. And destiny was everywhere.

No thing walks alone.

Nor crawls nor vegetates nor swims nor flies nor shambles.

One planet barred to every mind but one; and once that mind arrived, barred forevermore.

One mind to tell the galaxy when the galaxy was ready. One mind to tell of destiny and hope.

That mind, thought Sutton, is my own.

Lord help me now.

For if I had been the one to choose, if I had been asked, if I had had a thing to say about it, it would not have been me, but someone or something else. Some other mind in another million years. Some other thing in ten times another million years.

It is too much to ask, he thought…too much to ask a being with a mind as frail as Man’s, to bear the weight of revelation, to bear the load of knowing.

But destiny put the finger on me. Happenstance or accident or pure blind luck…it would be destiny.

I lived with destiny, as destiny… I was a part of destiny instead of destiny merely a part of me and we came to know each other as if we were two humans…better than if we were two humans. For destiny was I and I was destiny. Destiny had no name and I called it Johnny and the fact that I had to name him is a joke that destiny, my destiny, still can chuckle over.

I lived with Johnny, the vital part of me, the spark of me that men call life and do not understand…the part of me I still do not understand…until my body had been repaired again. And then I returned to it and it was a different body, a better body, for the many destinies had been astounded and horrified at the inefficiency and flimsiness of the human structure.

When they fixed it up, they made it better. They tinkered it so it had a lot of things it did not have before…many things, I suspect, that I still do not know about and will not know about until it is time to use them. Some things, perhaps, I’ll never know at all.

When I went back to my body, destiny came and lived with me again. But now I knew him and recognized him and I called him Johnny and we talked together. Now I never failed to hear him, as I must many times have failed to hear him in the past.

“Johnny,” Sutton called. He waited and there was no answer. “Johnny,” he called again and there was terror in his voice. For Johnny must be there. Destiny must be there.

Unless…the thought struck slowly, kindly…unless Asher Sutton was really dead. Unless this was dreaming, unless this was a twilight zone where knowledge and a sense of being linger for a moment between the state of life and death.

Johnny’s voice was small, very small and very far away: “Ash.”

“Yes, Johnny!” He forgot his doubts, sat erect and tense.

“The engines, Ash. The engines.”

He fought his body out of the pilot’s chair, stood on weaving legs.

He could scarcely see…just the faded, blurred, shifting outline of the shape of metal that enclosed him. His feet were solid weights that he could not move. They were no part of him at all.

He stumbled, staggered forward, fell flat upon his face.

Shock, he thought. The shock of violence, the shock of death, the shock of draining blood, of mangled, blasted flesh.

There once had been strength that had brought him, clear-eyed, clear-brained, to his feet. A strength that had been great enough to take the lives of the two men who had killed him. The strength of vengeance.

But that strength was gone and now he knew it had been the strength of will alone.

He struggled to his hands and knees and crept. He stopped and rested and then crept a few feet more. His head hung limp between his shoulders, drooling blood that left a trail across the floor.

He found the door of the engine room and by slow degrees pulled himself upward to the latch.

His fingers found the latch and pulled it down, but they had no strength. They slipped off the metal. He fell into a huddled pile of sheer defeat against the hard coldness of the door.

He waited for a long time and then tried again. This time the latch clicked open even as his fingers slipped again. And as he fell, he fell across the threshold.

Intelligence, senses, consciousness…they all vanished in the same micro-second.

CHAPTER XXVIII

Asher Sutton awoke to darkness.

To darkness and unknowing.

To unknowing and a slow, expanding wonder.

He was lying on a hard, smooth surface and a roof of metal came down close above his head. And beside him was a thing that purred and rumbled. One arm was flung across the purring thing and somehow he knew that he had slept with the thing clasped to him.

There was no sense of time or sense of place, and no means of any life before. As if he had sprung full-limbed by magic into life and intelligence and knowing.

He lay still and his eyes became accustomed to the dark, and he saw the open door and the dark stain, now dry, that led across the threshold into the room beyond. Something had dragged itself there, from the other room into this one, and left a trail behind it. He lay for a long time, wondering what the thing might be, with the queasiness of terror gnawing at his mind. For the thing might still be with him and it might be dangerous.

But he felt he was alone, sensed a loneness in the throbbing of the engine at his side…and it was thus for the first time that he knew the purring thing for what it was. Name and recognition had slipped back into his consciousness without his searching for it, as if it were a thing he had known all the time and now he knew what it was, except that it seemed to him the name had come ahead of recognition, and that, he thought, was strange.

So the thing beside him was an engine and he was lying on a floor and the metal close above his head was a roof of some sort. A narrow space, he thought. A narrow space that housed an engine and a door that opened into another room.

A ship. That was it. He was in a ship. And the trail of dark that ran across the threshold…?

At first he thought that some imagined thing had crawled in slime of its own making to mark the trail, but now he remembered. It had been himself crawling to the engines.

Lying quietly, he remembered it all, and in wonder he tested his aliveness. He lifted a hand and felt his chest. The clothes were burned away and their scorched edges were crisp between his fingers, but his chest was whole…whole and smooth and hard. Sound human flesh. No ragged, bleeding holes.

So it was possible, he thought. I remember that I wondered if it was…if Johnny might not have some trick up his sleeve, if my body might not have some capability which I could not suspect.

It sucked at the stars and nibbled at the asteroid and it yearned toward the engines. It wanted energy. And the engines had available energy…more than the distant stars, more than the cold, frozen chunk of rock that was the asteroid.

So I crawled to reach the engines and I left a dark death-trail behind me and I slept with the engines in my arms. And my body—my direct-intake, energy-eating body—sucked the power that was needed from the flaming core of the reaction chambers.

And I am whole again.

I am back on my breath-and-blood body once again and I can return to Earth.

* * * *

Sutton crawled out of the engine room and stood on his two feet.

Faint starlight came through the vision plates and scattered like jewel dust along the floor and walls. And there were two huddled shapes, one in the middle of the floor and another in a corner.

His mind took them in and turned them around as they were dead and as they might have been alive, and in a little while he remembered what they were. The humanity within him shivered at the black, sprawled shapes, but another part of him, a cold, hard inner core, stood undismayed in the face of death.

He moved forward on slow feet and slowly knelt beside one of the bodies. It must be Case, he thought, for Case had been thin and tall. But he could not see the face and he did not wish to see it, for in some dark corner of his mind he still remembered what Case and Pringle had looked like when they died.

His hands went down and searched through the clothing. He made a tiny pile of the things he found, and finally he found the thing he was looking for.

Squatting on his heels, he opened the book to the title page and it was the same as the one he carried in his pocket. The same except for a line of type at the very bottom:

Revised Edition

So that was it. That was the meaning of the word that had puzzled him: Revisionists.

There had been a book and it had been revised. Those who lived by the revised edition were the Revisionists. And the others? He wondered, running through the names… Fundamentalists, Primitives, Orthodox, Hard Shell. There were others, he was sure, but it didn’t really matter what the others would be called.

There were two blank pages and the text began:

We are not alone.

No one ever is alone.

Not since the first faint stirring of the first flicker of life, on the first planet in the galaxy that knew the quickening of sentiency, has there ever been a single entity that walked or crawled or slithered down the path of life alone.

His eye went down the page to the first footnote.

*This is the first of many statements which, wrongly interpreted, have caused some readers to believe that Sutton meant to say that life, regardless of its intelligence or moral precepts, is the beneficiary of destiny. His first line should refute this entire line of reasoning, for Sutton used the pronoun “we” and all students of semantics are agreed that it is a common idiom for any genus, when speaking of itself, to use such a personal pronoun. Had Sutton meant all life, he would have written “all life.” But by using the personal pronoun, he undeniably was referring to his own genus, the human race, and the human race alone. He apparently erroneously believed, a not uncommon belief of his day, that the Earth had been the first planet to know life and this will explain his reference to the first planet of the galaxy to know the quickening of life. There is no doubt that, in part, Sutton’s revelations of his great discovery of destiny have been tampered with. Assiduous research and study, however, have resulted in determining beyond reasonable doubt which portions are genuine and which are not. Those parts which patently have been altered will be noted and the reasons for this belief will be carefully and frankly pointed out.

Sutton riffled through the pages quickly. More than half the text was taken up by the fine print foot notes. Some of the pages had two or three lines of actual text and the rest was filled with lengthy explanation and refutation.

He slapped the book shut, held it angrily between his flattened palms.

I tried so hard, he thought. I repeated and reiterated and underscored.

Not human life alone, but all life. Everything that lives.

And yet they twist my words.

They fight a war so that my words shall not be the words I wrote, so that the things I meant to say shall be misinterpreted. They scheme and fight and murder so that the great cloak of destiny shall rest on one race alone…so that the most grasping and ambitious race ever spawned shall steal the thing that was meant not for them alone, but for every living thing.

And somehow I must stop it. Somehow it must be stopped. Somehow my words must stand, so that all may read and know, without the smokescreen of crooked theorizing and dishonest interpretation and weasel logic confusing them.

For it is so simple. Such a simple thing:

All life has destiny, not human life alone.

There is one destiny partner for every living thing. For every living thing and then to spare. They wait for life to happen, and each time it occurs, one of them is there and stays there until the particular life is ended. How, I do not know, nor why. I do not know if the actual Johnny is lodged within my mind and being, or if he merely keeps in contact with me from Cygni. But I know that he is with me. I know that he will stay.

And yet the Revisionists will twist my words and discredit me. They will change my book and dig up old scandals about the Suttons so that the mistakes of my forebears, magnified many times, will tend to smear my name.

They sent back a man who talked to John H. Sutton and he told them things that they could have used. For John Sutton said that there are skeletons in every family closet, and in that he spoke the truth. And, being old and garrulous, he talked about those skeletons.

But those tales were not carried forward into the future to be of any use, for the man who heard them came tramping up the road with a bandage on his head and no shoes on his feet.

Something happened and he could not go back.

Something happened.

Something…

Sutton rose slowly.

Something happened, he said, talking to himself, and I know what it was.

Six thousand years ago in a place that was called Wisconsin.

He moved forward, heading for the pilot’s chair and the Wisconsin of sixty centuries in the past.

CHAPTER XXIX

Christopher Adams came into his office and hung up his hat and coat.

He turned around and pulled out the chair before his desk and in the act of sitting down, he froze and listened.

The psych-tracer burped at him.

Ker-up, it chuckled. Ker-up, clickity, click, ker-up.

Christopher Adams straightened from his half-sitting position and put on his hat and coat again.

Going out, he slammed the door behind him.

In all his life, he had never slammed a door.

CHAPTER XXX

Sutton breasted the river, swimming with slow, sure strokes. The water was warm against his body and it talked to him with a deep, important voice and Sutton thought: It is trying to tell me something, as it has tried to tell people something all down through the ages. A mighty tongue talking down the land, gossiping to itself when there is no one to hear, but trying, always trying to tell its people the news it has to tell. Some of them, perhaps, have grasped a certain truth and a certain philosophy from the river, but none of them have ever reached the meaning of the river’s language, for it is an unknown language.

Like the language, Sutton thought, I used to make my notes. For they had to be in a language which no one else could read, a language that had been forgotten in the galaxy eons before any tongue now living lisped its baby talk. Either a language that had been forgotten or one that never could be known.

I do not know that language, Sutton told himself, the language of my notes. I do not know whence it came or when or how. I asked, but they would not tell me. Johnny tried to tell me once, but I could not grasp it, for it was a thing that the brain of Man could not accept.

I know its symbols and the things they stand for, but I do not know the sounds that make it. My tongue might not be able to form the sounds that make the spoken language. For all I know, it might be the language that this river talks…or the language of some race that went to disaster and to dust a million or a billion years ago.

The black of night came down to nestle against the black of flowing river and the Moon had not arisen, would not rise for many hours to come. The starlight made little diamond points on the rippling waves of the pulsing river. On the shore ahead, the lights of homes made jagged patterns up and down the land.

Herkimer has the notes, Sutton told himself, and I hope he has sense enough to hide them. I will need them later, but not now. I would like to see Herkimer, but I can’t take the chance; they’ll be watching him. And there’s no doubt they have a tracer on me, but if I move fast enough I can keep out of their way.

His feet struck gravel bottom and he let himself down, waded up the shelving shore. The night wind struck him and he shivered; the river had been warm from a day of sun, and the wind had a touch of chill.

Herkimer, of course, would be one of those who had come back from the future to see that he wrote the book as he would have written it if there had been no interference. Herkimer and Eva…and of the two, Sutton told himself, he could trust Herkimer. For an android would fight, would fight and die for the thing that the book would say. And so would every nonhuman form of life that could read and understand Asher Sutton’s book. But no human could be trusted.

He found a grassy bank and sat down and took off his clothes to wring them dry, then put them on again. He struck out across the meadow toward the highway that arrowed up the valley.

No one would find the ship at the bottom of the river…not for a while, at least. And a few hours were all he needed. A few hours to ask a thing that he must know, a few minutes then to get back to the ship again.

But he couldn’t waste any time. He had to get the information the quickest way he could. For if Adams had a tracer on him—and Adams would have a tracer on him—they would already know that he had returned to Earth.

Once again came the old nagging wonder about Adams. How had Adams known that he was coming back from 61 Cygni, and why had he set a mouse trap for him when he did arrive? What information had he gotten that would make him give the order that Sutton must be shot on sight?

Someone had reached him…someone who had evidence to show him. For Adams would not go on anything less than evidence. And the only person who could have given him any information would have been someone from the future. One of those, perhaps, who contended that the book must not be written, that it must not exist, that the knowledge that it held be blotted out forever. And if the man who was to write it should die, what could be more simple?

Except that the book had been written. The book already did exist. The knowledge apparently was spread across the galaxy.

That would be catastrophe…for if the book were not written, then it never had existed. The whole segment of the future that had been touched by the book in any wise would be blotted out, along with the book that had not been.

And that could not be, Sutton told himself.

That meant that Asher Sutton could not, would not be allowed to die before the book was written.

However it were written, the book must be written or the future was a lie.

Sutton shrugged. The tangled thread of logic was too much for him. There was no precept, no precedent upon which one might develop the pattern of cause and result.

Alternate futures? Maybe, but it didn’t seem likely. Alternate futures were a fantasy that employed semantics-twisting to prove a point, a clever use of words that covered up and masked the fallacies.

He crossed the road and took a footpath that led to a house standing on a knoll.

In the marsh down near the river, the frogs had struck up their piping and somewhere far away a wild duck called in the darkness. In the hills the whippoorwills began the evening forum. The scent of new-cut grass lay heavy in the air and the smell of fog was crawling up the hills.

The path came out on a patio and Sutton moved across it.

A man’s voice came to him.

“Good evening,” it said, and Sutton wheeled around.

He saw the man, then, for the first time. A man who sat in his chair and smoked his pipe beneath the evening stars.

“I hate to bother you,” said Sutton, “but I wonder if I might use your phone.”

“Certainly, Ash,” said Adams. “Anything you wish.”

Sutton started and then felt himself freeze.

Adams!

Of all the homes along the river, he would walk in on Adams! Adams chuckled at him, “Destiny works against you, Ash.”

Sutton moved forward, found a chair in the darkness and sat down. “You have a pleasant place,” he said.

“A very pleasant place,” said Adams. He tapped out his pipe and put it in his pocket. “So you died again.”

“I was killed,” said Sutton. “I got unkilled almost immediately.”

“Some of my boys?” asked Adams. “They are hunting for you.”

“A couple of strangers. Some of Morgan’s gang.”

Adams shook his head. “I don’t know the name.”

“He probably didn’t tell you his name,” said Sutton. “He told you I was coming back.”

“So that was it. The man out of the future. You have him worried, Ash.”

“I need a phone,” said Sutton.

“You can use the phone.”

“And I need an hour.”

Adams shook his head. “I can’t give you an hour.”

“A half-hour, then. I may have a chance to make it. A half-hour after I finish my call.”

“Nor a half-hour, either.”

“You never gamble, do you?”

“Never,” said Adams.

“I do,” said Sutton. He rose. “Where is that phone? I’m going to gamble on you.”

“Sit down, Ash,” said Adams, almost kindly. “Sit down and tell me something.”

Stubbornly, Sutton remained standing.

“If you could give me your word,” said Adams, “that this destiny business won’t harm Man, if you could tell me it won’t give aid and comfort to our enemies…”

“Man hasn’t any enemies,” said Ash, “except the ones he’s made.”

“The galaxy is waiting for us to crack. Waiting to close in at the first sign of weakness.”

“That’s because we taught them it. They watched us use their own weaknesses to push them under.”

“What will this destiny do?” asked Adams.

“It will teach Man humility,” said Sutton. “Humility and responsibility.”

“It’s not a religion,” said Adams. “That’s what Raven told me. But it sounds like a religion…with all that preaching about humility.”

“Dr. Raven was right,” Sutton told him. “It’s not a religion. Destiny and religions could flourish side by side and exist in perfect peace. They do not conflict. Rather, they would complement one another. Destiny stands for the same things most religions stand for, and it holds out no promise of an afterlife. It leaves that to religion.”

“Ash,” asked Adams quietly, “you have read your history?”

Sutton nodded.

“Think back,” said Adams. “Remember the Crusades. Remember the rise of Mohammedanism. Remember Cromwell in England. Remember Germany and America. And Russia and America. Religion and ideas, Ash. Man will fight for an idea when he wouldn’t lift a hand for land or life or honor. But an idea to make other races fight Man…that’s a different thing.”

“And you’re afraid of an idea.”

“We can’t afford any, Ash. Not right now, at least.”

“And still,” Sutton told him, “it has been the ideas that have made men grow. We wouldn’t have a culture if it weren’t for ideas.”

“Right now,” said Adams bitterly, “men are fighting in the future over this destiny of yours.”

“That’s why I have to use the phone,” said Sutton. “That’s why I need an hour.”

Adams rose heavily to his feet. “I may be making a mistake,” he said. “It’s something I have never done in all my life. But I seem to be doing a lot of things I never did before. For once I’ll gamble.”

He led the way across the patio and into a dimly lighted room, filled with old-fashioned furniture of the 50th and 60th centuries.

“Jonathon,” he called.

Feet pattered in the hall and the android came into the room.

“A pair of dice,” said Adams heavily. “Mr. Sutton and I are about to gamble.”

“Dice, sir?”

“Yes, that pair you and the cook are using.”

“Yes, sir,” said Jonathon.

He turned and disappeared and Sutton listened to his feet going through the house, fainter and fainter.

Adams turned to face him.

“One throw each,” he said. “High man wins.”

Sutton nodded, tense.

“If you win, you get the hour,” said Adams. “If I win, you take my orders.”

“I’ll throw with you,” said Sutton. “On terms like that, I’m willing to gamble.”

And he was thinking: I lifted the battered ship on Cygni VII and maneuvered it through space. I was the engine and the pilot, the power tubes and navigator. Energy garnered by my body took the ship and lifted it and drove it through space…eleven years through space. I brought the ship down tonight through atmosphere with the engines dead so it could not be spotted and I landed in the river. I could pick a book out of that case and carry it to the table without laying hands on it, and I could turn the pages without the use of fingertips.

But dice.

They roll so fast and topple so.

“Win or lose,” said Adams, “you can use the phone.”

“If I lose,” said Sutton, “I won’t need the phone.”

Jonathon came back and laid the dice upon a table top. When he saw that the two humans were waiting for him to go, he left. His footsteps died away.

Sutton nodded at the dice carelessly. “You first,” he said.

Adams picked them up, held them in his fist and shook them. Their clicking was like the frightened porcelain chatter of teeth.

His fist came down above the table and his fingers opened. The little white cubes spun and whirled on the polished top. They came to rest.

One was a five, the other a six.

Adams raised his eyes to Sutton and there was nothing in them. No triumph. Absolutely nothing.

“Your turn,” he said.

Perfect, thought Sutton, nothing less than perfect. It has to be two sixes.

He stretched out his hand and picked up the dice, shook them in his fist, felt the shape and size of them rolling in his palm.

Now take them in your mind, he told himself…take them in your mind as well as in your fist. Hold them in your mind, make them a part of you, as you made the two ships you drove through space, as you could make a book or chair or a flower you wished to pick.

He changed for a moment and his heart faltered to a stop. The blood slowed to a trickle in his arteries and veins, and he was not breathing. He felt the energy system take over, the other body that drew raw energy from anything that could be tapped.

His mind reached out and took the dice and shook them inside the prison of his fist. He brought his hand down with a swooping gesture and let his fingers uncurl. The dice came dancing out.

They were dancing in his brain, too, as well as on the table top and he saw them, or sensed them, or was aware of them, as if they were a part of him. Aware of the sides that had the six black dots and the sides with all the other numbers.

But they were slippery to handle, hard to make go the way he wanted them to go. For a fearful, agonizing second, it seemed almost as if the spinning cubes had minds and personalities that were their very own.

One of them was a six and the other still was rolling. The six was coming up and it toppled for a moment, threatening to fall back.

A push, thought Sutton. Just a little push. But with brain power instead of muscular.

The six came up and the two dice lay there, both of them showing sixes.

Sutton drew in a sobbing breath and his heart beat once again and the blood pumped through the veins.

The two men stood in silence for a moment, staring at one another across the table top.

Adams spoke and his voice was quiet; one could not have guessed from his tone what he felt.

“The phone is over there,” he said.

Sutton bowed, ever so slightly, and felt foolish doing it, like a character out of some incredibly old and bad piece of romantic fiction.

“Destiny,” he said, “still is working for me. When it comes to the pinch, destiny is there.”

“Your hour will start,” said Adams, “as soon as you finish phoning.”

He turned smartly and walked back to the patio, very stiff and straight.

Now that he had won, Sutton suddenly was weak, and he walked unsteadily to the phone. He sat down before it and took out the directory that he needed.

Information. And the subheading: Geography, historic, North America.

He Found the number and dialed it and the screen lit up. The information robot said: “Can I be of service, sir?”

“Yes,” said Sutton. “I would like to know where Wisconsin was.”

“Where are you now, sir?”

“I am at the residence of Mr. Christopher Adams.”

“The Mr. Adams who is with the Department of Galactic Investigation?”

“The same.”

“Then,” the robot said, “you are in Wisconsin.”

“Bridgeport?” asked Sutton.

“It was on the Wisconsin River, on the north bank, a matter of seven miles above the junction with the Mississippi.”

“But those rivers—I’ve never heard of them.”

“You are near them now, sir. The Wisconsin flows into the Mississippi just below the point where you are now.”

Sutton hung up, rose shakily and crossed the room, went out on the patio.

Adams was lighting up his pipe. “You got what you wanted?”

Sutton nodded.

“Get going, then,” said Adams. “Your hour’s already started.”

Sutton hesitated.

“What is it, Ash?”

“I wonder,” said Sutton, “I wonder if you would shake my hand.”

“Why, sure,” said Adams.

He rose ponderously to his feet and held out his hand.

“I don’t know which,” said Adams, “but you are either the greatest man or the biggest damn fool that I have ever known.”

CHAPTER XXXI

Bridgeport dreamed in its rock-hemmed niche alongside the swiftly flowing river. The summer sun beat down into the pocket between the tree-mantled cliffs with a fierceness that seemed to squeeze the last hope of life and energy out of everything…out of the weather-beaten houses, out of the dust that lay along the street, out of leaf-wilted shrub and bush and beaten rows of flowers.

The railroad tracks curved around a bluff and entered the town, then curved around another bluff and were gone again. For the short span of this arc out of somewhere into nowhere, they shone in the sun with the burnished sharpness of a whetted knife. Between the tracks and river, the railroad station drowsed, a foursquare building that had the look of having hunched its shoulders against summer sun and winter cold for so many years that it stood despondent and cringing, waiting for the next whiplash of weather.

Sutton stood on the station platform and listened to the river, the suck and swish of tiny whirlpools that ran along the shore, the gurgle of water flowing across a hidden, upward-canted log, the soft sigh of watery fingers grasping at the tip of a downward-drooping branch. And above it all, cutting through it all, the real noise of the river.

He lifted his head and squinted against the sun to follow the mighty metal span that leaped across the river from the bluff-top, slanting down toward the high-graded roadbed that walked across the gently rising valley on the other shore.

Man leaped rivers on great spans of steel and he never heard the talk of rivers as they rolled down to the sea. Man leaped seas on wings powered by smooth, sleek engines, and the thunder of the sea was a sound lost in the empty vault of sky. Man crossed space in metallic cylinders that twisted time and space and hurled Man and his miraculous machines down alleys of conjectural mathematics that were not even dreamed of in this world of Bridgeport, 1977.

Man was in a hurry and he went too far, too fast. So far and fast that he missed many things…things that he should have taken time to learn as he went along…things that someday in some future age he would take the time to study. Someday Man would come back along the trail again and learn the things he’d missed and wonder why he missed them and think upon the years that were lost for never knowing them.

Sutton stepped down from the platform and found a faint footpath that went down to the river. Carefully, he made his way along it, for it was soft and crumbly and there were stones that might turn underfoot.

At the end of the footpath he found the old man.

The oldster sat perched on a small boulder planted in the mud and he held a cane pole slanted riverwise across his knees. An ancient pipe protruded from a two-weeks’ growth of graying whiskers, and an earthenware jug with a corncob for a cork sat beside him, easy to his hand.

Sutton sat down cautiously on the shelving shore beside the boulder and wondered at the coolness of the shade from the trees and undergrowth—a welcome coolness after the fierce splash of sun upon the village just a few rods up the bank.

“Catching anything?” he asked.

“Nope,” said the old man.

He puffed away at his pipe and Sutton watched in fascinated silence. One would have sworn, he told himself, that the mop of whiskers was on fire.

“Didn’t catch nothing yesterday, either,” the old man added. He took his pipe out of his mouth with a deliberate, considered motion and spat neatly into the center of a river eddy. “Didn’t catch nothing the day before yesterday.”

“You want to catch something, don’t you?” Sutton asked.

“Nope.” The old man put down a hand and lifted the jug, worked out the corncob cork and wiped the jug’s neck carefully with a dirty hand. “Have a snort,” he invited.

Sutton, remembering the dirty hand, took it, gagging to himself. Cautiously, he lifted it and tipped it to his mouth.

The stuff splashed and gurgled down his throat and it was liquid fire laced with gall and with a touch of brimstone to give it something extra.

Sutton snatched the jug away and held it by the handle, keeping his mouth wide open to cool it and air out the taste.

The old man took the jug back and Sutton swabbed at the tears running down his cheeks.

“Ain’t aged the way she should be,” the old man apologized. “But I ain’t got the time to fool around with that.”

He took himself a hooker, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and whooshed out his breath in gusty satisfaction. He put the jug down again and worked the cork in tight.

“Stranger, ain’t you?” he asked Sutton. “Don’t recall seeing you around.”

Sutton nodded. “Looking for some people by the name of Sutton. John H. Sutton.”

The old man chuckled. “Old John, eh? Him and me was kids together. Sneakiest little rascal that I ever knew. Ain’t worth a tinker’s damn, old John ain’t. Went off to law school and got him an education. But he didn’t make a go of it. Roosting out on a farm up on the ridge, over there across the river.” He shot a look at Sutton. “You ain’t no relative of his, are you?”

“Well,” said Sutton, “not exactly. Not very close, at least.”

“Tomorrow’s the Fourth,” said the old man, “and I recollect the time that John and me blew up a culvert in Campbell Hollow, come the Fourth. Found some dynamite a road gang had been using for blasting. John and me, we figured it would make a bigger bang if we confined it, sort of. So we put her in the culvert pipe and lit a long fuse. Mister, it blew that culvert all to hell. I recollect our dads like to took the hide off us for doing it.”

Dead ringer, thought Sutton. John H. Sutton is just across the river and tomorrow is the Fourth. July 4, 1977, that’s what the letter said.

And I didn’t have to ask. The old codger unwittingly told me.

The sun was a furnace blast from the river’s surface, but here, underneath the trees, one just caught the edge of the flare of heat. A leaf floated by and there was a grasshopper riding on it. The grasshopper tried to jump ashore, but his jump fell short and the current grabbed and swallowed him out of sight.

“Never had a chance,” said the old man, “that hopper didn’t. Wickedest river in these United States, the old Wisconsin is. Can’t trust her. Tried to run steamboats on her in the early days, but they couldn’t do it, for where there was a channel one day there’d be a sand bar on the next. Current shifts the sand something awful. Government fellow wrote a report on her once. Said the only way you could use the Wisconsin for navigation was to lathe and plaster it.”

From far overhead came the rumble of traffic crossing the bridge. A train came by, chuffing and grinding, a long freight that dragged itself up the valley. Long after it had passed, Sutton heard its whistle hooting.

“Destiny,” said the old man, “sure wasn’t working worth a hoot for that hopper, was it?”

Sutton sat upright. “What was that you said?”

“Don’t mind me,” the old man told him. “I go around mumbling to myself. Sometimes people hear me; mostly they don’t.”

“But destiny—you said something about destiny.”

“Interested in it, lad? Wrote a story about it once. Didn’t amount to much. Used to mess around some, writing, in my early days.”

Sutton relaxed and lay back.

A dragonfly skimmed the water’s surface. Far up the bank, a small fish jumped and left a widening circle in the water.

“About this fishing,” said Sutton. “You don’t seem to care whether you catch anything or not.”

“Rather not,” the old man told him. “Catch something and you got to take it off the hook. Then you got to bait up again and throw the hook back in the river. Then you got to clean the fish. It’s an awful sight of work.” He took the pipe out of his mouth and spat carefully into the river. “Ever read Thoreau, son?”

Sutton shook his head, trying to remember. The name struck a chord of memory. There had been a fragment in a book of ancient literature in his college days. All that was left of what was believed to have been an extensive amount of writing.

“You ought to,” the old man told him. “He had the right idea.”

Sutton rose and dusted off his trousers.

“Stick around,” the old man said. “You ain’t bothering me. Hardly none at all.”

“Got to be getting along,” said Sutton.

“Hunt me up some other time,” the old man said. “We could talk some more.”

“Someday,” Sutton answered politely, “I’ll do just that.”

“Care for another snort before you go?”

“No, thank you,” said Sutton, backing off. “No, thank you very much.”

“Oh, well,” the old man said. He lifted the jug and took a long and gurgling drink.

Sutton climbed the bank to the blaze of sun again.

“Sure,” said the station agent in the village, “the Suttons live just across the river, over in Grant County. Several ways to get there. Which one would you like?”

“The longest one,” Sutton told him. “I’m not in any hurry.”

The moon was coming up when Sutton climbed the hill to reach the bridge.

He was in no hurry. He had all night. Tomorrow was the Fourth.

CHAPTER XXXII

The land was wild…wilder than anything Sutton had ever seen on the seeded, trimmed and watered parks of his native Earth. The land tilted upward, as if it rested on a knife edge, and it was littered by great clumps of stone which appeared to have been flung down in godlike anger by a giant hand out of forgotten time. Stark bluffs speared erect, soaring massively, masked by mighty trees that seemed to have tried, at one time, to have matched the height and dignity of the rocky cliffs. Through the trees, Asher Sutton glimpsed the break in the cliffs ahead and knew that he was at the place that old John Sutton had mentioned in his letter.

The sun was only a couple of hours high and there still was time. There still would be time, for John Sutton had talked to the man only a couple of hours or so and then had gone to dinner.

From there on, with the cleft of the cliff in sight, Sutton took his time. He reached the top and found the boulder that his old ancestor had spoken of. It was almost designed for sitting.

He sat upon it and stared across the valley, grateful for the shade.

And there was peace, as John Sutton had said there was. Peace and the quieting majesty of the scene before him…the strange third-dimensional quality of the space that hung, as if alive, above the river valley. Strangeness, too, the strangeness of expected…and unexpected…happenings.

He looked at his watch. It was half-past nine, so he left the boulder and lay down behind a patch of brush and waited. Almost as he did, there was a soft, smooth swish of motor-noise and a ship came down, a tiny one-man ship, slanting across the trees, to land in the pasture just beyond the fence.

A man got out and leaned against the ship, staring at the sky and trees, as if satisfying himself that he had reached his destination.

Sutton chuckled quietly to himself.

Stage setting, he said. Dropping in unexpectedly and with a crippled ship…no need to explain your presence. Waiting for a man to come walking up and talk to you. Most natural thing in all the worlds. You didn’t seek him out; he saw you and came to you, and of course he talked.

You couldn’t come walking up the road and turn in at the gate and knock at the door and say: “I came to pick up all the scandal I can about the Sutton family. I wonder if I might sit down and talk with you.”

But you could land in a pasture with a crippled ship and first you’d talk of corn and pasture, of weather and of grass, and finally you’d get around to talking about personal and family matters.

The man had his wrench out and was tinkering at the ship.

It must almost be time.

Sutton lifted himself on his arms and stared through the close-laced branches of the hazel brush.

John H. Sutton was coming down the hill, a big-bellied man with a trim white beard and an old black hat, and his walk was a waddle with some swagger still left in it.

CHAPTER XXXIII

So this is failure, Eva Armour said. This is how failure feels. Dry in the throat and heavy in the heart and tired in the brain.

I am bitter, she told herself, and I have a right to be. Although I am so tired with trying and with failure that the knife edge of bitterness is dulled.

“The psych tracer in Adams’ office has stopped,” Herkimer had said, and then the plate had gone dead as he cut the visor.

There was no trace of Sutton. The tracer had stopped.

That meant that Sutton was dead. He could not be dead, for historically he had written a book and he had not yet written it.

But history was something that you couldn’t trust. It was put together wrong, or copied wrong, or misinterpreted, or improved upon by a man with a misplaced imagination. Truth was so hard to keep, myth and fable so easy to breathe into a life that was more acceptable than truth.

Half the history of Sutton, Eva knew, must be sheer legend. And yet there were certain truths that must be truths indeed.

Someone had written a book and it would have had to be Sutton. No one else could break the language in which his notes were written, and the words themselves breathed the very sincerity of the man himself.

Sutton had died, but not on Earth nor in Earth’s solar system and not a youth of sixty. He had died on a planet circling some far star and he had not died for many, many years.

These were truths that could not well be twisted. These were truths that had to stand until they were disproved.

And yet the tracer had stopped.

Eva got up from her chair and walked across the room to the window that looked out on the landscaped grounds of the Orion Arms. Fireflies were dotting the bushes with their brief, cold flame and the late moon was coming up behind a cloud that looked like a gentle hill.

So much work, she thought. So many years of planning. Androids who had worn no mark upon their forehead and who had been formed to look exactly like the humans they replaced. And other androids who had marks upon their foreheads, but who had not been the androids made in the laboratories of the eightieth century. Elaborate networks of espionage, waiting for the day Sutton would come home. Years of puzzling over the records of the past, trying to separate the truth from the half-truth and the downright error.

Years of watching and of waiting, parrying the counter-espionage of the Revisionist, laying the groundwork for the day of action. And being careful…always careful. For the eightieth century must not know, must not even guess.

But there had been unseen factors.

Morgan had come back and warned Adams that Sutton must be killed.

Two humans had been planted on Benton’s forfeited asteroid.

Although those two factors could not account entirely for what had happened. There was another factor somewhere.

She stood at the window, looking out at the rising moon, and her brows knit into crinkling lines of thought. But she was too tired. No thought would come.

Except defeat.

Defeat would explain it all.

Sutton might be dead and that would be defeat, utter and complete. Victory for an officialdom that was at once too timid and too vicious to take any active part in the struggle for the book. An officialdom that sought to keep the status quo, willing to wipe out centuries of thought to maintain its grip on the galaxy.

Such a defeat, she knew, would be even worse than a defeat by the Revisionists. If the Revisionists won, there still would be a book; there still would be the teaching of Man’s own destiny. And that, she told herself, was better than no inkling of destiny at all.

Behind her, the visiphone purred, and she spun around, hurried across the room.

A robot said: “Mr. Sutton called. He asked about Wisconsin.”

“Wisconsin?”

“It’s an old place name,” the robot explained. “He asked about a place called Bridgeport, Wisconsin.”

“As if he were going there?”

“It would appear so.”

“Quick,” said Eva. “Where is this Bridgeport?”

“Five or six miles away,” said the robot, “and at least four thousand years.”

She caught her breath. “In time,” she said.

“Yes, miss, in time.”

“Tell me exactly,” Eva told him. The robot shook his head. “I don’t know. I couldn’t catch it. His mind was all roiled up. He’d just come through a trying experience.”

“Then you can’t help.”

“I wouldn’t bother if I were you,” the robot told her. “He struck me as a man who knew what he was doing. He’ll come out all right.”

“You’re sure of that?”

“I would like to be,” the robot admitted reluctantly.

CHAPTER XXXIV

A dry stick cracked under Sutton’s feet and the man with the wrench slowly turned around. A swift, smooth smile spread upon his face in widening crinkles to hide the amazement that glittered in his eyes.

“Good afternoon,” said Sutton.

John H. Sutton was a stout speck that had almost climbed the hill. The sun had passed its zenith and was swinging toward the west. Down in the river valley, a half-dozen crows were cawing; it was as if the sound came from underneath their feet.

The man held out his hand. “Mr. Sutton, isn’t it?” he asked. “The Mr. Sutton of the eightieth century?”

“Drop the wrench,” said Sutton.

The man pretended not to hear him. “My name is Dean,” he said. “Arnold Dean. I’m from the eighty-fourth.”

“Drop the wrench,” said Sutton.

Dean dropped it. Sutton hooked it along the ground with a toe until it was out of reach.

“That is better,” he said. “Now, let’s sit down and talk.”

Dean gestured with a thumb. “The old man will be coming back. He will get to wondering and he will come back. He had a lot of questions he forgot to ask.”

“Not for a while,” Sutton told him. “Not until he’s eaten and had an after-dinner nap.”

Dean grunted and eased himself to a sitting position, his back against the ship. “Random factors,” he said. “That’s what balls up the detail. You’re a random factor, Sutton. It wasn’t planned this way.”

Sutton sat down easily and picked up the wrench. He weighed it in his hand. Blood, he thought, looking at the wrench. You’ll have blood upon one end before the day is out.

“Tell me,” said Dean. “Now that you are here, what do you plan to do?”

“Easy,” said Sutton. “You’re going to talk to me. You’re going to tell me something that I need to know.”

“Gladly,” Dean agreed.

“You said you came from the eighty-fourth. What year?”

“Eighty-three eighty-six,” said Dean. “But if I were you, I’d go a little past that. You’d find more to interest you.”

“But you figure I’ll never get even as far as that,” said Sutton. “You think that you will win.”

“Of course I do,” said Dean.

Sutton dug into the ground with the wrench. “A while ago, I found a man who died very shortly after. He recognized me and he made a sign with his fingers.”

Dean spat upon the ground. “Android. They worship you, Sutton. They made a religion out of you. Because, you see, you gave them hope to cling to. You gave them something that made them, in one way, the equal of Man.”

“I take it,” Sutton said, “you don’t believe a thing I wrote.”

“Should I?”

“I do,” said Sutton.

Dean said nothing.

“You have taken the thing I wrote,” said Sutton evenly, “and you are trying to use it to fashion one more rung in the ladder of Man’s vanity. You have missed the point entirely. You have no sense of destiny because you gave destiny no chance whatever.”

And he felt foolish even as he said it, for it sounded so much like preaching. So much like what the men of old had said of faith when faith was just a word, before it had become a force to really reckon with.

“I won’t lecture you,” he said, angry at the smooth way Dean had put him on the defensive. “I won’t preach at you. You either accept destiny or you ignore it. So far as I’m concerned I’ll not raise a hand to convince any single man. The book I wrote tells you what I know. You can take it or you can leave it…it’s all the same to me.”

“Sutton,” said Dean, “you’re batting your head against a stone wall. You haven’t got a chance. You’re fighting humankind. The whole human race against you…and nothing’s ever stood against the human race. All you have is a pack of measly androids and a few renegade humans…the kind of humans that used to swarm to the old cult-worships.”

“The empire is built on androids and robots,” Sutton told him. “They can throw you out any time they want to. Without them you couldn’t hold a single foot of ground outside the solar system.”

“They will stick with us in the empire,” Dean retorted, very confident. “They may fight us on this business of destiny, but they’ll stay with us because they can’t get along without us. They can’t reproduce, you know. And they can’t make themselves. They have to have humans to keep their race going, to replace the ones who get knocked off.”

He chuckled. “Until one android can create another android, they will stick with us and they will work with us. If they didn’t, they would be committing racial suicide.”

“What I can’t understand,” said Sutton, “is how you know which ones are fighting you and which are sticking with you.”

“That,” said Dean, “is the hell of it…we don’t. If we did, we’d make short work of this lousy war. The android who fought you yesterday may shine your shoes tomorrow, and how are you to know? The answer is, you don’t.”

He picked up a tiny stone and flicked it out on the pasture grass.

“Sutton,” he said, “it’s enough to drive you nuts. No battles, really. Just guerrilla skirmishes here and there, when one small task force sent out to do a time-fixing job is ambushed by another task force sent out by the other side to intercept them.”

“Like I intercepted you,” said Sutton.

“Huh…” said Dean, and then he brightened. “Why, sure. Like you intercepted me.”

One moment Dean was sitting with his back against the machine, talking as if he meant to keep on talking…and in the next moment his body was a fluid streak of motion, jackknifing up and forward in a lunge toward the wrench that Sutton held.

Sutton moved instinctively, toes tightening against the ground, leg muscles flexing to drive his body aside, hand starting to jerk the wrench away.

But Dean had the advantage of a full second’s start.

Sutton felt the wrench ripped from his grip, saw the flash of it in the sun as Dean swung it sharply for the blow.

Dean’s lips were moving. Even as he tried to throw up his arms to shield his head, Sutton read the words the other’s lips were ironically forming:

“So you thought the blood on the wrench would be mine!”

Then pain exploded inside Sutton’s head and he fell through darkness.

CHAPTER XXXV

Tricked!

Tricked by a smooth character from 500 years ahead in time.

Tricked by a letter from 6,000 years out of the past.

Tricked, groaned Sutton, by my own muddle-headedness.

He sat up and held his head in his hands and felt the westering Sun against his back, heard the squalling of a catbird in the blackberry patch and the sound of the wind as it ran along the corn rows.

Tricked and trapped, he said through his teeth.

He took his hands from his head and there in the trampled grass lay the wrench with the blood on it. Sutton spread out his fingers and blood was on them, too…warm and sticky blood. Gingerly he touched his head with a cautious hand and his hair was wet and matted down.

Pattern, he said viciously. It all runs in a pattern.

Here I am and there is the wrench and just beyond the fence is the field of corn that is better than knee high on this splendid afternoon of July 4, 1977.

The ship from the future is gone and in another hour or so John H. Sutton will come waddling down the hill to ask the questions that he forgot to ask before. And ten years from now he will write a letter and in it he will record his suspicions about me and I will be in the farm yard at that very moment pumping a drink.

Sutton staggered to his feet and stood in the empty afternoon, with the sweep of sky above the horizon of the ridge and the panorama of the winding river far down the slope below.

He touched the wrench with his toe and thought: I could break the pattern. I could take the wrench and then John H. would never find it, and, with one thing in the pattern changed, the end might not be the same.

I read the letter wrong, he thought. I always figured it would be the other man, not me. It never once occurred to me that it was my blood upon the wrench and that I would be the one who would steal the clothes off the line.

And yet he realized there were certain things that didn’t track. He still had his clothes and there would be no need to steal. His ship still was resting on the river’s bottom and there was no need to stay in the past.

Yet it had happened once before, for if it had not happened, why had there been the letter? The letter had made him come here and the letter had been written because he had come, so he must have come before. And in that other time he’d stayed…and stayed only because he could not get away. This time he would go back; this time he need not stay.

A second chance, he thought. I’ve been given another chance.

Yet that wasn’t right, for if there had been a second time, old John H. would have known about it. And there couldn’t be a second time, for this was the very day that John H. had talked to the man out of the future.

Sutton shook his head.

There had been only one time that this had happened, and this, of course, was it.

Something will stop me, he told himself. Something will not let me go back. Somehow I will be forced to steal the clothes and in the end I’ll walk to that farmhouse up there and ask if they need a hand for the harvest.

For the pattern was set. It had to be set.

Sutton touched the wrench with his toe again, pondering.

Then he turned and went down the hill. Glancing over his shoulder as he plunged into the woods, he saw old John H. coming down the hill.

CHAPTER XXXVI

For three days Sutton toiled to free the ship from the tons of sand that the treacherous, swift-running river currents had mounded over it. And he admitted, when three days were gone, that it was a hopeless task, for the current piled up the sand as fast as he could clear it.

After that, he concentrated on clearing an opening to the entrance lock and when another day went by with many cave-ins, he accomplished his purpose.

Wearily he braced himself against the metal of the ship.

A gamble, he told himself. But I will have to gamble.

For there was no possibility of wrenching the ship free by using the engines. The tubes, he knew, were packed with sand and any attempt to use the rockets would simply mean that he and the ship and a good portion of the landscape would evaporate in a flashing puff of atomic fury.

He had lifted a ship from a Cygnian planet and driven it across eleven years of space by the power of mind alone. He had rolled two sixes.

Perhaps, he told himself. Perhaps…

There were tons of sand and he was deathly tired, tired despite the smooth, efficient functioning of his nonhuman system of metabolism.

I rolled two sixes, he said. Surely that was harder than the task I must do now. Although that called for deftness and this will call for power…and suppose, just suppose I haven’t got the strength.

For it would take strength to lift this buried mass of metal out of the mound of sand. Not the strength of muscles, but the strength of mind.

Of course, he told himself, if he could not lift the ship, he still could use the time-mover, shift the ship, lying where it was, forward 6,000 years. Although there were hazards he did not like to think about. For in shifting the ship through time, he would be exposing it to every threat and vagary of the river through the whole 6,000 years.

He put his hand up to his throat, feeling for the key chain that hung around his neck.

There was no chain!

Mind dulled by sudden terror, he stood frozen for a moment.

Pockets, he thought, but his hands fumbled with a dread certainty that there was no hope. For he never put the keys of the ship in his pockets…always on their chain around his neck where they would be safe.

He searched, feverishly at first, then with a grim, cold thoroughness.

His pockets held no keys.

The chain broke, he thought in frantic desperation. The chain broke and it fell inside my clothes. He patted himself, carefully, from head to foot, and it was not there. He took off his shirt, gently, cautiously, feeling for the missing keys. He tossed the shirt aside, and sitting down, pulled off his trousers, searching in their folds, turning them inside out.

There were no keys.

On hands and knees, he searched the sands of the river bed, fumbling in the dim light that filtered through the rushing water.

An hour later he gave up.

The shifting, water-driven sand already had closed the trench he had dug to the lock, and now there was no point of getting to the lock, for he could not open it when he got there.

His shirt and trousers had vanished with the current.

Wearily, beaten, he turned toward the shore, forcing his way through the stubborn water. His head broke into open air and the first stars of evening were shining in the east.

On shore he sat down with his back against a tree. He took one breath and then another, willed the first heartbeat, then the second and a third…nursed the human metabolism back into action once again.

The river gurgled at him, deep laughter on its tongue. In the wooded valley a whippoorwill began its sadistic suggestion. Fireflies danced through the blackness of the bushes.

A mosquito stung him and he slapped at it savagely.

A place to sleep, he thought. A hay-loft in a barn, perhaps. And pilfered food from a farmer’s garden to fill his empty belly. Then clothes.

At least he knew where he’d get the clothes.

CHAPTER XXXVII

Sundays were lonely.

During the rest of the week there was work—physical labor—for a man to do, the endless, trudging round of work that is necessary to extract a living from the soil. Land to plow, crops to be put in and tended and finally harvested, wood to cut, fences to be built and mended, machines to be repaired—things that must be done with bone and muscle, with calloused hand and aching back and the hot Sun on one’s neck or the whiplash of windy cold biting at one’s bones.

For six days a farmer labored and the labor was a thing that dulled one to the aching emptiness of memory, and, at night, when work was done, sleep was swift and merciful. There were times when the work, not only for its sedative effect, but of its very self became a thing of interest and of satisfaction. The straight line of new-set fence posts became a minor triumph when one glanced back along their length. The harvest field with its dust upon one’s shoes and its smell of Sun on golden straw and the clacking of the binder as it went its rounds became a full-breasted symbolism of plenty and contentment. And there were moments when the pink blush of apple blossoms shining through the silver rain of spring became a wild and pagan paean of the resurrection of the Earth from the frosts of winter.

For six days a man would labor and would not have time to think; on the seventh day he rested and braced himself for the loneliness and the thoughts of desperation that idleness would bring.

Not a loneliness for a people or a world or a way of life, for this world was kindlier and closer to Earth and life and safer—much safer—than the world one had left behind. But a nagging loneliness, an accusing loneliness that talked of a job that waited, a piece of work that now might wait forever, a task that must be done, but now never might be done.

At first there had been hope.

Surely, Sutton thought, they will look for me. Surely they will find a way to reach me.

The thought was a comfort that he hugged close against himself, a peace of mind that he could not bring himself to analyze too closely. For he realized, even as he coddled it, that it was unrealistic, that it might not survive too close a scrutiny, that it was fashioned of faith and of wishful thinking and that for all its wealth of comfort it might be a fragile bauble.

The past cannot be changed, he argued with himself, not in its entirety. It can be altered—subtly. It can be twisted and it can be dented and it can be whittled down, but by and large it stands. And that is why I’m here and will have to stay until old John H. writes the letter to himself. For the past is in the letter—the letter brought me here and it will keep me here until it’s finally written. Up to that point the pattern must necessarily hold, for up to that point in time the past, so far as I and my relation with it are concerned, is a known and a revealed past. But the moment the letter is written, it becomes an unknown past; it tends to the speculative and there is no known pattern. After the letter is written, so far as I’m concerned, anything can happen.

Although he admitted, even as he thought it, that his premise was fallacious. Known or not, revealed or unrevealed, the past would form a pattern. For the past had happened. He was living in a time that already had been set and molded.

Even in that thought there was a hope, however. Even in the unknownness of the past and the knowledge that what had happened was a thing that stood unchanged, there must be hope. For somewhere, somewhen he had written a book. The book existed and therefore had happened, although, of course, it had not happened yet. But he had seen two copies of the book and that meant that in some future age the book was a factor in the pattern of the past.

Sometime, said Sutton, they will find me. Sometime before it is too late.

They will hunt for me and find me. They will have to find me.

They? he asked himself, finally honest with himself.

Herkimer, an android.

Eva Armour, a woman.

They…two people.

But not those two alone. Surely not those two alone. Back of them, like a shadowy army, all the other androids and all the robots that Man had ever fashioned. And here and there a human who saw the rightness of the proposition that Man could not, by mere self-assertion, be a special being; understanding that it was to his greater glory to take his place among the other things of life, as a simple thing of life, as a form of life that could lead and teach and be a friend, rather than a power-hungry creature that conquered and ruled and stood as one apart.

They would look for him, of course, but where?

With all of time and all of space to search in, how would they know when and where to look?

The robot at the information center, he remembered, could tell them that he had inquired about an ancient town called Bridgeport, Wisconsin. And that would tell them where. But no one could tell them when.

For no one knew about the letter…absolutely no one. He remembered how the dried and flaky mucilage had showered down across his hands in a white and aged powder when his thumb nail had cracked loose the flap of the envelope. No one, certainly, had seen the contents of that letter since the day it had been written until he, himself, had opened it.

He realized now that he should have gotten word to someone…word of where and when he was going and what he meant to do. But he had been so confident and it had seemed such a simple thing, such a splendid plan.

A splendid plan in the very directness of its action…to intercept the Revisionist, to knock him out and take his ship and go forward into time to take his place. It could have been arranged, of that he was certain. There would have been an android somewhere to help fashion his disguise. There would have been papers in the ship and androids from the future to brief him on the things that he would have had to know.

A splendid plan…except it hadn’t worked.

I could have told the information robot, Sutton told himself. He certainly was one of us. He would have passed the word along.

He sat with his back against the tree and stared out across the river valley, hazy with the blue of the Indian summer. In the field below him the corn stood in brown and golden shocks, like a village of wigwams that clustered tight and warm against the sure knowledge of the winter’s coming. To the west the bluffs of the Mississippi were a purple cloud that crouched close against the land. To the north the golden land swept up in low hill rising on low hill until it reached a misty point where, somewhere, land stopped and sky began, although one could not find the definite dividing point, no clear-cut pencil mark that held the two apart.

A field mouse came out of a corn shock and looked at Sutton for a moment with its beady eyes, then squeaked in sudden fright and whisked into the shock again, its tail looped above its back in frantic alarm.

Simple folk, thought Sutton. The little, simple, furry folk. They would be with me, too, if they could only know. The bluejay and the field mouse, the owl and hawk and squirrel. A brotherhood, he thought…the brotherhood of life.

He heard the mouse rustling in the shock and he tried to imagine what life as a mouse might mean. Fear first of all, of course, the ever-present, quivering, overriding fear of other life, of owl and hawk, of mink and fox and skunk. And the fear of Man, he added. All things fear Man. Man has caused all things to fear him.

Then there would be hunger, or at least the dread and threat of hunger. And the urge to reproduce. There would be the urgency and the happiness of life, the thrill of swiftly moving feet and the sleek contentment of the well-filled belly and the sweetness of sleep…and what else? What else might fill a mouse’s life?

He crouched in a place of safety and listened and knew that all was well. All was safe and there were food and shelter against the coming cold. For he knew about the cold, not so much from the experience of other winters as from an instinct handed down through many generations of shivering in the cold and dying of winter famine.

To his ears came the soft rustlings in the corn shock as others of his kind moved softly on their business. He smelled the sweetness of the Sun-cured grass that had been brought in to fashion nests for warm and easy sleeping. And he smelled, as well, the grains of corn and the succulent weed seeds that would keep their bellies full.

All is well, he thought. All is as it should be. But one must keep watch, one must never lower one’s guard, for security is a thing that can be swept away in a single instant. And we are so soft…we are so soft and frail, and we make good eating. A paw-step in the dark can spell swift and sure disaster. A whir of wings is the song of death.

He closed his eyes and tucked his feet beneath him and wrapped his tail around him.…

Sutton sat with his back against the tree and suddenly, without knowing how or when he had become so, he was rigid with the knowledge of what had happened.

He had closed his eyes and tucked his feet beneath him and wrapped his tail about him and he had known the simple fears and the artless, ambitionless contentment of another life…of a life that hid in a corn shock from the paw-steps and the wings, that slept in Sun-scented grass and felt a vague but vital happiness in the sure and fundamental knowledge of food and warmth and shelter.

He had not felt it merely, or known it alone…he had been the little creature, he had been the mouse that the corn shock sheltered; and at the one and the same time he had been Asher Sutton, sitting with his back against a straight-trunked shellbark hickory tree, gazing out across the autumn-painted valley.

There were two of us, said Sutton. I, myself, and I, the mouse. There were two of us at once, each with his separate identity. The mouse, the real mouse, did not know it, for if he had known or guessed, I would have known as well, for I was as much the mouse as I was myself.

He sat quiet and still, not a muscle moving, wonder gnawing at him. Wonder and a fear, a fear of a dormant alienness that lay within his brain.

He had brought a ship from Cygni, he had returned from death, he had rolled a six.

Now this!

A man is born and he has a body and a mind that have many functions, some of them complex, and it takes him years to learn those functions, more years to master them. Months before one takes a toddling step, months more before one shapes a word, years before thought and logic become polished tools…and sometimes, said Sutton, sometimes they never do.

Even then there is a certain guidance, the guidance of experienced mentors…parents at first and teachers after that and the doctors and the churches and all the men of science and the people that one meets. All the people, all the contacts, all the forces that operate to shape one into a social being capable of using the talents that he holds for the good of himself and the society which guides him and holds him to its path.

Heritage, too, thought Sutton…the inbred knowledge and the will to do and think certain things in a certain way. The tradition of what other men have done and the precepts that have been fashioned from the wisdom of the ages.

The normal human has one body and one mind, and Lord knows, Sutton thought, that is enough for any man to get along with. But I, to all intent, have what amounts to a second body and perhaps even a second mind, but for that second body I have no mentors and I have no heritage. I do not know how to use it yet; I’m just taking my first toddling step. I am finding out, slowly, one by one, the things that I may do. Later on, if I live long enough, I may even learn to do them well.

But there are mistakes that one will make. A child will stumble when it walks at first, and its words, to begin with, are only the approximation of words, and it does not know enough not to burn its finger with matches it has lighted.

“Johnny,” he said. “Johnny, talk to me.”

“Yes, Ash?”

“Is there more, Johnny?”

“Wait and see,” said Johnny. “I cannot tell you. You must wait and see.”

CHAPTER XXXVIII

The android investigator said: “We checked Bridgeport back to the year 2,000 and we are convinced nothing happened there. It was a small village and it lay off the main trunk of world happenings.”

“It wouldn’t have to be a big thing,” Eva Armour told him. “It could have been a little thing. Just some slight clue. A word out of the context of the future, perhaps. A word that Sutton might have dropped in some unguarded moment and someone else picked up and used. Within a few years a word like that would become a part of the dialect of that community.”

“We checked for the little things, miss,” the investigator said. “We checked for any change, any hint that might point to Sutton having been in that community. We used approved methods and we covered the field. But we found nothing, absolutely nothing. The place is barren of any leads at all.”

“He must have gone there,” said Eva. “The robot at the information center talked to him. He asked about Bridgeport. It indicates that he had some interest in the place.”

“But it didn’t necessarily indicate that he was going there,” Herkimer pointed out.

“He went some place,” said Eva. “Where did he go?”

“We threw in as large a force of investigators as was possible without arousing suspicion, both locally and in the future,” the investigator told them. “Our men practically fell over one another. We sent them out as book salesmen and scissor grinders and unemployed laborers looking for work. We canvassed every home for forty miles around, first at twenty-year intervals, then, when we found nothing, at ten, and finally at five. If there had been any word or any rumor, we would have run across it.”

“Back to the year 2,000, you say?” asked Herkimer. “Why not to 1999 or 1950 or even 1800?”

“We had to set an arbitrary date somewhere,” the investigator told him.

“The Sutton family lived in that locality,” said Eva. “I suppose you investigated them just a bit more closely.”

“We had men working on the Sutton farm off and on,” said the investigator. “As often as the family was in need of any help on the farm, one of our men showed up to get himself the job. When the family needed no help, we had men on other farms nearby. One of our men bought a tract of timber in that locality and spent ten years at woodcutting…he could have stretched it out much longer, but we were afraid someone would get suspicious.

“We did this from the year 2,000 up to 3150, when the last of the family moved from the area.”

Eva looked at Herkimer. “The family has been checked all the way?” she asked.

Herkimer nodded. “Right to the day that Asher left for Cygni. There’s nothing that would help us.

Eva said, “It seems so hopeless. He is somewhere. Something happened to him. The future, perhaps.”

“That’s what I was thinking,” Herkimer told her. “The Revisionists may have intercepted him. They may be holding him.”

“They couldn’t hold him…not Asher Sutton,” Eva said. “They couldn’t hold him if he knew all his powers.”

“But he doesn’t know them,” Herkimer reminded her. “And we couldn’t tell him about them or draw them to his attention. He had to find them for himself. He had to be put under pressure and suddenly discover them by natural reaction. He couldn’t be taught them; he had to evolve into them.”

“We did so well,” said Eva. “We seemed to be doing so well. We forced Morgan into ill-considered action by conditioning Benton into challenging Sutton, the one quick way to get rid of Asher when Adams failed to fall in with the plan to kill him. And that Benton incident put Asher on his guard without our having to tell him that he should be careful. And now,” she said. “And now.…”

“The book was written,” Herkimer told her.

“But it doesn’t have to be,” said Eva. “You and I may be no more than puppets in some probability world that will pinch out tomorrow.”

“We’ll cover all key points in the future,” Herkimer promised her. “We’ll redouble our espionage of the Revisionists, check back on every task force of the past. Maybe we’ll learn something.”

“It’s the random factors,” Eva said. “You can’t be sure, ever. All of time and space for them to happen in. How can we know where to look or turn? Do we have to fight our way through every possible happening to get the thing we want?”

“You forget one factor,” Herkimer said calmly.

“One factor?”

“Yes, Sutton himself. Sutton is somewhere and I have great faith in him. In him and his destiny. For, you see, he listens closely to his destiny and that will pay off in the end.”

Eva walked to the window.

Ash, she thought. Ash, my love, you simply have to be all right. You must know what you’re doing. You must come back to us and you must write the book and.…

Not for me alone, she thought. Not for me alone, for I, least of all of them, have a claim on you. But the galaxy has a claim on you, and maybe someday the universe. The little striving lives are waiting for your words and the hope and dignity they spell. And most of all the dignity. Dignity ahead of hope. The dignity of equality…the dignity of the knowledge that all life is on an equal basis…that life is all that matters…that life is the badge of a greater brotherhood than anything the mind of Man has ever spelled out in all its theorizing.

And I, she thought, have no right to think the way I do, to feel the way I do.

But I can’t help it, Ash. I can’t help but love you.

Someday, she thought, and knew it for a hopeless wish.

She stood straight and lonely and the tears moved slowly down her cheeks, and she did not raise her hand to brush them off.

Dreams, she thought. Broken dreams are bad enough. But the dream that has no hope…the dream that is doomed long before it’s broken…that’s the worst of all.

CHAPTER XXXIX

“You are a strange man, William Jones,” John H. Sutton told him. “And a good one, too. I’ve never had a better hired hand in all the years I’ve farmed. None of the others would stay more than a year or two, always running off, always going somewhere.”

“I have no place to go,” said Asher Sutton. “There’s no place I want to go. This is as good as any.”

And it was better, he told himself, than he had thought it would be, for here were peace and security and living close to nature that no man of his own age ever had experienced.

The two men leaned on the pasture bars and watched the twinkling of the house and auto lights from across the river. In the darkness on the slope below them, the cattle, turned out after milking, moved about with quiet, soft sounds, cropping a last few mouthfuls of grass before settling down to sleep. A breeze with a touch of coolness in it drifted up the slope and it was fine and soothing after a day of heat.

“We always get a cool night breeze,” said old John H. “No matter how hot the day may be, we have easy sleeping.”

He sighed. “I wonder sometimes,” he said, “how well contented a man should let himself become. I wonder if it may not be a sign of—well, almost sinfulness. For Man is not by nature a contented animal. He is restless and unhappy and it’s that same unhappiness that has driven him, like a lash across his back, to his great accomplishments.”

“Contentedness,” said Asher Sutton, “is an indication of complete adjustment to one’s particular environment. It is a thing that is not often found…that is too seldom found. Someday Man, and other creatures as well, will know how to achieve it and there will be peace and happiness in all the galaxy.”

John H. chuckled. “You take in a lot of territory, William.”

“I was taking the long-range view,” said Sutton. “Someday Man will be going to the stars.”

John H. nodded. “Yes, I suppose he will. But he will go too soon. Before Man goes to the stars, he should learn how to live on Earth.”

He yawned and said: “I think I will turn in. Getting old, you know, and I need my rest.”

“I’m going to walk around a bit,” said Sutton.

“You do a lot of walking, William.”

“After dark,” said Sutton, “the land is different than it is in daylight. It smells different. Sweet and fresh and clean, as if it were just washed. You hear things in the quietness you do not hear in daylight. You walk and you are alone with the land and the land belongs to you.”

John H. wagged his head. “It’s not the land that’s different, William. It is you. Sometimes I think you see and hear things that the rest of us do not know. Almost, William.…” he hesitated, then added abruptly, “almost as if you did not quite belong.”

“Sometimes I think I don’t.”

“Remember this,” John H. told him. “You are one of us…one of the family, seems like. Let me see, how many years now?”

“Ten,” said Sutton.

“That’s right. I can usually recall the day you came, but sometimes I forget. Sometimes it seems that you were always here. Sometimes I catch myself thinking you’re a Sutton.”

He hacked and cleared his throat, spitting in the dust. “I borrowed your typewriter the other day, William. I had a letter I had to write. It was an important letter and I wanted it done properly.”

“It’s all right,” said Sutton. “I’m glad it was some use to you.”

“Getting any writing done these days, William?”

“No,” said Sutton, “I gave up. I couldn’t do it. I lost my notes, you see. I had it all figured out and I had it down on paper, and I thought maybe I could remember it, but I found I couldn’t. It’s no use trying.”

John H.’s voice was a soft, low sound in the darkness. “You in any kind of trouble, William?”

“No,” said Sutton. “Not exactly trouble.”

“Anything I can do to help?”

“Not a thing,” said Sutton.

“Let me know if there is,” insisted the old man. “We’d do anything for you.”

“Someday I may go away,” said Sutton. “Maybe suddenly. If I do, I wish you would forget me, forget I was ever here.”

“That’s what you wish, lad?”

“Yes, it is,” said Sutton.

“We can’t forget you, William. We never could do that. But we won’t talk about you. If someone comes and asks about you, we’ll act as if you never had been here.”

He paused. “Is that the way you want it, William?”

“Yes,” said Sutton. “If you don’t mind, that’s the way I want it.”

They stood silent for a moment, facing one another in the dark. Then the old man turned around and clumped toward the lighted windows of the house and Sutton, turning, too, leaned his arms on the pasture bars and stared across the river where the faery lights were blinking in a land of never-never.

Ten years, thought Sutton, and the letter’s written. Ten years and the conditions of the past are met. Now the past can get along without me, for I was only staying so that John H. could write the letter…so that he could write it and I could find it in an old trunk 6,000 years from now and read it on a nameless asteroid I won by killing a man in a place of synthetic dreams that will be called the Zag House.

The Zag House will be over there across the river, he thought, far up the plain above the ancient town of Prairie du Chien; and the University of North America, with its towers of beauty, will be set on the hills there to the north, and Adams’ house will be near the confluence of the Wisconsin and Mississippi Rivers. Great ships will climb into the sky from the Iowa prairies and head out for the stars that even now are twinkling overhead…and other stars that no man’s eye can see unaided.

Far across the river, he thought, that’s where the Zag House will be. And that is where someday, 6,000 years from now, I will meet a little girl in a checkered apron. Like in a story, he thought. Boy meets girl and the boy is towheaded with a cowlick and he’s barefooted and the girl twists her apron in her little hands and tells him what her name is.…

He straightened and gripped the top bar of the pasture gate.

“Eva,” he said hopelessly, “where are you?”

Her hair was copper and her eyes…what color were her eyes? I have studied you for twenty years, she had said, and he had wanted to kiss her for it, not believing the words she spoke, but ready to believe the unspoken word of her proud face and lovely body.

Somewhere she still existed, somewhere in time and space. Somewhere she might be thinking of him as even now he thought of her. If he tried hard enough, he might contact her. Might drive his hunger for her through the folds of space and time and let her know that he still remembered, still wanted her, that somehow, sometime he would come back to her.

But even as he thought of it, he knew that it was unreal, that he floundered in the grasp of forgotten time as a man may flounder in a running sea. It was not he who would reach out for her, for he could not, but she or Herkimer or someone else might reach out to him…if anyone ever did.

Ten years, he thought, and they seem to have forgotten me. Is it because they cannot find me, or, having found me, cannot reach me? Or is it for a purpose, and if that is it, what can the purpose be?

There had been times when he had felt that he was being watched, that nasty touch of cold between the shoulder blades. And there had been the time when someone had run from him when he had been in the woods, late of a summer evening, hunting for the fence-jumping, cross-eyed heifer that was forever getting lost.

He turned from the pasture bars and through the barnyard, making his way in the darkness as a man will walk in a well-remembered room. From the barn came the scent of freshly mown hay, and in the row of chicken coops one of the young birds was cheeping sleepily.

Even as he walked, his mind flicked out and touched the disturbed chicken’s mind.

Fluttering dread of an unknown thing…there had been a sound coming on the edge of sleep. And a sound was danger…a signal of an unknown danger. Sound and nowhere to go. Darkness and sound. Apprehension.

Sutton pulled back his mind and walked on. Not much stability in a chicken, he thought. A cow was contented and its thought and purpose as slow-moving as its feeding. A dog was alive and friendly, and a cat, no matter how well tamed it might be, still walked the jungle’s edge.

I know them all, he thought. I have been each one of them. And there are some that are not quite pleasant. A rat, for example, or a weasel or a bass lying in wait beneath the lily pads. But the skunk…the skunk was a pleasant fellow. One could enjoy living as a skunk.

Curiosity or practice? Perhaps curiosity, he admitted, the human penchant for prying into things that were hung with signs: No Trespassing. Keep Out. Private. Do Not Disturb. But practice as well, learning one of the tools of the second body. Learning how to move into another mind and share its every shade of intellectual and emotional reactions.

But there was a line…a line he had never crossed, either through innate decency or a fear of being found out. He could not decide quite which.

The road was a dusty strip of white that ran along the ridge, twisting between the deep bowls of darkness where the land fell away into deep hollows. Sutton walked slowly, footfalls muffled by the dust. The land was black and the road was white and the stars were large and soft in the summer night. So different, Sutton thought, from the winter stars. In the winter the stars retreated high into the sky and glowed with a hard and steely light.

Peace and quiet, he told himself. In this corner of the ancient Earth there is peace and quiet, unbroken by the turbulence of twentieth century living.

From a land like this came the steady men, the men who in a few more generations would ride the ships out to the stars. Here, in the quiet corners of the world, were built the stamina and courage, the depth of character and the deep convictions that would take the engines that more brilliant, less stable men had dreamed, and drive them to the farthest rims of the galaxy, there to hold key worlds for the glory and the profit of the race.

The profit, Sutton said. The glory gets dimmed by profit somehow.

Ten years, he thought, and the involuntary compact with time has been consummated…each condition filled. I am free to go.

But there was no place to go and no way to get there.

I would like to stay, said Sutton. It is pleasant here.

“Johnny,” he said. “Johnny, what are we going to do?”

He felt the stir in his mind, the old canine stir, the wagging tail, the comfort of blankets tucked about a child in his bed.

“It’s all right, Ash,” said Johnny. “Everything’s all right. You needed these ten years.”

“You’ve stayed with me, Johnny.”

“I am you,” said Johnny. “I came when you were born. I’ll stay until you die.”

“And then?”

“You’ll not need me, Ash. I’ll go to something or someone else. None walks alone.”

None walks alone, said Sutton, and he said it like a prayer.

And he was not alone.

Someone walked beside him, and where he’d come from, and how long he’d been there, Sutton did not know.

“This is a splendid walk,” said the man, whose face was hidden in darkness. “Do you take it often?”

“Almost every night,” said Sutton’s tongue, and his brain warned: Steady! Steady!

“It’s so quiet,” said the man. “So quiet and alone. It is good for thinking. A man could do a lot of thinking, walking nights out here.”

Sutton did not answer.

They plodded along, side by side, and even while he fought to keep relaxed, Sutton felt his body tensing.

“You’ve been doing a lot of thinking, Sutton,” said the man. “Ten whole years of thinking.”

“You should know,” said Sutton. “You’ve been watching me.”

“We’ve watched,” admitted the man. “And our machines have watched. We got you down on tape and we know a lot about you. A whole lot more than we did ten years ago.”

“Ten years ago,” said Sutton, “you sent two men to buy me off.”

“I know,” replied the man. “We have often wondered what became of them.”

“That’s an easy one,” Sutton said. “I killed them.”

“They had a proposition.”

“If you can call it that. They offered me a planet.”

“I knew at the time it wouldn’t work,” the man declared. “I told Trevor that it wouldn’t work.”

“I suppose you have another proposition?” Sutton asked. “A slightly higher price?”

“Not exactly,” said the man. “We thought this time we’d cut out the bargaining and just let you name your price.”

“I’ll think about it,” Sutton told him. “I’m not too sure I can think up a price.”

“As you wish, Sutton,” said the man. “We’ll be waiting…and watching. Just give us the sign when you’ve made up your mind.”

“A sign?”

“Sure. Just write us a note. We’ll be looking over your shoulder. Or just say… ‘Well, I’ve made up my mind.’ We’ll be listening and we’ll hear.”

“Simple,” Sutton replied. “Nothing to it.”

“We make it easy for you,” said the man. “Good evening, Mr. Sutton.”

Sutton did not see him do it, but sensed that he had touched his hat…if he wore a hat. Then he was gone, turning off the road and going down across the pasture, walking in the dark, heading for the woods that sloped to the river bluffs.

* * * *

Sutton stood in the dusty road and listened to him go—the soft swish of dew-laden grass brushing on his shoes, the muted pad of his feet in the pasture.

Contact at last! After ten years, contact with the people from another time. But the wrong people. Not his people.

The Revisionists had been watching him, even as he had sensed them watching. Watching and waiting, waiting for ten years. But, of course, not ten years of their time, just ten years of his. Machines and watchers would have been sprinkled through those ten years, so that the job could have been done in a year or a month, or even in a week, if they had wanted to throw enough men and materials into the effort.

But why wait ten years? To soften him up, to make him ready to jump at anything they offered?

To soften him up? He grinned wryly in the dark.

Then suddenly the picture came to him and he stood there stupidly, wondering why he hadn’t thought of it much sooner.

They hadn’t waited to soften him up…they had waited for old John H. to write the letter. For they knew about the letter. They had studied old John H. and they knew he’d write a letter. They had him down on tape and they knew him inside out and they had figured to an eyelash the way his mind would work.

The letter was the key to the whole thing. The letter was the lure that had been used to suck Asher Sutton back into this time. They had lured him, then sealed him off and kept him, kept him as surely as if they’d had him in a cage. They had studied him and they knew him and they had him figured out. They knew what he would do as surely as they had known what old John H. would do.

His mind flicked out and probed cautiously at the brain of the man striding down the hill.

Chickens and cats and dogs and meadow mice—and not one of them suspected, not one of them had known that another mind than theirs had occupied their brain.

But the brain of a man might be a different matter. Highly trained and sensitive, it might detect outside interference, might sense, if it did not actually know, the invasion of itself.

The girl won’t wait. I’ve been away too long. Her affections are less than skin deep and she has no morals, absolutely none, and I’m the one to know. I’ve been on this damn patrol too long. She will be tired of waiting…she was tired of waiting when I was gone three hours. To hell with her…I can get another one. But not like her…not exactly like her. There isn’t another one anywhere quite like her.

Whoever said this Sutton guy would be an easy one to crack was crazy as a loon. God, after ten years in a dump like this, I’d fall on someone’s neck and kiss ’em if they came back from my own time. Anyone at all…friend or foe, it would make no difference. But what does Sutton do? Not a damn word. Not a single syllable of surprise in any word he spoke. When I first spoke to him, he didn’t even break his stride, kept right on walking as if he knew I’d been there all the time. Cripes, I could use a drink. Nerve-wracking work.

Wish I could forget that girl. Wish she would be waiting for me, but I know she won’t. Wish…

Sutton snapped back his mind, stood quietly in the road.

And inside himself he felt the shiver of triumph, the swift backwash of relief and triumph. They didn’t know. In all their ten years of watching, they had seen no more than the superficial things. They had him down on tape, but they didn’t know all that went on within his mind.

A human mind, perhaps. But not his mind. A human mind they might be able to strip as bare as a sickled field, might dissect it and analyze it and read the story in it. But his mind told them only what it wished to tell them, only enough so that there would be no suspicion that he was holding back. Ten years ago Adams’ gang had tried to tap his mind and had not even dented it.

The Revisionists had watched ten years and they knew each motion that he made, many of the things that he had thought.

But they did not know that he could go to live within the mind of a mouse or a catfish or a man.

For if they had known, they would have set up certain safeguards, would have been on the alert against him.

And they weren’t. No more alert than the mouse had been.

He glanced back the road to where the Sutton farmhouse stood upon the hill. For a moment he thought that he could see it, a darker mass against the darkness of the sky, but that, he knew, was no more than pure imagination. He knew it was there and he had formed a mental image.

One by one, he checked the items in his room. The books, the few scribbled papers, the razor.

There was nothing there, he knew, that he could not leave behind. Not a thing that would arouse suspicion. Nothing that could be fastened on in some later day and turned into a weapon to be used against him.

He had been prepared against this day, knowing that some day it would come—that some day Herkimer or the Revisionists or an agent from the government would step from behind a tree and walk along beside him.

Knowing? Well, not exactly. Hoping. And ready for the hope.

Long years ago his futile attempt to write the book of destiny without his notes had gone up in smoke. All that remained was a heap of paper ash, mixed these many years with the soil. Bleached away by the rains, gone as chemical elements into a head of wheat or an ear of corn.

He was ready. Packed and ready. His mind had been packed and ready, he knew now, for these many years.

Softly he stepped off the road and went down across the pasture, following the man who walked toward the river bluffs. His mind flicked out and tracked him through the darkness, using his thoughts to track him as a hound would use his nose to track a fox.

* * * *

He overhauled him scant minutes after he had entered the fringe of trees and after that kept a few paces behind him, walking carefully to guard against the suddenly snapping twig, the swish of swaying bushes that could have warned his quarry.

The ship lay within a deep ravine and at a hail it lighted up and a port swung open. Another man stood in the port and stared into the night.

“That you, Gus?” he called.

The other swore at him. “Who else do you think would be floundering around in these woods at the dead of night?”

“I got to worrying,” said the man in the port. “You were gone longer than I thought you would be. Just getting ready to set out and hunt for you.”

“You’re always worrying,” Gus growled at him. “Between you and this outlandish ancient world, I’m fed up. Trevor can find someone else to do this kind of work from here on out.”

He scrambled up the steps into the ship. “Get going,” he told the other man tersely. “We’re getting out of here.”

He turned to shut the port, but Sutton already had it closed.

Gus took two steps backward, brought up against an anchored chair and stood there, grinning.

“Look at what we got,” he said. “Hey, Pinky, look at what followed me back home.”

Sutton smiled at them grimly. “If you gentlemen have no objection, I’ll hitch a ride with you.”

“And if we have objections?” Pinky asked.

“I’m riding this ship,” Sutton told him. “With you or without you. Take your choice.”

“This is Sutton,” Gus told Pinky. “The Mr. Sutton. Trevor will be glad to see you, Sutton.”

Trevor… Trevor. That was three times he had heard the name, and somewhere else he had heard it once before. He stood with his back against the closed port and his mind returned to another ship and another two men.

“Trevor,” Case had said, or had it been Pringle who had said it? “Trevor? Why, Trevor is the head of the corporation.”

“I’ve been looking forward, all these years,” Sutton told them, “to meeting Mr. Trevor. He and I will have a lot to talk about.”

“Get her going, Pinky,” Gus said. “And send ahead a message. Trevor will want to break out the guard of honor for us. We’re bringing Asher Sutton back.”

CHAPTER XL

Trevor picked up a paper clip and flipped it at an ink well on the desk. The clip landed in the ink.

“Getting pretty good,” said Trevor: “Hit it seven times out of every ten. Used to be I missed it seven times out of every ten.”

He looked at Sutton, studying him.

“You look like an ordinary man,” he said. “I should be able to talk with you and make you understand.”

“I haven’t any horns,” said Sutton, “if that is what you mean.”

“Nor,” said Trevor, “any halo, either, so far as I’m concerned.”

He flipped another paper clip and it missed the ink well.

“Seven out of ten,” said Trevor.

He flipped another one.

“Sutton,” said Trevor, “you know a great deal about destiny. Have you ever thought of it in terms of manifest destiny?”

Sutton shrugged. “You’re using an antiquated term. Pure and simple propaganda of the nineteenth century. There was a certain nation that wore that one threadbare.”

“Propaganda?” Trevor repeated. “Let’s call it psychology. You say a thing so often and so well that after a time everyone believes it. Even, finally, yourself.”

“This manifest destiny,” said Sutton. “For the human race, I presume?”

“Naturally,” said Trevor. “After all, we’re the animals that would know how to use it to the best advantage.”

“You pass up a point,” declared Sutton. “The humans don’t need it. They already think they are great and right and holy. Certainly you don’t need to propagandize them.”

“In the short view, you are right,” agreed Trevor. “But in the short view only.” He stabbed a sudden finger at Sutton. “Once we have the galaxy in hand, what do we do then?”

“Why,” said Sutton and stopped. “Why, I suppose…”

“That’s exactly it,” said Trevor. “You don’t know where you’re going. Nor does the human race.”

“And manifest destiny?” asked Sutton. “If we had manifest destiny, it would be different?”

Trevor’s words were scarcely more than a whisper. “There are other galaxies, Sutton. Greater even than this one. Many other galaxies.”

Good Lord! thought Sutton.

He started to speak and then closed his mouth and sat stiffly in his chair.

Trevor’s whisper speared at him from across the desk.

“Staggers you, doesn’t it?” he demanded.

Sutton tried to speak aloud, but his voice came out a whisper, too.

“You’re mad, Trevor. Absolutely mad.”

“The long-range view,” said Trevor. “That is what we need. The absolutely unshakable belief in human destiny, the positive and all-inclusive conviction that Man is meant not only to take over this galaxy alone, but all the galaxies, the entire universe.”

“You should live long enough,” said Sutton, sudden mockery rising to his tongue.

“I won’t see it, of course,” admitted Trevor. “And neither will you. Nor will our children’s children or their children for many generations.”

“It will take a million years,” Sutton told him.

“More than a million years,” Trevor answered calmly. “You have no idea, no conception of the scope of the universe. In a million years we’ll just be getting a good start…”

“Then, why, for the love of heaven, do you and I sit here and quibble about it?”

“Logic,” said Trevor.

“There is no real logic,” Sutton declared, “in planning a million years ahead. A man can plan his own lifetime, if he wishes, and there is some logic in that. Or the life of his children and there still would be some logic in it…and maybe in the life of his grandchildren. But beyond that there can be no logic.”

“Sutton,” asked Trevor, “did you ever hear of a corporation?”

“Why, yes, of course, but…”

“A corporation could plan for a million years,” said Trevor. “It could plan very logically.”

“A corporation is not a man,” said Sutton. “It is not an entity.”

“But it is,” insisted Trevor. “An entity composed of men and created by men to carry out their wishes. It is a living, operative concept that is handed down from one generation to another to carry out a plan too vast to be accomplished in the lifetime of one man alone.”

“Your corporation publishes books, too, doesn’t it?” asked Sutton.

Trevor stared at him. “Who told you that?” he snapped.

“A couple of men by the name of Case and Pringle. They tried to buy my book for your corporation.”

“Case and Pringle are out on a mission,” Trevor said. “I had expected them back…”

“They won’t be coming back.”

“You killed them,” Trevor said, flatly.

“They tried to kill me first. I’m awfully hard to kill.”

“That would have been against my orders, Sutton. I do not want you killed.”

“They were on their own,” said Sutton. “They were going to sell my carcass to Morgan.”

There was no way of telling, Sutton thought, how you hit this man. There was no difference of expression in his eyes, no faintest flicker of change across his face.

“I appreciate your killing them,” said Trevor. “It saves me the bother.”

He flicked a clip at the ink well and it was a hit.

“It’s logical,” he continued, as though Sutton had not spoken, “that a corporation should plan a million years ahead. It provides a framework within which a certain project may be carried forward without interruption, although the personnel in charge should change from time to time.”

“Wait a minute,” Sutton told him. “Is there a corporation or are you just posing fables?”

“There is a corporation,” Trevor told him, “and I am the man who heads it. Varied interests pooling their resources…and there will be more and more of them as time goes on. As soon as we can show something tangible.”

“By tangible, you mean destiny for the human race, for the human race alone?”

Trevor nodded. “Then we’ll have something to talk about. A commodity to sell. Something to back up our sales talk.”

Sutton shook his head. “I can’t see what you expect to gain.”

“Three things,” Trevor told him. “Wealth and power and knowledge. The wealth and power and knowledge of the universe. For Man alone, you understand. For a single race. For people like you and me. And of the three items, knowledge perhaps would be the greatest prize of all, for knowledge, added to and compounded, correlated and coordinated, would lead to even greater wealth and power…and to greater knowledge.”

“It is madness,” said Sutton. “You and I, Trevor, will be drifting dust, and not only ourselves, but the very era in which we live out this moment will be forgotten before the job is done.”

“Remember the corporation.”

“I’m remembering the corporation,” Sutton said, “but I can’t help but think in terms of people. You and I and the other people like us.”

“Let’s think in terms of people, then,” said Trevor, smoothly. “One day the life that runs in you will run in the brain and blood and muscle of a man who shall be part owner of the universe. There will be trillions upon trillions of life-forms to serve him, there will be wealth that he cannot count, there will be knowledge of which you and I cannot even dream.”

Sutton sat quietly, taut in his chair.

“You’re the only man,” said Trevor, “who is standing in the way. You’re the man who is blocking the project for a million years.”

“You need destiny,” said Sutton, “and destiny is not mine to give away.”

“You are a human being, Sutton,” Trevor told him, talking evenly. “You are a man. It is the people of your own race that I’m talking to you about.”

“Destiny,” said Sutton, “belongs to everything that lives. Not to Man alone, but to every form of life.”

“It needn’t,” Trevor contradicted. “You are the only man who knows. You are the man who can tell the facts. You can make it a manifest destiny for the human race instead of a personal destiny for every crawling, cackling, sniveling thing that has the gift of life.”

Sutton didn’t answer.

“One word from you,” said Trevor, “and the thing is done.”

“It can’t be done,” said Sutton. “This scheme of yours—think of the sheer time, the thousands of years, even at the rate of speed of the starships of today, to cross intergalactic space. Only from this galaxy to the next…not from this to the outermost galaxy.”

Trevor sighed. “You forget what I said about the compounding of knowledge. Two and two won’t make four, my friend. It will make much more than four. In some instances thousands of times more than four.”

Sutton shook his head, wearily. But Trevor was right, he knew. Knowledge and technique would pyramid exactly as he said. Even, once Man had the time to do it, the knowledge in a single galaxy alone…

“One word from you,” said Trevor, “and the war is at an end. One word and the security of the human race is guaranteed forever. For all the race will need is the knowledge that you can give it.”

“It wouldn’t be the truth.”

“That,” replied Trevor, “doesn’t have a thing to do with it.”

“You don’t need manifest destiny,” said Sutton, “to carry out your project.”

“We have to have the human race behind us. We have to have something that is big enough to capture their imagination. Something important enough to make them pay attention. And manifest destiny—manifest destiny as it applies to the universe—is the thing to turn the trick.”

“Thirty years ago,” said Sutton, “I might have thrown in with you.”

“And now?” asked Trevor.

Sutton shook his head. “Not now. I know more than I did thirty years ago. Thirty years ago I was a human, Trevor. I’m not too sure I’m entirely human any longer.”

“I hadn’t mentioned the matter of reward,” said Trevor. “That goes without saying.”

“No, thanks,” said Sutton. “I’d like to keep on living.”

Trevor flipped a clip at the ink well and it missed.

“You’re slipping,” Sutton said. “Your percentage is way off.”

Trevor picked up another clip.

“All right,” he said. “Go ahead and have your fun. There’s a war on and we’ll win that war. It’s a hellish way to fight, but we’re doing it the best we can. No war anywhere, no surface indication of war, for you understand the galaxy is in utter and absolute peace under the rule of benevolent Earthmen. We can win without you, Sutton, but it would be easier with you.”

“You’re going to turn me loose?” Sutton asked.

“Why, sure,” Trevor told him. “Go on out and beat your head against a stone wall a little longer. In the end, you’ll get tired of it. Eventually you’ll give up out of sheer exhaustion. You’ll come back then and give us the thing we want.”

Sutton rose to his feet.

He stood for a moment, indecisive.

“What are you waiting for?” asked Trevor.

“One thing has me puzzled,” Sutton answered. “The book, somehow, somewhere, already has been written. It has been a fact for almost five hundred years. How are you going to change that? If I write it now the way you want it written, it will change the human setup…”

Trevor laughed. “We got that one all figured out. Let us say that finally, after all of these years, the original of your manuscript is discovered. It can be readily and indisputably identified by certain characteristics which you will very carefully incorporate into it when you write it. It will be found and proclaimed, and what is more, proven…and the human race will have its destiny.

“We’ll explain the past unpleasantness by very convincing historical evidence of earlier tampering with the manuscript. Even your friends, the androids, will have to believe what we say, once we get through with it.”

“Clever,” Sutton admitted.

“I think so, too,” said Trevor.

“Too bad you won’t have a chance to try it,” Sutton said.

CHAPTER XLI

At the building’s entrance a man was waiting for him. He raised his hand in what might have been a brief salute.

“Just a minute, Mr. Sutton.”

“Yes, what is it?”

“There’ll be a few of us following you, sir. Orders, you know.”

“But.…”

“Nothing personal, sir. We won’t interfere with anything you want to do. Just guarding you, sir.”

“Guarding me?”

“Certainly, sir. Morgan’s crowd, you know. Can’t let them kill you off.”

“You can’t know,” Sutton told him, “how deeply I appreciate your interest.”

“It’s nothing, sir,” the man told him. “Just part of the day’s work. Glad to do it. Don’t mention it at all.”

He stepped back again and Sutton wheeled and walked down the steps and followed the cinder walk that flanked the avenue.

The Sun was near to setting. Looking back over his shoulder, he saw the tall, straight lines of the gigantic office building in which he had talked to Trevor outlined against the brightness of the western sky. But of anyone who might be following him he did not see a sign.

He had no place to go. He had no idea where to go. But he realized that he couldn’t stand around feeling lost. He’d walk, he told himself, and think, and wait for whatever was going to happen next to happen.

He met other walkers and a few of them stared at him curiously and now, for the first time, Sutton realized that he still wore the clothing of a twentieth-century farm hand…blue denim overalls and cotton shirt, with heavy, serviceable farm shoes on his feet.

But here, he knew, even such an outlandish costume would not arouse undue suspicion. For on Earth, with its visiting dignitaries from far solar systems, with its Babel of races employed in the different governmental departments, with its exchange students, its diplomats and legislators representing backwoods planets, how a man dressed would arouse but slight curiosity.

By morning, he told himself, he’d have to find some hiding place, some retreat where he could relax and figure out some of the angles in this world of five hundred years ahead.

Either that or locate an android he could trust to put him in touch with the android organization…for although he had never been told so, he had no doubt there was an android organization. There would have to be to fight a war in time.

* * * *

He turned off the path that flanked the roadway and took another one, a faint footpath that led out across marshy land toward a range of low hills.

Suddenly now he realized that he was hungry and that he should have dropped into one of the shops in the office building for a bite of food. And then he remembered that he had no money with which to pay for food. A few twentieth-century dollars were in his pockets, but they would be worthless here as a medium of exchange, although quite possibly they might be collectors’ items.

Short hours ago, he thought, he had walked a dusty hilltop road in the twentieth century, scuffing the white dust with his shoes…and some of the white dust, he saw, still clung to the leather. Even as the memory of that hilltop road still clung to his memory. Memory and dust, he thought, link us to the past.

He reached the hills and began to climb them and the night was sweet with the smell of pine.

He came to the top of a slight rise and stood there for a moment, looking out across the velvety softness of the night. Somewhere, near at hand, a cricket was tentatively tuning up his fiddle, and from the marsh came the muted sound of frogs. In the darkness just ahead of him, a stream was splashing along its rocky bed and it talked as it went along, talked to the trees and its grassy banks and the nodding flowers above them.

“I would like to stop,” it said. “I would like to stop and talk with you. But I can’t, you see. I must hurry on. I have some place I must go. I can’t waste a minute. I must hurry on.”

Like Man, thought Sutton. For Man is driven like the stream. Man is driven by circumstance and necessity and the bright-eyed ambition of other restless men who will not let them be.

He did not hear a sound, but he felt the great hand close upon his arm and yank him off the path. Twisting, he sought to free himself of the grasp, and saw the dark blur of the man who had grabbed him. He balled his fist and swung it and it was a sledge-hammer slamming at the dark head, but it never reached its mark. A charging body slammed into his knees and drove them inward under him. Arms wrapped themselves around his legs and he staggered, falling on his face.

He sat up and somewhere off to the right he heard the soft snickering of rapidly firing guns and caught, out of the tail of his eyes, their bright flicker in the night.

Then a hand came out of nowhere and cupped itself around his mouth and nose.

“Sleeping powder!” he thought. “Must hold my breath…”

And even as he thought it, the dark figures in the woods, the cheeping frogs and the snarling of the guns fused into silence.

CHAPTER XLII

Sutton opened his eyes to strangeness and lay quietly on the bed. A breeze came through an open window and the room, decorated with fantastic life-murals, was splashed with brilliant sunlight. The breeze brought in the scent of blooming flowers and in a tree outside a bird was chirping contentedly.

Slowly Sutton let his senses reach out and gather in the facts of the room, the facts of strangeness…the unfamiliar furniture, the contour of the room itself, the green and purple monkeys that chased one another along the wavy vine that ran around the border of the walls.

Quietly his mind moved back along the track of time to his final conscious moment. There had been guns flickering in the night and there had been a hand that reached out and cupped his nose.

Drugged, Sutton told himself. Drugged and dragged away.

Before that there had been a cricket and the frogs singing in the marsh and the talking brook that babbled down the hill, hurrying to get wherever it was going.

And before that a man had sat across a desk from him and told him about a corporation and a dream and a plan the corporation held.

Fantastic, Sutton thought. And in the bright light of the room, the very idea was one of utter fantasy…that Man should go out, not only to the stars, but to the other galaxies, and plan a million years ahead.

But there was greatness in it, a very human greatness. There had been a time when it had been fantasy to think that Man could ever lift himself from the bosom of the planet of his birth. And another time when it had been fantasy to think that Man would go beyond the solar system, out into the dread reaches of nothingness that stretched between the stars. And through time itself.…

But there had been strength in Trevor, and conviction as well as strength. A man who knew where he was going and why he was going and what it took to get there.

Manifest destiny, Trevor had said. That is what it takes. That is what it needs.

Man would be almost a god. The concepts of life and thought that had been born on the Earth would be the basic concepts of the entire universe, of the fragile bubble of space and time that bobbed along on a sea of mystery beyond which no mind could penetrate. And yet, by the time that Man got where he was headed for, he might well be able to penetrate that, too.

A mirror stood in one corner of the room and in it he saw the reflection of the lower half of his body, lying on the bed, naked except for a pair of shorts. He wiggled his toes and watched them in the glass.

And you’re the only one who is stopping us, Trevor had told him. You’re the one man standing in the way of Man. You’re the stumbling block. You are keeping men from being gods.

But all men did not think as Trevor did. All men were not tangled in the blind chauvinism of the human race.

Always there are men who know that humanity is a single race, men who refuse to exploit other forms of life. Teachers. Missionaries. Vegetarians. Ordinary feeling human beings.

Even in his time, there had been men who treated androids sympathetically and Sutton had been one of them, though he knew now that it was the sympathy of the master for the underdog. The androids had not misunderstood; they knew it wasn’t equality that was offered or would be granted, that sympathy could turn to savage reprisal if they acted as equals. Occasionally one would, swaggering and belligerent in the way of the frightened and insecure, and his ghastly fate served as example to others who might, as the saying went, get out of hand.

For the human race, thought Sutton, cannot even for a moment forget that it is human, cannot achieve the greatness of humility that will unquestioningly accord equality. Even while the humane argue for the equality of androids, they cannot help but patronize the very ones that they would make equal.

What was it Herkimer had said? Equality not by edict, not by human tolerance. But that was the only way the human race would ever accord equality…by edict, by dispensation, a gesture of tolerance where there was none, actually.

And yet, thought Sutton, there is Eva Armour.

There may be others like her. Somewhere, working with the androids even now, there may be others like her.

He swung his feet out of bed and sat on the bed’s edge. A pair of slippers stood on the floor and he worked his feet into them, stood up and walked to the mirror.

A strange face stared back at him, a face he’d never seen before, and for a moment muddy panic surged within his brain.

Then, sudden suspicion blossoming, his hand went up to his forehead and rubbed at the smudge that was there, set obliquely across his brow.

Bending low, with his face close to the mirror, he verified the thought.

The smudge upon his brow was an android identification mark! An identification key and number!

With his fingers he carefully explored his face, located the plastic coatings of flesh that had changed its contours until he was unrecognizable.

He turned around, made his way back to the bed, sat down upon it cautiously and gripped the edge of the mattress with his hands.

Disguised, he told himself. Made into an android. Kidnapped a human and an android when he woke.

The door clicked and Herkimer said: “Good morning, sir. I trust that you are comfortable.”

Sutton jerked erect. “So it was you,” he said.

Herkimer nodded happily. “At your service, sir. Is there anything you wish?”

“You didn’t have to knock me out,” said Sutton. “This is the second time. I’m getting tired of it.”

“We had to work fast, sir,” said Herkimer. “We couldn’t have you messing up things, stumbling around and asking questions and wanting to know what it was all about. We just drugged you and hauled you off. It was, believe me, sir, much simpler that way.”

“There was some shooting,” Sutton said. “I heard the guns.”

“It seems,” Herkimer told him, “that there were a few Revisionists lurking about, and it gets a little complicated, sir, when one tries to explain during a fight.”

“You tangle with those Revisionists?”

“Well, to tell the truth,” said Herkimer, “some of them were so rash as to draw their guns. It was most unwise of them, sir. They got the worst of it.”

“It won’t do us a bit of good,” said Sutton, “if the idea was to get me out of the clutches of Trevor’s mob. Trevor will have a psych tracer on me. He knows where I am and this place will be watched three deep.”

Herkimer grinned. “It is, sir. His men are practically bumping into one another all around the place.”

“Then why this get-up?” Sutton demanded angrily. “Why disguise me?”

“Well, sir,” explained Herkimer, “it’s like this. We figured no human in his right mind ever would want to be taken for an android. So we turned you into one. They’ll be looking for a human. It would never occur to them to take a second look at an android when they were looking for a human.”

Sutton grunted. “Smart,” he said. “I hope it doesn’t.…”

“Oh, they’ll get onto it after a while, sir,” Herkimer admitted, cheerfully. “But it will give us some time. Time to work out some plans.”

He moved swiftly around the room, opening chest drawers and taking out clothing.

“It’s very nice, sir,” he said, “to have you back again. We tried to find you, but it was no dice. We figured the Revisionists had you cooped up somewhere, so we redoubled our security here and kept a close watch on everything that happened. For the past five weeks we’ve known every move that Trevor and his gang has made.”

“Five weeks!” gasped Sutton. “Did you say five weeks?”

“Certainly, sir. Five weeks. You disappeared just seven weeks ago.”

“By my calendar,” said Sutton, “it was ten years.”

Herkimer wagged his head sagely, unstartled. “Time is the funniest thing, sir. There’s just no way to make subjective and objective time come out right.”

He laid clothing on the bed. “If you’ll get into these, sir, we’ll go down for breakfast. Eva is waiting—and will be glad to see you.”

CHAPTER XLIII

Trevor missed with three clips in a row. He flung the rest of them down on the desk.

“You’re sure of this?” he asked the man across the desk.

The man nodded, tight-lipped.

“It might be android propaganda, you know,” said Trevor. “They’re clever. That’s a thing you never must forget. An android, for all his bowing and his scraping, is just as smart as we are.”

“Do you realize what it means?” the man demanded. “It means.…”

“I can tell you what it means,” said Trevor. “From now on we can’t be sure which of us are human. There’ll be no sure way of knowing who’s a human and who’s an android. You could be an android. I could be.…”

“Exactly,” said the man.

“That’s why Sutton was so smug yesterday afternoon,” said Trevor. “He sat there, where you are sitting, and I had the impression that he was laughing at me all the time.…”

“I don’t think Sutton knows,” said the man. “It’s an android secret. Only a few of them know it. They certainly wouldn’t take a chance on any human knowing it.”

“Not even Sutton?”

“Not even Sutton,” said the man.

“Cradle,” said Trevor. “Nice sense of fitness they have.”

“You’re going to do something about it, certainly,” said the man impatiently.

Trevor put his elbows on the desk and matched fingertips.

“Of course I am,” he said, “Do you think I’d ever sit back and not do something?”

CHAPTER XLIV

Eva Armour rose from the table on the patio and held out both her hands in greeting. Sutton pulled her close to him, planted a kiss on her upturned lips.

“That,” he said, “is for the million times I have thought of you.”

She laughed at him, suddenly gay and happy.

“Now, Ash, a million times?”

“Tangled time,” said Herkimer. “He’s been away ten years.”

“Oh,” said Eva. “Oh, Ash, how horrible!”

He grinned at her. “Not too horrible. I had ten years of rest. Ten years of peace and quiet. Working on a farm, you know. It was a little rough at first, but I was actually sorry when I had to leave. Except that it meant coming back to you.”

He held a chair for her, took one himself between her and Herkimer.

They ate…ham and eggs, toast and marmalade, strong, black coffee. It was pleasant on the patio. In the trees above them birds quarreled amiably. In the clover at the edge of the bricks and stones that formed the paving, bees hummed among the blossoms.

“How do you like my place, Ash?” asked Eva.

“It’s wonderful,” he said, and then, as if the two ideas might be connected in some way, he added, “I saw Trevor yesterday. He took me to the mountain top and showed me the universe.”

Eva drew in her breath sharply, and Sutton looked up quickly from his plate. Herkimer was waiting with drawn face, with fork poised in mid-air, halfway to his mouth.

“What’s the matter with you two?” Sutton asked, offended. “Don’t you trust me?”

And even as he asked the question, he answered it himself. Of course they wouldn’t trust him. He was human and he could betray his own beliefs. He could twist destiny so that it was a thing for the human race alone. And there was no way in which they could be sure that he would not do this. Why should they trust a man who still felt uncomfortable and patronizing eating with an android? For he did, even now, though he was ashamed and blamed a lifetime of conditioning.

“Ash,” said Eva, “you refused to…”

“I left Trevor with an idea that I would be back to talk it over. Nothing that I said or did. He just believes I will. Told me to go out and beat my head against the wall some more.”

“You have thought about it, sir?” asked Herkimer.

Sutton shook his head. “No. Not too much. I haven’t sat down and mulled it over, if that is what you mean. It would have its points if I were merely human. Sometimes I frankly wonder how much of the human there may be left in me.”

“How much of it do you know, Ash?” Eva asked, speaking softly. Her eyes questioned him.

Sutton scrubbed a hand across his forehead. “Most of it, I think. I know about the war in time and how and why it’s being fought. I know about myself. I have two bodies and two minds, or at least substitute bodies and minds. I know some of the things that I can do. There may be other abilities I do not know about. One grows into them. Each new thing comes hard.”

“We couldn’t tell you,” Eva said. “It would have been so simple if we could have told you. To start with, you would not have believed the things we told you. And, when dealing with time, one interferes as little as possible. Just enough to turn an event in the right direction.

“I tried to warn you. Remember, Ash? As near as I could come to warning.”

He nodded. “After I killed Benton in the Zag House. You told me you had studied me for twenty years.”

“And, remember, I was the little girl in the checkered apron.”

He looked at her in surprise. “You knew about that? It wasn’t just part of the Zag dream?”

“Identification planted by suggestion,” said Herkimer. “So that you could identify Eva as a friend, as someone you had known before and who was close to you. So that you would accept her and whatever help she was allowed to offer.”

“But it was a dream.”

“A Zag dream,” said Herkimer. “The Zag is one of us. His race would benefit if destiny can stand for everyone and not the human race alone.”

Sutton said: “Trevor is too confident. Not just pretending to be confident, but really confident. I keep coming back to that remark he made. Go out, he said, and butt your head some more.”

“He’s counting on you as a human being,” Eva said.

Sutton shook his head. “I can’t think that’s it. He must have some scheme up his sleeve, some maneuver that we won’t be able to check.”

Herkimer spoke slowly. “I don’t like that, sir. The war’s not going too well as it is. If we had to win, we’d be lost right now.”

“If we had to win? I don’t understand…”

“We don’t have to win, sir,” said Herkimer. “All we have to do is fight a holding action, prevent the Revisionists from destroying the book as you will write it. From the very first we have not tried to change a single entry. We’ve tried to keep them from being changed.”

Sutton nodded. “On his part, Trevor has to win decisively. He must smash the original text, either prevent it from being written as I mean to write it or discredit it so thoroughly that not even an android will believe it.”

“You’re right, sir,” Herkimer told him. “Unless he can do that, the humans cannot claim destiny for their own, cannot make other life believe that destiny is reserved for the human race alone.”

“And that is all he wants,” said Eva. “Not the destiny itself, for no human can have the faith in destiny that say, for example, an android can. To Trevor it is merely a matter of propaganda…to make the human race believe so completely that it is destined that it will not rest until it holds the universe.”

“So long,” said Herkimer, “as we can keep him from doing that, we can state that we are winning. But the issue is so finely balanced that a new approach by either side would score heavily. A new weapon could be a factor that would mean victory or defeat.”

“I have a weapon,” Sutton said. “A made-to-order weapon that would beat them…but there’s no way that it can be used.”

Neither of them asked the question, but he saw it on their faces and he answered it.

“There’s only one such weapon. Only one gun. You can’t fight a war with just one gun.”

Feet pounded around the corner of the house. When they turned, they saw an android running toward them across the patio. Dust stained his clothing and his face was red from running. He came to a stop and faced them, clutching at the table’s edge.

“They tried to kill me,” he panted, the words coming out in gushes. “The place is surrounded…”

“Andrew, you fool,” snapped Herkimer. “What do you mean by running in like this? They will know…”

“They’ve found out about the Cradle,” Andrew gasped. “They know.…”

Herkimer came erect in one swift motion. The chair on which he had been sitting tipped over with the violence of his rising and his face was suddenly so white that the identification tattoo on his forehead stood out with startling clearness.

“They know where…?”

Andrew shook his head. “Not where. They just found out about it. Just now. We still have time…”

“We’ll call in all the ships,” said Herkimer. “We’ll have to pull all the guards off the crisis points…”

“But you can’t,” cried Eva. “That’s exactly what they would want you to do. That is all that is stopping them…”

“We have to,” Herkimer said grimly. “There’s no choice. If they destroy the Cradle…”

“Herkimer,” said Eva, and there was a deadly calm in her unhurried words. “The mark!”

Andrew swung around toward her, then took a backward step. Herkimer’s hand flashed underneath his coat and Andrew turned to run, heading for the low wall that rimmed the patio.

The knife in Herkimer’s hand flashed in the Sun and was suddenly a spinning wheel that tracked the running android. It caught him before he reached the wall and he went down into a heap of huddled clothing.

The knife, Sutton saw, was neatly buried in his neck.

CHAPTER XLV

“Have you noticed, sir,” said Herkimer, “how the little things, the inconsequential, trivial factors come to play so big a part in any happening?”

He touched the huddled body with his foot.

“Perfect,” he said. “Absolutely perfect. Except that before reporting to us, he should have smeared some lacquer over his identification mark. Many androids do it in an attempt to hide the mark, but it’s seldom much of a success. After only a short time, the mark shows through.”

“But lacquer?” asked Sutton.

“A little code we have,” said Herkimer. “A very simple thing. It’s the recognition sign for an agent reporting. A password, as it were. It takes a moment only. Some lacquer on your finger and a smear across your forehead.”

“So simple a thing,” said Eva, “that no one, absolutely no one, would ever notice it.”

Sutton nodded. “One of Trevor’s men?”

Herkimer nodded. “Impersonating one of our men. Sent to smoke us out. Sent to start us running, panicked to save the Cradle.”

“This Cradle.…”

“But it means,” said Eva, “that Trevor knows about it. He doesn’t know where it is, but he knows about it. And he’ll hunt until he finds it and then.…”

Herkimer’s gesture stopped her.

“What is wrong?” asked Sutton.

For there was something wrong, something that was terribly wrong. The whole atmosphere of the place had grown harsh. The friendliness was gone…the trust and friendliness and the oneness of their purpose. Shattered by an android who had run across the patio and talked about a thing that he called a Cradle and died, seconds later, with a knife blade through his throat.

Instinctively Sutton’s mind reached out for Herkimer and then he drew it back. It was not an ability, he told himself, that one used upon a friend. It was an ability that one must keep in trust, not to be used curiously or idly, but only where the end result would justify its use.

“What’s gone sour?” he asked. “What is the matter?”

“Sir,” said Herkimer, “you are a human being and this is an android matter.”

For a moment Sutton stood stiff and straight, his mind absorbing the shock of the words that Herkimer had spoken, the black fury boiling ice cold inside his body.

Then, deliberately, as if he had planned to do it, as if it was an action he had decided upon after long consideration, he made a tight fist and swung his arm.

It was a vicious blow, with all his weight and all his strength and anger back of it, and Herkimer went down like an ox beneath a hammer.

“Ash!” cried Eva.

She clutched at his arm, but he shook her off.

* * * *

Herkimer was sitting up, his hands covering his face, blood dripping down between his fingers.

Sutton spoke to him. “I have not sold destiny, nor do I intend to sell it. Although, God knows, if I did, it would be no more than the lot of you deserve.”

“Ash,” said Eva softly. “Ash, we must be sure.”

“How can I make you sure?” he asked. “I can only tell you.”

“They are your people, Ash,” she said. “Your race. Their greatness is your greatness, too. You can’t blame Herkimer for thinking.…”

“They’re your people, too,” said Sutton. “The taint that applies to me applies to you as well.”

She shook her head.

“I’m a special case,” she said. “I was orphaned when I was only a few weeks old. The family androids took me over. They raised me. Herkimer was one of them. I’m much more an android, Ash, than I am a human being.”

Herkimer was still sitting on the grass, beside the sprawled, dead body of Trevor’s agent. He did not take his hands from his face. He made no sign that he was going to. The blood still dripped down between his fingers and trickled down his arms.

Sutton said to Eva: “It was very nice to see you again. And thank you for the breakfast.”

He turned on his heel and walked away, across the patio and over the low wall and out into the path that led down to the road.

He heard Eva cry out for him to stop, but he pretended not to hear her.

I was raised by androids, she had said. And he had been raised by Buster, a robot, not even an android. By Buster, who had taught him how to fight when the kid down the road had given him a licking. Buster, who had whaled him good and proper for eating green apples. By Buster, who had gone out, five hundred years before, to homestead a planet.

Sutton walked with the icy fury still running in his blood. They didn’t trust me, he said. They thought I might sell out. After all the years of waiting, after all the years of planning and of thinking.

“Johnny,” he said.

“What is it, Ash?”

“What’s going on, Johnny? What about all this?”

“You’re a stinker, Ash.”

“To hell with you,” said Sutton. “You and all the rest of them.”

Trevor’s men, he knew, must be around the house, watching and waiting. He expected to be stopped. But he wasn’t stopped. He didn’t see a soul.

CHAPTER XLVI

Sutton stepped into the visor booth and closed the door behind him. From the rack along the wall, he took out the directory and hunted up the number. He dialed and snapped the toggle and there was a robot on the screen.

“Information,” said the robot, his eyes seeking out the forehead of the man who called. Since it was an android, he dropped the customary “sir.”

“Information. Records. What can I do for you?”

“Is there any possibility,” asked Sutton, “that this call could be tapped?”

“None,” said the robot. “Absolutely none. You see…”

“I want to see the homestead filings for the year 7990.”

“Earth filings?”

Sutton nodded.

“Just a moment,” said the robot.

Sutton waited, watching the robot select the proper spool and mount it on the viewer.

“They are arranged alphabetically,” said the robot. “What name did you wish?”

“The name begins with ‘S’,” said Sutton. “Let me see the ‘S’s.”

The unwinding spool was a blur on the screen. It slowed momentarily at the ‘M’s, spun to the ‘P’s, then went more slowly.

The ‘S’ list dragged by. “Toward the end,” said Sutton, and, finally, “Hold it.”

For there was the entry that he sought.

Sutton, Buster…

He read the planet description three times to make sure he had it firmly in his mind.

“That’s all,” he said. “Thank you very much.”

The robot grumbled at him and shut off the screen.

Outside again, Sutton ambled easily across the foyer of the office building he had selected to place his call. On the road outside, he walked up the road, branched off onto a path and found a bench with a pleasant view.

He sat down on the bench and forced himself to relax.

He was being watched, he knew. Kept under observation, for by this time, certainly, Trevor would know that the android who had walked out of Eva Armour’s house was actually Asher Sutton. The psych tracer long ago would have told the story, would have traced his movements and pinpointed him for Trevor’s men to watch.

Take it easy, he told himself. Dawdle. Loaf. Act as if you didn’t have a thing to do, as if you didn’t have a thought in mind.

You can’t fool them, but you can at least catch them unguarded when you have to move.

And there were many things to do, many things left to think about, although he was satisfied that the course of action he had planned was the course to take.

He took them up, step by step, checking them over for any chance of slip-up.

* * * *

First, back to Eva’s house to get the manuscript notes he had left on the hunting asteroid, notes that either Eva or Herkimer must have kept through all the years…or was it only weeks?

That would be a ticklish and embarrassing business at the best. But they were his notes, he told himself. They were his to claim. He had no commitments in this conflict.

“I have come to get my notes. I suppose you still have them somewhere.”

Or—“Remember the attaché case I had? I wonder if you took care of it for me.”

Or—“I’m going on a trip. I’d appreciate my notes if you can lay your hands on them.”

Or—

But it was no use. However he might say it, whatever he might do, the first step would be to reclaim the notes.

Dawdle up till then, he told himself. Work your way back toward the house until it’s almost dark. Then get the notes and after that move fast—so fast that Trevor’s gang can’t catch up with you.

Second was the ship, the ship that he must steal.

He had spotted it earlier in the day while loafing at the area spaceport. Sleek and small, it would be a fast job, and the stiff, military bearing of the officer who had been directing the provisioning and refueling had been the final tip-off that it was the ship he wanted.

Loafing outside the barrier fence, playing the part of an idly curious, no-good android, he had carefully entered the officer’s mind. Ten minutes later, he was on his way, with the information that he needed.

The ship did carry a time-warp unit.

It was not taking off until the next morning.

It would be guarded during the night.

Without a doubt, Sutton told himself, one of Trevor’s ships, one of the fighting warships of the Revisionists.

It would take nerve, he knew, to steal the ship. Nerve and fast footwork and a readiness and the ability to kill.

Saunter out onto the field, as if he were waiting for an incoming ship, mingling with the crowd. Slip out of the crowd and walk across the field, acting as if he had a right to be there. Not run…walk. Run only if someone challenged him and made the challenge stick. Run then. Fight. Kill, if necessary. But get the ship.

Get the ship and pile on the speed to the limit of endurance, heading in a direction away from his destination, driving the ship with everything that was in it.

Two years out, or sooner if necessary, he would throw in the time unit, roll himself and the ship a couple of centuries into the past.

Once in the past, he would have to ditch the motors, for undoubtedly they would have built-in recognition signals which could be traced. Unship them and let them travel in the direction he had been going.

* * * *

Then take over the empty hull with his nonhuman body, swing around and head toward Buster’s planet, still piling on the speed, building it up to that fantastic figure that was necessary to jump great interstellar spaces.

Vaguely he wondered how his body, how the drive of his energy-intake body, would compare with the actual motors in the long haul. Better, he decided. Better than the motors. Faster and stronger.

But it would take years—many years of time, for Buster was far out.

He listed the moves:

Unshipping the engines would throw off pursuit. The pursuers would follow the recognition-signals in the motors, would spend long days in overhauling them before they discovered their mistake.

Check.

The time roll would unhook the contact of Trevor’s psych tracers, for they could not operate through time.

Check.

By the time other tracers could be set in other times to find him, he would be so far out that the tracers would go insane trying to catch up on the time-lag of his whereabouts—if, in fact, they could ever find it in the vastness of the outer reaches of the galaxy.

Check.

If it works, he thought. If it only works. If there isn’t some sort of slip-up, some kind of unseen factor.

A squirrel skipped across the grass, sat up on its haunches and took a long look at him. Then, deciding that he was not dangerous, it started a busy search in the grass for imaginary buried treasure.

Cut loose, thought Sutton. Cut loose from everything that holds me. Cut loose and get the job done. Forget Trevor and his Revisionists, forget Herkimer and the androids. Forget Eva. Get the book written.

Trevor wants to buy me. Eva wants to use me; I’m nothing to her as a man. And the androids do not trust me. And Morgan, if he had the chance, would kill me.

The androids do not trust me.

That’s foolish, he told himself.

Childish.

And yet they did not trust him. You are a human, Eva had told him. The humans are your people. I’m much more an android, Ash, than I am a human being.

He shook his head, bewildered by the situation.

There was one thing that stood out clearly. One thing he had to do. One obligation that was his and one that must be fulfilled or all else would be with utterly no meaning.

There is a thing called destiny.

The knowledge of that destiny has been granted me. Not as a human being, not as a member of the human race, but as an instrument to transmit that knowledge to all other thinking life.

I must write a book to do it.

I must make that book as clear and forceful and as honest as I can.

Having done that, I shall have discharged my responsibility.

Having done that, it does not matter what may happen to me.

Having done that, there is no further claim upon me.

A footstep sounded on the path back of the bench and Sutton turned around.

“Mr. Sutton, isn’t it?” said the man.

Sutton nodded.

“Sit down, Trevor,” he said. “I’ve been expecting you.”

CHAPTER XLVII

“You didn’t stay long with your friends,” said Trevor.

Sutton shook his head. “We had a disagreement.”

“Something about this Cradle business?”

“You might call it that,” said Sutton. “It goes a good deal deeper. The fundamental prejudices rooted between androids and humans.”

“Herkimer killed an android who brought him a message about the Cradle,” Trevor said.

“He thought it was someone that you sent. Someone masquerading as an android. That is why he killed him.”

Trevor pursed his mouth sanctimoniously. “Too bad,” he said. “Too bad. Mind telling me how he recognized the…might we call it the deception?”

“That is something,” Sutton said, “that you will have to figure out without my help.”

Trevor labored at acting unconcerned. “The main point is,” he said, “that it didn’t work.”

“You mean the androids didn’t run helter-skelter for the Cradle and show you where it was.”

Trevor nodded. “There was another angle to it, too. They might have pulled some of their guards off the crisis points. That would have helped us some.”

“Double-barreled,” said Sutton. “Very shrewd.”

“Oh, most assuredly,” agreed Trevor. “Nothing like getting the other fellow square behind the eight-ball.”

He squinted at Sutton’s face.

“Since when,” he asked, “and why did you desert the human race?”

Sutton put his hand up to his face, felt the resilience of the plastic that had remodeled his features into those of another person.

“It was Herkimer’s idea,” he declared. “He thought it would make me hard to spot. You wouldn’t be looking for an android, you know.”

Trevor nodded agreement. “It might have helped,” he said. “It would have fooled us for a while, but when you walked away and the tracer followed you, we knew who you were.”

The squirrel came hopping across the grass and looked them over.

“Sutton,” Trevor asked, “how much do you know about this Cradle business?”

“Nothing,” Sutton replied. “They told me I was a human and it was an android matter.”

“You can see from that how important it must be.”

“I think I can,” said Sutton. “You can guess, just from the name, what it might be.”

“That’s not too hard to do.”

“Because we needed a greater force of humans,” said Trevor, “we made the first androids a thousand years ago. We needed them to fill out the too-thin ranks of Mankind. We made them as close to humans as we could. They could do everything the humans could except one thing.”

“They can’t reproduce,” said Sutton. “I wonder, Trevor, assuming it had been possible, whether we would have given that power to them, too. If we had, they would have been true humans. There would have been no difference whatever between men whose ancestors were made in a laboratory and those whose ancestors stemmed back to the primal ocean. The androids would have been a self-continuing race, and they wouldn’t have been androids. They would have been humans. We would have been adding to our population by biological as well as chemical means.”

“I don’t know,” said Trevor. “Honestly, I don’t. Of course, the wonder is that we could make them at all, that we could produce life in the laboratory. Think of the sheer intellectual ability and the technical skill that went into it. For centuries men had tried to find out what life was, had run down one blind alley after another, getting nowhere near the secret at all. Failing in a scientific answer, many of them turned back to a divine source, to a mythical answer, to the belief that it was a matter of supernatural intervention. The idea is perfectly expressed by du Nouy, who wrote back in the twentieth century.”

“We gave the androids one thing we do not have ourselves,” said Sutton, calmly.

Trevor stared at him, suddenly hard, suddenly suspicious.

“You.…”

“We gave them inferiority,” said Sutton. “We made them less than human and that gave them a reason to fight us. We denied them something they have to fight to get…equality. We furnished them with a motive Man lost long ago, though he still has a need to feel superior to other humans for some arbitrary and unimportant difference. Once it was religion, nationality, the color of the skin. Now it’s the ability to reproduce.”

“They’re equal now,” said Trevor, bitterly. “The androids have been reproducing themselves…chemically, not biologically, for a long time now.”

“We should have expected it,” said Sutton.

“I suppose we should have,” Trevor admitted. “We gave them the same brains we have ourselves. We gave them—or we tried to give them—a human perspective.”

“And we put a mark upon their foreheads.”

Trevor made an angry motion with his hand. “That little matter is being taken care of now. When the androids make another android, they don’t bother to put a mark upon his head.”

Sutton started as the thunder hit him…thunder that rolled and rumbled in his brain, a growing, painful, roaring thunder that shut out everything.

He had said a weapon. He had said there was a weapon…

“They could make themselves better than they were originally,” continued Trevor. “They could improve upon the model. They could build a super-race, a mutant race, call it what you will…”

Only one weapon, Sutton had said. And you can’t fight with just one cannon.

Sutton put a hand up to his forehead, rubbed hard against his brow.

“Sure,” said Trevor. “You can go nuts thinking about it. I have. You can conjure up all sorts of possibilities. They could push us out. The new pushing out the old.”

“The race would be human still,” said Sutton.

“We built slowly, Sutton. The old race. The biological race. We came up from the dawn of Man. We came up from chipped flints and fist axe, from the cave and the treetop nest. We’ve built too slowly and painfully and bloodily to have our heritage taken from us by something to which that slowness and the pain and blood would mean not a thing at all.”

One gun, Sutton thought. But he had been wrong. There were a thousand guns, a million guns, to save destiny for all life that was or would be. Now or a million-billion years from now.

“I suppose,” he said, shakily, “that you feel I should throw in with you.”

“I want you,” said Trevor, “to find out for me where the Cradle is. You could get the androids to tell you.”

“So you can smash it.”

“So I can save humanity. The old humanity. The real humanity.”

“You feel that all humans should stick together now.”

“If you have a streak of human in you, you will be with us now.”

“There was a time,” said Sutton, “back on Earth, before men went to the stars, when the human race was the most important thing the mind of Man could know. That isn’t true any longer, Trevor. There are other races just as great. Either actually or potentially.”

“Each race,” answered Trevor, “is loyal to its own. The human race must be loyal unto itself.”

“I am going to be traitor. I may be wrong, but I still think that destiny is greater than humanity.”

“You refuse to help us?”

“Not only that,” said Sutton. “I am going to fight you. If you want to kill me, Trevor, now’s the time to do it. Because if you don’t do it now, it will be too late.”

“I wouldn’t kill you for all the worlds,” Trevor assured him coldly. “I need the words you wrote. Despite you and the androids, Sutton, we all read them the way we want them read. And so will all the other slimy, crawling things you admire so much. There’s nothing in the whole universe that can stand before the human race, that can match the human race.…”

Sutton saw loathing on his face. “I’m leaving you to yourself, Sutton,” Trevor told him. “Your name will go down as the blackest blot in all of human history. The syllables of your name will be a sound that the last human will gag upon if he tries to speak it. Sutton will become a common noun with which one man will insult another…”

Trevor stood up and started to walk away and then turned back. His voice was not much more than a whisper, but it cut into Sutton’s brain like a whetted knife.

“Go and wash your face,” he said. “Wash off the plastic and the mark. But you’ll never be human again, Sutton. You’ll never dare to call yourself a man again.”

He turned on his heel and walked away. Staring at his back, Sutton seemed to hear the sound of a slamming door.

There was one lamp lighted in a corner of the room. The attaché case lay on a table underneath the lamp and Eva Armour was standing beside a chair, as if she had been expecting him.

“You came back,” said Eva, “to get your notes. I have them ready for you.”

He stood just inside the door and shook his head.

“Not yet,” he said. “Later I will need the notes. Not right now.”

And there it was, he thought, the thing he had worried about that afternoon, the thing that he had tried to put in words.

“I told you about a weapon at breakfast this morning,” he went on. “You must remember what I said about it. I said there was only one weapon. I said you can’t fight a war with just one gun.”

Eva nodded, her lovely face drawn in the lamplight. “I remember, Ash.”

“There are a million of them,” said Ash. “As many as you want. There’s no limit to the number there can be.”

He moved slowly across the room until he stood face to face with her.

“I am on your side,” he told her, simply. “I saw Trevor this afternoon. He cursed me for all humanity.”

Slowly she put up a hand and he felt it slide across his face, the palm cool and smooth. Her fingers closed in his hair and she shook his head gently, tenderly.

“Ash,” she said, “you washed the plastic off your face. You are Ash again.”

He nodded. “I wanted to be human again.”

“Trevor told you about the Cradle, Ash?”

“I’d guessed some of it,” Sutton said. “He told me the rest. About the androids that wear no mark.”

“We use them as spies,” she said, as if it were quite a natural thing to say. “We even have some of them in Trevor’s headquarters. He thinks that they are human.”

“Herkimer?” he asked.

“He isn’t here, Ash. He wouldn’t be here, after what happened out on the patio.”

“Of course,” said Sutton. “Of course he wouldn’t. Eva, we humans are such heels.”

“Sit down,” she told him. “That chair over there. You talk so oddly that you scare me.”

He sat down.

“Tell me what happened,” she demanded.

He didn’t tell her. He said: “I thought of Herkimer this afternoon. When Trevor was talking with me. I hit Herkimer this morning and I would hit him tomorrow morning if he said the same thing to me. It’s something in the human blood, Eva. We fought our way up. With fist, axe and club and gun and atom bomb and.…”

“Shut up,” cried Eva. “Keep still, can’t you?”

He looked up at her in astonishment.

“Human, you say,” she said harshly. “And what is Herkimer if he isn’t human? He is a human, made by humans. A robot can make another robot and they’re still robots, aren’t they? A human makes another human and both of them are humans.”

Sutton mumbled, confused. “Trevor is afraid the androids will take over. That there will be no more humans. No more original, biological humans.…”

“Ash,” she said, “you are bothering yourself over something that there is no reason to fight. The Cradle will solve the secret of biological reproduction. Not for centuries, of course, but ultimately. What’s the use of agonizing over a difference that eventually won’t exist?”

He shook his head. “I guess there is no use. It keeps stirring around in my head, though, accusing me of treason. Once it was so clear and simple. I would write a book and the galaxy would read it and accept it and everything would be just fine.”

“It still can be that way,” she said. “After a while, after a long while. When Man stops believing that racial loyalty means the right to subjugate all other life. It will come, Ash, and humanity will be greater for it, allied to everything that lives, not an arrogant and fearful master.”

“Herkimer said one weapon would do it,” Sutton said. “One weapon would be the balance that was needed. Eva, the androids have gone a long way in their research, haven’t they? Chemical, I mean. The study of the human body. They would have to, to do what they have done.”

She nodded. “A long way, Ash.”

“They have a scanner…a machine that could take a person apart, molecule by molecule, record it almost atom for atom. Make a blueprint for another body.”

“We’ve done that,” said Eva. “We’ve duplicated men in Trevor’s organization. Kidnapped them and blueprinted them and made a duplicate…sent him back the duplicate and placed the other under benevolent detention. It’s only been through tricks like that that we’ve been able to hold our own at all.”

“You could duplicate me?” asked Sutton.

“Certainly, Ash, but…”

“A different face, of course,” said Sutton. “But a duplicate brain and…well, a few other things.”

Eva nodded. “Your special abilities.”

“I can get into another mind,” said Sutton. “Not mere telepathy, but the actual power to be another person, to be that other mind, to see and know and feel the same things that the other mind may see or know or feel. I don’t know how it’s done, but it must be something inherent in the brain structure. If you duplicated my brain, the ability should go along with the duplication. Not all of the duplicates would have it, maybe, not all of them could use it, but some of them could.”

She gasped. “Ash, that would mean.…”

“You would know everything,” said Sutton, “that Trevor thinks. Every word and thought that passes through his mind. Because one of you would be Trevor. And the same with every other person who has anything to do with the war in time. You would know as soon as they know what they’re going to do. You could plan to meet any threat they might be considering. You could block them at everything they tried.”

“It would be stalemate,” Eva said, “and that is exactly what we want. A strategy of stalemate, Ash. They wouldn’t know how they were being blocked and many times they would not know who was blocking them. It would seem to them that luck was permanently against them…that destiny was against them.”

“Trevor himself gave me the idea,” Sutton said. “He told me to go out and butt my head against a wall some more. He told me that finally I would get tired of doing it. He said that after a while I would give up.”

“Ten years,” said Eva. “Ten years should do the job. But if ten won’t, why, then, a hundred. Or a thousand, if it must take that long. We have all the time there is.”

“Finally,” said Sutton, “they would give up. Literally throw up their hands and quit. It would be such a futile thing. Never winning. Always fighting hard and never winning.”

They sat in the room with its one little oasis of light that stood guard against the darkness that pressed in upon them, and there was no triumph in them, for this was not a thing of triumph. This was a matter of necessity, not one of conquest. This was Man fighting himself, and winning and losing at the same time.

“You can arrange this scanning soon?” asked Sutton.

“Tomorrow, Ash.” She looked at him queerly. “What’s your hurry?”

“I am leaving,” Sutton said. “Running away to a refuge that I thought of. That is, if you’ll lend me a ship.”

“Any ship you want.”

“It would be more convenient that way,” he told her. “Otherwise, I’d have to steal one.”

She did not ask the question that he had expected and he went on: “I have to write the book.”

“There are plenty of places, Ash, where you could write the book. Safe places. Places that could be arranged to be foolproof safe.”

He shook his head. “There’s an old robot. He’s the only folks I have. When I was on Cygni, he went out to one of the star systems at the very edge and filed on a homestead. I am going there.”

“I understand,” she said, speaking very softly.

“There’s just one thing,” said Sutton. “I keep remembering a little girl who came and spoke to me when I was fishing. I know that she was a person conditioned in my mind. I know she was put there for a purpose, but it makes no difference. I keep thinking of her.”

He looked at Eva and saw how the lamplight turned her hair into a copper glory.

“I don’t know if I am still allowed to love,” said Sutton. “I can’t tell you for sure if I will always be allowed to love you, Eva. But I wish you would go with me out to Buster’s planet.”

“I can’t,” she cried. “Don’t ask me to.”

“But I must. I’ve suffered enough alone. I deserve you, don’t I?”

Her eyes were misty in the lamplight. “Perhaps sometime, Ash, if you still want me. But there’s this war that must not be lost.…”

Sutton said, simply: “I’ll always want you, Eva. The war can’t be lost any more.”

She was against him, her lips to his, her words muffled and hungry. “I want to. Oh, I want to.”

CHAPTER XLIX

Sutton floated in a sea of light and from far away he heard the humming of the machines at work, little busy machines that were dissecting him with their tiny fingers of probing light and clicking shutters and the sensitive paper that ran like a streak of burnished silver through the holders. Dissecting and weighing, probing and measuring…missing nothing, adding nothing. A faithful record not of himself alone, but of every particle of him, of every cell and molecule, of every branching nerve and muscle fiber.

And from somewhere else, also far away, from a place beyond the sea of light that held him, a voice said one word and kept repeating it:

Traitor.

Traitor.

Traitor.

One word without an exclamation point. A voice that had no emphasis. One flat word.

First there had been one voice crying it and then another joined and then there was a crowd and finally it was a roaring mob and the sound and word built up until it was a world of voices that were crying out the word. Crying out the word until there was no longer any meaning in it, until it had lost its meaning and become a sound being senselessly repeated.

Sutton tried to answer and there was no answer nor any way to answer. He had no voice, for he had no lips or tongue or throat. He was an entity that floated in the sea of light and the word kept on, never changing…never stopping.

But back of the word, a background to the word, there were other words unspoken.

We are the ones who clicked the flints together and built the first fire of Man’s own making. We are the ones who drove the beasts out of the caves and took them for ourselves, in which to shape the first pattern of a human civilization. We are the ones who painted the colorful bison on the hidden walls, working in the light of mud lamps with moss for wicks and animal fat for oil. We are the ones who tilled the soil and tamed the seed to grow beneath our hand. We are the ones who built great cities that our own kind might live together and accomplish the greatness that a handful could not even try. We are the ones who dreamed of stars—and broke the atom to the harness of our minds.

It is our heritage you spend. It is our traditions that you give away to things that we have made, that we have fashioned with the deftness of our hands and the sharpness of our minds.

The machines clicked on and the voice kept on with the one word it was saying.

But there was another voice, deep within the undefinable being that was Asher Sutton, a faint voice.…

It said no word, for there was no word that could frame the thought it formed. It made him kin to something far greater than a race of thinking, brawling, ambitious primates. It made him kin to all life…all life.

Sutton answered it. “Thank you, Johnny. Thank you very much.”

And he was astonished that he could answer Johnny when he could not answer all the others.

The machines went on with their clicking.

CHAPTER L

Herkimer stood alone in the darkness underneath the trees and watched the two of them walk across the field toward the ship.

She should have stayed, he thought. He would have gone without her. He would not have guessed the real reason why she should have stayed. No more than he guesses even now that we sent Buster out to the Tower stars many years ago to establish refuge for him—well knowing that the day might come when he would need that refuge.

She had told him at first that she couldn’t go with him. She should have stuck it out, thought Herkimer. But she is too human. That is the trouble with all of us—we are too human.

Out on the tiny field, fire flickered in the mouths of the tubes and the silvery ship lurched down the launching ramp. Gathering speed, it slammed along the up-curve and hurled itself into the sky, a breath of fire that blazed against the night.

Herkimer stood with tilted head and watched it until it was a tiny pinpoint of light that was fleeing spaceward.

He lifted a hand hesitantly, half doubting the fitness of a parting gesture.

“Good-by, Ash,” he said underneath his breath. “Good-by, Ash. God bless you, Eva.”

Standing there, he had a hopeful thought.

Perhaps, he told himself, Sutton never will learn she is an android woman. But he knew then that Eva would tell the truth and that it would not change Sutton’s love for her.

EMPIRE

CHAPTER ONE

Spencer Chambersfrowned at the spacegram on the desk before him. John Moore Mallory. That was the man who had caused so much trouble in the Jovian elections. The troublemaker who had shouted for an investigation of Interplanetary Power. The man who had said that Spencer Chambers and Interplanetary Power were waging economic war against the people of the Solar System.

Chambers smiled. With long, well-kept fingers, he rubbed his iron-gray mustache.

John Moore Mallory was right; for that reason, he was a dangerous man. Prison was the place for him, but probably a prison outside the Jovian confederacy. Perhaps one of the prison ships that plied to the edge of the System, clear to the orbit of Pluto. Or would the prison on Mercury be better?

Spencer Chambers leaned back in his chair and matched his fingertips, staring at them, frowning again.

Mercury was a hard place. A man’s life wasn’t worth much there. Working in the power plants, where the Sun poured out its flaming blast of heat, and radiations sucked the energy from one’s body, in six months, a year at most, any man was finished.

Chambers shook his head. Not Mercury. He had nothing against Mallory. He had never met the man but he rather liked him. Mallory was just a man fighting for a principle, the same as Chambers was doing.

He was sorry that it had been necessary to put Mallory in prison. If the man only had listened to reason, had accepted the proposals that had been made, or just had dropped out of sight until the Jovian elections were over…or at least had moderated his charges. But when he had attempted to reveal the offers, which he termed bribery, something had to be done.

Ludwig Stutsman had handled that part of it. Brilliant fellow, this Stutsman, but as mean a human as ever walked on two legs. A man utterly without mercy, entirely without principle. A man who would stoop to any depth. But a useful man, a good one to have around to do the dirty work. And dirty work sometimes was necessary.

Chambers picked up the spacegram again and studied it. Stutsman, out on Callisto now, had sent it. He was doing a good job out there. The Jovian confederacy, less than one Earth year under Interplanetary domination, was still half rebellious, still angry at being forced to turn over its government to the hand-picked officials of Chambers’ company. An iron heel was needed and Stutsman was that iron heel.

* * * *

So the people on the Jovian satellites wanted the release of John Moore Mallory. “They’re getting ugly,” the spacegram said. It had been a mistake to confine Mallory to Callisto. Stutsman should have thought of that.

Chambers would instruct Stutsman to remove Mallory from the Callisto prison, place him on one of the prison ships. Give instructions to the captain to make things comfortable for him. When this furor had blown over, after things had quieted down in the Jovian confederacy, it might be possible to release Mallory. After all, the man wasn’t really guilty of any crime. It was a shame that he should be imprisoned when racketeering rats like Scorio went scot-free right here in New York.

A buzzer purred softly and Chambers reached out to press a stud.

“Dr. Craven to see you,” his secretary said. “You asked to see him, Mr. Chambers.”

“All right,” said Chambers. “Send him right in.”

He clicked the stud again, picked up his pen, wrote out a spacegram to Stutsman, and signed it.

Dr. Herbert Craven stood just inside the door, his black suit wrinkled and untidy, his sparse sandy hair standing on end.

“You sent for me,” he said sourly.

“Sit down, Doctor,” invited Chambers.

* * * *

Craven sat down. He peered at Chambers through thick-lensed glasses.

“I haven’t much time,” he declared acidly.

“Cigar?” Chambers offered.

“Never smoke.”

“A drink, then?”

“You know I don’t drink,” snapped Craven.

“Doctor,” said Chambers, “you’re the least sociable man I’ve ever known. What do you do to enjoy yourself?”

“I work,” said Craven. “I find it interesting.”

“You must. You even begrudge the time it takes to talk with me.”

“I won’t deny it. What do you want this time?”

Chambers swung about to face him squarely across the desk. There was a cold look in the financier’s gray eyes and his lips were grim.

“Craven,” he said, “I don’t trust you. I’ve never trusted you. Probably that’s no news to you.”

“You don’t trust anyone,” countered Craven. “You’re watching everybody all the time.”

“You sold me a gadget I didn’t need five years ago,” said Chambers. “You outfoxed me and I don’t hold it against you. In fact, it almost made me admire you. Because of that I put you under a contract, one that you and all the lawyers in hell can’t break, because someday you’ll find something valuable, and when you do, I want it. A million a year is a high price to pay to protect myself against you, but I think it’s worth it. If I didn’t think so, I’d have turned you over to Stutsman long ago. Stutsman knows how to handle men like you.”

“You mean,” said Craven, “that you’ve found I’m working on something I haven’t reported to you.”

“That’s exactly it.”

“You’ll get a report when I have something to report. Not before.”

“That’s all right,” said Chambers. “I just wanted you to know.”

Craven got to his feet slowly. “These talks with you are so refreshing,” he remarked.

“We’ll have to have them oftener,” said Chambers.

Craven banged the door as he went out.

Chambers stared after him. A queer man, the most astute scientific mind anywhere, but not a man to be trusted.

* * * *

The president of Interplanetary Power rose from his chair and walked to the window. Below spread the roaring inferno of New York, greatest city in the Solar System, a strange place of queer beauty and weighty materialism, dreamlike in its super-skyscraper construction, but utilitarian in its purpose, for it was a port of many planets.

The afternoon sunlight slanted through the window, softening the iron-gray hair of the man who stood there. His shoulders almost blocked the window, for he had the body of a fighting man, one, moreover, in good condition. His short-clipped mustache rode with an air of dignity above his thin, rugged mouth.

His eyes looked out on the city, but did not see it. Through his brain went the vision of a dream that was coming true. His dream spun its fragile net about the planets of the Solar System, about their moons, about every single foot of planetary ground where men had gone to build and create a second homeland—the mines of Mercury and the farms of Venus, the pleasure-lands of Mars and the mighty domed cities on the moons of Jupiter, the moons of Saturn and the great, cold laboratories of Pluto.

Power was the key, supplied by the accumulators owned and rented by Interplanetary Power. A monopoly of power. Power that Venus and Mercury had too much of, must sell on the market, and that the other planets and satellites needed. Power to drive huge spaceships across the void, to turn the wheels of industry, to heat the domes on colder worlds. Power to make possible the life and functioning of mankind on hostile worlds.

In the great power plants of Mercury and Venus, the accumulators were charged and then shipped out to those other worlds where power was needed. Accumulators were rented, never sold. Because they belonged at all times to Interplanetary Power, they literally held the fate of all the planets in their cells.

A few accumulators were manufactured and sold by other smaller companies, but they were few and the price was high. Interplanetary saw to that. When the cry of monopoly was raised, Interplanetary could point to these other manufacturers as proof that there was no restraint of trade. Under the statute no monopoly could be charged, but the cost of manufacturing accumulators alone was protection against serious competition from anyone.

Upon a satisfactory, efficient power-storage device rested the success or failure of space travel itself. That device and the power it stored were for sale by Interplanetary…and, to all practical purposes, by Interplanetary only.

Accordingly, year after year, Interplanetary had tightened its grip upon the Solar System. Mercury was virtually owned by the company. Mars and Venus were little more than puppet states. And now the government of the Jovian confederacy was in the hands of men who acknowledged Spencer Chambers as their master. On Earth the agents and the lobbyists representing Interplanetary swarmed in every capital, even in the capital of the Central European Federation, whose people were dominated by an absolute dictatorship. For even Central Europe needed accumulators.

“Economic dictatorship,” said Spencer Chambers to himself. “That’s what John Moore Mallory called it.” Well, why not? Such a dictatorship would insure the best business brains at the heads of the governments, would give the Solar System a business administration, would guard against the mistakes of popular government.

Democracies were based on a false presumption—the theory that all people were fit to rule. It granted intelligence where there was no intelligence. It presumed ability where there was not the slightest trace of any. It gave the idiot the same political standing as the wise man, the crackpot the same political opportunity as the man of well-grounded common sense, the weakling the same voice as the strong man. It was government by emotion rather than by judgment.

* * * *

Spencer Chambers’ face took on stern lines. There was no softness left now. The late afternoon sunlight painted angles and threw shadows and created highlights that made him look almost like a granite mask on a solid granite body.

There was no room for Mallory’s nonsense in a dynamic, expanding civilization. No reason to kill him—even he might have value under certain circumstances, and no really efficient executive destroys value—but he had to be out of the way where his mob-rousing tongue could do no damage. The damned fool! What good would his idiotic idealism do him on a prison spaceship?

CHAPTER TWO

Russell Page squinted thoughtful eyes at the thing he had created—a transparent cloud, a visible, sharply outlined cloud of something. It was visible as a piece of glass is visible, as a globe of water is visible. There it lay, within his apparatus, a thing that shouldn’t be.

“I believe we have something there, Harry,” he said slowly.

Harry Wilson sucked at the cigarette that drooped from the corner of his mouth, blew twin streams of smoke from his nostrils. His eyes twitched nervously.

“Yeah,” he said. “Anti-entropy.”

“All of that,” said Russell Page. “Perhaps a whole lot more.”

“It stops all energy change,” said Wilson, “as if time stood still and things remained exactly as they were when time had stopped.”

“It’s more than that,” Page declared. “It conserves not only energy in toto, not only the energy of the whole, but the energy of the part. It is perfectly transparent, yet it has refractive qualities. It won’t absorb light because to do so would change its energy content. In that field, whatever is hot stays hot, whatever is cold can’t gain heat.”

He scraped his hand over a week’s growth of beard, considering. From his pocket he took a pipe and a leather pouch. Thoughtfully he filled the pipe and lit it.

It had started with his experiments in Force Field 348, an experiment to observe the effects of heating a conductor in that field. It had been impossible to heat the conductor electrically, for that would have upset the field, changed it, twisted it into something else. So he had used a Bunsen burner.

Through half-closed eyes, he still could see that slender strand of imperm wire, how its silvery length had turned to red under the blue flame. Deep red at first and then brighter until it flamed in almost white-hot incandescence. And all the while the humming of the transformer as the force field built up. The humming of the transformer and the muted roaring of the burner and the glowing heat in the length of wire.

Something had happened then…an awesome something. A weird wrench as if some greater power, some greater law had taken hold. A glove of force, invisible, but somehow sensed, had closed about the wire and flame. Instantly the roaring of the burner changed in tone; an odor of gas spewed out of the vents at its base. Something had cut off the flow of flame in the brass tube. Some force, something…

The flame was a transparent cloud. The blue and red of flame and hot wire had changed, in the whiplash of a second, to a refractive but transparent cloud that hung there within the apparatus.

* * * *

The red color had vanished from the wire as the blue had vanished from the flame. The wire was shining. It wasn’t silvery; it wasn’t white. There was no hint of color, just a refractive blur that told him the wire was there. Colorless reflection. And that meant perfect reflection!The most perfect reflectors reflect little more than 98 per cent of the light incident and the absorption of the two per cent colors those reflectors as copper or gold or chromium. But the imperm wire within that force field that had been flame a moment before, was reflecting all light.

He had cut the wire with a pair of shears and it had still hung, unsupported, in the air, unchanging within the shimmer that constituted something no man had ever seen before.

“You can’t put energy in,” said Page, talking to himself, chewing the bit of his pipe. “You can’t take energy out. It’s still as hot as it was at the moment the change came. But it can’t radiate any of that heat. It can’t radiate any kind of energy.”

Why, even the wire was reflective, so that it couldn’t absorb energy and thus disturb the balance that existed within that bit of space. Not only energy itself was preserved, but the very form of energy.

But why? That was the question that hammered at him. Why? Before he could go ahead, he had to know why.

Perhaps the verging of the field toward Field 349? Somewhere in between those two fields of force, somewhere within that almost non-existent borderline which separated them, he might find the secret.

Rising to his feet, he knocked out his pipe.

“Harry,” he announced, “we have work to do.”

Smoke drooled from Wilson’s nostrils.

“Yeah,” he said.

Page had a sudden urge to lash out and hit the man. That eternal drooling of smoke out of his nostrils, that everlasting cigarette dangling limply from one corner of his mouth, the shifty eyes, the dirty fingernails, got on his nerves.

But Wilson was a mechanical genius. His hands were clever despite the dirty nails. They could fashion pinhead cameras and three-gram electroscopes or balances capable of measuring the pressure of electronic impacts. As a laboratory assistant he was unbeatable. If only he wouldn’t answer every statement or question with that nerve-racking ‘yeah’!

Page stopped in front of a smaller room, enclosed by heavy quartz. Inside that room was the great bank of mercury-vapor rectifiers. From them lashed a blue-green glare that splashed against his face and shoulders, painting him in angry, garish color. The glass guarded him from the terrific blast of ultra-violet light that flared from the pool of shimmering molten metal, a terrible emanation that would have flayed a man’s skin from his body within the space of seconds.

* * * *

The scientist squinted his eyes against the glare. There was something in it that caught him with a deadly fascination. The personification of power—the incredibly intense spot of incandescent vapor, the tiny sphere of blue-green fire, the spinning surge of that shining pool, the intense glare of ionization.

Power…the breath of modern mankind, the pulse of progress.

In an adjacent room were the accumulators. Not Interplanetary accumulators, which he would have had to rent, but ones he had bought from a small manufacturer who turned out only ten or fifteen thousand a year…not enough to bother Interplanetary.

Gregory Manning had made it possible for him to buy those accumulators. Manning had made many things possible in this little laboratory hidden deep within the heart of the Sierras, many miles from any other habitation.

Manning’s grandfather, Jackson Manning, had first generated the curvature field and overcome gravity, had left his grandson a fortune that approached the five-billion mark. But that had not been all. From his famous ancestor, Manning had inherited a keen, sharp, scientific mind. From his mother’s father, Anthony Barret, he had gained an astute business sense. But unlike his maternal grandfather, he had not turned his attention entirely to business. Old Man Barret had virtually ruled Wall Street for almost a generation, had become a financial myth linked with keen business sense, with an uncanny ability to handle men and money. But his grandson, Gregory Manning, had become known to the world in a different way. For while he had inherited scientific ability from one side of the family, financial sense from the other, he likewise had inherited from some other ancestor—perhaps remote and unknown—a wanderlust that had taken him to the farthest outposts of the Solar System.

* * * *

It was Gregory Manning who had financed and headed the rescue expedition which took the first Pluto flight off that dark icebox of a world when the exploration ship had crashed. It was he who had piloted home the winning ship in the Jupiter derby, sending his bulleting craft screaming around the mighty planet in a time which set a Solar record. It was Gregory Manning who had entered the Venusian swamps and brought back, alive, the mystery lizard that had been reported there. And he was the one who had flown the serum to Mercury when the lives of ten thousand men depended upon the thrumming engines that drove the shining ship inward toward the Sun.

Russell Page had known him since college days. They had worked out their experiments together in the school laboratories, had spent long hours arguing and wondering…debating scientific theories. Both had loved the same girl, both had lost her, and together they had been bitter over it…drowning their bitterness in a three-day drunk that made campus history.

After graduation Gregory Manning had gone on to world fame, had roamed over the face of every planet except Jupiter and Saturn, had visited every inhabited moon, had climbed Lunar mountains, penetrated Venusian swamps, crossed Martian deserts, driven by a need to see and experience that would not let him rest. Russell Page had sunk into obscurity, had buried himself in scientific research, coming more and more to aim his effort at the discovery of a new source of power…power that would be cheap, that would destroy the threat of Interplanetary dictatorship.

Page turned away from the rectifier room.

“Maybe I’ll have something to show Greg soon,” he told himself. “Maybe, after all these years.… ”

* * * *

Forty minutes after Page put through the call to Chicago, Gregory Manning arrived. The scientist, watching for him from the tiny lawn that surrounded the combined home and laboratory, saw his plane bullet into sight, scream down toward the little field and make a perfect landing.

Hurrying toward the plane as Gregory stepped out of it, Russell noted that his friend looked the same as ever, though it had been a year or more since he had seen him. The thing that was discomfiting about Greg was his apparently enduring youthfulness.

He was clad in jodhpurs and boots and an old tweed coat, with a brilliant blue stock at his throat. He waved a hand in greeting and hurried forward. Russ heard the grating of his boots across the gravel of the walk.

Greg’s face was bleak; it always was. A clean, smooth face, hard, with something stern about the eyes.

His grip almost crushed Russ’s hand, but his tone was crisp. “You sounded excited, Russ.”

“I have a right to be,” said the scientist. “I think I have found something at last.”

“Atomic power?” asked Manning. There was no flutter of excitement in his voice, just a little hardening of the lines about his eyes, a little tensing of the muscles in his cheeks.

Russ shook his head. “Not atomic energy. If it’s anything, it’s material energy, the secret of the energy of matter.”

They halted before two lawn chairs.

“Let’s sit down here,” invited Russ. “I can tell it to you out here, show it to you afterward. It isn’t often I can be outdoors.”

“It is a fine place,” said Greg. “I can smell the pines.”

The laboratory perched on a ledge of rugged rock, nearly 7,000 feet above sea level. Before them the land swept down in jagged ruggedness to a valley far below, where a stream flashed in the noonday sun. Beyond climbed pine-clad slopes and far in the distance gleamed shimmering spires of snow-capped peaks.

From his leather jacket Russ hauled forth his pipe and tobacco, lighted up.

“It was this way,” he said. Leaning back comfortably he outlined the first experiment. Manning listened intently.

“Now comes the funny part,” Russ added. “I had hopes before, but I believe this is what put me on the right track. I took a metal rod, a welding rod, you know. I pushed it into that solidified force field, if that is what you’d call it…although that doesn’t describe it. The rod went in. Took a lot of pushing, but it went in. And though the field seemed entirely transparent, you couldn’t see the rod, even after I had pushed enough of it in so it should have come out the other side. It was as if it hadn’t entered the sphere of force at all. As if I were just telescoping the rod and its density were increasing as I pushed, like pushing it back into itself, but that, of course, wouldn’t have been possible.”

He paused and puffed at his pipe, his eyes fixed on the snowy peaks far in the purple distance. Manning waited.

“Finally the rod came out,” Russ went on. “Mind you, it came out, even after I would have sworn, if I had relied alone upon my eyes, that it hadn’t entered the sphere at all. But it came out ninety degrees removed from its point of entry!”

“Wait a second,” said Manning. “This doesn’t check. Did you do it more than once?”

“I did it a dozen times and the results were the same each time. But you haven’t heard the half of it. When I pulled that rod out—yes, I could pull it out—it was a good two inches shorter than when I had pushed it in. I couldn’t believe that part of it. It was even harder to believe than that the rod should come out ninety degrees from its point of entry. I measured the rods after that and made sure. Kept an accurate record. Every single one of them lost approximately two inches by being shoved into the sphere. Every single one of them repeated the phenomenon of curving within the sphere to come out somewhere else than where I had inserted them.”

* * * *

“Any explanation of it?” asked Manning, and now there was a cold chill of excitement in his voice.

“Theories, no real explanations. Remember that you can’t see the rod after you push it into the sphere. It’s just as if it isn’t there. Well, maybe it isn’t. You can’t disturb anything within that sphere or you’d change the sum of potential-kinetic-pressure energies within it. The sphere seems dedicated to that one thing…it cannot change. If the rod struck the imperm wire within the field, it would press the wire down, would use up energy, decrease the potential energy. So the rod simply had to miss it somehow. I believe it moved into some higher plane of existence and went around. And in doing that it had to turn so many corners, so many fourth-dimensional corners, that the length was used up. Or maybe it was increased in density. I’m not sure. Perhaps no one will ever know.”

“Why didn’t you tell me about this sooner?” demanded Manning. “I should have been out here helping you. Maybe I wouldn’t be much good, but I might have helped.”

“You’ll have your chance,” Russ told him. “We’re just starting. I wanted to be sure I had something before I troubled you. I tried other things with that first sphere. I found that metal pushed through the sphere will conduct an electrical current, which is pretty definite proof that the metal isn’t within the sphere at all. Glass can be forced through it without breaking. Not flexible glass, but rods of plain old brittle glass. It turns without breaking, and it also loses some of its length. Water can be forced through a tube inserted in the sphere, but only when terrific pressure is applied. What that proves I can’t even begin to guess.”

“You said you experimented on the first sphere,” said Manning. “Have you made others?”

Russ rose from his chair.

“Come on in, Greg,” he said, and there was a grin on his face. “I have something you’ll have to see to appreciate.”

* * * *

The apparatus was heavier and larger than the first in which Russ had created the sphere of energy. Fed by a powerful accumulator battery, five power leads were aimed at it, centered in the space between four great copper blocks.

Russ’s hand went out to the switch that controlled the power. Suddenly the power beams flamed, changed from a dull glow into an intense, almost intolerable brilliance. A dull grumble of power climbed up to a steady wail.

The beams had changed color, were bluish now, the typical color of ionized air. They were just power beams, meeting at a common center, but somehow they were queer, too, for though they were capable of slashing far out into space, they were stopped dead. Their might was pouring into a common center and going no farther. A splash of intensely glowing light rested over them, then began to rotate slowly as a motor somewhere hummed softly, cutting through the mad roar and rumble of power that surged through the laboratory.

The glowing light was spinning more swiftly now. A rotating field was being established. The power beams began to wink, falling and rising in intensity. The sphere seemed to grow, almost filling the space between the copper blocks. It touched one and rebounded slightly toward another. It extended, increased slightly. A terrible screaming ripped through the room, drowning out the titanic din as the spinning sphere came in contact with the copper blocks, as force and metal resulted in weird friction.

With a shocking wrench the beams went dead, the scream cut off, the roar was gone. A terrifying silence fell upon the room as soon as the suddenly thunking relays opened automatically.

* * * *

The sphere was gone! In its place was a tenuous refraction that told where it had been. That and a thin layer of perfectly reflective copper…colorless now, but Manning knew it was copper, for it represented the continuation of the great copper blocks.

His mind felt as if it were racing in neutral, getting nowhere. Within that sphere was the total energy that had been poured out by five gigantic beams, turned on full, for almost a minute’s time. Compressed energy! Energy enough to blast these mountains down to the primal rock were it released instantly. Energy trapped and held by virtue of some peculiarity of that little borderline between Force Fields 348 and 349.

Russ walked across the room to a small electric truck with rubber caterpillar treads, driven by a bank of portable accumulators. Skillfully the scientist maneuvered it over to the other side of the room, picked up a steel bar four inches in diameter and five feet long. Holding it by the handler’s magnetic crane, he fixed it firmly in the armlike jaws on the front of the machine, then moved the machine into a position straddling the sphere of force.

With smashing momentum the iron jaws thrust downward, driving the steel bar into the sphere. There was a groaning crash as the handler came to a halt, shuddering, with only eight inches of the bar buried in the sphere. The stench of hot insulation filled the room while the electric motor throbbed, the rubber treads creaked, the machine groaned and strained, but the bar would go no farther.

Russ shut off the machine and stood back.

“That gives you an idea,” he said grimly.

“The trick now,” Greg said, “is to break down the field.”

Without a word, Russ reached for the power controls. A sudden roar of thunderous fury and the beams leaped at the sphere…but this time the sphere did not materialize again. Again the wrench shuddered through the laboratory, a wrench that seemed to distort space and time.

Then, as abruptly as it had come, it was gone. But when it ended, something gigantic and incomprehensibly powerful seemed to rush soundlessly by…something that was felt and sensed. It was like a great noiseless, breathless wind in the dead of night that rushed by them and through them, all about them in space and died slowly away.

But the vanished steel did not reappear with the disappearance of the sphere and the draining away of power. Almost grotesquely now, the handler stood poised above the place where the sphere had been and in its jaws it held the bar. But the end of the bar, the eight inches that had been within the sphere, was gone. It had been sliced off so sharply that it left a highly reflective concave mirror on the severed surface.

“Where is it?” demanded Manning. “In that higher dimension?”

Russ shook his head. “You noticed that rushing sensation? That may have been the energy of matter rushing into some other space. It may be the key to the energy of matter!”

Gregory Manning stared at the bar. “I’m staying with you, Russ. I’m seeing this thing through.”

“I knew you would,” said Russ.

Triumph flamed briefly in Manning’s eyes. “And when we finish, we’ll have something that will break Interplanetary. We’ll smash their stranglehold on the Solar System.” He stopped and looked at Page. “Lord, Russ,” he whispered, “do you realize what we’ll have?”

“I think I do, Greg,” the scientist answered soberly. “Material energy engines. Power so cheap that you won’t be able to give it away. More power than anybody could ever need.”

CHAPTER THREE

Russ hunched over the keyboard set in the control room of the Comet and stared down at the keys. The equation was set and ready. All he had to do was tap that key and they would know, beyond all argument, whether or not they had dipped into the awful heart of material energy; whether, finally, they held in their grasp the key to the release of energy that would give the System power to spare.

His glance lifted from the keyboard, looked out the observation port. Through the inkiness of space ran a faint blue thread, a tiny line that stretched from the ship and away until it was lost in the darkness of the void.

One hundred thousand miles away, that thread touched the surface of a steel ball bearing…a speck in the immensity of space.

He thought about that little beam of blue. It took power to do that, power to hold a beam tight and strong and steady through the stress of one hundred thousand miles. But it had to be that far away…and they had that power. From the bowels of the ship came the deep purr of it, the angry, silky song of mighty engines throttled down.

He heard Harry Wilson shuffling impatiently behind him, smelled the acrid smoke that floated from the tip of Wilson’s cigarette.

“Might as well punch that key, Russ,” said Manning’s cool voice. “We have to find out sooner or later.”

Russ’s finger hovered over the key, steadied and held. When he punched that key, if everything worked right, the energy in the tiny ball bearing would be released instantaneously. The energy of a piece of steel, weighing less than an ounce. Over that tight beam of blue would flash the impulse of destruction.…

His fingers plunged down.

Space flamed in front of them. For just an instant the void seemed filled with an angry, bursting fire that lapped with hungry tongues of cold, blue light toward the distant planets. A flare so intense that it was visible on the Jovian worlds, three hundred million miles away. It lighted the night-side of Earth, blotting out the stars and Moon, sending astronomers scurrying for their telescopes, rating foot-high streamers in the night editions.

Slowly Russ turned around and faced his friend.

“We have it, Greg,” he said. “We really have it. We’ve tested the control formulas all along the line. We know what we can do.”

“We don’t know it all yet,” declared Greg. “We know we can make it work, but I have a feeling we haven’t more than skimmed the surface possibilities.”

* * * *

Russ sank into a chair and stared about the room. They knew they could generate alternating current of any frequency they chose by use of a special collector apparatus. They could release radiant energy in almost any quantity they desired, in any wave-length, from the longest radio to the incredibly hard cosmics. The electrical power they could measure accurately and easily by simple voltmeters and ammeters. But radiant energy was another thing. When it passed all hitherto known bonds, it would simply fuse any instrument they might use to measure it.

But they knew the power they generated. In one split second they had burst the energy bonds of a tiny bit of steel and that energy had glared briefly more hotly than the Sun.

“Greg,” he said, “it isn’t often you can say that any event was the beginning of a new era. You can with this—the era of unlimited power. It kind of scares me.”

Up until a hundred years ago coal and oil and oxygen had been the main power sources, but with the dwindling of the supply of coal and oil, man had sought another way. He had turned back to the old dream of snatching power direct from the Sun. In the year 2048 Patterson had perfected the photo-cell. Then the Alexanderson accumulators made it possible to pump the life-blood of power to the far reaches of the System, and on Mercury and Venus, and to a lesser extent on Earth, great accumulator power plants had sprung up, with Interplanetary, under the driving genius of Spencer Chambers, gaining control of the market.

The photo-cell and the accumulator had spurred interplanetary trade and settlement. Until it had been possible to store Sun-power for the driving of spaceships and for shipment to the outer planets, ships had been driven by rocket fuel, and the struggling colonies on the outer worlds had fought a bitter battle without the aid of ready power.

Coal and oil there were in plenty on the outer worlds, but one other essential was lacking…oxygen. Coal on Mars, for instance, had to burned under synthetic air pressures, like the old carburetor. The result was inefficiency. A lot of coal burned, not enough power delivered.

Even the photo-cells were inefficient when attempts were made to operate them beyond the Earth; that was the maximum distance for maximum Solar efficiency.

Russ dug into the pocket of his faded, scuffed leather jacket and hauled forth pipe and pouch. Thoughtfully he tamped the tobacco into the bowl.

“Three months,” he said. “Three months of damn hard work.”

“Yeah,” agreed Wilson, “we sure have worked.”

Wilson’s face was haggard, his eyes red. He blew smoke through his nostrils.

“When we get back, how about us taking a little vacation?” he asked.

Russ laughed. “You can if you want to. Greg and I are keeping on.”

“We can’t waste time,” Manning said. “Spencer Chambers may get wind of this. He’d move all hell to stop us.”

Wilson spat out his cigarette. “Why don’t you patent what you have? That would protect you.”

* * * *

Russ grinned, but it was a sour one.

“No use,” said Greg. “Chambers would tie us up in a mile of legal red tape. It would be just like walking up and handing it to him.”

“You guys go ahead and work,” Wilson stated. “I’m taking a vacation. Three months is too damn long to stay out in a spaceship.”

“It doesn’t seem long to me,” said Greg, his tone cold and sharp.

No, thought Russ, it hadn’t seemed long. Perhaps the hours had been rough, the work hard, but he hadn’t noticed. Sleep and food had come in snatches. For three months they had worked in space, not daring to carry out their experiments on Earth…frankly afraid of the thing they had.

He glanced at Manning.

The three months had left no mark upon him, no hint of fatigue or strain. Russ understood now how Manning had done the things he did. The man was all steel and flame. Nothing could touch him.

“We still have a lot to do,” said Manning.

Russ leaned back and puffed at his pipe.

Yes, there was a lot to do. Transmission problems, for instance. To conduct away such terrific power as they knew they were capable of developing would require copper or silver bars as thick as a man’s thigh, and even so at voltages capable of jumping a two-foot spark gap.

Obviously, a small machine such as they now had would be impractical. No matter how perfectly it might be insulated, the atmosphere itself would not be an insulator, with power such as this. And if one tried to deliver the energy as a mechanical rotation of a shaft, what shaft could transmit it safely and under control?

“Oh, hell,” Russ burst out, “let’s get back to Earth.”

* * * *

Harry Wilson watched the couple alight from the aero-taxi, walk up the broad steps and pass through the magic portals of the Martian Club. He could imagine what the club was like, the deference of the management, the exotic atmosphere of the dining room, the excellence of the long, cold drinks served at the bar. Mysterious drinks concocted of ingredients harvested in the jungles of Venus, spiced with produce from the irrigated gardens of Mars.

He puffed on the dangling cigarette and shuffled on along the airy highwalk. Below and above him, all around him flowed the beauty and the glamor, the bravery and the splendor of New York. The city’s song was in his ears, the surging noises that were its voice.

Two thousand feet above his head reared giant pinnacles of shining metal, glinting in the noonday sun, architecture that bore the alien stamp of other worlds.

Wilson turned around, stared at the Martian Club. A man needed money to pass through those doors, to taste the drinks that slid across its bar, to sit and watch its floor shows, to hear the music of its orchestras.

For a moment he stood, hesitating, as if he were trying to make up his mind. He flipped away the cigarette, turned on his heel, walked briskly to the automatic elevator which would take him to the lower levels.

There, on the third level, he entered a Mecho restaurant, sat down at a table and ordered from the robot waiter, pushing ivory-tipped buttons on the menu before him.

He ate leisurely, smoked ferociously, thinking. Looking at his watch, he saw that it was nearly two o’clock. He walked to the cashier machine, inserted the metallic check with the correct change and received from the clicking, chuckling register the disk that would let him out the door.

“Thank you, come again,” the cashier-robot fluted.

“Don’t mention it,” growled Wilson.

Outside the restaurant he walked briskly. Ten blocks away he came to a building roofing four square blocks. Over the massive doorway, set into the beryllium steel, was a map of the Solar System, a map that served as a cosmic clock, tracing the movement of the planets as they swung in their long arcs around the Sun. The Solar System was straddled by glowing, golden letters. They read: INTERPLANETARY BUILDING.

It was from here that Spencer Chambers ruled his empire built on power.

Wilson went inside.

CHAPTER FOUR

The new apparatus was set up, a machine that almost filled the laboratory…a giant, compact mass of heavy, solidly built metal work, tied together by beams of girderlike construction. It was meant to stand up under the hammering of unimaginable power, the stress of unknown spatial factors.

Slowly, carefully, Russell Page tapped keys on the control board, setting up an equation. Sucking thoughtfully at his pipe, he checked and rechecked them.

Harry Wilson regarded him through squinted eyes.

“What the hell is going to happen now?” he asked.

“We’ll have to wait and see,” Russ answered. “We know what we want to happen, what we hope will happen, but we never can be sure. We are working with conditions that are entirely new.”

Sitting beside a table littered with papers, staring at the gigantic machine before him, Gregory Manning said slowly: “That thing simply has to adapt itself to spaceship drive. There’s everything there that’s needed for space propulsion. Unlimited power from a minimum of fuel. Split-second efficiency. Entire independence of any set condition, because the stuff creates its own conditions.”

He slowly wagged his head.

“The secret is some place along the line,” he declared. “I feel that we must be getting close to it.”

Russ walked from the control board to the table, picked up a sheaf of papers and leafed through them. He selected a handful and shook them in his fist.

“I thought I had it here,” he said. “My math must have been wrong, some factor that I didn’t include in the equation.”

“You’ll keep finding factors for some time yet,” Greg prophesied.

“Repulsion would have been the answer,” said Russ bitterly. “And the Lord knows we have it. Plenty of it.”

“Too much,” observed Wilson, smoke drooling from his nostrils.

“Not too much,” corrected Greg. “Inefficient control. You jump at conclusions, Wilson.”

“The math didn’t show that progressive action,” said Russ. “It showed repulsion, negative gravity that could be built up until it would shoot the ship outside the Solar System within an hour’s time. Faster than light. We don’t know how many times faster.”

“Forget it,” advised Greg. “The way it stands, it’s useless. You get repulsion by progressive steps. A series of squares with one constant factor. It wouldn’t be any good for space travel. Imagine trying to use it on a spaceship. You’d start with a terrific jolt. The acceleration would fade and just when you were recovering from the first jolt, you’d get a second one and that second one would iron you out. A spaceship couldn’t take it, let alone a human body.”

* * * *

“Maybe this will do it,” said Wilson hopefully.

“Maybe,” agreed Russ. “Anyhow we’ll try it. Equation 578.”

“It might do the trick,” said Greg. “It’s a new approach to the gravity angle. The equation explains the shifting of gravitational lines, the changing and contortion of their direction. Twist gravity and you have a perfect space drive. As good as negative gravity. Better, perhaps, more easily controlled. Would make for more delicate, precise handling.”

Russ laid down the sheaf of papers, lit his pipe and walked to the apparatus.

“Here goes,” he said.

His hand went out to the power lever, eased it in. With a roar the material energy engine built within the apparatus surged into action, sending a flow of power through the massive leads. The thunder mounted in the room. The laboratory seemed to shudder with the impact.

Wilson, watching intently, cried out, a brief, choked-off cry. A wave of dizziness engulfed him. The walls seemed to be falling in. The room and the machine were blurring. Russ, at the controls, seemed horribly disjointed. Manning was a caricature of a man, a weird, strange figure that moved and gestured in the mad room.

Wilson fought against the dizziness. He tried to take a step and the floor seemed to leap up and meet his outstretched foot, throwing him off balance. His cigarette fell out of his mouth, rolled along the floor.

Russ was shouting something, but the words were distorted, loud one instant, rising over the din of the apparatus, a mere whisper the next. They made no sense.

There was a peculiar whistling in the air, a sound such as he had never heard before. It seemed to come from far away, a high, thin shriek that was torture in one’s ears.

Giddy, seized with deathly nausea, Wilson clawed his way across the floor, swung open the laboratory door and stumbled outdoors. He weaved across the lawn and clung to a sun dial, panting.

He looked back at the laboratory and gasped in disbelief. All the trees were bent toward the building, as if held by some mighty wind. Their branches straining, every single leaf standing at rigid attention, the trees were bending in toward the structure. But there was no wind.

And then he noticed something else. No matter where the trees stood, no matter in what direction from the laboratory, they all bent inward toward the building…and the whining, thundering, shrieking machine.

Inside the laboratory an empty bottle crashed off a table and smashed into a thousand fragments. The tinkling of the broken glass was a silvery, momentary sound that protested against the blasting thrum of power that shook the walls.

Manning fought along the floor to Russ’s side. Russ roared in his ear: “Gravitational control! Concentration of gravitational lines!”

The papers on the desk started to slide, slithering onto the floor, danced a crazy dervish across the room. Liquids in the laboratory bottles were climbing the sides of glass, instead of lying at rest parallel with the floor. A chair skated, bucking and tipping crazily, toward the door.

* * * *

Russ jerked the power lever back to zero. The power hum died. The liquids slid back to their natural level, the chair tipped over and lay still, papers fluttered gently downward.

The two men looked at one another across the few feet of floor space between them. Russ wiped beads of perspiration from his forehead with his shirt sleeve. He sucked on his pipe, but it was dead.

“Greg,” Russ said jubilantly, “we have something better than anti-gravity! We have something you might call positive gravity…gravity that we can control. Your grandfather nullified gravity. We’ve gone him one better.”

Greg gestured toward the machine. “You created an attraction center. What else?”

“But the center itself is not actually an attracting force. The fourth dimension is mixed up in this. We have a sort of fourth-dimensional lens that concentrates the lines of any gravitational force. Concentration in the fourth dimension turns the force loose in three dimensions, but we can take care of that by using mirrors of our anti-entropy. We can arrange it so that it turns the force loose in only one dimension.”

Greg was thoughtful for a moment. “We can guide a ship by a series of lenses,” he declared at last. “But here’s the really important thing. That field concentrates the forces of gravity already present. Those forces exist throughout all of space. There are gravitational lines everywhere. We can concentrate them in any direction we want to. In reality, we fall toward the body which originally caused the force of gravitation, not to the concentration.”

* * * *

Russ nodded. “That means we can create a field immediately ahead of the ship. The ship would fall into it constantly, with the concentration moving on ahead. The field would tend to break down in proportion to the strain imposed and a big ship, especially when you are building up speed, would tend to enlarge it, open it up. But the field could be kept tight by supplying energy and we have plenty of that…far more than we’d ever need. We supply the energy, but that’s only a small part of it. The body emitting the gravitational force supplies the fulcrum that moves us along.”

“It would operate beyond the planets,” said Greg. “It would operate equally well anywhere in space, for all of space is filled with gravitational stress. We could use gravitational bodies many light years away as the driver of our ships.”

A half-wild light glowed momentarily in his eyes.

“Russ,” he said, “we’re going to put space fields to work at last.”

He walked to the chair, picked it up and sat down in it.

“We’ll start building a ship,” he stated, “just as soon as we know the mechanics of this gravity concentration and control. Russ, we’ll build the greatest ship, the fastest ship, the most powerful ship the Solar System has ever known!”

* * * *

“Damn,” said Russ, “that thing’s slipped again.”

He glared at the offending nut. “I’ll put a lock washer on it this time.”

Wilson stepped toward the control board. From his perch on the apparatus, Russ motioned him away.

“Never mind discharging the field,” he said. “I can get around it somehow.”

Wilson squinted at him. “This tooth is near killing me.”

“Still got a toothache?” asked Russ.

“Never got a wink of sleep last night.”

“You better run down to Frisco and have it yanked out,” suggested the scientist. “Can’t have you laid up.”

“Yeah, that’s right,” agreed Wilson. “Maybe I will. We got a lot to do.”

Russ reached out and clamped his wrench on the nut, quickly backed it off and slipped on the washer. Viciously he tightened it home. The wrench stuck.

Gritting his teeth on the bit of his pipe, Russ cursed soundlessly. He yanked savagely at the wrench. It slipped from his hand, hung for a minute on the nut and then plunged downward, falling straight into the heart of the new force field they had developed.

Russ froze and watched, his heart in his throat, mad thoughts in his brain. In a flash, as the wrench fell, he remembered that they knew nothing about this field. All they knew was that any matter introduced in it suddenly acquired an acceleration in the dimension known as time, with its normal constant of duration reduced to zero.

When that wrench struck the field, it would cease to exist! But something else might happen, too, something entirely unguessable.

The wrench fell only a few feet, but it seemed to take long seconds as Russ watched, frozen in fascination.

He saw it strike the hazy glow that defined the limits of the field, saw it floating down, as if its speed had been slowed by some dense medium.

In the instant that hazy glow intensified a thousand times—became a blinding sun-burst! Russ ducked his head, shielded his eyes from the terrible blast of light. A rending, shuddering thud seemed to echo…in space rather than in air…and both field and wrench were gone!

A moment passed, then another, and there was the heavy, solid clanging thud of something striking metal. This time the thud was not in space, but a commonplace noise, as if someone had dropped a tool on the floor above.

Russ turned around and stared at Wilson. Wilson stared back, his mouth hanging open, the smoldering, cigarette dangling from his mouth.

“Greg!” Russ shouted, his cry shattering the silence in the laboratory.

A door burst open and Manning stepped into the main laboratory room, a calculation pad in one hand, a pencil in the other.

“What’s the matter?” he demanded.

“We have to find my wrench!”

“Your wrench?” Greg was puzzled. “Can’t you get another?”

“I dropped it into the field. Its time-dimension was reduced to zero. It became an ‘instantaneous wrench’.”

“Nothing new in that,” said Greg, unruffled.

“But there is,” persisted Russ. “The field collapsed, you see. Maybe the wrench was too big for it to handle. And when the field collapsed the wrench gained a new time-dimension. I heard it. We have to find it.”

The three of them pounded up the stairs to the room where Russ had heard the thump. There was nothing on the floor. They searched the room from end to end, then the other rooms. There was no wrench.

At the end of an hour Greg went back to the main laboratory, brought back a portable fluoroscope.

“Maybe this will do the trick,” he announced bleakly.

* * * *

It did. They found the wrench inside the space between the walls!

Russ stared at the shadow in the fluoroscope plate. Undeniably it was the shadow of the wrench.

“Fourth dimension,” he said. “Transported in time.”

The muscles in Greg’s cheeks were tensed, that old flame of excitement burning in his eyes, but otherwise his face was the mask of old, the calm, almost terrible mask that had faced a thousand dangers.

“Power and time,” he corrected.

“If we can control it,” said Russ.

“Don’t worry. We can control it. And when we can, it’s the biggest thing we’ve got.”

Wilson licked his lips, dredged a cigarette out of a pocket.

“If you don’t mind,” he said, “I’ll hit for Frisco tonight. This tooth of mine is getting worse.”

“Sure, can’t keep an aching tooth,” agreed Russ, thinking of the wrench while talking.

“Can I take your ship?” asked Wilson.

“Sure,” said Russ.

Back in the laboratory they rebuilt the field, dropped little ball bearings in it. The ball bearings disappeared. They found them everywhere—in the walls, in tables, in the floor. Some, still existing in their new time-dimension, hung in mid-air, invisible, intangible, but there.

Hours followed hours, with the sheet of data growing. Math machines whirred and chuckled and clicked. Wilson departed for San Francisco with his aching tooth. The other two worked on. By dawn they knew what they were doing. Out of the chaos of happenstance they were finding rules of order, certain formulas of behavior, equations of force.

The next day they tried heavier, more complicated things and learned still more.

A radiogram, phoned from the nearest spaceport, forty miles distant, informed them that Wilson would not be back for a few days. His tooth was worse than he had thought, required an operation and treatment of the jaw.

“Hell,” said Russ, “just when he could be so much help.”

With Wilson gone the two of them tackled the controlling device, labored and swore over it. But finally it was completed.

Slumped in chairs, utterly exhausted, they looked proudly at it.

“With that,” said Russ, “we can take an object and transport it any place we want. Not only that, we can pick up any object from an indefinite distance and bring it to us.”

“What a thing for a lazy burglar,” Greg observed sourly.

Worn out, they gulped sandwiches and scalding coffee, tumbled into bed.

* * * *

The outdoor camp meeting was in full swing. The evangelist was in his top form. The sinners’ bench was crowded. Then suddenly, as the evangelist paused for a moment’s silence before he drove home an important point, the music came. Music from the air. Music from somewhere in the sky. The soft, heavenly music of a hymn. As if an angels’ chorus were singing in the blue.

The evangelist froze, one arm pointing upward, with index finger ready to sweep down and emphasize his point. The sinners kneeling at the bench were petrified. The congregation was astounded.

The hymn rolled on, punctuated, backgrounded by deep celestial organ notes. The clear voice of the choir swept high to a bell-like note.

“Behold!” shrieked the evangelist. “Behold, a miracle! Angels singing for us! Kneel! Kneel and pray!”

Nobody stood.

* * * *

Andy McIntyre was drunk again. In the piteous glare of mid-morning, he staggered homeward from the poker party in the back of Steve Abram’s harness shop. The light revealed him to the scorn of the entire village.

At the corner of Elm and Third he ran into a maple tree. Uncertainly he backed away, intent on making another try. Suddenly the tree spoke to him:

“Alcohol is the scourge of mankind. It turns men into beasts. It robs them of their brains, it shortens their lives…”

Andy stared, unable to believe what he heard. The tree, he had no doubt, was talking to him personally.

The voice of the tree went on: “…takes the bread out of the mouths of women and children. Fosters crime. Weakens the moral fiber of the nation.”

“Stop!” screamed Andy. “Stop, I tell you!”

The tree stopped talking. All he could hear was the whisper of wind among its autumn-tinted leaves.

Suddenly running, Andy darted around the corner, headed home.

“Begad,” he told himself, “when trees start talkin’ to you it’s time to lay off the bottle!”

* * * *

In another town fifty miles distant from the one in which the tree had talked to Andy McIntyre, another miracle happened that same Sunday morning.

Dozens of people heard the bronze statue of the soldier in the courtyard speak. The statue did not come to life. It stood as ever, a solid piece of golden bronze, in spots turned black and green by weather. But from its lips came words…words that burned themselves into the souls of those who heard. Words that exhorted them to defend the principles for which many men had died, to grasp and hold high the torch of democracy and liberty.

In somber bitterness, the statue called Spencer Chambers the greatest threat to that liberty and freedom. For, the statue said, Spencer Chambers and Interplanetary Power were waging an economic war, a bloodless one, but just as truly war as if there were cannons firing and bombs exploding.

For a full five minutes the statue spoke and the crowd, growing by the minute, stood dumbfounded.

Then silence fell over the courtyard. The statue stood as before, unmoving, its timeless eyes staring out from under the ugly helmet, its hands gripping the bayoneted rifle. A blue and white pigeon fluttered softly down, alighted on the bayonet, looked the crowd over and then flew to the courthouse tower.

* * * *

Back in the laboratory, Russ looked at Greg.

“That radio trick gives me an idea,” he said. “If we can put a radio in statues and trees without interfering with its operation, why can’t we do the same thing with a television set?”

Greg started. “Think of the possibilities of that!” he burst out.

Within an hour a complete television sending apparatus was placed within the field and a receptor screen set up in the laboratory.

The two moved chairs in front of the screen and sat down. Russ reached out and pulled the switch of the field control. The screen came to life, but it was only a gray blur.

“It’s traveling too fast,” said Greg. “Slow it down.”

Russ retarded the lever. “When that thing’s on full, it’s almost instantaneous. It travels in a time dimension and any speed slower than instantaneity is a modification of that force field.”

On the screen swam a panorama of the mountains, mile after mile of snow-capped peaks and valleys ablaze with the flames of autumn foliage. The mountains faded away. There was desert now and then a city. Russ dropped the televisor set lower, down into a street. For half an hour they sat comfortably in their chairs and watched men and women walking, witnessed one dog fight, cruised slowly up and down, looking into windows of homes, window-shopping in the business section.

“There’s just one thing wrong,” said Greg. “We can see everything, but we can’t hear a sound.”

“We can fix that,” Russ told him.

He lifted the televisor set from the streets, brought it back across the desert and mountains into the laboratory.

“We have two practical applications now,” said Greg. “Space drive and television spying. I don’t know which is the best. Do you realize that with this television trick there isn’t a thing that can be hidden from us?”

“I believe we can go to Mars or Mercury or anywhere we want to with this thing. It doesn’t seem to have any particular limits. It handles perfectly. You can move it a fraction of an inch as easily as a hundred miles. And it’s fast. Almost instantaneous. Not quite, for even with our acceleration within time, there is a slight lag.”

By evening they had an audio apparatus incorporated in the set, had wired the screen for sound.

“Let’s put this to practical use,” suggested Greg. “There’s a show at the New Mercury Theater in New York I’ve been wanting to see. Let’s knock off work and take in that show.”

“Now,” said Russ, “you really have an idea. The ticket scalpers are charging a fortune, and it won’t cost us a cent to get in!”

CHAPTER FIVE

Pine roots burned brightly in the fireplace, snapping and sizzling as the blaze caught and flamed on the resin. Deep in an easy chair, Greg Manning stretched his long legs out toward the fire and lifted his glass, squinting at the flames through the amber drink.

“There’s something that’s been worrying me a little,” he said. “I hadn’t told you about it because I figured it wasn’t as serious as it looked. Maybe it isn’t, but it looks funny.”

“What’s that?” asked Russ.

“The stock market,” replied Greg. “There’s something devilish funny going on there. I’ve lost about a billion dollars in the last two weeks.”

“A billion dollars?” gasped Russ.

Greg swirled the whiskey in his glass. “Don’t sound so horrified. The loss is all on paper. My stocks have gone down. Most of them cut in half. Some even less than that. Martian Irrigation is down to 75. I paid 185 for it. It’s worth 200.”

“You mean something has happened to the market?”

“Not to the market. If that was it, I wouldn’t worry. I’ve seen the market go up and down. That’s nothing to worry about. But the market, except for a slight depression, has behaved normally in these past two weeks. It almost looks as if somebody was out to get me.”

“Who’d want to and why?”

Greg sighed. “I wish I knew. I haven’t really lost a cent, of course. My shares can’t stay down for very long. The thing is that right now I can’t sell them even for what I paid for them. If I sold now I’d lose that billion. But as long as I don’t have to sell, the loss is merely on paper.”

He sipped at the drink and stared into the fire.

“If you don’t have to, what are you worrying about?” asked Russ.

“Couple of things. I put that stock up as collateral to get the cash to build the spaceship. At present prices, it will take more securities than I thought. If the prices continue to go down, I’ll have the bulk of my holdings tied up in the spaceship. I might even be forced to liquidate some of it and that would mean an actual loss.”

He hunched forward in the chair, stared at Russ.

“Another thing,” he said grimly, “is that I hate the idea of somebody singling me out as a target. As if they were going to make a financial example of me.”

“And it sounds as if someone has,” agreed Russ.

Greg leaned back again, drained his glass and set it down.

“It certainly does,” he said.

Outside, seen through the window beside the fireplace, the harvest moon was a shield of silver hung in the velvet of the sky. A lonesome wind moaned in the pines and under the eaves.

“I got a report from Belgium the other day,” said Greg. “The spaceship is coming along. It’ll be the biggest thing afloat in space.”

“The biggest and the toughest,” said Russ, and Greg nodded silent agreement.

The ship itself was being manufactured at the great Space Works in Belgium, but other parts of it, apparatus, engines, gadgets of every description, were being manufactured at other widely scattered points. Anyone wondering what kind of ship the finished product would be would have a hard time gathering the correct information, which, of course, was the idea. The “anyone” they were guarding against was Spencer Chambers.

* * * *

“We need a better television set,” said Russ. “This one we have is all right, but we need the best there is. I wonder if Wilson could get us one in Frisco and bring it back.”

“I don’t see why not,” said Greg. “Send him a radio.”

Russ stepped to the phone, called the spaceport and filed the message.

“He always stays at the Greater Martian,” he told Greg. “We’ll probably catch him there.”

* * * *

Two hours later the phone rang. It was the spaceport.

“That message you sent to Wilson,” said the voice of the operator, “can’t be delivered. Wilson isn’t at the Greater Martian. The clerk said he checked out for New York last night.”

“Didn’t he leave a forwarding address?” asked Russ.

“Apparently not.”

Russ hung up the receiver, frowning. “Wilson is in New York.”

Greg looked up from a sheet of calculations.

“New York, eh?” he said and then went back to work, but a moment later he straightened from his work. “What would Wilson be doing in New York?”

“I wonder…” Russ stopped and shook his head.

“Exactly,” said Greg. He glanced out of the window, considering, the muscles in his cheeks knotting. “Russ, we both are thinking the same thing.”

“I hate to think it,” said Russ evenly. “I hate to think such a thing about a man.”

“One way to find out,” declared Greg. He rose from the chair and walked to the television control board, snapped the switch. Russ took a chair beside him. On the screen the mountains danced weirdly as the set rocketed swiftly away and then came the glint of red and yellow desert. Blackness blanked out the screen as the set plunged into the ground, passing through the curvature of the Earth’s surface. The blackness passed and fields and farms were beneath them on the screen, a green and brown checkerboard with tiny white lines that were roads.

New York was in the screen now. Greg’s hand moved the control and the city rushed up at them, the spires speeding toward them like plunging spears. Down into the canyons plunged the set, down into the financial district with its beetling buildings that hemmed in the roaring traffic.

Grimly, surely, Greg drove his strange machine through New York. Through buildings, through shimmering planes, through men. Like an arrow the television set sped to its mark and then Greg’s hand snapped back the lever and in the screen was a building that covered four whole blocks. Above the entrance was the famous Solar System map and straddling the map were the gleaming golden letters: INTERPLANETARY BUILDING.

“Now we’ll see,” said Greg.

He heard the whistle of the breath in Russ’s nostrils as the television set began to move, saw the tight grip Russ had upon the chair arms.

The interior of the building showed on the screen as he drove the set through steel and stone, offices and corridors and brief glimpses of steel partitions, until it came to a door marked: SPENCER CHAMBERS, PRESIDENT.

Greg’s hand twisted the control slightly and the set went through the door, into the office of Spencer Chambers.

Four men were in the room—Chambers himself; Craven, the scientist; Arnold Grant, head of Interplanetary’s publicity department, and Harry Wilson!

Wilson’s voice came out of the screen, a frantic, almost terrified voice.

“I’ve told you all I know. I’m not a scientist. I’m a mechanic. I’ve told you what they’re doing. I can’t tell you how they do it.”

Arnold Grant leaned forward in his chair. His face was twisted in fury.

“There were plans, weren’t there?” he demanded. “There were equations and formulas. Why didn’t you bring us some of them?”

Spencer Chambers raised a hand from the desk, waved it toward Grant. “The man has told us all he knows. Obviously, he can’t be any more help to us.”

“You told him to go back and see if he couldn’t find something else, didn’t you?” asked Grant.

“Yes, I did,” Chambers told him. “But apparently he couldn’t find it.”

“I tried,” pleaded Wilson. Perspiration stood out on his forehead. The cigarette in his mouth was limp and dead. “One of them was always there. I never could get hold of any papers. I asked questions, but they were too busy to answer. And I couldn’t ask too much, because then they would have suspected me.”

“No, you couldn’t do that,” commented Craven with an open sneer.

* * * *

In the laboratory Russ pounded the arm of his chair with a clenched fist. “The rat sold us out!”

Greg said nothing, but his face was stony and his eyes were crystal-hard.

On the screen Chambers was speaking to Wilson. “Do you think you could find something out if you went back again?”

Wilson squirmed in his chair.

“I’d rather not.” His voice sounded like a whimper. “I’m afraid they suspect me now. I’m afraid of what they’d do if they found out.”

“That’s his conscience,” breathed Russ in the laboratory. “I never suspected him.”

“He’s right about one thing, though,” Greg said. “He’d better not come back.”

Chambers was talking again: “You realize, of course, that you haven’t been much help to us. You have only warned us that another kind of power generation is being developed. You’ve set us on our guard, but other than that we’re no better off than we were before.”

Wilson bristled, like a cowardly animal backed into a corner. “I told you what was going on. You can be ready for it now. I can’t help it if I couldn’t find out how all them things worked.”

“Look here,” said Chambers. “I made a bargain with you and I keep my bargains. I told you I would pay you twenty thousand dollars for the information you gave me when you first came to see me. I told you I’d pay you for any further additional information you might give. Also I promised you a job with the company.”

Watching the financier, Wilson licked his lips. “That’s right,” he said.

Chambers reached out and pulled a checkbook toward him, lifted a pen from its holder. “I’m paying you the twenty thousand for the warning. I’m not paying you a dime more, because you gave me no other information.”

Wilson leaped to his feet, started to protest.

“Sit down,” said Chambers coldly.

“But the job! You said you’d give me a job!”

Chambers shook his head. “I wouldn’t have a man like you in my organization. If you were a traitor to one man, you would be to another.”

“But…but…” Wilson started to object and then sat down, his face twisted in something that came very close to fear.

Chambers ripped the check out of the book, waved it slowly in the air to dry it. Then he arose and held it out to Wilson, who reached out a trembling hand and took it.

“And now,” said Chambers, “good day, Mr. Wilson.”

For a moment Wilson stood uncertain, as if he intended to speak, but finally he turned, without a word, and walked through the door.

* * * *

In the laboratory Russ and Greg looked at one another.

“Twenty thousand,” said Greg. “Why, that was worth millions.”

“It was worth everything Chambers had,” said Russ, “because it’s the thing that’s going to wreck him.”

Their attention snapped back to the screen.

Chambers was hunched over his desk, addressing the other two.

“Now, gentlemen,” he asked, “what are we to do?”

Craven shrugged his shoulders. There was a puzzled frown in the eyes back of the thick-lensed glasses. “We haven’t much to go on. Wilson doesn’t know a thing about it. He hasn’t the brain to grasp even the most fundamental ideas back of the whole thing.”

Chambers nodded. “The man knew the mechanical setup perfectly, but that was all.”

“I’ve constructed the apparatus,” said Craven. “It’s astoundingly simple. Almost too simple to do the things Wilson said it would do. He drew plans for it, so clear that it was easy to duplicate the apparatus. He himself checked the machine and says it is the same as Page and Manning have. But there are thousands of possible combinations for hookups and control board settings. Too many to try to go through and hit upon the right answer. Because, you see, one slight adjustment in any one of a hundred adjustments might do the trick…but which of those adjustments do you have to make? We have to have the formulas, the equations, before we can even move.”

“He seemed to remember a few things,” said Grant hopefully. “Certain rules and formulas.”

Craven flipped both his hands angrily. “Worse than nothing,” he exploded. “What Page and Manning have done is so far in advance of anything that anyone else has even thought about that we are completely at sea. They’re working with space fields, apparently, and we haven’t even scratched the surface in that branch of investigation. We simply haven’t got a thing to go on.”

* * * *

“No chance at all?” asked Chambers.

Craven shook his head slowly.

“At least you could try,” snapped Grant.

“Now, wait,” Chambers snapped back. “You seem to forget Dr. Craven is one of the best scientists in the world today. I’m relying on him.”

Craven smiled. “I can’t do anything with what Page and Manning have, but I might try something of my own.”

“By all means do so,” urged Chambers. He turned to Grant. “I observed you have carried out the plans we laid. Martian Irrigation hit a new low today.”

Grant grinned. “It was easy. Just a hint here and there to the right people.”

Chambers looked down at his hands, slowly closing into fists. “We have to stop them some way, any way at all. Keep up the rumors. We’ll make it impossible for Greg Manning to finance this new invention. We’ll take away every last dollar he has.”

He glared at the publicity man. “You understand?”

“Yes, sir,” said Grant, “I understand perfectly.”

“All right,” said Chambers. “And your job, Craven, is to either develop what Page has found or find something we can use in competition.”

Craven growled angrily. “What happens if your damn rumors can’t ruin Manning? What if I can’t find anything?”

“In that case,” said Chambers, “there are other ways.”

“Other ways?”

Chambers suddenly smiled at them. “I have a notion to call Stutsman back to Earth.”

Craven drummed his fingers idly on the arm of his chair. “Yes, I guess you do have other ways,” he said.

* * * *

Greg’s hand snapped the switch and the screen suddenly was blank as the televisor set returned instantly to the laboratory.

“That explains a lot of things,” he said. “Among them what has happened to my stocks.”

Russ sat in his chair, numbed. “That little weak-kneed, ratting traitor, Wilson. He’d sell his mother for a new ten-dollar bill.”

“We know,” said Greg, “and Chambers doesn’t know we know. We’ll follow every move he makes. We’ll know every one of his plans.”

Pacing up and down the room, he was already planning their campaign.

“There are still a few things to do,” he added. “A few possibilities we may have overlooked.”

“But will we have time?” asked Russ.

“I think so. Chambers is going to go slow. The gamble is too big to risk any slip. He doesn’t want to get in bad with the law. There won’t be any strong-arm stuff…not until he recalls Stutsman from Callisto.”

He paused in mid-stride, stood planted solidly on the floor.

“When Stutsman gets into the game,” he said, “all hell will break loose.”

He took a deep breath.

“But we’ll be ready for it then!”

CHAPTER SIX

“If we can get television reception with this apparatus of ours,” asked Greg, “what is to prevent us from televising? Why can’t we send as well as receive?”

Russ drew doodles on a calculation sheet. “We could. Just something else to work out. You must remember we’re working in a four-dimensional medium. That would complicate matters a little. Not like working in three dimensions alone. It would…”

He stopped. The pencil fell from his finger and he swung around slowly to face Manning.

“What’s the matter now?” asked Greg.

“Look,” said Russ excitedly. “We’re working in four dimensions. And if we televised through four dimensions, what would we get?”

Greg wrinkled his brow. Suddenly his face relaxed. “You don’t mean we can televise in three dimensions, do you?”

“That’s what it should work out to,” declared Russ. He swung back to the table again, picked up his pencil and jotted down equations. He looked up from the sheet. “Three-dimensional television!” he almost whispered.

“Something new again,” commented Greg.

“I’ll say it’s new!”

Russ reached out and jerked a calculator toward him. Rapidly he set up the equations, pressed the tabulator lever. The machine gurgled and chuckled, clicked out the result. Bending over to read it, Russ sucked in his breath.

“It’s working out right,” he said.

“That’ll mean new equipment, lots of it,” Greg pointed out. “Wilson’s gone, damn him. Who’s going to help us?”

“We’ll do it ourselves,” said Russ. “When we’re the only ones here, we can be sure there won’t be any leak.”

It took hours of work on the math machines, but at the end of that time Russ was certain of his ground.

“Now we go to work,” he said, gleefully.

In a week’s time they had built a triple televisor, but simplifications of the standard commercial set gave them a mechanism that weighed little more and was far more efficient and accurate.

During the time the work went on they maintained a watch over both the office of Spencer Chambers and the laboratory in which Dr. Herbert Craven worked 16 hours a day. Unseen, unsuspected, they were silent companions of the two men during many hours. They read what the men wrote, read what was written to them, heard what they said, saw how they acted. Doing so, the pair in the high mountain laboratory gained a deep insight into the characters of unsuspecting quarries.

“Both utterly ruthless,” declared Greg. “But apparently men who are sincere in thinking that the spoils belong to the strong. Strange, almost outdated men. You can’t help but like Chambers. He’s good enough at heart. He has his pet charities. He really, I believe, wants to help the people. And I think he actually believes the best way to do it is to gain a dictatorship over the Solar System. That ambition rules everything in his life. It has hardened him and strengthened him. He will crush ruthlessly, without a single qualm, anything that stands in his path. That’s why we’ll have a fight on our hands.”

* * * *

Craven seemed to be making little progress. They could only guess at what he was trying to develop.

“I think,” said Russ, “he’s working on a collector field to suck in radiant energy. If he really gets that, it will be something worth having.”

For hours Craven sat, an intent, untidy, unkempt man, sunk deep in the cushions of an easy chair. His face was calm, with relaxed jaw and eyes that seemed vacant. But each time he would rouse himself from the chair to pencil new notations on the pads of paper that littered his desk. New ideas, new approaches.

The triple televisor was completed except for one thing.

“Sound isn’t so easy,” said Russ. “If we could only find a way to transmit it as well as light.”

“Listen,” said Greg, “why don’t you try a condenser speaker.”

“A condenser speaker?”

“Sure, the gadget developed way back in the 1920s. It hasn’t been used for years to my knowledge, but it might do the trick.”

Russ grinned broadly. “Hell, why didn’t I think of that? Here I’ve been racking my brain for a new approach, a new wrinkle…and exactly what I wanted was at hand.”

“Should work,” declared Greg. “Just the opposite of a condenser microphone. Instead of radiating sound waves mechanically, it radiates a changing electric field and this field becomes audible directly within the ear. Even yet no one seems to understand just how it works, but it does…and that’s good enough.”

“I know,” said Russ. “It really makes no sound. In other words it creates an electric field that doubles for sound. It ought to be just the thing because nothing can stop it. Metal shielding can, I guess, if it’s thick enough, but it’s got to be pretty damn thick.”

It took time to set the mechanism up. Ready, the massive apparatus, within which glowed a larger and more powerful force field, was operated by two monstrous material energy engines. The controls were equipped with clockwork drives, designed so that the motion of the Earth could be nullified completely and automatically for work upon outlying planets.

* * * *

Russ stood back and looked at it. “Stand in front of that screen, Greg,” he said, “and we’ll try it on you.”

Greg stepped in front of the screen. The purr of power came on. Suddenly, materializing out of the air, came Greg’s projection. Hazy and undefined at first, it rapidly assumed apparent solidity. Greg waved his arm; the image moved its arm.

Russ left the controls and walked across the laboratory to inspect the image. Examined from all sides, it looked solid. Russ walked through it and felt nothing. There was nothing there. It was just a three-dimensional image. But even from two feet away, it was as if the man himself stood there in all the actuality of flesh and blood.

“Hello, Russ,” the image whispered. It held out a hand. “Glad to see you again.”

Laughing, Russ thrust out his hand. It closed on nothing in mid-air, but the two men appeared to shake hands.

They tested the machine that afternoon. Their images strode above the trees, apparently walking on thin air. Gigantic replicas of Greg stood on a faraway mountain top and shouted with a thunderous voice. Smaller images, no more than two inches high, shinnied up a table leg.

Satisfied, they shut off the machine.

“That’s one of the possibilities you mentioned,” suggested Russ.

Greg nodded grimly.

* * * *

An autumn gale pelted the windows with driving rain, and a wild, wet wind howled through the pines outside. The fire was leaping and flaring in the fireplace.

Deep in his chair, Russ stared into the flame and puffed at his pipe.

“The factory wants more money on the spaceship,” said Greg from the other chair. “I had to put up some more shares as collateral on a new loan.”

“Market still going down?” asked Russ.

“Not the market,” replied Greg. “My stocks. All of them hit new lows today.”

Russ dragged at the pipe thoughtfully. “I’ve been thinking about that stock business, Greg.”

“So have I, but it doesn’t seem to do much good.”

“Look,” said Russ slowly, “what planets have exchanges?”

“All of them except Mercury. The Jovian exchange is at Ranthoor. There’s even one out at Pluto. Just mining and chemical shares listed, though.”

Russ did not reply. Smoke curled up from his pipe. He was staring into the fire.

“Why do you ask?” Greg wanted to know.

“Just something stirring around in my mind. I was wondering where Chambers does most of his trading.”

“Ranthoor now,” said Greg. “Used to do it on Venus. The listing is larger there. But since he took over the Jovian confederacy, he switched his business to it. The transaction tax is lower. He saw to that.”

“And the same shares are listed on the Callisto market as on the New York boards?”

“Naturally,” said Greg, “only not as many.”

Russ watched the smoke from his pipe. “How long does it take light to travel from Callisto to Earth?”

“Why, about 45 minutes, I guess. Somewhere around there.” Greg sat upright. “Say, what’s light got to do with this?”

“A lot,” said Russ. “All commerce is based on the assumption that light is instantaneous, but it isn’t. All business, anywhere throughout the Solar System, is based on Greenwich time. When a noon signal sent out from Earth reaches Mars, it’s noon there, but as a matter of fact, it is actually 15 minutes or so past noon. When the same signal reaches Callisto, the correct time for the chronometer used in commerce would be noon when it is really a quarter to one. That system simplifies things. Does away with varying times. And it has worked all right so far because there has been, up to now, nothing that could go faster than light. No news can travel through space, no message, no signal can be sent at any speed greater than that. So everything has been fine.”

Greg had come out of the chair, was standing on his feet, the glow of the blaze throwing his athletic figure into bold relief. That calm exterior had been stripped from him now. He was excited.

“I see what you are getting at! We have something that is almost instantaneous!”

“Almost,” said Russ. “Not quite. There’s a time lag somewhere. But it isn’t noticeable except over vast distances.”

“But it would beat ordinary light signals to Callisto. It would beat them there by almost 45 minutes.”

“Almost,” Russ agreed. “Maybe a split second less.”

Greg strode up and down in front of the fireplace like a caged lion. “By heaven,” he said, “we’ve got Chambers where we want him. We can beat the stock quotations to Callisto. With that advance knowledge of what the board is doing in New York, we can make back every dime I’ve lost. We can take Mr. Chambers to the cleaners!”

Russ grinned. “Exactly,” he said. “We’ll know 45 minutes in advance of the other traders what the market will be. Let’s see Chambers beat that.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

Ben Wrail was taking things easy. Stretched out in his chair, with his cigar lit and burning satisfactorily, he listened to a radio program broadcast from Earth.

Through the window beside him, he could look out of his skyscraper apartment over the domed city of Ranthoor. Looming in the sky, slightly distorted by the heavy quartz of the distant dome, was massive Jupiter, a scarlet ball tinged with orange and yellow. Overwhelmingly luminous, monstrously large, it filled a large portion of the visible sky, a sight that brought millions of tourists to the Jovian moons each year, a sight that even the old-timers still must stare at, drawn by some unfathomable fascination.

Ben Wrail stared at it now, puffing at his cigar, listening to the radio. An awe-inspiring thing, a looming planet that seemed almost ready to topple and crash upon this airless, frigid world.

Wrail was an old-timer. For thirty years—Earth years—he had made his home in Ranthoor. He had seen the city grow from a dinky little mining camp enclosed by a small dome to one that boasted half a million population. The dome that now covered the city was the fourth one. Four times, like the nautilus, the city had outgrown its shell, until today it was the greatest domed city in the Solar System. Where life had once been cheap and where the scum of the system had held rendezvous, he had seen Ranthoor grow into a city of dignity, capital of the Jovian confederacy.

He had helped build that confederacy, had been elected a member of the constitution commission, had helped create the government and for over a decade had helped to make its laws.

But now…Ben Wrail spat angrily and stuffed the cigar back in his mouth again, taking a fresh and fearsome grip. Now everything had changed. The Jovian worlds today were held in bond by Spencer Chambers. The government was in the hands of his henchmen. Duly elected, of course, but in an election held under the unspoken threat that Interplanetary Power would withdraw, leaving the moons circling the great planet without heat, air, energy. For the worlds of the Jovian confederacy, every single one of them, depended for their life upon the accumulators freighted outward from the Sun.

Talk of revolt was in the air, but, lacking a leader, it would get nowhere. John Moore Mallory was imprisoned on one of the prison spaceships that plied through the Solar System. Mallory, months ago, had been secretly transferred from the Callisto prison to the spaceship, but in a week’s time the secret had been spread in angry whispers. If there had been riots and bloodshed, they would have been to no purpose. For revolution, even if successful, would gain nothing. It would merely goad Interplanetary Power into withdrawing, refusing to service the domed cities on the moons.

* * * *

Ben Wrail stirred restlessly in his chair. The cigar had gone out. The radio program blared unheard. His eyes still looked out the window without seeing Jupiter.

“Damn,” said Ben Wrail. Why did he have to go and spoil an evening thinking about this damned political situation? Despite his part in the building of the confederacy, he was a businessman, not a politician. Still, it hurt to see something torn down that he had helped to build, though he knew that every pioneering strike in history had been taken over by shrewd, ruthless, powerful operators. Knowing that should have helped, but it didn’t. He and the other Jovian pioneers had hoped it wouldn’t happen and, of course, it had.

“Ben Wrail,” said a voice in the room.

Wrail swung around, away from the window.

“Manning!” he yelled, and the man in the center of the room grinned bleakly at him. “How did you come in without me hearing you? When did you get here?”

“I’m not here,” said Greg. “I’m back on Earth.”

“You’re what?” asked Wrail blankly. “That’s a pretty silly statement, isn’t it, Manning? Or did you decide to loosen up and pull a gag now and then?”

“I mean it,” said Manning. “This is just an image of me. My body is back on Earth.”

“You mean you’re dead? You’re a ghost?”

The grin widened, but the face was bleak as ever.

“No, Ben, I’m just alive as you are. Let me explain. This is a television image of me. Three-dimensional television. I can travel anywhere like this.”

Wrail sat down in the chair again. “I don’t suppose there’d be any use trying to shake hands with you.”

“No use,” agreed Manning’s image. “There isn’t any hand.”

“Nor asking you to have a chair?”

Manning shook his head.

“Anyhow,” said Wrail, “I’m damn glad to see you—or think I see you. I don’t know which. Figure you can stay and talk with me a while?”

* * * *

“Certainly,” said Manning. “That is what I came for. I want to ask your help.”

“Listen,” declared Wrail, “you can’t be on Earth, Manning. I say something to you and you answer right back. That isn’t possible. You can’t hear anything I say until 45 minutes after I say it, and then I’d have to wait another 45 minutes to hear your answer.”

“That’s right,” agreed the image, “if you insist upon talking about the velocity of light. We have something better than that.”

“We?”

“Russell Page and myself. We have a two-way television apparatus that works almost instantaneously. To all purposes, so far as the distance between Earth and Callisto is concerned, it is instantaneous.”

Wrail’s jaw fell. “Well, I be damned. What have you two fellows been up to now?”

“A lot,” said Manning laconically. “For one thing we are out to bust Interplanetary Power. Bust them wide open. Hear that, Wrail?”

Wrail stared in stupefaction. “Sure, I hear. But I can’t believe it.”

“All right then,” said Manning grimly, “we’ll give you proof. What could you do, Ben, if we told you what was happening on the stock market in New York…without you having to wait the 45 minutes it takes the quotations to get here?”

Wrail sprang to his feet. “What could I do? Why, I could run the pants off every trader in the exchange! I could make a billion a minute!” He stopped and looked at the image. “But this isn’t like you. This isn’t the way you’d do things.”

“I don’t want you to hurt anyone but Chambers,” said Manning. “If somebody else gets in the way, of course they have to take the rap along with him. But I do want to give Chambers a licking. That’s what I came here to see you about.”

“By Heaven, Greg, I’ll do it,” said Wrail. He stepped quickly forward, held out his hand to close the deal, and encountered only air.

Manning’s image threw back its head and laughed.

“That’s your proof, Ben. Good enough?”

“I’ll say it is,” said Wrail shakily, looking down at the solid-seeming hand that his own had gone right through.

* * * *

November 6, 2153, was a day long remembered in financial circles throughout the Solar System. The Ranthoor market opened easy with little activity. Then a few stocks made fractional gains. Mining dropped fractionally. Martian Irrigation still was unexplainably low, as was Pluto Chemical and Asteroid Mining.

Trading through two brokers, Ben Wrail bought 10,000 shares of Venus Farms, Inc. when the market opened at 83½. A few minutes later they bought 10,000 shares of Spacesuits Ltd. at 106¼. The farm stocks dropped off a point. Spacesuits gained a point. Then suddenly both rose. In the second hour of trading the Venus stocks had boomed a full five points and Wrail sold. Ten minutes later they sagged. At the end of the day they were off two points from the opening. In late afternoon Wrail threw his 10,000 shares of Spacesuits on the market, sold them at an even 110. Before the close they had dropped back with a gain of only half a point over the opening.

Those were only two transactions. There were others. Spaceship Fabrication climbed three points before it fell and Wrail cashed in on that. Mercury Metals rose two points and crashed back to close with a full point loss. Wrail sold just before the break. He had realized a cool half million in the day’s trade.

The next day it was a million and then the man who had always been a safe trader, who had always played the conservative side of the market, apparently sure of his ground now, plunged deeper and deeper. It was uncanny. Wrail knew when to buy and when to sell. Other traders watched closely, followed his lead. He threw them off by using different brokers to disguise his transactions.

Hectic day followed hectic day. Ben Wrail did not appear on the floor. Calls to his office netted exactly nothing. Mr. Wrail was not in. So sorry.

His brokers, well paid, were close-mouthed. They bought and sold. That was all.

Seated in his office, Ben Wrail was busy watching two television screens before him. One showed the board in the New York exchange. In the other was the image of Gregory Manning, hunched in a chair in Page’s mountain laboratory back on Earth. And before Greg likewise were two screens, one showing the New York exchange board, the other trained on Ben Wrail’s office.

“That Tourist stuff looks good,” said Greg. “Why not buy a block of it? I happen to know that Chambers owns a few shares. He’ll be dabbling in it.”

Ben Wrail grinned. “It’s made a couple of points, hasn’t it? It’s selling here for 60 right now. In 45 minutes it’ll be quoted at 62.”

He picked up a telephone. “Buy all you can of Tourist,” he said. “Right away. I’ll tell you when to sell. Get rid of whatever you have in Titan Copper at 10:30.”

“Better let go of your holdings of Ranthoor Dome,” suggested Greg. “It’s beginning to slip.”

“I’ll watch it,” promised Ben. “It may revive.”

They lapsed into silence, watching the board in New York.

“You know, Greg,” said Ben finally, “I really didn’t believe all this was true until I saw those credit certificates materialize on my desk.”

“Simple,” grunted Greg. “This thing we’ve got can take anything any place. I could reach out there, grab you up and have you down here in a split second.”

Ben sucked his breath in between his teeth. “I’m not doubting anything any more. You sent me half a billion two days ago. It’s more than doubled now.”

He picked up the phone again and spoke to his broker on the other end.

“Unload Ranthoor Dome when she reaches 79.”

* * * *

The real furor came on the Ranthoor floor when Wrail cornered Titan Copper. Striking swiftly, he purchased the stock in huge blocks. The shares rocketed as the exchanges throughout the System were thrown into an uproar. Under the cover of the excitement he proceeded to corner Spacesuits Ltd. Spacesuits zoomed.

For two days the main exchanges on four worlds were in a frenzy as traders watched the shares climb swiftly. Operators representing Interplanetary Power made offerings. No takers were reported. The shares climbed.

Within one hour, however, the entire Wrail holdings in both stocks were dumped on the market. The Interplanetary Power traders, frantic over the prospect of losing control of the two important issues, bought heavily. The price plummeted.

Spencer Chambers lost three billion or more on the deal. Overnight Ben Wrail had become a billionaire many times over. Greg Manning added to his own fortune.

“We have enough,” said Greg. “We’ve given Chambers what he had coming to him. Let’s call it off.”

“Glad to,” agreed Ben. “It was just too damned easy.”

“Be seeing you, Ben.”

“I’ll get down to Earth some day. Come see me when you have a minute. Drop in for an evening.”

“That’s an invitation,” said Greg. “It’s easy with this three-dimension stuff.”

He reached out a hand, snapped a control. The screens in Wrail’s office went dead.

Wrail reached for a cigar, lit it carefully. He leaned back in his chair, put his feet on the desk.

“By Heaven,” he said satisfiedly, “I’ve never enjoyed anything so much in all my life.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

A giant cylindrical hull of finest beryl steel, the ship loomed in the screen. A mighty ship, braced into absolute rigidity by monster cross beams of shining steel. Glowing under the blazing lamps that lighted the scene, it towered into the shadows of the factory, dwarfing the scurrying workmen who swarmed over it.

“She’s a beauty,” said Russ, puffing at his pipe.

Greg nodded agreement. “They’re working on her day and night to get her finished. We may need it some day and need it in a hurry. If Chambers really gets that machine of his to rolling, space will be the only place big enough to hide in.”

He chuckled, a grim chuckle, deep in his throat.

“But we won’t have to hide long. Just until we get organized and then will come the time when we’ll call for the showdown. Chambers will have to spread his cards.”

Russ snapped the television switch and the screen went blank. The laboratory suddenly was a place of queer lights and shadows, bulging with grotesque machines, with sprawling apparatus, a place that hinted darkly of vast power and mighty forces.

The scientist sat up in his chair. “We’ve come a long way, Greg. A long, long way. We have the greatest power man has ever known; we have an almost incomprehensible space drive; we have three-dimensional television.”

“And,” said Greg dryly, “we took Chambers to the cleaners on the market.”

They sat in silence. Greg smelled the smoke from Russ’s pipe, mixed with the taint of lubricant and the faint lingering scent of ionized air.

“We mustn’t underrate Chambers, however,” he declared. “The man made one mistake. He underrated us. We can’t repeat his mistake. He is dangerous all the time. He will stop at nothing. Not even murder.”

“He’s going easy now,” said Russ. “He’s hoping Craven can find something that will either equal our stuff or beat it. But Craven isn’t having any luck. He’s still driving himself on the radiation theory, but he doesn’t seem to make much headway.”

“If he got it, just what would it mean?”

“Plenty. With that he could turn all radiations in space to work. The cosmics, heat, light, everything. Space is full of radiation.”

“If it hadn’t been for Wilson,” Greg said, his voice a snarl, “we wouldn’t have to be worrying about Chambers. Chambers wouldn’t know until we were ready to let him know.”

“Wilson!” ejaculated Russ, suddenly leaning forward. “I had forgotten about Wilson. What do you say we try to find him?”

* * * *

Harry Wilson sat at his table in the Martian Club and watched the exotic Martian dance, performed by near-nude girls. Smoke trailed up lazily from his drooping cigarette as he watched through squinted eyes. There was something about the dance that got under Wilson’s skin.

The music rose, then fell to whispering undertones and suddenly, unexpectedly, crashed and stopped. The girls were running from the floor. A wave of smooth, polite applause rippled around the tables.

Wilson sighed and reached for his wine glass. He crushed the cigarette into a tray and sipped his wine. He glanced around the room, scanning the bobbing, painted faces of the night—the great, the near-great, the near-enough-to-touch-the-great. Brokers and businessmen, artists and writers and actors. There were others, too, queer night-life shadows that no one knew much about, or that one heard too much about…the playboys and the ladies of family and fortune, correctly attired men, gorgeously, sleekly attired women.

And—Harry Wilson. The waiters called him Mr. Wilson. He heard people whispering about him asking who he was. His soul soaked it in and cried for more. Good food, good drinks, the pastels of the walls, the soft lights and weird, exotic music. The cold but colorful correctness of it all.

Just two months ago he had stood outside the club, a stranger in the city, a mechanic from a little out-of-the-way laboratory, a man who was paid a pittance for his skill. He had stood outside and watched his employers walk up the steps and through the magic doors. He had watched in bitterness.…

But now!

The orchestra was striking up a tune. A blonde nodded at him from a near-by table. Solemnly, with the buzz of wine in his brain and its hotness in his blood, he returned the nod.

Someone was speaking to him, calling him by name. He looked around, but there was no one looking at him now. And once again, through that flow of music, through the hum of conversation, through the buzzing of his own brain, came the voice, cold and sharp as steel:

“Harry Wilson!”

It sent a shudder through him. He reached for the wine glass again, but his hand stopped half-way to the stem, paused and trembled at what he saw.

* * * *

For there was a gray vagueness in front of him, a sort of shimmer of nothingness, and out of that shimmer materialized a pencil.

As he watched, in stricken terror, the point of the pencil dropped to the tablecloth and slowly, precisely, it started to move. He stared, hypnotized, unbelieving, with the fingers of madness probing at his brain. The pencil wrote:

Wilson, you sold me out.

The man at the table tried to speak, tried to shriek, but his tongue and throat were dry and only harsh breath rattled in his mouth.

The pencil moved on mercilessly:

But you will pay. No matter where you go, I will find you. You cannot hide from me.

The pencil slowly lifted its point from the table and suddenly was gone, as if it had never been. Wilson, eyes wide and filled with terrible fear, stared at the black words on the cloth.

Wilson, you sold me out. But you will pay. No matter where you go, I will find you. You cannot hide from me.

The music pulsated in the room, the hum of conversation ran like an undertone, but Wilson did not hear. His entire consciousness was centered on the writing, the letters and the words that filled his soul with dread.

Something seemed to snap within him. The cold wind of terror reached out and struck at him. He staggered from the chair. His hand swept the wine glass from the table and it shattered into chiming shards.

“They can’t do this to me!” he shrieked.

There was a silence in the room a silence of terrible accusation. Everyone was staring at him. Eyebrows raised.

* * * *

A waiter was at his elbow. “Do you feel ill, sir?”

And then, on unsteady feet, he was being led away. Behind him he heard the music once again, heard the rising hum of voices.

Someone set his hat on his head, was holding his coat. The cold air of the night struck his face and the doors sighed closed behind him.

“I’d take it easy going down the step, sir,” counseled the doorman.

An aero-taxi driver held open the door of the cab and saluted.

“Where to, sir?”

Wilson stumbled in and stammered out his address. The taxi droned into the traffic lane.

Hands twitching, Wilson fumbled with the key, took minutes to open the door into his apartment. Finally the lock clicked and he pushed open the door. His questing finger found the wall switch. Light flooded the room.

Wilson heaved a sigh of relief. He felt safe here. This place belonged to him. It was his home, his retreat.…

A low laugh, hardly more than a chuckle, sounded behind him. He whirled and for a moment, blinking in the light, he saw nothing. Then something stirred by one of the windows, gray and vague, like a sheet of moving fog.

As he watched, shrinking back against the wall, the grayness deepened, took the form of a man. And out of that mistiness a face was etched, a face that had no single line of humor in it, a bleak face with the fire of anger in the eyes.

“Manning!” shrieked Wilson. “Manning!” He wheeled and sprinted for the door, but the gray figure moved, too…incredibly fast, as if it were wind-blown vapor, and barred his path to the door.

“Why are you running away?” Manning’s voice mocked. “Certainly you aren’t afraid of me.”

“Look,” Wilson whimpered, “I didn’t think of what it meant. I just was tired of working the way Page made me work. Tired of the little salary I got. I wanted money. I was hungry for money.”

“So you sold us out,” said Manning.

“No,” cried Wilson, “I didn’t think of it that way. I didn’t stop to think.”

“Think now, then,” said Manning gravely. “Think of this. No matter where you are, no matter where you go, no matter what you do, I’ll always be watching you, I’ll never let you rest. I’ll never give you a minute’s peace.”

“Please,” pleaded Wilson. “Please, go away and leave me. I’ll give you back the money…there’s some of it left.”

“You sold out for twenty thousand,” said Manning. “You could have gotten twenty million. Chambers would have paid that much to know what you could tell him, because it was worth twenty billion.”

Wilson’s breath was coming in panting gasps. He dropped his coat and backed away. The back of his knees collided with a chair and he folded up, sat down heavily, still staring at the gray mistiness that was a man.

“Think of that, Wilson,” Manning went on sneeringly. “You could have been a millionaire. Maybe even a billionaire. You could have had all the fine things these other people have. But you only got twenty thousand.”

“What can I do?” begged Wilson.

The misty face split in a sardonic grin.

“I don’t believe there’s anything left for you to do.”

Before Wilson’s eyes the face dissolved, lost its lines, seemed to melt away. Only streaming, swirling mist, then a slight refraction in the air and then nothing.

Slowly Wilson rose to his feet, reached for the bottle of whiskey on the table. His hand shook so that the liquor splashed. When he raised the glass to his mouth, his still-shaking hand poured half the drink over his white shirt front.

CHAPTER NINE

Ludwig Stutsmanpressed his thin, straight lips together. “So that’s the setup,” he said.

Across the desk Spencer Chambers studied the man. Stutsman was like a wolf, lean and cruel and vicious. He even looked like a wolf, with his long, thin face, his small, beady eyes, the thin, bloodless lips. But he was the kind of man who didn’t always wait for instructions, but went ahead and used his own judgment. And in a ruthless sort of way, his judgment was always right.

“Only as a last resort,” cautioned Chambers, “do I want you to use the extreme measures you are so fond of using. If they should prove necessary, we can always use them. But not yet. I want to settle this thing in the quietest way possible. Page and Manning are two men who can’t simply disappear. There’d be a hunt, an investigation, an ugly situation.”

“I understand,” agreed Stutsman. “If something should happen to their notes, if somebody could find them. Perhaps you. If you found them on your desk one morning.”

The two men measured one another with their eyes, more like enemies than men working for the same ends.

“Not my desk,” snapped Chambers, “Craven’s. So that Craven could discover this new energy. Whatever Craven discovers belongs to Interplanetary.”

Chambers rose from his chair and walked to the window, looked out. After a moment’s time, he turned and walked back again, sat down in his chair. Leaning back, he matched his fingertips, his teeth flashing in a grin under his mustache.

“I don’t know anything about what’s going on,” he said. “I don’t even know someone has discovered material energy. That’s up to Craven. He has to find it. Both you and Craven work alone. I know nothing about either of you.”

Stutsman’s jaw closed like a steel trap. “I’ve always worked alone.”

“By the way,” said Chambers, the edge suddenly off his voice, “how are things going in the Jovian confederacy? I trust you left everything in good shape.”

“As good as could be expected,” Stutsman replied. “The people are still uneasy, half angry. They still remember Mallory.”

“But Mallory,” objected Chambers, “is on a prison ship. In near Mercury now, I believe.”

Stutsman shook his head. “They still remember him. We’ll have trouble out there one of these days.”

“I would hate to have that happen,” remarked Chambers softly. “I would regret it very much. I sent you out there to see that nothing happened.”

“The trouble out there won’t be a flash to this thing you were telling me about,” snapped Stutsman.

“I’m leaving that in your hands, too,” Chambers told him. “I know you can take care of it.”

Stutsman rose. “I can take care of it.”

“I’m sure you can,” Chambers said.

He remained standing after Stutsman left, looking at the door through which the man had gone. Maybe it had been a mistake to call Stutsman in from Callisto. Maybe it was a mistake to use Stutsman at all. He didn’t like a lot of things the man did…or the way he did them. Brutal things.

* * * *

Slowly Chambers sat down again and his face grew hard.

He had built an empire of many worlds. That couldn’t be done with gentle methods and no sure goal. Fighting every inch from planet to planet, he had used power to gain power. And now that empire was threatened by two men who had found a greater power. That threat had to be smashed! It would be smashed!

Chambers leaned forward and pressed a buzzer.

“Yes, Mr. Chambers?” said a voice in the communicator.

“Send Dr. Craven in,” commanded Chambers.

Craven came in, slouchily, his hair standing on end, his eyes peering through the thick-lensed glasses.

“You sent for me,” he growled, taking a chair.

“Yes, I did,” said Chambers. “Have a drink?”

“No. And no smoke either.”

Chambers took a long cigar from the box on his desk, clipped off the end and rolled it in his mouth.

* * * *

“I’m a busy man,” Craven reminded him.

Puckering lines of amusement wrinkled Chambers’ eyes as he lit up, watching Craven.

“You do seem to be busy, Doctor,” he said. “I only wish you had something concrete to report.”

The scientist bristled. “I may have in a few days, if you leave me alone and let me work.”

“I presume that you are still working on your radiation collector. Any progress?”

“Not too much. You can’t expect a man to turn out discoveries to order. I’m working almost night and day now. If the thing can be solved, I’ll solve it.”

Chambers glowed. “Keep up the good work. But I wanted to talk to you about something else. You heard, I suppose, that I lost a barrel of money on the Ranthoor exchange.”

Craven smiled, a sardonic twisting of his lips. “I heard something about it.”

“I thought you had,” said Chambers sourly. “If not, you would have been the only one who hadn’t heard how Ben Wrail took Chambers for a ride.”

“He really took you then,” commented Craven. “I thought maybe it was just one of those stories.”

“He took me, but that’s not what’s worrying me. I want to know how he did it. No man, not even the most astute student of the market, could have foretold the trend of the market the way he did. And Wrail isn’t the most astute. It isn’t natural when a man who has always played the safe side suddenly turns the market upside down. Even less natural when he never makes a mistake.”

“Well,” demanded Craven, “what do you want me to do about it? I’m a scientist. I’ve never owned a share of stock in my life.”

“There’s an angle to it that might interest you,” said Chambers smoothly, leaning back, puffing at the cigar. “Wrail is a close friend of Manning. And Wrail himself didn’t have the money it took to swing those deals. Somebody furnished that money.”

“Manning?” asked Craven.

“What do you think?”

“If Manning’s mixed up in it,” said Craven acidly, “there isn’t anything any of us can do about it. You’re bucking money and genius together. This Manning is no slouch of a scientist himself and Page is better. They’re a combination.”

* * * *

“You think they’re good?” asked Chambers.

“Good? Didn’t they discover material energy?” The scientist glowered at his employer. “That ought to be answer enough.”

“Yes, I know,” Chambers agreed irritably. “But can you tell me how they worked this market deal?”

Craven grimaced. “I can guess. Those boys didn’t stop with just finding how to harness material energy. They probably have more things than you can even suspect. They were working with force fields, you remember, when they stumbled onto the energy. Force fields are something we don’t know much about. A man monkeying around with them is apt to find almost anything.”

“What are you getting at?”

“My guess would be that they have a new kind of television working in the fourth dimension, using time as a factor. It would penetrate anything. Nothing could stop it. It could go anywhere, at a speed many times the speed of light…almost instantaneously.”

Chambers sat upright in his chair. “Are you sure about this?”

Craven shook his head. “Just a guess. I tried to figure out what I would do if I were Page and Manning and had the things they had. That’s all.”

“And what would you do?”

Craven smiled dourly. “I’d be using that television right in this office,” he said. “I’d keep you and me under observation all the time. If what I think is true, Manning is watching us now and has heard every word we said.”

Chambers’ face was a harsh mask of anger. “I don’t believe it could be done!”

“Doctor Craven is right,” said a quiet voice.

Chambers swung around in his chair and gasped. Greg Manning stood inside the room, just in front of the desk.

“I hope you don’t mind,” said Greg. “I’ve been wanting to have a talk with you.”

Craven leaped to his feet, his eyes shining. “Three dimensions!” he whispered. “How did you do it?”

Greg chuckled. “I haven’t patented the idea, Doctor. I’d rather not tell you just now.”

“You will accept my congratulations, however?” asked Craven.

“That’s generous of you. I really hadn’t expected this much.”

“I mean it,” said Craven. “Damned if I don’t.” Chambers was on his feet, leaning across the desk, with his hand held out. Greg’s right hand came out slowly.

“Sorry, I really can’t shake hands,” he said. “I’m not here, you know. Just my image.”

Chambers’ hand dropped to the desk. “Stupid of me not to realize that. You looked so natural.” He sat back in his chair again, brushed his gray mustache. A smile twisted his lips. “So you’ve been watching me?”

“Off and on,” Greg said.

“And what is the occasion of this visit?” asked Chambers. “You could have held a distinct advantage by remaining unseen. I didn’t entirely believe what Craven told me, you know.”

“That isn’t the point at all,” declared Greg. “Maybe we can get to understand one another.”

“So you’re ready to talk business.”

“Not in the sense you mean,” Greg said. “I’m not willing to make concessions, but there’s no reason why we have to fight one another.”

“Why, no,” said Chambers, “there’s no reason for that. I’ll be willing to buy your discovery.”

“I wouldn’t sell it to you,” Greg told him.

“You wouldn’t? Why not? I’m prepared to pay for it.”

“You’d pay the price, all right. Anything I asked…even if it bankrupted you. Then you’d mark it down to loss, and scrap material energy. And I’ll tell you why.”

* * * *

A terrible silence hung in the room as the two men eyed one another across the table.

“You wouldn’t use it,” Greg went on, “because it would remove the stranglehold you have on the planets. It would make power too cheap. It would eliminate the necessity of your rented accumulators. The Jovian moons and Mars could stand on their feet without the power you ship to them. You could make billions in legitimate profits selling the apparatus to manufacture the energy…but you wouldn’t want that. You want to be dictator of the Solar System. And that is what I intend to stop.”

“Listen, Manning,” said Chambers, “you’re a reasonable man. Let’s talk this thing over without anger. What do you plan to do?”

“I could put my material engines on the market,” said Greg. “That would ruin you. You wouldn’t move an accumulator after that. Your Interplanetary stock wouldn’t be worth the paper it is written on. Material energy would wipe you out.”

“You forget I have franchises on those planets,” Chambers reminded him. “I’d fight you in the courts until hell froze over.”

“I’d prove convenience, economy and necessity. Any court in any land, on any planet, would rule for me.”

Chambers shook his head. “Not Martian or Jovian courts. I’d tell them to rule for me and the courts outside of Earth do what I tell them to.”

* * * *

Greg straightened and backed from the desk. “I hate to ruin a man. You’ve worked hard. You’ve built a great company. I would be willing, in return for a hands-off policy on your part, to hold up any announcement of my material energy until you had time to get out, to save what you could.”

Hard fury masked Chambers’ face. “You’ll never build a material energy engine outside your laboratory. Don’t worry about ruining me. I won’t allow you to stand in my way. I hope you understand.”

“I understand too well. But even if you are a dictator out on Mars and Venus, even if you do own Mercury and boss the Jovian confederacy, you’re just a man to me. A man who stands for things that I don’t like.”

Greg stopped and his eyes were like ice crystals.

“You talked to Stutsman today,” he said. “If I were you, I wouldn’t let Stutsman do anything rash. Russ Page and I might have to fight back.”

Mockery tinged Chambers’ voice. “Am I to take this as a declaration of war, Mr. Manning?”

“Take it any way you like,” Greg said. “I came here to give you a proposition, and you tell me you’re going to smash me. All I have to say to you, Chambers, is this—when you get ready to smash me, you’d better have a deep, dark hole all picked out for yourself to hide in. Because I’ll hand you back just double anything you hand out.”

CHAPTER TEN

“One of us will have to watch all the time,” Greg told Russ. “We can’t take any chances. Stutsman will try to reach us sooner or later and we have to be ready for him.”

He glanced at the new radar screen they had set up that morning beside the bank of other controls. Any ship coming within a hundred miles of the laboratory would be detected instantly and pinpointed.

The board flashed now. In the screen they saw a huge passenger ship spearing down toward the airport south of them.

“With the port that close,” said Russ, “we’ll get a lot of signals.”

“I ordered the Belgium factory to rush work on the ship,” said Greg. “But it will be a couple of weeks yet. We just have to sit tight and wait. As soon as we have the ship we’ll start in on Chambers; but until we get the ship, we just have to dig in and stay on the defensive.”

He studied the scene in the screen. The ship had leveled off, was banking in to the port. His eyes turned away, took in the laboratory with its crowding mass of machinery.

“We don’t want to fool ourselves about Chambers,” he said. “He may not have the power here on Earth that he does on the other planets, but he’s got plenty. Feeling the way he does, he’ll try to finish us off in a hurry now.”

Russ reached out to the table that stood beside the bank of controls and picked up a small, complicated mechanism. Its face bore nine dials, with the needles on three of them apparently registering, the other six motionless.

“What is that?” asked Greg.

“A mechanical detective,” said Russ. “A sort of mechanical shadow. While you were busy with the stock market stunt, I made several of them. One for Wilson and another for Chambers and still another for Craven.” He hoisted and lowered the one in his hand. “This one is for Stutsman.”

“A shadow?” asked Greg. “Do you mean that thing will trail Stutsman?”

“Not only trail him,” said Russ. “It will find him, wherever he may be. Some object every person wears or carries is made of iron or some other magnetic metal. This ‘shadow’ contains a tiny bit of that ridiculous military decoration that Stutsman never allows far away from him. Find that decoration and you find Stutsman. In another one I have a chunk of Wilson’s belt buckle, that college buckle, you know, that he’s so proud of. Chambers has a ring made of a piece of meteoric iron and that’s the bait for another machine. Have a tiny piece off Craven’s spectacles in his machine. It was easy to get the stuff. The force field enables a man to reach out and take anything he wants to, from a massive machine to a microscopic bit of matter. It was a cinch to get the stuff I needed.”

Russ chuckled and put the machine back on the table. He gestured toward it.

“It maintains a tiny field similar to our television field,” he explained. “But it’s modified along a special derivation with a magnetic result. It can follow and find the original mass of any metallic substance it may contain.”

“Clever,” commented Greg.

Russ lit his pipe, puffed comfortably. “We needed something like that.”

The red light on the board snapped on and blinked. Russ reached out and slammed home the lever, twirled dials. It was only another passenger ship. They relaxed, but not too much.

* * * *

“I wonder what he’s up to,” said Russ.

Stutsman’s car had stopped in the dock section of New York. Crumbling, rotting piers and old tumbledown warehouses, deserted and unused since the last ship sailed the ocean before giving way to air commerce, loomed darkly, like grim ghosts, in the darkness.

Stutsman had gotten out of the car and said: “Wait here.”

“Yes, sir,” said the voice of the driver.

Stutsman strode away, down a dark street. The televisor kept pace with him and on the screen he could be seen as a darker shape moving among the shadows of that old, almost forgotten section of the Solar System’s greatest city.

Another shadow detached itself from the darkness of the street, shuffled toward Stutsman.

“Sir,” said a whining voice, “I haven’t eaten…”

There was a swift movement as Stutsman’s stick lashed out, a thud as it connected with the second shadow’s head. The shadow crumpled on the pavement. Stutsman strode on.

Greg sucked in his breath. “He isn’t very sociable tonight.”

Stutsman ducked into an alley where even deeper darkness lay. Russ, with a delicate adjustment, slid the televisor along, closer to Stutsman, determined not to lose sight of him for an instant.

The man suddenly turned into a doorway so black that nothing could be seen. Sounds of sharp, impatient rappings came out of the screen as Stutsman struck the door with his stick.

Brilliant illumination sprang out over the doorway, but Stutsman seemed not to see it, went on knocking. The colors on the screen were peculiarly distorted.

“Ultra-violet,” grunted Greg. “Whoever he’s calling on wants to have a good look before letting anybody in.”

The door creaked open and a shaft of normal light spewed out into the street, turning its murkiness to pallid yellow.

Stutsman stepped inside.

The man at the door jerked his head. “Back room,” he said.

* * * *

The televisor slid through the door into the lighted room behind Stutsman. Dust lay thick on the woodwork and floors. Patches of plaster had broken away. Furrows zigzagged across the floor, marking the path of heavy boxes or furniture which had been pushed along in utter disdain of the flooring. Cheap wall-paper hung in tatters from the walls, streaked with water from some broken pipe.

But the back room was a startling contrast to the first. Rich, comfortable furniture filled it. The floor was covered with a steel-cloth rug and steel-cloth hangings, colorfully painted, hid the walls.

A man sat under a lamp, reading a newspaper. He rose to his feet, like the sudden uncoiling of springs.

Russ gasped. That face was one of the best known faces in the entire Solar System. A ratlike face, with cruel cunning printed on it that had been on front pages and TV screens often, but never for pay.

“Scorio!” whispered Russ.

Greg nodded and his lips were drawn tight.

“Stutsman,” said Scorio, surprised. “You’re the last person in the world I was expecting. Come in. Have a chair. Make yourself comfortable.”

Stutsman snorted. “This isn’t a social call.”

“I didn’t figure it was,” replied the gangster, “but sit down anyway.”

Gingerly Stutsman sat down on the edge of a chair, hunched forward. Scorio resumed his seat and waited.

“I have a job for you,” Stutsman announced bluntly.

“Fine. It isn’t often you have one for me. Three-four years ago, wasn’t it?”

“We may be watched,” warned Stutsman.

The mobster started from his chair, his eyes darting about the room.

Stutsman grunted disgustedly. “If we’re watched, there isn’t anything we can do about it.”

“We can’t, huh?” snarled the gangster. “Why not?”

“Because the watcher is on the West Coast. We can’t reach him. If he’s watching, he can see every move we make, hear every word we say.”

“Who is it?”

* * * *

“Greg Manning or Russ Page,” said Stutsman. “You’ve heard of them?”

“Sure. I heard of them.”

“They have a new kind of television,” said Stutsman. “They can see and hear everything that’s happening on Earth, perhaps in all the Solar System. But I don’t think they’re watching us now. Craven has a machine that can detect their televisor. It registers certain field effects they use. They weren’t watching when I left Craven’s laboratory just a few minutes ago. They may have picked me up since, but I don’t think so.”

“So Craven has made a detector,” said Greg calmly. “He can tell when we’re watching now.”

“He’s a clever cuss,” agreed Russ.

“Take a look at that machine now,” urged Scorio. “See if they’re watching. You shouldn’t have come here. You should have let me know and I would have met you some place. I can’t have people knowing where my hideout is.”

“Quiet down,” snapped Stutsman. “I haven’t got the machine. It weighs half a ton.”

Scorio sank deeper into his chair, worried. “Do you want to take a chance and talk business?”

“Certainly. That’s why I’m here. This is the proposition. Manning and Page are working in a laboratory out on the West Coast, in the mountains. I’ll give you the exact location later. They have some papers we want. We wouldn’t mind if something happened to the laboratory. It might, for example blow up. But we want the papers first.”

* * * *

Scorio said nothing. His face was quiet and cunning.

“Give me the papers,” said Stutsman, “and I’ll see that you get to any planet you want to. And I’ll give you two hundred thousand in Interplanetary Credit certificates. Give me proof that the laboratory blew up or melted down or something else happened to it and I’ll boost the figure to five hundred thousand.”

Scorio did not move a muscle as he asked: “Why don’t you have some of your own mob do this job?”

“Because I can’t be connected with it in any way,” said Stutsman. “If you slip up and something happens, I won’t be able to do a thing for you. That’s why the price is high.”

The gangster’s eyes slitted. “If the papers are worth that much to you, why wouldn’t they be worth as much to me?”

“They wouldn’t be worth a dime to you.”

“Why not?”

“Because you couldn’t read them,” said Stutsman.

“I can read,” retorted the gangster.

“Not the kind of language on those papers. There aren’t more than two dozen people in the Solar System who could read it, perhaps a dozen who could understand it, maybe half a dozen who could follow the directions in the papers.” He leaned forward and jabbed a forefinger at the gangster. “And there are only two people in the System who could write it.”

“What the hell kind of a language is it that only two dozen people could read?”

“It isn’t a language, really. It’s mathematics.”

“Oh, arithmetic.”

“No,” Stutsman said. “Mathematics. You see? You don’t even know the difference between the two, so what good would the papers do you?”

Scorio nodded. “Yeah, you’re right.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The Paris-Berlin express thundered through the night, a gigantic ship that rode high above the Earth. Far below one could see the dim lights of eastern Europe.

Harry Wilson pressed his face against the window, staring down. There was nothing to see but the tiny lights. They were alone, he and the other occupants of the ship…alone in the dark world that surrounded them.

But Wilson sensed some other presence in the ship, someone besides the pilot and his mechanics up ahead, the hostess and the three stodgy traveling men who were his fellow passengers.

Wilson’s hair ruffled at the base of his skull, tingling with an unknown fear that left him shaken.

A voice whispered in his ear: “Harry Wilson. So you are running away!”

Just a tiny voice that seemed hardly a voice at all, it seemed at once to come from far away and yet from very near. The voice, with an edge of coldness on it, was one he never would forget.

He cowered in his seat, whimpering.

The voice came again: “Didn’t I tell you that you couldn’t run away? That no matter where you went, I’d find you?”

“Go away,” Wilson whispered huskily. “Leave me alone. Haven’t you hounded me enough?”

“No,” answered the voice, “not enough. Not yet. You sold us out. You warned Chambers about our energy and now Chambers is sending men to kill us. But they won’t succeed, Wilson.”

“You can’t hurt me,” said Wilson defiantly. “You can’t do anything but talk to me. You’re trying to drive me mad, but you can’t. I won’t let you. I’m not going to pay any more attention to you.”

The whisper chuckled.

“You can’t,” argued Wilson wildly. “All you can do is talk to me. You’ve never done anything but that. You drove me out of New York and out of London and now you’re driving me out of Paris. But Berlin is as far as I will go. I won’t listen to you any more.”

“Wilson,” whispered the voice, “look inside your bag. The bag, Wilson, where you are carrying that money. That stack of credit certificates. Almost eleven thousand dollars, what is left of the twenty thousand Chambers paid you.”

With a wild cry Wilson clawed at his bag, snapped it open, pawed through it.

* * * *

The credit certificates were gone!

“You took my money,” he shrieked. “You took everything I had. I haven’t got a cent. Nothing except a few dollars in my pocket.”

“You haven’t got that either, Wilson,” whispered the voice.

There was a sound of ripping cloth as something like a great, powerful hand flung aside Wilson’s coat, tore away the inside pocket. There was a brief flash of a wallet and a bundle of papers, which vanished.

The hostess was hurrying toward him.

“Is there something wrong?”

“They took…” Wilson began and stopped.

What could he tell her? Could he say that a man half way across the world had robbed him?

The three traveling men were looking at him.

“I’m sorry, miss,” he stammered. “I really am. I fell asleep and dreamed.”

He sat down again, shaken. Shivering, he huddled back into the corner of his seat. His hands explored the torn coat pocket. He was stranded, high in the air, somewhere between Paris and Berlin…stranded without money, without a passport, with nothing but the clothes he wore and the few personal effects in his bag.

Fighting to calm himself, he tried to reason out his plight. The plane was entering the Central European Federation and that, definitely, was no place to be without a passport or without visible means of support. A thousand possibilities flashed through his mind. They might think he was a spy. He might be cited for illegal entry. He might be framed by secret police.

Terror perched on his shoulder and whispered to him. He shivered violently and drew farther back into the corner of the seat. He clasped his hands, beat them against his huddled knees.

He would cable friends back in America and have them identify him and vouch for his character. He would borrow some money from them, just enough to get back to America. But whom would he cable? And with aching bitterness in his breast, Harry Wilson came face to face with the horrible realization that nowhere in the world, nowhere in the Solar System, was there a single person who was his friend. There was no one to help him.

He bowed his head in his hands and sobbed, his shoulders jerking spasmodically, the sobs racking his body.

The traveling men stared at him unable to understand. The hostess looked briskly helpless. Wilson knew he looked like a scared fool and he didn’t care.

He was scared.

* * * *

Gregory Manningriffled the sheaf of credit certificates, the wallet, the passport and pile of other papers that lay upon the desk in front of him.

“That closes one little incident,” he said grimly. “That takes care of our friend Wilson.”

“Maybe you were a bit too harsh with him, Greg,” suggested Russell Page.

Greg shook his head. “He was a traitor, the lowest thing alive. He sold the confidence we placed in him. He traded something that was not his to trade. He did it for money and now I’ve taken that money from him.”

He shoved the pile of certificates to one side.

“Now I’ve got this stuff,” he said, “I don’t know what to do with it. We don’t want to keep it.”

“Why not send it to Chambers?” suggested Russ. “He will find the passport and the money on his desk in the morning. Give him something to think about tomorrow.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

Scorio snarled at the four men: “I want you to get the thing done right. I don’t want bungling. Understand?”

The bulky, flat-faced man with the scar across his cheek shuffled uneasily. “We went over it a dozen times. We know just what to do.”

He grinned at Scorio, but the grin was lopsided, more like a sneering grimace. At one time the man had failed to side-step a heat ray and it had left a neat red line drawn across the right cheek, nipped the end of the ear.

“All right, Pete,” said Scorio, glaring at the man, “your job is the heavy work, so just keep your mind on it. You’ve got the two heaters and the kit.”

Pete grinned lopsidedly again. “Yeah, my own kit. I can open anything hollow with this rig.”

“You got a real job tonight,” snarled Scorio. “Two doors and a safe. Sure you can do it?”

“Just leave it to me,” Pete growled.

“Chizzy, you’re to pilot,” Scorio snapped. “Know the coordinates?”

“Sure,” said Chizzy, “know them by heart. Do it with my eyes shut.”

“Keep your eyes open. We can’t have anything go wrong. This is too important. You swoop in at top speed and land on the roof. Stand by the controls and keep a hand on the big heater just in case of trouble. Pete, Max and Reg will go to the lockdoor. Reg will stay there with the buzzer and three drums of ammunition.”

He whirled on Reg. “You got that ammunition?”

Reg nodded emphatically. “Four drums of it,” he said. “One solid round in the gun. Another drum of solid and two explosive.”

“There’s a thousand rounds in each drum,” snapped Scorio, “but they last only a minute, so do your firing in bursts.”

“I ain’t handled buzzers all these years without knowing something about them.”

“There’s only two men there,” said Scorio, “and they’ll probably be asleep. Come down with your motor dead. The lab roof is thick and the plane landing on those thick tires won’t wake them. But be on your guard all the time. Pete and Max will go through the lockdoor into the laboratory and open the safe. Dump all the papers and money and whatever else you find into the bags and then get out fast. Hop into the plane and take off. When you’re clear of the building, turn the heaters on it. I want it melted down and the men and stuff inside with it. Don’t leave even a button unmelted. Get it?”

* * * *

“Sure, chief,” said Pete. He dusted his hands together.

“Now get going. Beat it.”

The four men turned and filed out of the room, through the door leading to the tumbledown warehouse where was hidden the streamlined metal ship. Swiftly they entered it and the ship nosed gently upward, blasting out through a broken, frameless skylight, climbing up and up, over the gleaming spires of New York.

Back in the room hung with steel-cloth curtains, alone, Scorio lit a cigarette and chuckled. “They won’t have a chance,” he said.

“Who won’t?” asked a tiny voice from almost in front of him.

“Why, Manning and Page…” said Scorio, and then stopped. The fire of the match burned down and scorched his fingers. He dropped it. “Who asked that?” he roared.

“I did,” said the piping voice.

Scorio looked down. A three-inch man sat on a matchbox on the desk!

“Who are you?” the gangster shouted.

“I’m Manning,” said the little man. “The one you’re going to kill. Don’t you remember?”

“Damn you!” shrieked Scorio. His hand flipped open a drawer and pulled out a flame pistol. The muzzle of the pistol came up and blasted. Screwed down to its smallest diameter, the gun’s aim was deadly. A straight lance of flame, no bigger than a pencil, streamed out, engulfed the little man, bored into the table top. The box of matches exploded with a gush of red that was a dull flash against the blue blaze of the gun.

But the figure of the man stood within the flame! Stood there and waved an arm at Scorio. The piping voice came out of the heart of the gun’s breath.

“Maybe I’d better get a bit smaller. Make me harder to hit. More sport that way.”

* * * *

Scorio’s finger lifted from the trigger. The flame snapped off. Laboriously climbing out of the still smoking furrow left in the oaken table top was Greg Manning, not more than an inch tall now.

The gangster laid the gun on the table, stepped closer, warily. With the palm of a mighty hand he swatted viciously at the little figure.

“I got you now!”

But the figure seemed to ooze upright between his fingers, calmly stepped off his hand onto the table. And now it began to grow. Watching it, Scorio saw it grow to six inches and there it stopped.

“What are you?” he breathed.

“I told you,” said the little image. “I’m Gregory Manning. The man you set out to kill. I’ve watched every move you’ve made and known everything you planned.”

“But that isn’t possible,” protested Scorio. “You’re out on the West Coast. This is some trick. I’m just seeing things.”

“You aren’t seeing anything imaginary. I’m really here, in this room with you. I could lift my finger and kill you if I wished…and maybe I should.”

Scorio stepped back a pace.

“But I’m not going to,” said Manning. “I have something better saved for you. Something more appropriate.”

“You can’t touch me!”

“Look,” said Manning sternly. He pointed his finger at a chair. It suddenly grew cloudy, became a wisp of trailing smoke, was gone.

The gangster backed away, eyes glued to the spot where the chair had vanished.

“Look here,” piped the little voice. Scorio jerked his head around and looked.

The chair was in Manning’s hand. A tiny chair, but the very one that had disappeared from the room a moment before.

“Watch out!” warned Manning, and heaved the chair. The tiny chair seemed to float in the air. Then with a rush it gathered speed, grew larger. In a split second it was a full-sized chair and it was hurtling straight at the gangster’s head.

With a strangled cry Scorio threw up his arms. The chair crashed into him, bowled him over.

“Now do you believe me?” demanded Manning.

Scrambling to his feet, Scorio gibbered madly, for the six-inch figure was growing. He became as large as the average man, and then much larger. His head cleared the high ceiling by scant inches. His mighty hands reached out for the gangster.

Scorio scuttled away on hands and knees, yelping with terror.

Powerful hands seemed to seize and lift him. The room was blotted out. The Earth was gone. He was in a place where there was nothing. No light, no heat, no gravitation. For one searing, blasting second he seemed to be floating in strangely suspended animation. Then with a jolt he became aware of new surroundings.

He blinked his eyes and looked around. He was in a great laboratory that hummed faintly with the suggestion of terrific power, that smelled of ozone and seemed filled with gigantic apparatus.

Two men stood in front of him.

He staggered back.

“Manning!” he gasped.

Manning grinned savagely at him. “Sit down, Scorio. You won’t have long to wait. Your boys will be along any minute now.”

* * * *

Chizzy crouched over the controls, his eyes on the navigation chart. Only the thin screech of parted air disturbed the silence of the ship. The high scream and the slow, precise snack-snack of cards as Reg and Max played a game of double solitaire with a cold, emotionless precision.

The plane was near the stratosphere, well off the traveled air lanes. It was running without lights, but the cabin bulbs were on, carefully shielded.

Pete sat in the co-pilot’s chair beside Chizzy. His blank, expressionless eyes stared straight ahead.

“I don’t like this job,” he complained.

“Why not?” asked Chizzy.

“Page and Manning aren’t the kind of guys a fellow had ought to be fooling around with. They ain’t just chumps. You fool with characters like them and you got trouble.”

Chizzy growled at him disgustedly, bent to his controls.

Straight ahead was a thin sliver of a dying Moon that gave barely enough illumination to make out the great, rugged blocks of the mountains, like dark, shadowy brush-strokes on a newly started canvas.

Pete shuddered. There was something about the thin, watery moonlight, and those brush-stroke hills.…

“It seems funny up here,” he said.

“Hell,” growled Chizzy, “you’re going soft in your old age.”

Silence fell between the two. The snack-snack of the cards continued.

“You ain’t got nothing to be afraid of,” Chizzy told Pete. “This tub is the safest place in the world. She’s overpowered a dozen times. She can outfly anything in the air. She’s rayproof and bulletproof and bombproof. Nothing can hurt us.”

But Pete wasn’t listening. “That moonlight makes a man see things. Funny things. Like pictures in the night.”

“You’re balmy,” declared Chizzy.

Pete started out of his seat. His voice gurgled in his throat. He pointed with a shaking finger out into the night.

“Look!” he yelled “Look!”

Chizzy rose out of his seat…and froze in sudden terror.

Straight ahead of the ship, etched in silvery moon-lines against the background of the star-sprinkled sky, was a grim and terrible face.

It was as big and hard as a mountain.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The ship was silent now. Even the whisper of the cards had stopped. Reg and Max were on their feet, startled by the cries of Pete and Chizzy.

“It’s Manning!” shrieked Pete. “He’s watching us!”

Chizzy’s hand whipped out like a striking snake toward the controls and, as he grasped them, his face went deathly white. For the controls were locked! They resisted all the strength he threw against them and the ship still bore on toward that mocking face that hung above the Earth.

“Do something!” screamed Max. “You damn fool, do something!”

“I can’t,” moaned Chizzy. “The ship is out of control.”

It seemed impossible. That ship was fast and tricky and it had reserve power far beyond any possible need. It handled like a dream…it was tops in aircraft. But there was no doubt that some force more powerful than the engines and controls of the ship itself had taken over.

“Manning’s got us!” squealed Pete. “We came out to get him and now he has us instead!”

The craft was gaining speed. The whining shriek of the air against its plates grew thinner and higher. Listening, one could almost feel and hear the sucking of the mighty power that pulled it at an ever greater pace through the tenuous atmosphere.

The face was gone from the sky now. Only the Moon remained, the Moon and the brush-stroke mountains far below.

Then, suddenly, the speed was slowing and the ship glided downward, down into the saw-teeth of the mountains.

“We’re falling!” yelled Max, and Chizzy growled at him.

But they weren’t falling. The ship leveled off and floated, suspended above a sprawling laboratory upon a mountain top.

“That’s Manning’s laboratory,” whispered Pete in terror-stricken tones.

The levers yielded unexpectedly. Chizzy flung the power control over, drove the power of the accumulator bank, all the reserve, into the engines. The ship lurched, but did not move. The engines whined and screamed in torture. The cabin’s interior was filled with a blast of heat, the choking odor of smoke and hot rubber. The heavy girders of the frame creaked under the mighty forward thrust of the engines…but the ship stood still, frozen above that laboratory in the hills.

Chizzy, hauling back the lever, turned around, pale. His hand began clawing for his heat gun. Then he staggered back. For there were only two men in the cabin with him—Reg and Max. Pete had gone!

“He just disappeared,” Max jabbered. “He was standing there in front of us. Then all at once he seemed to fade, as if he was turning into smoke. Then he was gone.”

* * * *

Something had descended about Pete. There was no sound, no light, no heat. He had no sense of weight. It was as if, suddenly, his mind had become disembodied.

Seeing and hearing and awareness came back to him as one might turn on a light. From the blackness and the eventless existence of a split second before, he was catapulted into a world of light and sound.

It was a world that hummed with power, that was ablaze with light, a laboratory that seemed crammed with mighty banks of massive machinery, lighted by great globes of creamy brightness, shedding an illumination white as sunlight, yet shadowless as the light of a cloudy day.

Two men stood in front of him, looking at him, one with a faint smile on his lips, the other with lines of fear etched across his face. The smiling one was Gregory Manning and the one who was afraid was Scorio!

With a start, Pete snatched his pistol from its holster. The sights came up and lined on Manning as he pressed the trigger. But the lancing heat that sprang from the muzzle of the gun never reached Manning. It seemed to strike an obstruction less than a foot away. It mushroomed with a flare of scorching radiance that drove needles of agony into the gangster’s body.

His finger released its pressure and the gun dangled limply from his hand. He moaned with the pain of burns upon his unprotected face and hands. He beat feebly at tiny, licking blazes that ran along his clothing.

Manning was still smiling at him.

“You can’t reach me, Pete,” he said. “You can only hurt yourself. You’re enclosed within a solid wall of force that matter cannot penetrate.”

A voice came from one corner of the room: “I’ll bring Chizzy down next.”

Pete whirled around and saw Russell Page for the first time. The scientist sat in front of a great control board, his swift, skillful fingers playing over the banks of keys, his eyes watching the instrument and the screen that slanted upward from the control banks.

Pete felt dizzy as he stared at the screen. He could see the interior of the ship he had been yanked from a moment before. He could see his three companions, talking excitedly, frightened by his disappearance.

* * * *

His eyes flicked away from the screen, looked up through the skylight above him. Outlined against the sky hung the ship. At the nose and stern, two hemispheres of blue-white radiance fitted over the metal framework, like the jaws of a powerful vise, holding the craft immovable.

His gaze went back to the screen again, just in time to see Chizzy disappear. It was as if the man had been a mere figure chalked upon a board…and then someone had taken a sponge and wiped him out.

Russ’s fingers were flying over the keys. His thumb reached out and tripped a lever. There was a slight hum of power.

And Chizzy stood beside him.

Chizzy did not pull his gun. He whimpered and cowered within the invisible cradle of force.

“You’re yellow,” Pete snarled at him, but Chizzy only covered his eyes with his arms.

“Look, boss,” said Pete, addressing Scorio, “what are you doing here? We left you back in New York.”

Scorio did not answer. He merely glared. Pete lapsed into silence, watching.

* * * *

Manning stood poised before the captives, rocking back and forth on his heels.

“A nice bag for one evening,” he told Russ.

Russ grinned and stoked up his pipe.

Manning turned to the gangster chief. “What do you think we ought to do with these fellows? We can’t leave them in those force shells too long because they’ll die for lack of air. And we can’t let them loose because they might use their guns on us.”

“Listen, Manning,” Scorio rasped hoarsely, “just name your price to let us loose. We’ll do anything you want.”

Manning drew his mouth down. “I can’t think of a thing. We just don’t seem to have any use for you.”

“Then what in hell,” the gangster asked shakily, “are you going to do with us?”

“You know,” said Manning, “I may be a bit old-fashioned along some lines. Maybe I am. I just don’t like the idea of killing people for money. I don’t like people stealing things other people have worked hard to get. I don’t like thieves and murderers and thugs corrupting city governments, taking tribute on every man, woman and child in our big cities.”

“But look here, Manning,” pleaded Scorio, “we’d be good citizens if we just had a chance.”

Manning’s face hardened. “You sent these men here to kill us tonight, didn’t you?”

“Well, not exactly. Stutsman kind of wanted you killed, but I told the boys just to get the stuff in the safe and never mind killing you. I said to them that you were pretty good eggs and I didn’t like to bump you off, see?”

“I see,” said Manning.

He turned his back on Scorio and started to walk away. The gangster chief came half-way out of his chair, and as he did so, Russ reached out a single finger and tapped a key. Scorio screamed and beat with his fists against the wall of force that had suddenly formed about him. That single tap on the great keyboard had sprung a trap, had been the one factor necessary to bring into being a force shell already spun and waiting for him.

Manning did not even turn around at Scorio’s scream. He slowly paced his way down the line of standing gangsters. He stopped in front of Pete and looked at him.

“Pete,” he said, “you’ve sprung a good many prisons, haven’t you?”

“There ain’t a jug in the System that can hold me,” Pete boasted, “and that’s a fact.”

“I believe there’s one that could,” Greg told him. “One that no man has ever escaped from, or ever will.”

“What’s that?” demanded Pete.

“The Vulcan Fleet,” said Greg.

Pete looked into the eyes of the man before him and read the purpose in those eyes. “Don’t send me there! Send me any place but there!”

Greg turned to Russ and nodded. Russ’s fingers played their tune of doom upon the keyboard. His thumb depressed a lever. With a roar five gigantic material energy engines screamed with thrumming power.

Pete disappeared.

The engines roared with thunderous throats, a roar that seemed to drown the laboratory in solid waves of sound. A curious refractive effect developed about the straining hulks as space near them bent under their lashing power.

Months ago Russ and Greg had learned a better way of transmitting power than by metal bars or through conducting beams. Beams of such power as were developing now would have smashed atoms to protons and electrons. Through a window in the side of the near engine, Greg could see the iron ingot used as fuel dwindling under the sucking force.

* * * *

The droning died and only a hum remained.

“He’s in a prison now he’ll never get out of,” said Greg calmly. “I wonder what they’ll think when they find him, dressed in civilian clothes and carrying a heat gun. They’ll clap him into a photo-cell and keep him there until they investigate. When they find out who he is, he won’t get out—he has enough unfinished prison sentences to last a century or two.”

For Pete was on one of the Vulcan Fleet ships, the hell-ships of the prison fleet. There were confined only the most vicious and the most depraved of the Solar System’s criminals. He would be forced to work under the flaming whip-lashes of a Sun that hurled such intense radiations that mere spacesuits were no protection at all. The workers on the Vulcan Fleet ships wore suits that were in reality photo-cells which converted the deadly radiations into electric power. For electric power can be disposed of where heat cannot.

Quailing inside his force shell, Scorio saw his men go, one by one. Saw them lifted and whisked away, out through the depths of space by the magic touch upon the keyboards. With terror-widened eyes he watched Russ set up the equations, saw him trip the activating lever, saw the men disappear, listened to the thunderous rumbling of the mighty engines.

Chizzy went to the Outpost, the harsh prison on Neptune’s satellite. Reg went to Titan, clear across the Solar System, where men in the infamous penal colony labored in the frigid wastes of that moon of Saturn. Max went to Vesta, the asteroid prison, which long had been the target of reformers, who claimed that on it 50 per cent of the prisoners died of boredom and fear.

Max was gone and only Scorio remained.

“Stutsman’s the one who got us into this,” wailed the gangster. “He’s the man you want to get. Not me. Not the boys. Stutsman.”

“I promise you,” said Greg, “that we’ll take care of Stutsman.”

“And Chambers, too,” chattered Scorio. “But you can’t touch Chambers. You wouldn’t dare.”

“We’re not worrying about Chambers,” Greg told him. “We’re not worrying about anyone. You’re the one who had better start doing some.”

Scorio cringed.

“Let me tell you about a place on Venus,” said Greg. “It’s in the center of a big swamp that stretches for hundreds of miles in every direction. It’s a sort of mountain rising out of the swamp. And the swamp is filled with beasts and reptiles of every kind. Ravenous things, lusting for blood. But they don’t climb the mountain. A man, if he stayed on the mountain, would be safe. There’s food there. Roots and berries and fruits and even small animals one could kill. A man might go hungry for a while, but soon he’d find the things to eat.

“But he’d be alone. No one ever goes near that mountain. I am the only man who ever set foot on it. Perhaps no one ever will again. At night you hear the screaming and the crying of the things down in swamp, but you mustn’t pay any attention to them.”

* * * *

Scorio’s eyes widened, staring. “You won’t send me there!”

“You’ll find my campfires,” Greg told him, “if the rain hasn’t washed them away. It rains a lot. So much and so drearily that you’ll want to leave that mountain and walk down into the swamp, of your own free will, and let the monsters finish you.”

Scorio sat dully. He did not move. Horror glazed his eyes.

Greg signed to Russ. Russ, pipe clenched between his teeth, reached out his fingers for the keys. The engines droned.

Manning walked slowly to a television control, sat down in the chair and flipped over a lever. A face stared out of the screen. It was strangely filled with anger and a sort of half-fear.

“You watched it, didn’t you, Stutsman?” Greg asked.

Stutsman nodded. “I watched. You can’t get away with it, Manning. You can’t take the law into your own hands that way.”

“You and Chambers have been taking the law into your hands for years,” said Greg. “All I did tonight was clear the Earth of some vermin. Every one of those men was guilty of murder…and worse.”

“What did you gain by it?” asked Stutsman.

Greg gave a bitter laugh. “I convinced you, Stutsman,” he said, “that it isn’t so easy to kill me. I think it’ll be some time before you try again. Better luck next time.”

He flipped the switch and turned about in the chair.

Russ jerked his thumb at the skylight. “Might as well finish the ship now.”

Greg nodded.

An instant later there was a fierce, intolerably blue-white light that lit the mountains for many miles. For just an instant it flared, exploding into millions of brilliant, harmless sparks that died into darkness before they touched the ground. The gangster ship was destroyed beyond all tracing, disintegrated. The metal and quartz of which it was made were simply gone.

Russ brought his glance back from the skylight, looked at his friend. “Stutsman will do everything he can to wipe us out. By tomorrow morning the Interplanetary machine will be rolling. With only one purpose—to crush us.”

“That’s right,” Greg agreed, “but we’re ready for them now. Our ship left the Belgium factories several hours ago. The Comet towed it out in space and it’s waiting for us now. In a few hours the Comet will be here to pick us up.”

“War in space,” said Russ, musingly. “That’s what it will be.”

“Chambers and his gang won’t fight according to any rules. There’ll be no holds barred, no more feeble attempts like the one they tried tonight. From now on we need a base that simply can’t be located.”

“The ship,” said Russ.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The Invincible hung in space, an empty, airless hull, the largest thing afloat.

Chartered freighters, leaving their ports from distant parts of the Earth, had converged upon her hours before, had unloaded crated apparatus, storing it in the yawning hull. Then they had departed.

Now the sturdy little space-yacht, Comet, was towing the great ship out into space, 500,000 miles beyond the orbit of the Moon. Slowly the hull was being taken farther and farther away from possible discovery.

Work on the installation of the apparatus had started almost as soon as the Comet had first tugged at the ponderous mass. Leaving only a skeleton crew in charge of the Comet, the rest of the selected crew had begun the assembly of the mighty machines which would transform the Invincible into a thing of unimaginable power and speed.

The doors were closed and sealed and the air, already stored in the ship’s tanks, was released. The slight acceleration of the Comet’s towing served to create artificial weight for easier work, but not enough to handicap the shifting of the heavier pieces of apparatus. An electric cable was run back from the little yacht and the Invincible took her first breath of life.

The work advanced rapidly, for every man was more than a mere engineer or spacebuster. They were a selected crew, the men who had helped to make the name of Gregory Manning famous throughout the Solar System.

First the engines were installed, then the two groups of five massive power plants and the single smaller engine as an auxiliary supply plant for the light, heat, air.

The accumulators of the Comet were drained in a single tremendous surge and the auxiliary generator started. It in turn awoke to life the other power plants, to leave them sleeping, idling, but ready for instant use to develop power such as man never before had dreamed of holding and molding to his will.

Then, with the gigantic tools these engines supplied…tools of pure force and strange space fields…the work was rapidly completed. The power boards were set in place, welded in position by a sudden furious blast of white hot metal and as equally sudden freezing, to be followed by careful heating and recooling till the beryl-steel reached its maximum strength. Over the hull swarmed spacesuited men, using that strange new power, heat-treating the stubborn metal in a manner never before possible.

The generators were charging the atoms of the ship’s beryl-steel hide with the same hazy force that had trapped and held the gangster ship in a mighty vise. Thus charged, no material thing could penetrate them. The greatest meteor would be crushed to drifting dust without so much as scarring that wall of mighty force…meteors traveling with a speed and penetrative power that no gun-hurled projectile could ever hope to attain.

Riding under her own power, driven by the concentration of gravitational lines, impregnable to all known forces, containing within her hull the secrets of many strange devices, the Invincible wheeled in space.

* * * *

Russell Page lounged in a chair before the control manual of the tele-transport machine. He puffed placidly at his pipe and looked out through the great sweep of the vision panel. Out there was the black of space and the glint of stars, the soft glow of distant Jupiter.

Greg Manning was hunched over the navigation controls, sharp eyes watching the panorama of space.

Russ looked at him and grinned. On Greg’s face there was a smile, but about his eyes were lines of alert watchfulness and thought. Greg Manning was in his proper role at the controls of a ship such as the Invincible, a man who never stepped backward from danger, whose spirit hungered for the vast stretches of void that lay between the worlds.

Russ leaned back, blowing smoke toward the high-arched control room ceiling.

They had burned their bridges behind them. The laboratory back in the mountains was destroyed. Locked against any possible attack by a sphere of force until the tele-transport had lifted from it certain items of equipment, it had been melted into a mass of molten metal that formed a pool upon the mountain top, that ran in gushing, fiery ribbons down the mountain side, flowing in gleaming curtains over precipices. It would have been easier to have merely disintegrated in one bursting flash of energy, but that would have torn apart the entire mountain range, overwhelmed and toppled cities hundreds of miles away, dealt Earth a staggering blow.

A skeleton crew had taken the Comet back to Earth and landed it on Greg’s estate. Once again the tele-transport had reached out, wrapped its fingers around the men who stepped from the little ship. In less than the flash of a strobe light, they had been snatched back to the Invincible, through a million miles of space, through the very walls of the ship itself. One second they had been on Earth, the next second they were in the control room of the Invincible, grinning, saluting Greg Manning, trotting back to their quarters in the engine rooms.

* * * *

Russ stared out at space, puffed at his pipe, considering.

A thousand years ago men had held what they called tournaments. Armored knights rode out into the jousting grounds and broke their lances to prove which was the better man. Today there was to be another tournament. This ship was to be their charger, and the gauntlet had been flung to Spencer Chambers and Interplanetary Power. And all of space was to be the jousting grounds.

This was war. War without trappings, without fanfare, but bitter war upon which depended the future of the Solar System. A war to break the grip of steel that Interplanetary accumulators had gained upon the planets, to shatter the grim dream of empire held by one man, a war for the right to give to the people of the worlds a source of power that would forever unshackle them.

Back in those days, a thousand years ago, men had built a system of government that historians called the feudal system. By this system certain men were called lords or barons and other titles. They held the power of life and death over the men “under” them.

This was what Spencer Chambers was trying to do with the Solar System…what he would do if someone did not stop him.

* * * *

Russ bit viciously on his pipe-stem.

The Earth, the Solar System, never could revert to that ancient way of government. The proud people spawned on the Earth, swarming outward to the other planets, must never have to bow their heads as minions to an overlord.

The thrum of power was beating in his brain, the droning, humming power from the engine rooms that would blast, once and forever, the last threat of dictatorship upon any world. The power that would free a people, that would help them on and up and outward to the great destiny that was theirs.

And this had come because, wondering, groping, curiously, he had sought to heat a slender thread of imperm wire within Force Field 348, because another man had listened and had made available his fortune to continue the experiments. Blind luck and human curiosity…perhaps even the madness of a human dream…and from those things had come this great ship, this mighty power, these many bulking pieces of equipment that would perform wonders never guessed at less than a year ago.

Greg Manning swiveled his chair. “Well, Russ, we’re ready to begin. Let’s get Wrail first.”

Russ nodded silently, his mind still half full of fleeting thought. Absent-mindedly he knocked out his pipe and pocketed it, swung around to the manual of the televisor. His fingers reached out and tapped a pattern.

Callisto appeared within the screen, leaped upward at them. Then the surface of the frozen little world seemed to rotate swiftly and a dome appeared.

The televisor dived through the dome, sped through the city, straight for a penthouse apartment.

Ben Wrail sat slumped in a chair. A newspaper was crumpled at his feet. In his lap lay a mangled dead cigar.

“Greg!” yelled Russ. “Greg, there’s something wrong!”

Greg leaped forward, stared at the screen. Russ heard his smothered cry of rage.

In Wrail’s forehead was a tiny, neatly drilled hole from which a single drop of blood oozed.

“Murdered!” exclaimed Russ.

“Yes, murdered,” said Greg, and there was a sudden calmness in his voice.

Russ grasped the televisor control. Ranthoor’s streets ran beneath them, curiously silent and deserted. Here and there lay bodies. A few shop windows were smashed. But the only living that stirred was a dog that slunk across the street and into the shadows of an alley.

Swiftly the televisor swung along the streets. Straight into the screen clanked a marching detail of government police, herding before them a half dozen prisoners. The men had their hands bound behind their backs, but they walked with heads held high.

“Revolution,” gasped Russ.

“Not a revolution. A purge. Stutsman is clearing the city of all who might be dangerous to him. This will be happening on every other planet where Chambers holds control.”

Perspiration ran down Russ’s forehead and dripped into his eyes as he manipulated the controls.

“Stutsman is striking first,” said Greg, calmly…far too calmly. “He’s consolidating his position, possibly on the pretense that plots have been discovered.”

A few buildings were bombed. A line of bodies were crumpled at the foot of a steel wall, marking the spot where men had been lined up and mowed down with one sweeping blast from a heater.

Russ turned the television controls. “Let’s see about Venus and Mars.”

The scenes in Ranthoor were duplicated in Sandebar on Mars, in New Chicago, the capital of Venus. Everywhere Stutsman had struck…everywhere the purge was wiping out in blood every person who might revolt against the Chambers-dictated governments. Throughout the Solar System violence was on the march, iron-shod boots trampling the rights of free men to tighten the grip of Interplanetary.

* * * *

In the control room of the Invincible the two men stared at one another.

“There’s one man we need,” said Greg. “One man, if he’s still alive, and I think he is.”

“Who is that?” asked Russ.

“John Moore Mallory,” said Greg.

“Where is he?”

“I don’t know. He was imprisoned in Ranthoor, but Stutsman transferred him some place else. Possibly to one of the prison fleet.”

“If we had the records of the Callisto prison,” suggested Russ, “we could find out.”

“If we had the records…”

“We’ll get them!” Russ said.

He swung back to the keyboard again.

A moment later the administration offices of the prison were on the screen.

The two men searched the vision plate.

“The records are most likely in that vault,” said Russ. “And the vault is locked.”

“Don’t worry about the lock,” snapped Greg. “Just bring the whole damn thing here—vault and records and all.”

Russ nodded grimly. His thumb tripped the tele-transport control and from the engine rooms came a drone of power. In Ranthoor Prison, great bands of force wrapped themselves around the vault, clutching it, enfolding it within a sphere of power. Back in the Invincible the engines screamed and the vault was ripped out of the solid steel wall as easily as a man might rip a button from his shirt.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

John Moore Mallorysat on the single metal chair within his cell and pressed his face against the tiny vision port. For hours he had sat there, staring out into the blackness of space.

There was bitterness in John Moore Mallory’s soul, a terrible and futile bitterness. So long as he had remained within the Ranthoor prison, there had always been a chance of escape. But now, aboard the penal ship, there was no hope. Nothing but the taunting reaches of space, the mocking pinpoints of the stars, the hooting laughter of the engines.

Sometimes he had thought he would go mad. The everlasting routine, the meaningless march of hours. The work period, the sleep period…the work period, the sleep period…endless monotony, an existence without a purpose. Men buried alive in space.

“John Moore Mallory,” said a voice.

Mallory heard, but he did not stir. An awful thought crossed his mind. Now he was hearing voices calling his name!

“John Mallory,” said the voice again.

Mallory slowly turned about and as he turned he started from his chair.

A man stood in the cell! A man he had never seen before, who had come silently, for there had been no screech of opening door.

“You are John Moore Mallory, aren’t you?” asked the man.

“Yes, I am Mallory. Who are you?”

“Gregory Manning.”

“Gregory Manning,” said Mallory wonderingly. “I’ve heard of you. You’re the man who rescued the Pluto Expedition. But why are you here? How did you get in?”

“I came to take you away with me,” said Greg. “Back to Callisto. Back to any place you want to go.”

Mallory flattened himself against the partition, his face white with disbelief. “But I’m in a prison ship. I’m not free to go and come as I please.”

Greg chuckled. “You are free to go and come as you please from now on,” he said. “Even prison ships can’t hold you.”

“You’re mad,” whispered Mallory. “Either you’re mad or I am. You’re a dream. I’ll wake up and find you gone.”

Manning stood in silence, looking at the man. Mallory bore the marks of prison on him. His eyes were haunted and his rugged face was pinched and thin.

“Listen closely, Mallory,” said Greg softly. “You aren’t going mad and I’m not mad. You aren’t seeing things. You aren’t hearing things. You’re actually talking to me.”

* * * *

There was no change in the other’s face.

“Mallory,” Greg went on, “I have what you’ve always needed—means of generating almost unlimited energy at almost no cost, the secret of the energy of matter. A secret that will smash Interplanetary, that will free the Solar System from Spencer Chambers. But I can’t make that secret available to the people until Chambers is crushed, until I’m sure that he can’t take it from me. And to do that I need your help.”

Mallory’s face lost its expression of bewilderment, suddenly lighted with realization. But his voice was harsh and bitter.

“You came too late. I can’t help you. Remember, I’m in a prison ship from which no one can escape. You have to do what you can…you must do what you can. But I can’t be with you.”

Manning strode forward. “You don’t get the idea at all. I said I’d get you out of here and I’m going to. I could pick up this ship and put it wherever I wanted. But I don’t want to. I just want you.”

Mallory stared at him.

“Just don’t be startled,” said Greg. “Something will happen soon. Get ready for it.”

Feet drummed on the metal corridor outside.

“Hey, you, pipe down!” yelled the voice of the guard. “You know there’s no talking allowed now. Go to sleep.”

“That’s the guard,” Mallory whispered fiercely. “They’ll stop us.”

Greg grinned viciously. “No, they won’t.”

* * * *

The guard came into view through the grilled door.

“So it’s you, Mallory…” he began, stopping in amazement. “Hey, you!” he shouted at Greg. “Who are you? How did you get in that cell?”

Greg flipped a hand in greeting. “Pleasant evening, isn’t it?”

The guard grabbed for the door, but he did not reach the bars. Some force stopped him six inches away. It could not be seen, could not be felt, but his straining against it accomplished nothing.

“Mallory and I are leaving,” Greg told the guard. “We don’t like it here. Too stuffy.”

The guard lifted a whistle and blew a blast. Feet pounded outside. A prisoner yelled from one of the cells. Another catcalled. Instantly the ship was in an uproar. The convicts took up the yammering, shaking the bars on their doors.

“Let’s get started,” Greg said to Mallory. “Hold tight.”

Blackness engulfed Mallory. He felt a peculiar twisting wrench. And then he was standing in the control room of a ship and Gregory Manning and another man were smiling at him. White light poured down from a cluster of globes. Somewhere in the ship engines purred with the hum of power. The air was fresh and pure, making him realize how foul and stale the air of the prison ship had been.

Greg held out his hand. “Welcome to our ship.”

Mallory gripped his hand, blinking in the light. “Where am I?”

“You are on the Invincible, five million miles off Callisto.”

“But were you here all the time?” asked Mallory. “Were you in my cell back there or weren’t you?”

“I was really in your cell,” Greg assured him. “I could have just thrown my image there, but I went there personally to get you. Russ Page, here, sent me out. When I gave him the signal, he brought both of us back.”

“I’m glad you’re with us,” Russ said. “Perhaps you’d like a cup of coffee, something to eat.”

Mallory stammered. “Why, I really would.” He laughed. “Rations weren’t too good in the prison ship.”

They sat down while Russ rang the galley for coffee and sandwiches.

Crisply, Greg informed Mallory of the situation.

“We want to start manufacturing these engines as soon as possible,” he explained, “but I haven’t even dared to patent them. Chambers would simply buy out the officials if I tried it on Earth, delay the patent for a few days and then send through papers copied from ours. You know what he’d do with it if he got the patent rights. He’d scrap it and the old accumulator business would go on as always. If I tried it on any other world, with any other government, he’d see that laws were passed to block us. He’d probably instruct the courts to rule against the manufacture of the engines on the grounds that they were dangerous.”

Mallory’s face was grave. “There’s only one answer,” he said. “With the situation on the worlds, with this purge you told me about, there’s only one thing to do. We have to act at once. Every minute we wait gives Stutsman just that much longer to tighten his hold.”

“And that answer?” asked Russ.

“Revolution,” said Mallory. “Simultaneous revolution in the Jovian confederacy, on Mars and Venus. Once free, the planets will stay free with your material energy engines. Spencer Chambers and his idea of Solar System domination will be too late.”

* * * *

Greg’s forehead was wrinkled in thought, his facial muscles tensed.

“First thing to do,” he said, “is to contact all the men we can find…men we can rely on to help us carry out our plans. We’ll need more televisor machines, more teleport machines, some for use on Mars and Venus, others for the Jovian moons. We will have to bring the men here to learn to operate them. It’ll take a few days. We’ll get some men to work on new machines right away.”

He started to rise from his chair, but at that moment the coffee and sandwiches arrived.

Greg grinned. “We may as well eat first.”

Mallory looked grateful and tried to keep from wolfing the food. The others pretended not to notice.

* * * *

Grim hours followed, an unrelenting search over two planets and four moons for men whom Mallory considered loyal to his cause—men willing to risk their lives to throw off the yoke of Interplanetary.

They were hard to find. Many of them were dead, victims of the purge. The others were in hiding and word of them was difficult to get.

But slowly, one by one, they were ferreted out, the plan explained to them, and then, by means of the tele-transport, they were brought to the Invincible.

Hour after hour men worked, stripped to their waists, in the glaring inferno of terrible force fields, fashioning new television units. As fast as the sets were constructed, they were placed in operation.

The work went faster than could be expected, yet it was maddeningly slow.

For with the passing of each hour, Stutsman clamped tighter his iron grip on the planets. Concentration camps were filled to overflowing. Buildings were bombed and burned. Murders and executions were becoming too common to be news.

Then suddenly there was a new development.

“Greg, Craven has found something!” Russ cried. “I can’t get him!”

Supervising the installation of a new televisor set, Greg spun around. “What’s that?”

“Craven! I can’t reach him. He’s blocking me out!”

Greg helped, but the apparatus was unable to enter the Interplanetary building in New York. Certain other portions of the city adjacent to the building also were blanketed out. In all the Solar System, the Interplanetary building was the only place they could not enter, except the Sun itself.

Craven had developed a field from which their field shied off. The televisor seemed to roll off it like a drop of mercury. That definitely ended all spying on Craven and Chambers.

Russ mopped his brow, sucked at his dead pipe.

“Light penetrates it,” he said. “Matter penetrates it, electricity, all ordinary forces. But this field won’t. It’s…well, whatever Craven has is similarly dissimilar. The same thing of opposite nature. It repels our field, but doesn’t affect anything else. That means he has analyzed our fields. We have Wilson to thank for this.”

Greg nodded gravely. “There’s just one thing to be thankful for,” he declared. “He probably isn’t any nearer our energy than he was before. But now we can’t watch him. And that field of his shows that he has tremendous power of some sort.”

“We can’t watch him, but we can follow him,” corrected Russ. “He can’t shake us. None of them can. The mechanical shadow will take care of that. I have one for Craven with a bit of ‘bait’ off his spectacles and he’ll keep those spectacles, never fear. He’s blind as a bat without them. And we can track Chambers with his ring.”

“That’s right,” agreed Greg, “but we’ve got to speed up. Craven is getting under way now. If he does this, he can do something else. Something that will really hurt us. The man’s clever…too damn clever.”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

A miracle came to pass in Ranthoor when a man for whom all hope had been abandoned suddenly appeared within the city’s streets. But he appeared to be something not quite earthly, for he did not have the solidity of a man. He was pale, like a wraith from out of space, and one could see straight through him, yet he still had all the old mannerisms and tricks.

In frightened, awe-stricken whispers the word was spread…the spirit of John Moore Mallory had come back to the city once again. He bulked four times the height of a normal man and there was that singular ghostliness about him. From where he had come, or how, or why, no one seemed to know.

But when he reached the steps of the federation’s administration building and walked straight through a line of troopers that suddenly massed to bar his way, and when he turned on those steps and spoke to the people who had gathered, there was none to doubt that at last a sign had come. The sign that now, if ever, was the time to avenge the purge. Now the time to take vengeance for the blood that flowed in gutters, for the throaty chortling of the flame guns that had snuffed out lives against a broad steel wall.

Standing on the steps, shadowy but plainly visible, John Moore Mallory talked to the people in the square below, and his voice was the voice they remembered. They saw him toss his black mane of hair, they saw his clenched fist raised in terrible anger, they heard the boom of the words he spoke.

Like a shrilling alarm the words spread through the city, reverberating from the dome, seeking out those who were in hiding. From every corner of the city, from its deepest cellars and its darkest alleys, poured out a mass of humanity that surrounded the capitol and blackened the square and the converging streets with a mob that shrieked its hatred, bellowed its anger.

“Power!” thundered the mighty shadow on the steps. “Power to burn! Power to give away. Power to heat the dome, to work your mines, to drive your spaceships!”

“Power!” answered the voice of the crowd. “Power!” It sounded like a battle cry.

“No more accumulators,” roared the towering image. “Never again need you rely on Spencer Chambers for your power. Callisto is yours. Ranthoor is yours.”

The black crowd surged forward, reached the steps and started to climb, wild cheers in their throat, the madness of victory in their eyes. Up the steps came men with nothing but bare hands, screaming women, jeering children.

Officers snapped orders at the troops that lined the steps, but the troopers, staring into the awful, raging maw of that oncoming crowd, dropped their guns and fled, back into the capitol building, with the mob behind them, shrilling blood lust and long-awaited vengeance.

* * * *

Out of the red and yellow wilderness of the deserts, a man came to Sandebar on Mars. He had long been thought dead. The minions of the government had announced that he was dead. But he had been in hiding for six years.

His beard was long and gray, his eyes were curtained by hardship, his white hair hung about his shoulders and he was clothed in the tattered leather trappings of the spaceways.

But men remembered him.

Tom Brown had lead the last revolt against the Martian government, an ill-starred revolt that ended almost before it started when the troopers turned loose the heavy heaters and swept the streets with washing waves of flame.

When he climbed to the base of a statue in Techor Park to address the crowd that gathered, the police shouted for him to come down and he disregarded them. They climbed the statue to reach him and their hands went through him.

Tom Brown stood before the people, in plain view, and spoke, but he wasn’t there!

Other things happened in Sandebar that day. A voice spoke out of thin air, a voice that told the people the reign of Interplanetary was over. It told of a mighty new source of power. Power that would cost almost nothing. Power that would make the accumulators unnecessary…would make them out of date. A voice that said the people need no longer submit to the yoke of Spencer Chambers’ government in order to obtain the power they needed.

There was no one there…no one visible at all. And yet that voice went on and on. A great crowd gathered, listening, cheering. The police tried to break it up and failed. The troops were ordered out and the people fought them until the voice told them to disband peaceably and go to their homes.

Throughout Mars it was the same.

In a dozen places in Sandebar the voice spoke. It spoke in a dozen places, out of empty air, in Malacon and Alexon and Adebron.

Tom Brown, vanishing into the air after his speech was done, reappeared a few minutes later in Adebron and there the police, warned of what had happened in Sandebar, opened fire upon him when he stood on a park bench to address the people. But the flames passed through and did not touch him. Tom Brown, his long white beard covering his chest, his mad eyes flashing, stood in the fiery blast that bellowed from the muzzles of the flame rifles and calmly talked.

* * * *

The chief of police at New Chicago, Venus, called the police commissioner. “There’s a guy out here in the park, just across the street. He’s preaching treason. He’s telling the people to overthrow the government.”

In the ground glass the police commissioner’s face grew purple.

“Arrest him,” he ordered the chief. “Clap him in the jug. Do you have to call me up every time one of those fiery-eyed boys climbs a soap box? Run him in.”

“I can’t,” said the chief.

The police commissioner seemed ready to explode. “You can’t? Why the hell not?”

“Well, you know that hill in the center of the park? Memorial Hill?”

“What has a hill got to do with it?” the commissioner roared.

“He’s sitting on top of that hill. He’s a thousand feet tall. His head is way up in the sky and his voice is like thunder. How can you arrest anybody like that?”

* * * *

Everywhere in the System, revolt was flaming. New marching songs rolled out between the worlds, wild marching songs that had the note of anger in them. Weapons were brought out of hiding and polished. New standards were raised in an ever-rising tide against oppression.

Freedom was on the march again. The right of a man to rule himself the way he chose to rule. A new declaration of independence. A Solar Magna Carta.

There were new leaders, led by the old leaders. Led by spirits that marched across the sky. Led by voices that spoke out of the air. Led by signs and symbols and a new-born courage and a great and a deep conviction that right in the end would triumph.

* * * *

Spencer Chambersglared at Ludwig Stutsman. “This is one time you went too far.”

“If you’d given me a free hand before, this wouldn’t have been necessary,” Stutsman said. “But you were soft. You made me go easy when I should have ground them down. You left the way open for all sorts of plots and schemes and leaders to develop.”

The two men faced one another, one the smooth, tawny lion, the other the snarling wolf.

“You’ve built up hatred, Stutsman,” Chambers said. “You are the most hated man in the Solar System. And because of you, they hate me. That wasn’t my idea. I needed you because I needed an iron fist, but I needed it to use judiciously. And you have been ruthless. You’ve used force when conciliation was necessary.”

Stutsman sneered openly. “Still that old dream of a benevolent dictatorship. Still figuring yourself a little bronze god to be set up in every household. A dictatorship can’t be run that way. You have to let them know you’re boss.”

Chambers was calm again. “Argument won’t do us any good now. The damage is done. Revolt is flaming through all the worlds. We have to do something.”

He looked at Craven, who was slouched in a chair beside the desk across which he and Stutsman faced each other.

“Can you help us, doctor?” he asked.

Craven shrugged. “Perhaps,” he said acidly. “If I could only be left to my work undisturbed, instead of being dragged into these stupid conferences, I might be able to do something.”

“You already have, haven’t you?” asked Chambers.

“Very little. I’ve been able to blank out the televisor that Manning and Page are using, but that is all.”

“Do you have any idea where Manning and Page are?”

“How could I know?” Craven asked. “Somewhere in space.”

“They’re at the bottom of this,” snarled Stutsman. “Their damned tricks and propaganda.”

“We know they’re at the bottom of it,” said Craven. “That’s no news to us. If it weren’t for them, we wouldn’t have this trouble now, despite your bungling. But that doesn’t help us any. With this new discovery of mine I have shielded this building from their observation. They can’t spy on us any more. But that’s as far as I’ve got.”

“They televised the secret meeting of the emergency council when it met in Satellite City on Ganymede the other day,” said Chambers. “The whole Jovian confederacy watched and listened to that meeting, heard our secret war plans, for fully ten minutes before the trick was discovered. Couldn’t we use your shield to prevent such a situation again?”

“Better still,” suggested Stutsman, “let’s shield the whole satellite. Without Manning’s ghostly leaders, this revolt would collapse of its own weight.”

Craven shook his head. “It takes fifty tons of accumulators to build up that field, and a ton of fuel a day to maintain it. Just for this building alone. It would be impossible to shield a whole planet, an entire moon.”

* * * *

“Any progress on your collector field?” asked Chambers.

“Some,” Craven admitted. “I’ll know in a day or two.”

“That would give us something with which to fight Manning and Page, wouldn’t it?”

“Yes,” agreed Craven. “It would be something to fight them with. If I can develop that collector field, we would be able to utilize every radiation in space, from the heat wave down through the cosmics. Within the Solar System, our power would be absolutely limitless. Your accumulators depend for their power storage upon just one radiation…heat. But with this idea I have you’d use all types of radiations.”

“You say you could even put the cosmics to work?” asked Chambers.

Craven nodded. “If I can do anything at all with the field, I can.”

“How?” demanded Stutsman.

“By breaking them up, you fool. Smash the short, high-powered waves into a lot of longer, lower-powered waves.” Craven swung back to face Chambers. “But don’t count on it,” he warned. “I haven’t done it yet.”

“You have to do it,” Chambers insisted.

Craven rose from his chair, his blue eyes blazing angrily behind the heavy lenses. “How often must I tell you that you cannot hurry scientific investigation? You have to try and try…follow one tiny clue to another tiny clue. You have to be patient. You have to hope. But you cannot force the work.”

He strode from the room, slammed the door behind him.

Chambers turned slowly in his chair to face Stutsman. His gray eyes bored into the wolfish face.

“And now,” he suggested, “suppose you tell me just why you did it.”

Stutsman’s lips curled. “I suppose you would rather I had allowed those troublemakers to go ahead, consolidate their plans. There was only one thing to do—root them out, liquidate them. I did it.”

“You chose a poor time,” said Chambers softly. “You would have to do something like this, just at the time when Manning is lurking around the Solar System somewhere, carrying enough power to wipe us off the face of the Earth if he wanted to.”

“That’s why I did it,” protested Stutsman. “I knew Manning was around. I was afraid he’d start something, so I beat him to it. I thought it would throw a scare into the people, make them afraid to follow Manning when he acted.”

* * * *

“You have a low opinion of the human race, don’t you?” Chambers said. “You think you can beat them into a mire of helplessness and fear.”

Chambers rose from his chair, pounded his desk for emphasis.

“But you can’t do it, Stutsman. Men have tried it before you, from the very dawn of history. You can destroy their homes and kill their children. You can burn them at the stake or in the electric chair, hang them or space-walk them or herd them into gas chambers. You can drive them like cattle into concentration camps, you can keep the torture racks bloody, but you can’t break them.

“Because the people always survive. Their courage is greater than the courage of any one man or group of men. They always reach the man who has oppressed them, they always tear him down from the place he sits, and they do not deal gently with him when they do. In the end the people always win.”

Chambers reached across the desk and caught Stutsman by the slack of the shirt. A twist of his hand tightened the fabric around Stutsman’s neck. The financier thrust his face close to the wolfish scowl. “That is what is going to happen to you and me. We’ll go down in history as just a couple of damn fools who tried to rule and couldn’t make the grade. Thanks to you and your damned stupidity. You and your blood purges!”

Patches of anger burned on Stutsman’s cheeks. His eyes glittered and his lips were white. But his whisper was bitter mockery. “Maybe we should have coddled and humored them. Made them just so awful happy that big bad old Interplanetary had them. So they could have set up little bronze images of you in their homes. So you could have been sort of a solar god!”

“I still think it would have been the better way.” Chambers flung Stutsman from him with a straight-armed push. The man reeled and staggered across the carpeted floor. “Get out of my sight!”

Stutsman straightened his shirt, turned and left.

Chambers slumped into his chair, his hands grasping the arms on either side of his great body, his eyes staring out through the window from which flooded the last rays of the afternoon Sun.

* * * *

Drums pounded in his brain…the drums of rebellion out in space, of rebellion on those other worlds…drums that were drowning out and shattering forever the dream that he had woven. He had wanted economic dictatorship…not the cold, passionless, terrible dictatorship that Stutsman typified…but one that would bring peace and prosperity and happiness to the Solar System.

He closed his eyes and thought. Snatches of ambition, snatches of hopes…but it was useless to think, for the drums and the imagined shouting drowned out his thoughts.

Mankind didn’t give a damn for good business administration, nor a hoot for prosperity or peace or happiness. Liberty and the right to rule, the right to go risk one’s neck…to climb a mountain or cross a desert or explore a swamp, the right to aim one’s sights at distant stars, to fling a taunting challenge into the teeth of space, to probe with clumsy fingers and force nature to lay bare her secrets…that was what mankind wanted. That was what those men out on Mars and Venus and in the Jovian worlds were fighting for. Not against Spencer Chambers or Ludwig Stutsman or Interplanetary Power, but for the thing that drove man on and made of him a flame that others might follow. Fighting for a heritage that was first expressed when the first man growled at the entrance to his cave and dared the world to take it from him.

Spencer Chambers closed his eyes and rocked back and forth in the tilting office chair.

It had been a good fight, a hard fight. He had had a lot of fun out of it. But he was licked, after all these years. He had held the biggest dream of any man who ever lived. Alexander and Napoleon, Hitler, Stalin and those other fellows had been pikers alongside of Spencer Chambers. They had only aimed at Earthly conquest while he had reached out to grab at all the worlds. But by heaven, he’d almost made it!

A door grated open.

“Chambers!” said a voice.

His feet hit the floor with a thud and he sat stiff and staring at the figure in the door.

It was Craven and the man was excited. His glasses were slid far down on his nose, his hair was standing on end, his tie was all awry.

“I have it!” Craven whooped. “I have it at last!”

Hope clutched at Chambers, but he was almost afraid to speak.

“Have what?” he whispered tensely.

“The collector field! It was under my nose all the time, but I didn’t see it!”

Chambers was out of his chair and striding across the room. A tumult buzzed within his skull.

Licked? Hell, he hadn’t even started! He’d win yet. He’d teach the people to revolt! He’d run Manning and Page out to the end of space and push them through!

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

It was a weird revolution. There were few battles, little blood shed. There seemed to be no secret plots. There were no skulking leaders, no passwords, nothing that in former years had marked rebellion against tyranny.

It was a revolution carried out with utter boldness. Secret police were helpless, for it was not a secret revolution. The regular police and the troopers were helpless because the men they wanted to arrest were shadows that flitter here and there…large and substantial shadows, but impossible to seize and imprison.

Every scheme that was hatched within the government circles was known almost at once to the ghostly leaders who stalked the land. Police detachments, armed with warrants for the arrests of men who had participated in some action which would stamp them as active rebels, found the suspects absent when they broke down the doors. Someone had warned them. Troops, hurried to points where riots had broken out, arrived to find peaceful scenes, but with evidence of recent battle. The rioters had been warned, had made their getaway.

When the rebels struck it was always at the most opportune time, when the government was off balance or off guard.

In the first day of the revolt, Ranthoor fell when the maddened populace, urged on by the words of a shadowy John Moore Mallory, charged the federation buildings. The government fled, leaving all records behind, to Satellite City on Ganymede.

In the first week three Martian cities fell, but Sandebar, the capital, still held out. On Venus, Radium City was taken by the rebels within twenty-four hours after the first call to revolt had rung across the worlds, but New Chicago, the seat of government, still was in the government’s hands, facing a siege.

Government propagandists spread the word that the material energy engines were not safe. Reports were broadcast that on at least two occasions the engines had blown up, killing the men who operated them.

But this propaganda failed to gain credence, for in the cities that were in the rebel hands, technicians were at work manufacturing and setting up the material engines. Demonstrations were given. The people saw them, saw what enormous power they developed.

* * * *

Russ Page stared incredulously at the television screen. It seemed to be shifting back and forth. One second it held the distorted view of Satellite City on Ganymede, and the next second the view of jumbled, icy desert somewhere outside the city.

“Look here, Greg,” he said. “Something’s wrong.”

Greg Manning turned away from the calculator where he had been working and stared at the screen.

“How long has it been acting that way?” he asked.

“Just started,” said Russ.

Greg straightened and glanced down the row of television machines. Some of them were dead, their switches closed, but on the screens of many of the others was the same effect as on this machine. Their operators were working frustratedly at the controls, trying to focus the image, bring it into sharp relief.

“Can’t seem to get a thing, sir,” said one of the men. “I was working on the fueling station out on Io, and the screen just went haywire.”

“Mine seems to be all right,” said another man. “I’ve had it on Sandebar for the last couple of hours and there’s nothing wrong.”

A swift check revealed one fact. The machines, when trained on the Jovian worlds, refused to function. Anywhere else in space, however, they worked perfectly.

Russ stoked and lit his pipe, snapped off his machine and swung around in the operator’s chair.

“Somebody’s playing hell with us out around Jupiter,” he stated calmly.

“I’ve been expecting something like this,” said Greg. “I have been afraid of this ever since Craven blanketed us out of the Interplanetary building.”

* * * *

“He really must have something this time,” Russ agreed. “He’s blanketing out the entire Jovian system. There’s a space field of low intensity surrounding all of Jupiter, enclosing all the moons. He keeps shifting the intensity so that, even though we can force our way through his field, the irregular variations make it impossible to line up anything. It works, in principle, just as effectively as if we couldn’t get through at all.”

Greg whistled soundlessly through suddenly bared teeth.

“That takes power,” he said, “and I’m afraid Craven has it. Power to burn.”

“The collector field?” asked Russ.

Greg nodded. “A field that sucks in radiant energy. Free energy that he just reaches out and grabs. And it doesn’t depend on the Sun alone. It probably makes use of every type of radiation in all of space.”

Russ slumped in his chair, smoking, his forehead wrinkled in thought.

“If that’s what he’s got,” he finally declared, “he’s going to be hard to crack. He can suck in any radiant vibration form, any space vibration. He can shift them around, break them down and build them up. He can discharge them, direct them. He’s got a vibration plant that’s the handiest little war machine that ever existed.”

Greg suddenly wheeled and walked to a wall cabinet. From it he took a box and, opening it, lifted out a tiny mechanism.

He chuckled deep in his throat. “The mechanical shadow. The little machine that always tells us where Craven is—as long as he’s wearing his glasses.”

“He always wears them,” said Russ crisply. “He’s blind as a bat without them.”

Greg set the machine down on the table. “When we find Craven, we’ll find the contraption that’s blanketing Jupiter and its moons.”

Dials spun and needles quivered. Rapidly Russ jotted down the readings on a sheet of paper. At the calculator, he tapped keys, depressed the activator. The machine hummed and snarled and chuckled.

Russ glanced at the result imprinted on the paper roll.

“Craven is out near Jupiter,” he announced. “About 75,000 miles distant from its surface, in a plane normal to the Sun’s rays.”

“A spaceship,” suggested Greg.

Russ nodded. “That’s the only answer.”

The two men looked at one another.

“That’s something we can get hold of,” said Greg.

He walked to the ship controls and lowered himself into the pilot’s chair. A hand came out and hauled back a lever.

The Invincible moved.

From the engine rooms came the whine of the gigantic power plant as it built up and maintained the gravity concentration center suddenly created in front of the ship.

Russ, standing beside Greg at the control panel, looked out into space and marveled. They were flashing through space, their speed building up at a breath-taking rate, yet they had no real propulsion power. The discovery of the gravity concentrator had outdated such a method of driving a spaceship. Instead, they were falling, hurtling downward into the yawning maw of an artificial gravity field. And such a method made for speed, terrible speed.

Jupiter seemed to leap at them. It became a great crimson and yellow ball that filled almost half the vision plate.

* * * *

The Invincible’s speed was slacking off, slower and slower, until it barely crawled in comparison to its former speed.

Slowly they circled Jupiter’s great girth, staring out of the vision port for a sight of Craven’s ship. They were nearing the position the little mechanical shadow had indicated.

“There it is,” said Russ suddenly, almost breathlessly.

Far out in space, tiny, almost like a dust mote against the great bulk of the monster planet, rode a tiny light. Slowly the Invincible crawled inward. The mote of light became a gleaming silver ship, a mighty ship—one that was fully as large as the Invincible!

“That’s it all right,” said Greg. “They’re lying behind a log out here raising hell with our television apparatus. Maybe we better tickle them a little bit and see what they have.”

Rising from the control board, he went to another control panel. Russ remained standing in front of the vision plate, staring down at the ship out in space.

Behind him came a shrill howl from the power plant. The Invincible staggered slightly. A beam of deep indigo lashed across space, a finger suddenly jabbing at the other ship.

Space was suddenly colored, for thousands of miles, as the beam struck Craven’s ship and seemed to explode in a blast of dazzling indigo light. The ship reeled under the impact of the blow, reeled and weaved in space as the beam struck it and delivered to it the mighty power of the screaming engines back in the engine room.

“What happened?” Greg screamed above the roar.

Russ shrugged his shoulders. “You jarred him a little. Pushed him through space for several hundred miles. Made him know something had hit him, but it didn’t seem to do any damage.”

“That was pure cosmic I gave him! Five billion horsepower—and it just staggered him!”

“He’s got a space lens that absorbs the energy,” said Russ. “The lens concentrates it and pours it into a receiving chamber, probably a huge photo-cell. Nobody yet has burned out one of those things on a closed circuit.”

Greg wrinkled his brow, perplexed. “What he must have is a special field of some sort that lowers the wave-length and the intensity. He’s getting natural cosmics all the time and taking care of them.”

“That wouldn’t be much of a trick,” Russ pointed out. “But when he takes care of cosmics backed by five billion horsepower…that’s something else!”

Greg grinned wickedly. “I’m going to hand him a long heat radiation. If his field shortens that any, he’ll have radio beam and that will blow photo-cells all to hell.”

He stabbed viciously at the keys on the board and once again the shrill howl of the engines came from the rear of the ship. A lance of red splashed out across space and touched the other ship. Again space was lit, this time with a crimson glow.

* * * *

Russ shook his head. “Nothing doing.”

Greg sat down and looked at Russ. “Funny thing about this. They just sat there and let us throw two charges at them, took everything we gave them and never tried to hand it back.”

“Maybe they haven’t anything to hand us,” Russ suggested hopefully.

“They must have. Craven wouldn’t take to space with just a purely defensive weapon. He knew we’d find him and he’d have a fight on his hands.”

Russ found his pipe was dead. Snapping his lighter, he applied flame to the blackened tobacco. Walking slowly to the wall cabinet, he lifted two other boxes out, set them on the table and took from them two other mechanical shadows. He turned them on and leaned close, watching the spinning dials, the quivering needles.

“Greg,” he whispered, “Chambers and Stutsman are there in that ship with Craven! Look, their shadows register identical with the one that spotted Craven.”

“I suspected as much,” Greg replied. “We got the whole pack cornered out here. If we can just get rid of them, the whole war would be won in one stroke.”

Russ lifted a stricken face from the row of tiny mechanisms. “This is our big chance. We may never get it again. The next hour could decide who is going to win.”

Greg rose from the chair and stood before the control board. Grimly he punched a series of keys. The engines howled again. Greg twisted a dial and the howl rose into a shrill scream.

From the Invincible another beam lashed out…another and another. Space was speared with beam after beam hurtling from the great ship.

Swiftly the beams went through the range of radiation, through radio and short radio, infra-red, visible light, ultra-violet, X-ray, the gammas and the cosmics—a terrific flood of billions of horsepower.

Craven’s ship buckled and careened under the lashing impacts of the bombardment, but it seemed unhurt!

Greg’s face was bleaker than usual as he turned from the board to look at Russ.

“We’ve used everything we have,” he said, “and he’s stopped them all. We can’t touch him.”

* * * *

Russ shivered. The control room suddenly seemed chilly with a frightening kind of cold.

“He’s carrying photo-cells and several thousand tons of accumulator stacks. Not much power left in them. He could pour a billion horsepower into them for hours and still have room for more.”

Greg nodded wearily. “All we’ve been doing is feeding him.”

The engines were humming quietly now, singing the low song of power held in leash.

But then they screamed like a buzz saw biting into an iron-hard stick of white oak. Screamed in a single, frightful agony as they threw into the protecting wall that enclosed the Invincible all the power they could develop.

The air of the ship was instantaneously charged with a hazy, bluish glow, and the sharp, stinging odor of ozone filled the ship.

* * * *

Outside, an enormous burst of blue-white flame splashed and spattered around the Invincible. Living lightning played in solid, snapping sheets around the vision port and ran in trickling blazing fire across the plates.

Russ cried out and backed away, holding his arm before his eyes. It was as if he had looked into a nova of energy exploding before his eyes.

In the instant the scream died and the splash of terrific fire had vanished. Only a rapidly dying glow remained.

“What was it?” asked Russ dazedly. “What happened? Ten engines every one of them capable of over five billion horsepower and every one of them screaming!”

“Craven,” said Greg grimly. “He let us have everything he had. He simply drained his accumulator stacks and threw it all into our face. But he’s done now. That was his only shot. He’ll have to build up power now and that will take a while. But we couldn’t have taken much more.”

“Stalemate,” said Russ. “We can’t hurt him, he can’t hurt us.”

“Not by a damn sight,” declared Greg. “I still have a trick or two in mind.”

He tried them. From the Invincible a fifty-billion-horsepower bolt of living light and fire sprang out as all ten engines thundered with an insane voice that racked the ship.

Fireworks exploded in space when the bolt struck Craven’s ship. Screen after screen exploded in glittering, flaming sparks, but the ship rode the lashing charge, finally halted the thrust of power. The beam glowed faintly, died out.

Perspiration streamed down Greg’s face as he bent over a calculator and constructed the formula for a magnetic field. He sent out a field of such unimaginable intensity that it would have drawn any beryl-steel within a mile of it into a hard, compact mass. Even the Invincible, a hundred miles away, lurched under the strain. But Craven’s ship, after the first wild jerk, did not move. A curious soft glow spread out from the ship, veered sharply and disappeared in the magnetic field.

Greg swore softly. “He’s cutting it down as fast as I try to build it up,” he explained, “and I can’t move it any nearer.”

From Craven’s ship lashed out another thunderbolt and once again the engines screamed in terrible unison as they poured power into the ship’s triple screen. The first screen stopped all material things. The second stopped radiations by refracting them into the fourth dimension. The third shield was akin to the anti-entropy field, which stopped all matter…and yet the ten engines bellowed like things insane as Craven struck with flaming bolts, utilizing the power he had absorbed from the fifty billion horsepower Greg had thrown at him.

There was anger in Greg Manning’s face…a terrible anger. His fists knotted and he shook them at the gleaming ship that lay far down near Jupiter.

“I’ve got one trick left,” he shouted, almost as if he expected Craven to hear. “Just one trick. Damn you, see if you can stop this one!”

He set up the pattern on the board and punched the activating lever. The ten engines thrummed with power. Then the howling died away.

Four times they screamed and four times they ebbed into a gentle hum.

“Get on the navigation controls!” yelled Greg. “Be ready to give the ship all you’ve got.”

Greg leaped for the control chair, grasped the acceleration lever.

“Now,” growled Greg, “look out, Craven, we’re coming at you!”

Greg, teeth gritted, slammed the acceleration over.

Suddenly all space wrenched horribly with a nauseating, terrible thud that seemed to strain at the very anchors of the Universe.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Jupiter and the Jovian worlds leaped suddenly backward, turned swiftly green, then blue, and faded in an instant into violet. The Sun spun crazily through space, retreating, dimming to a tiny ruby-tinted star.

The giant generators in the Invincible hummed louder now, continually louder, a steel-throated roar that trembled through every plate, through every girder, through every bit of metal in the ship.

The ship itself was plunging spaceward, streaking like a runaway star for the depths of space beyond the Solar System. And behind it, caught tight, gripped and held, Craven’s ship trailed at the end of a tractor field that bound it to the space-rocketing Invincible.

The acceleration compensator, functioning perfectly, had taken up the slack as the ship had plunged from a standing start into a speed that neared the pace of light. But it had never been built to stand such sudden, intense acceleration, and for an instant Russ and Greg seemed to be crushed by a mighty weight that struck at them. The sensation swiftly lifted as the compensator took up the load.

* * * *

Greg shook his head, flinging the trickling perspiration from his eyes.

“I hope their compensator worked as well as ours,” he said.

“If it didn’t,” declared Russ, “we’re towing a shipload of dead men.”

Russ glanced at the speed dial. They were almost touching the speed of light. “He hasn’t cut down our speed yet.”

“We threw him off his balance. His drive depends largely on the mass of some planet as a body to take up the reaction of his ship. Jupiter is the ideal body for that…but he’s leaving Jupiter behind. He has to do something soon or it’ll be too late.”

“He’s getting less energy, too,” said Russ. “We’re retreating from his main sources of energy, the Sun and Jupiter. Almost the speed of light and that would cut down his energy intake terrifically. He has to use what he’s got in his accumulators, and after that last blast at us, they must be nearly drained.”

As Russ watched, the speed needle fell off slightly. Russ held his breath. It edged back slowly, creeping. The speed was being cut down.

“Craven is using whatever power he has,” he said. “They’re alive back there, all right. He’s trying to catch hold of Jupiter and make its gravity work for him.”

The Invincible felt the strain of the other ship now. Felt it as Craven poured power into his drive, fighting to get free of the invisible hawser that had trapped him, fighting against being dragged into outer space at the tail-end of a mighty craft heading spaceward with frightening speed.

Girders groaned in the Invincible, the engines moaned and throbbed. The speed needle fell back, creeping down the dial, slowly, unwillingly, resisting any drop in speed. But Craven was cutting it down. And as he cut it, he was able to absorb more energy with his collector lens. But he was fighting two things…momentum and the steadily decreasing gravitational pull of Jupiter and the Sun. The Sun’s pull was dwindling slowly, Jupiter’s rapidly.

The needle still crept downward.

“What’s his point of equality to us?” demanded Greg. “Will we make it?”

Russ shook his head. “Won’t know for hours. He’ll be able to slow us up…maybe he’ll even stop us or be able to jerk free, although I doubt that. But every minute takes him farther away from his main source of power, the Solar System’s radiation. He could collect power anywhere in space, you know, but the best place to collect it is near large radiant bodies.”

Russ continued to crouch over the dial, begrudging every backward flicker of the needle.

This was the last play, the final hand. If they could drag Craven and his ship away from the Solar System, maroon him deep in space, far removed from any source of radiation, they would win, for they could go back and finish the work of smashing Interplanetary.

But if Craven won—if he could halt their mad dash for space, if he could shake free—they’d never have another chance. He would be studying that field they had wrapped around him, be ready for it next time, might even develop one like it and use it on the Invincible. If Craven could win his way back to the Sun, he would be stronger than they were, could top them in power, shatter all their plans, and once again the worlds would bow to Interplanetary and Spencer Chambers.

Russ watched the meter. The speed was little more than ten miles a second now and dropping rapidly. He sat motionless, hunched, sucking at his dead pipe, listening to the thrumming of the generators.

* * * *

“If we only had a margin,” he groaned. “If we just had a few more horsepower. Just a few. But we’re wide open. Every engine is developing everything it can!”

Greg tapped him on the shoulder, gently. Russ turned his head and looked into the face of his friend, a face as bleak as ever, but with a hint of smile in the corners of the eyes.

“Why not let Jupiter help us?” he asked. “He could be a lot of help.”

Russ stared for a moment, uncomprehending. Then with a sob of gladness he reached out a hand, shoved over a lever. Mirrors of anti-entropy shifted, assumed different angles, and the Invincible sheered off. They were no longer retreating directly from the Sun, but at an angle quartering off across the Solar System.

Greg grinned. “We’re falling behind Jupiter now. Letting Jupiter run away from us as he circles his orbit, following the Sun. Adds miles per second to our velocity of retreat, even if it doesn’t show on the dial.”

The cosmic tug of war went on, grimly—two ships straining, fighting each other, one seeking to escape, the other straining to snake the second ship into the maw of open, hostile space.

The speed was down to five miles a second, then a fraction lower. The needle was flickering now, impossible to decide whether it was dropping or not. And in the engine rooms, ten great generators howled in their attempt to make that needle move up the dial again.

Russ lit his pipe, his eyes not leaving the dial. The needle was creeping lower again. Down to three miles a second now.

He puffed clouds of smoke and considered. Saturn fortunately was ninety degrees around in his orbit. On the present course, only Neptune remained between them and free space. Pluto was far away, but even if it had been, it really wouldn’t count, for it was small and had little attraction.

In a short while Ganymede and Callisto would be moving around on the far side of Jupiter and that might help. Everything counted so much now.

The dial was down to two miles a second and there it hung. Hung and stayed. Russ watched it with narrowed eyes. By this time Craven certainly would have given up much hope of help from Jupiter. If the big planet couldn’t have helped him before, it certainly couldn’t now. In another hour or two Earth would transit the Sun and that would cut down the radiant energy to some degree. But in the meantime Craven was loading his photo-cells and accumulators, was laying up a power reserve. As a last desperate resort he would use that power, in a final attempt to break away from the Invincible.

Russ waited for that attempt. There was nothing that could be done about it. The engines were developing every watt of power that could be urged out of them. If Craven had the power to break away, he would break away…that was all there would be to it.

An hour passed and the needle crept up a fraction of a point. Russ was still watching the dial, his mind foggy with concentration.

* * * *

Suddenly the Invincible shuddered and seemed to totter in space, as if something, some mighty force, had struck the ship a terrific blow. The needle swung swiftly backward, reached one mile a second, dipped to half a mile.

Russ sat bolt upright, holding his breath, his teeth clenched with death grip upon the pipe-stem.

Craven had blasted with everything he had! He had used every last trickle of power in the accumulators…all the power he had been storing up.

Russ leaped from the chair and raced to the periscopic mirror. Stooping, he stared into it. Far back in space, like a silver bauble, swung Craven’s ship. It swung back and forth in space, like a mighty, cosmic pendulum. Breathlessly he watched. The ship was still in the grip of the space field!

“Greg,” he shouted, “we’ve got him!”

He raced back to the control panel, snapped a glance at the speed dial. The needle was rising rapidly now, a full mile a second. Within another fifteen minutes, it had climbed to a mile and a half. The Invincible was starting to go places!

The engines still howled, straining, shrieking, roaring their defiance.

In an hour the needle indicated the speed of four miles a second. Two hours later it was ten and rising visibly as Jupiter fell far behind and the Sun became little more than a glowing cinder.

Russ swung the controls to provide side acceleration and the two ships swung far to the rear of Neptune. They would pass that massive planet at the safe distance of a full hundred million miles.

“He won’t even make a pass at it,” said Greg. “He knows he’s licked.”

“Probably trying to store some more power,” suggested Russ.

“Sweet chance he has to do that,” declared Greg. “Look at that needle walk, will you? We’ll hit the speed of light in a few more hours and after that he may just as well shut off his lens. There just won’t be any radiation for him to catch.”

Craven didn’t make a try at Neptune. The planet was far away when they intersected its orbit…furthermore, a wall of darkness had closed in about the ships. They were going three times as fast as light and the speed was still accelerating!

Hour after hour, day after day, the Invincible and its trailing captive sped doggedly outward into space. Out into the absolute wastes of interstellar space, where the stars were flecks of light, like tiny eyes watching from very far away.

* * * *

Russ lounged in the control chair and stared out the vision plate. There was nothing to see, nothing to do. There hadn’t been anything to see or do for days. The controls were locked at maximum and the engines still hammered their roaring song of speed and power. Before them stretched an empty gulf that probably never before had been traversed by any intelligence, certainly not by man.

Out into the mystery of interstellar space. Only it didn’t seem mysterious. It was very commonplace and ordinary, almost monotonous. Russ gripped his pipe and chuckled.

There had been a day when men had maintained one couldn’t go faster than light. Also, men had claimed that it would be impossible to force nature to give up the secret of material energy. But here they were, speeding along faster than light, their engines roaring with the power of material energy.

They were plowing a new space road, staking out a new path across the deserts of space, pioneering far beyond the ‘last frontier.’

Greg’s steps sounded across the room. “We’ve gone a long way, Russ. Maybe we better begin to slow down a bit.”

“Yes,” agreed Russ. He leaned forward and grasped the controls. “We’ll slow down now,” he said.

Sudden silence smote the ship. Their ears, accustomed for days to the throaty roarings of the engines, rang with the torture of no sound.

Long minutes and then new sounds began to be heard…the soft humming of the single engine that provided power for the interior apparatus and the maintenance of the outer screens.

“Soon as we slow down below the speed of light,” said Greg, “we’ll throw the televisor on Craven’s ship and learn what we can about his apparatus. No use trying it now, for we couldn’t use it, because we’re in the same space condition it uses in normal operation.”

“In fact,” laughed Russ, “we can’t do much of anything except move. Energies simply can’t pass through this space we’re in. We’re marooned.”

Greg sat down in a chair, gazed solemnly at Russ.

“Just what was our top speed?” he demanded.

Russ grinned. “Ten thousand times the speed of light,” he said.

Greg whistled soundlessly. “A long way from home.”

* * * *

Far away, the stars were tiny pinpoints, like little crystals shining by the reflection of a light. Pinpoints of light and shimmering masses of lacy silver…star dust that seemed ghostly and strange, but was in reality the massing of many million mighty stars. And great empty black spaces where there was not a single light, where the dark went on and on and did not stop.

Greg exhaled his breath softly. “Well, we’re here.”

“Wherever that might be,” amended Russ.

There were no familiar constellations, not a single familiar star. Every sign post of the space they had known was wiped out.

“There really aren’t any brilliant stars,” said Russ. “None at all. We must be in a sort of hole in space, a place that’s relatively empty of any stars.”

Greg nodded soberly. “Good thing we have those mechanical shadows. Without them we’d never find our way back home. But we have several that will lead us back.”

Outside the vision panel, they could see Craven’s ship. Freed now of the space field, it was floating slowly, still under the grip of the momentum they had built up in their dash across space. It was so close that they could see the lettering across its bow.

“So they call it the Interplanetarian,” said Russ.

Greg nodded. “Guess it’s about time we talk to them. I’m afraid they’re getting pretty nervous.”

* * * *

“Do you have any idea where we are?” demanded Ludwig Stutsman.

Craven shook his head. “No more idea than you have. Manning snaked us across billions of miles, clear out of the Solar System into interstellar space. Take a look at those stars and you get some idea.”

Spencer Chambers stroked his gray mustache, asked calmly: “What do you figure our chances are of getting back?”

“That’s something we’ll know more about later,” said Craven. “Doesn’t look too bright right now. I’m not worrying about that. What I’m wondering about is what Manning and Page are going to do now that they have us out here.”

“I thought you’d be,” said a voice that came out of clear air.

They stared at the place from which the voice had seemed to come. There was a slight refraction in the air; then, swiftly, a man took shape. It was Manning. He stood before them, smiling.

“Hello, Manning,” said Craven. “I figured you’d pay us a call when you got around to it.”

“Look here,” snarled Stutsman, but he stopped when Chambers’ hand fell upon his shoulder, gripped it hard.

“Got plenty of air?” asked Greg.

“Air? Sure. Atmosphere machines working perfectly,” Craven replied.

“Fine,” said Greg. “How about food and water? Plenty of both?”

“Plenty,” said Craven.

“Look here, Manning,” broke in Chambers, “where’s all this questioning leading? What have you got up your sleeve?”

“Just wanted to be sure,” Greg told him. “Would hate to have you fellows starve on me, or go thirsty. Wouldn’t want to come back and find you all dead.”

“Come back?” asked Chambers wonderingly. “I’m afraid I don’t understand. Is this a joke of some sort?”

“No joke,” said Greg grimly. “I thought you might have guessed. I’m going to leave you here.”

“Leave us here?” roared Stutsman.

“Keep your shirt on,” snapped Greg. “Just for a while, until we can go back to the Solar System and finish a little job we’re doing. Then we’ll come back and get you.”

Craven grimaced. “I thought it would be something like that.” He squinted at Manning through the thick lenses. “You never miss a bet, do you?”

Greg laughed. “I try not to.”

A little silence fell upon the three men and Manning’s image.

Greg broke it. “How about your energy collector?” he asked Craven. “Will it maintain the ship out here? You get cosmic rays. Not too much else, I’m afraid.”

Craven grinned wryly. “You’re right, but we can get along. The accumulators are practically drained, though, and we won’t be able to store anything. Would you mind shooting us over just a little power? Enough to charge the accumulators a little for emergency use.”

He looked over his shoulder, almost apprehensively.

“There might be an emergency out here, you know. Nobody knows anything about this place.”

“I’ll give you a little power,” Greg agreed.

“Thank you very much,” said Craven, half in mockery. “No doubt you think yourself quite smart, Manning, getting us out here. You know you have us stranded, that we can’t collect more than enough power to live on.”

“That’s why I did it,” Greg said, and vanished.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Craven watched the Invincible gather speed and tear swiftly through the black, saw it grow tiny and then disappear entirely, either swallowed by the distance or snapping into the strange super-space that existed beyond the speed of light.

He turned from the window, chuckling.

Stutsman snarled at him: “What’s so funny?”

The scientist glared at the wolfish face and without speaking, walked to the desk and sat down. He reached for pencil and paper.

Chambers walked over to watch him.

“You’ve found something, Doctor,” he said quietly.

Craven laughed, throatily. “Yes, I have. I’ve found a lot. Manning thinks he can keep us out here, but he’s wrong. We’ll be in the Solar System less than a week after he gets there.”

Chambers stifled a gasp, tried to speak calmly. “You mean this?”

“Of course I mean it. I don’t waste my time with foolish jokes.”

“You have the secret of material energy?”

“Not that,” the scientist growled, “but I have something else as valuable. I have the secret of Manning’s drive: I know what it is that enables him to exceed the speed of light…to go ten thousand times as fast as light…the Lord knows how much faster if he wanted to.”

“No ordinary drive would do that,” said Chambers. “It would take more than power to make a ship go that fast.”

“You bet your life it would, and Manning is the boy who’s got it. He uses a space field. I think I can duplicate it.”

“And how long will it take you to do this work?”

“About a week,” Craven told him. “Perhaps a little longer, perhaps a little less. But once we go, we’ll go as fast as Manning does. We’ll be short on power, but I think I can do something about that, too.”

Chambers took a chair beside the desk. “But do we know the way home?”

“We can find it,” said Craven.

“But there are no familiar constellations,” objected Chambers. “He dragged us out so far that there isn’t a single star that any one of us can identify.”

“I said I’d find the Solar System,” Craven declared impatiently, “and I will. Manning started out for it, didn’t he? I saw the way he went. The Sun is a type G star and all I’ll do is look for a type G star.”

“But there may be more than one type G star,” objected the financier.

“Probably are,” Craven agreed, “but there are other ways of finding the Sun and identifying it.”

He volunteered no further information, went back to work with the pad and pencil. Chambers rose wearily from his chair.

“Tell me when you know what we can do,” he said.

“Sure,” Craven grunted.

* * * *

“That’s the Sun,” said Craven. “That faint star between those two brighter ones.”

“Are you sure of it?” demanded Stutsman.

“Of course. I don’t make blunders.”

“It’s the only type G star in that direction,” suggested Chambers, helpfully.

“Not that, either,” declared Craven. “In fact, there are several type G stars. I examined them all and I know I’m right.”

“How do you know?” challenged Stutsman.

“Spectroscopic examination. That collector field of ours gathers energy just like a burning glass. You’ve seen a burning glass, haven’t you?”

He stared at Stutsman, directing the question at him.

Stutsman shuffled awkwardly, unhappily.

“Well,” Craven went on, “I used that for a telescope. Gathered the light from the suns and analyzed it. Of course it didn’t act like a real telescope, produce an image or anything like that, but it was ideal for spectroscopic work.”

They waited for him to explain. Finally, he continued:

“All of the stars I examined were just type G stars, nothing else, but there was a difference in one of them. First, the spectroscope showed lines of reflected light passing through oxygen and hydrogen, water vapor and carbon dioxide. Pure planetary phenomena, never found on a star itself. Also it showed that a certain per cent of the light was polarized. Now remember that I examined it for a long time and I found out something else from the length of observation which convinces me. The light varied with a periodic irregularity. The chronometers aren’t working exactly right out here, so I can’t give you any explanation in terms of hours. But I find a number of regularly recurring changes in light intensity and character…and that proves the presence of a number of planetary bodies circling the star. That’s the only way one could explain the fluctuations for the G-type star is a steady type. It doesn’t vary greatly and has no light fluctuations to speak of. Not like the Cepheid and Mira types.”

“And that proves it’s our Sun?” asked Chambers.

Craven nodded. “Fairly definitely, I’d say.”

“How far away is it?” Stutsman wanted to know.

* * * *

Craven snorted. “You would ask something like that.”

“But,” declared Stutsman, “there are ways of measuring how far a star is away from any point, measuring both the distance and the size of the star.”

“Okay,” agreed Craven, “you find me something solid and within reach that’s measurable. Something, preferably, about 200 million miles or so across. Then I’ll tell you how far we are from the Sun. This ship is not in an orbit. It’s not fixed in space. I have no accurate way of measuring distances and angles simultaneously and accurately. Especially angles as small as these would be.”

Craven and Stutsman glared at one another.

“It’s a long way however you look at it,” the financier said. “If we’re going to get there, we’ll have to start as soon as possible. How soon can we start, Doctor?”

“Very soon. I have the gravity concentration field developed and Manning left me just enough power to get a good start.” He chuckled, took off his glasses, wiped the lenses and put them back on again. “Imagine him giving me that power!”

“But after we use up that power, what are we going to do?” demanded Chambers. “This collector lens of yours won’t furnish us enough to keep going.”

“You’re right,” Craven conceded, “but we’ll be able to get more. We’ll build up what speed we can and then we’ll shut off the drive and let momentum carry us along. In the meantime our collector will gather power for us. We’re advancing toward the source of radiation now, instead of away from it. Out here, where there’s little gravity stress, fewer conflicting lines of gravitation, we’ll be able to spread out the field, widen it, make it thousands of miles across. And the new photo-cells will be a help as well.”

“How are the photo-cells coming?” asked Chambers.

Craven grinned. “We’ll have a bank of them in within a few hours, and replace the others as fast as we can. I have practically the whole crew at work on them. Manning doesn’t know it, but he found the limit of those photo-cells when he was heaving energy at us back in the Solar System. He blistered them. I wouldn’t have thought it possible, but it was. You have to hand it to Manning and Page. They are a couple of smart men.”

To the eye there was only one slight difference between the old cells and the new ones. The new type cell, when on no load, appeared milky white, whereas the old cells on no load were silvery. The granular surface of the new units was responsible for the difference in appearance, for each minute section of the surface was covered with even more minute metallic hexagonal pyramids and prisms.

“Just a little matter of variation in the alloy,” Craven explained. “Crystalization of the alloy, forming those little prisms and pyramids. As a result, you get a surface thousands of times greater than in the old type. Helps you absorb every bit of the energy.”

* * * *

The Interplanetarian arrowed swiftly starward, driving ahead with terrific momentum while the collector lens, sweeping up the oncoming radiations, charged the great banks of accumulators. The G-type star toward which they were heading was still pale, but the two brighter stars to either side blazed like fiery jewels against the black of space.

“You say we’ll be only a week or so behind Manning?” asked Chambers.

Craven looked at the financier, his eyes narrowed behind the heavy lenses. He sucked in his loose lips and turned once again to the control board.

“Perhaps a little longer,” he admitted finally. “We’re losing time, having to go along on momentum in order to collect power. But the nearer we get to those stars, the more power we’ll have and we’ll be able to move faster.”

Chambers drummed idly on the arm of his chair, thinking.

“Perhaps there’s time yet,” he said, half to himself. “With the power we’ll have within the Solar System, we can stop Manning and the revolution. We can gain control again.”

* * * *

Craven was silent, watching the dials.

“Manning might even pass us on the way back to look for us,” Chambers went on. “He thinks we’re still out there. He wouldn’t expect to find us where we are, light years from where we started.”

Craven shot him a curious look. “I wouldn’t be too sure of that. Manning has a string of some sort tied to us. He’s got us tagged…good and proper. He’s always been able to find us again, no matter where we were. I have a hunch he’ll find us again, even way out here.”

Chambers shrugged his shoulders. “It really doesn’t matter. Just so we get close enough to the Sun so we can load those accumulators and jam the photo-cells full. With a load like that we can beat him hands down.”

The financier fell into a silence. He stared out of the vision plate, watching the stars. Still far away, but so much nearer than they had been.

His brain hummed with dreams. Old dreams, revived again, old dreams of conquest and of empire, dreams of a power that held a solar system in its grip.

Craven broke his chain of thoughts. “Where’s our friend Stutsman? I haven’t seen him around lately.”

Chambers chuckled good-naturedly. “He’s sulking. He seems to have gotten the idea neither one of us likes him. He’s been spending most of his time back in the engine room with the crew.”

“Were you talking about me?” asked a silky voice.

They spun around to see Stutsman standing in the doorway of the control room. His face was twisted into a wolfish grin and in his right hand he held a heat gun.

Chambers’ voice was sharp, like the note of a clanging bell. “What’s this?”

Stutsman’s face twisted into an even more exaggerated grin. “This,” he said, “is mutiny. I’m taking over!” He laughed at them.

“No use calling the crew. They’re with me.”

“Damn you!” shouted Chambers, taking a step forward. He halted as Stutsman jerked the pistol up.

“Forget it, Chambers. You’re just second man from now on. Maybe not even second man. You tried out this dictator business and you bungled it. You went soft. You’re taking orders from me from now on. No questions, no back talk. You do as I say and maybe you won’t get hurt.”

“You’re mad, Stutsman!” cried Chambers. “You can’t get away with this.”

Stutsman barked out a brittle laugh. “Who is going to stop me?”

“The people,” Chambers shouted at him. “The people will. They won’t allow this. When you get back to the Solar System…”

Stutsman growled, stepping toward Chambers, pistol leveled. “The people won’t have anything to say about this. I’ll rule the Solar System the way I want to. There won’t be anyone else who’ll have a thing to say about it. So you dreamed of empire, did you? You dreamed of a solar dictatorship. Well, watch me! I’ll build a real empire. But I’ll be the head of it…not you.”

Craven sat down in his chair, crossed his knees. “Just what do you plan to do, Dictator Stutsman?”

* * * *

Stutsman fairly foamed at the mouth over the insolence of Craven’s voice. “I’ll smash Manning first. I’ll wipe him out. This ship will do it. You said yourself it would. You have ten times the power he has. And then…”

Craven raised a hand and waved him into silence. “So you plan to reach the Solar System, do you? You plan to meet Manning, and destroy his ship. Nice plan.”

“What’s wrong with it?” challenged Stutsman.

“Nothing,” said Craven calmly. “Absolutely nothing at all…except that we may never reach the Solar System!”

Stutsman seemed to sag. The wolfish snarl on his lips drooped. His eyes stared. Then with an effort he braced himself.

“What do you mean? Why can’t we?” He gestured toward the vision plate, toward the tiny yellow star between the two brighter stars.

“That,” said Craven, “isn’t our Sun. It has planets, but it isn’t our Sun.”

Chambers stepped quickly to Craven, reached out a hand and hoisted him from the chair, shook him.

“You must be joking! That has to be the Sun!”

Craven shrugged free of Chambers’ clutch, spoke in an even voice. “I never joke. We made a mistake, that’s all. I hadn’t meant to tell you yet. I had intended to get in close to the star and take on a full load of power and then try to locate our Sun. But I’m afraid it’s a hopeless task.”

“A hopeless task?” shrieked Stutsman. “You are trying to trick me. This is put up between the two of you. That’s the Sun over there. I know it is!”

“It isn’t,” said Craven. “Manning tricked us. He started off in the wrong direction. He made us think he was going straight back to the Solar System, but he didn’t. He circled and went in some other direction.”

The scientist eyed Stutsman calmly. Stutsman’s knuckles were white with the grip he had upon the gun.

“We’re lost,” Craven told him, looking squarely at him. “We may never find the Solar System!”

CHAPTER TWENTY

The revolution was over. Interplanetary officials and army heads had fled to the sanctuary of Earth. Interplanetary was ended…ended forever, for on every world, including Earth, material energy engines were humming. The people had power to burn, to throw away, power so cheap that it was practically worthless as a commodity, but invaluable as a way to a new life, a greater life, a fuller life…a broader destiny for the human race.

Interplanetary stocks were worthless. The mighty power plants on Venus and Mercury were idle. The only remaining tangible asset were the fleets of spaceships used less than a month before to ship the accumulators to the outer worlds, to bring them Sunward for recharging.

Patents protecting the rights to the material energy engines had been obtained from every government throughout the Solar System. New governments were being formed on the wreckage of the old. John Moore Mallory already had been inaugurated as president of the Jovian confederacy. The elections on Mars and Venus would be held within a week.

Mercury, its usefulness gone with the smashing of the accumulator trade, had been abandoned. No human foot now trod its surface. Its mighty domes were empty. It went its way, as it had gone for billions of years, a little burned out, worthless planet, ignored and shunned. For a brief moment it had known the conquering tread of mankind, had played its part in the commerce of the worlds, but now it had reverted to its former state…a lonely wanderer of the regions near the Sun, a pariah among the other planets.

* * * *

Russell Page looked across the desk at Gregory Manning. He heaved a sigh and dug the pipe out of his jacket pocket.

“It’s finished, Greg,” he said.

Greg nodded solemnly, watching Russ fill the bowl and apply the match.

Except for the small crew, they were alone in the Invincible. John Moore Mallory and the others were on their own worlds, forming their own governments, carrying out the dictates of the people, men who would go down in solar history.

The Invincible hung just off Callisto. Russ looked out at the mighty moon, saw the lonely stretches of its ice-bound surface, saw the silvery spot that was the dome of Ranthoor.

“All done,” said Greg, “except for one thing.”

“Go out and get Chambers and the others,” said Russ, puffing at the pipe.

Greg nodded. “We may as well get started.”

Russ rose slowly, went to the wall cabinet and lifted out a box, the mechanical shadow with its tiny space field surrounding the fleck of steel that would lead them to the Interplanetarian. Carefully he lifted the machine from its resting place and set it on the desk. Bending over it, he watched the dials.

Suddenly he whistled. “Greg, they’ve moved! They aren’t where we left them!”

Greg sprang to his side and stared at the readings. “They’re moving farther away from us…out into space. Where can they be going?”

Russ straightened, scowling, pulling at the pipe. “They probably found another G-type star, and are heading for that. They must think it is old Sol.”

“That sounds like it,” said Greg. “We spun all over the map to throw Craven off and looped several times so he’d lose all sense of direction. Naturally he would be lost.”

“But he’s evidently got something,” Russ pointed out. “We left him marooned…dead center, out where he didn’t have too much radiation and couldn’t get leverage on any single body. Yet he’s moving—and getting farther away all the time.”

“He solved our gravitation concentration screen,” said Greg. “He tricked us into giving him power to build it.”

The two men looked at one another for a long minute.

“Well,” said Russ, “that’s that. Craven and Chambers and Stutsman. The three villains. All lost in space. Heading for the wrong star. Hopelessly lost. Maybe they’ll never find their way back.”

He stopped and relit his pipe. An aching silence fell in the room.

“Poetic justice,” said Russ. “Hail and farewell.”

Greg rubbed his fist indecisively along the desk. “I can’t do it, Russ. We took them out there. We marooned them. We have to get them back or I couldn’t sleep nights.”

Russ laughed quietly, watching the bleak face that stared at him. “I knew that’s what you’d say.”

He knocked out the pipe, crushed a fleck of burning tobacco with his boot. Pocketing the pipe, he walked to the control panel, sat down and reached for the lever. The engines hummed louder and louder. The Invincible darted spaceward.

* * * *

“It’s too late now,” said Chambers. “By the time we reach that planetary system and charge our accumulators, Manning and Page will have everything under control back in the Solar System. Even if we could locate the star that was our Sun, we wouldn’t have a chance to get there in time.”

“Too bad,” Craven said, and wagged his head, looking like a solemn owl. “Too bad. Dictator Stutsman won’t have a chance to strut his stuff.”

Stutsman started to say something and thought better of it. He leaned back in his chair. From his belt hung a heat pistol.

Chambers eyed the pistol with ill-concealed disgust. “There’s no point in playing soldier. We aren’t going to try to upset your mutiny. So far your taking over the ship hasn’t made any difference to us…so why should we fight you?”

“It isn’t going to make any difference either,” said Craven. “Because there are just two things that will happen to us. We’re either lost forever, will never find our way back, will spend the rest of our days wandering from star to star, or Manning will come out and take us by the ear and lead us home again.”

Chambers started, leaned forward and fastened his steely eyes on Craven. “Do you really think he could find us?”

“I have no doubt of it,” Craven replied. “I don’t know how he does it, but I’m convinced he can. Probably, however, he’ll find that we are lost and get rid of us that way.”

“No,” said Chambers, “you’re wrong there. Manning wouldn’t do that. He’ll come to get us.”

“I don’t know why he should,” snapped Craven.

“Because he’s that sort of man,” declared Chambers.

“What you going to do when he does get out here?” demanded Stutsman. “Fall on his neck and kiss him?”

Chambers smiled, stroked his mustache. “Why, no,” he said. “I imagine we’ll fight. We’ll give him everything we’ve got and he’ll do the same. It wouldn’t seem natural if we didn’t.”

“You’re damned right we will,” growled Stutsman. “Because I’m running this show. You seem to keep forgetting that. We have power enough, when we get those accumulators filled, to wipe him out. And that is exactly what I’m going to do.”

“Fine,” said Craven, mockingly, “just fine. There’s just one thing you forget. Manning is the only man who can lead us back to the Solar System.”

“Hell,” stormed Stutsman, “that doesn’t make any difference. I’ll find my way back there some way.”

“You’re afraid of Manning,” Chambers challenged.

Stutsman’s hand went down to the heat pistol’s grip. His eyes glazed and his face twisted itself into utter hatred. “I don’t know why I keep on letting you live. Craven is valuable to me. I can’t kill him. But you aren’t. You aren’t worth a damn to anyone.”

* * * *

Chambers matched his stare. Stutsman’s hand dropped from the pistol and he slouched to his feet, walked from the room.

Afraid of Manning! He laughed, a hollow, gurgling laugh. Afraid of Manning!

But he was.

Within his brain hammered a single sentence. Words he had heard Manning speak as he watched over the television set at Manning’s mocking invitation. Words that beat into his brain and seared his reason and made his soul shrivel and grow small.

Manning talking to Scorio. Talking to him matter-of-factly, but grimly: “I promise you that we’ll take care of Stutsman!”

Manning had taken Scorio and his gangsters one by one and sent them to far corners of the Solar System. One out to the dreaded Vulcan Fleet, one to the Outpost, one to the Titan prison, and one to the hell-hole on Vesta, while Scorio had gone to a little mountain set in a Venus swamp. They hadn’t a chance. They had been locked within a force shell and shunted through millions of miles of space. No trial, no hearing…nothing. Just terrible, unrelenting judgment.

“I promise you that we’ll take care of Stutsman!”

* * * *

“Craven’s only a few billion miles ahead now,” said Gregory Manning. “With our margin of speed, we should overhaul him in a few more hours. He is still short on power, but he’s remedying that rapidly. He’s getting nearer to that sun every minute. Running in toward it as he is, he tends to sweep up outpouring radiations. That helps him collect a whole lot more than he would under ordinary circumstances.”

Russ, sitting before the controls, pipe clenched in his teeth, watching the dials, nodded soberly.

“All I’m afraid of,” he said, “is that he’ll get too close to that sun before we catch up with him. If he gets close enough so he can fill those accumulators, he’ll pack a bigger wallop than we do. It’ll all be in one bolt, of course, for his power isn’t continuous like ours. He has to collect it slowly. But when he’s really loaded, he can give us aces and still win. I’d hate to take everything he could pack into those accumulators.”

Greg shuddered. “So would I.”

The Invincible was exceeding the speed of light, was enveloped in the mysterious darkness that characterized the speed. They could see nothing outside the ship, for there was nothing to see. But the tiny mechanical shadow, occupying a place of honor on the navigation board, kept them informed of the position and the distance of the Interplanetarian.

Greg lolled in his chair, watching Russ.

“I don’t think we need to worry about him throwing the entire load of the accumulators at us,” he said. “He wouldn’t dare load those accumulators to peak capacity. He’s got to leave enough carrying capacity in the cells to handle any jolts we send him and he knows we can send him plenty. He has to keep that handling margin at all times, over and above what he takes in for power, because his absorption screen is also a defensive screen. And he has to use some power to keep our television apparatus out.”

Russ chuckled. “I suppose, at that, we have him plenty worried.”

The thunder of the engines filled the control room. For days now that thunder had been in their ears. They had grown accustomed to it, now hardly noticed it. Ten mighty engines, driving the Invincible at a pace no other ship had ever obtained, except, possibly, the Interplanetarian, although lack of power should have held Craven’s ship down to a lower speed. Craven wouldn’t have dared to build up the acceleration they had now attained, for he would have drained his banks and been unable to charge them again.

“Maybe he won’t fight,” said Russ. “Maybe he’s figured out by this time that he’s heading for the wrong star. He may be glad to see us and follow us back to the Solar System.”

“No chance of that. Craven and Chambers won’t pass up a chance for a fight. They’ll give us a few wallops if only for the appearance of things.”

“We’re crawling up all the time,” said Russ. “If we can catch him within four or five billion miles of the star, he won’t be too tough to handle. Be getting plenty of radiations even then, but not quite as much as he would like to have.”

“He’ll have to start decelerating pretty soon,” Greg declared. “He can’t run the chance of smashing into the planetary system at the speed he’s going. He won’t want to waste too much power using his field as a brake, because he must know by this time that we’re after him and he’ll want what power he has to throw at us.”

Hours passed. The Invincible crept nearer and nearer, suddenly seemed to leap ahead as the Interplanetarian began deceleration.

“Keep giving her all you got,” Greg urged Russ. “We’ve got plenty of power for braking. We can overhaul him and stop in a fraction of the time he does.”

Russ nodded grimly. The distance indicator needle on the mechanical shadow slipped off rapidly. Greg, leaping from his chair, hung over it, breathlessly.

“I think,” he said, “we better slow down now. If we don’t, we’ll be inside the planetary system.”

“How far out is Craven?” asked Russ.

“Not far enough,” Greg replied unhappily. “He can’t be more than three billion miles from the star and that star’s hot. A class G, all right, but a good deal younger than old Sol.”

* * * *

“We’ll let them know we’ve arrived,” grinned Greg. He sent a stabbing beam of half a billion horsepower slashing at the Interplanetarian.

The other ship staggered but steadied itself.

“They know,” said Russ cryptically from his position in front of the vision plate. “We shook them up a bit.”

They waited. Nothing happened.

Greg scratched his head. “Maybe you were right. Maybe they don’t want to fight.”

Together they watched the Interplanetarian. It was still moving in toward the distant sun, as if nothing had happened.

“We’ll see,” said Greg.

Back at the controls he threw out a gigantic tractor beam, catching the other ship in a net of forces that visibly cut its speed.

Space suddenly vomited lashing flame that slapped back and licked and crawled in living streamers over the surface of the Invincible. The engines moaned in their valiant battle to keep up the outer screen. The pungent odor of ozone filtered into the control room. The whole ship was bucking and vibrating, creaking, as if it were being pulled apart.

“So they don’t want to fight, eh?” hooted Russ.

Greg gritted his teeth. “They snapped the tractor beam.”

“They have power there,” Russ declared.

“Too much,” said Greg. “More power than they have any right to have.”

His hand went out to the lever on the board and pulled it back. A beam smashed out, with the engines’ screaming drive behind it, billions of horsepower driving with unleashed ferocity at the other ship.

Greg’s hand spun a dial, while the generators roared thunderous defiance.

“I’m giving them the radiation scale,” said Greg.

The Interplanetarian was staggering under the terrific bombardment, but its screen was handling every ounce of the power that Greg was pouring into it.

“Their photo-cells can’t handle that,” cried Russ. “No photo-cell would handle all that stuff you’re shooting at them. Unless…”

“Unless what?”

“Unless Craven has improved on them.”

“We’ll have to find out. Get the televisor.”

* * * *

Russ leaped for the television machine.

A moment later he lifted a haggard face.

“I can’t get through,” he said. “Craven’s got our beams stopped and now he has our television blocked out.”

Greg nodded. “We might have expected that. When he could scramble our televisors back in the Jovian worlds, he certainly ought to be able to screen his ship against them.”

He shoved the lever clear over, slamming the extreme limit of power into the beam. The engines screamed like demented things, howling and shrieking. Instantly a tremendous sheet of solid flame spun a fiery web around the Interplanetarian, turning it into a blazing inferno of lapping, leaping fire.

A dozen terrific beams, billions of horsepower in each, stabbed back at the Invincible as theInterplanetarian shunted the terrific energy influx from the overcharged accumulators to the various automatic energy discharges.

The Invincible’s screen flared in defense and the ten great engines wailed in utter agony. More stabbing flame shot from the Interplanetarian in slow explosions.

The temperature in the Invincible’s control room was rising. The ozone was sharp enough to make their eyes water and nostrils burn. The vision glass was blanked out by the lapping flames that crawled and writhed over the screen outside the glass.

Russ tore his collar open, wiped his face with his shirt sleeve. “Try a pure magnetic!”

Greg, his face set and bleak as a wall of stone, grunted agreement. His fingers danced over the control manual.

Suddenly the stars outside twisted and danced, like stars gone mad, as if they were dancing a riotous jig in space, some uproariously hopping up and down while others were applauding the show that was being provided for their unblinking eyes.

The magnetic field was tightening now, twisting the light from those distant stars and bending it straight again. The Interplanetarian reeled like a drunken thing and the great arcs of electric flame looped madly and plunged straight for the field’s very heart.

* * * *

The stars danced weirdly in far-off space again as the Interplanetarian’s accumulators lashed out with tremendous force to oppose the energy of the field.

The field glowed softly and disappeared.

“They have us stopped at every turn,” groaned Russ. “There must be some way, something we can do.” He looked at Greg. Greg grinned without humor, wiping his face. “There is something we can do,” said Russ grimly. “We should have thought of it long ago.”

He strode to the desk, reached out one hand and drew a calculator near.

“You keep them busy,” he snapped. “I’ll have this thing figured out in just a while.”

From the engine rooms came the roar and hum of the laboring units and the Invincible shuddered once again as Greg grimly hurled one beam after another, at the Interplanetarian.

The Interplanetarian struck back, using radio frequency that flamed fiercely against the Invincible’s outer screen. Simultaneously the Interplanetarian leaped forward with a sudden surge of accumulated energy, driving at the star that lay not more than three billion miles away.

Greg worked desperately, cursing under his breath. He pulled down the outer screen that was fighting directly against the radio frequency, energy for energy, and allowed the beam to strike squarely on the second screen, the inversion field that shunted the major portion of the energy impacting against it through 90 degrees into another space.

The engines moaned softly and settled into a quieter rumble as the necessity of supplying the first screen was eliminated. But they screamed once again as Greg sent out a tractor beam that seized and held, dragged the Interplanetarian to a standstill. Craven’s ship had gained millions of miles, though, and established a tremendous advantage by fighting nearer to its source of energy.

“Russ,” gasped Greg, “if you don’t get that scheme of yours figured out pretty soon, we’re done for. They’ve stopped everything we’ve got. They’re nearer the sun. We won’t stand a chance if they make another break like that.”

Russ glanced up to answer, but his mouth fell open in amazement and he did not speak. A streak of terrible light was striking at them from the Interplanetarian, blinding white light, and along that highway of light swarmed a horde of little green figures, like squirming green amebas. Swarming toward the Invincible, stretching out hungry, pale-green pseudopods toward the inversion barrier…and eating through it!

Wherever they touched, holes appeared. They drifted through the inversion screen easily and began drilling into the inner screen of anti-entropy. Eating their way into the anti-entropy…into a state of matter which Russ and Greg had thought would resist all change!

* * * *

For seconds both men stood transfixed, unable to believe the evidence of their eyes. But the ameba things came on in ever-increasing throngs, creatures that gnawed and slobbered at the anti-entropy, eating into it, flaking it away, drilling their way through it.

When they pierced the anti-entropy, they would cut through the steel plates of the Invincible like so much paper!

And more were coming. More and more!

With a grunt of amazement, Greg slammed a beam straight into the heart of the amebas. They ate the beam and vanished as mistily as before, little glowing things that ate and died. But there were always more to take their place. They overwhelmed the beam and ate back along its length, attacked the screen again.

They ate through walls of force and walls of metal, and a rush of hissing air began to flame into ions in the terrific battle of energies outside the Invincible.

Russ was crouching over the manual of the televisor board. His breath moaned in his throat as his fingers flew.

“I have to have power, Greg,” he said. “Lots of power.”

“Take it.” Greg replied. “I haven’t been able to do anything with it. It isn’t any use to me.”

Russ’s thumb reached out and tripped the activating lever. The giant engines shrieked and yowled.

Something was happening on the television screen…something terrifying. Craven’s ship seemed to retreat suddenly for millions of miles…and as suddenly the Invincible appeared on the screen. For a single flashing instant, the view held; then it was gone in blank grayness. For seconds nothing happened on the screen, unnerving seconds while the two men held their breath.

The screen’s grayness fled and they looked into the control room of the Interplanetarian. Craven was hunched in a chair, intent upon a series of controls. Behind him and to one side stood Stutsman, a heat pistol dangled from his hand, his face twisted into a sneer of triumph. There was no sign of Chambers.

“You damn fool,” Craven was snapping at Stutsman. “You’re cheating us out of the only chance we ever had of getting home.”

* * * *

“Shut up,” snarled Stutsman, the pistol jerking in his hand. “Have you got that apparatus on full power?”

“It’s been on full power for minutes now,” said Craven. “It must be eating holes straight through Manning’s ship.”

“See you keep it that way. I really don’t need you any more, anyhow. I’ve watched and I know all the tricks. I could carry on this battle single-handed.”

Craven did not reply, merely hunched closer over the controls, eyes watching flickering dials.

Greg jogged Russ’s elbow. “That must be the apparatus over there, in the corner of the room. That triangular affair. A condenser of some sort. That stuff they’re throwing at us must be super-saturated force fields and they’d need a space-field condenser for that.”

Russ nodded. “We’ll take care of that.”

His fingers moved swiftly and a transport beam whipped out, riding the television beam. Bands of force wrapped around the triangular machine and wrenched viciously. In the screen the apparatus disappeared…simply was gone. It now lay within the Invincible’s control room, jerked there by the tele-transport.

The flood of dazzling light reaching out from the Interplanetarian snapped off and the little green ameba things were gone. The shrill whistle of escaping air stopped as the eaten screens clamped down again, sealing in the atmosphere despite the holes bored through the metal plates.

In the television screen, Craven leaped from his chair, was staring with Stutsman at the place where the concentrator had stood. The machine had been ripped from a welded base and jagged, bright, torn metal gleamed in the control room lights. Snapped cables and broken busbars lay piled about the room.

“What happened?” Stutsman was screaming. They heard Craven laugh at the terror in the other’s voice. “Manning just walked in and grabbed it away from us.”

“But he couldn’t! We had the screen up! He couldn’t get through!”

Craven shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know how he did it, but he did. Probably he could clean out the whole place if he wanted to.”

“That’s a good idea,” said Russ, judiciously.

He stripped bank after bank of the other ship’s photo-cells from their moorings, wrecked the force field controls, ripped cables from the engines and left the ship without means of collecting power, without means of using power, without means of movement, of offense or defense.

* * * *

He leaned back in his chair and regarded the screen with deep satisfaction.

“That,” he decided, “should hold them for a while.”

He hauled the pipe out of his pocket and filled it from the battered leather pouch.

Greg regarded him with a quizzical stare. “You sent the televisor back in time. You got it inside the Interplanetarian before Craven had run up his screen and then you brought it forward.”

“You guessed it,” said Russ, tamping the tobacco into the bowl. “We should have thought of that long ago. We have a time factor there. In fact, the whole thing revolves around time. We move the televisor, we use the tele-transport, by giving the objects we wish to move an acceleration in time.”

Greg wrinkled his brow. “Maybe that means we can really investigate the past, or even the future. Can sit here before our screen and see everything that has happened, everything that is going to happen.”

Russ shook his head. “I don’t know, Greg. Notice, though, that we got no screen response until the televisor came up out of the past and actually reached the point which coincided with the present. That is, the screen and the televisor itself have to be on the same time level for them to operate. We might modify the screen, even modify the televisor so that we could travel in time, but it will take a lot of research, a lot of work. And especially it will take a whale of a lot of power.”

“We have the power,” said Greg.

Russ moved the lighter back and forth over the tobacco, igniting it carefully. Clouds of blue smoke swirled around his head. He spoke out of the smoke.

“Right now,” he said, “we better see how Craven and our other friends are getting along. I didn’t like the way Stutsman was talking or the way he was swinging that gun around. And Chambers wasn’t anywhere in sight. There’s something screwy about the entire thing.”

* * * *

“What are we going to do now?” demanded Stutsman.

Craven grinned at him. “That’s up to you. Remember, you’re the master mind around here. You took over and said you were going to run things.” He waved a casual hand at the shattered machines, the ripped-out apparatus. “Well, there you are. Go ahead and run the joint.”

“But you will have to help,” pleaded Stutsman, his face twisted until it seemed that he was suffering intense physical agony. “You know what to do. I don’t.”

Craven shook his head. “There isn’t any use starting. Manning will be along almost anytime now. We’ll wait and see what he has in mind.”

“Manning!” shrieked Stutsman, waving the pistol wildly. “Always Manning. One would think you were working for Manning.”

“He’s the big shot out in this little corner of space right now,” Craven pointed out. “There isn’t any way you can get around that.”

Stutsman backed carefully away. His gun came up and he looked at Craven appraisingly, as if selecting his targets.

“Put down that gun,” said a voice.

Gregory Manning stood between Stutsman and Craven. There had been no foggy forerunner of his appearance. He had just snapped out of empty air.

Stutsman stared at him, his eyes widening, but the gun remained steady in his hand.

“Look out, Craven,” warned Greg. “He’s going to fire and it will go right through me and hit you.”

* * * *

There was the thump of a falling body as Craven hurled himself out of his chair, hit the floor and rolled. Stutsman’s gun vomited flame. The spouting flame passed through Greg’s image, blasted against the chair in which Craven had sat, fused it until it fell in on itself.

“Russ,” said Greg quietly, “disarm this fellow before he hurts somebody.”

An unseen force reached out and twisted the gun from Stutsman’s hand, flung it to one side. Swiftly Stutsman’s hands were forced behind his back and held there by invisible bonds.

Stutsman cried out, tried to struggle, but he was unable to move. It was as if giant hands had gripped him, were holding him in a viselike clutch.

“Thanks, Manning,” said Craven, getting up off the floor. “The fool would have shot this time. He’s threatened it for days. He has been developing a homicidal mania.”

“We don’t need to worry about him now,” declared Greg. He turned around to face Craven. “Where’s Chambers?”

“Stutsman locked him up,” said Craven. “I imagine he has the key in his pocket. Locked him up in the stateroom. Chambers jumped him and tried to take the gun away from him and Stutsman laid him out, hit him over the head. He kept Chambers locked up after that. Hasn’t allowed anyone to go near the room. Hasn’t even given him food and water. That was three days ago.”

“Get the key out of his pocket,” directed Greg. “Go and see how Chambers is.”

Alone in the control room with Stutsman, Greg looked at him.

“I have a score to settle with you, Stutsman,” he said. “I had intended to let it ride, but not now.”

“You can’t touch me,” blustered Stutsman. “You wouldn’t dare.”

“What makes you think I wouldn’t?”

“You’re bluffing. You’ve got a lot of tricks, but you can’t do the things you would like me to think you can. You’ve got Chambers and Craven fooled, but not me.”

“It may be that I can offer you definite proof.”

Chambers staggered over the threshold. His clothing was rumpled. A rude bandage was wound around his head. His face was haggard and his eyes red.

“Hello, Manning,” he said. “I suppose you’ve won. The Solar System must be in your control by now.”

He lifted his hand to his mustache, brushed it, a feeble attempt at playing the old role he’d acted so long.

“We’ve won,” said Greg quietly, “but you’re wrong about our being in control. The governments are in the hands of the people, where they should be.”

Chambers nodded. “I see,” he mumbled. “Different people, different ideas.” His eyes rested on Stutsman and Greg saw sudden rage sweep across the gray, haggard face. “So you’ve got him, have you? What are you going to do with him? What are you going to do with all of us?”

“I haven’t had time to think about it,” said Greg. “I’ve principally been thinking about Stutsman here.”

“He mutinied,” rasped Chambers. “He seized the ship, turned the crew against me.”

“And the penalty for that,” said Greg, quietly, “is death. Death by walking in space.”

Stutsman writhed within the bands of force that held him tight. His face contorted. “No, damn you! You can’t do that! Not to me, you can’t!”

“Shut up,” roared Chambers and Stutsman quieted.

“I was thinking, too,” said Greg, “that at his order thousands of people were mercilessly shot down back in the Solar System. Stood against a wall and mowed down. Others were killed like wild animals in the street. Thousands of them.”

* * * *

He moved slowly toward Stutsman and the man cringed.

“Stutsman,” he said, “you’re a butcher. You’re a stench in the nostrils of humanity. You aren’t fit to live.”

“Those,” said Craven, “are my sentiments exactly.”

“You hate me,” screamed Stutsman. “All of you hate me. You are doing this because you hate me.”

“Everyone hates you, Stutsman,” said Greg. “Every living person hates you. You have a cloud of hate hanging over you as black and wide as space.”

The man closed his eyes, trying to break free of the bonds.

“Bring me a spacesuit,” snapped Greg, watching Stutsman’s face.

Craven brought it and dropped it at Stutsman’s feet.

“All right, Russ,” said Greg. “Turn him loose.”

Stutsman swayed and almost fell as the bands of force released him.

“Get into that suit,” ordered Greg.

Stutsman hesitated, but something he saw in Greg’s face made him lift the suit, step into it, fasten it about his body.

“What are you going to do with me?” he whimpered. “You aren’t going to take me back to Earth again, are you? You aren’t going to make me stand trial?”

“No,” said Greg, gravely, “we aren’t taking you back to Earth. And you’re standing trial right now.”

Stutsman read his fate in the cold eyes that stared into his. Chattering frightenedly, he rushed at Greg, plunged through him, collided with the wall of the ship and toppled over, feebly attempting to rise.

Invisible hands hoisted him to his feet, gripped him, held him upright. Greg walked toward him, stood facing him.

“Stutsman,” he said, “you have four hours of air. That will give you four hours to think, to make your peace with death.” He turned toward the other two. Chambers nodded grimly. Craven said nothing.

“And now,” said Greg to Craven, “if you will fasten down his helmet.”

The helmet clanged shut, shutting out the pleas and threats that came from Stutsman’s throat.

* * * *

Stutsman saw distant stars, cruel, gleaming eyes that glared at him. Empty space fell away on all sides.

Numbed by fear, he realized where he was. Manning had picked him up and thrown him far into space…out into that waste where for hundreds of light years there was only the awful nothingness of space.

He was less than a speck of dust, in this great immensity of emptiness. There was no up or down, no means of orientation.

Loneliness and terror closed in on him, a terrible agony of fear. In four hours his air would be gone and then he would die! His body would swirl and eddy through this great cosmic ocean. It would never be found. It would remain here, embalmed by the cold of space, until the last clap of eternity.

There was one way, the easy way. His hand reached up and grasped the connection between his helmet and the air tank. One wrench and he would die swiftly, quickly…instead of letting death stalk him through the darkness for the next four hours.

He shivered and his hand loosened its hold, dropped away. He was afraid to hasten death. He wanted to put it off. He was afraid of death…horribly afraid.

The stars mocked him and he seemed to hear hooting laughter from somewhere far away. Curiously, it sounded like his own laughter.…

* * * *

“I’ll make it easy for you, Manning,” Chambers said. “I know that all of us are guilty. Guilty in the eyes of the people and the law. Guilty in your eyes. If we had won, there would have been no penalty. There’s never a penalty for the one who wins.”

“Penalty,” said Greg, his eyes half smiling. “Why, yes, I think there is. I’m going to order you aboard the Invincible for something to eat and to get some rest.”

“You mean to say that we aren’t prisoners?”

Greg shook his head. “Not prisoners,” he said. “Why, I came out here to guide you back to Earth. I hauled you out here and got you into this jam. It was up to me to get you out of it. I would have done the same for Stutsman, too, but…”

He hesitated and looked at Chambers.

Chambers stared back and slowly nodded.

“Yes, Manning,” he said. “I think I understand.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Chambers lit his cigar and leaned back in his chair.

“I wish you could see it my way, Manning,” he said. “There’s no place for me on Earth, no place for me in the Solar System. You see, I tried and failed. I’m just a has-been back there.”

He laughed quietly. “Somehow, I can’t imagine myself coming back in the role of the defeated tribal leader, chained to your chariot, so to speak.”

“But it wouldn’t be that way,” protested Greg. “Your company is gone, true, and your stocks are worthless, but you haven’t lost everything. You still have a fleet of ships. With our new power, the Solar System will especially need ships. Lots of ships. For the spacelanes will be filled with commerce. You’d be coming back to a new deal, a new Solar System, a place that has been transformed almost overnight by power that’s practically free.”

“Yes, yes, I know all that,” said Chambers. “But I climbed too high. I got too big. I can’t come back now as something small, a failure.”

“You have things we need,” said Greg. “The screen that blankets out our television and tele-transport, for example. We need your screen as a safeguard against the very thing we have created. Think of what criminal uses could be made of the tele-transport. No vault, no net of charged wires, nothing, could stop a thief from taking anything he wanted. Prisons would cease to be prisons. Criminals could reach in and pick up their friends, no matter how many guards there were. Prisons and bank vaults and national treasuries could be cleaned out in a single day.”

“Then there’s the super-saturated space fields,” added Russ, ruefully. “Those almost got us. If I hadn’t thought of moving the televisor through time, we would have had to pull stakes and run for it.”

“No, you wouldn’t,” pointed out Craven. “You could have wiped us out in a moment. You can disintegrate matter. Send it up in a puff of smoke…rip every electron apart and send it hurtling away.”

“Of course we could have, Craven,” said Greg, “but we wouldn’t.”

Chambers laughed softly. “Not quite mad enough at us to do that, eh?”

Greg looked at him. “I guess that must have been it.”

“But I’m curious about the green space fields,” persisted Russ.

“Simple,” said Craven. “They were just fields that had more energy packed into a certain portion of space than space could take. Space fields that had far more than their share of energy, more than they could hold. A super-saturated solution will crystalize almost immediately onto the tiniest crystal put into it. Those fields acted the same way. They crystalized instantly into hyper-space the moment they came into contact with other energy, whether as photons of radiation, matter or other space fields. Your anti-entropy didn’t stand a chance under those conditions. When they crystalized, they took a chunk of the field along with them, a small chunk, but one after another they ate a hole right through your screen.”

* * * *

“Something like that would have a commercial value,” said Greg. “Useful in war, too, and now that mankind has taken to space, now that we’re spreading out, we must think of possible attack. There must be life on other planets throughout the Galaxy. Someday they’ll come. If they don’t, someday we’ll go to them. And we may need every type of armament we can get our hands on.”

Chambers knocked the ash off his cigar and was staring out the vision port. The ship had swung so that through the port could be seen the distant star toward which the Interplanetarian had been driving.

“For my part,” said Chambers, slowly, measuring each word, “you can have those findings of ours. We’ll give them to you, knowing you will use them as they should be used. Craven can tell you how they work. That is, if Craven wants to. He is the man who developed them.”

“Certainly,” said Craven. “They’ll be something to remember us by.”

* * * *

“But you are coming back with us, aren’t you?” asked Greg.

Craven shook his head. “No, I’m going with Chambers. I don’t know what he’s thinking of, but whatever it is, it’s all right with me. We’ve been together too long. I’d miss someone to fight with.”

Chambers was still staring out the vision port. He was talking, but he did not seem to be talking to them.

“I had a dream, you see. I saw the people struggling against the inefficiency and stupidity of popular government. I saw the periodic rise of bad leaders. I saw them lead the people into blunders. I read history and I saw that since the time man had risen from the ape, this had been going on. So I proposed to give the people scientific government…a business administration. An administration that would have run the government exactly as a successful businessman runs his business. The people would have resented it if I had told them they didn’t know how to run their affairs. There was only one way to do it…gain control and force it down their throats.”

Chambers was no longer a beaten man, no longer a man with a white bandage around his head and his power stripped from him. Once again he was the fighting financier who had sat back at the desk in the Interplanetary building on Earth and issued orders…orders that sped across millions of miles of space.

He shrugged his shoulders. “They didn’t want it. Man doesn’t want to live under scientific government. He doesn’t want to be protected against blunders. He wants what he calls freedom. The right to do the things he wants to do, even if it means making a damn fool of himself. The right to rise to great heights and tumble to equally low depths. That’s human nature and I ruled it out. But you can’t rule out human nature.”

They sat in silence, no one speaking. Russ cupped his pipe bowl in his hand and watched Chambers. Chambers leaned back and slowly puffed at the cigar. Greg just sat, his face unchanging.

Craven finally broke the silence. “Just what are you planning to do?”

Chambers flicked his hand toward the distant sun that gleamed through the vision port.

“There’s a new solar system out there,” he said. “New worlds, a new sun. A place to start over again. You and I discovered it. It’s ours by right of discovery. We’ll go there and stake out our claim.”

“But there may be nothing there,” protested Greg. “That sun is younger than our Sun. The planets may not have cooled as yet. Life may not have developed.”

“In such a case,” said Chambers, “we shall find another planetary system around another sun. A system that has cooled, where there is life.”

Russ gasped. Here was something important, something that should set a precedent. The first men to roam from star to star seeking new worlds. The first men to turn their backs on the old solar system and strike out in search of new worlds swinging in their paths around distant suns.

Greg was saying, “All right, if that’s the way you want it. I was hoping you’d come back with us. But we’ll help you repair your ship. We’ll give you all the supplies we can spare.”

Russ rose to his feet. “That,” he said, “calls for a little drink.”

He opened a cabinet and took out bottles and glasses.

“Only three,” said Chambers. “Craven doesn’t drink.”

Craven interrupted. “Pour one for me, too, Page.”

Chambers looked at the scientist, astounded. “I never knew you to take a drink in your life.”

Craven twisted his face into a grin. “This is a special occasion.”

* * * *

The Invincible was nearing Mars, heading for Earth, which was still a greenish sphere far to one side of the flaming Sun.

Russ watched the little green globe, thinking.

Earth was home. To him it always would be home. But that would be changed soon. Just a few more generations, and, to millions upon millions of human beings, Earth no longer would be home.

With the new material energy engines, life on every planet would be possible now, even easy. The cost of manufacture, mining, shipping across the vast distances between the planets would be only a fraction of what it had been when man had been forced to rely upon the unwieldy, expensive accumulator system of supplying life-giving power.

Now Mars would have power of her own. Even Pluto could generate her own. And power was…well, it was power. The power to live, the power to work, to establish and maintain commerce, to adjust gravity to Earth standard or to any standard. The power to remake and reshape and rebuild planetary conditions to suit man exactly.

Earthmen and Earthwomen would be moving out en masse now to the new and virgin fields of endeavor—to the farms of Venus, to the manufacturing centers that were springing up on Mars, to the mines of the Jovian worlds, to the great laboratory plants that would spring up on Titan and on Pluto and on the other colder worlds.

The migration of races had started long ago. In the Old Stone Age, the Cro-Magnon had swept out of nowhere to oust the Neanderthal. Centuries later the barbarians of the north, in another of those restless migrations, had overwhelmed and swept away the Roman Empire. And many centuries later, migration had turned from Europe to a new world across the sea, and fighting Americans had battled their way from east to west, conquering a continent.

And now another great migration was on—man was leaving the Earth, moving into space. He was leaving behind him the world that had reared and fostered him. He was striking out and out. First the planets would be overrun, and then man would leap from the planets to the stars!

* * * *

For years after America had become a country, had built a tradition of her own, Europe was regarded by millions as the homeland. But as the years swept by, this had ceased to be and the Americas were a world unto themselves, owing nothing to Europe.

And that was the way it would be with Earth. For centuries, for thousands of years, Earth would be the Mother Planet, the homeland for all the millions of roaming men and women who dared the gulfs of space and the strangeness of new worlds. There would be trips back to the Earth for sentimental reasons…to see the place where one’s ancestors were born and had lived, to goggle at the monument which marked the point from which the first spaceship had taken off for the Moon, to visit old museums and see old cities and breathe the air that men and women had breathed for thousands of years before they found the power to take them anywhere.

In the end, Earth would be just a worn-out planet. Even now her minerals were rapidly being exhausted; her oil wells were dry and all her coal was mined; her industry stabilized and filled; her businesses interlocking and highly competitive. A world that was too full, that had too many things, too many activities, too many people. A world that didn’t need men and women. A world where even genius was kept from rising to the top.

And this was what was driving mankind away from the Earth. The competition, the crowded conditions, in business and industrial fields, the lack of opportunity for new development, the everlasting struggle to get ahead, fighting for a place to live when millions of others were fighting for the same thing. But not entirely that, not that alone. There was something else—that old adventuresome spirit, the driving urge to face new dangers, to step over old frontiers, to do and dare, to make a damn fool of one’s self, or to surpass the greatest accomplishments of history.

But Earth would never die, for there was a part of Earth in every man and woman who would go forth into space, part of Earth’s courage, part of Earth’s ideals, part of Earth’s dreams. The habits and the virtues and the faults that Earth had spawned and fostered…these were things that would never die. Old Earth would live forever. Even when she was drifting dust and the Sun was a dead, cold star, Earth would live on in the courage and the dreams that by that time would be spreading to the far corners of the Galaxy.

Russ dug the pipe out of his pocket, searched for the pouch, found it on the desk behind him. It was empty.

“Hell,” he said, “my tobacco’s all gone.”

Greg grinned. “You won’t have to wait long. We’ll be back on Earth in a few more hours.”

Russ put the stem between his teeth, bit down on it savagely. “I guess that’s right. I can dry smoke her until we get there.”

Earth was larger now. Mars had swung astern.

Suddenly a winking light stabbed out into space from the night side of Earth. Signaling…signaling…clearing the spacelanes for a greater future than any human prophet had ever predicted.

THE STREET THAT WASN’T THERE

Written with Carl Jacobi.

Mr. Jonathon Chambers left his house on Maple Street at exactly seven o’clock in the evening and set out on the daily walk he had taken, at the same time, come rain or snow, for twenty solid years.

The walk never varied. He paced two blocks down Maple Street, stopped at the Red Star confectionery to buy a Rose Trofero perfecto, then walked to the end of the fourth block on Maple. There he turned right on Lexington, followed Lexington to Oak, down Oak and so by way of Lincoln back to Maple again and to his home.

He didn’t walk fast. He took his time. He always returned to his front door at exactly 7:45. No one ever stopped to talk with him. Even the man at the Red Star confectionery, where he bought his cigar, remained silent while the purchase was being made. Mr. Chambers merely tapped on the glass top of the counter with a coin, the man reached in and brought forth the box, and Mr. Chambers took his cigar. That was all.

For people long ago had gathered that Mr. Chambers desired to be left alone. The newer generation of townsfolk called it eccentricity. Certain uncouth persons had a different word for it. The oldsters remembered that this queer looking individual with his black silk muffler, rosewood cane and bowler hat once had been a professor at State University.

A professor of metaphysics, they seemed to recall, or some such outlandish subject. At any rate a furore of some sort was connected with his name…at the time an academic scandal. He had written a book, and he had taught the subject matter of that volume to his classes. What that subject matter was, had long been forgotten, but whatever it was had been considered sufficiently revolutionary to cost Mr. Chambers his post at the university.

A silver moon shone over the chimney tops and a chill, impish October wind was rustling the dead leaves when Mr. Chambers started out at seven o’clock.

It was a good night, he told himself, smelling the clean, crisp air of autumn and the faint pungence of distant wood smoke.

He walked unhurriedly, swinging his cane a bit less jauntily than twenty years ago. He tucked the muffler more securely under the rusty old topcoat and pulled his bowler hat more firmly on his head.

He noticed that the street light at the corner of Maple and Jefferson was out and he grumbled a little to himself when he was forced to step off the walk to circle a boarded-off section of newly-laid concrete work before the driveway of 816.

It seemed that he reached the corner of Lexington and Maple just a bit too quickly, but he told himself that this couldn’t be. For he never did that. For twenty years, since the year following his expulsion from the university, he had lived by the clock.

The same thing, at the same time, day after day. He had not deliberately set upon such a life of routine. A bachelor, living alone with sufficient money to supply his humble needs, the timed existence had grown on him gradually.

So he turned on Lexington and back on Oak. The dog at the corner of Oak and Jefferson was waiting for him once again and came out snarling and growling, snapping at his heels. But Mr. Chambers pretended not to notice and the beast gave up the chase.

A radio was blaring down the street and faint wisps of what it was blurting floated to Mr. Chambers.

“…still taking place…Empire State building disappeared…thin air…famed scientist, Dr. Edmund Harcourt.… ”

The wind whipped the muted words away and Mr. Chambers grumbled to himself. Another one of those fantastic radio dramas, probably. He remembered one from many years before, something about the Martians. And Harcourt! What did Harcourt have to do with it? He was one of the men who had ridiculed the book Mr. Chambers had written.

But he pushed speculation away, sniffed the clean, crisp air again, looked at the familiar things that materialized out of the late autumn darkness as he walked along. For there was nothing…absolutely nothing in the world…that he would let upset him. That was a tenet he had laid down twenty years ago.

* * * *

There was a crowd of men in front of the drugstore at the corner of Oak and Lincoln and they were talking excitedly. Mr. Chambers caught some excited words: “It’s happening everywhere.… What do you think it is.… The scientists can’t explain.… ”

But as Mr. Chambers neared them they fell into what seemed an abashed silence and watched him pass. He, on his part, gave them no sign of recognition. That was the way it had been for many years, ever since the people had become convinced that he did not wish to talk.

One of the men half started forward as if to speak to him, but then stepped back and Mr. Chambers continued on his walk.

Back at his own front door he stopped and as he had done a thousand times before drew forth the heavy gold watch from his pocket.

He started violently. It was only 7:30!

For long minutes he stood there staring at the watch in accusation. The timepiece hadn’t stopped, for it still ticked audibly.

But 15 minutes too soon! For twenty years, day in, day out, he had started out at seven and returned at a quarter of eight. Now.…

It wasn’t until then that he realized something else was wrong. He had no cigar. For the first time he had neglected to purchase his evening smoke.

Shaken, muttering to himself, Mr. Chambers let himself in his house and locked the door behind him.

He hung his hat and coat on the rack in the hall and walked slowly into the living room. Dropping into his favorite chair, he shook his head in bewilderment.

Silence filled the room. A silence that was measured by the ticking of the old fashioned pendulum clock on the mantelpiece.

But silence was no strange thing to Mr. Chambers. Once he had loved music…the kind of music he could get by tuning in symphonic orchestras on the radio. But the radio stood silent in the corner, the cord out of its socket. Mr. Chambers had pulled it out many years before. To be precise, upon the night when the symphonic broadcast had been interrupted to give a news flash.

He had stopped reading newspapers and magazines too, had exiled himself to a few city blocks. And as the years flowed by, that self exile had become a prison, an intangible, impassable wall bounded by four city blocks by three. Beyond them lay utter, unexplainable terror. Beyond them he never went.

But recluse though he was, he could not on occasion escape from hearing things. Things the newsboy shouted on the streets, things the men talked about on the drugstore corner when they didn’t see him coming.

And so he knew that this was the year 1960 and that the wars in Europe and Asia had flamed to an end to be followed by a terrible plague, a plague that even now was sweeping through country after country like wild fire, decimating populations. A plague undoubtedly induced by hunger and privation and the miseries of war.

But those things he put away as items far removed from his own small world. He disregarded them. He pretended he had never heard of them. Others might discuss and worry over them if they wished. To him they simply did not matter.

But there were two things tonight that did matter. Two curious, incredible events. He had arrived home fifteen minutes early. He had forgotten his cigar.

Huddled in the chair, he frowned slowly. It was disquieting to have something like that happen. There must be something wrong. Had his long exile finally turned his mind…perhaps just a very little…enough to make him queer? Had he lost his sense of proportion, of perspective?

No, he hadn’t. Take this room, for example. After twenty years it had come to be as much a part of him as the clothes he wore. Every detail of the room was engraved in his mind with…clarity; the old center leg table with its green covering and stained glass lamp; the mantelpiece with the dusty bric-a-brac; the pendulum clock that told the time of day as well as the day of the week and month; the elephant ash tray on the tabaret and, most important of all, the marine print.

Mr. Chambers loved that picture. It had depth, he always said. It showed an old sailing ship in the foreground on a placid sea. Far in the distance, almost on the horizon line, was the vague outline of a larger vessel.

There were other pictures, too. The forest scene above the fireplace, the old English prints in the corner where he sat, the Currier and Ives above the radio. But the ship print was directly in his line of vision. He could see it without turning his head. He had put it there because he liked it best.

Further reverie became an effort as Mr. Chambers felt himself succumbing to weariness. He undressed and went to bed. For an hour he lay awake, assailed by vague fears he could neither define nor understand.

When finally he dozed off it was to lose himself in a series of horrific dreams. He dreamed first that he was a castaway on a tiny islet in mid-ocean, that the waters around the island teemed with huge poisonous sea snakes…hydrophinnae…and that steadily those serpents were devouring the island.

In another dream he was pursued by a horror which he could neither see nor hear, but only could imagine. And as he sought to flee he stayed in the one place. His legs worked frantically, pumping like pistons, but he could make no progress. It was as if he ran upon a treadway.

Then again the terror descended on him, a black, unimagined thing and he tried to scream and couldn’t. He opened his mouth and strained his vocal cords and filled his lungs to bursting with the urge to shriek…but not a sound came from his lips.

* * * *

All next day he was uneasy and as he left the house that evening, at precisely seven o’clock, he kept saying to himself: “You must not forget tonight! You must remember to stop and get your cigar!”

The street light at the corner of Jefferson was still out and in front of 816 the cemented driveway was still boarded off. Everything was the same as the night before.

And now, he told himself, the Red Star confectionery is in the next block. I must not forget tonight. To forget twice in a row would be just too much.

He grasped that thought firmly in his mind, strode just a bit more rapidly down the street.

But at the corner he stopped in consternation. Bewildered, he stared down the next block. There was no neon sign, no splash of friendly light upon the sidewalk to mark the little store tucked away in this residential section.

He stared at the street marker and read the word slowly: GRANT. He read it again, unbelieving, for this shouldn’t be Grant Street, but Marshall. He had walked two blocks and the confectionery was between Marshall and Grant. He hadn’t come to Marshall yet…and here was Grant.

Or had he, absent-mindedly, come one block farther than he thought, passed the store as on the night before?

For the first time in twenty years, Mr. Chambers retraced his steps. He walked back to Jefferson, then turned around and went back to Grant again and on to Lexington. Then back to Grant again, where he stood astounded while a single, incredible fact grew slowly in his brain:

There wasn’t any confectionery! The block from Marshall to Grant had disappeared!

Now he understood why he had missed the store on the night before, why he had arrived home fifteen minutes early.

On legs that were dead things he stumbled back to his home. He slammed and locked the door behind him and made his way unsteadily to his chair in the corner.

What was this? What did it mean? By what inconceivable necromancy could a paved street with houses, trees and buildings be spirited away and the space it had occupied be closed up?

Was something happening in the world which he, in his secluded life, knew nothing about?

Mr. Chambers shivered, reached to turn up the collar of his coat, then stopped as he realized the room must be warm. A fire blazed merrily in the grate. The cold he felt came from something…somewhere else. The cold of fear and horror, the chill of a half whispered thought.

A deathly silence had fallen, a silence still measured by the pendulum clock. And yet a silence that held a different tenor than he had ever sensed before. Not a homey, comfortable silence…but a silence that hinted at emptiness and nothingness.

There was something back of this, Mr. Chambers told himself. Something that reached far back into one corner of his brain and demanded recognition. Something tied up with the fragments of talk he had heard on the drugstore corner, bits of news broadcasts he had heard as he walked along the street, the shrieking of the newsboy calling his papers. Something to do with the happenings in the world from which he had excluded himself.

* * * *

He brought them back to mind now and lingered over the one central theme of the talk he overheard: the wars and plagues. Hints of a Europe and Asia swept almost clean of human life, of the plague ravaging Africa, of its appearance in South America, of the frantic efforts of the United States to prevent its spread into that nation’s boundaries.

Millions of people were dead in Europe and Asia, Africa and South America. Billions, perhaps.

And somehow those gruesome statistics seemed tied up with his own experience. Something, somewhere, some part of his earlier life, seemed to hold an explanation. But try as he would his befuddled brain failed to find the answer.

The pendulum clock struck slowly, its every other chime as usual setting up a sympathetic vibration in the pewter vase that stood upon the mantel.

Mr. Chambers got to his feet, strode to the door, opened it and looked out.

Moonlight tesselated the street in black and silver, etching the chimneys and trees against a silvered sky.

But the house directly across the street was not the same. It was strangely lop-sided, its dimensions out of proportion, like a house that suddenly had gone mad.

He stared at it in amazement, trying to determine what was wrong with it. He recalled how it had always stood, foursquare, a solid piece of mid-Victorian architecture.

Then, before his eyes, the house righted itself again. Slowly it drew together, ironed out its queer angles, readjusted its dimensions, became once again the stodgy house he knew it had to be.

With a sigh of relief, Mr. Chambers turned back into the hall.

But before he closed the door, he looked again. The house was lop-sided…as bad, perhaps worse than before!

Gulping in fright, Mr. Chambers slammed the door shut, locked it and double bolted it. Then he went to his bedroom and took two sleeping powders.

His dreams that night were the same as on the night before. Again there was the islet in mid-ocean. Again he was alone upon it. Again the squirming hydrophinnae were eating his foothold piece by piece.

He awoke, body drenched with perspiration. Vague light of early dawn filtered through the window. The clock on the bedside table showed 7:30. For a long time he lay there motionless.

Again the fantastic happenings of the night before came back to haunt him and as he lay there, staring at the windows, he remembered them, one by one. But his mind, still fogged by sleep and astonishment, took the happenings in its stride, mulled over them, lost the keen edge of fantastic terror that lurked around them.

The light through the windows slowly grew brighter. Mr. Chambers slid out of bed, slowly crossed to the window, the cold of the floor biting into his bare feet. He forced himself to look out.

There was nothing outside the window. No shadows. As if there might be a fog. But no fog, however, thick, could hide the apple tree that grew close against the house.

But the tree was there…shadowy, indistinct in the gray, with a few withered apples still clinging to its boughs, a few shriveled leaves reluctant to leave the parent branch.

The tree was there now. But it hadn’t been when he first had looked. Mr. Chambers was sure of that.

* * * *

And now he saw the faint outlines of his neighbor’s house…but those outlines were all wrong. They didn’t jibe and fit together…they were out of plumb. As if some giant hand had grasped the house and wrenched it out of true. Like the house he had seen across the street the night before, the house that had painfully righted itself when he thought of how it should look.

Perhaps if he thought of how his neighbor’s house should look, it too might right itself. But Mr. Chambers was very weary. Too weary to think about the house.

He turned from the window and dressed slowly. In the living room he slumped into his chair, put his feet on the old cracked ottoman. For a long time he sat, trying to think.

And then, abruptly, something like an electric shock ran through him. Rigid, he sat there, limp inside at the thought. Minutes later he arose and almost ran across the room to the old mahogany bookcase that stood against the wall.

There were many volumes in the case: his beloved classics on the first shelf, his many scientific works on the lower shelves. The second shelf contained but one book. And it was around this book that Mr. Chambers’ entire life was centered.

Twenty years ago he had written it and foolishly attempted to teach its philosophy to a class of undergraduates. The newspapers, he remembered, had made a great deal of it at the time. Tongues had been set to wagging. Narrow-minded townsfolk, failing to understand either his philosophy or his aim, but seeing in him another exponent of some anti-rational cult, had forced his expulsion from the school.

It was a simple book, really, dismissed by most authorities as merely the vagaries of an over-zealous mind.

Mr. Chambers took it down now, opened its cover and began thumbing slowly through the pages. For a moment the memory of happier days swept over him.

Then his eyes focused on the paragraph, a paragraph written so long ago the very words seemed strange and unreal:

Man himself, by the power of mass suggestion, holds the physical fate of this earth…yes, even the universe. Billions of minds seeing trees as trees, houses as houses, streets as streets…and not as something else. Minds that see things as they are and have kept things as they were.… Destroy those minds and the entire foundation of matter, robbed of its regenerative power, will crumple and slip away like a column of sand.…

His eyes followed down the page:

Yet this would have nothing to do with matter itself…but only with matter’s form. For while the mind of man through long ages may have moulded an imagery of that space in which he lives, mind would have little conceivable influence upon the existence of that matter. What exists in our known universe shall exist always and can never be destroyed, only altered or transformed.

But in modern astrophysics and mathematics we gain an insight into the possibility…yes probability…that there are other dimensions, other brackets of time and space impinging on the one we occupy.

If a pin is thrust into a shadow, would that shadow have any knowledge of the pin? It would not, for in this case the shadow is two dimensional, the pin three dimensional. Yet both occupy the same space.

Granting then that the power of men’s minds alone holds this universe, or at least this world in its present form, may we not go farther and envision other minds in some other plane watching us, waiting, waiting craftily for the time they can take over the domination of matter? Such a concept is not impossible. It is a natural conclusion if we accept the double hypothesis: that mind does control the formation of all matter; and that other worlds lie in juxtaposition with ours.

Perhaps we shall come upon a day, far distant, when our plane, our world will dissolve beneath our feet and before our eyes as some stronger intelligence reaches out from the dimensional shadows of the very space we live in and wrests from us the matter which we know to be our own.

He stood astounded beside the bookcase, his eyes staring unseeing into the fire upon the hearth.

He had written that. And because of those words he had been called a heretic, had been compelled to resign his position at the university, had been forced into this hermit life.

A tumultuous idea hammered at him. Men had died by the millions all over the world. Where there had been thousands of minds there now were one or two. A feeble force to hold the form of matter intact.

* * * *

The plague had swept Europe and Asia almost clean of life, had blighted Africa, had reached South America…might even have come to the United States. He remembered the whispers he had heard, the words of the men at the drugstore corner, the buildings disappearing. Something scientists could not explain. But those were merely scraps of information. He did not know the whole story…he could not know. He never listened to the radio, never read a newspaper.

But abruptly the whole thing fitted together in his brain like the missing piece of a puzzle into its slot. The significance of it all gripped him with damning clarity.

There were not sufficient minds in existence to retain the material world in its mundane form. Some other power from another dimension was fighting to supersede man’s control and take his universe into its own plane!

Abruptly Mr. Chambers closed the book, shoved it back in the case and picked up his hat and coat.

He had to know more. He had to find someone who could tell him.

He moved through the hall to the door, emerged into the street. On the walk he looked skyward, trying to make out the sun. But there wasn’t any sun…only an all pervading grayness that shrouded everything…not a gray fog, but a gray emptiness that seemed devoid of life, of any movement.

The walk led to his gate and there it ended, but as he moved forward the sidewalk came into view and the house ahead loomed out of the gray, but a house with differences.

He moved forward rapidly. Visibility extended only a few feet and as he approached them the houses materialized like two dimensional pictures without perspective, like twisted cardboard soldiers lining up for review on a misty morning.

Once he stopped and looked back and saw that the grayness had closed in behind him. The houses were wiped out, the sidewalk faded into nothing.

He shouted, hoping to attract attention. But his voice frightened him. It seemed to ricochet up and into the higher levels of the sky, as if a giant door had been opened to a mighty room high above him.

He went on until he came to the corner of Lexington. There, on the curb, he stopped and stared. The gray wall was thicker there but he did not realize how close it was until he glanced down at his feet and saw there was nothing, nothing at all beyond the curbstone. No dull gleam of wet asphalt, no sign of a street. It was as if all eternity ended here at the corner of Maple and Lexington.

With a wild cry, Mr. Chambers turned and ran. Back down the street he raced, coat streaming after him in the wind, bowler hat bouncing on his head.

Panting, he reached the gate and stumbled up the walk, thankful that it still was there.

On the stoop he stood for a moment, breathing hard. He glanced back over his shoulder and a queer feeling of inner numbness seemed to well over him. At that moment the gray nothingness appeared to thin…the enveloping curtain fell away, and he saw.…

Vague and indistinct, yet cast in stereoscopic outline, a gigantic city was lined against the darkling sky. It was a city fantastic with cubed domes, spires, and aerial bridges and flying buttresses. Tunnel-like streets, flanked on either side by shining metallic ramps and runways, stretched endlessly to the vanishing point. Great shafts of multicolored light probed huge streamers and ellipses above the higher levels.

And beyond, like a final backdrop, rose a titanic wall. It was from that wall…from its crenelated parapets and battlements that Mr. Chambers felt the eyes peering at him.

Thousands of eyes glaring down with but a single purpose.

And as he continued to look, something else seemed to take form above that wall. A design this time, that swirled and writhed in the ribbons of radiance and rapidly coalesced into strange geometric features, without definite line or detail. A colossal face, a face of indescribable power and evil, it was, staring down with malevolent composure.

Then the city and the face slid out of focus; the vision faded like a darkened magic-lantern, and the grayness moved in again.

Mr. Chambers pushed open the door of his house. But he did not lock it. There was no need of locks…not any more.

A few coals of fire still smouldered in the grate and going there, he stirred them up, raked away the ash, piled on more wood. The flames leaped merrily, dancing in the chimney’s throat.

Without removing his hat and coat, he sank exhausted in his favorite chair, closed his eyes then opened them again.

He sighed with relief as he saw the room was unchanged. Everything in its accustomed place: the clock, the lamp, the elephant ash tray, the marine print on the wall.

Everything was as it should be. The clock measured the silence with its measured ticking; it chimed abruptly and the vase sent up its usual sympathetic vibration.

This was his room, he thought. Rooms acquire the personality of the person who lives in them, become a part of him. This was his world, his own private world, and as such it would be the last to go.

But how long could he…his brain…maintain its existence?

Mr. Chambers stared at the marine print and for a moment a little breath of reassurance returned to him. They couldn’t take this away. The rest of the world might dissolve because there was insufficient power of thought to retain its outward form.

But this room was his. He alone had furnished it. He alone, since he had first planned the house’s building, had lived here.

This room would stay. It must stay on…it must.…

He rose from his chair and walked across the room to the book case, stood staring at the second shelf with its single volume. His eyes shifted to the top shelf and swift terror gripped him.

For all the books weren’t there. A lot of books weren’t there! Only the most beloved, the most familiar ones.

So the change already had started here! The unfamiliar books were gone and that fitted in the pattern…for it would be the least familiar things that would go first.

Wheeling, he stared across the room. Was it his imagination, or did the lamp on the table blur and begin to fade away?

But as he stared at it, it became clear again, a solid, substantial thing.

For a moment real fear reached out and touched him with chilly fingers. For he knew that this room no longer was proof against the thing that had happened out there on the street.

Or had it really happened? Might not all this exist within his own mind? Might not the street be as it always was, with laughing children and barking dogs? Might not the Red Star confectionery still exist, splashing the street with the red of its neon sign?

Could it be that he was going mad? He had heard whispers when he had passed, whispers the gossiping housewives had not intended him to hear. And he had heard the shouting of boys when he walked by. They thought him mad. Could he be really mad?

But he knew he wasn’t mad. He knew that he perhaps was the sanest of all men who walked the earth. For he, and he alone, had foreseen this very thing. And the others had scoffed at him for it.

Somewhere else the children might be playing on a street. But it would be a different street. And the children undoubtedly would be different too.

For the matter of which the street and everything upon it had been formed would now be cast in a different mold, stolen by different minds in a different dimension.

Perhaps we shall come upon a day, far distant, when our plane, our world will dissolve beneath our feet and before our eyes as some stronger intelligence reaches out from the dimensional shadows of the very space we live in and wrests from us the matter which we know to be our own.

But there had been no need to wait for that distant day. Scant years after he had written those prophetic words the thing was happening. Man had played unwittingly into the hands of those other minds in the other dimension. Man had waged a war and war had bred a pestilence. And the whole vast cycle of events was but a detail of a cyclopean plan.

He could see it all now. By an insidious mass hypnosis minions from that other dimension…or was it one supreme intelligence…had deliberately sown the seeds of dissension. The reduction of the world’s mental power had been carefully planned with diabolic premeditation.

On impulse he suddenly turned, crossed the room and opened the connecting door to the bedroom. He stopped on the threshold and a sob forced its way to his lips.

There was no bedroom. Where his stolid four poster and dresser had been there was greyish nothingness.

Like an automaton he turned again and paced to the hall door. Here, too, he found what he had expected. There was no hall, no familiar hat rack and umbrella stand.

Nothing.…

Weakly Mr. Chambers moved back to his chair in the corner.

“So here I am,” he said, half aloud.

So there he was. Embattled in the last corner of the world that was left to him.

Perhaps there were other men like him, he thought. Men who stood at bay against the emptiness that marked the transition from one dimension to another. Men who had lived close to the things they loved, who had endowed those things with such substantial form by power of mind alone that they now stood out alone against the power of some greater mind.

The street was gone. The rest of his house was gone. This room still retained its form.

This room, he knew, would stay the longest. And when the rest of the room was gone, this corner with his favorite chair would remain. For this was the spot where he had lived for twenty years. The bedroom was for sleeping, the kitchen for eating. This room was for living. This was his last stand.

These were the walls and floors and prints and lamps that had soaked up his will to make them walls and prints and lamps.

He looked out the window into a blank world. His neighbors’ houses already were gone. They had not lived with them as he had lived with this room. Their interests had been divided, thinly spread; their thoughts had not been concentrated as his upon an area four blocks by three, or a room fourteen by twelve.

* * * *

Staring through the window, he saw it again. The same vision he had looked upon before and yet different in an indescribable way. There was the city illumined in the sky. There were the elliptical towers and turrets, the cube-shaped domes and battlements. He could see with stereoscopic clarity the aerial bridges, the gleaming avenues sweeping on into infinitude. The vision was nearer this time, but the depth and proportion had changed…as if he were viewing it from two concentric angles at the same time.

And the face…the face of magnitude…of power of cosmic craft and evil.…

Mr. Chambers turned his eyes back into the room. The clock was ticking slowly, steadily. The greyness was stealing into the room.

The table and radio were the first to go. They simply faded away and with them went one corner of the room.

And then the elephant ash tray.

“Oh, well,” said Mr. Chambers, “I never did like that very well.”

Now as he sat there it didn’t seem queer to be without the table or the radio. It was as if it were something quite normal. Something one could expect to happen.

Perhaps, if he thought hard enough, he could bring them back.

But, after all, what was the use? One man, alone, could not stand off the irresistible march of nothingness. One man, all alone, simply couldn’t do it.

He wondered what the elephant ash tray looked like in that other dimension. It certainly wouldn’t be an elephant ash tray nor would the radio be a radio, for perhaps they didn’t have ash trays or radios or elephants in the invading dimension.

He wondered, as a matter of fact, what he himself would look like when he finally slipped into the unknown. For he was matter, too, just as the ash tray and radio were matter.

He wondered if he would retain his individuality…if he still would be a person. Or would he merely be a thing?

There was one answer to all of that. He simply didn’t know.

Nothingness advanced upon him, ate its way across the room, stalking him as he sat in the chair underneath the lamp. And he waited for it.

The room, or what was left of it, plunged into dreadful silence.

Mr. Chambers started. The clock had stopped. Funny…the first time in twenty years.

He leaped from his chair and then sat down again.

The clock hadn’t stopped.

It wasn’t there.

There was a tingling sensation in his feet.

THE WORLD THAT COULDN’T BE

The tracks went up one row and down another, and in those rows the vua plants had been sheared off an inch or two above the ground. The raider had been methodical; it had not wandered about haphazardly, but had done an efficient job of harvesting the first ten rows on the west side of the field. Then, having eaten its fill, it had angled off into the bush—and that had not been long ago, for the soil still trickled down into the great pug marks, sunk deep into the finely cultivated loam.

Somewhere a sawmill bird was whirring through a log, and down in one of the thorn-choked ravines, a choir of chatterers was clicking through a ghastly morning song. It was going to be a scorcher of a day. Already the smell of desiccated dust was rising from the ground and the glare of the newly risen sun was dancing off the bright leaves of the hula-trees, making it appear as if the bush were filled with a million flashing mirrors.

Gavin Duncan hauled a red bandanna from his pocket and mopped his face.

“No, mister,” pleaded Zikkara, the native foreman of the farm. “You cannot do it, mister. You do not hunt a Cytha.”

“The hell I don’t,” said Duncan, but he spoke in English and not the native tongue.

He stared out across the bush, a flat expanse of sun-cured grass interspersed with thickets of hula-scrub and thorn and occasional groves of trees, criss-crossed by treacherous ravines and spotted with infrequent waterholes.

It would be murderous out there, he told himself, but it shouldn’t take too long. The beast probably would lay up shortly after its pre-dawn feeding and he’d overhaul it in an hour or two. But if he failed to overhaul it, then he must keep on.

“Dangerous,” Zikkara pointed out. “No one hunts the Cytha.”

“I do,” Duncan said, speaking now in the native language. “I hunt anything that damages my crop. A few nights more of this and there would be nothing left.”

Jamming the bandanna back into his pocket, he tilted his hat lower across his eyes against the sun.

“It might be a long chase, mister. It is the skun season now. If you were caught out there.… ”

“Now listen,” Duncan told it sharply. “Before I came, you’d feast one day, then starve for days on end; but now you eat each day. And you like the doctoring. Before, when you got sick, you died. Now you get sick, I doctor you, and you live. You like staying in one place, instead of wandering all around.”

“Mister, we like all this,” said Zikkara, “but we do not hunt the Cytha.”

“If we do not hunt the Cytha, we lose all this,” Duncan pointed out. “If I don’t make a crop, I’m licked. I’ll have to go away. Then what happens to you?”

“We will grow the corn ourselves.”

“That’s a laugh,” said Duncan, “and you know it is. If I didn’t kick your backsides all day long, you wouldn’t do a lick of work. If I leave, you go back to the bush. Now let’s go and get that Cytha.”

“But it is such a little one, mister! It is such a young one! It is scarcely worth the trouble. It would be a shame to kill it.”

Probably just slightly smaller than a horse, thought Duncan, watching the native closely.

It’s scared, he told himself. It’s scared dry and spitless.

“Besides, it must have been most hungry. Surely, mister, even a Cytha has the right to eat.”

“Not from my crop,” said Duncan savagely. “You know why we grow the vua, don’t you? You know it is great medicine. The berries that it grows cures those who are sick inside their heads. My people need that medicine—need it very badly. And what is more, out there—” he swept his arm toward the sky—”out there they pay very much for it.”

“But, mister.… ”

“I tell you this,” said Duncan gently, “you either dig me up a bush-runner to do the tracking for me or you can all get out, the kit and caboodle of you. I can get other tribes to work the farm.”

“No, mister!” Zikkara screamed in desperation.

“You have your choice,” Duncan told it coldly.

* * * *

He plodded back across the field toward the house. Not much of a house as yet. Not a great deal better than a native shack. But someday it would be, he told himself. Let him sell a crop or two and he’d build a house that would really be a house. It would have a bar and swimming pool and a garden filled with flowers, and at last, after years of wandering, he’d have a home and broad acres and everyone, not just one lousy tribe, would call him mister.

Gavin Duncan, planter, he said to himself, and liked the sound of it. Planter on the planet Layard. But not if the Cytha came back night after night and ate the vua plants.

He glanced over his shoulder and saw that Zikkara was racing for the native village.

Called their bluff, Duncan informed himself with satisfaction.

He came out of the field and walked across the yard, heading for the house. One of Shotwell’s shirts was hanging on the clothes-line, limp in the breathless morning.

Damn the man, thought Duncan. Out here mucking around with those stupid natives, always asking questions, always under foot. Although, to be fair about it, that was Shotwell’s job. That was what the Sociology people had sent him out to do.

Duncan came up to the shack, pushed the door open and entered. Shotwell, stripped to the waist, was at the wash bench.

Breakfast was cooking on the stove, with an elderly native acting as cook.

Duncan strode across the room and took down the heavy rifle from its peg. He slapped the action open, slapped it shut again.

Shotwell reached for a towel.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

“Cytha got into the field.”

“Cytha?”

“A kind of animal,” said Duncan. “It ate ten rows of vua.”

“Big? Little? What are its characteristics?”

The native began putting breakfast on the table. Duncan walked to the table, laid the rifle across one corner of it and sat down. He poured a brackish liquid out of a big stew pan into their cups.

God, he thought, what I would give for a cup of coffee.

* * * *

Shotwell pulled up his chair. “You didn’t answer me. What is a Cytha like?”

“I wouldn’t know,” said Duncan.

“Don’t know? But you’re going after it, looks like, and how can you hunt it if you don’t know—”

“Track it. The thing tied to the other end of the trail is sure to be the Cytha. Well find out what it’s like once we catch up to it.”

“We?”

“The natives will send up someone to do the tracking for me. Some of them are better than a dog.”

“Look, Gavin. I’ve put you to a lot of trouble and you’ve been decent with me. If I can be any help, I would like to go.”

“Two make better time than three. And we have to catch this Cytha fast or it might settle down to an endurance contest.”

“All right, then. Tell me about the Cytha.”

Duncan poured porridge gruel into his bowl, handed the pan to Shotwell. “It’s a sort of special thing. The natives are scared to death of it. You hear a lot of stories about it. Said to be unkillable. It’s always capitalized, always a proper noun. It has been reported at different times from widely scattered places.”

“No one’s ever bagged one?”

“Not that I ever heard of.” Duncan patted the rifle. “Let me get a bead on it.”

He started eating, spooning the porridge into his mouth, munching on the stale corn bread left from the night before. He drank some of the brackish beverage and shuddered.

“Some day,” he said, “I’m going to scrape together enough money to buy a pound of coffee. You’d think—”

“It’s the freight rates,” Shotwell said. “I’ll send you a pound when I go back.”

“Not at the price they’d charge to ship it out,” said Duncan. “I wouldn’t hear of it.”

They ate in silence for a time. Finally Shotwell said: “I’m getting nowhere, Gavin. The natives are willing to talk, but it all adds up to nothing.”

“I tried to tell you that. You could have saved your time.”

Shotwell shook his head stubbornly. “There’s an answer, a logical explanation. It’s easy enough to say you cannot rule out the sexual factor, but that’s exactly what has happened here on Layard. It’s easy to exclaim that a sexless animal, a sexless race, a sexless planet is impossible, but that is what we have. Somewhere there is an answer and I have to find it.”

“Now hold up a minute,” Duncan protested. “There’s no use blowing a gasket. I haven’t got the time this morning to listen to your lecture.”

“But it’s not the lack of sex that worries me entirely,” Shotwell said, “although it’s the central factor. There are subsidiary situations deriving from that central fact which are most intriguing.”

“I have no doubt of it,” said Duncan, “but if you please—”

“Without sex, there is no basis for the family, and without the family there is no basis for a tribe, and yet the natives have an elaborate tribal setup, with taboos by way of regulation. Somewhere there must exist some underlying, basic unifying factor, some common loyalty, some strange relationship which spells out to brotherhood.”

“Not brotherhood,” said Duncan, chuckling. “Not even sisterhood. You must watch your terminology. The word you want is ithood.”

The door pushed open and a native walked in timidly.

“Zikkara said that mister want me,” the native told them. “I am Sipar. I can track anything but screamers, stilt-birds, longhorns and donovans. Those are my taboos.”

“I am glad to hear that,” Duncan replied. “You have no Cytha taboo, then.”

“Cytha!” yipped the native. “Zikkara did not tell me Cytha!”

Duncan paid no attention. He got up from the table and went to the heavy chest that stood against one wall. He rummaged in it and came out with a pair of binoculars, a hunting knife and an extra drum of ammunition. At the kitchen cupboard, he rummaged once again, filling a small leather sack with a gritty powder from a can he found.

“Rockahominy,” he explained to Shotwell. “Emergency rations thought up by the primitive North American Indians. Parched corn, ground fine. It’s no feast exactly, but it keeps a man going.”

“You figure you’ll be gone that long?”

“Maybe overnight. I don’t know. Won’t stop until I get it. Can’t afford to. It could wipe me out in a few days.”

“Good hunting,” Shotwell said. “I’ll hold the fort.”

Duncan said to Sipar: “Quit sniveling and come on.”

He picked up the rifle, settled it in the crook of his arm. He kicked open the door and strode out.

Sipar followed meekly.

II

Duncan got his first shot late in the afternoon of that first day.

In the middle of the morning, two hours after they had left the farm, they had flushed the Cytha out of its bed in a thick ravine. But there had been no chance for a shot. Duncan saw no more than a huge black blur fade into the bush.

Through the bake-oven afternoon, they had followed its trail, Sipar tracking and Duncan bringing up the rear, scanning every piece of cover, with the sun-hot rifle always held at ready.

Once they had been held up for fifteen minutes while a massive donovan tramped back and forth, screaming, trying to work up its courage for attack. But after a quarter hour of showing off, it decided to behave itself and went off at a shuffling gallop.

Duncan watched it go with a lot of thankfulness. It could soak up a lot of lead, and for all its awkwardness, it was handy with its feet once it set itself in motion. Donovans had killed a lot of men in the twenty years since Earthmen had come to Layard.

With the beast gone, Duncan looked around for Sipar. He found it fast asleep beneath a hula-shrub. He kicked the native awake with something less than gentleness and they went on again.

The bush swarmed with other animals, but they had no trouble with them.

Sipar, despite its initial reluctance, had worked well at the trailing. A misplaced bunch of grass, a twig bent to one side, a displaced stone, the faintest pug mark were Sipar’s stock in trade. It worked like a lithe, well-trained hound. This bush country was its special province; here it was at home.

With the sun dropping toward the west, they had climbed a long, steep hill and as they neared the top of it, Duncan hissed at Sipar. The native looked back over its shoulder in surprise. Duncan made motions for it to stop tracking.

The native crouched and as Duncan went past it, he saw that a look of agony was twisting its face. And in the look of agony he thought he saw as well a touch of pleading and a trace of hatred. It’s scared, just like the rest of them, Duncan told himself. But what the native thought or felt had no significance; what counted was the beast ahead.

Duncan went the last few yards on his belly, pushing the gun ahead of him, the binoculars bumping on his back. Swift, vicious insects ran out of the grass and swarmed across his hands and arms and one got on his face and bit him.

* * * *

He made it to the hilltop and lay there, looking at the sweep of land beyond. It was more of the same, more of the blistering, dusty slogging, more of thorn and tangled ravine and awful emptiness.

He lay motionless, watching for a hint of motion, for the fitful shadow, for any wrongness in the terrain that might be the Cytha.

But there was nothing. The land lay quiet under the declining sun. Far on the horizon, a herd of some sort of animals was grazing, but there was nothing else.

Then he saw the motion, just a flicker, on the knoll ahead—about halfway up.

He laid the rifle carefully on the ground and hitched the binoculars around. He raised them to his eyes and moved them slowly back and forth. The animal was there where he had seen the motion.

It was resting, looking back along the way that it had come, watching for the first sign of its trailers. Duncan tried to make out the size and shape, but it blended with the grass and the dun soil and he could not be sure exactly what it looked like.

He let the glasses down and now that he had located it, he could distinguish its outline with the naked eye.

His hand reached out and slid the rifle to him. He fitted it to his shoulder and wriggled his body for closer contact with the ground. The cross-hairs centered on the faint outline on the knoll and then the beast stood up.

It was not as large as he had thought it might be—perhaps a little larger than Earth lion-size, but it certainly was no lion. It was a square-set thing and black and inclined to lumpiness and it had an awkward look about it, but there were strength and ferociousness as well.

Duncan tilted the muzzle of the rifle so that the cross-hairs centered on the massive neck. He drew in a breath and held it and began the trigger squeeze.

The rifle bucked hard against his shoulder and the report hammered in his head and the beast went down. It did not lurch or fall; it simply melted down and disappeared, hidden in the grass.

“Dead center,” Duncan assured himself.

He worked the mechanism and the spent cartridge case flew out. The feeding mechanism snicked and the fresh shell clicked as it slid into the breech.

He lay for a moment, watching. And on the knoll where the thing had fallen, the grass was twitching as if the wind were blowing, only there was no wind. But despite the twitching of the grass, there was no sign of the Cytha. It did not struggle up again. It stayed where it had fallen.

Duncan got to his feet, dug out the bandanna and mopped at his face. He heard the soft thud of the step behind him and turned his head. It was the tracker.

“It’s all right, Sipar,” he said. “You can quit worrying. I got it. We can go home now.”

* * * *

It had been a long, hard chase, longer than he had thought it might be. But it had been successful and that was the thing that counted. For the moment, the vua crop was safe.

He tucked the bandanna back into his pocket, went down the slope and started up the knoll. He reached the place where the Cytha had fallen. There were three small gouts of torn, mangled fur and flesh lying on the ground and there was nothing else.

He spun around and jerked his rifle up. Every nerve was screamingly alert. He swung his head, searching for the slightest movement, for some shape or color that was not the shape or color of the bush or grass or ground. But there was nothing. The heat droned in the hush of afternoon. There was not a breath of moving air. But there was danger—a saw-toothed sense of danger close behind his neck.

“Sipar!” he called in a tense whisper, “Watch out!”

The native stood motionless, unheeding, its eyeballs rolling up until there was only white, while the muscles stood out along its throat like straining ropes of steel.

Duncan slowly swiveled, rifle held almost at arm’s length, elbows crooked a little, ready to bring the weapon into play in a fraction of a second.

Nothing stirred. There was no more than emptiness—the emptiness of sun and molten sky, of grass and scraggy bush, of a brown-and-yellow land stretching into foreverness.

Step by step, Duncan covered the hillside and finally came back to the place where the native squatted on its heels and moaned, rocking back and forth, arms locked tightly across its chest, as if it tried to cradle itself in a sort of illusory comfort.

The Earthman walked to the place where the Cytha had fallen and picked up, one by one, the bits of bleeding flesh. They had been mangled by his bullet. They were limp and had no shape. And it was queer, he thought. In all his years of hunting, over many planets, he had never known a bullet to rip out hunks of flesh.

He dropped the bloody pieces back into the grass and wiped his hand upon his thighs. He got up a little stiffly.

He’d found no trail of blood leading through the grass, and surely an animal with a hole of that size would leave a trail.

And as he stood there upon the hillside, with the bloody fingerprints still wet and glistening upon the fabric of his trousers, he felt the first cold touch of fear, as if the fingertips of fear might momentarily, almost casually, have trailed across his heart.

* * * *

He turned around and walked back to the native, reached down and shook it.

“Snap out of it,” he ordered.

He expected pleading, cowering, terror, but there was none.

Sipar got swiftly to its feet and stood looking at him and there was, he thought, an odd glitter in its eyes.

“Get going,” Duncan said. “We still have a little time. Start circling and pick up the trail. I will cover you.”

He glanced at the sun. An hour and a half still left—maybe as much as two. There might still be time to get this buttoned up before the fall of night.

A half mile beyond the knoll, Sipar picked up the trail again and they went ahead, but now they traveled more cautiously, for any bush, any rock, any clump of grass might conceal the wounded beast.

Duncan found himself on edge and cursed himself savagely for it. He’d been in tight spots before. This was nothing new to him. There was no reason to get himself tensed up. It was a deadly business, sure, but he had faced others calmly and walked away from them. It was those frontier tales he’d heard about the Cytha—the kind of superstitious chatter that one always heard on the edge of unknown land.

He gripped the rifle tighter and went on.

No animal, he told himself, was unkillable.

Half an hour before sunset, he called a halt when they reached a brackish waterhole. The light soon would be getting bad for shooting. In the morning, they’d take up the trail again, and by that time the Cytha would be at an even greater disadvantage. It would be stiff and slow and weak. It might be even dead.

Duncan gathered wood and built a fire in the lee of a thorn-bush thicket. Sipar waded out with the canteens and thrust them at arm’s length beneath the surface to fill them. The water still was warm and evil-tasting, but it was fairly free of scum and a thirsty man could drink it.

The sun went down and darkness fell quickly. They dragged more wood out of the thicket and piled it carefully close at hand.

Duncan reached into his pocket and brought out the little bag of rockahominy.

“Here,” he said to Sipar. “Supper.”

The native held one hand cupped and Duncan poured a little mound into its palm.

“Thank you, mister,” Sipar said. “Food-giver.”

“Huh?” asked Duncan, then caught what the native meant. “Dive into it,” he said, almost kindly. “It isn’t much, but it gives you strength. We’ll need strength tomorrow.”

Food-giver, eh? Trying to butter him up, perhaps. In a little while, Sipar would start whining for him to knock off the hunt and head back for the farm.

Although, come to think of it, he really was the food-giver to this bunch of sexless wonders. Corn, thank God, grew well on the red and stubborn soil of Layard—good old corn from North America. Fed to hogs, made into corn-pone for breakfast back on Earth, and here, on Layard, the staple food crop for a gang of shiftless varmints who still regarded, with some good solid skepticism and round-eyed wonder, this unorthodox idea that one should take the trouble to grow plants to eat rather than go out and scrounge for them.

Corn from North America, he thought, growing side by side with the vua of Layard. And that was the way it went. Something from one planet and something from another and still something further from a third and so was built up through the wide social confederacy of space a truly cosmic culture which in the end, in another ten thousand years or so, might spell out some way of life with more sanity and understanding than was evident today.

He poured a mound of rockahominy into his own hand and put the bag back into his pocket.

“Sipar.”

“Yes, mister?”

“You were not scared today when the donovan threatened to attack us.”

“No, mister. The donovan would not hurt me.”

“I see. You said the donovan was taboo to you. Could it be that you, likewise, are taboo to the donovan?”

“Yes, mister. The donovan and I grew up together.”

“Oh, so that’s it,” said Duncan.

He put a pinch of the parched and powdered corn into his mouth and took a sip of brackish water. He chewed reflectively on the resultant mash.

He might go ahead, he knew, and ask why and how and where Sipar and the donovan had grown up together, but there was no point to it. This was exactly the kind of tangle that Shotwell was forever getting into.

Half the time, he told himself, I’m convinced the little stinkers are doing no more than pulling our legs.

What a fantastic bunch of jerks! Not men, not women, just things. And while there were never babies, there were children, although never less than eight or nine years old. And if there were no babies, where did the eight-and nine-year-olds come from?

“I suppose,” he said, “that these other things that are your taboos, the stilt-birds and the screamers and the like, also grew up with you.”

“That is right, mister.”

“Some playground that must have been,” said Duncan.

He went on chewing, staring out into the darkness beyond the ring of firelight.

“There’s something in the thorn bush, mister.”

“I didn’t hear a thing.”

“Little pattering. Something is running there.”

Duncan listened closely. What Sipar said was true. A lot of little things were running in the thicket.

“More than likely mice,” he said.

He finished his rockahominy and took an extra swig of water, gagging on it slightly.

“Get your rest,” he told Sipar. “I’ll wake you later so I can catch a wink or two.”

“Mister,” Sipar said, “I will stay with you to the end.”

“Well,” said Duncan, somewhat startled, “that is decent of you.”

“I will stay to the death,” Sipar promised earnestly.

“Don’t strain yourself,” said Duncan.

He picked up the rifle and walked down to the waterhole.

The night was quiet and the land continued to have that empty feeling. Empty except for the fire and the waterhole and the little micelike animals running in the thicket.

And Sipar—Sipar lying by the fire, curled up and sound asleep already. Naked, with not a weapon to its hand—just the naked animal, the basic humanoid, and yet with underlying purpose that at times was baffling. Scared and shivering this morning at mere mention of the Cytha, yet never faltering on the trail; in pure funk back there on the knoll where they had lost the Cytha, but now ready to go on to the death.

Duncan went back to the fire and prodded Sipar with his toe. The native came straight up out of sleep.

“Whose death?” asked Duncan. “Whose death were you talking of?”

“Why, ours, of course,” said Sipar, and went back to sleep.

III

Duncan did not see the arrow coming. He heard the swishing whistle and felt the wind of it on the right side of his throat and then it thunked into a tree behind him.

He leaped aside and dived for the cover of a tumbled mound of boulders and almost instinctively his thumb pushed the fire control of the rifle up to automatic.

He crouched behind the jumbled rocks and peered ahead. There was not a thing to see. The hula-trees shimmered in the blaze of sun and the thorn-bush was gray and lifeless and the only things astir were three stilt-birds walking gravely a quarter of a mile away.

“Sipar!” he whispered.

“Here, mister.”

“Keep low. It’s still out there.”

Whatever it might be. Still out there and waiting for another shot. Duncan shivered, remembering the feel of the arrow flying past his throat. A hell of a way for a man to die—out at the tail-end of nowhere with an arrow in his throat and a scared-stiff native heading back for home as fast as it could go.

He flicked the control on the rifle back to single fire, crawled around the rock pile and sprinted for a grove of trees that stood on higher ground. He reached them and there he flanked the spot from which the arrow must have come.

He unlimbered the binoculars and glassed the area. He still saw no sign. Whatever had taken the pot shot at them had made its getaway.

He walked back to the tree where the arrow still stood out, its point driven deep into the bark. He grasped the shaft and wrenched the arrow free.

“You can come out now,” he called to Sipar. “There’s no one around.”

The arrow was unbelievably crude. The unfeathered shaft looked as if it had been battered off to the proper length with a jagged stone. The arrowhead was unflaked flint picked up from some outcropping or dry creek bed, and it was awkwardly bound to the shaft with the tough but pliant inner bark of the hula-tree.

“You recognize this?” he asked Sipar.

The native took the arrow and examined it. “Not my tribe.”

“Of course not your tribe. Yours wouldn’t take a shot at us. Some other tribe, perhaps?”

“Very poor arrow.”

“I know that. But it could kill you just as dead as if it were a good one. Do you recognize it?”

“No tribe made this arrow,” Sipar declared.

“Child, maybe?”

“What would child do way out here?”

“That’s what I thought, too,” said Duncan.

He took the arrow back, held it between his thumbs and forefingers and twirled it slowly, with a terrifying thought nibbling at his brain. It couldn’t be. It was too fantastic. He wondered if the sun was finally getting him that he had thought of it at all.

He squatted down and dug at the ground with the makeshift arrow point. “Sipar, what do you actually know about the Cytha?”

“Nothing, mister. Scared of it is all.”

“We aren’t turning back. If there’s something that you know—something that would help us.… ”

It was as close as he could come to begging aid. It was further than he had meant to go. He should not have asked at all, he thought angrily.

“I do not know,” the native said.

Duncan cast the arrow to one side and rose to his feet. He cradled the rifle in his arm. “Let’s go.”

He watched Sipar trot ahead. Crafty little stinker, he told himself. It knows more than it’s telling.

They toiled into the afternoon. It was, if possible, hotter and drier than the day before. There was a sense of tension in the air—no, that was rot. And even if there were, a man must act as if it were not there. If he let himself fall prey to every mood out in this empty land, he only had himself to blame for whatever happened to him.

The tracking was harder now. The day before, the Cytha had only run away, straight-line fleeing to keep ahead of them, to stay out of their reach. Now it was becoming tricky. It backtracked often in an attempt to throw them off. Twice in the afternoon, the trail blanked out entirely and it was only after long searching that Sipar picked it up again—in one instance, a mile away from where it had vanished in thin air.

That vanishing bothered Duncan more than he would admit. Trails do not disappear entirely, not when the terrain remains the same, not when the weather is unchanged. Something was going on, something, perhaps, that Sipar knew far more about than it was willing to divulge.

He watched the native closely and there seemed nothing suspicious. It continued at its work. It was, for all to see, the good and faithful hound.

* * * *

Late in the afternoon, the plain on which they had been traveling suddenly dropped away. They stood poised on the brink of a great escarpment and looked far out to great tangled forests and a flowing river.

It was like suddenly coming into another and beautiful room that one had not expected.

This was new land, never seen before by any Earthman. For no one had ever mentioned that somewhere to the west a forest lay beyond the bush. Men coming in from space had seen it, probably, but only as a different color-marking on the planet. To them, it made no difference.

But to the men who lived on Layard, to the planter and the trader, the prospector and the hunter, it was important. And I, thought Duncan with a sense of triumph, am the man who found it.

“Mister!”

“Now what?”

“Out there. Skun!”

“I don’t—”

“Out there, mister. Across the river.”

Duncan saw it then—a haze in the blueness of the rift—a puff of copper moving very fast, and as he watched, he heard the far-off keening of the storm, a shiver in the air rather than a sound.

He watched in fascination as it moved along the river and saw the boiling fury it made out of the forest. It struck and crossed the river, and the river for a moment seemed to stand on end, with a sheet of silvery water splashed toward the sky.

Then it was gone as quickly as it had happened, but there was a tumbled slash across the forest where the churning winds had traveled.

Back at the farm, Zikkara had warned him of the skun. This was the season for them, it had said, and a man caught in one wouldn’t have a chance.

Duncan let his breath out slowly.

“Bad,” said Sipar.

“Yes, very bad.”

“Hit fast. No warning.”

“What about the trail?” asked Duncan. “Did the Cytha—”

Sipar nodded downward.

“Can we make it before nightfall?”

“I think so,” Sipar answered.

It was rougher than they had thought. Twice they went down blind trails that pinched off, with sheer rock faces opening out into drops of hundreds of feet, and were forced to climb again and find another way.

They reached the bottom of the escarpment as the brief twilight closed in and they hurried to gather firewood. There was no water, but a little was still left in their canteens and they made do with that.

* * * *

After their scant meal of rockahominy, Sipar rolled himself into a ball and went to sleep immediately.

Duncan sat with his back against a boulder which one day, long ago, had fallen from the slope above them, but was now half buried in the soil that through the ages had kept sifting down.

Two days gone, he told himself.

Was there, after all, some truth in the whispered tales that made the rounds back at the settlements—that no one should waste his time in tracking down a Cytha, since a Cytha was unkillable?

Nonsense, he told himself. And yet the hunt had toughened, the trail become more difficult, the Cytha a much more cunning and elusive quarry. Where it had run from them the day before, now it fought to shake them off. And if it did that the second day, why had it not tried to throw them off the first? And what about the third day—tomorrow?

He shook his head. It seemed incredible that an animal would become more formidable as the hunt progressed. But that seemed to be exactly what had happened. More spooked, perhaps, more frightened—only the Cytha did not act like a frightened beast. It was acting like an animal that was gaining savvy and determination, and that was somehow frightening.

From far off to the west, toward the forest and the river, came the laughter and the howling of a pack of screamers. Duncan leaned his rifle against the boulder and got up to pile more wood on the fire. He stared out into the western darkness, listening to the racket. He made a wry face and pushed a hand absent-mindedly through his hair. He put out a silent hope that the screamers would decide to keep their distance. They were something a man could do without.

Behind him, a pebble came bumping down the slope. It thudded to a rest just short of the fire.

Duncan spun around. Foolish thing to do, he thought, to camp so near the slope. If something big should start to move, they’d be out of luck.

He stood and listened. The night was quiet. Even the screamers had shut up for the moment. Just one rolling rock and he had his hackles up. He’d have to get himself in hand.

He went back to the boulder, and as he stooped to pick up the rifle, he heard the faint beginning of a rumble. He straightened swiftly to face the scarp that blotted out the star-strewn sky—and the rumble grew!

In one leap, he was at Sipar’s side. He reached down and grasped the native by an arm, jerked it erect, held it on its feet. Sipar’s eyes snapped open, blinking in the firelight.

The rumble had grown to a roar and there were thumping noises, as of heavy boulders bouncing, and beneath the roar the silky, ominous rustle of sliding soil and rock.

Sipar jerked its arm free of Duncan’s grip and plunged into the darkness. Duncan whirled and followed.

They ran, stumbling in the dark, and behind them the roar of the sliding, bouncing rock became a throaty roll of thunder that filled the night from brim to brim. As he ran, Duncan could feel, in dread anticipation, the gusty breath of hurtling debris blowing on his neck, the crushing impact of a boulder smashing into him, the engulfing flood of tumbling talus snatching at his legs.

A puff of billowing dust came out and caught them and they ran choking as well as stumbling. Off to the left of them, a mighty chunk of rock chugged along the ground in jerky, almost reluctant fashion.

Then the thunder stopped and all one could hear was the small slitherings of the lesser debris as it trickled down the slope.

Duncan stopped running and slowly turned around. The campfire was gone, buried, no doubt, beneath tons of overlay, and the stars had paled because of the great cloud of dust which still billowed up into the sky.

He heard Sipar moving near him and reached out a hand, searching for the tracker, not knowing exactly where it was. He found the native, grasped it by the shoulder and pulled it up beside him.

Sipar was shivering.

“It’s all right,” said Duncan.

And it was all right, he reassured himself. He still had the rifle. The extra drum of ammunition and the knife were on his belt, the bag of rockahominy in his pocket. The canteens were all they had lost—the canteens and the fire.

“We’ll have to hole up somewhere for the night,” Duncan said. “There are screamers on the loose.”

He didn’t like what he was thinking, nor the sharp edge of fear that was beginning to crowd in upon him. He tried to shrug it off, but it still stayed with him, just out of reach.

Sipar plucked at his elbow.

“Thorn thicket, mister. Over there. We could crawl inside. We would be safe from screamers.”

It was torture, but they made it.

“Screamers and you are taboo,” said Duncan, suddenly remembering. “How come you are afraid of them?”

“Afraid for you, mister, mostly. Afraid for myself just a little. Screamers could forget. They might not recognize me until too late. Safer here.”

“I agree with you,” said Duncan.

The screamers came and padded all about the thicket. The beasts sniffed and clawed at the thorns to reach them, but finally went away.

When morning came, Duncan and Sipar climbed the scarp, clambering over the boulders and the tons of soil and rock that covered their camping place. Following the gash cut by the slide, they clambered up the slope and finally reached the point of the slide’s beginning.

There they found the depression in which the poised slab of rock had rested and where the supporting soil had been dug away so that it could be started, with a push, down the slope above the campfire.

And all about were the deeply sunken pug marks of the Cytha!

IV

Now it was more than just a hunt. It was knife against the throat, kill or be killed. Now there was no stopping, when before there might have been. It was no longer sport and there was no mercy.

“And that’s the way I like it,” Duncan told himself.

He rubbed his hand along the rifle barrel and saw the metallic glints shine in the noonday sun. One more shot, he prayed. Just give me one more shot at it. This time there will be no slip-up. This time there will be more than three sodden hunks of flesh and fur lying in the grass to mock me.

He squinted his eyes against the heat shimmer rising from the river, watching Sipar hunkered beside the water’s edge.

The native rose to its feet and trotted back to him.

“It crossed,” said Sipar. “It walked out as far as it could go and it must have swum.”

“Are you sure? It might have waded out to make us think it crossed, then doubled back again.”

He stared at the purple-green of the trees across the river. Inside that forest, it would be hellish going.

“We can look,” said Sipar.

“Good. You go downstream. I’ll go up.”

An hour later, they were back. They had found no tracks. There seemed little doubt the Cytha had really crossed the river.

They stood side by side, looking at the forest.

“Mister, we have come far. You are brave to hunt the Cytha. You have no fear of death.”

“The fear of death,” Duncan said, “is entirely infantile. And it’s beside the point as well. I do not intend to die.”

They waded out into the stream. The bottom shelved gradually and they had to swim no more than a hundred yards or so.

They reached the forest bank and threw themselves flat to rest.

Duncan looked back the way that they had come. To the east, the escarpment was a dark-blue smudge against the pale-blue burnished sky. And two days back of that lay the farm and the vua field, but they seemed much farther off than that. They were lost in time and distance; they belonged to another existence and another world.

All his life, it seemed to him, had faded and become inconsequential and forgotten, as if this moment in his life were the only one that counted; as if all the minutes and the hours, all the breaths and heartbeats, wake and sleep, had pointed toward this certain hour upon this certain stream, with the rifle molded to his hand and the cool, calculated bloodlust of a killer riding in his brain.

* * * *

Sipar finally got up and began to range along the stream. Duncan sat up and watched.

Scared to death, he thought, and yet it stayed with me. At the campfire that first night, it had said it would stick to the death and apparently it had meant exactly what it said. It’s hard, he thought, to figure out these jokers, hard to know what kind of mental operation, what seethings of emotion, what brand of ethics and what variety of belief and faith go to make them and their way of life.

It would have been so easy for Sipar to have missed the trail and swear it could not find it. Even from the start, it could have refused to go. Yet, fearing, it had gone. Reluctant, it had trailed. Without any need for faithfulness and loyalty, it had been loyal and faithful. But loyal to what, Duncan wondered, to him, the outlander and intruder? Loyal to itself? Or perhaps, although that seemed impossible, faithful to the Cytha?

What does Sipar think of me, he asked himself, and maybe more to the point, what do I think of Sipar? Is there a common meeting ground? Or are we, despite our humanoid forms, condemned forever to be alien and apart?

He held the rifle across his knees and stroked it, polishing it, petting it, making it even more closely a part of him, an instrument of his deadliness, an expression of his determination to track and kill the Cytha.

Just another chance, he begged. Just one second, or even less, to draw a steady bead. That is all I want, all I need, all I’ll ask.

Then he could go back across the days that he had left behind him, back to the farm and field, back into that misty other life from which he had been so mysteriously divorced, but which in time undoubtedly would become real and meaningful again.

Sipar came back. “I found the trail.”

Duncan heaved himself to his feet. “Good.”

They left the river and plunged into the forest and there the heat closed in more mercilessly than ever—humid, stifling heat that felt like a soggy blanket wrapped tightly round the body.

The trail lay plain and clear. The Cytha now, it seemed, was intent upon piling up a lead without recourse to evasive tactics. Perhaps it had reasoned that its pursuers would lose some time at the river and it may have been trying to stretch out that margin even further. Perhaps it needed that extra time, he speculated, to set up the necessary machinery for another dirty trick.

Sipar stopped and waited for Duncan to catch up. “Your knife, mister?”

Duncan hesitated. “What for?”

“I have a thorn in my foot,” the native said. “I have to get it out.”

Duncan pulled the knife from his belt and tossed it. Sipar caught it deftly.

Looking straight at Duncan, with the flicker of a smile upon its lips, the native cut its throat.

V

He should go back, he knew. Without the tracker, he didn’t have a chance. The odds were now with the Cytha—if, indeed, they had not been with it from the very start.

Unkillable? Unkillable because it grew in intelligence to meet emergencies? Unkillable because, pressed, it could fashion a bow and arrow, however crude? Unkillable because it had a sense of tactics, like rolling rocks at night upon its enemy? Unkillable because a native tracker would cheerfully kill itself to protect the Cytha?

A sort of crisis-beast, perhaps? One able to develop intelligence and abilities to meet each new situation and then lapsing back to the level of non-intelligent contentment? That, thought Duncan, would be a sensible way for anything to live. It would do away with the inconvenience and the irritability and the discontentment of intelligence when intelligence was unneeded. But the intelligence, and the abilities which went with it, would be there, safely tucked away where one could reach in and get them, like a necklace or a gun—something to be used or to be put away as the case might be.

Duncan hunched forward and with a stick of wood pushed the fire together. The flames blazed up anew and sent sparks flying up into the whispering darkness of the trees. The night had cooled off a little, but the humidity still hung on and a man felt uncomfortable—a little frightened, too.

Duncan lifted his head and stared up into the fire-flecked darkness. There were no stars because the heavy foliage shut them out. He missed the stars. He’d feel better if he could look up and see them.

When morning came, he should go back. He should quit this hunt which now had become impossible and even slightly foolish.

But he knew he wouldn’t. Somewhere along the three-day trail, he had become committed to a purpose and a challenge, and he knew that when morning came, he would go on again. It was not hatred that drove him, nor vengeance, nor even the trophy-urge—the hunter-lust that prodded men to kill something strange or harder to kill or bigger than any man had ever killed before. It was something more than that, some weird entangling of the Cytha’s meaning with his own.

He reached out and picked up the rifle and laid it in his lap. Its barrel gleamed dully in the flickering campfire light and he rubbed his hand along the stock as another man might stroke a woman’s throat.

“Mister,” said a voice.

It did not startle him, for the word was softly spoken and for a moment he had forgotten that Sipar was dead—dead with a half-smile fixed upon its face and with its throat laid wide open.

“Mister?”

Duncan stiffened.

Sipar was dead and there was no one else—and yet someone had spoken to him, and there could be only one thing in all this wilderness that might speak to him.

“Yes,” he said.

He did not move. He simply sat there, with the rifle in his lap.

“You know who I am?”

“I suppose you are the Cytha.”

“You have done well,” the Cytha said. “You’ve made a splendid hunt. There is no dishonor if you should decide to quit. Why don’t you go back? I promise you no harm.”

It was over there, somewhere in front of him, somewhere in the brush beyond the fire, almost straight across the fire from him, Duncan told himself. If he could keep it talking, perhaps even lure it out—

“Why should I?” he asked. “The hunt is never done until one gets the thing one is after.”

“I can kill you,” the Cytha told him. “But I do not want to kill. It hurts to kill.”

“That’s right,” said Duncan. “You are most perceptive.”

For he had it pegged now. He knew exactly where it was. He could afford a little mockery.

His thumb slid up the metal and nudged the fire control to automatic and he flexed his legs beneath him so that he could rise and fire in one single motion.

“Why did you hunt me?” the Cytha asked. “You are a stranger on my world and you had no right to hunt me. Not that I mind, of course. In fact, I found it stimulating. We must do it again. When I am ready to be hunted, I shall come and tell you and we can spend a day or two at it.”

“Sure we can,” said Duncan, rising. And as he rose into his crouch, he held the trigger down and the gun danced in insane fury, the muzzle flare a flicking tongue of hatred and the hail of death hissing spitefully in the underbrush.

“Anytime you want to,” yelled Duncan gleefully, “I’ll come and hunt you! You just say the word and I’ll be on your tail. I might even kill you. How do you like it, chump!”

And he held the trigger tight and kept his crouch so the slugs would not fly high, but would cut their swath just above the ground, and he moved the muzzle back and forth a lot so that he covered extra ground to compensate for any miscalculations he might have made.

* * * *

The magazine ran out and the gun clicked empty and the vicious chatter stopped. Powder smoke drifted softly in the campfire light and the smell of it was perfume in the nostrils and in the underbrush many little feet were running, as if a thousand frightened mice were scurrying from catastrophe.

Duncan unhooked the extra magazine from where it hung upon his belt and replaced the empty one. Then he snatched a burning length of wood from the fire and waved it frantically until it burst into a blaze and became a torch. Rifle grasped in one hand and the torch in the other, he plunged into the underbrush. Little chittering things fled to escape him.

He did not find the Cytha. He found chewed-up bushes and soil churned by flying metal, and he found five lumps of flesh and fur, and these he brought back to the fire.

Now the fear that had been stalking him, keeping just beyond his reach, walked out from the shadows and hunkered by the campfire with him.

He placed the rifle within easy reach and arranged the five bloody chunks on the ground close to the fire and he tried with trembling fingers to restore them to the shape they’d been before the bullets struck them. And that was a good one, he thought with grim irony, because they had no shape. They had been part of the Cytha and you killed a Cytha inch by inch, not with a single shot. You knocked a pound of meat off it the first time, and the next time you shot off another pound or two, and if you got enough shots at it, you finally carved it down to size and maybe you could kill it then, although he wasn’t sure.

He was afraid. He admitted that he was and he squatted there and watched his fingers shake and he kept his jaws clamped tight to stop the chatter of his teeth.

The fear had been getting closer all the time; he knew it had moved in by a step or two when Sipar cut its throat, and why in the name of God had the damn fool done it? It made no sense at all. He had wondered about Sipar’s loyalties, and the very loyalties that he had dismissed as a sheer impossibility had been the answer, after all. In the end, for some obscure reason—obscure to humans, that is—Sipar’s loyalty had been to the Cytha.

But then what was the use of searching for any reason in it? Nothing that had happened made any sense. It made no sense that a beast one was pursuing should up and talk to one—although it did fit in with the theory of the crisis-beast he had fashioned in his mind.

Progressive adaptation, he told himself. Carry adaptation far enough and you’d reach communication. But might not the Cytha’s power of adaptation be running down? Had the Cytha gone about as far as it could force itself to go? Maybe so, he thought. It might be worth a gamble. Sipar’s suicide, for all its casualness, bore the overtones of last-notch desperation. And the Cytha’s speaking to Duncan, its attempt to parley with him, contained a note of weakness.

The arrow had failed and the rockslide had failed and so had Sipar’s death. What next would the Cytha try? Had it anything to try?

Tomorrow he’d find out. Tomorrow he’d go on. He couldn’t turn back now.

He was too deeply involved. He’d always wonder, if he turned back now, whether another hour or two might not have seen the end of it. There were too many questions, too much mystery—there was now far more at stake than ten rows of vua.

Another day might make some sense of it, might banish the dread walker that trod upon his heels, might bring some peace of mind.

As it stood right at the moment, none of it made sense.

But even as he thought it, suddenly one of the bits of bloody flesh and mangled fur made sense.

Beneath the punching and prodding of his fingers, it had assumed a shape.

Breathlessly, Duncan bent above it, not believing, not even wanting to believe, hoping frantically that it should prove completely wrong.

But there was nothing wrong with it. The shape was there and could not be denied. It had somehow fitted back into its natural shape and it was a baby screamer—well, maybe not a baby, but at least a tiny screamer.

Duncan sat back on his heels and sweated. He wiped his bloody hands upon the ground. He wondered what other shapes he’d find if he put back into proper place the other hunks of limpness that lay beside the fire.

He tried and failed. They were too smashed and torn.

He picked them up and tossed them in the fire. He took up his rifle and walked around the fire, sat down with his back against a tree, cradling the gun across his knees.

* * * *

Those little scurrying feet, he wondered—like the scampering of a thousand busy mice. He had heard them twice, that first night in the thicket by the waterhole and again tonight.

And what could the Cytha be? Certainly not the simple, uncomplicated, marauding animal he had thought to start with.

A hive-beast? A host animal? A thing masquerading in many different forms?

Shotwell, trained in such deductions, might make a fairly accurate guess, but Shotwell was not here. He was at the farm, fretting, more than likely, over Duncan’s failure to return.

Finally the first light of morning began to filter through the forest and it was not the glaring, clean white light of the open plain and bush, but a softened, diluted, fuzzy green light to match the smothering vegetation.

The night noises died away and the noises of the day took up—the sawings of unseen insects, the screechings of hidden birds and something far away began to make a noise that sounded like an empty barrel falling slowly down a stairway.

What little coolness the night had brought dissipated swiftly and the heat clamped down, a breathless, relentless heat that quivered in the air.

Circling, Duncan picked up the Cytha trail not more than a hundred yards from camp.

The beast had been traveling fast. The pug marks were deeply sunk and widely spaced. Duncan followed as rapidly as he dared. It was a temptation to follow at a run, to match the Cytha’s speed, for the trail was plain and fresh and it fairly beckoned.

And that was wrong, Duncan told himself. It was too fresh, too plain—almost as if the animal had gone to endless trouble so that the human could not miss the trail.

He stopped his trailing and crouched beside a tree and studied the tracks ahead. His hands were too tense upon the gun, his body keyed too high and fine. He forced himself to take slow, deep breaths. He had to calm himself. He had to loosen up.

He studied the tracks ahead—four bunched pug marks, then a long leap interval, then four more bunched tracks, and between the sets of marks the forest floor was innocent and smooth.

Too smooth, perhaps. Especially the third one from him. Too smooth and somehow artificial, as if someone had patted it with gentle hands to make it unsuspicious.

Duncan sucked his breath in slowly.

Trap?

Or was his imagination playing tricks on him?

And if it were a trap, he would have fallen into it if he had kept on following as he had started out.

Now there was something else, a strange uneasiness, and he stirred uncomfortably, casting frantically for some clue to what it was.

* * * *

He rose and stepped out from the tree, with the gun at ready. What a perfect place to set a trap, he thought. One would be looking at the pug marks, never at the space between them, for the space between would be neutral ground, safe to stride out upon.

Oh, clever Cytha, he said to himself. Oh, clever, clever Cytha!

And now he knew what the other trouble was—the great uneasiness. It was the sense of being watched.

Somewhere up ahead, the Cytha was crouched, watching and waiting—anxious or exultant, maybe even with laughter rumbling in its throat.

He walked slowly forward until he reached the third set of tracks and he saw that he had been right. The little area ahead was smoother than it should be.

“Cytha!” he called.

His voice was far louder than he had meant it to be and he stood astonished and a bit abashed.

Then he realized why it was so loud.

It was the only sound there was!

The forest suddenly had fallen silent. The insects and birds were quiet and the thing in the distance had quit falling down the stairs. Even the leaves were silent. There was no rustle in them and they hung limp upon their stems.

There was a feeling of doom and the green light had changed to a copper light and everything was still.

And the light was copper!

Duncan spun around in panic. There was no place for him to hide.

Before he could take another step, the skun came and the winds rushed out of nowhere. The air was clogged with flying leaves and debris. Trees snapped and popped and tumbled in the air.

The wind hurled Duncan to his knees, and as he fought to regain his feet, he remembered, in a blinding flash of total recall, how it had looked from atop the escarpment—the boiling fury of the winds and the mad swirling of the coppery mist and how the trees had whipped in whirlpool fashion.

He came half erect and stumbled, clawing at the ground in an attempt to get up again, while inside his brain an insistent, clicking voice cried out for him to run, and somewhere another voice said to lie flat upon the ground, to dig in as best he could.

Something struck him from behind and he went down, pinned flat, with his rifle wedged beneath him. He cracked his head upon the ground and the world whirled sickeningly and plastered his face with a handful of mud and tattered leaves.

He tried to crawl and couldn’t, for something had grabbed him by the ankle and was hanging on.

With a frantic hand, he clawed the mess out of his eyes, spat it from his mouth.

Across the spinning ground, something black and angular tumbled rapidly. It was coming straight toward him and he saw it was the Cytha and that in another second it would be on top of him.

He threw up an arm across his face, with the elbow crooked, to take the impact of the wind-blown Cytha and to ward it off.

But it never reached him. Less than a yard away, the ground opened up to take the Cytha and it was no longer there.

Suddenly the wind cut off and the leaves once more hung motionless and the heat clamped down again and that was the end of it. The skun had come and struck and gone.

Minutes, Duncan wondered, or perhaps no more than seconds. But in those seconds, the forest had been flattened and the trees lay in shattered heaps.

He raised himself on an elbow and looked to see what was the matter with his foot and he saw that a fallen tree had trapped his foot beneath it.

He tugged a few times experimentally. It was no use. Two close-set limbs, branching almost at right angles from the hole, had been driven deep into the ground and his foot, he saw, had been caught at the ankle in the fork of the buried branches.

The foot didn’t hurt—not yet. It didn’t seem to be there at all. He tried wiggling his toes and felt none.

He wiped the sweat off his face with a shirt sleeve and fought to force down the panic that was rising in him. Getting panicky was the worst thing a man could do in a spot like this. The thing to do was to take stock of the situation, figure out the best approach, then go ahead and try it.

The tree looked heavy, but perhaps he could handle it if he had to, although there was the danger that if he shifted it, the bole might settle more solidly and crush his foot beneath it. At the moment, the two heavy branches, thrust into the ground on either side of his ankle, were holding most of the tree’s weight off his foot.

The best thing to do, he decided, was to dig the ground away beneath his foot until he could pull it out.

He twisted around and started digging with the fingers of one hand. Beneath the thin covering of humus, he struck a solid surface and his fingers slid along it.

With mounting alarm, he explored the ground, scratching at the humus. There was nothing but rock—some long-buried boulder, the top of which lay just beneath the ground.

His foot was trapped beneath a heavy tree and a massive boulder, held securely in place by forked branches that had forced their splintering way down along the boulder’s sides.

* * * *

He lay back, propped on an elbow. It was evident that he could do nothing about the buried boulder. If he was going to do anything, his problem was the tree.

To move the tree, he would need a lever and he had a good, stout lever in his rifle. It would be a shame, he thought a little wryly, to use a gun for such a purpose, but he had no choice.

He worked for an hour and it was no good. Even with the rifle as a pry, he could not budge the tree.

He lay back, defeated, breathing hard, wringing wet with perspiration.

He grimaced at the sky.

All right, Cytha, he thought, you won out in the end. But it took a skun to do it. With all your tricks, you couldn’t do the job until.…

Then he remembered.

He sat up hurriedly.

“Cytha!” he called.

The Cytha had fallen into a hole that had opened in the ground. The hole was less than an arm’s length away from him, with a little debris around its edges still trickling into it.

Duncan stretched out his body, lying flat upon the ground, and looked into the hole. There, at the bottom of it, was the Cytha.

It was the first time he’d gotten a good look at the Cytha and it was a crazily put-together thing. It seemed to have nothing functional about it and it looked more like a heap of something, just thrown on the ground, than it did an animal.

The hole, he saw, was more than an ordinary hole. It was a pit and very cleverly constructed. The mouth was about four feet in diameter and it widened to roughly twice that at the bottom. It was, in general, bottle-shaped, with an incurving shoulder at the top so that anything that fell in could not climb out. Anything falling into that pit was in to stay.

This, Duncan knew, was what had lain beneath that too-smooth interval between the two sets of Cytha tracks. The Cytha had worked all night to dig it, then had carried away the dirt dug out of the pit and had built a flimsy camouflage cover over it. Then it had gone back and made the trail that was so loud and clear, so easy to make out and follow. And having done all that, having labored hard and stealthily, the Cytha had settled down to watch, to make sure the following human had fallen in the pit.

* * * *

“Hi, pal,” said Duncan. “How are you making out?”

The Cytha did not answer.

“Classy pit,” said Duncan. “Do you always den up in luxury like this?”

But the Cytha didn’t answer.

Something queer was happening to the Cytha. It was coming all apart.

Duncan watched with fascinated horror as the Cytha broke down into a thousand lumps of motion that scurried in the pit and tried to scramble up its sides, only to fall back in tiny showers of sand.

Amid the scurrying lumps, one thing remained intact, a fragile object that resembled nothing quite so much as the stripped skeleton of a Thanksgiving turkey. But it was a most extraordinary Thanksgiving skeleton, for it throbbed with pulsing life and glowed with a steady violet light.

Chitterings and squeakings came out of the pit and the soft patter of tiny running feet, and as Duncan’s eyes became accustomed to the darkness of the pit, he began to make out the forms of some of the scurrying shapes. There were tiny screamers and some donovans and sawmill birds and a bevy of kill-devils and something else as well.

Duncan raised a hand and pressed it against his eyes, then took it quickly away. The little faces still were there, looking up as if beseeching him, with the white shine of their teeth and the white rolling of their eyes.

He felt horror wrenching at his stomach and the sour, bitter taste of revulsion welled into his throat, but he fought it down, harking back to that day at the farm before they had started on the hunt.

“I can track down anything but screamers, stilt-birds, longhorns and donovans,” Sipar had told him solemnly. “These are my taboos.”

And Sipar was also their taboo, for he had not feared the donovan. Sipar had been, however, somewhat fearful of the screamers in the dead of night because, the native had told him reasonably, screamers were forgetful.

Forgetful of what!

Forgetful of the Cytha-mother? Forgetful of the motley brood in which they had spent their childhood?

For that was the only answer to what was running in the pit and the whole, unsuspected answer to the enigma against which men like Shotwell had frustratedly banged their heads for years.

* * * *

Strange, he told himself. All right, it might be strange, but if it worked, what difference did it make? So the planet’s denizens were sexless because there was no need of sex—what was wrong with that? It might, in fact, Duncan admitted to himself, head off a lot of trouble. No family spats, no triangle trouble, no fighting over mates. While it might be unexciting, it did seem downright peaceful.

And since there was no sex, the Cytha species was the planetary mother—but more than just a mother. The Cytha, more than likely, was mother-father, incubator, nursery, teacher and perhaps many other things besides, all rolled into one.

In many ways, he thought, it might make a lot of sense. Here natural selection would be ruled out and ecology could be controlled in considerable degree and mutation might even be a matter of deliberate choice rather than random happenstance.

And it would make for a potential planetary unity such as no other world had ever known. Everything here was kin to everything else. Here was a planet where Man, or any other alien, must learn to tread most softly. For it was not inconceivable that, in a crisis or a clash of interests, one might find himself faced suddenly with a unified and cooperating planet, with every form of life making common cause against the interloper.

The little scurrying things had given up; they’d gone back to their places, clustered around the pulsing violet of the Thanksgiving skeleton, each one fitting into place until the Cytha had taken shape again. As if, Duncan told himself, blood and nerve and muscle had come back from a brief vacation to form the beast anew.

“Mister,” asked the Cytha, “what do we do now?”

“You should know,” Duncan told it. “You were the one who dug the pit.”

“I split myself,” the Cytha said. “A part of me dug the pit and the other part that stayed on the surface got me out when the job was done.”

“Convenient,” grunted Duncan.

And it was convenient. That was what had happened to the Cytha when he had shot at it—it had split into all its component parts and had got away. And that night beside the waterhole, it had spied on him, again in the form of all its separate parts, from the safety of the thicket.

“You are caught and so am I,” the Cytha said. “Both of us will die here. It seems a fitting end to our association. Do you not agree with me?”

“I’ll get you out,” said Duncan wearily. “I have no quarrel with children.”

He dragged the rifle toward him and unhooked the sling from the stock. Carefully he lowered the gun by the sling, still attached to the barrel, down into the pit.

The Cytha reared up and grasped it with its forepaws.

“Easy now,” Duncan cautioned. “You’re heavy. I don’t know if I can hold you.”

But he needn’t have worried. The little ones were detaching themselves and scrambling up the rifle and the sling. They reached his extended arms and ran up them with scrabbling claws. Little sneering screamers and the comic stilt-birds and the mouse-size kill-devils that snarled at him as they climbed. And the little grinning natives—not babies, scarcely children, but small editions of full-grown humanoids. And the weird donovans scampering happily.

They came climbing up his arms and across his shoulders and milled about on the ground beside him, waiting for the others.

And finally the Cytha, not skinned down to the bare bones of its Thanksgiving-turkey-size, but far smaller than it had been, climbed awkwardly up the rifle and the sling to safety.

Duncan hauled the rifle up and twisted himself into a sitting position.

The Cytha, he saw, was reassembling.

He watched in fascination as the restless miniatures of the planet’s life swarmed and seethed like a hive of bees, each one clicking into place to form the entire beast.

And now the Cytha was complete. Yet small—still small—no more than lion-size.

“But it is such a little one,” Zikkara had argued with him that morning at the farm. “It is such a young one.”

Just a young brood, no more than suckling infants—if suckling was the word, or even some kind of wild approximation. And through the months and years, the Cytha would grow, with the growing of its diverse children, until it became a monstrous thing.

It stood there looking at Duncan and the tree.

“Now,” said Duncan, “if you’ll push on the tree, I think that between the two of us—”

“It is too bad,” the Cytha said, and wheeled itself about.

He watched it go loping off.

“Hey!” he yelled.

But it didn’t stop.

He grabbed up the rifle and had it halfway to his shoulder before he remembered how absolutely futile it was to shoot at the Cytha.

He let the rifle down.

“The dirty, ungrateful, double-crossing—”

He stopped himself. There was no profit in rage. When you were in a jam, you did the best you could. You figured out the problem and you picked the course that seemed best and you didn’t panic at the odds.

He laid the rifle in his lap and started to hook up the sling and it was not till then that he saw the barrel was packed with sand and dirt.

He sat numbly for a moment, thinking back to how close he had been to firing at the Cytha, and if that barrel was packed hard enough or deep enough, he might have had an exploding weapon in his hands.

He had used the rifle as a crowbar, which was no way to use a gun. That was one way, he told himself, that was guaranteed to ruin it.

* * * *

Duncan hunted around and found a twig and dug at the clogged muzzle, but the dirt was jammed too firmly in it and he made little progress.

He dropped the twig and was hunting for another stronger one when he caught the motion in a nearby clump of brush.

He watched closely for a moment and there was nothing, so he resumed the hunt for a stronger twig. He found one and started poking at the muzzle and there was another flash of motion.

He twisted around. Not more than twenty feet away, a screamer sat easily on its haunches. Its tongue was lolling out and it had what looked like a grin upon its face.

And there was another, just at the edge of the clump of brush where he had caught the motion first.

There were others as well, he knew. He could hear them sliding through the tangle of fallen trees, could sense the soft padding of their feet.

The executioners, he thought.

The Cytha certainly had not wasted any time.

He raised the rifle and rapped the barrel smartly on the fallen tree, trying to dislodge the obstruction in the bore. But it didn’t budge; the barrel still was packed with sand.

But no matter—he’d have to fire anyhow and take whatever chance there was.

He shoved the control to automatic, and tilted up the muzzle.

There were six of them now, sitting in a ragged row, grinning at him, not in any hurry. They were sure of him and there was no hurry. He’d still be there when they decided to move in.

And there were others—on all sides of him.

Once it started, he wouldn’t have a chance.

“It’ll be expensive, gents,” he told them.

And he was astonished at how calm, how coldly objective he could be, now that the chips were down. But that was the way it was, he realized.

He’d thought, a while ago, how a man might suddenly find himself face to face with an aroused and cooperating planet. Maybe this was it in miniature.

The Cytha had obviously passed the word along: Man back there needs killing. Go and get him.

Just like that, for a Cytha would be the power here. A life force, the giver of life, the decider of life, the repository of all animal life on the entire planet.

There was more than one of them, of course. Probably they had home districts, spheres of influence and responsibility mapped out. And each one would be a power supreme in its own district.

Momism, he thought with a sour grin. Momism at its absolute peak.

Nevertheless, he told himself, it wasn’t too bad a system if you wanted to consider it objectively.

But he was in a poor position to be objective about that or anything else.

* * * *

The screamers were inching closer, hitching themselves forward slowly on their bottoms.

“I’m going to set up a deadline for you critters,” Duncan called out. “Just two feet farther, up to that rock, and I let you have it.”

He’d get all six of them, of course, but the shots would be the signal for the general rush by all those other animals slinking in the brush.

If he were free, if he were on his feet, possibly he could beat them off. But pinned as he was, he didn’t have a chance. It would be all over less than a minute after he opened fire. He might, he figured, last as long as that.

The six inched closer and he raised the rifle.

But they stopped and moved no farther. Their ears lifted just a little, as if they might be listening, and the grins dropped from their faces. They squirmed uneasily and assumed a look of guilt and, like shadows, they were gone, melting away so swiftly that he scarcely saw them go.

Duncan sat quietly, listening, but he could hear no sound.

Reprieve, he thought. But for how long? Something had scared them off, but in a while they might be back. He had to get out of here and he had to make it fast.

If he could find a longer lever, he could move the tree. There was a branch slanting up from the topside of the fallen tree. It was almost four inches at the butt and it carried its diameter well.

He slid the knife from his belt and looked at it. Too small, too thin, he thought, to chisel through a four-inch branch, but it was all he had. When a man was desperate enough, though, when his very life depended on it, he would do anything.

He hitched himself along, sliding toward the point where the branch protruded from the tree. His pinned leg protested with stabs of pain as his body wrenched it around. He gritted his teeth and pushed himself closer. Pain slashed through his leg again and he was still long inches from the branch.

He tried once more, then gave up. He lay panting on the ground.

There was just one thing left.

He’d have to try to hack out a notch in the trunk just above his leg. No, that would be next to impossible, for he’d be cutting into the whorled and twisted grain at the base of the supporting fork.

Either that or cut off his foot, and that was even more impossible. A man would faint before he got the job done.

It was useless, he knew. He could do neither one. There was nothing he could do.

* * * *

For the first time, he admitted to himself: He would stay here and die. Shotwell, back at the farm, in a day or two might set out hunting for him. But Shotwell would never find him. And anyhow, by nightfall, if not sooner, the screamers would be back.

He laughed gruffly in his throat—laughing at himself.

The Cytha had won the hunt hands down. It had used a human weakness to win and then had used that same human weakness to achieve a viciously poetic vengeance.

After all, what could one expect? One could not equate human ethics with the ethics of the Cytha. Might not human ethics, in certain cases, seem as weird and illogical, as infamous and ungrateful, to an alien?

He hunted for a twig and began working again to clean the rifle bore.

A crashing behind him twisted him around and he saw the Cytha. Behind the Cytha stalked a donovan.

He tossed away the twig and raised the gun.

“No,” said the Cytha sharply.

The donovan tramped purposefully forward and Duncan felt the prickling of the skin along his back. It was a frightful thing. Nothing could stand before a donovan. The screamers had turned tail and run when they had heard it a couple of miles or more away.

The donovan was named for the first known human to be killed by one. That first was only one of many. The roll of donovan-victims ran long, and no wonder, Duncan thought. It was the closest he had ever been to one of the beasts and he felt a coldness creeping over him. It was like an elephant and a tiger and a grizzly bear wrapped in the selfsame hide. It was the most vicious fighting machine that ever had been spawned.

He lowered the rifle. There would be no point in shooting. In two quick strides, the beast could be upon him.

The donovan almost stepped on him and he flinched away. Then the great head lowered and gave the fallen tree a butt and the tree bounced for a yard or two. The donovan kept on walking. Its powerfully muscled stern moved into the brush and out of sight.

“Now we are even,” said the Cytha. “I had to get some help.”

Duncan grunted. He flexed the leg that had been trapped and he could not feel the foot. Using his rifle as a cane, he pulled himself erect. He tried putting weight on the injured foot and it screamed with pain.

He braced himself with the rifle and rotated so that he faced the Cytha.

“Thanks, pal,” he said. “I didn’t think you’d do it.”

“You will not hunt me now?”

Duncan shook his head. “I’m in no shape for hunting. I am heading home.”

“It was the vua, wasn’t it? That was why you hunted me?”

“The vua is my livelihood,” said Duncan. “I cannot let you eat it.”

The Cytha stood silently and Duncan watched it for a moment. Then he wheeled. Using the rifle for a crutch, he started hobbling away.

The Cytha hurried to catch up with him.

“Let us make a bargain, mister. I will not eat the vua and you will not hunt me. Is that fair enough?”

“That is fine with me,” said Duncan. “Let us shake on it.”

He put down a hand and the Cytha lifted up a paw. They shook, somewhat awkwardly, but very solemnly.

“Now,” the Cytha said, “I will see you home. The screamers would have you before you got out of the woods.”

VI

They halted on a knoll. Below them lay the farm, with the vua rows straight and green in the red soil of the fields.

“You can make it from here,” the Cytha said. “I am wearing thin. It is an awful effort to keep on being smart. I want to go back to ignorance and comfort.”

“It was nice knowing you,” Duncan told it politely. “And thanks for sticking with me.”

He started down the hill, leaning heavily on the rifle-crutch. Then he frowned troubledly and turned back.

“Look,” he said, “you’ll go back to animal again. Then you will forget. One of these days, you’ll see all that nice, tender vua and—”

“Very simple,” said the Cytha. “If you find me in the vua, just begin hunting me. With you after me, I will quickly get smart and remember once again and it will be all right.”

“Sure,” agreed Duncan. “I guess that will work.”

The Cytha watched him go stumping down the hill.

Admirable, it thought. Next time I have a brood, I think I’ll raise a dozen like him.

It turned around and headed for the deeper brush.

It felt intelligence slipping from it, felt the old, uncaring comfort coming back again. But it glowed with anticipation, seethed with happiness at the big surprise it had in store for its new-found friend.

Won’t he be happy and surprised when I drop them at his door, it thought.

Will he be ever pleased!

HELLHOUNDS OF THE COSMOS

The paper had gone to press, graphically describing the latest of the many horrible events which had been enacted upon the Earth in the last six months. The headlines screamed that Six Corners, a little hamlet in Pennsylvania, had been wiped out by the Horror. Another front-page story told of a Terror in the Amazon Valley which had sent the natives down the river in babbling fear. Other stories told of deaths here and there, all attributable to the “Black Horror,” as it was called.

The telephone rang.

“Hello,” said the editor.

“London calling,” came the voice of the operator.

“All right,” replied the editor.

He recognized the voice of Terry Masters, special correspondent. His voice came clearly over the transatlantic telephone.

“The Horror is attacking London in force,” he said. “There are thousands of them and they have completely surrounded the city. All roads are blocked. The government declared the city under martial rule a quarter of an hour ago and efforts are being made to prepare for resistance against the enemy.”

“Just a second,” the editor shouted into the transmitter.

He touched a button on his desk and in a moment an answering buzz told him he was in communication with the press-room.

“Stop the presses!” he yelled into the speaking tube. “Get ready for a new front make-up!”

“O.K.,” came faintly through the tube, and the editor turned back to the phone.

“Now let’s have it,” he said, and the voice at the London end of the wire droned on, telling the story that in another half hour was read by a world which shuddered in cold fear even as it scanned the glaring headlines.

* * * *

“Woods,” said the editor of the Press to a reporter, “run over and talk to Dr. Silas White. He phoned me to send someone. Something about this Horror business.”

Henry Woods rose from his chair without a word and walked from the office. As he passed the wire machine it was tapping out, with a maddeningly methodical slowness, the story of the fall of London. Only half an hour before it had rapped forth the flashes concerning the attack on Paris and Berlin.

He passed out of the building into a street that was swarming with terrified humanity. Six months of terror, of numerous mysterious deaths, of villages blotted out, had set the world on edge. Now with London in possession of the Horror and Paris and Berlin fighting hopelessly for their lives, the entire population of the world was half insane with fright.

Exhorters on street corners enlarged upon the end of the world, asking that the people prepare for eternity, attributing the Horror to the act of a Supreme Being enraged with the wickedness of the Earth.

Expecting every moment an attack by the Horror, people left their work and gathered in the streets. Traffic, in places, had been blocked for hours and law and order were practically paralyzed. Commerce and transportation were disrupted as fright-ridden people fled from the larger cities, seeking doubtful hiding places in rural districts from the death that stalked the land.

A loudspeaker in front of a music store blared forth the latest news flashes.

“It has been learned,” came the measured tones of the announcer, “that all communication with Berlin ceased about ten minutes ago. At Paris all efforts to hold the Horror at bay have been futile. Explosives blow it apart, but have the same effect upon it as explosion has on gas. It flies apart and then reforms again, not always in the same shape as it was before. A new gas, one of the most deadly ever conceived by man, has failed to have any effect on the things. Electric guns and heat guns have absolutely no effect upon them.

“A news flash which has just come in from Rome says that a large number of the Horrors has been sighted north of that city by airmen. It seems they are attacking the capitals of the world first. Word comes from Washington that every known form of defense is being amassed at that city. New York is also preparing.… ”

Henry Woods fought his way through the crowd which milled in front of the loudspeaker. The hum of excitement was giving away to a silence, the silence of a stunned people, the fearful silence of a populace facing a presence it is unable to understand, an embattled world standing with useless weapons before an incomprehensible enemy.

In despair the reporter looked about for a taxi, but realized, with a groan of resignation, that no taxi could possibly operate in that crowded street. A street car, blocked by the stream of humanity which jostled and elbowed about it, stood still, a defeated thing.

Seemingly the only man with a definite purpose in that whirlpool of terror-stricken men and women, the newspaperman settled down to the serious business of battling his way through the swarming street.

* * * *

“Before I go to the crux of the matter,” said Dr. Silas White, about half an hour later, “let us first review what we know of this so-called Horror. Suppose you tell me exactly what you know of it.”

Henry Woods shifted uneasily in his chair. Why didn’t the old fool get down to business? The chief would raise hell if this story didn’t make the regular edition. He stole a glance at his wrist-watch. There was still almost an hour left. Maybe he could manage it. If the old chap would only snap into it!

“I know no more,” he said, “than is common knowledge.”

The gimlet eyes of the old white-haired scientist regarded the newspaperman sharply.

“And that is?” he questioned.

There was no way out of it, thought Henry. He’d have to humor the old fellow.

“The Horror,” he replied, “appeared on Earth, so far as the knowledge of man is concerned, about six months ago.”

Dr. White nodded approvingly.

“You state the facts very aptly,” he said.

“How so?”

“When you say ‘so far as the knowledge of man is concerned.’”

“Why is that?”

“You will understand in due time. Please proceed.”

Vaguely the newspaperman wondered whether he was interviewing the scientist or the scientist interviewing him.

* * * *

“They were first reported,” Woods said, “early this spring. At that time they wiped out a small village in the province of Quebec. All the inhabitants, except a few fugitives, were found dead, killed mysteriously and half eaten, as if by wild beasts. The fugitives were demented, babbling of black shapes that swept down out of the dark forest upon the little town in the small hours of the morning.

“The next that was heard of them was about a week later, when they struck in an isolated rural district in Poland, killing and feeding on the population of several farms. In the next week more villages were wiped out, in practically every country on the face of the Earth. From the hinterlands came tales of murder done at midnight, of men and women horribly mangled, of livestock slaughtered, of buildings crushed as if by some titanic force.

“At first they worked only at night and then, seeming to become bolder and more numerous, attacked in broad daylight.”

The newspaperman paused.

“Is that what you want?” he asked.

“That’s part of it,” replied Dr. White, “but that’s not all. What do these Horrors look like?”

“That’s more difficult,” said Henry. “They have been reported as every conceivable sort of monstrosity. Some are large and others are small. Some take the form of animals, others of birds and reptiles, and some are cast in appalling shapes such as might be snatched out of the horrid imagery of a thing which resided in a world entirely alien to our own.”

Dr. White rose from his chair and strode across the room to confront the other.

“Young man,” he asked, “do you think it possible the Horror might have come out of a world entirely alien to our own?”

“I don’t know,” replied Henry. “I know that some of the scientists believe they came from some other planet, perhaps even from some other solar system. I know they are like nothing ever known before on Earth. They are always inky black, something like black tar, you know, sort of sticky-looking, a disgusting sight. The weapons of mankind can’t affect them. Explosives are useless and so are projectiles. They wade through poison gas and fiery chemicals and seem to enjoy them. Elaborate electrical barriers have failed. Heat doesn’t make them turn a hair.”

“And you think they came from some other planet, perhaps some other solar system?”

“I don’t know what to think,” said Henry. “If they came out of space they must have come in some conveyance, and that would certainly have been sighted, picked up long before it arrived, by our astronomers. If they came in small conveyances, there must have been many of them. If they came in a single conveyance, it would be too large to escape detection. That is, unless—”

“Unless what?” snapped the scientist.

“Unless it traveled at the speed of light. Then it would have been invisible.”

“Not only invisible,” snorted the old man, “but non-existent.”

A question was on the tip of the newspaperman’s tongue, but before it could be asked the old man was speaking again, asking a question:

“Can you imagine a fourth dimension?”

“No, I can’t,” said Henry.

“Can you imagine a thing of only two dimensions?”

“Vaguely, yes.”

The scientist smote his palms together.

“Now we’re coming to it!” he exclaimed.

Henry Woods regarded the other narrowly. The old man must be turned. What did fourth and second dimensions have to do with the Horror?

“Do you know anything about evolution?” questioned the old man.

“I have a slight understanding of it. It is the process of upward growth, the stairs by which simple organisms climb to become more complex organisms.”

Dr. White grunted and asked still another question:

“Do you know anything about the theory of the exploding universe? Have you ever noted the tendency of the perfectly balanced to run amuck?”

The reporter rose slowly to his feet.

“Dr. White,” he said, “you phoned my paper you had a story for us. I came here to get it, but all you have done is ask me questions. If you can’t tell me what you want us to publish, I will say good-day.”

The doctor put forth a hand that shook slightly.

“Sit down, young man,” he said. “I don’t blame you for being impatient, but I will now come to my point.”

The newspaperman sat down again.

“I have developed a hypothesis,” said Dr. White, “and have conducted several experiments which seem to bear it out. I am staking my reputation upon the supposition that it is correct. Not only that, but I am also staking the lives of several brave men who believe implicitly in me and my theory. After all, I suppose it makes little difference, for if I fail the world is doomed, if I succeed it is saved from complete destruction.

“Have you ever thought that our evolutionists might be wrong, that evolution might be downward instead of upward? The theory of the exploding universe, the belief that all of creation is running down, being thrown off balance by the loss of energy, spurred onward by cosmic accidents which tend to disturb its equilibrium, to a time when it will run wild and space will be filled with swirling dust of disintegrated worlds, would bear out this contention.

“This does not apply to the human race. There is no question that our evolution is upward, that we have arisen from one-celled creatures wallowing in the slime of primal seas. Our case is probably paralleled by thousands of other intelligences on far-flung planets and island universes. These instances, however, running at cross purposes to the general evolutional trend of the entire cosmos, are mere flashes in the eventual course of cosmic evolution, comparing no more to eternity than a split second does to a million years.

“Taking these instances, then, as inconsequential, let us say that the trend of cosmic evolution is downward rather than upward, from complex units to simpler units rather than from simple units to more complex ones.

“Let us say that life and intelligence have degenerated. How would you say such a degeneration would take place? In just what way would it be manifested? What sort of transition would life pass through in passing from one stage to a lower one? Just what would be the nature of these stages?”

The scientist’s eyes glowed brightly as he bent forward in his chair. The newspaperman said simply: “I have no idea.”

“Man,” cried the old man, “can’t you see that it would be a matter of dimensions? From the fourth dimension to the third, from the third to the second, from the second to the first, from the first to a questionable existence or plane which is beyond our understanding or perhaps to oblivion and the end of life. Might not the fourth have evolved from a fifth, the fifth from a sixth, the sixth from a seventh, and so on to no one knows what multidimension?”

* * * *

Dr. White paused to allow the other man to grasp the importance of his statements. Woods failed lamentably to do so.

“But what has this to do with the Horror?” he asked.

“Have you absolutely no imagination?” shouted the old man.

“Why, I suppose I have, but I seem to fail to understand.”

“We are facing an invasion of fourth-dimensional creatures,” the old man whispered, almost as if fearful to speak the words aloud. “We are being attacked by life which is one dimension above us in evolution. We are fighting, I tell you, a tribe of hellhounds out of the cosmos. They are unthinkably above us in the matter of intelligence. There is a chasm of knowledge between us so wide and so deep that it staggers the imagination. They regard us as mere animals, perhaps not even that. So far as they are concerned we are just fodder, something to be eaten as we eat vegetables and cereals or the flesh of domesticated animals. Perhaps they have watched us for years, watching life on the world increase, lapping their monstrous jowls over the fattening of the Earth. They have awaited the proper setting of the banquet table and now they are dining.

“Their thoughts are not our thoughts, their ideals not our ideals. Perhaps they have nothing in common with us except the primal basis of all life, self-preservation, the necessity of feeding.

“Maybe they have come of their own will. I prefer to believe that they have. Perhaps they are merely following the natural course of events, obeying some immutable law legislated by some higher being who watches over the cosmos and dictates what shall be and what shall not be. If this is true it means that there has been a flaw in my reasoning, for I believed that the life of each plane degenerated in company with the degeneration of its plane of existence, which would obey the same evolutional laws which govern the life upon it. I am quite satisfied that this invasion is a well-planned campaign, that some fourth-dimensional race has found a means of breaking through the veil of force which separates its plane from ours.”

“But,” pointed out Henry Woods, “you say they are fourth-dimensional things. I can’t see anything about them to suggest an additional dimension. They are plainly three-dimensional.”

“Of course they are three-dimensional. They would have to be to live in this world of three dimensions. The only two-dimensional objects which we know of in this world are merely illusions, projections of the third dimension, like a shadow. It is impossible for more than one dimension to live on any single plane.

“To attack us they would have to lose one dimension. This they have evidently done. You can see how utterly ridiculous it would be for you to try to attack a two-dimensional thing. So far as you were concerned it would have no mass. The same is true of the other dimensions. Similarly a being of a lesser plane could not harm an inhabitant of a higher plane. It is apparent that while the Horror has lost one material dimension, it has retained certain fourth-dimensional properties which make it invulnerable to the forces at the command of our plane.”

The newspaperman was now sitting on the edge of his chair.

“But,” he asked breathlessly, “it all sounds so hopeless. What can be done about it?”

Dr. White hitched his chair closer and his fingers closed with a fierce grasp upon the other’s knee. A militant boom came into his voice.

“My boy,” he said, “we are to strike back. We are going to invade the fourth-dimensional plane of these hellhounds. We are going to make them feel our strength. We are going to strike back.”

Henry Woods sprang to his feet.

“How?” he shouted. “Have you… ?”

Dr. White nodded.

“I have found a way to send the third-dimensional into the fourth. Come and I will show you.”

* * * *

The machine was huge, but it had an appearance of simple construction. A large rectangular block of what appeared to be a strange black metal was set on end and flanked on each side by two smaller ones. On the top of the large block was set a half-globe of a strange substance, somewhat, Henry thought, like frosted glass. On one side of the large cube was set a lever, a long glass panel, two vertical tubes and three clock-face indicators. The control board, it appeared, was relatively simple.

Beside the mass of the five rectangles, on the floor, was a large plate of transparent substance, ground to a concave surface, through which one could see an intricate tangle of wire mesh.

Hanging from the ceiling, directly above the one on the floor, was another concave disk, but this one had a far more pronounced curvature.

Wires connected the two disks and each in turn was connected to the rectangular machine.

“It is a matter of the proper utilization of two forces, electrical and gravitational,” proudly explained Dr. White. “Those two forces, properly used, warp the third-dimensional into the fourth. A reverse process is used to return the object to the third. The principle of the machine is—”

The old man was about to launch into a lengthy discussion, but Henry interrupted him. A glance at his watch had shown him press time was drawing perilously close.

“Just a second,” he said. “You propose to warp a third-dimensional being into a fourth dimension. How can a third-dimensional thing exist there? You said a short time ago that only a specified dimension could exist on one single plane.”

“You have missed my point,” snapped Dr. White. “I am not sending a third-dimensional thing to a fourth dimension. I am changing the third-dimensional being into a fourth-dimensional being. I add a dimension, and automatically the being exists on a different plane. I am reversing evolution. This third dimension we now exist on evolved, millions of eons ago, from a fourth dimension. I am sending a lesser entity back over those millions of eons to a plane similar to one upon which his ancestors lived inconceivably long ago.”

“But, man, how do you know you can do it?”

The doctor’s eyes gleamed and his fingers reached out to press a bell.

A servant appeared almost at once.

“Bring me a dog,” snapped the old man. The servant disappeared.

“Young man,” said Dr. White, “I am going to show you how I know I can do it. I have done it before, now I am going to do it for you. I have sent dogs and cats back to the fourth dimension and returned them safely to this room. I can do the same with men.”

The servant reappeared, carrying in his arms a small dog. The doctor stepped to the control board of his strange machine.

“All right, George,” he said.

The servant had evidently worked with the old man enough to know what was expected of him. He stepped close to the floor disk and waited. The dog whined softly, sensing that all was not exactly right.

The old scientist slowly shoved the lever toward the right, and as he did so a faint hum filled the room, rising to a stupendous roar as he advanced the lever. From both floor disk and upper disk leaped strange cones of blue light, which met midway to form an hour-glass shape of brilliance.

The light did not waver or sparkle. It did not glow. It seemed hard and brittle, like straight bars of force. The newspaperman, gazing with awe upon it, felt that terrific force was there. What had the old man said? Warp a third-dimensional being into another dimension! That would take force!

As he watched, petrified by the spectacle, the servant stepped forward and, with a flip, tossed the little dog into the blue light. The animal could be discerned for a moment through the light and then it disappeared.

“Look in the globe!” shouted the old man; and Henry jerked his eyes from the column of light to the half-globe atop the machine.

He gasped. In the globe, deep within its milky center, glowed a picture that made his brain reel as he looked upon it. It was a scene such as no man could have imagined unaided. It was a horribly distorted projection of an eccentric landscape, a landscape hardly analogous to anything on Earth.

“That’s the fourth dimension, sir,” said the servant.

“That’s not the fourth dimension,” the old man corrected him. “That’s a third-dimensional impression of the fourth dimension. It is no more the fourth dimension than a shadow is three-dimensional. It, like a shadow, is merely a projection. It gives us a glimpse of what the fourth plane is like. It is a shadow of that plane.”

Slowly a dark blotch began to grow in the landscape. Slowly it assumed definite form. It puzzled the reporter. It looked familiar. He could have sworn he had seen it somewhere before. It was alive, for it had moved.

“That, sir, is the dog,” George volunteered.

“That was the dog,” Dr. White again corrected him. “God knows what it is now.”

He turned to the newspaperman.

“Have you seen enough?” he demanded.

Henry nodded.

The other slowly began to return the lever to its original position. The roaring subsided, the light faded, the projection in the half-globe grew fainter.

“How are you going to use it?” asked the newspaperman.

“I have ninety-eight men who have agreed to be projected into the fourth dimension to seek out the entities that are attacking us and attack them in turn. I shall send them out in an hour.”

“Where is there a phone?” asked the newspaperman.

“In the next room,” replied Dr. White.

As the reporter dashed out of the door, the light faded entirely from between the two disks and on the lower one a little dog crouched, quivering, softly whimpering.

* * * *

The old man stepped from the controls and approached the disk. He scooped the little animal from where it lay into his arms and patted the silky head.

“Good dog,” he murmured; and the creature snuggled close to him, comforted, already forgetting that horrible place from which it had just returned.

“Is everything ready, George?” asked the old man.

“Yes, sir,” replied the servant. “The men are all ready, even anxious to go. If you ask me, sir, they are a tough lot.”

“They are as brave a group of men as ever graced the Earth,” replied the scientist gently. “They are adventurers, every one of whom has faced danger and will not shrink from it. They are born fighters. My one regret is that I have not been able to secure more like them. A thousand men such as they should be able to conquer any opponent. It was impossible. The others were poor soft fools. They laughed in my face. They thought I was an old fool—I, the man who alone stands between them and utter destruction.”

His voice had risen to almost a scream, but it again sank to a normal tone.

“I may be sending ninety-eight brave men to instant death. I hope not.”

“You can always jerk them back, sir,” suggested George.

“Maybe I can, maybe not,” murmured the old man.

Henry Woods appeared in the doorway.

“When do we start?” he asked.

“We?” exclaimed the scientist.

“Certainly, you don’t believe you’re going to leave me out of this. Why, man, it’s the greatest story of all time. I’m going as special war correspondent.”

“They believed it? They are going to publish it?” cried the old man, clutching at the newspaperman’s sleeve.

“Well, the editor was skeptical at first, but after I swore on all sorts of oaths it was true, he ate it up. Maybe you think that story didn’t stop the presses!”

“I didn’t expect them to. I just took a chance. I thought they, too, would laugh at me.”

“But when do we start?” persisted Henry.

“You are really in earnest? You really want to go?” asked the old man, unbelievingly.

“I am going. Try to stop me.”

Dr. White glanced at his watch.

“We will start in exactly thirty-four minutes,” he said.

* * * *

“Ten seconds to go.” George, standing with watch in hand, spoke in a precise manner, the very crispness of his words betraying the excitement under which he labored.

The blue light, hissing, drove from disk to disk; the room thundered with the roar of the machine, before which stood Dr. White, his hand on the lever, his eyes glued on the instruments before him.

In a line stood the men who were to fling themselves into the light to be warped into another dimension, there to seek out and fight an unknown enemy. The line was headed by a tall man with hands like hams, with a weather-beaten face and a wild mop of hair. Behind him stood a belligerent little cockney. Henry Woods stood fifth in line. They were a motley lot, adventurers every one of them, and some were obviously afraid as they stood before that column of light, with only a few seconds of the third dimension left to them. They had answered a weird advertisement, and had but a limited idea of what they were about to do. Grimly, though, they accepted it as a job, a bizarre job, but a job. They faced it as they had faced other equally dangerous, but less unusual, jobs.

“Five seconds,” snapped George.

The lever was all the way over now. The half-globe showed, within its milky interior, a hideously distorted landscape. The light had taken on a hard, brittle appearance and its hiss had risen to a scream. The machine thundered steadily with a suggestion of horrible power.

“Time up!”

The tall man stepped forward. His foot reached the disk; another step and he was bathed in the light, a third and he glimmered momentarily, then vanished. Close on his heels followed the little cockney.

With his nerves at almost a snapping point, Henry moved on behind the fourth man. He was horribly afraid, he wanted to break from the line and run, it didn’t matter where, any place to get away from that steady, steely light in front of him. He had seen three men step into it, glow for a second, and then disappear. A fourth man had placed his foot on the disk.

Cold sweat stood out on his brow. Like an automaton he placed one foot on the disk. The fourth man had already disappeared.

“Snap into it, pal,” growled the man behind.

Henry lifted the other foot, caught his toe on the edge of the disk and stumbled headlong into the column of light.

He was conscious of intense heat which was instantly followed by equally intense cold. For a moment his body seemed to be under enormous pressure, then it seemed to be expanding, flying apart, bursting, exploding.…

* * * *

He felt solid ground under his feet, and his eyes, snapping open, saw an alien land. It was a land of somber color, with great gray moors, and beetling black cliffs. There was something queer about it, an intangible quality that baffled him.

He looked about him, expecting to see his companions. He saw no one. He was absolutely alone in that desolate brooding land. Something dreadful had happened! Was he the only one to be safely transported from the third dimension? Had some horrible accident occurred? Was he alone?

Sudden panic seized him. If something had happened, if the others were not here, might it not be possible that the machine would not be able to bring him back to his own dimension? Was he doomed to remain marooned forever in this terrible plane?

He looked down at his body and gasped in dismay. It was not his body!

It was a grotesque caricature of a body, a horrible profane mass of flesh, like a phantasmagoric beast snatched from the dreams of a lunatic.

It was real, however. He felt it with his hands, but they were not hands. They were something like hands; they served the same purpose that hands served in the third dimension. He was, he realized, a being of the fourth dimension, but in his fourth-dimensional brain still clung hard-fighting remnants of that faithful old third-dimensional brain. He could not, as yet, see with fourth-dimensional eyes, think purely fourth-dimensional thoughts. He had not oriented himself as yet to this new plane of existence. He was seeing the fourth dimension through the blurred lenses of millions of eons of third-dimensional existence. He was seeing it much more clearly than he had seen it in the half-globe atop the machine in Dr. White’s laboratory, but he would not see it clearly until every vestige of the third dimension was wiped from him. That, he knew, would come in time.

He felt his weird body with those things that served as hands, and he found, beneath his groping, unearthly fingers, great rolling muscles, powerful tendons, and hard, well-conditioned flesh. A sense of well-being surged through him and he growled like an animal, like an animal of that horrible fourth plane.

But the terrible sounds that came from between his slobbering lips were not those of his own voice, they were the voices of many men.

Then he knew. He was not alone. Here, in this one body were the bodies, the brains, the power, the spirit, of those other ninety-eight men. In the fourth dimension, all the millions of third-dimensional things were one. Perhaps that particular portion of the third dimension called the Earth had sprung from, or degenerated from, one single unit of a dissolving, worn-out fourth dimension. The third dimension, warped back to a higher plane, was automatically obeying the mystic laws of evolution by reforming in the shape of that old ancestor, unimaginably removed in time from the race he had begot. He was no longer Henry Woods, newspaperman; he was an entity that had given birth, in the dim ages when the Earth was born, to a third dimension. Nor was he alone. This body of his was composed of other sons of that ancient entity.

He felt himself grow, felt his body grow vaster, assume greater proportions, felt new vitality flow through him. It was the other men, the men who were flinging themselves into the column of light in the laboratory to be warped back to this plane, to be incorporated in his body.

It was not his body, however. His brain was not his alone. The pronoun, he realized, represented the sum total of those other men, his fellow adventurers.

Suddenly a new feeling came, a feeling of completeness, a feeling of supreme fitness. He knew that the last of the ninety-eight men had stepped across the disk, that all were here in this giant body.

Now he could see more clearly. Things in the landscape, which had escaped him before, became recognizable. Awful thoughts ran through his brain, heavy, ponderous, black thoughts. He began to recognize the landscape as something familiar, something he had seen before, a thing with which he was intimate. Phenomena, which his third-dimensional intelligence would have gasped at, became commonplace. He was finally seeing through fourth-dimensional eyes, thinking fourth-dimensional thoughts.

Memory seeped into his brain and he had fleeting visions, visions of dark caverns lit by hellish flames, of huge seas that battered remorselessly with mile-high waves against towering headlands that reared titanic toward a glowering sky. He remembered a red desert scattered with scarlet boulders, he remembered silver cliffs of gleaming metallic stone. Through all his thoughts ran something else, a scarlet thread of hate, an all-consuming passion, a fierce lust after the life of some other entity.

He was no longer a composite thing built of third-dimensional beings. He was a creature of another plane, a creature with a consuming hate, and suddenly he knew against whom this hate was directed and why. He knew also that this creature was near and his great fists closed and then spread wide as he knew it. How did he know it? Perhaps through some sense which he, as a being of another plane, held, but which was alien to the Earth. Later, he asked himself this question. At the time, however, there was no questioning on his part. He only knew that somewhere near was a hated enemy and he did not question the source of his knowledge.…

* * * *

Mumbling in an idiom incomprehensible to a third-dimensional being, filled with rage that wove redly through his brain, he lumbered down the hill onto the moor, his great strides eating up the distance, his footsteps shaking the ground.

At the foot of the hill he halted and from his throat issued a challenging roar that made the very crags surrounding the moor tremble. The rocks flung back the roar as if in mockery.

Again he shouted and in the shout he framed a lurid insult to the enemy that lurked there in the cliffs.

Again the crags flung back the insult, but this time the echoes, booming over the moor, were drowned by another voice, the voice of the enemy.

At the far end of the moor appeared a gigantic form, a form that shambled on grotesque, misshapen feet, growling angrily as he came.

He came rapidly despite his clumsy gait, and as he came he mouthed terrific threats.

Close to the other he halted and only then did recognition dawn in his eyes.

“You, Mal Shaff?” he growled in his guttural tongue, and surprise and consternation were written large upon his ugly face.

“Yes, it is I, Mal Shaff,” boomed the other. “Remember, Ouglat, the day you destroyed me and my plane. I have returned to wreak my vengeance. I have solved a mystery you have never guessed and I have come back. You did not imagine you were attacking me again when you sent your minions to that other plane to feed upon the beings there. It was I you were attacking, fool, and I am here to kill you.”

Ouglat leaped and the thing that had been Henry Woods, newspaperman, and ninety-eight other men, but was now Mal Shaff of the fourth dimension, leaped to meet him.

Mal Shaff felt the force of Ouglat, felt the sharp pain of a hammering fist, and lashed out with those horrible arms of his to smash at the leering face of his antagonist. He felt his fists strike solid flesh, felt the bones creak and tremble beneath his blow.

His nostrils were filled with the terrible stench of the other’s foul breath and his filthy body. He teetered on his gnarled legs and side-stepped a vicious kick and then stepped in to gouge with straightened thumb at the other’s eye. The thumb went true and Ouglat howled in pain.

Mal Shaff leaped back as his opponent charged head down, and his knotted fist beat a thunderous tattoo as the misshapen beast closed in. He felt clawing fingers seeking his throat, felt ghastly nails ripping at his shoulders. In desperation he struck blindly, and Ouglat reeled away. With a quick stride he shortened the distance between them and struck Ouglat a hard blow squarely on his slavering mouth. Pressing hard upon the reeling figure, he swung his fists like sledge-hammers, and Ouglat stumbled, falling in a heap on the sand.

Mal Shaff leaped upon the fallen foe and kicked him with his taloned feet, ripping him wickedly. There was no thought of fair play, no faintest glimmer of mercy. This was a battle to the death: there could be no quarter.

The fallen monster howled, but his voice cut short as his foul mouth, with its razor-edged fangs, closed on the other’s body. His talons, seeking a hold, clawed deep.

Mal Shaff, his brain a screaming maelstrom of weird emotions, aimed pile-driver blows at the enemy, clawed and ripped. Together the two rolled, locked tight in titanic battle, on the sandy plain and a great cloud of heavy dust marked where they struggled.

In desperation Ouglat put every ounce of his strength into a heave that broke the other’s grip and flung him away.

The two monstrosities surged to their feet, their eyes red with hate, glaring through the dust cloud at one another.

Slowly Ouglat’s hand stole to a black, wicked cylinder that hung on a belt at his waist. His fingers closed upon it and he drew the weapon. As he leveled it at Mal Shaff, his lips curled back and his features distorted into something that was not pleasant to see.

Mal Shaff, with doubled fists, saw the great thumb of his enemy slowly depressing a button on the cylinder, and a great fear held him rooted in his tracks. In the back of his brain something was vainly trying to explain to him the horror of this thing which the other held.

Then a multicolored spiral, like a corkscrew column of vapor, sprang from the cylinder and flashed toward him. It struck him full on the chest and even as it did so he caught the ugly fire of triumph in the red eyes of his enemy.

He felt a stinging sensation where the spiral struck, but that was all. He was astounded. He had feared this weapon, had been sure it portended some form of horrible death. But all it did was to produce a slight sting.

For a split second he stood stock-still, then he surged forward and advanced upon Ouglat, his hands outspread like claws. From his throat came those horrible sounds, the speech of the fourth dimension.

“Did I not tell you, foul son of Sargouthe, that I had solved a mystery you have never guessed at? Although you destroyed me long ago, I have returned. Throw away your puny weapon. I am of the lower dimension and am invulnerable to your engines of destruction. You bloated.… ” His words trailed off into a stream of vileness that could never have occurred to a third-dimensional mind.

Ouglat, with every line of his face distorted with fear, flung the weapon from him, and turning, fled clumsily down the moor, with Mal Shaff at his heels.

Steadily Mal Shaff gained and with only a few feet separating him from Ouglat, he dived with outspread arms at the other’s legs.

The two came down together, but Mal Shaff’s grip was broken by the fall and the two regained their feet at almost the same instant.

The wild moor resounded to their throaty roaring and the high cliffs flung back the echoes of the bellowing of the two gladiators below. It was sheer strength now and flesh and bone were bruised and broken under the life-shaking blows that they dealt. Great furrows were plowed in the sand by the sliding of heavy feet as the two fighters shifted to or away from attack. Blood, blood of fourth-dimensional creatures, covered the bodies of the two and stained the sand with its horrible hue. Perspiration streamed from them and their breath came in gulping gasps.

The lurid sun slid across the purple sky and still the two fought on. Ouglat, one of the ancients, and Mal Shaff, reincarnated. It was a battle of giants, a battle that must have beggared even the titanic tilting of forgotten gods and entities in the ages when the third-dimensional Earth was young.

Mal Shaff had no conception of time. He may have fought seconds or hours. It seemed an eternity. He had attempted to fight scientifically, but had failed to do so. While one part of him had cried out to elude his opponent, to wait for openings, to conserve his strength, another part had shouted at him to step in and smash, smash, smash at the hated monstrosity pitted against him.

It seemed Ouglat was growing in size, had become more agile, that his strength was greater. His punches hurt more; it was harder to hit him.

Still Mal Shaff drilled in determinedly, head down, fists working like pistons. As the other seemed to grow stronger and larger, he seemed to become smaller and weaker.

It was queer. Ouglat should be tired, too. His punches should be weaker. He should move more slowly, be heavier on his feet.

There was no doubt of it. Ouglat was growing larger, was drawing on some mysterious reserve of strength. From somewhere new force and life were flowing into his body. But from where was this strength coming?

A huge fist smashed against Mal Shaff’s jaw. He felt himself lifted, and the next moment he skidded across the sand.

Lying there, gasping for breath, almost too fagged to rise, with the black bulk of the enemy looming through the dust cloud before him, he suddenly realized the source of the other’s renewed strength.

Ouglat was recalling his minions from the third dimension! They were incorporating in his body, returning to their parent body!

They were coming back from the third dimension to the fourth dimension to fight a third-dimensional thing reincarnated in the fourth-dimensional form it had lost millions of eons ago!

This was the end, thought Mal Shaff. But he staggered to his feet to meet the charge of the ancient enemy and a grim song, a death chant immeasurably old, suddenly and dimly remembered from out of the mists of countless millenniums, was on his lips as he swung a pile-driver blow into the suddenly astonished face of the rushing Ouglat.…

* * * *

The milky globe atop the machine in Dr. White’s laboratory glowed softly, and within that glow two figures seemed to struggle.

Before the machine, his hands still on the controls, stood Dr. Silas White. Behind him the room was crowded with newspapermen and photographers.

Hours had passed since the ninety-eight men—ninety-nine, counting Henry Woods—had stepped into the brittle column of light to be shunted back through unguessed time to a different plane of existence. The old scientist, during all those hours, had stood like a graven image before his machine, eyes staring fixedly at the globe.

Through the open windows he had heard the cry of the newsboy as the Press put the greatest scoop of all time on the street. The phone had rung like mad and George answered it. The doorbell buzzed repeatedly and George ushered in newspapermen who had asked innumerable questions, to which he had replied briefly, almost mechanically. The reporters had fought for the use of the one phone in the house and had finally drawn lots for it. A few had raced out to use other phones.

Photographers came and flashes popped and cameras clicked. The room was in an uproar. On the rare occasions when the reporters were not using the phone the instrument buzzed shrilly. Authoritative voices demanded Dr. Silas White. George, his eyes on the old man, stated that Dr. Silas White could not be disturbed, that he was busy.

From the street below came the heavy-throated hum of thousands of voices. The street was packed with a jostling crowd of awed humanity, every eye fastened on the house of Dr. Silas White. Lines of police held them back.

“What makes them move so slowly?” asked a reporter, staring at the globe. “They hardly seem to be moving. It looks like a slow motion picture.”

“They are not moving slowly,” replied Dr. White. “There must be a difference in time in the fourth dimension. Maybe what is hours to us is only seconds to them. Time must flow more slowly there. Perhaps it is a bigger place than this third plane. That may account for it. They aren’t moving slowly, they are fighting savagely. It’s a fight to the death! Watch!”

The grotesque arm of one of the figures in the milky globe was moving out slowly, loafing along, aimed at the head of the other. Slowly the other twisted his body aside, but too slowly. The fist finally touched the head, still moving slowly forward, the body following as slowly. The head of the creature twisted, bent backward, and the body toppled back in a leisurely manner.

“What does White say?… Can’t you get a statement of some sort from him? Won’t he talk at all? A hell of a fine reporter you are—can’t even get a man to open his mouth. Ask him about Henry Woods. Get a human-interest slant on Woods walking into the light. Ask him how long this is going to last. Damn it all, man, do something, and don’t bother me again until you have a real story—yes, I said a real story—are you hard of hearing? For God’s sake, do something!”

The editor slammed the receiver on the hook.

“Brooks,” he snapped, “get the War Department at Washington. Ask them if they’re going to back up White. Go on, go on. Get busy.… How will you get them? I don’t know. Just get them, that’s all. Get them!”

Typewriters gibbered like chuckling morons through the roaring tumult of the editorial rooms. Copy boys rushed about, white sheets clutched in their grimy hands. Telephones jangled and strident voices blared through the haze that arose from the pipes and cigarettes of perspiring writers who feverishly transferred to paper the startling events that were rocking the world.

The editor, his necktie off, his shirt open, his sleeves rolled to the elbow, drummed his fingers on the desk. It had been a hectic twenty-four hours and he had stayed at the desk every minute of the time. He was dead tired. When the moment of relaxation came, when the tension snapped, he knew he would fall into an exhausted stupor of sleep, but the excitement was keeping him on his feet. There was work to do. There was news such as the world had never known before. Each new story meant a new front make-up, another extra. Even now the presses were thundering, even now papers with the ink hardly dry upon them were being snatched by the avid public from the hands of screaming newsboys.

A man raced toward the city desk, waving a sheet of paper in his hand. Sensing something unusual the others in the room crowded about as he laid the sheet before the editor.

“Just came in,” the man gasped.

The paper was a wire dispatch. It read:

“Rome—The Black Horror is in full retreat. Although still apparently immune to the weapons being used against it, it is lifting the siege of this city. The cause is unknown.”

The editor ran his eye down the sheet. There was another dateline:

“Madrid—The Black Horror, which has enclosed this city in a ring of dark terror for the last two days, is fleeing, rapidly disappearing.… ”

The editor pressed a button. There was an answering buzz.

“Composing room,” he shouted, “get ready for a new front! Yes, another extra. This will knock their eyes out!”

A telephone jangled furiously. The editor seized it.

“Yes. What was that?… White says he must have help. I see. Woods and the others are weakening. Being badly beaten, eh?… More men needed to go out to the other plane. Wants reinforcements. Yes. I see. Well, tell him that he’ll have them. If he can wait half an hour we’ll have them walking by thousands into that light. I’ll be damned if we won’t! Just tell White to hang on! We’ll have the whole nation coming to the rescue!”

He jabbed up the receiver.

“Richards,” he said, “write a streamer, ‘Help Needed,’ ‘Reinforcements Called’—something of that sort, you know. Make it scream. Tell the foreman to dig out the biggest type he has. A foot high. If we ever needed big type, we need it now!”

He turned to the telephone.

“Operator,” he said, “get me the Secretary of War at Washington. The secretary in person, you understand. No one else will do.”

He turned again to the reporters who stood about the desk.

“In two hours,” he explained, banging the desk top for emphasis, “we’ll have the United States Army marching into that light Woods walked into!”

* * * *

The bloody sun was touching the edge of the weird world, seeming to hesitate before taking the final plunge behind the towering black crags that hung above the ink-pot shadows at their base. The purple sky had darkened until it was almost the color of soft, black velvet. Great stars were blazing out.

Ouglat loomed large in the gathering twilight, a horrible misshapen ogre of an outer world. He had grown taller, broader, greater. Mal Shaff’s head now was on a level with the other’s chest; his huge arms seemed toylike in comparison with those of Ouglat, his legs mere pipestems.

Time and time again he had barely escaped as the clutching hands of Ouglat reached out to grasp him. Once within those hands he would be torn apart.

The battle had become a game of hide and seek, a game of cat and mouse, with Mal Shaff the mouse.

Slowly the sun sank and the world became darker. His brain working feverishly, Mal Shaff waited for the darkness. Adroitly he worked the battle nearer and nearer to the Stygian darkness that lay at the foot of the mighty crags. In the darkness he might escape. He could no longer continue this unequal fight. Only escape was left.

The sun was gone now. Blackness was dropping swiftly over the land, like a great blanket, creating the illusion of the glowering sky descending to the ground. Only a few feet away lay the total blackness under the cliffs.

Like a flash Mal Shaff darted into the blackness, was completely swallowed in it. Roaring, Ouglat followed.

His shoulders almost touching the great rock wall that shot straight up hundreds of feet above him, Mal Shaff ran swiftly, fear lending speed to his shivering legs. Behind him he heard the bellowing of his enemy. Ouglat was searching for him, a hopeless search in that total darkness. He would never find him. Mal Shaff felt sure.

Fagged and out of breath, he dropped panting at the foot of the wall. Blood pounded through his head and his strength seemed to be gone. He lay still and stared out into the less dark moor that stretched before him.

For some time he lay there, resting. Aimlessly he looked out over the moor, and then he suddenly noted, some distance to his right, a hill rising from the moor. The hill was vaguely familiar. He remembered it dimly as being of great importance.

A sudden inexplicable restlessness filled him. Far behind him he heard the enraged bellowing of Ouglat, but that he scarcely noticed. So long as darkness lay upon the land he knew he was safe from his enemy.

The hill had made him restless. He must reach the top. He could think of no logical reason for doing so. Obviously he was safer here at the base of the cliff, but a voice seemed to be calling, a friendly voice from the hilltop.

He rose on aching legs and forged ahead. Every fiber of his being cried out in protest, but resolutely he placed one foot ahead of the other, walking mechanically.

Opposite the hill he disregarded the strange call that pulsed down upon him, long enough to rest his tortured body. He must build up his strength for the climb.

He realized that danger lay ahead. Once he quitted the blackness of the cliff’s base, Ouglat, even in the darkness that lay over the land, might see him. That would be disastrous. Once over the top of the hill he would be safe.

Suddenly the landscape was bathed in light, a soft green radiance. One moment it had been pitch dark, the next it was light, as if a giant search-light had been snapped on.

In terror, Mal Shaff looked for the source of the light. Just above the horizon hung a great green orb, which moved up the ladder of the sky even as he watched.

A moon! A huge green satellite hurtling swiftly around this cursed world!

A great, overwhelming fear sat upon Mal Shaff and with a high, shrill scream of anger he raced forward, forgetful of aching body and outraged lungs.

His scream was answered from far off, and out of the shadows of the cliffs toward the far end of the moor a black figure hurled itself. Ouglat was on the trail!

Mal Shaff tore madly up the slope, topped the crest, and threw himself flat on the ground, almost exhausted.

* * * *

A queer feeling stole over him, a queer feeling of well-being. New strength was flowing into him, the old thrill of battle was pounding through his blood once more.

Not only were queer things happening to his body, but also to his brain. The world about him looked queer, held a sort of an intangible mystery he could not understand. A half question formed in the back of his brain. Who and what was he? Queer thoughts to be thinking! He was Mal Shaff, but had he always been Mal Shaff?

He remembered a brittle column of light, creatures with bodies unlike his body, walking into it. He had been one of those creatures. There was something about dimensions, about different planes, a plan for one plane to attack another!

He scrambled to his bowed legs and beat his great chest with mighty, long-nailed hands. He flung back his head and from his throat broke a sound to curdle the blood of even the bravest.

On the moor below Ouglat heard the cry and answered it with one equally ferocious.

Mal Shaff took a step forward, then stopped stock-still. Through his brain went a sharp command to return to the spot where he had stood, to wait there until attacked. He stepped back, shifting his feet impatiently.

He was growing larger; every second fresh vitality was pouring into him. Before his eyes danced a red curtain of hate and his tongue roared forth a series of insulting challenges to the figure that was even now approaching the foot of the hill.

As Ouglat climbed the hill, the night became an insane bedlam. The challenging roars beat like surf against the black cliffs.

Ouglat’s lips were flecked with foam, his red eyes were mere slits, his mouth worked convulsively.

They were only a few feet apart when Ouglat charged.

Mal Shaff was ready for him. There was no longer any difference in their size and they met like the two forward walls of contending football teams.

Mal Shaff felt the soft throat of the other under his fingers and his grip tightened. Maddened, Ouglat shot terrific blow after terrific blow into Mal Shaff’s body.

Try as he might, however, he could not shake the other’s grip.

It was silent now. The night seemed brooding, watching the struggle on the hilltop.

Larger and larger grew Mal Shaff, until he overtopped Ouglat like a giant.

Then he loosened his grip and, as Ouglat tried to scuttle away, reached down to grasp him by the nape of his neck.

High above his head he lifted his enemy and dashed him to the ground. With a leap he was on the prostrate figure, trampling it apart, smashing it into the ground. With wild cries he stamped the earth, treading out the last of Ouglat, the Black Horror.

When no trace of the thing that had been Ouglat remained, he moved away and viewed the trampled ground.

Then, for the first time he noticed that the crest of the hill was crowded with other monstrous figures. He glared at them, half in surprise, half in anger. He had not noticed their silent approach.

“It is Mal Shaff!” cried one.

“Yes, I am Mal Shaff. What do you want?”

“But, Mal Shaff, Ouglat destroyed you once long ago!”

“And I, just now,” replied Mal Shaff, “have destroyed Ouglat.”

The figures were silent, shifting uneasily. Then one stepped forward.

“Mal Shaff,” it said, “we thought you were dead. Apparently it was not so. We welcome you to our land again. Ouglat, who once tried to kill you and apparently failed, you have killed, which is right and proper. Come and live with us again in peace. We welcome you.”

Mal Shaff bowed.

Gone was all thought of the third dimension. Through Mal Shaff’s mind raced strange, haunting memories of a red desert scattered with scarlet boulders, of silver cliffs of gleaming metallic stone, of huge seas battering against towering headlands. There were other things, too. Great palaces of shining jewels, and weird nights of inhuman joy where hellish flames lit deep, black caverns.

He bowed again.

“I thank you, Bathazar,” he said.

Without a backward look he shambled down the hill with the others.

* * * *

“Yes?” said the editor. “What’s that you say? Doctor White is dead! A suicide! Yeah, I understand. Worry, hey! Here, Roberts, take this story.”

He handed over the phone.

“When you write it,” he said, “play up the fact he was worried about not being able to bring the men back to the third dimension. Give him plenty of praise for ending the Black Horror. It’s a big story.”

“Sure,” said Roberts, then spoke into the phone: “All right, Bill, shoot the works.”

PROJECT MASTODON

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 thequiet 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.

Table of Contents

COPYRIGHT INFO

A NOTE FROM THE PUBLISHER

THE GOLDEN AGE OF SCIENCE FICTION MEGAPACKS

THE MEGAPACK SERIES

TIME QUARRY [Part 1]

TIME QUARRY [Part 2]

EMPIRE

THE STREET THAT WASN’T THERE

THE WORLD THAT COULDN’T BE

HELLHOUNDS OF THE COSMOS

PROJECT MASTODON