COPYRIGHT INFO

The First Science Fiction Megapack is copyright © 2013 by Wildside Press LLC. All rights reserved. It is a revised edition of The Science Fiction Megapack (2011) and changes a few stories. For publication history of specific stories, see the Acknowledgments section at the end of this volume.

For more information, contact the publisher through wildsidepress.com or the Wildside Press Forums. For publication information on individual stories, see the Acknowledgments page at the end of this volume.

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* * * *

THE MEGAPACK SERIES

The Adventure Megapack

The Boys’ Adventure Megapack

The Christmas Megapack

The Second Christmas Megapack

The Classic American Short Story Megapack

The Dan Carter, Cub Scout Megapack

The Cowboy Megapack

The Craig Kennedy Scientific Detective Megapack

The Cthulhu Mythos Megapack

The Father Brown Megapack

The Ghost Story Megapack

The Second Ghost Story Megapack

The Horror Megapack

The Macabre Megapack

The Martian Megapack

The Military Megapack

The Mummy Megapack

The Mystery Megapack

The Penny Parker Megapack

The Pulp Fiction Megapack

The Rover Boys Megapack

The 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 Penny Parker Megapack

The Pinocchio Megapack

The Steampunk Megapack

The Tom Corbett, Space Cadet Megapack

The Tom Swift Megapack

The Vampire Megapack

The Victorian Mystery Megapack

The Werewolf Megapack

The Western Megapack

The Second Western Megapack

The Second Western Megapack

The Wizard of Oz Megapack

The Wizard of Oz Megapack

AUTHOR MEGAPACKS

The E.F. Benson Megapack

The Second E.F. Benson Megapack

The B.M. Bower Megapack

The Wilkie Collins Megapack

The Jacques Futrelle Megapack

The Randall Garrett Megapack

The G.A. Henty Megapack

The Andre Norton Megapack

The H. Beam Piper Megapack

The Rafael Sabatini Megapack

UNKNOWN THINGS, by Reginald Bretnor

I have met any number of collectors during my thirty years in the antique trade: greedy ones (though, of course, they’re all greedy one way or another), and some with superb taste and a deep understanding of their fields, some with book knowledge and no taste at all, others who collect status symbols or security blanks, rare people with whom it is a joy to converse and many more utter bores, and others still so unbelievably eccentric that they defy classification. But Andreas Hoogstraten was the strangest of them all. Always polite, almost always smiling, he still seemed to carry with him that eerie coldness you find in haunted houses. Neither his obvious wealth nor his perfect tailoring, neither his patrician nose, sleek blond hair, and thick, impossibly yellow eyebrows, nor a voice as soft and gentle as a wooing dove’s could conceal it, at least from me.

I met him first in a Glastonbury pub. Every year, I’d go to England, buy an ancient van, and spend two months at least driving around and about, through Scotland and back down to Wales and Cornwall, buying big antiques and filling them with little antiques, then for the last third of my time crossing over to the continent and doing the same thing in France and the Low Countries. When the van was full, I’d ship it back as deckload on a freighter—this was in the days when you could do that—and drive it home to Saybrook from wherever it landed. It was a lot of fun, and I enjoyed every bit of it.

The Glastonbury pub was called the Weeping Nun—after some local ghost story—with an eighteenth-century sign that showed its dismal subject against a background of ancient tombstones and a silver moon—but inside it was the essence of English country hospitality, with all the dark wood and pewter and hunting prints you might expect, a great fireplace fit for roasting haunches of beef but cold now in the summertime, and neither a jukebox nor a telly to ruin the atmosphere. I went there with a local dealer, Tod Bardsley, with whom I had done business for several years, and we were just about to have lunch when Hoogstraten came in. He waved. He strode over to our table, carrying his cold aura with him.

“Mr. Bardsley, they said you’d be here, but I see you’re with a friend?” Bardsley nudged my foot under the table. He moved over. “Ah, do sit down, Mr. Hoogstraten,” he invited. “Charles here won’t mind. He’s a fellow dealer,” he chuckled, “always happy to meet another customer, like all of us.”

We were introduced. I shook Hoogstraten’s tense, cold hand. I was, I said, pleased to meet him. I was indeed a dealer, but I was a long way from home. Briefly, Bardsley told him about my yearly trips, while the girl brought us two half-and-halfs and took his order for a whiskey and soda.

“You really must get around,” he commented, looking at me intently. “I imagine you see a far greater variety of things than the average dealer, don’t you?”

“Rather!” Bardsley laughed. “There’s not a shop from Land’s End to John o’ Groat’s Charlie’s not been in, to say nothing of across Channel. I daresay he’s probably seen a thing or two that’d strike your fancy.”

“What do you collect,” I asked.

He turned his head, and I found myself looking directly into his lashless eyes. They were almost a matte blue, reminding me of Wedgewood Parian ware, and they looked dry, as though they’d never known tears.

“What do I collect?” he said. “As our friend here will tell you, I buy anything I do not understand. I do not mean the expert’s understanding of antiques and works of art. If I do not know what a thing is, if I cannot imagine what it was made for, it intrigues me, and if it’s for sale I buy it. You see, if I do not know, and if nobody can tell me, it makes me determined to find out, to solve the problem. Where is your shop?”

“In Saybrook, in Connecticut.”

“Well, that’s certainly near enough to me. My apartment’s in New York.”

We exchanged cards, and he said he’d take a run up one of these days and have a look around and made me promise to keep my eyes peeled for any of his mysterious objects. He was, he told me, on his way to Istanbul and the Near East generally, and perhaps to Nepal and, now that the Chinese were letting down the barriers, to Tibet.

Shortly after our lunch arrived, he rose to go, saying he’d see Bardsley later at the shop, and once more he made me promise to look out for him. He left, and I asked Tod about him.

“He’s a rum one, Charlie. Buys anything if you can’t tell him what it is, and pays well too. Last time in my place, he saw a weird cast-iron tool with a lot of cogs and a twisty handle that somehow didn’t seem to connect with anything. He peered at it and peered at it, and finally took it with him looking like the cat fresh from the cream jug. A year or so back, too, I found him a painting—a dark thing like something seventeenth-century Dutch—but not like any you ever saw. The more you tried to make out what the subject was, the odder it looked. But it was done by a real artist, you could tell that. He paid me seven hundred without a quiver. And the real beauty of it is, he buys things that otherwise you’d have on hand forever—so what if he is strange looking, with those crazy eyebrows and blue-blue eyes?”

I told him then about the coldness, but he said the man had never affected him that way, so I put the thought aside as a quirk of my own.

Now I know that it was not.

Actually, Hoogstraten never did take the trouble to come up to Saybrook and visit my shop, and for three or four months I almost forgot about him. Then, at a flea market, I found a gadget I couldn’t make head or tail of—one which ordinarily I’d have passed by without a second look. It was beautifully made of brass and polished steel, and its fitted mahogany box clearly went back to the last decade of the nineteenth century. Cased with it were eight or ten brass wheels, the rim of each serrated with geometrical neatness and with its individual pattern. It had a central axis to which these might have been affixed, a plunger like a date-stamp’s, a spirit level, and two calibrated dials the purpose of which I couldn’t even guess at. The man who had it thought it might have been a check-writing device, but he couldn’t tell me how it possibly could have worked.

I bought the thing for less than twenty dollars, and that night I phoned Hoogstraten and was pleased to find him back from his journeyings. I described it to him, and instantly his voice came alive with interest. No, he couldn’t possibly come up to Saybrook, not then, but would I bring it to New York?

I hesitated, for it seemed like quite an expedition for what I assumed would be a pretty petty deal, and at once he answered my unspoken question. “You needn’t worry about the money part, Mr. Dennison—it is Dennison, isn’t it? I am accustomed to paying well for anything that meets my criteria—at least in three figures—unless, of course, the seller has already set a lower price. In this case, even if I do not buy it, I’ll make the trip worth your while.”

So I agreed to bring it to him on the Sunday, and he gave me an address near Sutton Place—his card had carried only his phone number. The cab dropped me off at two in the afternoon in front of a several-story, obviously very expensively converted brownstone, with a martial doorman mounting guard at the entrance. I waited humbly while he made his phone call, and saw that there was only a single flat on each floor.

“Mr. Hoogstraten is waiting for you,” he told me finally, giving my shoes and sports coat a supercilious farewell appraisal. “Take the elevator to the third floor.”

The elevator was smooth and swift and new, and I was whisked to my destination in an instant. There a man-servant was waiting for me—I won’t say a butler. He was short and muscular and massive, with a pale square face and huge hands. I judged him to be some sort of general factotum—chauffeur perhaps? Guard? He looked more like a hit-man. But he was polite enough, bowing me through the hall and opening the door for me.

I don’t know exactly what I had expected, but it was not the Museum of Modern Art decor that greeted me, spare and stark and rectilinear, self-consciously manipulating mass and light and shadow in grays and blacks, startling whites, intrusive yellows, solid reds, some of the furniture echoing it, some tortured, twisted, with a thin scattering of anomalous ornaments. Of the objects he collected, there was no sign.

My face, I know, must have mirrored my astonishment, but he did not notice. He had eyes only for the package I was carrying, and I saw how hard his small black pupils were in their Wedgwood settings. He did not ask me to sit down. Dressed like something from a Vanity Fair men’s fashions ad, he seized it without a word, opened it. His lips now drawn back from his almost too even teeth, he plucked the gadget from its box, hastily put the box down on a table, seated himself. For several minutes, he examined it, testing this, trying that, while I stood there uncomfortably.

Finally, “What do you suppose it is?” he asked.

“I haven’t the foggiest,” I answered. “The man I bought it from thought it might have been intended as some sort of check protector.”

He said that was nonsense, and went back to his examination for several more long, silent minutes.

Then he looked up at me. He smiled, and again I felt wrapped in coldness. “It is satisfactory,” he told me. “Yes, it is completely satisfactory. I shall derive pleasure from it.” He nodded. “Indeed yes. Will five hundred be adequate?”

“You are very generous,” I said, accepting the five hundred-dollar bills.

And at that point, a door opened and a woman entered. The effect was unbelievable. She paused, regarding us—and suddenly, as far as I was concerned, no one else was in the room. Her presence dominated it. She was tall, her hair coal black, as were her eyes. Her cheekbones were high. But the physical details were nothing compared with the totality. Suddenly I knew why men had imagined goddesses, and sacrificed to them, why there had been tilting in the lists and knightly quests, why late Victorian artists like Burne-Jones had so idealized the beauty of womankind. And simultaneously there was another surge, one I still felt when I remember her, that very natural one that sets your loins afire.

She turned toward us, and against all reason I was quite sure that she did not walk, but flowed, floated. Nor was she gowned for any such effect. She was dressed simply, in a tailored suit with white lace at the throat, and almost no jewelry; a brooch, a wedding ring.

Hoogstraten looked up, frowning slightly. “You’re going out?” he asked.

“Yes, dear,” she answered—and at the word irrational jealousy flamed in me. “Only for a—how do you say it?—for an hour or two perhaps? You do not need me here?”

She had the strangest accent I’ve ever heard, one I was quite unable to identify. All I can say is that somehow, to my ear, it sounded archaic. He didn’t even answer, his attention once more on the thing I’d sold him.

“Good-bye,” she said, smiled very slightly at me, and left.

I had to interrupt him. “Mrs. Hoogstraten?” I asked.

“Yes, yes,” he replied, a hint of irritation in his voice. “Pretty, isn’t she?” She’s magnificent! I thought. But I had sense enough not to say it. It took him a moment more to remember I was there, but with a sigh he put the object down again. “Thank you, Dennison,” he said. “You will call me if you find anything else, won’t you? Yes, yes. Now Varig will show you out.”

He must have pressed a button, because immediately the servant was at the door. Hoogstraten did not say good-bye.

That night I dreamed of her, a dream which Tennyson might have written for me, or one of the Cavalier poets, and I had a hard time explaining my abstraction to the sweet girl I was going with. She was in my mind, and would not leave, and I began to hope I’d never find another object for her husband, no matter how profitable the find might be.

As it turned out, during the next several months I found three things that seemed to have been made especially for him, and on each occasion he demanded that I bring them to him in New York. I justified it by telling myself that, after all, I was a dealer and could not forego such easy money, but I know now that it was far more the hope of seeing her even for a moment, of hearing her speak a few casual words. I dreamed of her time and again, and tormented myself with the thought of her embraced in her husband’s coldness.

My second visit went much like the first, except that she was in the room when I arrived, again attired very simply in—but what she wore is of no moment. She stood up when I walked into her presence, and though again Hoogstraten did not introduce us, she thanked me for the machine—was it not a machine?—I had sold Andreas, which had pleased him. He was a genius. His mind, it demanded problems.… It was very nice of…

I stood there tongue-tied, trapped by the magic radiating from her. Hoogstraten was already opening what I had brought him—a clock but not a clock. A thing with complicated clockwork in a case which could have been made by some exotic Faberge, which told something, but not time—at least not any time that might make sense to us. After a moment, his voice still soft, he told her to leave the room, and without demur, as I stood there grinning at her foolishly, she left. For that I hated him, and almost for spite I asked him seven thousand for the thing. He paid me seventy-five hundred, again in cash, and sent me on my way.

Two months passed before I went again, two months during which I still dreamed of her, still thought of her, wondered at whatever power she had over me, at what her life might have been before she married Hoogstraten and, indeed, why she had married him.

This time, again, she was in the room when I arrived, and again she spoke to me, nothing memorable, comments about the season possibly, or how very good I was to find another treasure for Andreas. Then, once more, he sent her out; and the performance was repeated. He first became wholly absorbed in what I’d brought—what was it? Half book, half Byzantine icon?-but written in a script completely alien to me, resembling none I’d seen before, which seemed to change as its pages turned, momentarily revealing illustrations that vanished almost instantly. He was delighted with it, and paid me far more than I would have dared to ask. Then, for the first time, he became almost friendly.

“Dennison,” he said, “where do these come from? Why were they made? Was it simply as a challenge to me, to my intellect? I have no doubt that some of them came from hidden cultures, arts not permitted to the masses, lost civilizations, perhaps even other worlds! But why? Again, I ask you, is it deliberate? A continuing contest? To see if I, Andreas Hoogstraten, have a breaking point?” He stood. From a skeletal cabinet as convoluted as the last agony of an El Greco saint, he lifted a vessel, which I had seen before, but which I had taken simply for some far-out potter’s drug-dream. He handed it to me. Perhaps a foot high, almost opaque, it was enormously heavy.

“Look at it, Dennison,” he said. “Do you know what it is?”

Up close, it looked like grayish glass, but with a higher lustre, and it was much, much heavier. Like any vase, it tapered to a neck, but there the resemblance ceased, for the neck doubled back on itself to penetrate the body halfway down and emerge again in a mouth melding with the other side.

“It is a Klein bottle, Dennison. Are you familiar with the Moebius Strip?”

“You mean a strip of paper you give a sort of twist to and then join its ends so that in effect it has one side only?”

“Exactly. Well, a Klein bottle is like that, only in three dimensions. Its inside is its outside and vice versa. Do you understand?”

I said I understood.

He took it from me, looked at it with an expression of mixed pride and anger. “I have drilled into it, Dennison. I have used a little instrument with which surgeons look into our bodies’ inmost secrets. Inside it is a complex of beautifully ground crystals, and what seem to be controls and things I cannot put a name to. So far, it is the only unknown thing that has defeated me. I have had it several years, and I know no more about it than when it came to me, but my getting it could not have been an accident. It was part of the test, the challenge.”

Shocked at his megalomania, I fumbled for something innocuous to say. “I—I suppose you have a pretty large collection by this time, Mr. Hoogstraten?”

He replaced the Klein bottle in the cabinet. “A large collection?” He said it with a sneer. “Dennison, I have always two or perhaps three. They do not defeat me for very long. Indeed, this is the only one I have had to keep for several years.”

“But what do you do with them?” I asked. “Do you give them away or sell them?”

“Certainly not. When I have solved them, when they have served their purpose, I destroy them. That is the only way for me perhaps to get revenge, you understand?”

Frankly, I was horrified. I started to protest that some of them were treasures, that they exhibited superb craftsmanship, that surely scientists would be interested in them.

He cut me off before I had three words out. “Never!” he cried. “When I have solved them, they are nothing! Nothing! They no longer have a soul!”

He paid me even more than he had previously, and exacted a promise that I’d keep hunting for him; and I left telling myself that no matter what I found, I’d never go back again.

It was five months before I did, just after I returned from my annual trip to England, and then it was because I knew I had to see her one more time. In a sense, she had never left me. I would wake at night from my Pre-Raphaelite dreams of her, despairing, wondering how ever she could have married him-not for his money, certainly. But why, why, why?

So I went back. The thing I’d found was simple—a crude tool, mysterious only in the fact that it had no discernible function. This time, when the man-servant admitted me, I saw that she wasn’t in the room, and all the while Hoogstraten examined what I’d brought him, I kept looking at the door through which she had come and gone, wishing, hoping.

Finally he rose. “I will take the tool,” he told me, “even though it is not of so high a quality. I shall pay four hundred only.”

I could control myself no longer. “I haven’t see Mrs. Hoogstraten,” I said, I hoped casually.

He stopped counting money. For moments, those cold, glistening pupils stared at me. Then, “No,” he said, ever so gently. “You see—” he smiled, “—I found out what she was.”

CAPTIVES OF THE FLAME, by Samuel R. Delany (Part 1)

PROLOGUE

The green of beetles’ wings…the red of polished carbuncle…a web of silver fire. Lightning tore his eyes apart, struck deep inside his body; and he felt his bones split. Before it became pain, it was gone. And he was falling through blue smoke. The smoke was inside him, cool as blown ice. It was getting darker.

He had heard something before, a…voice: the Lord of the Flames.… Then:

Jon Koshar shook his head, staggered forward, and went down on his knees in white sand. He blinked. He looked up. There were two shadows in front of him.

To his left a tooth of rock jutted from the sand, also casting a double shadow. He felt unreal, light. But the backs of his hands had real dirt on them, his clothes were damp with real sweat, and they clung to his back and sides. He felt immense. But that was because the horizon was so close. Above it, the sky was turquoise—which was odd because the sand was too white for it to be evening. Then he saw the City.

It hit his eyes with a familiarity that made him start. The familiarity was a refuge, and violently his mind clawed at it, tried to find other familiar things. But the towers, the looped roadways, that was all there was—and one small line of metal ribbon that soared out across the desert, supported by strut-work pylons. The transit ribbon! He followed it with his eyes, praying it would lead to something more familiar. The thirteenth pylon—he had counted them as he ran his eye along the silver length—was crumpled, as though a fist had smashed it. The transit ribbon snarled in mid-air and ceased. The abrupt end again sent his mind clawing back toward familiarity: I am Jon Koshar (followed by the meaningless number that had been part of his name for five years). I want to be free (and for a moment he saw again the dank, creosoted walls of the cabins of the penal camp, and heard the clinking chains of the cutter teeth as he had heard them for so many days walking to the mine entrance while the yard-high ferns brushed his thighs and forearms…but that was in his mind).

The only other things his scrambling brain could reach were facts of negation. He was some place he had never been before. He did not know how he had gotten there. He did not know how to get back. And the close horizon, the double shadows…now he realized that this wasnot Earth (Earth of the Thirty-fifth Century, although he gave it another name, Fifteenth Century G.F.).

But the City.… It was on earth, and he was on earth, and he was—had been—in it. Again the negations: the City was not on a desert, nor could its dead, deserted towers cast double shadows, nor was the transit ribbon broken.

The transit ribbon!

No!

It couldn’t be broken. He almost screamed. Don’t let it be broken, please.…

The entire scene was suddenly jerked from his head. There was nothing left but blue smoke, cool as blown ice, inside him, around him. He was spinning in blue smoke. Sudden lightning seared his eyeballs, and the shivering after-image faded, shifted, became … a web of silver fire, the red of polished carbuncle, the green of beetles’ wings.

CHAPTER I

Silent as a sleeping serpent for sixty years, it spanned from the heart of Telphar to the royal palace of Toromon. From the ashes of the dead city to the island capital, it connected what once had been the two major cities, the only cities of Toromon. Today there was only one.

In Telphar, it soared above ashes and fallen roadways into the night.

Miles on, the edge of darkness paled before the morning and in the faint shadow of the transit ribbon, at the edge of a field of lava, among the whispering, yard-high ferns, sat row on row of squat shacks, cheerless as roosting macaws. They stood near the entrance of the tetron mines.

A few moments before, the light rain had stopped. Water dribbled down the supporting columns of the transit ribbon which made a black band on the fading night.

Now, six extraordinarily tall men left the edge of the jungle. They carried two corpses among them. Two of the tall men hung back to converse.

“The third one won’t get very far.”

“If he does,” said the other, “he’ll be the first one to get through the forest guards in twelve years.”

“I’m not worried about his escaping,” said the first. “But why have there been such an increase in attempts over the past year?”

The other one laughed. Even in the dull light, the three scars that ran down the side of his face and neck were visible. “The orders for tetron have nearly doubled.”

“I wonder just what sort of leeches in Toron make their living off these miserable—” He didn’t finish, but pointed ahead to the corpses.

“The hydroponic growers, the aquarium manufacturers,” answered the man with the scars. “They’re the ones who use the ore. Then, of course, there’s the preparation for the war.”

“They say that since the artificial food growers have taken over, the farmers and fishermen near the coast are being starved out. And with the increased demand for tetron, the miners are dying off like flies here at the mine. Sometimes I wonder how they supply enough prisoners.”

“They don’t,” said the other. Now he called out. “All right. Just drop them there, in front of the cabins.”

The rain had made the ground mud. Two dull splashes came through the graying morning. “Maybe that’ll teach them some sort of lesson,” said the first.

“Maybe,” shrugged the one with the scars.

Now they turned back toward the jungle.

* * * *

Soon, streaks of light speared the yellow clouds and pried apart the billowing rifts. Shafts of yellow sank into the lush jungles of Toromon, dropping from wet, green fronds, or catching on the moist cracks of boulders. Then the dawn snagged on the metal ribbon that arced over the trees, and webs of shadow from the immense supporting pylons fell across the few, gutted lava beds that dotted the forest.

A formation of airships flashed through a tear in the clouds like a handful of hurled, silver chips. As the buzz from their tetron motors descended through the trees, Quorl, the forest guard, stretched his seven-foot body and rolled over, crushing leaves beneath his shoulder. Instinctively his stomach tensed. But silence had returned. With large, yellow-brown eyes, he looked about the grove in which he had spent the night. His broad nostrils flared even wider. But the air was still, clean, safe. Above, the metal ribbon glinted. Quorl lay back on the dried leaves once more.

* * * *

As dawn slipped across the jungle, more and more of the ribbon caught fire from beneath the receding shadows, till at last it soared above the yellow crescent of sand that marked the edge of the sea.

Fifty yards down the beach from the last supporting pylon whose base still sat on dry land, Cithon, the fisherman, emerged from his shack.

“Tel?” he called. He was a brown, wiry man whose leathery face was netted with lines from sand and wind. “Tel?” he called once more. Now he turned back into the cottage. “And where has the boy gotten off to now?”

Grella had already seated herself at the loom, and her strong hands now began to work the shuttle back and forth while her feet stamped the treadle.

“Where has he gone?” Cithon demanded.

“He went out early this morning,” Grella said quietly. She did not look at her husband. She watched the shuttle moving back and forth, back and forth between the green and yellow threads.

“I can see he’s gone out,” Cithon snapped. “But where? The sun is up. He should be out with me on the boat. When will he be back?”

Grella didn’t answer.

“When will he be back?” Cithon demanded.

“I don’t know.”

Outside there was a sound, and Cithon turned abruptly and went to the side of the shack.

The boy was leaning over the water trough, sloshing his face.

“Tel.”

The boy looked up quickly at his father. He was perhaps fourteen, a thin child, with a shock of black hair, yet eyes as green as the sea. Fear had widened them now.

“Where were you?”

“No place,” was the boy’s quietly defensive answer. “I wasn’t doing anything.”

“Where were you?”

“No place,” Tel mumbled again. “Just walking.…”

Suddenly Cithon’s hand, which had been at his waist jerked up and then down, and the leather strap that had been his belt slashed over the boy’s wet shoulder.

The only sound was a sudden intake of breath.

“Now get down to the boat.”

Inside the shack, the shuttle paused in Grella’s fist the length of a drawn breath. Then it shot once more between the threads.

* * * *

Down the beach, the transit ribbon leapt across the water. Light shook on the surface of the sea like flung diamonds, and the ribbon above was dull by comparison.

Dawn reached across the water till at last the early light fell on the shore of an island. High in the air, the ribbon gleamed above the busy piers and the early morning traffic of the wharf. Behind the piers, the towers of the City were lanced with gold, and as the sun rose, gold light dropped further down the building faces.

On the boardwalk, two merchants were talking above the roar of tetron-powered winches and chuckling carts.

“It looks like your boat’s bringing in a cargo of fish,” said the stout one.

“It could be fish. It could be something else,” answered the other.

“Tell me, friend,” asked the portly one, whose coat was of cut and cloth expensive enough to suggest his guesses were usually right, “why do you trouble to send your boat all the way to the mainland to buy from the little fishermen there? My aquariums can supply the City with all the food it needs.”

The other merchant looked down at the clip-board of inventory slips.

“Perhaps my clientele is somewhat different from yours.”

The first merchant laughed. “You sell to the upper families of the City, who still insist on the doubtful superiority of your imported delicacies. Did you know, my friend, I am superior in every way to you? I feed more people, so what I produce is superior to what you produce. I charge them less money, and so I am financially more benevolent than you. I make more money than you do, so I am also financially superior. Also, later this morning my daughter is coming back from the university, and this evening I will give her a party so great and so lavish that she will love me more than any daughter has ever loved a father before.”

Here the self-satisfied merchant laughed again, and turned down the wharf to inspect a cargo of tetron ore that was coming in from the mainland.

As the merchant of imported fish turned up another inventory slip, another man approached him. “What was old Koshar laughing about?” he asked.

“He was gloating over his good fortune in backing that hairbrained aquarium idea. He was also trying to make me jealous of his daughter. He’s giving her a party tonight to which I am no doubt invited; but the invitation will come late this afternoon with no time for me to reply properly.”

The other man shook his head. “He’s a proud man. But you can bring him to his place. Next time he mentions his daughter, ask him about his son, and watch the shame storm into his face.”

“He may be proud,” said the other, “but I am not cruel. Why should I move to hurt him? Time takes care of her own. This coming war will see.”

“Perhaps,” said the other merchant. “Perhaps.”

* * * *

Once over the island city of Toron, capital of Toromon, the transit ribbon breaks from its even course and bends among the towers, weaves among the elevated highways, till finally it crosses near a wide splash of bare concrete, edged with block-long aircraft hangars. Several airships had just arrived, and at one of the passenger gates the people waiting for arrivals crowded closely to the metal fence.

Among them was one young man in military uniform. A brush of red hair, eyes that seemed doubly dark in his pale face, along with a squat, taurine power in his legs and shoulders; these were what struck you in the swift glance. A close look brought you the incongruity of the major’s insignia and his obvious youth.

He watched the passengers coming through the gate with more than military interest.

Someone called, “Tomar!”

And he turned, a grin leaping to his face.

“Tomar,” she called again. “I’m over here.”

A little too bumptiously, he rammed through the crowd until at last he almost collided with her. Then he stopped, looking bewildered and happy.

“Gee, I’m glad you came,” she said. “Come on. You can walk me back to father’s.” Her black hair fell close to broad, nearly oriental cheekbones. Then the smile on her first strangely, then attractively pale mouth fell.

Tomar shook his head, as they turned now, arm in arm, among the people wandering over the field.

“No?” she asked. “Why not?”

“I don’t have time, Clea,” he answered. “I had to sneak an hour off just to get here. I’m supposed to be back at the Military Ministry in forty minutes. Hey, do you have any bags I can carry?”

Clea held up a slide rule and a notebook. “I’m traveling light. In a week I’ll be back at the university for summer courses, so I didn’t bring any clothes. Wait a minute. You’re not going to be too busy to get to the party Dad’s giving me tonight, are you?”

Tomar shrugged.

Clea began a word, but pushed her tongue hard against the roof of her mouth. “Tomar?” she asked after a moment.

“Yes?” He had a rough voice, which, when he was sad, took on the undertones of a bear’s growl.

“What’s happening about the war? Will there really be one?”

Again he shrugged. “More soldiers, more planes, and at the Ministry there’s more and more work to do. I was up before dawn this morning getting a fleet of survey planes off for a scouting trip to the mainland over the radiation barrier. If they come back this evening, I’ll be busy all night with the reports and I won’t be able to make the party.

“Oh,” said Clea. “Tomar?”

“Yes, Clea Koshar?”

“Oh, don’t be formal with me, please. You’ve been in the City long enough and known me long enough. Tomar, if the war comes, do you think they’ll draft prisoners from the tetron mines into the army?”

“They talk about it.”

“Because my brother.…”

“I know,” said Tomar.

“And if a prisoner from the mines distinguished himself as a soldier, would he be freed at the end of the war? They wouldn’t send him back to the mines, would they?”

“The war hasn’t even begun yet,” said Tomar. “No one knows how it will end.”

“You’re right,” she said, “as usual.” They reached the gate. “Look, Tomar, I don’t want to keep you if you’re busy. But you’ve got to promise to come see me and spend at least an afternoon before I go back to school.”

“If the war starts, you won’t be going back to school.”

“Why not?”

“You already have your degree in theoretical physics. Now you’re only doing advanced work. Not only will they conscript prisoners from the mines, but all scientists, engineers, and mathematicians will have to lend their efforts to the cause as well.”

“I was afraid of that,” Clea said. “You believe the war will actually come, don’t you, Tomar?”

“They get ready for it night and day,” Tomar said. “What is there to stop it? When I was a boy on my father’s farm on the mainland, there was too much work, and no food. I was a strong boy, with a strong boy’s stomach. I came to the City and I took my strength to the army. Now I have work that I like. I’m not hungry. With the war, there will be work for a lot more people. Your father will be richer. Your brother may come back to you, and even the thieves and beggars in the Devil’s Pot will have a chance to do some honest work.”

“Perhaps,” said Clea. “Look, like I said, I don’t want to keep you—I mean I do, but. Well, when will you have some time?”

“Probably tomorrow afternoon.”

“Fine,” said Clea. “We’ll have a picnic then, all right?”

Tomar grinned. “Yes,” he said. “Yes.” He took both her hands, and she smiled back at him. Then he turned away, and was gone through the crowd.

Clea watched a moment, and then turned toward the taxi stand. The sun was beginning to warm the air as she pushed into the shadow of the great transit ribbon that soared above her between the towers.

* * * *

Buildings dropped bands of shadow across the ribbon, as it wound through the city, although occasional streaks of light from an eastward street still made silver half-rings around it. At the center of the city it raised a final two hundred feet and entered the window of the laboratory tower in the west wing of the royal palace of Toron.

The room in which the transit ribbon ended was deserted. At the end of the metal band was a transparent crystal sphere, fifteen feet in diameter which hovered above the receiving platform. A dozen small tetron units of varying sizes sat around the room. The viewing screens were dead gray. On a control panel by one ornate window, a bank of forty-nine scarlet-knobbed switches pointed to off. The metal catwalks that ran over the receiving platform were empty.

In another room of the palace, however, someone was screaming.

“Tetron!”

“…if your Highness would only wait a moment to hear the report,” began the aged minister, “I believe.…”

“Tetron!”

“…you would understand the necessity,” he continued in an amazingly calm voice, “of disturbing you at such an ungodly hour…”

“I never want to hear the word tetron again!”

“…of the morning.”

“Go away, Chargill; I’m sleeping!” King Uske, who had just turned twenty-one though he had been the official ruler of Toromon since the age of seven, jammed his pale blond head beneath three over-stuffed pillows that lay about the purple silken sheets of his bed. With one too-slender hand he sought feebly around for the covers to hide himself completely.

The old minister quietly picked up the edge of the ermine-rimmed coverlet and held it out of reach. After several half-hearted swipes, the pale head emerged once more and asked in a coldly quiet voice, “Chargill, why is it that roads have been built, prisoners have been reprieved, and traitors have been disemboweled at every hour of the afternoon and evening without anyone expressing the least concern for what I thought? Now, suddenly, at—” Uske peered at the jewel-crusted chronometer by his bed in which a shimmering gold light fixed the hour, “—my God, ten o’clock in the morning! Why must I suddenly be consulted at every little twist and turn of empire?”

“First,” explained Chargill, “you are now of age. Secondly, we are about to enter a war, and in times of stress, responsibility is passed to the top, and you, sir, are in the unfortunate position.”

“Why can’t we have a war and get it over with?” said Uske, rolling over to face Chargill and becoming a trifle more amenable. “I’m tired of all this idiocy. You don’t think I’m a very good king, do you?” The young man sat up and planted his slender feet as firmly as possible on the three-inch thick fur rug. “Well, if we had a war,” he continued, scratching his stomach through his pink sateen pajama top, “I’d ride in the first line of fire, in the most splendid uniform imaginable, and lead my soldiers to a sweeping victory.” At the word sweeping, he threw himself under the covers.

“Commendable sentiment,” stated Chargill dryly. “And seeing that there may just be a war before the afternoon arrives, why don’t you listen to the report, which merely says that another scouting flight of planes has been crippled trying to observe the enemy just beyond the tetron mines over the radiation barrier.”

“Let me continue it for you. No one knows how the planes have been crippled, but the efficacy of their methods has lead the council to suggest that we consider the possibility of open war even more strongly. Isn’t this more or less what the reports have been for weeks?”

“It is,” replied Chargill.

“Then why bother me. Incidentally, must we really go to that imbecilic party for that stupid fish-peddler’s daughter this evening? And talk about tetron as little as possible, please.”

“I need not remind you,” went on the patient Chargill, “that this stupid fish-peddler has amassed a fortune nearly as large as that in the royal treasury—though I doubt if he is aware of the comparison—through the proper exploitation of the unmentionable metal. If there is a war, and we should need to borrow funds, it should be done with as much good will as possible. Therefore, you will attend his party to which he has so kindly invited you.”

“Listen a minute, Chargill,” said Uske. “And I’m being serious now. This war business is completely ridiculous, and if you expect me to take it seriously, then the council is going to have to take it seriously. How can we have a war with whatever is behind the radiation barrier? We don’t know anything about it. Is it a country? Is it a city? Is it an empire? We don’t even know if it’s got a name. We don’t know how they’ve crippled our scouting planes. We can’t monitor any radio communication. Of course we couldn’t do that anyway with the radiation barrier. We don’t even know if it’s people. One of our silly planes gets its tetron (Pardon me. If you can’t say it, I shouldn’t say it either.) device knocked out and a missile hurled at it. Bango! The council says war. Well, I refuse to take it seriously. Why do we keep on wasting planes anyway? Why not send a few people through the transit ribbon to do some spying?”

Chargill looked amazed.

“Before we instituted the penal mines, and just after we annexed the forest people, the transit ribbon was built. Correct? Now, where does it go?”

“Into the dead city of Telphar,” answered Chargill.

“Exactly. And Telphar was not at all dead when we built it, sixty years ago. The radiation hadn’t progressed that far. Well, why not send spies into Telphar and from there, across the barrier and into enemy territory. Then they can come back and tell us everything.” Uske smiled.

“Of course your Majesty is joking.” Chargill smiled. “May I remind your Majesty that the radiation level in Telphar today is fatal to human beings. Completely fatal. The enemy seems to be well beyond the barrier. Only recently, with the great amount of tetron—eh, excuse me—coming from the mines have we been able to develop planes that can perhaps go over it. And that, when and if we can do it, is the only way.”

Uske had started out smiling. It turned to a giggle. Then to a laugh. Suddenly he cried out and threw himself down on the bed. “Nobody listens to me! Nobody takes any of my suggestions!” He moaned and stuck his head under the pillows. “No one does anything but contradict me. Go away. Get out. Let me sleep.”

Chargill sighed and withdrew from the royal bedchamber.

CHAPTER II

It had been silent for sixty years. Then, above the receiving stage in the laboratory tower of the royal place of Toromon, the great transparent crystal sphere glowed.

On the stage a blue haze shimmered. Red flame shot through the mist, a net of scarlet, contracting, pulsing, outlining the recognizable patterning of veins and arteries. Among the running fires, the shadow of bones formed a human skeleton in the blue, till suddenly the shape was laced with sudden silver, the net of nerves that held the body imprisoned in sensation. The blue became opaque. Then the black-haired man, barefooted, in rags, staggered forward to the rail and held on for a moment. Above, the crystal faded.

He blinked his eyes hard before he looked up. He looked around. “All right,” he said out loud. “Where the hell are you?” He paused. “Okay. Okay. I know. I’m not supposed to get dependent on you. I guess I’m all right now, aren’t I?” Another pause. “Well, I feel fine.” He let go of the rail and looked at his hands, back and palms. “Dirty as hell,” he mumbled. “Wonder where I can get washed up.” He looked up. “Yeah, sure. Why not?” He ducked under the railing and vaulted to the floor. Once again he looked around. “So I’m really in the castle. After all these years. I never thought I’d see it. Yeah, I guess it really is.”

He started forward, but as he passed under the shadow of the great ribbon’s end, something happened.

He faded.

At least the exposed parts of his body—head, hands, and feet—faded. He stopped and looked down. Through his ghost-like feet, he could see the rivets that held down the metal floor. He made a disgusted face, and continued toward the door. Once in the sunlight, he solidified again.

There was no one in the hall. He walked along, ignoring the triptych of silver partitions that marked the consultant chamber. A stained glass window further on rotated by silent machinery flung colors over his face as he passed. A golden disk chronometer fixed in the ceiling behind a carved crystal face said ten-thirty.

Suddenly he stopped in front of a book cabinet and opened the glass door. “Here’s the one,” he said out loud again. “Yeah, I know we haven’t got time, but it will explain it to you better than I can.” He pulled a book from the row of books. “We used this in school,” he said. “A long time ago.”

The book was Catham’s Revised History of Toromon. He opened the sharkskin cover and flipped a few pages into the text.

“…from a few libraries that survived the Great Fire (from which we will date all subsequent events). Civilization was reduced beyond barbarism. But eventually the few survivors on the Island of Toron established a settlement, a village, a city. Now they pushed to the mainland, and the shore became the central source of food for the island’s population which now devoted itself to manufacturing. On the coast, farms and fishing villages flourished. On the island, science and industry became sudden factors in the life of Toromon, now an empire.

“Beyond the plains at the coast, explorers discovered the forest people who lived in the strip of jungle that held in its crescent the stretch of mainland. They were a mutant breed, gigantic in physical stature, peaceful in nature. They quickly became part of Toromon’s empire, with no resistance.

“Beyond the jungle were the gutted fields of lava and dead earth, and it was here that the strange metal tetron was discovered. A great empire has a great crime rate, and our penal system was used to supply miners for the tetron. Now technology leaped ahead, and we developed many uses for the power that could be released from the tetron.

“Then, beyond the lava fields, we discovered what it was that had enlarged the bodies of the forest people, what it was that had killed all green things beyond the jungle. Lingering from the days of the Great Fire, a wide strip of radioactive land still burned all around the lava fields, cutting us off from further expansion.

“Going toward that field of death, the plants became gnarled, distorted caricatures of themselves. Then only rock. Death was long if a man ventured in and came back. First immense thirst; then the skin dries out; blindness, fever, madness, at last death; this is what awaited the transgressor.

“It was at the brink of the radiation barrier, in defiance of death, that Telphar was established. It was far enough away to be safe, yet near enough to see the purple glow at the horizon over the broken hills. At the same time, experiments were being conducted with elementary matter transmission, and as a token to this new direction of science, the transit ribbon was commissioned to link the two cities. It was more a gesture of the solidarity of Toromon’s empire than a practical appliance. Only three or four hundred pounds of matter could be sent at once, or two or three people. The transportation was instantaneous, and portended a future of great exploration to any part of the world, with theoretical travel to the stars.

“Then, at seven thirty-two on an autumn evening, sixty years ago, a sudden increase in the pale light was observed in the radiation-saturated west by the citizens of Telphar. Seven hours later the entire sky above Telphar was flickering with streaks of pale blue and yellow. Evacuation had begun already. But in three days, Telphar was dead. The sudden rise in radiation has been attributed to many things in theory, but as yet, an irrefutable explanation is still wanted.

“The advance of the radiation stopped well before the tetron mines; however, Telphar was not lost to Toron for good, and…”

Jon suddenly closed the book. “You see?” he said. “That’s why I was afraid when I saw where I was. That’s why…” He stopped, shrugged. “You’re not listening,” he said, and put the book back on the shelf.

Down the hallway fifty feet, two ornate stairways branched right and left. He waited with his hands shoved into his pockets, looking absently toward another window, like a person waiting for someone else to make up his mind. But the decision was not forthcoming. At last, belligerently he started up the stairway to the left. Halfway up he became a little more cautious, his bare feet padding softly, his broad hand preceding him wearily on the banister.

He turned down another hallway where carved busts and statues sat in niches in the walls, a light glowing blue behind those to the left, yellow behind those to the right. A sound from around a corner sent him behind a pink marble mermaid playing with a garland of seaweed.

The old man who walked by was carrying a folder and looked serenely and patiently preoccupied.

Jon waited without breathing the space of three ordinary breaths. Then he ducked out and sprinted down the hall. At last he stopped before a group of doors. “Which one?” he demanded.

This time he must have gotten an answer, because he went to one, opened it, and slipped in.

* * * *

Uske had pulled the silken sheet over his head. He heard several small clicks and tiny brushing noises, but they came through the fog of sleep that had been washing back over him since Chargill’s departure. The first sound definite enough to wake him was water against tile. He listened to it for nearly two minutes through the languid veil of fatigue. It was only when it stopped that he frowned, pushed back the sheet, and sat up. The door to his private bath was open. The light was off, but someone, or thing, was apparently finishing a shower. The windows of his room were covered with thick drapes, but he hesitated to push the button that would reel them back from the sun.

He heard the rings of the shower curtain sliding along the shower rod; the rattle of the towel rack; silence; a few whistled notes. Suddenly he saw that dark spots were forming on the great fur rug that sprawled across the black stone floor. One after another—footprints! Incorporeal footprints were coming toward him slowly.

When they were about four feet away from his bed, he slammed the flat of his palm on the button that drew back the curtains. Sunlight filled the room like bright water.

And standing in the last pair of footprints was the sudden, naked figure of a man. He leaped at Uske as the King threw himself face down into the mound of pillows and tried to scream at the same time. Immediately he was caught, pulled up, and the edge of a hand was thrust into his open mouth so that when he bit down, he chomped the inside of his cheeks.

“Will you keep still, stupid?” a voice whispered behind him. The King went limp.

“There, now just a second.”

A hand reached past Uske’s shoulder, pressed the button on the night table by the bed, and the curtains swept across the window. The hand went out as if it had been a flame.

“Now you keep still and be quiet.”

The pressure released and the King felt the bed give as the weight lifted. He held still for a moment. Then he whirled around. There wasn’t anyone there.

“Where do you keep your clothes, huh? You always were about my size.”

“Over there…there in that closet.”

The bodiless footprints padded over the fur rug, and the closet door opened. Hangers slid along the rack. The bureau at the back of the closet was opened. “This’ll do fine. I didn’t think I was ever going to get into decent clothes again. Just a second.”

There was the sound of tearing thread.

“This jacket will fit me all right, once I get these shoulder pads out of it.”

Something came out of the closet, dressed now: a human form, only without head or hands.

“Now that I’m decent, open up those curtains and throw some light around the place.” The standing suit of clothes waited. “Well, come on, open the curtains.”

Slowly Uske reached for the button. A freshly shaven young man with black hair stood in the sunlight, examining his cuffs. An open brocade jacket with metal-work filigree covered a white silk shirt that laced over a wide V-neck. The tight gray trousers were belted with a broad strip of black leather and fastened with a gold disk. The black boots, opened at the toe and the heel, were topped with similar disks. Jon Koshar looked around. “It’s good to be back.”

“Who…what are you?” whispered Uske.

“Loyal subject of the crown,” said Jon, “you squid-brained clam.”

Uske sputtered.

“Think back about five years to when you and I were in school together.”

A flicker of recognition showed in the blond face.

“You remember a kid who was a couple of years ahead of you, and got you out of a beating when the kids in the mechanics class were going to gang up on you because you’d smashed a high-frequency coil, on purpose. And remember you dared that same kid to break into the castle and steal the royal Herald from the throne room? In fact, you gave him the fire-blade to do it, too. Only that wasn’t mentioned in the trial. Did you also alert the guards that I was coming? I was never quite sure of that part.”

“Look…” began Uske. “You’re crazy.”

“I might have been a little crazy then. But five years out in the tetron mines has brought me pretty close to my senses.”

“You’re a murderer.…”

“It was in self-defense, and you know it. Those guards that converged on me weren’t kidding. I didn’t kill him on purpose. I just didn’t want to get my head seared off.”

“So you seared one of their heads off first. Jon Koshar, I think you’re crazy. What are you doing here anyway?”

“It would take too long to explain. But believe me, the last thing I came back for was to see you again.”

“So you come in, steal my clothing” Suddenly he laughed. “Oh, of course. I’m dreaming all this. How silly of me. I must be dreaming.”

Jon frowned.

Uske went on. “I must be feeling guilty about that whole business when we were kids. You keep on disappearing and appearing. You can’t possibly be more than a figment of my imagination. Koshar! The name! Of course. That’s the name of the people who are giving the party that I’m going to once I wake up. That’s the reason for the whole thing.”

“What party?” Jon demanded.

“Your father is giving it for your sister. Yes, that’s right. You had quite a pretty sister. I’m going back to sleep now. And when I wake up, you’re to be gone, do you understand? What a silly dream.”

“Just a moment. Why are you going?”

Uske snuggled his head into the pillow. “Apparently your father has managed to amass quite a fortune. Chargill says I have to treat him kindly so we can borrow money from him later on. Unless I’m dreaming that up too.”

“You’re not dreaming.”

Uske opened one eye, closed it again. And rolled over onto the pillow. “Tell that to my cousin, the Duchess of Petra. She was dragged all the way from her island estate to come to this thing. The only people who are getting out of it are mother and my kid brother. Lucky starfish.”

“Go back to sleep,” said Jon.

“Go away,” said Uske. He opened his eyes once more to see Jon push the button that pulled the curtains. And then the headless, handless figure went to the door and out. Uske shivered and pulled the covers up again.

* * * *

Jon walked down the hall.

Behind the door to one room that he did not enter, the red-headed Duchess of Petra was standing by the window of her apartment, gazing over the roofs of the city, the great houses of the wealthy merchants and manufacturers, over the hive-like buildings which housed the city’s doctors, clerks, secretaries, and storekeepers, down to the reeking clapboard and stone alleys of the Devil’s Pot.

The early sun lay flame in her hair and whitened her pale face. She pushed the window open a bit, and the breeze waved her blue robe as she absently fingered a smoky crystal set in a silver chain around her neck.

* * * *

Jon continued down the hall.

Three doors away, the old queen lay on the heap of over-stuffed mattresses, nestled in the center of an immense four-poster bed. Her white hair was coiled in two buns on either side of her head, her mouth was slightly open and a faint breath hissed across the white lips. On the wall above the bed hung the portrait of the late King Alsen, sceptered, official, and benevolent.

* * * *

In a set of rooms just beside the queen mother’s chamber, Let, Prince of the Royal Blood, Heir Apparent to the Empire of Toromon, and half a dozen more, was sitting in just his pajama top on the edge of his bed, knuckling his eyes.

The thin limbs of the thirteen-year-old were still slightly akimbo with natural awkwardness and sleep. Like his brother, he was blond and slight.

Still blinking, he slipped into his underwear and trousers, pausing a moment to check his watch. He fastened the three snaps on his shirt, turned to the palace intercom, and pressed a button.

“I overslept, Petra,” Let apologized. “Anyway, I’m up now.”

“You must learn to be on time. Remember, you are heir to the throne of Toromon. You mustn’t forget that.”

“Sometimes I wish I could,” replied Let. “Sometimes.”

“Never say that again,” came the sudden command through the tiny intercom. “Do you hear me? Never even let yourself think that for a moment.”

“I’m sorry, Petra,” Let said. His cousin, the Duchess, had been acting strangely since her arrival two days ago. Fifteen years his senior, she was still the member of the family to whom he felt closest. Usually, with her, he could forget the crown that was always being pointed to as it dangled above his head. His brother was not very healthy, nor even—as some rumored—all in his proper mind. Yet now it was Petra herself who was pointing out the gold circlet of Toromon’s kingship. It seemed a betrayal. “Anyway,” he went on. “Here I am. What did you want?”

“To say good morning.” The smile in the voice brought a smile to Let’s face too. “Do you remember that story I told you last night, about the prisoners in the tetron mines?”

“Sure,” said Let, who had fallen asleep thinking about it. “The ones who were planning an escape.” She had sat in the garden with him for an hour after dark, regaling him with the harrowing details of three prisoners’ attempt to escape the penal mines. She had terminated it at the height of suspense with the three men crouching by the steps in the darkness and the drizzling rain, waiting to make their dash into the forest. “You said you were going to go on with it this morning.”

“Do you really want to hear the end of the story?”

“Of course I do. I couldn’t get to sleep for hours thinking about it.”

“Well,” said Petra, “when the guard changed, and the rope tripped him up when he was coming down the steps, the rear guard ran around to see what had happened, as planned, and they dashed through the searchlight beam, into the forest, and…” She paused. “Anyway, one of them made it. The other two were caught and killed.”

“Huh?” said Let. “Is that all?”

“That’s about it,” said Petra.

“What do you mean?” Let demanded. Last night’s version had contained detail upon detail of the prisoners’ treatment, their efforts to dig a tunnel, the precautions they took, along with an uncannily vivid description of the scenery that had made him shiver as though he had been in the leaky, rotten-walled shacks. “You can’t just finish it up like that,” he exclaimed. “How did they get caught? Which one got away? Was it the chubby one with the freckles? How did they die?”

“Unpleasantly,” Petra answered. “No, the chubby one with the freckles didn’t make it. They brought him, and the one with the limp, back that morning in the rain and dropped them in the mud outside the barracks to discourage further escape attempts.”

“Oh,” said Let. “What about the one who did make it?” he asked after a moment.

Instead of answering, she said, “Let, I want to give you a warning.” The prince stiffened a bit, but she began differently than he expected. “Let, in a little while, you may be going on quite an adventure, and you may want to forget some things, because it will be easier. Like being the prince of Toromon. But don’t forget it, Let. Don’t.”

“What sort of adventure, Petra?”

Again she did not answer his question. “Let, do you remember how I described the prison to you? What would you do if you were king and those prisoners were under your rule, with their rotten food, the rats, their fourteen hours of labor a day in the mines…”

“Well, I don’t know, Petra,” he began, feeling as if something were being asked of him that he was reluctant to give. It was like when his history teacher expected him to know the answer on a question of government just because he had been born into it. “I suppose I’d have to consult the council, and see what Chargill said. It would depend on the individual prisoners, and what they’d done; and of course how the people felt about it. Chargill always says you shouldn’t do things too quickly…”

“I know what Chargill says,” said the Duchess quietly. “Just remember what I’ve said, will you?”

“What about the third man, the one who escaped?”

“He…came back to Toron.”

“He must have had a lot more adventures. What happened to him, Petra? Come on, tell me.”

“Actually,” said Petra, “he managed to bypass most of the adventures. He came very quickly. Let me see. After they dashed across the searchlit area, they ducked into the jungle. Almost immediately the three got separated. The black-haired one got completely turned around, and wandered in the wrong direction until he had gone past the mines, out of the forest, and across the rocky stretch of ground beyond a good five miles. By the time it was light enough to see, he suddenly realized he had been wandering toward the radiation barrier; because in the distance, like a black skeleton on the horizon, were the abandoned ruins of Telphar, the Dead City.”

“Shouldn’t he have been dead from the radiation?”

“That’s exactly what he figured. In fact, he figured if he was close enough to see the place, he should have been dead a few miles back. He was tired. The food they’d taken kept him from being hungry. But he was definitely alive. Finally he decided that he might as well go toward the city. He took two steps more, when suddenly he heard something.”

There was silence over the intercom.

After he had allowed sufficient time for a dramatic pause, Let asked, “What was it? What did he hear?”

“If you ever hear it,” Petra said, “you’ll know it.”

“Come on, Petra, what was it?”

“I’m quite serious,” Petra said. “That’s all I know of the story. And that’s all you need to know. Maybe I’ll be able to finish it when I come back from the party tonight.”

“Please, Petra…”

“That’s it.”

He paused for a minute. “Petra, is the adventure I’m supposed to have, the war? Is that why you’re reminding me not to forget?”

“I wish it were that simple, Let. Let’s say that’s part of it.”

“Oh,” said Let.

“Just promise to remember the story, and what I’ve said.”

“I will,” said Let, wondering. “I will.”

* * * *

Jon walked down a long spiral staircase, nodded to the guard at the foot, passed into the castle garden, paused to squint at the sun, and went out the gate. Getting in was a lot more difficult.

CHAPTER III

The Devil’s Pot overturned its foul jelly at the city’s edge. Thirteen alleys lined with old stone houses was its nucleus; many of them were ruined, built over, and ruined again. These were the oldest structures in Toron. Thick with humanity and garbage, it reached from the waterfront to the border of the hive houses in which lived the clerks and professionals of Toron. Clapboard alternated with hastily constructed sheet-metal buildings with no room between. The metal rusted; the clapboard sagged. The waterfront housed the temporary prison, the immigration offices, and the launch service that went out to the aquariums and hydroponics plants that floated on vast pontoons three miles away.

At the dock, a frog-like, sooty hulk had pulled in nearly an hour ago. But the passengers were only being allowed to come ashore now, and that after passing their papers through the inspection of a row of officials who sat behind a wooden table. A flimsy, waist-high structure of boards separated the passengers from the people on the wharf. The passengers milled.

A few had bundles. Many had nothing. They stood quietly, or ambled aimlessly. On the waterfront street, the noise was thunderous. Peddlers hawking, pushcarts trundling, the roar of arguing voices. Some passengers gazed across the fence at the sprawling slum. Most did not.

As they filed past the officers and onto the dock, a woman with a box of trinkets and a brown-red birthmark splashed over the left side of her face pushed among the new arrivals. Near fifty, she wore a dress and head rag, that were a well-washed, featureless gray.

“And would you like to buy a pair of shoelaces, fine strong ones,” she accosted a young man who returned a bewildered smile of embarrassment.

“I…I don’t got any money,” he stammered, though complimented by the attention.

Rara glanced down at his feet. “Apparently you have no shoes either. Well, good luck here in the New World, the Island of Opportunity.” She brushed by him and aimed toward a man and woman who carried a bundle composed of a hoe, a rake, a shovel, and a baby. “A picture,” she said, digging into her box, “of our illustrious majesty, King Uske, with a real metal frame, hand-painted in miniature in honor of his birthday. No true cosmopolitan patriot can be without one.”

The woman with the baby leaned over to see the palm-sized portrait of a vague young man with blond hair and a crown. “Is that really the king?”

“Of course it is,” declared the birthmarked vendress. “He sat for it in person. Look at that noble face. It would be a real inspiration to the little one there, when and if he grows up.”

“How much is it?” the woman asked.

Her husband frowned.

“For a hand-painted picture,” said Rara, “it’s very cheap. Say, half a unit?”

“It’s pretty,” said the woman, then caught the frown on the man’s face. She dropped her eyes and shook her head.

Suddenly the man, from somewhere, thrust a half-unit piece into Rara’s hand. “Here.” He took the picture and handed it to his wife. As she looked at it, he nodded his head. “It is pretty,” he said. “Yes. It is.”

“Good luck here in the New World,” commented Rara. “Welcome to the Island of Opportunity.” Turning, she drew out the next gee-gaw her hand touched, glanced at it long enough to see what it was, and said to the man she now faced. “I see you could certainly use a spool of fine thread to good purpose.” She pointed to a hole in his sleeve. “There.” A brown shoulder showed through his shirt, further up. “And there.”

“I could use a needle too,” he answered her. “And I could use a new shirt, and a bucket of gold.” Suddenly he spat. “I’ve as much chance of getting one as the other with what I’ve got in my pocket.”

“Oh, surely a spool of fine, strong thread…”

Suddenly someone pushed her from behind. “All right. Move on, lady. You can’t peddle here.”

“I certainly can,” exclaimed Rara, whirling. “I’ve got my license right here. Just let me find it now.…”

“Nobody has a license to peddle in front of the immigration building. Now move on.”

“Good luck in the New Land,” she called over her shoulder as the officer forced her away. “Welcome to the Island of Opportunity!”

Suddenly a commotion started behind the gate. Someone was having trouble with papers. Then a dark-haired, barefoot boy broke from his place in line, ran to the wooden gate, and vaulted over. The wooden structure was flimsy. As the boy landed, feet running, the fence collapsed.

Behind the fence they hesitated like an unbroken wave. Then they came. At the table the officials stood up, waved their hands, shouted, then stood on their benches and shouted some more. The officer who had shoved the vending woman disappeared in the wash of bodies.

Rara clutched her box of trinkets and scurried to the corner, then melded with the herding crowd for two blocks into the slums.

“Rara!”

She stopped and looked around. “Oh, there you are,” she said, joining a young girl who stood back from the crowd, holding a box of trinkets like the other woman’s.

“Rara, what happened?”

The birthmarked woman laughed. “You are watching the beginning of the transformation. Fear, hunger, a little more fear, no work, more fear, and every last one of these poor souls will be a first class, grade-A citizen of the Devil’s Pot. How much did you sell?”

“Just a couple of units worth,” the girl answered. She was perhaps sixteen, with a strange combination of white hair, blue eyes, and skin that had tanned richly and quickly, giving her the large-eyed look of an exotic snow-maned animal. “Why are they running?”

“Some boy started a panic. The fence gave way and the rest followed him.” A second surge of people rounded the corner. “Welcome to the New Land, the Island of Opportunity,” Rara called out. Then she laughed.

“Where are they all going to go?” Alter asked.

“Into the holes in the ground, into the cracks in the street. The lucky men will get into the army. But even that won’t absorb them all. The women, the children…?” She shrugged.

Just then a boy’s voice came from halfway down the block. “Hey!”

They turned.

“Why that’s the boy that broke the fence down,” exclaimed Rara.

“What does he want?”

“I don’t know. Before this afternoon I’d never seen him in my life.”

He was dark, with black hair; but as he approached, they saw that his eyes were water-green. “You’re the woman who was selling things, huh?”

Rara nodded. “What do you want to buy?”

“I don’t want to buy anything,” he said. “I want to sell something to you.” He was barefoot; his pants frayed into nothing at mid-calf, and his sleeveless shirt had no fastenings.

“What do you want to sell?” she asked, her voice deepening with skepticism.

He reached into his pocket, and brought out a rag of green flannel, which he unwrapped now in his hand.

They had been polished to a milky hue, some streaked with gold and red, others run through with warm browns and yellows. Two had been rubbed down to pure mother-of-pearl, rubbed until their muted silver surfaces were clouded with pastel lusters. There in the nest of green, they swirled around themselves, shimmering.

“They’re nothing but sea shells,” Rara said.

Alter reached her forefinger out and touched a white periwinkle. “They’re lovely,” she told him. “Where did you get them?” They ranged in size from the first joint of her thumb to the width of her pinky nail.

“By your departed mother, my own sister, we can’t afford to give him a centiunit, Alter. I hardly sold a thing before that brute officer forced me away.”

“I found them on the beach,” the boy explained. “I was hiding on the boat and I didn’t have nothing to do. So I polished them.”

“What were you hiding for?” asked Rara, her voice suddenly sharp. “You don’t mean you stowed away?”

“Un-huh,” the boy nodded.

“How much do you want for them?” Alter asked.

“How much? How much would it cost to get a meal and a place to stay?”

“Much more than we can afford to pay,” interrupted Rara. “Alter, come with me. This boy is going to talk you out of a unit or two yet, if you keep on listening to him.”

“See,” said the boy, pointing to the shells. “I’ve put holes in them already. You can string them around your neck.”

“If you want to get food and a place to sleep,” said Alter, “you don’t want money. You want friends. What’s your name? And where are you from?”

The boy looked up from the handful of shells, surprised. “My name is Tel,” he said after a moment. “I come from the mainland coast. And I’m a fisherman’s son. I thought when I came here I could get a job in the aquariums. That’s all you hear about on the coast.”

Alter smiled. “First of all you’re sort of young…”

“But I’m a good fisherman.”

“…and also, it’s very different from fishing on a boat. I guess you’d say that there were a lot of jobs in the aquariums and the hydroponics gardens. But with all the immigrants, there are three people for every job.”

The boy shrugged. “Well, I can try.”

“That’s right,” said Alter. “Come on. Walk with us.”

Rara huffed.

“We’ll take him back to Geryn’s place and see if we can get him some food. He can probably stay there a little while if Geryn takes a liking to him.”

“You can’t just take every homeless barnacle you find back to Geryn’s. You’ll have it crawling with every shrimp in the Pot. And suppose he doesn’t take a liking to him. Suppose he decides to kick us out in the street.” The birthmark on her left cheek darkened.

“Aunt Rara, please,” said Alter. “I’ll handle Geryn.”

Rara huffed once more. “How come when we’re two weeks behind on the rent, you can’t find a kind word in your mouth for the old man when he threatens to throw us onto the street? Yet for the sake of a handful of pretty shells…”

“Please…”

A breeze seeped through the narrow street, picked a shock of Alter’s white hair and flung it back from her shoulder.

“Anyway, Geryn may be able to use him. If Tel stowed away, that means he doesn’t have any papers.”

Tel frowned with puzzlement.

Rara frowned with chastisement in her eyes. “You are not supposed to refer to that, ever.”

“Don’t be silly,” said Alter. “It’s just a fantasy of Geryn’s anyway. It’ll never happen. And without papers, Tel can’t get a job at the aquariums, even if they wanted him. So if Geryn thinks he can fit him into his crazy plan, Tel will come out a lot better than if he had some old ten-unit-a-week factory job. Look, Rara, how can Geryn possibly kidnap…”

“Be quiet,” snapped Rara.

“And even if he did, what good is it going to do? It’s not as if it were the king himself.”

“I don’t understand,” said Tel.

“That’s good,” said Rara. “And if you want to keep going with us, you won’t try to find out.”

“We can tell you this much,” said Alter. “The man who owns the inn where we stay wants to do something. Now, he is a little crazy. He’s always talking to himself, for example. But he needs someone who has no identification registered in the City. Now, if he thinks he can use you, you’ll get free food and a place to sleep. He used to be the gardener on the island estate of the Duchess of Petra. But he drank a little too much and I guess at last he had to go. He still says she sends him messages though, about his plan. But…”

“You don’t have to go any further,” Rara said, curtly.

“You’ll hear about it from him,” said Alter. “Why did you stow away?”

“I just got fed up with life at home. We’d work all day to catch fish, and then have to leave them rotting on the beach because we could only sell a fifth of them, or sometimes none at all. Some people gave up; some only managed to get it in their heads that they had to work harder. I guess my father was like that. He figured if he worked enough, someone would just have to buy them. Only nobody did. My mother did some hand weaving and we were living mostly on that. Finally, I figured I was eating up more than I was worth. So I left.”

“Just like that, and with no money?” asked Rara.

“Just like that,” Tel said.

“You poor boy,” said Rara, and in a sudden fit of maternal affection, she put her arm around his shoulder.

“Ow!” cried Tel, and winced.

Rara jerked her hand away. “What’s the matter?”

“I…I got hurt there,” the boy said, rubbing his shoulders gently.

“Hurt? How?”

“My father—he whipped me there.”

“Ah,” said Rara. “Now it comes out. Well, whatever the reasons you left, they’re your own business. Anyway, I’ve never known anyone yet to do something for one reason alone. Don’t lag behind, now. We’ll be back at Geryn’s in time for lunch.”

“I thought if I could sneak aboard,” went on Tel, “that they’d have to let me off in the City, even if I didn’t have money. I didn’t know about papers. And when I was in line, I figured I’d explain to the men at the desk. Or maybe I’d even give them my shells, and they would get the papers for me. But the guy ahead of me had a mistake in his. Some date was wrong, and they said they were going to send him back to the mainland and that he couldn’t leave the ship. He said he’d give them real money, and even got it out of his pocket. But they started to take him away. That’s when I ran out of line and jumped the fence. I didn’t know everyone else would run too.”

“Probably half their papers were out of order, too. Or forged. That’s why they ran.”

“You’re a cynic, Aunt Rara.”

“I’m a practical woman.”

As they turned another corner, the boy’s green eyes jumped at the blue-hazed towers of the palace, distant behind the wealthy roofs of merchants’ mansions, themselves behind the hive houses and the spreading ruin of tenements. He tried to memorize the twisting street they followed. He couldn’t.

There were two general, contradictory impressions in his mind: first, of being enclosed in these tiny alleys, some so small that two could not pass through them with arms held out; the second, of the spreading, immense endlessness of the city. He tried to tell Alter what he felt, but after a minute of broken sentences, she smiled at him and shook her head. “No, I don’t understand. What do you mean?”

And a sudden picture of the seaside leapt into his head. The yellow length of the beach lashed across his mind so that it stung. He could see the salt-and-pepper rocks, shoaling away and knobbed with periwinkle shells. He could see the brown and green fingers of seaweed clutching the sand when the waves went out. He blinked the gray city back into his eyes. Tears washed the broken curb, the cracked walls, washed the rusted metal window jamb sharp and clean again.

“He means he’s homesick,” Rara interpreted. “No, boy,” she said. “It’ll never go away. But it’ll get less.”

The street turned sharply twice, then widened.

“Well,” said Alter. “Here we are.”

A red, circular plaque hung over the door of the only stone building on the block. It was two stories, twice the height of the other structures. They entered.

Beams of real wood were set into the low ceiling. By one wall was a counter. There was a large table in the middle, and coming down into the room in a large V was a stairway.

Of the men and women sitting around the room, one caught Tel’s eye immediately. He was perhaps seven feet and a handful of inches tall, and was sitting, spraddle-legged, at the table. He had a long, flat, equine face, and a triplex of scars started on his cheek, veered down to his neck, and disappeared under his collarless shirt. As Tel watched, he turned to a plate of food he was eating, so that his scars disappeared.

Suddenly, from the stair’s top, a harpoon-straight old man appeared. He hurried down, his white hair spiking out in all directions. Reaching the bottom, he whirled around, darting black eyes to every person in the room. “All right,” he said. “I’ve received the message. I’ve received the message. And it’s time.”

Alter whispered to Tel, “That’s Geryn.”

“Are we all here?” the old man demanded. “Are we all here now?”

A woman at the counter snickered. Suddenly Geryn turned toward Tel, Alter, and Rara. “You!” he demanded. His pointing finger wavered so they could not tell which of the three he meant.

“You mean him?” asked Alter, pointing to Tel.

Geryn nodded vigorously. “What are you doing here? Are you a spy?”

“No, sir,” said Tel.

Geryn stepped around the table and looked at him closely. The black eyes were two sharp spots of darkness in a face the color of shipboards gone two winters without paint.

“Geryn,” Alter said. “Geryn, he isn’t a spy. He’s from the mainland. And Geryn, he doesn’t have any papers, either. He stowed away.”

“You’re not a spy?” Geryn demanded again.

“No, sir,” Tel repeated.

Geryn backed away. “I like you,” he said. “I trust you.” Slowly he turned away. Then he whirled back. “I have no choice, you see. It’s too late. The message has come. So I need you.” He laughed. Then the laugh stopped short as if sliced by a razor. He put his hands over his eyes, and then brought his finger down slowly. “I’m tired,” he said. “Rara, you owe me rent. Pay up or I’ll kick you all out. I’m tired.” He walked heavily toward the bar. “Give me something to drink. In my own tavern you can give me something to drink.”

Someone laughed again. Tel looked at Alter.

“Well,” she said. “He likes you.”

“He does?”

“Um-hm,” she nodded.

“Oh,” said Tel.

At the bar, Geryn drained a large glass of pale green liquid, slammed the empty glass on the board and cried out, “The war. Yes, the war!”

“Oh, here we go,” Alter whispered.

Geryn ran his finger slowly along the rim of the glass. “The war,” he said again. He turned suddenly. “It’s coming!” he declaimed. “And do you know why it’s coming? Do you know how it’s coming? We can’t stop it, not now, not any more. I’ve received the signal, so there’s no hope left. We must just go ahead and try to save something, something to start and build from again.” Geryn looked directly at Tel. “Boy, do you know what a war is?”

“No, sir,” said Tel, which wasn’t exactly true. He’d heard the word.

“Hey,” someone cried from the bar. “Are we gonna get stories, great fires and destruction again?”

Geryn ignored the cry. “Do you know what the Great Fire was?”

Tel shook his head.

“The world was once much bigger than it is today,” Geryn said. “Once man flew not just between island and mainland, island and island, but skirted the entire globe of the earth. Once man flew to the moon, even to the moving lights in the sky. There were empires, like Toromon, only bigger. And there were many of them. Often they fought with one another, and that was called a war. And the end of the final war was the Great Fire. That was over fifteen hundred years ago. Most of the world, from what little we know of it today, is scarred with strips of impassable land, the sea is run through with deadly currents. Only fragments of the earth, widely separated can hold life. Toromon may be the only one, for all we are sure of. And now we will have another war.”

Some one from the bar yelled, “So what if it comes? It might bring some excitement.”

Geryn whirled. “You don’t understand!” He whipped one hand through his shocked white hair. “What are we fighting? We don’t know. It’s something mysterious and unnamable on the other side of the radiation barrier. Why are we fighting?”

“Because…” began a bored voice at the bar.

“Because,” interrupted Geryn, suddenly pointing directly at Tel’s face, “we have to fight. Toromon has gotten into a situation where its excesses must be channelled toward something external. Our science has outrun our economics. Our laws have become stricter, and we say it is to stop the rising lawlessness. But it is to supply workers for the mines that the laws tighten, workers who will dig more tetron, that more citizens shall be jobless, and must therefore become lawless to survive. Ten years ago, before the aquariums, fish was five times its present price. There was perhaps four per cent unemployment in Toron. Today the prices of fish are a fifth of what they were, yet unemployment has reached twenty-five per cent of the city’s populace. A quarter of our people starve. More arrive every day. What will we do with them? We will use them to fight a war. Our university turns out scientists whose science we can not use lest it put more people out of work. What will we do with them? We will use them to fight a war. Eventually the mines will flood us with tetron, too much for even the aquariums and the hydroponic gardens. It will be used for the war.”

“Then what?” asked Tel.

“We do not know who or what we are fighting,” repeated Geryn. “We will be fighting ourselves, but we will not know it. According to the books, it is customary in a war to keep each side in complete ignorance of the other. Or give them lies like those we use to frighten children instead of truth. But here the truth may be…” His voice trailed off.

“What’s your plan?” Tel asked.

There was another laugh at the bar.

“Somehow,” and his voice was lower. “Somehow we must get ready to save something, salvage some fragment from the destruction that will come. There are only a few of us who know all this, who understand it, who know what…what has to be done.”

“What is that?” Tel asked again.

Suddenly Geryn whirled. “Drinks!” he called. “Drinks all around!” The quiet amusement and general lethargy disappeared as the people moved to the bar. “Drink up, friends, my fellows!” cried Geryn.

“Your plan?” Tel asked again, puzzled.

“I’ll tell you,” answered the old man, almost in a whisper. “I’ll tell you. But not just yet. Not just…” He turned back again. “Drink up!” Three men who already had their glasses gave a cheer.

“Are you with me, friends?” Geryn demanded.

“We’re with you,” six more cried, laughing, clinking their glasses hard on the table top as Tel looked from Alter to Rara and back.

“My plan…” began Geryn. “Have you all had a glass? All of you? Another round for everybody. Yes, a second round!”

There was a solid cheer, now. Glass bottoms turned toward the ceiling, then whammed on the counter top again.

“My plan is to—you understand it’s not just my plan, but only a small part in a great plan, a plan to save us all—my plan is to kidnap Prince Let from the palace. That’s the part that we must do. Are you with me, friends?” A yell rose, and somebody had started a friendly fight at the end of the bar. Then Geryn’s voice suddenly broke through the sound, low, in a grating whisper that silenced them for seconds. “Because you must be with me! The time is tonight. I have…I have it planned.” The voices halted, and then heaved to a roar. “Tonight,” repeated Geryn, though hardly anyone could hear him. “I have it planned. Only you’ve got to be…be with me.”

Tel frowned and Alter shook her head. The old man had closed his eyes for a moment. Rara was beside him, her hand on his shoulder. “You’re going to get yourself sick with all this yelling. Let me get you up to your room.”

As she turned him toward the stairs, the scarred giant who had been given a drink, now rose from the table, looked straight at Geryn, then drained his glass.

Geryn nodded, drew a breath through his teeth, and then allowed Rara to lead him up the stairs as Tel and Alter watched.

The noise among the drinking men and women at the bar increased.

CHAPTER IV

She made a note on her pad, put down her slide rule, and picked up a pearl snap with which she fastened together the shoulder panels of her white dress. The maid said, “Ma’am, shall I do your hair now?”

“One second,” Clea said. She turned to page 328 of her integral tables, checked the increment of sub-cosine A plus B over the nth root of A to the nth plus B to the nth, and transferred it to her notebook.

“Ma’am?” asked the maid. She was a thin woman, about thirty. The little finger of her left hand was gone.

“You can start now.” Clea leaned back in the beauty-hammock and lifted the dark mass of her hair from her neck. The maid caught the ebony wealth with one hand and reached for the end of the four yards of silver chain strung with alternate pearls and diamonds each inch and a half.

“Ma’am?” asked the maid again. “What are you figuring on?”

“I’m trying to determine the inverse sub-trigonometric functions. Dalen Golga, he was my mathematics professor at the university, discovered the regular ones, but nobody’s come up with the inverses yet.”

“Oh,” said the maid. She ceased weaving the jeweled chain a moment, took a comb, and whipped it through a cascade of hair that fell back on Clea’s shoulder. “Eh…what are you going to do with them, once you find them?”

“Actually,” said Clea. “Ouch…”

“Oh, pardon me, I’m sorry, please…”

“Actually,” went on Clea, “they’ll be perfectly useless. At least as far as anyone knows now. They exist, so to speak, in a world that has little to do with ours. Like the world of imaginary numbers, the square root of minus one. Eventually we may find use for them, perhaps in the same way we use imaginary numbers to find the roots of equations of a higher order than two, because cosine theta plus I sine theta equals e to the I sine theta, which lets us…”

“Ma’am?”

“Well, that is to say they haven’t been able to do anything like that with the sub-trigonometric functions yet. But they’re fun.”

“Bend your head a little to the left, ma’am,” was the maid’s comment.

Clea bent.

“You’re going to look beautiful.” Four and five fingers wove deftly in her hair. “Just beautiful.”

“I hope that Tomar can get here. It’s not going to be any fun without him.”

“But isn’t the King coming?” asked the maid. “I saw his acceptance note myself. You know it was on very simple paper. Very elegant.”

“My father will enjoy that a good deal more than I will. My brother went to school with the King before…before his Majesty’s coronation.”

“That’s amazing,” said the maid. “Were they friends? Just think of it? Do you know whether they were friends or not?”

Clea shrugged.

“And, oh,” said the maid, continuing, “have you seen the ballroom? All the hors d’oeuvres are real, imported fish. You can tell, because they’re smaller than the ones your father grows.”

“I know,” smiled Clea. “I don’t think I’ve ever eaten any of Dad’s fish in my life, which is sort of terrible, actually. They’re supposed to be very good.”

“Oh, they are, ma’am. They are. Your father is a fine man to grow such great, good fishes. But you must admit, there’s something special about the ones that come from the coast. I tasted one on my way up through the pantry. So I know.”

“What exactly is it?” Clea asked, turning around.

The maid frowned, and then smiled and nodded wisely. “Oh, I know. I know. You can tell the difference.”

* * * *

At that moment, Jon Koshar was saying, “Well, so far you’ve been right.” He appeared to be more or less standing (the room was dim, so his head and hands were invisible), more or less alone (“Yeah, I trust you. I don’t have much choice,” he added.) in the pantry of his father’s mansion.

Suddenly his voice took a different tone. “Look, I will trust you; with part of me, anyway. I’ve been caged up for nearly five years, for something stupid I did, and for something that no matter how hard I try, I can’t convince myself was all my fault. I don’t mean that Uske should be blamed. But chance, and all the rest…well, all I mean is it makes me want out that much more. I want to be free. I nearly got myself killed trying to escape from the mines. And a couple of people did get killed helping me. All right, you got me out of that stainless steel graveyard I wandered into back at the radiation barrier, and for that, thanks. I mean it. But I’m not free yet. And I still want out, more than anything in the world.

“Sure, I know that you want me to do something, but I don’t understand it yet. You say you’ll tell me soon. Okay. But you’re riding around in my head like this, so I’m not free yet. If that’s what I have to do to get free, than I’ll do it. But I’m warning you. If I see another crack in the wall, another spot of light getting in, I’ll claw my hands off trying to break through and to hell with what you want. Because while you’re there, I can’t be free.”

Suddenly the light in the pantry flipped on. His sudden face went from the tautness of his last speech to fear. He had been standing by the side of a seven-foot porcelain storage cabinet. He jumped back to the wall. Whoever had come in, a butler or caterer, was out of sight on the other side. A hand came around the edge of the cabinet, reaching for the handle. The hand was broad, wiry with black hair, and sported a cheap, wide, brass ring set with an irregular shape of blue glass. As the door opened, the hand swung out of sight. There was a clatter of dishes on the shelves, the slide of crockery slipping over plastic racks, and a voice. “All right there. You carry this one.” Then a grunt, and theker-flop of the latch as the door slammed to.

A moment later, the light, and John Koshar’s hands and head, went out. When Jon stepped forward again, he looked at the pantry, at the doors, the cabinets. The familiarity hurt. There was a door that opened into the main kitchen. (Once he had snagged a kharba fruit from the cook’s table and ran, as behind him a wooden salad bowl crashed to the floor. The sound made him whirl, in time to catch the cook’s howl and to see the pale shreds of lettuce strewn across the black tile floor. The bowl was still spinning. He had been nine.)

He started slowly for the door to the hallway that led to the dining room. In the hall was a red wood table on which sat a free form sculpture of aluminum rods and heavy glass spheres. That was unfamiliar. Not the table, the sculpture.

A slight highlight along the curve of crystal brought back to him for a moment the blue ceramic vase that had been there in his memory. It was coated with glaze that was shot through with myriad cracks. It was cylindrical, straight, then suddenly veering to a small mouth, slightly off center. The burnished red wood behind the vivid, turquoise blue was a combination that was almost too rich, too sensual. He had broken the vase. He had broken it in surprise, when his sister had come in on him suddenly, the little girl with hair black as his own, only more of it, saying, “What are you doing, Jon?” and he had jumped, turned, and then the vase was lying in fragments on the floor, like a lot of bright, brittle leaves made out of stone. He remembered his first reaction had been, oddly, surprise at finding that the glaze covered the inside as well as the outside of the vase. He was fourteen.

He walked to the family dining room and stepped inside. With the ballroom in use, no one would come here. Stepping into the room was like stepping into a cricket’s den, the subtle tsk-tsk of a thousand clocks repeated and repeated, overlapping and melting, with no clear, discernible rhythm. The wall by the door was lined with shelves and they were filled with his father’s collection of chronometers. He looked at the clocks on the shelf level with his eye. The last time he had been in this room, it had been the shelf below. The light from the door made a row of crescents on the curved faces, some the size of his little finger nail, others the diameter of his head. Their hands were invisible, their settings were dim. (In his memory they went from simple gold to ornately carved silver, and one was set in an undersea bower with jeweled shells and coral branches.) There must be many new clocks after five years, he thought. If he turned on the light, how many would he recognize?

(When he was eighteen, he had stood in this room and examined the thin, double prong of a fire-blade. The light in the room was off, and as he flicked the button on the hilt, and the white sparks leaped out and up the length of the blade, the crescents flamed on the edges of the clock faces, all along the wall. Later, at the royal palace, with that same blade, there had been the same, sudden, clumsy fear at discovery, fear clotting into panic, the panic turning to confusion, and the confusion metastasizing into fear again, only fear all through him, dragging him down, so that when he tried to run down the vaulted hall, his feet were too heavy, so that when he tripped against the statue in the alcove, whirled upon the pursuing guard, and swung the white needle of energy down and the guard’s flesh hissed and fell away—a moment of blood spurring under pale flame—almost immediately he was exhausted. They took him easily after that.)

Clumsy, he thought. Not with his fingers, (He had fixed many of these clocks when his father had acquired them in various states of disrepair.), but with his mind. His emotions were not fine and drawn, but rather great shafts of anger or fear fell about him without focus or apparent source. Disgust, or even love, when he had felt it was vague, liable to metamorphasize from one to the other. (School was great; his history teacher was very good.… School was noisy; the kids were pushy and didn’t care about anything. His blue parakeet was delicate and beautiful; he had taught it to whistle…there were always crumbs on the bottom of the cage; changing the paper was a nuisance.)

Then there had been five years of prison. And the first sharp feeling pierced his mind, as sharp as the uncoiled hair-spring of a clock, as sharp as jewels in a poison ring. It was a wish, a pain, an agony for freedom. The plans for escape had been intricate, yet sharp as the cracks in blue ceramic glaze. The hunger for escape was a hand against his stomach, and as the three of them had, at last, waited in the rain by the steps, it had tightened unbearably. Then…

Then with all the sharpness, what had made him lose the others? Why had he wandered in the wrong direction? Clumsy! And he wanted to be free of that! And wonder if that was what he had wanted to be free of all along while he had sputtered at the prison guards, choked on the food, and could not communicate his outrage. Then, at the horizon, was the purple glow of something paler than sunrise, deadlier than the sea, a flickering, luminous purple gauze behind the hills. Near him were the skeletons of broken, century-ancient trees, leafless, nearly petrified. The crumbly dirt looked as if it had been scattered over the land in handfuls, loosely, bearing neither shrubs or footprints. By one boulder a trickle of black water ran beneath a fallen log, catching dim light in the ripples on either side. He looked up.

On the horizon, against the lines of light, as though cut—no, torn—from carbon paper was the silhouette of a city. Tower behind tower rose against the pearly haze. A net of roadways wound among the spires.

Then he made out one minuscule thread of metal that ran from the city, in his general direction but veering to the right. It passed him half a mile away and at last disappeared into the edge of the jungle that he could see, now, behind him. Telphar! The word came to his mind as though on a sign attached with springs to his consciousness. The radiation! That was the second thing he thought of. Once more the name of the city shivered in his brain: Telphar! The certain, very certain death he had wandered into caught the center of his gut like a fist. It was almost as if the name were sounding out loud in his skull. Then he stopped. Because he realized he had heard something. A…a voice! Very definitely he heard it—

Music had started. He could hear it coming from the ballroom now. The party must be under way. He looked out into the hall. A fellow in a white apron, holding an empty tray on which were crumbs from small cakes, was coming toward him.

“Excuse me, sir,” the man in the apron said. “Guests aren’t supposed to be in this part of the house.”

“I was trying to find the-eh-er…” Jon coughed.

The man in the apron smiled. “Oh. Of course. Go back into the ballroom and take the hall to your left down three doors.”

“Thank you,” Jon smiled back and hurried up the hallway. He entered the ballroom by way of a high, arched alcove in which were small white meat, red meat, dark meat of fish ground into patties, cut into stars, strips of fillet wound into imitation sea shells, tiny braised shrimp, and stuffed baby smelts.

A ten-piece orchestra—three bass radiolins, a theremin, and six blown shells of various sizes—was making a slow, windy music from the dais. The scattering of guests seemed lost in the great room. Jon wandered across the floor.

Here and there were stainless steel fountains in which blue or pink liquid fanned over mounds of crushed ice. Each fountain was rimmed with a little shelf on which was a ring of glasses. He picked a glass up, let a spout of pink fill it, and walked on, sipping slowly.

Suddenly, the loudspeaker announced the arrival of Mr. Quelor Da and party. Heads turned, and a moment later a complex of glitter, green silk, blue net, and diamonds at the top of the six wide marble steps across the room resolved into four ladies and their escorts.

Jon glanced up at the balcony than ran around the second story of the room. A short gentleman in a severe, unornamented blue suit was coming toward the head of the steps which expanded down toward the ballroom floor with the grace and approximate shape of a swan’s wing. The gentleman hurried down the pale cascade.

Jon sipped his drink. It was sweet with the combined flavors of a dozen fruits, with the whisper of alcohol bitter at the back of his tongue. The gentleman hurried across the floor, passing within yards of him.

Father! The impact was the same as the recognition of Telphar. The hair was thinner than it had been five years ago. He was much heavier. His—father—was at the other side of the room already, checking with the waiters. Jon pulled his shoulders in, and let his breath out. It was the familiarity, not the change, that hurt.

It took some time before the room filled. There was a lot of space. One guest Jon noted was a young man in military uniform. He was powerful, squat in a taurine way usually associated with older men. There was a major’s insignia on his shoulder. Jon watched him a while, empathizing with his occasional looks that told how out of place he felt. He took neither food nor drink, but prowled a ten-foot area by the side of the balcony steps. Waiting, Jon thought.

A half an hour later, the floor was respectably populated. Jon had exchanged a few words at last with the soldier. (Jon: “A beautiful party, don’t you think?” Soldier, with embarrassment: “Yes, sir.” Jon: “I guess the war is worrying all of us.” Soldier: “The war? Yes.” Then he looked away, not inclined to talk more.) Jon was now near the door. Suddenly the loudspeaker announced: “The Party of His Royal Majesty, the King.”

Gowns rustled, the talk rose, people turned, and fell back from the entrance. The King’s party, headed by himself and a tall, electric-looking red-headed woman, his senior by a handful of years, appeared at the top of the six marble steps. As they came down, right and left, people bowed. Jon dropped his head, but not before he realized that the King’s escort had given him a very direct look. He glanced up again, but now her emerald train was sweeping down the aisle the people had left open. Her insignia, he remembered, told him she was a duchess.

Coming up the aisle in the other direction now between the bowing crowds was old Koshar. He bowed very low, and the pale blond young man raised him and they shook hands, and Koshar spoke. “Your Majesty,” he began warmly.

“Sir,” answered the King, smiling.

“I haven’t seen you since you were a boy at school.”

The King smiled again, this time rather wanly. Koshar hurried on.

“But I would like to introduce my daughter to you, for it’s her party. Clea—.” The old man turned to the balcony stairs, and the crowd’s eyes turned with him.

She was standing on the top step, in a white dress made of panel over silken panel, held with pearl clasps. Her black hair cascaded across one shoulder, webbed and re-webbed with a chain of silver strung with pearls. Her hands at her sides, she came down the stairs. People stepped back; she smiled, and walked forward. Jon watched while at last his sister reached his father’s side.

“My daughter Clea,” said old Koshar to the King.

“Charmed.”

Koshar raised his left hand, and the musicians began the introduction to the changing partners dance. Jon watched the King take Clea in his arms, and also saw the soldier move toward them, and then stop. A woman in a smoky gray dress suddenly blocked his view, smiled at him, and said, “Will you dance?” He smiled back, to avoid another expression, and she was in his arms. Apparently the soldier had had a similar experience, for at the first turn of the music, Jon saw the soldier was dancing too. A few couples away, Clea and the King turned round and round, white and white, brunette and blond. The steps came back to Jon like a poem remembered, the turn, the dip, separate, and join again. When a girl does the strange little outward step, and the boy bows, so that for a moment she is out of sight, her gown always swishes just so. Yes, like that! This whole day had been filled with the sudden remembrances of tiny facts like that, forgotten for five years, at once relearned with startling vividness that shocked him. The music signaled for partners to change. Gowns whirled into momentary flowers, and he was dancing with the brown-haired woman the soldier had been dancing with a moment before. Looking to his left, he saw that the soldier had somehow contrived to get Clea for a partner. Moving closer, he overheard.

“I didn’t think you were going to get here at all. I’m so glad,” from Clea.

“I could have even come earlier,” Tomar said. “But you’d have been busy.”

“You could have come up.”

“And once I got here, I didn’t think we’d get a chance to talk, either.”

“Well, you’ve got one now. Better make it quick. We change partners in a moment. What happened to the scouting planes?”

“All crippled. Didn’t sight a thing. They got back to base almost before I did this morning. The report was nothing. What about the picnic, Clea?”

“We can have it on…”

A burst of music signaled the change. Jon did not hear the day, but expected his sister to whirl into his arms. But instead (he saw her white dress flare and turn by him) an emerald iridescence caught in his eye, then rich mahogany flame. He was dancing with the Duchess. She was nearly his height, and watched him with a smile hung in the subtle area between friendship and knowing cynicism. She moved easily, and he had just remembered that he ought to smile back to be polite when the music sounded the change. The instant before she whirled away, he heard her say, very distinctly, “Good luck, Jon Koshar.”

His name brought him to a halt, and he stared after her. When he did turn back to his new partner, surprise still on his face, his eyes were filled with sudden whiteness. It was Clea. He should have been dancing, but he was standing still. When she looked at his face to discover why, she suddenly drew a breath. At first he thought his head had disappeared again. Then, as shock and surprise became suddenly as real as her wide eyes, her open mouth, he whispered, “Clea!” And her hand went to her mouth.

Clumsy! he thought, and the word was a sudden ache in his hands and chest. Reach for her. Dance. As his hands went out, the music stopped, and the languid voice of the King came over the loudspeaker.

“Ladies and gentlemen, citizens of Toromon, I have just received a message from the council that necessitates an announcement to you as my friends and loyal subjects. I have been requested by the council to make their declaration of war official by my consent. An emergency meeting over sudden developments has made it imperative that we begin immediate action against our most hostile enemies on the mainland. Therefore, before you all, I declare the Empire of Toromon to be at war.”

In the silence, Jon looked for his sister, but she was gone. Someone near the microphone cried out, “Long live the King.” Then the cry echoed again. The musicians started the music once more, partners found one another, and the talking and laughing grew in his ears like waves, like crumbling rock, like the cutter teeth clawing into the rock face of the ore deposits.…

Jon shook his head. But he was in his own house, yes. His room was on the second floor and he could go up and lie down. And by his bed would be the copper night table, and the copy of Delcord the Whaler which he had been reading the night before.

He’d left the ballroom and gotten halfway down the hall before he remembered that his room was probably not his room any longer. And that he certainly couldn’t go up to it and lie down. He was standing in front of the door of one of the sitting rooms that opened off the hall. The door was ajar, and from it he heard a woman’s voice.

“Well, can’t you do something about his index of refraction? If he’s going to be doing any work at night, you can’t have him popping on and off like a cigarette lighter.” There was silence. Then: “Well, at least don’t you think he should be told more than he knows now? Fine. So do I, especially since the war has been officially declared.”

Jon took a breath and stepped in.

Her emerald train whirled across the duller green of the carpet as she turned. The bright hair, untonsured save by two coral combs, fell behind her shoulders. Her smile showed faint surprise. Very faint. “Who were you talking to?” Jon Koshar asked.

“Mutual friends,” the Duchess said. They were alone in the room.

After a moment, Jon said, “What do they want us to do? It’s treason, isn’t it?”

The Duchess’ eyes went thin. “Are you serious?” she asked. “You call that treason, keeping these idiots from destroying themselves, eating themselves up in a war with a nameless enemy, something so powerful that if there were any consideration of real fighting, we could be destroyed with a thought. Do you remember who the enemy is? You’ve heard his name. There are only three people in Toromon who have, Jon Koshar. Everyone else is ignorant. So we’re the only ones who can say we’re fully responsible. That responsibility is to Toromon. Have you any idea what state the economy is in? Your own father is responsible for a good bit of it; but if he closed down his aquariums now, the panic he would cause would equal the destruction their being open already causes. The empire is snowballing toward its own destruction, and it’s going to take it out in the war. You call trying to prevent it treason?”

“Whatever we call it, we don’t have much choice, do we?”

“With people like you around, I’m not sure it isn’t a bad idea.”

“Look,” said Jon. “I was cooped up in a prison mine way out beyond nowhere for five years. All I wanted was out, see. All I wanted was to get free. Well, I’m back in Toron and I’m still not free.”

“First of all,” said the Duchess, “if it wasn’t for them, you wouldn’t be as free as you are now. After a day of clean clothes and walking in fresh air, if you’re not well on the road to what you want, then I’d better change some ideas of my own. I want something too, Jon Koshar. When I was seventeen, I worked for a summer in your father’s aquarium. My nine hours a day were spent with a metal spoon about the size of your head scraping the bottoms of the used tank tube of the stuff that even the glass filters were too touchy to take out. Afterwards I was too tired to do much more than read. So I read. Most of it was about Toromon’s history. I read a lot about the mainland expeditions. Then, in my first winter out of school, I lived in a fishing village at the edge of the forest, studying what I could of the customs of the forest people. I made sketches of their temples, tried to map their nomadic movements. I even wrote an article on the architecture of their temporary shelters that was published in the university journal.

“Well, what I want is for Toromon to be free, free of its own ridiculous self-entanglements. Perhaps coming from the royal family, I had a easier path toward a sense of Toromon’s history. At its best, that’s all an aristocracy is good for anyway. But I wanted more than a sense, I wanted to know what it was worth. So I went out and looked, and I found out it was worth a whole lot. Somehow Toromon is going to have to pick itself up by the back of the neck and give itself a shaking. If I have to be the part that does the shaking, then I will. That’s what I want, Jon Koshar, and I want it as badly as you want to be free.”

Jon was quiet a moment. Then he said, “Anyway, to get what we want, I guess we more or less have to do the same thing. All right, I’ll go along. But you’re going to have to explain some things to me. There’s a lot I still don’t understand.”

“A lot we both don’t,” the Duchess said. “But we know this: they’re not from Earth, they’re not human, and they come from very far away. Inconceivably far.”

“What about the rest?”

“They’ll help us help Toromon if we help them. How, I still don’t understand for sure. Already I’ve arranged to have Price Let kidnaped.”

“Kidnaped? But why?”

“Because if we get through this, Toromon is going to need a strong king. And I think you’ll agree that Uske will never quite make that. Also, he’s ill, and under any great strain, might die in a moment, not to mention the underground groups that are bound to spring up to undermine whatever the government decides to do, once the war gets going. Let is going where he can become a strong man, with the proper training, so that if anything happens to Uske, he can return and there’ll be someone to guide the government through its crises. After that, how we’re to help them, I’m not sure.”

“I see,” said Jon. “How did they get hold of you, anyway? For that matter, how did they get me?”

“You? They contacted you just outside of Telphar, didn’t they? They had to rearrange the molecular structure of some of your more delicate proteins and do a general overhaul on your sub-crystalline structure so the radiation wouldn’t kill you. That, unfortunately had the unpleasant side effect of booting down your index of refraction a couple of points, which is why you keep fading in dim light. In fact, I got a blow-by-blow description of your entire escape from them. It kept me on the edge of my seat all night. How was I contacted? The same way you were, suddenly, and with those words: Lord of the Flames. Now, your first direct assignment will be…”

* * * *

In another room, Clea was sitting on a blue velvet hassock with her hands tight in her lap. Then suddenly they flew apart like springs, shook beside her head, and then clasped again. “Tomar,” she said. “Please, excuse me, but I’m upset. It was so strange. When I was dancing with the King, he told me how he had dreamed of my brother this morning. I didn’t think anything of it. I thought it was just small talk. Then, just after I changed partners for the third time, there I was, staring into a face that I could have sworn was Jon’s. And the man wasn’t dancing, either. He was just looking at me, very funny, and then he said my name. Tomar, it was the same voice Jon used to use when I’d hurt myself and he wanted to help. Oh, it couldn’t have been him, because he was too tall, and too gaunt, and the voice was just a little too deep. But it was so much like what he might have been. That was when the King made his announcement. I just turned and ran. The whole thing seemed supernatural. Oh, don’t worry, I’m not superstitious, but it unnerved me. And that plus what you said this morning.”

“What I said?” asked Tomar. He stood beside the hassock in the blue-draped sitting room, his hands in his pockets, listening with animal patience.

“About their drafting all the degree students into the war effort. Maybe the war is good, but Tomar, I’m working on another project, and all at once, the thing I want most in the world is to be left alone to work on it. And I want you, and I want to have a picnic. I’m nearly at the solution now, and to have to stop and work on bomb sightings and missile trajectories…Tomar, there’s a beauty in abstract mathematics that shouldn’t have to be dulled with that sort of thing. Also, maybe you’ll go away, or I’ll go away. That doesn’t seem fair either. Tomar, have you ever had things you wanted, had them in your hands, and suddenly have a situation come up that made it look like they might fly out of your grip forever?”

Tomar rubbed his hand across his brush-cut red hair and shook his head. “There was a time once, when I wanted things. Like food, work, and a bed where all four legs touched the ground. So I came to Toron. And I got them. And I got you, and so I guess there isn’t anything else to want, or want that bad.” He grinned, and the grin made her smile.

“I guess,” she started, “…I guess it was just that he looked so much like my brother.”

“Clea,” Tomar said. “About your brother. I wasn’t going to tell you this until later. Maybe I shouldn’t say it now. But you were asking whether or not they were going to draft prisoners into the army; and whether at the end of their service, they’d be freed. Well, I did some checking. They are going to, and I sent through a recommendation that they take your brother among the first bunch. In three hours I got a memorandum from the penal commissioner. Your brother’s dead.”

She looked at him hard, trying to hold her eyes open and to prevent the little snarl of sound that was a sob from loosening in the back of her throat.

“In fact it happened last night,” Tomar went on. “He and two others attempted an escape. Two of their bodies were found. And there’s no chance that the third one could have escaped alive.”

The snarl collapsed into a sound she would not make. She sat for a moment. Then she said, “Let’s go back to the party.” She stood up, and they walked across the white rug to the door. Once she shook her head and opened her mouth. Then she closed it again and went on. “Yes. I’m glad you said it. I don’t know. Maybe it was a sign…a sign that he was dead. Maybe it was a sign…” She stopped. “No. It wasn’t. It wasn’t anything, was it? No.” They went down the steps to the ballroom once more. The music was very, very happy.

CHAPTER V

A few hours earlier, Geryn gave Tel a kharba fruit. The boy took the bright-speckled melon around the inn, looking for Alter. Unable to find her, he wandered onto the street and up the block. Once a cat with a struggling gray shape in its teeth hurtled across his path. Later he saw an overturned garbage can with a filigree of fish bones ornamenting the parti-colored heap. Over the house roofs across the street, the taller buildings and towers of Toron paled to blue, with sudden yellow rectangles of window light scattered unevenly over their faces.

Turning down another block, he saw Rara standing on the corner, stopping the occasional passers-by. Tel started up to her, but she saw him and motioned him away. Puzzled, he went to a stoop and sat down to watch. As he ran his thumbnail along the orange rind, and juice oozed from the slit, he heard Rara talking to a stranger.

“Your fortune, sir. I’ll spread your future before you like a silver mirror…” The stranger passed. Rara turned to a woman now coming toward her. “Ma’am, a fragment of a unit will spread your life out like a patterned carpet where you may trace the designs of your fate. Just a quarter of a unit…” The woman smiled, but shook her head. “You look like you come from the mainland,” Rara called after her. “Well, good luck here in the New World, sister, the Island of Opportunity.” Immediately she turned to another man, this one in a deep green uniform. “Sir,” Tel heard her begin. Then she paused as she surveyed his costume. “Sir,” she continued, “for a single unit I will unweave the threads of your destiny from eternity’s loom. Would you like to know the promotion about to come your way? How many children you’ll…”

“Come on, lady,” said the man in uniform. “It’s illegal to tell fortunes here.”

“But I’ve got my license,” declared Rara. “I’m a genuine clairvoyant. Just a second…” And her hands began to plunge into the seams and pockets of her gray rags.

“Never mind, lady. Just get moving,” and he gave her a push. Rara moved.

Tel peeled back the strip of rind he’d loosened from the kharba fruit, licked the juice from the yellow wound, and followed Rara.

“Son of an electric eel,” she said when Tel reached her, her birthmark scarlet. “Just trying to make a living, that’s all.”

“Want a bite?”

Rara shook her head. “I’m too angry,” she said. They walked back to the inn.

“Do you know where Alter is?” Tel asked. “I was looking for her.”

“She’s not in the inn?”

“I couldn’t find her there.”

“Did you look on the roof?” Rara asked.

“Oh,” said Tel. “No.” They turned into the tavern and Tel went upstairs. It was not until he was halfway up the ladder on the second floor that went to the trap door in the ceiling that he wondered why she was on the roof. He pushed the trap door back and hoisted himself to the dusty, weathered rim.

Alter was hanging head and white hair down from a pipe that went from the stone chimney to a supporting pipe that was fastened by a firm collar to the roof.

“What are you doing?” Tel asked.

“Hi,” she smiled down at him. “I’m practicing.”

“Practicing what?”

She was hanging double from her waist over the pipe. Now she grabbed the bar close to her waist and somersaulted forward, letting her feet slowly and evenly to the ground, her legs perfectly straight. “My stunts,” she said. “I’m an acrobat.” She did not let go of the bar, but suddenly swung her legs up so that her ankles nearly touched her hands, and then whipped them down again, ending the kip by supporting herself upright on the metal perch. Then she flung her legs back (Tel jumped because she looked like she was going to fall) and went out and down, then under, swung up, arced over, and went down again in a giant circle. She circled once more, then doubled up, caught one knee over the bar, reversed direction, and suddenly was sitting on top of the rod with one leg over.

“Gee,” Tel said. “How did you do that?”

“It’s all timing,” Alter said. Suddenly she threw her head back, and circled the bar once more, hanging from her hands and one knee. Then the knee came loose, and her feet came slowly to the ground. “You’ve just got to be strong enough to hold up your own weight. Maybe a little stronger. But the rest is all timing.”

“You mean I could do that?”

“You want to try something?”

“Like what?”

“Come here and grab hold of the bar.”

Tel came over and grabbed. He could just keep his feet flat on the tar-papered roof and still hold on. “All right,” he said.

“Now pull yourself up and hook your left knee around the bar.”

“Like this?” He kicked up once, missed, and tried again.

“When you kick, throw your head back,” she instructed. “You’ll balance better.”

He did, pulled up, and got his foot through his arms, and suddenly felt the bar slide into the crook of his knee. He was hanging by his left knee and hands. “Now what do I do?” he asked, swaying back and forth.

Alter put her hand on his back to steady him. “Now straighten your right leg, and keep your arms fairly straight.” He obeyed. “Now swing your right leg up and down, three times, and then swing it down real hard.” Tel lifted his leg, dropped it, and at once began swinging back and forth beneath the pole. “Keep the leg straight,” Alter said. “Don’t bend it, or you’ll loose momentum.”

He got to the third kick, and then let go (with his thigh muscles, not his hands) and at once the sky slipped back behind him and his body swung upward away from the direction of the kick. “Whoooo,” he said, and then felt an arm steadying his wrist. He was sitting on top of the bar with one leg over it. He looked down at Alter. “Is that what was supposed to happen?”

“Sure,” she said. “That’s how you mount the bar. It’s called a knee mount.”

“I guess it’s easier than climbing. Now what do I do?”

“Try this. Straighten out your arms. And make sure they stay straight. Now straighten your back leg behind you.” As he tried, he felt her hand on his knee, helping. “Hey…” he said. “I’m not balanced.”

“Don’t worry,” she said. “I’m holding you. Keep those arms straight. If you don’t obey instructions you’ll have a head full of tar paper. Seven feet isn’t very high, but head first it’s sort of uncomfortable.”

Tel’s elbows locked.

“Now when I count three, kick the leg I’m holding under you and throw your head back as hard as you can. One…”

“What’s supposed to happen?” Tel demanded.

“Follow instructions,” replied Alter. “Two…three!”

Tel threw and kicked, and felt Alter give his leg an extra push. He had planned to close his eyes, but what he saw kept them open. Sky and then roof were coming at him, fast. Then they veered away, along with Alter’s face (which was upside down), till an instant later the pale blue towers of Toron, all pointing in the wrong direction, pierced his sight. Righting themselves, they jerked out of his line of vision and he was looking straight up at the sky (there was a star out, he noted before it became a meteor and flashed away) until it was replaced by the roof and Alter’s face (laughing now) and then once more everything swept into its proper position for a moment.

He clamped his stinging hands tightly on the bar, and when he felt himself stop, he hunched forward and closed his eyes. “Mmmmmmmmmm,” he said. Alter’s hand was on his wrist, very firm, and he was sitting on top of the bar again.

“You just did a double back knee circle,” she said, “You did it very well too.” Then she laughed. “Only it wasn’t supposed to be double. You just kept going.”

“How do I get down?” Tel asked.

“Arms straight,” said Alter.

Tel straightened his arms.

“Put this hand over here.” She patted the bar on the other side of his leg. Tel transferred his grip. “Now bring your leg off the bar.” Tel hoisted his leg back so that he was supported by just his hands. “Now bend forward and roll over, slowly if you can.” Tel rolled, felt the bar slip from where it was pressed against his waist, and a moment later his feet were brushing back and forth over the tar paper. He let go and rubbed his hands together. “Why didn’t you tell me what I was gonna do?”

“Because then you wouldn’t have done it. Now that you know you can, the rest will be easier. You’ve got three stunts now in less than five minutes. The knee mount, back knee circle, and the forward dismount. And that was the best I’ve ever seen anybody do for a first try.”

“Thanks,” said Tel. He looked back up at the horizontal bar. “You know, it feels real funny, doing that stuff. I mean you don’t really do it. You do things and than it happens to you.”

“That’s right,” Alter said. “I hadn’t thought of it like that Maybe that’s why a good acrobat has to be a person who can sort of relax and just let things happen. You have to trust both your mind and your body.”

“Oh,” said Tel. “I was looking for you when I came up here. I wanted to give you something.”

“Thank you,” she smiled, brushing a shock of white hair from her forehead.

“I hope it didn’t get broken.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a handful of something sinewy; he had strung the shells on lengths of leather thong. There were three loops of leather, each longer than the one before, and the shells were spread apart and held in place by tiny knots. “Geryn gave me the thong, and I put it together this afternoon. It’s a necklace, see?”

She turned while he tied the ends behind her neck. Then she turned back to him, touching the green brilliance of one frail cornucopia, passing to the muted orange of another along the brown leather band. “Thank you,” she said. “Thank you very much, Tel.”

“You want some fruit?” he said, picking up the globe and beginning to peel the rest of it.

“All right,” she said. He broke it open, gave her half, and they went to the edge of the roof and leaned on the balustrade, looking to the street below, then over the roofs of the other houses of the Devil’s Pot and up to the darkening towers.

“You know,” Tel said. “I’ve got a problem.”

“No identification papers, no place to go. I should say you do.”

“Not like that,” he said. “But that’s part of it, I guess. I guess it’s a large part of it. But not all.”

“Then what is it?”

“I’ve got to figure out what I want. Here I am, in a new place, with no way to get anything for myself; I’ve got to figure a goal.”

“Look,” said Alter, assuming the superiority of age and urban training, “I’m a year older than you, and I don’t know where I’m going yet. But when I was your age, it occurred to me it would probably all take care of itself. All I had to do was ride it out. So that’s what I’ve been doing, and I haven’t been too unhappy. Maybe it’s the difference between living here or on the seashore. But here you’ve got to spend a lot of time looking for the next meal. At least people like you and me have to. If you pay attention to that, you’ll find yourself heading in the right direction soon enough. Whatever you’re going to be, you’re going to be, if you just give yourself half a chance.”

“Like a big acrobatic stunt, huh?” asked Tel. “You just do the right things and then it happens to you.”

“Like that,” said Alter. “I guess so.”

“Maybe,” said Tel. The kharba fruit was cool, sweet like honey, orange, and pineapple.

A minute later someone was calling them. They turned from the balustrade and saw Geryn’s white head poking from the trap door. “Come down,” he demanded. “I’ve been looking all over for you. It’s time.”

They followed him back to the first floor. Tel saw that the scarred giant was still sitting at the table, his hands folded into quiet hammers before him.

“Now, everyone,” Geryn called as he sat down at the table. Somewhat reluctantly people left the bar. Geryn dropped a sheaf of papers on the table. “Come around, everyone.” The top sheet was covered with fine writing and careful architectural drawing. “Now this is the plan.” So were the other sheets, when Geryn turned them over. “First, I’ll divide you into groups.”

He looked at the giant across the table. “Arkor, you take the first group.” He picked out six more men and three women. He turned to the white-haired girl now. “Alter, you’ll be with the special group.” He named six more people. Tel was among them. A third group was formed which Geryn himself was to lead. Arkor’s group was for strong-arm work. Geryn’s was for guard duty and to keep the way clear while the prince was being conveyed back to the inn. “The people in the special group already know what to do.”

“Sir,” said Tel, “you haven’t told me, yet.”

Geryn looked at him. “You have to get caught.”

“Sir?”

“You go past the guards, and make enough noise so that they catch you. Then, when they’re occupied with you, we’ll break in. Because you have no papers, they won’t be able to trace you.”

“Am I supposed to stay caught?”

“Of course not. You’ll get away when we distract them.”

“Oh,” said Tel. Geryn went back to the papers.

As the plan was reviewed, Tel saw two things. First the completeness of the research, information, and attention to detail—habits of individual guards: one who left at the first sound of the change signal; another who waited a moment to exchange greetings with his replacement, a friend from his military academy days. Second, he saw its complexity. There were so many ins and outs, gears that had to mesh, movements to be timed within seconds, that Tel wondered if everything could possibly go right.

While he was wondering, they were suddenly already on their way, each one with a bit of the plan fixed firmly in his mind, no one with too clear a picture of the entire device. The groups were to split into subgroups of two or three, then reconvene at appointed spots around the castle. Tel and Alter found themselves walking through the city with the giant. Occasional street lights wheeled their shadows over the cracked pavement.

“You’re from the forest, aren’t you?” Tel finally asked the giant.

He nodded.

“Why did you come here?” Tel asked, trying to make conversation as they walked.

“I wanted to see the city,” he said, raising his hand to his scars with a small chuckle. After that, he said nothing.

* * * *

Prime Minister Chargill took his evening constitutional along the usually deserted Avenue of the Oyster at about this time every night. Prime Minister Chargill always carried on him a complete set of keys to the private suites of the royal family. This evening, however, a drunk in rags reeled out of a side street and collided with the old man. A moment later, making profuse apologies, he backed away, ducking his head, his hands behind his back. When the drunk returned to the side street, his weaving gait ceased, his hand came from behind his back, and in it was a complete set of keys to the private suites of the royal family.

* * * *

The guard who was in charge of checking the alarm system loved flowers. He could—(and had been)—observed going to the florist’s at least once a week on his time off. So when the old woman with a tray of scarlet anemones came by and offered them for his perusal, it is not surprising that he lowered his head over the tray and filled his lungs with that strange, pungent smell somewhere between orange rind and the sea wind. Forty-seven seconds later, he yawned. Fourteen seconds after that, he was sitting on the ground, his head hung forward, snoring. Through the gate two figures could be seen at the alarm box…had anyone been there to look.

* * * *

At another entrance to the castle, two guards converged on a fourteen-year-old boy with black hair and green eyes who was trying to climb the fence.

“Hey, get down from there! All right, come on. Where’re your papers? What do you mean you don’t have any? Come on with us. Get the camera out, Jo. We’ll have to photograph him and send the picture to Chief Records Headquarters. They’ll tell us who you are, kid. Now hold still.”

Behind them, a sudden white-haired figure was out of the shadows and over the gate in a moment. The guards did not see her.

“Hold still now, kid, while I get your retina pattern.”

* * * *

Later on a bunch of rowdies, led by a giant, started to raise hell around the palace. They hadn’t even gotten the kid to the guard house yet, but somehow in the confusion the boy got away. One guard, who wore a size seventeen uniform was knocked unconscious, but no one else was hurt. They dispersed the rowdies, carried the guard to the infirmary, and left. The doctor saw him in the waiting room, then left him there momentarily to look for an accident report slip in the supply room at the other side of the building. (He could have sworn that a whole pad of them had been lying on the desk when he’d stepped out for a bit ten minutes ago.) When the doctor returned with the slip the soldier was still there—only he was stark naked.

* * * *

A minute later, an unfamiliar guard, wearing a size seventeen uniform, saluted the guard at the gate, and marched in.

* * * *

Two strange men behind the gate flung a cord with a weight on one end over a third story cornice. They missed once, then secured it the second time and left it hanging there.

A guard wearing a size seventeen uniform came down the hall of the west wing of the castle, stopped before a large double door on which was a silver crown, indicating the room of the Queen Mother; he took a complete set of keys to the private suites of the royal family from his cloak, and locked her Majesty firmly in her room. At the next door, he locked Prince Let securely in his. Then he went rapidly on.

Tel ran till he got to the corner, rounded it, and checked the street sign. It was correct. So he went to a doorway and sat down to wait.

* * * *

At the same time, Prince Let, getting ready for bed and wearing nothing but his undershirt, looked out the window and saw a girl with white hair hanging head down outside the shutter. He stood very still The upside down face smiled at him. Then the hands converged at the window lock, did something, and the two glass panels came open. The girl rolled over once, turned quickly, and suddenly she was crouching on the window ledge.

Let snatched up his pajama bottoms first, and ran to the door second. When he couldn’t open it, he whirled around and pulled on his pajama pants.

Alter put her finger to her lips as she stepped down into his room. “Keep quiet,” she whispered. “And relax,” she added. “The Duchess of Petra sent me. More or less.” She had been instructed to use that name to calm the prince. It seemed to work a trifle.

“Look,” explained Alter, “you’re being kidnapped. It’s for your own good, believe me.” She watched the blond boy come away from the door.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“I’m a friend of yours if you’ll let me be.”

“Where are you going to take me?”

“You’re going to go on a trip. But you’ll come back, eventually.”

“What has my mother said?”

“Your mother doesn’t know. Nobody knows except you and the Duchess, and the few people who’re helping her.”

Let appeared to be thinking. He walked over to his bed, sat down, and pressed his heel against the side board. There was a tiny click. Nothing else happened. “Why won’t they open the door?” he asked.

“It’s been locked,” Alter said. Suddenly she looked at the clock beside the Prince’s bed, and turned to the window. Light from the crystal chandelier caught on the shells that were strung on leather thongs around her neck as she turned.

Let put his hand quietly on the newel post of his bed and pressed his thumb hard on the purple garnet that encrusted the crowning ornamental dolphin. Nothing happened except a tiny click.

At the window, Alter reached out her hand, just as a bundle appeared outside on a lowered rope. She pulled them in, untied them, and shook them out as the rope suddenly flew out the window again. “Here,” she said. “Get into these.” It was a suit of rags. She tossed them to him.

Finally Let slipped out of his pajama pants and into the suit.

“Now look in your pocket,” Alter said.

The boy did and took out a bunch of keys.

“You can open the door with those,” Alter said. “Go on.”

Let paused, then went to the door. Before he put the key in the lock though, he bent down and looked through the keyhole. “Hey,” he said, looking back at the girl. “Come here. Do you see anything?”

Alter crossed the room, bent down, and looked. The only motion Let made was to lean against one of the panels on the wall, which gave a slight click. Nothing happened.

“I don’t see anything,” Alter said. “Open the door.”

Let found the proper key, put it in the lock, and the door swung back.

“All right, you kids,” said the guard who was standing on the other side of the door (who incidentally wore a size seventeen uniform), “you come along with me.” He took Let firmly by one arm and Alter by the other and marched them down the hall. “I’m warning you to keep quiet,” the guard said to Let as they turned the last corner.

Three minutes later they were outside the castle. As the guard passed another uniformed man at the Sentry’s post, he said, “More stupid kids trying to break into the palace.”

“What a night,” said the guard and scratched his head. “A girl too?”

“Looks like it,” said the guard who was escorting Alter and the Prince. “I’m taking them to be photographed.”

“Sure,” answered the guard, and saluted.

The two children were marched down the street toward the guard house. Before they got there, they were turned off into a side street. Then suddenly the guard was gone. A black-haired boy with green eyes was coming toward them.

“Is this the Prince?” Tel asked.

“Un-huh,” said Alter.

“Who are you?” Let asked. “Where are you taking me?”

“My name is Tel. I’m a fisherman’s son.”

“My name is Alter,” Alter introduced herself.

“She’s an acrobat,” Tel added.

“I’m the Prince,” Let said. “Really. I’m Prince Let.”

The two others looked at the blond boy who stood in front of them in rags like their own. Suddenly they laughed. The Prince frowned. “Where are you taking me?” he asked again.

“We’re taking you to get something to eat and where you can get a good night’s sleep,” Alter answered. “Come on.”

“If you hurt me, my mother will put you in jail.”

“Nobody’s going to hurt you, silly,” Tel said. “Come on.”

CHAPTER VI

The Duchess of Petra said, “Now, your first direct assignment will be…”

* * * *

Then, the sudden green of beetles’ wings; the red of polished carbuncle; a web of silver fire; lightning and blue smoke. Columns of jade caught red light through the great crack in the roof. The light across the floor was red. Jon felt that there were others with him, but he could not be sure. Before him, on a stone platform, three marble crescents were filled with pulsating shadows. Jon Koshar looked at them, and then away. There were many more columns, most broken.

He saw a huge break in the sanctuary wall. Outside he could look down on an immense red plain. At a scribed line, the plain changed color to an even more luminous red. Near the temple a few geometrical buildings cast maroon pinions of shadow over the russet expanse. Suddenly he realized that the further half of the plain was an immense red sea, yet with a perfectly straight shore line. Calmly it rippled toward the bright horizon.

At the horizon, filling up nearly a quarter of the sky, was what seemed to be a completely rounded mountain of dull red. No, it was a segment of a huge red disk, a great dull sun lipping the horizon of the planet. Yet it was dim enough so that he could stare directly at it without blinking. Above it, the atmosphere was a rich purple.

Then there was a voice from behind him, and he turned to the triple throne once more.

“Hail, hosts of Earth,” the voice began. The very shadows of the room were like red bruises on the stone. “You are in the halls of an extinct city on Creton III. Twelve million years ago this planet housed a civilization higher than yours today. Now it is dead, and only we are left, sitting on their thrones in the twilight of their dying, ruddy sun.”

“Who are you?” demanded Jon, but his voice sounded strange, distorted. As he bit the last word off, another voice broke in.

“What do you really want from us?”

Then a third voice.

“What are you going to do with us?”

Jon looked around but saw no one else. Suddenly another picture, the picture of a world of white desert where the sky was deep blue and each object cast double shadows, filled his mind. “This isn’t the world you took me to before…” he exclaimed.

“No,” came the quiet voice, “this is not the world we took you to before. Listen. We are homeless wanderers of space. Our origin was not only in another galaxy, but in another universe, eternities ago. By way of this universe we can move from star to star without transversing any segment of time, unless we desire. Thus we have dwelt quietly in the dead cities of myriad suns till now. We have never tampered with any living species, though there is something in us that yearns for the extinct cultures.

“Recently according to our standards, though still much older than your solar system, a dark force has come into the universe. It has evolved similarly to us, and also leaps among galaxies in moments. Yet it holds no culture sacred that it finds, and has already tampered with a score of civilizations. It is younger than we are, and can only exist in one individual at a time, while our entity has three lobes, so to speak. This rival thinks nothing of completely changing the mind of its host, giving deadly information, even new powers. We are bound only to ride with your minds, warn you, guide you, but changing your body before your minds, and that only to keep you from death. So it will be your own greed, your own selflessness that will eventually win or lose this battle. Therefore it will be won or lost within the framework of your own civilization.”

“Then tell us this,” came a voice that was not Jon’s. “What is on the other side of the radiation barrier?”

“But we have told you already. And you have guessed. Toromon is at war with an economic condition. Beyond the barrier is a civilization which is controlled by the Lord of the Flames. He is only in one member of their number, and any time he may move to another, although it is not likely.”

“Are they our enemies?”

“Your only enemies are yourselves. But he must be evicted none the less. To do that, all you must do is confront the individual who is bearing him, the three of you together. But you must all be within seeing distance of him at once. For we work through your minds. What you cannot perceive, we cannot affect.”

“How will we do this?”

“One of you has already been made immune to the radiation barrier. So will the rest of you when it becomes necessary. This is what you will do for us, and it will also remove the threatening element of the unknown that distracts Toromon from her own problems.”

“But why our planet?” a voice asked.

“Yours is an ideal experimenting ground. Because of the Great Fire, your planet has many civilizations that are now completely isolated from one another; many, however, are on a fairly high level. The radiation barriers that lace your planet will keep you isolated from them for some time. When the Lord of the Flames is finished with one empire, he may wish to try a different method on a basically similar civilization. For all your isolated empires had the same base. Marinor, Letpar, Calcivon, Aptor—these are all empires on your planet of which you have never heard. But your first concern is Toromon.”

“Will we remember all this?” Jon asked.

“You will remember enough. Good-bye; you know your task.” The red haze in the deserted temple pulsed and the jade columns flickered. Hands of blue smoke caught him and flung him through a lightning flash. Whirled through a net of silver, he dropped through red into the vivid green of beetles’ wings.

* * * *

Jon blinked. The Duchess took a step backwards. The green carpet, the rich wood-paneled walls, the glass-covered desk: they were in a sitting room of his father’s house, again.

Finally Jon asked, “Now just what am I supposed to do, again? And explain it very carefully.”

“I was going to say,” said the Duchess, “that you were to get to the Prince, who is being kept at an inn in the Devil’s Pot, and accompany him to the forest people. I want him to stay there until this war is over. They live a different life from any of the other people of this empire. They will give him something he’ll be able to use. I told you I spent some time there when I was younger. I can’t explain exactly what it is, but it’s a certain ruggedness, a certain strength. Maybe they won’t give it to him, but if he’s got it in him, they’ll bring it out.”

“What about…the Lord of the Flames?”

“I don’t—do you have any idea, Jon?”

“Well, assuming we get beyond the radiation barrier, assuming we find what people we’re fighting, assuming we find which one of them is carrying around the Lord of the Flames, and assuming we can all three of us get to him at once—assuming all that, there’s no problem. But we can’t, can we? Look, I’ll be going to the forest, so I’ll be closest to the radiation barrier. I’ll try to get through, see what the situation is, and then the two of you can come on. All right?”

“Fine.”

“If nothing else, it’ll put me closer to the Lord of the Flames…and my freedom.”

“How are you not free now, Jon Koshar?” the Duchess asked.

Instead of answering, he said, “Give me the address of the inn at the Devil’s Pot.”

* * * *

Going down the hall, with the address, Jon increased his pace. His mind carried an alien mind that had saved him from death once already. How could he be free? The…obligation? That couldn’t be the word.

Around the corner he heard a voice. “And now would you please explain it to me? It’s not every day that I’m called on to declare war. I think I did it rather eloquently. Now tell my why.”

(Jon remembered the trick of acoustics which as a child enabled him to stand in this spot and overhear his sister and her girlfriends’ conversation just as they came into the house.)

“It’s your brother,” came the other voice. “He’s been kidnaped.”

“He’s been what?” asked the King. “And why? And by whom?”

“We don’t know,” answered the official. “But the council thought it was best to get you to declare war.”

“Oh,” said the King. “So that’s why I made that little speech in there. What does mother say?”

“It wouldn’t be polite to repeat, sir. She was locked in her room, and very insulted.”

“She would be,” said Uske. “So, the enemy has infiltrated and gotten my silly brother.”

“Well,” said the voice, “they can’t be sure. But what with the planes this morning, they thought it was best.”

“Oh, well,” said the King. There were footsteps. Then silence.

Coming round the corner, Jon saw the coat closet was ajar. He opened the door, took out a great cape and hood, and wrapped it around him, pulling the hood close over his head. He stepped into the foyer and went out past the doorman.

* * * *

At the edge of the Devil’s Pot, the woman with the birthmark on the left side of her face was tapping a cane and holding out a tin cup. She had put on a pair of dark glasses and wandered up one street and down another. “Money for a poor blind woman,” she said in a whiny voice. “Money for the blind.” As a coin clinked into her cup, she nodded, smiled, and said, “Welcome to the New World. Good luck in the Island of Opportunity.”

The man who had given her the coin walked a step, and then turned back. “Hey,” he said to Rara. “If you’re blind, how do you know I’m new here?”

“Strangers are generous,” Rara explained, “while those who live here are too frozen to give.”

“Look,” said the man, “I was told to watch out for blind beggars who weren’t blind. My cousin, he warned me…”

“Not blind!” cried Rara. “Not blind? Why my license is right here. It permits me to beg in specified areas because of loss of sight. If you keep this up, I’ll be obliged to show it to you.” She turned away with a huff and began in another direction. The man scratched his head, then hurried off.

A few moments later, a man completely swathed in a gray cloak and hood came around the corner and stopped in front of the woman.

“Money for the blind?”

“Can you use this?” the man said. From his cloak he held out a brocade jacket, covered with fine metal work.

“Of course,” said Rara softly. Then she coughed. “Er…what is it?”

“It’s a jacket,” Jon said. “It’s made pretty well. Maybe you can sell it?”

“Oh, thank you. Thank you, sir.”

* * * *

A few blocks later, a ragged boy, who looked completely amazed, was handed a white silk shirt by the man in the gray cloak. In front of a doorway two blocks on, a pair of open-toed black boots with gold disks were left—and stolen from that doorway exactly forty seconds later by a hairdresser who was returning to her home in Devil’s Pot. She was missing the little finger of her left hand. Once the gray cloaked figure paused in an alley beneath a clothes line. Suddenly he flung up a ball of gray cloth, which caught on the line, unrolled, and became identifiable as a pair of dark gray trousers. A block later the last minor articles of clothing were hurled unceremoniously through an open window. As Jon turned another corner, he glimpsed a figure ducking into a doorway down the dim street. The man was apparently following him.

Jon walked very slowly down the next block, ambling along in the shadow. The hoodlum crept up behind him, then grabbed his cloak, ripped it away, and leaped forward.

Only there wasn’t anything there. The mugger stood for a moment, the cape dangling from his hand, blinking at the place a man should have been. Then something hit him in the jaw. He staggered back. Something else hit him in the stomach. As he stumbled forward now, beneath the street lamp, a transparent human figure suddenly formed in front of him. Then it planted its quite substantial fist into his jaw again, and he went back, down, and out.

Jon dragged the man back to the side of the alley, fading out completely as he did so. Then he took the hoodlum’s clothes, which were ragged, smelly, and painfully nondescript. The shoes, which were too small for him, he had to leave off. Then he flung the cape back around his shoulders and pulled the hood over his head.

For the next six blocks he was lost because there were no street signs. When he did find the next one, he realized he was only a block away from the inn.

As he reached the stone building, he heard a thud in the tiny alleyway beside it. A moment later a girl’s voice called softly, “There. Just like that. Only you better do exactly as I say or you’ll break your arms or legs, or back.”

He walked to the edge of the building and peered into the alley.

Her white hair loose, Alter stood looking up at the roof. “All right, Tel,” she called. “You next.”

Something came down from the roof, flipped over on the ground at her feet, rolled away, and then suddenly unwound to standing position. The black-haired boy ran his fingers through his hair. “Wow,” he said. Then he shook his head. “Wow.”

“Are you all right?” Alter asked. “You didn’t pull anything, did you?”

“No,” he said. “I’m all right. I think. Yeah, everything’s in place.” He looked up at the roof again, two stories above.

“Your turn, Let,” Alter called up.

“It’s high,” came a childish voice from the roof.

“Hurry up,” said Alter, her voice becoming authoritative. “When I count three. And remember, knees up, chin down, and roll quick. One, two, three!” There was the space of a breath, and then it fell, rolled, bounced unsteadily to its feet, and resolved into another boy, this one blond, and slighter than the first.

“Hey, you kids,” Jon said.

They turned.

Jon looked at the smaller boy. His slight blond frame, less substantial then even Alter’s white-haired loveliness was definitely of the royal family. “What are you doing out here, anyway?” Jon asked. “Especially you, your Highness.”

All three children jumped.

It looked like they might balk, and after that descent from the roof, he wasn’t sure where they might balk to. So he said, “Incidentally, the Duchess of Petra sent me. How did you do that fall?”

His Highness was the only one to relax appreciably.

“And are you sure you’re supposed to be outside?”

“We were supposed to stay on the top floor,” Tel said. “But him,” he pointed to his ragged Highness, “he got restless, and we started telling him about the tricks, and so we went up to the roof, and Alter said she could get us down.”

“Can you get them back up?” Jon asked.

“Sure,” said Alter, “all we do is climb…”

Jon held up his hand. “Wait a minute,” he said. “We’ll go inside and talk to the man in charge. Don’t worry. No one’ll be mad.”

“You mean talk to Geryn?” said Alter.

“I guess that’s what his name is.”

They started back out of the alley. “Tell me,” Jon said, “just what sort of person is Geryn?”

“He’s a strange old man. He talks to himself all the time,” said Alter. “But he’s smart.”

Talks to himself, Jon reflected, and nodded. When they reached the door of the inn, Jon pulled his cape off and stepped into the light. A few people at the bar turned around, and when they saw the children, they looked askance at one another.

“Geryn’s probably upstairs,” Alter said. They went to the second floor. Jon let the children go ahead of him as they passed into the shadow of the hall. He only stepped up to them when Alter pushed open the door at the end of the hall and bright light from Geryn’s room fell full across them.

“What is it?” Geryn snapped. And then, “What is it, quick?” He whirled around in the chair at the rough wooden desk when they entered. The giant was standing by the window. Geryn’s gray eyes fidgeted back and forth. Finally he said, “Why are you out here? And who is he? What do you want?”

“I’m from the Duchess of Petra,” Jon said. “I’ve come to take Let to the forest people.”

“Yes,” said the old man. “Yes.” Then suddenly his face twisted as if he were trying to remember something. Then shook his head. “Yes.” Suddenly he stood up. “Well, go on. I’ve done my part, I tell you. I’ve done. Every minute he’s in my house he endangers my boarders, my friends. Take him. Go on.”

The giant turned from the window. “I am to go with you. My name is Arkor.”

Jon frowned. For the first time the scarred giant’s height struck him. “Why…?” he started.

“It is my country that we go to,” said Arkor. “I know how to get there. I can take you through it. Geryn says it is part of the plan.”

Jon felt a sudden knot of resentment tighten inside him. These plans—the Duchess’, Geryn’s, even the plans of the triple beings who inhabited them—they trapped him. Freedom. The word went in and out of his mind like a shadow. He said, “When do we go then, if you know how to get there?”

“In the morning,” said Arkor.

“Alter, take him to a room. Get him out of here. Quick. Go on.” They backed from the room and Alter hurried them up the hall.

Jon was thinking. After delivering Let to the forest people, he was going further. Yes. He would go on, try to get through the radiation barrier. But all three of them had to get through if they were to do any good. So why wasn’t Geryn coming instead of sending the giant? If Geryn came, then there’d be two people near the Lord of the Flames. But Geryn was old. Maybe the Duchess could bring him with her when she came. Mentally he smashed a fist into his thoughts and scattered them. Don’t think. Don’t think. Thinking binds up your mind, and you can never be—He stopped. Then another thought wormed into his skull, the thought of five years of glittering hunger.

That night he slept well. Morning pried his eyes open with blades of light that fell through the window. It was very early. He had been up only a minute when there was a knock on his door. Then it opened, and Arkor directed the dwarfed form of the Prince into Jon’s room, then turned and left.

“He says to meet him downstairs in five minutes,” Let said.

“Sure,” said Jon. He finished buttoning up the ragged shirt stolen from the mugger the night before, and looked at the boy by the door. “I guess you’re not used to these sort of clothes,” he said. “Once I wasn’t either. Pretty soon they begin to take.”

“Huh?” said Let. Then, “Oh.”

“Is something wrong?”

“Who are you?”

Jon thought for a moment. “Well,” he said. “I’m sort of a friend of your brother. An acquaintance, anyway. I’m supposed to take you to the forest.”

“Why?”

“You’ll be safe there.”

“Could we go to the sea instead?”

“My turn for a ‘why’?” Jon asked.

“Because Tel told me all about it last night. He said it was fun. He said there were rocks all different colors. And in the morning, he said, you can see the sun come up like a burning blister behind the water. He told me about the boats, too. I’d like to work on a boat. I really would. They don’t allow me to do anything at home. Mother says I might get hurt. Will I get a chance to work someplace?”

“Maybe,” Jon said.

“Tel had some good stories about fishing. Do you know any stories?”

“I don’t know,” Jon said. “I never tried telling any. Hey, come on. We better get started.”

“I like stories,” Let said. “Come on. I’m just trying to be friendly.”

Jon laughed, then thought a minute. “I can tell you a story, about a prison mine. Do you know anything about the prison mines beyond the forest?”

“Some,” said Let.

“Well, once upon a time, there were three prisoners in that prison camp.” They started out in the hall. “They’d been there a long time, and they wanted to get out. One was…well, he looked like me, let’s pretend. Another had a limp…”

“And the third one was chubby, sort of,” interrupted Let. “I know that story.”

“You do?” asked Jon.

“Sure,” Let said.

“Then you go on and tell it.” Jon was a little annoyed.

Let told it to him.

They were outside waiting for Arkor when the boy finished. “See,” Let said. “I told you I knew it.”

“Yeah,” said Jon quietly. He stood very still. “You say the other two…didn’t make it?”

“That’s right,” Let said. “The guards brought them back and dumped their bodies in the mud so that…”

“Shut up,” Jon said.

“Huh?” asked Let.

He was quiet for a few breaths. “Who told you that…story?”

“Petra,” Let answered. “She told it to me. It’s a good story, huh?”

“Incidentally,” Jon said. “I’m the one that got away.”

“You mean?” The boy stopped. “You mean it really happened?”

The early light warmed the deserted street now as Arkor came to the door of the inn and stepped into the street.

“All right,” he said. “Come on.”

CHAPTER VII

The news service of Toromon in the city of Toron was a public address system that flooded the downtown area, and a special printed sheet that was circulated among the upper families of the city. On the mainland it was a fairly accurate brigade of men and women who transported news orally from settlement to settlement. All announced simultaneously that morning:

Crown Prince Kidnaped

King Declares War!

In the military ministry, directives were issued in duplicate and redelivered in triplicate. At eight-forty, the 27B Communications Sector became hopelessly snarled. This resulted in the shipment of a boatload of prefabricated barracks foundations to a port on the mainland sixty-two miles from the intended destination.

Let, Jon, and Arkor were just mounting the private yacht of the Duchess of Petra which was waiting for them at the end of the harbor. Later, as the island of Toron slipped across the water, Let mentioned to Jon, leaning against the railing, that there was an awful lot of commotion on the docks.

“It’s always like that,” Jon told him, remembering the time he’d gone with his father in the morning to the pier. “They’re inspecting cargoes. But it does look awfully busy.”

Which was a euphemism. One group of military directives which had been quite speedily and accurately delivered were the offers of contracts, primarily for food, and secondarily for equipment. Two of the distributors of imported fish who had absolutely no chance of receiving the contracts sent in a bid accompanied by a letter which explained (with completely fraudulent statistics) how much cheaper it would be to use imported fish rather than those from the aquariums. Then they commandeered a group of ruffians who broke into the house of old Koshar’s personal secretary, who was still sleeping after the previous night’s party which he had helped out with. (So far he has appeared in this story only as a hand seen around the edge of a storage cabinet door, a broad hand, with wiry black hair, on which there was a cheap, wide, brass ring in which was set an irregular shape of blue glass.)

They tied him to a chair, punched him in the stomach, and in the head, and in the mouth until there was blood running down his trimmed, black beard; and he had given the information they wanted—information that enabled them to sink three of the Koshar cargo fleet that was just coming into dock.

The Duchess’ private yacht made contact with a tetron-tramp returning to the mainland and Let, Jon, and Arkor changed ships. Coming from the yacht in bare feet and rags gave them an incongruous appearance. But on the tramp, among those passengers who were returning for their families, they quickly became lost.

On Toron, the pilot of the shuttle boat that took workers from the city to the aquariums found a clumsily put-together, but nevertheless unmistakable, bomb hidden in the lavatory. It was dismantled. There was no accident. But an authority, Vice-Supervisor Nitum of Koshar Synthetic Food Concerns (whose name you do not need to remember, as he was killed three days later in a street brawl) clenched his jaw (unshaven; he had been called to the office a half an hour early over the sunken cargo boats), nodded his head, and issued a few non-official directives himself. Twenty minutes later, Koshar Synthetic Food Concerns was officially given the government contract to supply the armies of Toromon with food. Because the two rival bidders, the import merchants, had ceased to exist about twelve minutes previously, having suddenly been denied warehouse space, and their complete storage dumped into the streets to rot (nearly seven tons of frozen fish) because the refrigeration lockers, and the refrigeration buildings, and the refrigeration trucks had all been rented from Rahsok Refrigeration, and nobody had ever thought of spelling Rahsok backwards.

In the military ministry, Captain Clemen, along with Major Tomar, was called away from his present job of completing the evacuation of the top four floors of an adjacent office building to accommodate the new corps of engineers, mathematicians, and physicists that the army had just enlisted. Apparently riots had started in the streets around the old Rahsok Refrigeration Houses. The warehouses were just a few blocks away from the official boundary of the Devil’s Pot.

They got there ten minutes after the report came in. “What the hell is going on?” Clemen demanded, from the head of the City Dispersal Squad. Behind the line of uniformed men, masses of people were pushing and calling out. “And what’s that stench?” added Clemen. He was a tiny man, exactly a quarter of an inch over the minimum for military acceptance—4’ 10”.

“Fish, sir,” the Dispersal Chief told him. “There’s tons of it all over the street. The people are trying to take it away.”

“Well, let them have it,” Clemen said. “It’ll clear the streets of the mess and maybe do some good.”

“You don’t understand, sir,” the head of Dispersal explained. “It’s been poisoned. Just before it was dumped, it was soaked with buckets of barbitide. Half a ton of the stuff’s already been carried away.”

Clemen turned. “Tomar,” he said. “You get back to headquarters and see personally that a city-wide announcement goes out telling about the poisoned fish. Call General Medical, find out the antidote, and get the information all over the city. See to it personally, too.”

Tomar got back to headquarters, got General Medical, got the antidote, which was expensive, complicated, and long, and drafted his announcement.

WARNING! Any citizen who has taken fish from the street in the area of Rahsok Refrigeration is in immediate danger of death. The fish has been treated with the fatal poison barbitide. No fish other than that directly traceable to the Synthetic Markets should be eaten. warn your neighbors! If fish has been eaten, go directly to the General Medical building (address followed). Symptoms of barbitide poisoning: intense cramps about two hours after ingestion, followed by nausea, fever, and swollen lymph nodes. Death results in twenty minutes after onset of cramps under normal conditions. Foods with high calcium contents prolong spasms to a maximum hour and a half (foods such as milk, ground egg shell). General Medical has been alerted. There you will receive injections of Calcium Silicate and Atropayic Acid which can counteract the effects of the poison up until the last five or ten minutes.

Tomar personally sent the directive through Communications Center 27B, marked urgent and emergency. Ten minutes later he received a visiphone call from the Communications Engineer saying that 27B had been hopelessly snarled all morning. In fact so had 26B, 25B. In further fact, said the engineer, the only available sectors open were 34A and 42A, none of which, incidentally, had access to complete city lines.

Tomar made a triplicate copy of the warning and sent it out, nonetheless, through Sectors 40A, 41A, and 42A. A half an hour later the secretary to the Communications Engineer called and said, “Major Tomar, I’m sorry, I just got back from my break and I didn’t see your message until just now. Because of the tie-ups, we’ve received instructions only to let authorized persons have access to the available sectors.”

“Well, who the hell is authorized,” Tomar bellowed. “If you don’t put that through and quick, half the city may be dead by this evening.”

The secretary paused a minute. Then he said, “I’m sorry, sir, but…well, look. I’ll give it directly to the Communications Engineer when he gets back.”

“When is he getting back?” Tomar demanded.

“I…I don’t know.”

“Who is authorized?”

“Only generals, sir, and only those directly concerned with the war effort.”

“I see,” Tomar said, and hung up.

He had just dispatched seven copies of the announcement with an explanatory note to seven of the fourteen generals in the ministry when the Communications Engineer called again. “Major, what’s all this about a bushel of fish?”

“Look, there are seven tons of the stuff all over the streets.”

“And poisoned?”

“Exactly. Will you please see that this message gets out over every available piece of city-wide communication as fast as possible? This is really life and death.”

“We’re just allowed to work on getting war messages through. But I guess this takes priority. Oh, that explains some of the messages we’ve been getting. I believe there’s even one for you.”

“Well?” asked Tomar after a pause.

“I’m not allowed to deliver it, sir.”

“Why not?”

“You’re not authorized, sir.”

“Look, damn it, get it right now and read it to me.”

“Well…er…it’s right here sir. It’s from the chief of the City Dispersal Squad.”

The message was, in brief, that twenty-three men, among them Captain Clemen, had been trampled to death by an estimated two and a half thousand hungry residents of the Devil’s Pot, most of them immigrants from the mainland.

A ton and a half of fish was finally removed from the streets and disposed of. But five and a half tons had made its way through the city. The Communications Engineer also added that while they’d been talking, a memorandum had come through that Sectors 34A to 42A were now out of commission, but that the major should try 27B again, because it might have cleared up.

* * * *

The second shift of workers that day was arriving at the aquariums. In the great pontooned building, vast rows of transparent plastic tubes, three feet in diameter, webbed back and forth among the tetron pumps. Vibrator nets cut the tubes into twenty-foot compartments. Catwalks strung the six-story structure, all flooded with deep red light that came from the phosphor-rods that stuck up from the pumps. Light toward the blue end of the spectrum disturbed the fish, who had to be visible at all times, to be moved, or to be checked for any sickness or deformity. In their transparent tubes, the fish floated in a state near suspended animation, vibrated gently, were kept at a constant 82°, were fed, were fattened, were sorted according to age, size, and species; then slaughtered. The second shift of workers moved into the aquarium, relieving the first shift.

They had been on about two hours when a sweating hulk of a man who was an assistant feeder reported to the infirmary, complaining of general grogginess. Heat prostration was an occasional complaint in the aquarium.

The doctor told him to lie down for a little while. Five minutes later he went into violent cramps. Perhaps the proper attention would have been paid to him had not a few minutes later a woman fallen from a catwalk at the top of the aquarium and broken one of the plastic arteries and her skull, six stories below.

In the red light the workers gathered around her broken body that lay at the end of a jagged plastic tube. In the spread water, dozens of fish, fat and ruddy-skinned, flapped their gills weakly.

The woman’s co-workers said she had complained of not feeling well, when suddenly she went into convulsions while crossing one of the catwalks. By the time the doctor got back to the infirmary, the assistant feeder had developed a raging fever, and the nurse reported him violently nauseated. Then he died.

In the next two hours, out of the five thousand two hundred and eighty people who worked at the aquariums, three hundred and eighty-seven were taken with cramps and died in the next two hours, the only exception being an oddball physical culture enthusiast who always drank two quarts of milk for lunch; he lasted long enough to be gotten onto the shuttle and back to General Medical on Toron, where he died six minutes after admittance, one hour and seventeen minutes after the onset of the cramps. That was the first case that General Medical actually received. It was not until the sixteenth case that the final diagnosis of barbitide poisoning was arrived at. Then someone remembered the query that had come in by phone from the military ministry that morning about the antidote.

“Somehow,” said Chief Toxologist Oona, “the stuff has gotten into some food or other. It may be all over the city.” Then he sat down at his desk and drafted a warning to the citizens of Toron containing a description of the effects of barbitide poisoning, antidote, and instructions to come to the General Medical building, along with a comment on high calcium foods. “Send this to the Military Ministry and get it out over every available source of public communications, and quick,” he told his secretary.

When the Assistant Communications Engineer (the first having gone off duty at three o’clock) received the message, he didn’t even bother to see who it was from, but balled it up in disgust and flung it into a wastepaper basket and mumbled something about unauthorized messages. Had the janitor bothered to count that evening, he would have discovered that there were now thirty-six copies of Major Tomar’s directive in various wastebaskets around the ministry.

Only a fraction of the barbitide victims made it to General Medical, but the doctors were busy. There was just one extraordinary incident, and among the screams of cramped patients, it was not given much thought. Two men near the beginning of the rush of patients, gained access to the special receiving room. They managed to get a look at all the women who arrived. One of the patients who was wheeled by them was a particularly striking girl of about fifteen with snow white hair and a strong, lithe body, now knotted with cramps. Sweat beaded her forehead, her eyelids, and through her open collar you could see she wore a leather necklace of shells.

“That’s her,” one of the men said. The other nodded, then went to the doctor who was administering the injections, and whispered to him.

“Of course not,” the doctor said indignantly in a clear voice. “Patients need at least forty-eight hours rest and careful observation after injection of the antidotes. Their resistance is extremely low and complications…”

The man said something else to the doctor and showed him a set of credentials. The doctor stopped, looked scared, then left the patient he was examining and went to the bed of the new girl. Quickly he gave her two injections. Then he said to the men, “I want you to know that I object to this completely and I will—”

“All right, Doctor,” the first man said. Then the second hoisted Alter from the cot and they carried her out of the hospital.

* * * *

The Queen Mother had her separate throne room. She sat in it now, looking at photographs. In bright colors, two showed the chamber of the Crown Prince. In one picture the Prince was seated on his bed in his pajama pants with his heel against the side board; standing by the window was a white-haired girl with a leather necklace strung with tiny, bright shells. The next showed the Prince still sitting on the bed, this time with his hand on the newel dolphin. The girl was just turning toward the open window.

The third picture, which from the masking, seemed to have been taken through a keyhole, showed what seemed to be an immense enlargement of a human pupil; mistily discernible through the iris were the dottings and tiny pathways of a retina pattern. On the broad arm of the Queen Mother’s throne was a folder marked: Alter Ronid.

In the folder were a birth certificate, a clear photograph of the same retina pattern, a contract in which a traveling circus availed itself of the service of a group of child acrobats for the season, a school diploma, copies of receipts covering a three-year period of gymnastic instruction, a copy of a medical bill for the correction of a sprained hip, and two change of address slips. Also there were several cross reference slips to the files of Alia Ronid (mother, deceased) and Rara Ronid (maternal aunt, legal guardian).

The Queen put the photographs on top of the folder and turned to the guards. There were thirty of them lined against the walls of the room. She lifted up the heavy, jeweled scepter and said, “Bring her in.” She touched the two buns of white hair on the sides of her head, breathed deeply, and straightened in the chair, as two doors opened at the other end of the room.

Two blocks had been set up in the middle of the room, about four feet high and a foot apart.

Alter stumbled once, but the guard caught her. They walked her between the blocks, which came to just below her shoulders, spread her arms over the surface and strapped them straight across the tops at the biceps and wrist.

The Queen smiled. “That’s only a precaution. We want to help you.” She came down the steps of the throne, the heavy jeweled rod cradled in her arm. “Only we know something about you. We know that you know something which if you tell me, will make me feel a great deal better. I’ve been very upset, recently. Did you know that?”

Alter blinked and tried to get her balance. The blocks were just under the proper height by half an inch so that she could neither stand completely nor could she sag.

“We know you’re tired, and after your ordeal with the barbitide—you don’t feel well, do you?” asked the Queen, coming closer.

Alter shook her head.

“Where did you take my son?” the Queen asked.

Alter closed her eyes, then opened them wide and shook her head.

“Believe me,” said the Queen, “we have ample proof. Look.” She held up the photographs for Alter to see. “My son took these pictures of the two of you together. They’re very clear, don’t you think?” She put the pictures back in the quilted pocket of her robe.

“Aren’t you going to tell me, now?”

“I don’t know anything,” Alter said.

“Come now. That room had as many cameras as a sturgeon has eggs. There are dozens of hidden switches. Somehow the alarms connected with them didn’t go off, but the cameras still worked.”

Alter shook her head again.

“You don’t have to be afraid,” said the Queen. “We know you’re tired and we want to get you back to the hospital as soon as possible. Now. What happened to my son, the Prince?”

Silence.

“You’re a very sweet girl. You’re an acrobat too?”

Alter swallowed, and then coughed.

The Queen gave a puzzled smile this time. “Really, you don’t have to be afraid to answer me. You are an acrobat, isn’t that right?”

Alter nodded.

The Queen reached out and slowly lifted the triplet leather necklace with its scattering of shells in her fingers. “This is a beautiful piece of jewelry.” She lifted it from Alter’s neck. “An acrobat’s body must be like a fine jewel, fine and strong. You must be very proud of it.” Again she paused and tilted her head. “I’m only trying to put you at ease, dear, make conversation.” Smiling, she lifted the necklace completely from around Alter’s neck. “Oh, this is exquisite…”

Suddenly the necklace clattered to the ground, the shells making an almost miniature sound against the tiles.

Alter’s eyes followed the necklace to the floor.

“Oh,” the Queen said. “I’m terribly sorry. It would be a shame to break something like this.” With one hand the Queen drew back her robes until her shoe was revealed. Then she moved her foot forward until her raised toe was over the necklace. “Will you tell me where my son is?”

There was seven, eight, ten seconds of silence. “Very well,” the Queen said, and brought her foot down. The sound of crushed shells was covered by Alter’s scream. Because the Queen had brought down the scepter, too, the full arc of its swing, onto Alter’s strapped forearm. Then she brought it down again. The room was filled with the scream and the crack of the jeweled scepter against the surface of the block. Then the Queen smashed Alter’s upturned elbow joint.

When there was something like silence, the Queen said, “Now, where is my son?”

Alter didn’t say for a long while; when she did, they were ready to believe anything. So what she told them didn’t do much good when they had time to check it. Later, unconscious, she was carried into the General Medical building wrapped in a gray blanket.

“Another fish poison case?” asked the clerk.

The man nodded. The doctor, who had been there when Alter was removed from the hospital, had been working steadily for six hours. When he unwrapped the blanket, he recognized the girl. When he unwrapped it further, the breath hissed between his lips, and then hissed out again, slowly. “Get this girl to emergency surgery,” he said to the nurse. “Quickly!”

* * * *

In the Devil’s Pot, Tel had just gotten over a case of the runs which had kept him away from food all day. Feeling hungry, now, he was foraging in the cold storage cabinet of the inn’s kitchen. In the freezing chest he found the remains of a baked fish, so he got a sharp knife from over the sink, and cut a piece. Then the door opened and the barmaid came in. She was nearly seventy years old and wore a red scarf around her stringy neck. Tel had cut a slice of onion and was putting it on top of the fish when the barmaid ran forward and knocked the dish from his hand.

“Ouch,” Tel said, and jumped, though nothing had hurt him.

“Are you completely crazy?” the woman asked. “You want to be carried out of here like the rest of them?”

Tel looked puzzled as Rara entered the kitchen. “Good grief,” she declared. “Where is everybody? I’m starved. I started selling that homebrew tonic of mine that I made up yesterday, and around noon, suddenly everybody was buying the stuff. They wanted something for cramps, and I guess my Super Aqueous Tonic is as good as anything else. I couldn’t even get back to eat. Is there some sort of epidemic? Say, that looks good,” and she went for the fish.

The old barmaid snatched up the dish and carried it to the disposal can. “It’s poisoned, don’t you understand?” She dumped it into the chute. “It’s got to be the fish that’s causing it. Everybody who ate it has been carried off to General Medical with cramps. Lots of them died, too. The woman who lives across the street and me, we figured it out. We both bought it from the same woman this morning, and that’s all it could be.

“Well, I’m still hungry,” Tel said.

“Can we have some cheese and fruit?” asked Rara.

“I guess that’s safe,” the woman said.

“Who was carried out?” Tel wanted to know, looking back in the cabinet.

“Oh, that’s right,” the barmaid said, “you’ve been upstairs sick all day.” And then she told him.

* * * *

At about the same time, an observer in a scouting plane noticed a boat bearing prefabricated barracks foundations some sixty miles away from any spot that could possibly be receiving such a shipment. In fact, he had sent a corrective order on a typographical error concerning…yes, it must be, that same boat. He’d sent it that morning through Communication Sector 27B. They were near the shore, one of the few spots away from the fishing villages and the farm communes where the great forest had crept down to the edge of the water itself. A tiny port, occasionally used as an embarkation for the families of emigrants going to join people in the city, was the only point of civilization between the rippling smoke-green sea on one side and the crinkling deep green of the forest tree tops on the other. The observer also noted that a small tetron tramp was about to dock also. But that transport ship… He called the pilot and requested contact be made.

The pilot was shaking his head, groggily.

The co-pilot was leaning back in his seat, his mouth opened, his eyes closed. “I don’t feel too…” The pilot started, and then reached forward absently to crumple a sheet of tin foil he had left on the instrument panel, in which, a few hours ago, had been a filet sandwich that he and the co-pilot had shared between them.

Suddenly the pilot fell forward out of his chair, knocking the control stick way to the left. He clutched his stomach as the plane banked suddenly to the right. In the observation blister, the observer was thrown from his chair and the microphone fell from his hand.

The co-pilot woke up, belched, grabbed for the stick, which was not in its usual place, and so missed. Forty-one seconds later, the plane had crashed into a dock some thirty feet from the mooring tetron tramp.

CAPTIVES OF THE FLAME, by Samuel R. Delany (Part 2)

CHAPTER VIII

There was a roaring in the air. Let cried out and ran forward. Then shadow. Then water. His feet were slipping on the deck as the rail swung by. Then thunder. Then screaming. Something was breaking in half.

Jon and Arkor got him out. They had to jump overboard with the unconscious Prince, swim, climb, and carry. There were sirens at the dock when they laid him on the dried leaves of the forest clearing.

“We’ll leave him here,” Arkor said.

“Here? Are you sure?” Jon asked.

“They will come for him. You must go on,” he said softly. “We’ll leave the Prince now, and you can tell me of your plan.”

“My plan…” Jon said. They walked off through the trees.

* * * *

Dried leaves tickled one cheek, a breeze cooled the other. Something touched him on the side, and he stretched his arms, scrunched his eyelids, then curled himself into the comfortable dark. He was napping in the little park behind the palace. He would go in for supper soon. The leaf smell was fresher than it had ever.… Something touched him on the side again.

He opened his eyes, and bit off a scream. Because he wasn’t in the park, he wasn’t going in to supper, and there was a giant standing over him.

The giant touched the boy with his foot once more.

Suddenly the boy scrambled away, then stopped, crouching, across the clearing. A breeze shook the leaves like admonishing fingers before he heard the giant speak. The giant was silent. Then the giant spoke again.

The word the boy recognized in both sentences was, “…Quorl…”

The third time he spoke, he merely pointed to himself and repeated, “Quorl.”

Then he pointed to the boy and smiled questioningly.

The boy was silent.

Again the giant slapped his hand against his naked chest and said, “Quorl.” Again he extended his hand toward the boy, waiting for sound. It did not come. Finally the giant shrugged, and motioned for the boy to come with him.

The boy rose slowly, and then followed. Soon they were walking briskly through the woods.

As they walked, the boy remembered: the shadow of the plane out of control above them, the plane striking the water, water becoming a mountain of water, like shattered glass rushing at them across the sea. And he remembered the fire.

Hadn’t it really started in his room at the palace, when he pressed the first of the concealed micro-switches with his heel? The cameras were probably working, but there had been no bells, no sirens, no rush of guards. It had tautened when he pushed the second switch in the jeweled dolphin on his bedpost. It nearly snapped with metallic panic when he had to maneuver the girl into position for the retina photograph.Nothing had happened. He was taken away, and his mother stayed quietly in her room. What was supposed to happen was pulling further and further away from the reality. How could anybody kidnap the Prince?

His treatment by the boy who told him about the sea and the girl who taught him to fall pulled it even tighter. If the Prince werekidnaped, certainly his jailors should not tell him stories of beautiful mornings and sunsets, or teach him to do impossible things with his body.

He was sure that the girl had meant him to die when she had told him to leap from the roof. But he had to do what he was told. He always had. (He was following the giant through the dull leaves because the giant had told him to.) When he had leapt from the roof, then rolled over and sprung to his feet alive, the shock had turned the rack another notch and he could feel the threads parting.

Perhaps if he had stayed there, talked more to the boy and girl, he could have loosened the traction, pulled the fabric of reality back into the shape of expectation. But then the man with the black hair and the scarred giant had come to take him away. He’d made one last volitional effort to bring “is” and “suppose” together. He’d told the man the story of the mine prisoners, the one cogent, connected thing he remembered from his immediate past, a real good “suppose” story. But the man turned on him and said that “suppose” wasn’t “suppose” at all, but “is.” A thread snapped here, another there.

(Over the deck of the boat there was roaring in the air. He had cried out. Then shadow. Then water. His feet were slipping and the rail swung by. Then thunder. Then screaming, his screaming: I can’t die! I’m not supposed to die! Something tore in half.)

The leaves were shaking, the whole earth trembled with his tired, unsteady legs. As they walked through the forest, the last filament went, like a thread of glass under a blow-torch flame. The last thing to flicker out, like the fading end of the white hot strand, was the memory of someone, somewhere, entreating him not to forget something, not to forget it no matter what…but what it was, he wasn’t sure.

Quorl, with the boy beside him, kept a straight path through the forest. The ground sloped up now. Boulders lipped with moss pushed out here and there. Once Quorl stopped short; his arm shot in front of the boy to keep him from going further.

Yards before them the leaves parted, and two great women walked forward. Everything about them was identical, their blue-black eyes, flat noses, broad cheek ridges. Twin sisters, the boy thought. Both women also bore a triplex of scars down the left sides of their faces. They paid no attention to either Quorl or the boy, but walked across into the trees again. The moment they were gone, Quorl started again.

Much later they turned onto a small cliff that looked across a great drop to another mountain. Near a thick tree trunk was a pile of brush and twigs. The boy watched Quorl drop to his knees and being to move the brush away. The boy crouched to see better.

The great brown fingers tipped with bronze-colored nails gently revealed a cage made of sticks tied together with dried vines. Something squeaked in the cage, and the boy jumped.

Quorl in a single motion got the trap door opened and his hand inside. The next protracted squeak suddenly turned into a scream. Then there was silence. Quorl removed a furry weasel and handed it to the boy.

The pelt was feather soft and still warm. The head hung crazily to the side where the neck had been broken. The boy looked at the giant’s hands again.

Veins roped across the ligaments’ taut ridges. The hair on the joints of the fingers grew up to edge of the broad, furrowed knuckles. Now the finders were pulling the brush back over the trap. They crossed the clearing and Quorl uncovered a second trap. When the hand went into the trap and the knot of muscle jumped on the brown forearm (Squeeeeeeraaaaa!), the boy looked away, out across the great drop.

The sky was smoke gray to the horizon where a sudden streak of orange marked the sunset. The burning copper disk hung low in the purple gap of the mountains. A fan of lavender drifted above the orange, and then white, faint green.… The gray wasn’t really gray, it was blue-gray. He began to count colors, and there were twelve distinct ones (not a thousand). The last one was a pale gold that tipped the edges of the few low clouds that clustered near the burning circle.

A touch on the shoulder made the boy turn back. Quorl handed him the second animal, and they went back into the woods. Later, they had built a small fire and had skinned and quartered the animals on the scimitar-like blade that the giant wore. They sat in the diminishing shell of light with the meat on forked sticks, turning it over the flame. The boy watched the gray-maroon fibers go first shiny with juice, and then darken, turn crisp and brown. When the meat was done, Quorl took a piece of folded skin from his pouch and shook some white powder onto it. Then he passed the leather envelope to the boy.

The boy poured a scattering of white powder into his palm, then carefully put his tongue to it. It was salt.

When they had nearly finished eating the forest had grown cooler and still. Fire made the leaves around them into flickering shingles on the darkness. Quorl was cleaning the last, tiny bone with big, yellow teeth when there was a sound. They both turned.

Another branch broke to their left. “Tloto,” Quorl called harshly, followed by some sort of invective.

It moved closer, the boy could hear it moving, closer until the boy saw the tall shadow at the edge of the ring of light.

With disgust—but without fear, the boy could see—Quorl picked up a stick and flung it. The shadow dodged and made a small mewing sound.

“Di ta klee, Tloto,” Quorl said. “Di ta klee.”

Only Tloto didn’t di ta klee, but came forward instead, into the light.

Perhaps it had been born of human parents, but to call it human now… It was bone naked, hairless, shell white. It had no eyes, no ears, only a lipless mouth and slitted nostril flaps. It sniffed toward the fire.

Now the boy saw that both the feet were clubbed and gnarled. Only two fingers on each hand were neither misshapen or stiffly paralyzed. It reached for Quorl’s pile of bones, making the mewing sound with its mouth.

With a sudden sweep of his hand, Quorl knocked the paraplegic claw away and shouted another scattering of indifferent curses. Tloto backed away, turned to the boy, and came forward, its nostril slits widening and contracting.

The boy had eaten all he could and had a quarter of his meat still left. It’s only a head or two taller than I am, he thought. If it’s from this race of giants, perhaps it’s still a child. Maybe it’s my age. He stared at the blank face. It doesn’t know what’s going on, the boy thought. It doesn’t know what’s supposed to be happening.

Perhaps it was just the sound of the word in his head that triggered off the sudden panic. (Or was it something else that caught in his chest?) Anyway, he took the unfinished meat and extended it toward Tloto.

The claw jumped forward, grabbed, and snatched back. The boy tried to make his mouth go into a smile. But Tloto couldn’t see, so it didn’t matter. He turned back to the fire, and when he looked up again, Tloto was gone.

As Quorl began to kick dirt onto the coals, he lectured the boy, apparently on Tloto and perhaps a few other philosophical concepts. The boy listened carefully, and understood at least that Tloto was not worth his concern. Then they lay down beside the little cyst of embers, the glowing scab of light on the darkness, and slept.

When the giant’s hand came down and shook his shoulder, it was still dark. He didn’t jump this time but blinked against the night and pulled his feet under him. It had grown colder, and dark wind brushed his neck and fingered his hair. Then a high sound cut above the trees and fell away. Quorl took the boy’s arm and they started through the dark trees quickly.

Gray light filtered from the left. Was it morning? No. The boy saw it was the rising moon. The light became white, then silver white. They reached a cliff at last, beyond which was the dark sea. Broken rock spilled to ledges below. Fifty feet down, but still a hundred feet above the water, was the largest table of rock. The moon was high enough to light the entire lithic arena as well as the small temple at its edge.

In front of the temple stood a man in black robes who blew on a huge curved shell. The piercing wail sliced high over the sea and the forest. People were gathering around the edge of the arena. Some came in couples, some with children, but most were single men and women.

The boy started to go down, but Quorl held him back. They waited. From sounds about them, the boy realized there were others observing from the height also. On the water, waves began to glitter with broken images of the moon. The sky was speckled with stars.

Suddenly a group of people were led from the temple onto the platform. Most of them were children. One was an old man whose beard twitched in the light breeze. Another was a tall stately women. All of them were bound, all of them were near naked, and all except the woman shifted their feet and looked nervously about.

The priest in the black robe disappeared into the temple, and emerged again with something that looked to the boy from this distance for all the world like a back-scratcher. The priest raised it in the moonlight, and a murmur rose and quieted about the ring of people. The boy saw that there were three close prongs on the handle, each snagging on the luminous beams of the moon, betraying their metallic keenness.

The priest walked to the first child and caught the side of her head in his hand. Then he quickly drew the triple blade down the left side of her face. She made an indefinite noise, but it was drowned in the rising whisper of the crowd. He did the same to the next child who began to cry, and to the next. The woman stood completely still and did not flinch when the blades opened her cheek. The old man was afraid. The boy could tell because he whimpered and backed away.

A man and a woman stepped from the ring of people and held him for the priest. As the blade raked the side of his face, his high senile whine turned into a scream. The boy thought for a moment of the trapped animals. The old man staggered away from his captors and no one paid him any more attention. The priest raised the shell to his mouth once more, and the high, brilliant sound flooded the arena.

Then, as they had come, silently the people disappeared into the woods. Quorl touched the boy’s shoulder and they too went into the woods. The boy looked at the giant with a puzzled expression, but there was no explanation. Once the boy caught sight of a white figure darting at their left as a shaft of moonlight slipped across a naked shoulder. Tloto was following them.

* * * *

The boy spent his days learning. Quorl taught him to pull the gut of animals to make string. It had to be stretched a long time and then greased with hunks of fat. Once learned it became his job; as did changing the bait in the traps; as did cutting willow boughs to make sleeping pallets; as did sorting the firewood into piles of variously sized wood; as did holding together the sticks while Quorl tied them together and made a canopy for them, the night it rained.

He learned words, too. At least he learned to understand them. Tike—trap, Di’tika—a sprung trap, Tikan—two traps. One afternoon Quorl spent a whole six hours teaching words to the boy. There were lots of them. Even Quorl, who did not speak much, was surprised how many had to be learned. The boy did not speak at all. But soon he understood.

“There is a porcupine,” Quorl would say, pointing.

The boy would turn his eyes quickly, following the finger, and then look back, blinking quietly in comprehension.

They were walking through the forest that evening, and Quorl said, “You walk as loud as a tapir.” The boy had been moving over dry leaves. Obediently he moved his bare feet to where the leaves were damp and did not crackle.

Sometimes the boy went alone by the edge of the stream. Once a wild pig chased him and he had to climb a tree. The pig tried to climb after him and he sat in the crotch of the branch looking quietly down into the squealing mouth, the warty gray face; he could see each separate bristle stand up and lie down as the narrow jaw opened and closed beneath the skin. One yellow tusk was broken.

Then he heard a mewing sound away to his left. Looking off he saw slug-like Tloto coming towards his tree. A sudden urge to sound pushed him closer to speech (Stay away! Stay Back!) than he had been since his arrival in the woods. But Tloto could not see. Tloto could not hear. His hands tightened until the bark burned his palm.

Suddenly the animal turned from the tree and took off after Tloto. Instantly the slug-man turned and was gone.

The boy dropped from the tree and ran after the sound of the pig’s crashing in the underbrush. Twenty feet later after tearing through a net of thick foliage, he burst onto a clearing and stopped.

In the middle of the clearing, the pig was struggling half above ground and half under. Only it wasn’t ground. It was some sort of muckpool covered by a floating layer of leaves and twigs. The pig was going under fast.

Then the boy saw Tloto on the other side of the clearing, his nostrils quivering, his blind head turning back and forth. Somehow the slug-man must have maneuvered the animal into the trap. He wasn’t sure how, but that must have been what had happened.

The urge that welled in him now came too fast to be stopped. It had too much to do with the recognition of luck, and the general impossibility of the whole situation. The boy laughed.

He startled himself with the sound, and after a few seconds stopped. Then he turned. Quorl stood behind him.

(Squeeeee… Squeeee…raaaaaaa! Then a gurgle, then nothing.)

Quorl was smiling too, a puzzled smile.

“Why did you—?” (The last word was new. He thought it meant laugh, but he said nothing.)

The boy turned back now. Tloto and the pig were gone.

Quorl walked the boy back to their camp. As they were nearing the stream Quorl saw the boy’s footprints in the soft earth and frowned. “To leave your footprints in wet earth is dangerous. The vicious animals come to drink and they will smell you, and they will follow you, to eat. Suppose that pig had smelled them and been chasing you, instead of running into the pool? What then? If you must leave your footprints, leave them in dry dust. Better not to leave them at all.”

The boy listened, and remembered. But that night, he saved a large piece of meat from his food. When Tloto came into the circle of firelight, he gave it to him.

Quorl gave a shrug of disgust and flung a pebble at the retreating shadow. “He is useless,” Quorl said. “Why do you waste good food on him? To throw away good food is a—.” (Unintelligible word.) “You do not understand—.” (Another unintelligible word.)

The boy felt something start up inside him again. But he would not let it move his tongue; so he laughed. Quorl looked puzzled. The boy laughed again. Then Quorl laughed too. “You will learn. You will learn at last.” Then the giant became serious. “You know, that is the first—sound I have heard you make since coming here.”

The boy frowned, and the giant repeated the sentence. The boy’s face showed which word baffled him.

The giant thought a minute, and then said, “You, me, even Tloto, are malika.” That was the word. Now Quorl looked around him. “The trees, the rocks, the animals, they are not malika. But the laughing sound, that was a malika sound.”

The boy thought about it until perhaps he understood. Then he slept.

He laughed a lot during the days now. Survival had come as close to routine as it could here in the jungle, and he could turn his attention to more malika concerns. He watched Quorl when they came on other forest people. With single men and women there was usually only an exchange of ten or twelve friendly words. If it were a couple, especially with children, he would give them food. But if they passed anyone with scars, Quorl would freeze until the person was by.

Once the boy wandered to the temple on the arena of rock. There were carvings on much of the stone. The sun was high. The carvings represented creatures somewhere between fish and human. When he looked up from the rock, he saw that the priest had come from the temple and was staring at him. The priest stared until he went away.

Now the boy tried to climb the mountain. That was hard because the footing was slippery and the rocks kept giving. At last he stopped on a jutting rock that looked down the side of the mountain. He was far from any place he knew. He was very high. He stood with hand against the leaning trunk of a near rotten tree, breathing deep and squinting at the sky. (Three or four times Quorl and he had taken long hunting trips: one had taken them to the edge of a deserted meadow across which was a crazily sagging farmhouse. There were no people there. Another had taken them to the edge of the jungle, beyond which the ground was gray and broken, and row after row of unsteady shacks sat among clumps of slithering ferns. Many of the forest people living there had scars and spent more time in larger groups.) The boy wondered if he could see to the deserted meadow from here, or to the deadly rows of prison shacks. A river, a snake of light, coiled through the valley toward the sea. The sky was very blue.

He heard it first, and then he felt it start. He scrambled back toward firmer ground but didn’t scramble fast enough. The rock tilted, tore loose, and he was falling. (It pierced through his memory like a white fire-blade hidden under canvas: “…knees up, chin down, and roll quick,” the girl had said a long time ago.) It was perhaps twenty feet to the next level. Tree branches broke his fall and he hit the ground spinning, and rolled away. Something else, the rock or a rotten log, bit the ground a moment later where he had been. He uncurled too soon, reaching out to catch hold of the mountain as it tore by him. Then he hit something hard; then something hit him back, and he sailed off into darkness in a web of pain.

Much later he shook his head, opened his eyes, then chomped his jaws on the pain. But the pain was in his leg, so chomping didn’t help. He moved his face across crumbling dirt. The whole left side of his body ached, the type of ache that comes when the muscles are tensed to exhaustion but will not relax.

He tried to crawl forward, and went flat down onto the earth, biting up a mouthful of dirt. He nearly tore his leg off.

He had to be still, calm, find out exactly what was wrong. He couldn’t tear himself to pieces like the wildcat who had gotten caught in the sprung trap and who had bled to death after gnawing off both hind legs. He was too malika.

But each movement he made, each thought he had, happened in the blurring green haze of pain. He raised himself up and looked back. Then he lay down again and closed his eyes. A log the thickness of his body lay across his left leg. Once he tried to push it away but only bruised his palm against the bark, and at last went unconscious with the effort.

When he woke up, the pain was very far away. The air was darkening. No, he wasn’t quite awake. He was dreaming about something, something soft, a little garden, with shadows blowing in at the edge of his vision swift and cool, a little garden behind the—

Suddenly, very suddenly, it struck him what was happening, the slowing down of thoughts, his breathing, maybe even his heart. Then he was struggling again, struggling hard enough that had he still the strength, he would have torn himself in half, knowing while he struggled that perhaps the wildcat had been malika after all, or not caring if he were less, only fighting to pull himself away from the pain, realizing that blood had begun to seep from beneath the log again, just a tiny trickle.

Then the shadows overtook him, the dreams, the wisps of forgetfulness gauzing his eyes.

* * * *

Tloto nearly had to drag Quorl halfway up the mountain before the giant got the idea. When he did, he began to run. Quorl found the boy; just before sunset. He was breathing in short gasps, his fists clenched, his eyes closed. The blood on the dirt had dried black.

The great brown hands went around the log, locked, and started to shift it; the boy let out a high sound from between his teeth.

The hands, roped with vein and ridged with ligament, strained the log upward; the sound became a howl.

The giant’s feet braced against the dirt, slid into the dirt, and the hands that had snapped tiny necks and bound sticks together with gut string, pulled; the howl turned into a scream. He screamed again. Then again.

The log coming loose tore away nearly a square foot of flesh from the boy’s leg. Then, Quorl went over and picked him up.

This is the best dream, the boy thought, from that dark place he had retreated to behind the pain, because Quorl is here. The hands were lifting him now, he was held close, warm, somehow safe. His cheek was against the hard shoulder muscle, and he could smell Quorl too. So he stopped screaming and turned his head a little to make the pain go away. But it wouldn’t go. It wouldn’t. Then the boy cried.

The first tears through all that pain came salty in his eyes, and he cried until he went to sleep.

* * * *

Quorl had medicine for him the next day (“From the priest,” he said.) which helped the pain and made the healing start. Quorl also had made the boy a pair of wooden crutches that morning. Although muscle and ligament had been bruised and crushed and the skin torn away, no bone had broken.

That evening there was a drizzle and they ate under the canopy. Tloto did not come, and this time it was Quorl who saved the extra meat and kept looking off into the wet gray trees. Quorl had told the boy how Tloto had led him to him; when they finished eating, Quorl took the meat and ducked into the drizzle.

The boy lay down to sleep. He thought the meat was a reward for Tloto. Only Quorl had seemed that night full of more than usual gravity. The last thing he wondered before sleep flooded his eyes and ears was how blind, deaf Tloto had known where he was anyway.

* * * *

When he woke it had stopped raining. The air was damp and chill. Quorl had not come back.

The sound of the blown shell came again. The boy sat up and flinched at the twinge in his leg. To his left the moon was flickering through the trees. The sound came a third time, distant, sharp, yet clear and marine. The boy reached for his crutches and hoisted himself to his feet. He waited till the count of ten, hoping that Quorl might suddenly return to go with him.

A last he took a deep breath and started haltingly forward. The faint moonlight made the last hundred yards easy going. Finally he reached a vantage where he could look down through the wet leaves onto the arena of stone.

The sky was sheeted with mist and the moon was an indistinct pearl in the haze. The sea was misty. People were already gathered at the edge. The boy looked at the priest and then ran his eye around the circle of people. One of them was Quorl!

He leaned forward as far as he could. The priest sounded the shell again and the prisoners came out of the temple: first three boys, then an older girl, then a man. The next one…Tloto! It was marble-white under the blurred moon. Its clubbed feet shuffled on the rock. Its blind head ducked right and left with bewilderment.

As the priest raised the long three-pronged knife, the boy’s hands went tight around the crutches. He passed from one prisoner to the next. Tloto cringed, and the boy sucked in a breath as the knife went down, feeling his own flesh part under the blades. Then the murmur died, the prisoners were unbound, and the people filed from the rock back into the forest.

The boy waited to see which way Quorl headed before he started through moon-dusted bushes as fast as his crutches would let him. There were many people on the webbing of paths that came from the temple rock. There was Quorl!

When he caught up, Quorl saw him and slowed down. Quorl didn’t look at him, though. Finally the giant said, “You don’t understand. I had to catch him. I had to give him to the old one to be marked. But you don’t understand.” The boy hardly looked at all where they were going, but stared up at the giant.

“You don’t understand,” Quorl said again. Then he looked at the boy and was quiet for a minute. “No, you don’t,” he repeated. “Come.” They turned off the main path now, going slower. “It’s a…custom. An important custom. Yes, I know it hurt him. I know he was afraid. But it had to be. Tloto is one of those who—.” (The word was some inflection of the verb to know.) Quorl was silent for a moment. “Let me try to tell you why I had to hurt your friend. Yes, I know he is your friend, now. But once I said that Tloto was malika. I was wrong. Tloto is more thanmalika—he and the others that were marked. Somehow these people know things. That was how Tloto survived. That’s how he knew where you were, when you were hurt. He knew inside your head, he heard inside your head. Many are born like that, more of them each year. As soon as we find out, we mark them. Many try to hide it, and some succeed for a long time. Can you understand? Do you? When Tloto showed me where you were, he knew that I would know, that he would be caught and marked. Do you understand?”

Again he paused and looked at the boy. The eyes still showed puzzled hurt. “You want to know why. I…we.… Long ago we killed them when we found out. We don’t any more. The mark reminds them that they are different, and yet the same as we. Perhaps it is wrong. It doesn’t hurt that much, and it heals. Anyway, we don’t kill them any more. We know they’re important.…” Suddenly, having gone all through it with this strange boy, it seemed twisted to the giant, incorrect. Then he gave the boy what the boy had been sent to the forest to get, what the Duchess had found and knew was necessary. “I was wrong,” Quorl said. “I’m sorry. I will speak to the priest tomorrow.”

They walked until the dawn lightened the sky behind the trees. Once Quorl looked around and said, “I want to show you something. We are very near, and the weather is right.”

They walked a few minutes more till Quorl pointed to a wall of leaves, and said, “Go through there.”

As they pressed through the dripping foliage, bright light burnished their faces. They were standing on a small cliff that looked down the mountain. Fog the color of pale gold, the same gold the boy had seen so rarely in the sunset, rolled across the entire sky. The center flamed with the misty sun, and way below them through the fog was the shattered traces of water, the color of magnesium flame on copper foil, without edge or definition.

“That’s a lake that lies between this mountain and the next,” Quorl said, pointing to the water.

“I thought.…” the boy started softly, his tongue rough against the new language. “I thought it was the sea.”

Beside them appeared the crouching figure of Tloto. Drops from the wet leaves burned on his neck and back, over the drying blood. He turned his blank face left and right in the golden light, and with all his knowing could communicate no awe.

CHAPTER IX

Clea Koshar had been installed in her government office for three days. The notebook in which she had been doing her own work in inverse sub-trigonometric functions had been put away in her desk for exactly fifty-four seconds when she made the first discovery that gave her a permanent place in the history of Toromon’s wars as its first military hero. Suddenly she pounded her fist on the computer keys, flung her pencil across the room, muttered, “What the hell is this!” and dialed the military ministry.

It took ten minutes to get Tomar. His red-haired face came in on the visiphone, recognized her, and smiled. “Hi,” he said.

“Hi, yourself,” she said. “I just got out those figures you people sent us about the data from the radiation barrier, and those old readings from the time Telphar was destroyed. Tomar, I didn’t even have to feed them to the computer. I just looked at them. That radiation was artificially created. Its increment is completely steady. At least on the second derivative. Its build-up pattern is such that there couldn’t be more than two simple generators, or one complexed on…”

“Slow down,” Tomar said. “What do you mean, generators?”

“The radiation barrier, or at least most of it, is artificially maintained. And there are not more than two generators, and possibly one, maintaining it.”

“How do you generate radiation?” Tomar asked.

“I don’t know,” Clea said. “But somebody has been doing it.”

“I don’t want to knock your genius, but how come nobody else figured it out?”

“I just guess nobody thought it was a possibility, or thought of gratuitously taking the second derivative, or bothered to look at them before they fed them into the computers. In twenty minutes I can figure out the location for you.”

“You do that,” he said, “and I’ll get the information to whomever it’s supposed to get to. You know, this is the first piece of information of import that we’ve gotten from this whole battery of slide-rule slippers up there. I should have figured it would have probably come from you. Thanks, if we can use it.”

She blew him a kiss as his face winked out. Then she got out her notebook again. Then minutes later the visiphone crackled at her. She turned to it and tried to get the operator. The operator was not to be gotten. She reached into her desk and got out a small pocket tool kit and was about to attack the housing of the frequency-filterer when the crackling increased and she heard a voice. She put the screw driver down and put the instrument back on the desk. A face flickered onto the screen and then flickered off. The face had dark hair, seemed perhaps familiar. But it was gone before she was sure she had made it out.

Crossed signals from another line, she figured. Maybe a short in the dialing mechanism. She glanced down at her notebook and took up her pencil when the picture flashed onto the screen again. This time it was clear and there was no static. The familiarity, she did not realize, was the familiarity of her own face on a man.

“Hello,” he said. “Hello, Hello, Clea?”

“Who is this?” she asked.

“Clea, this is Jon.”

She sat very still, trying to pull two halves of something back together (as in a forest, a prince had felt the same things disengage). Clea succeeded. “You’re supposed to be…dead. I mean I thought you were. Where are you, Jon?”

“Clea,” he said. “Clea—I have to talk to you.”

There was a five-second silence.

“Jon, Jon, how are you?”

“Fine,” he said. “I really am. I’m not in prison any more. I’ve been out a long time, and I’ve done a lot of things. But Clea, I need your help.”

“Of course,” she said. “Tell me how? What do you want me to do?”

“Do you want to know where I am?” he said. “What I’ve been doing? I’m in Telphar, and I’m trying to stop the war.”

“In Telphar?”

“There’s something behind that famed radiation barrier, and it’s a more or less civilized race. I’m about to break through the rest of the barrier and see what can be done. But I need some help at home. I’ve been monitoring phone calls in Toron. There’s an awful lot of equipment here that’s more or less mine if I can figure out how to use it. And I’ve got a friend here who knows more in that line than I gave him credit for. I’ve overheard some closed circuit conference calls, and I’m talking to you by the same method. I know you’ve got the ear of Major Tomar and I know he’s one of the few trustworthy people in that whole military hodge-podge. Clea, there is something hostile to Toromon behind that radiation barrier, but a war is not the answer. The thing that’s making the war is the unrest in Toromon. And the war isn’t going to remedy that. The emigration situation, the food situation, the excess man power, the deflation: that’s what’s causing your war. If that can be stopped, then the thing behind the barrier can be dealt with quickly and peacefully. There in Toron you don’t even know what the enemy is. They wouldn’t let you know even if they knew themselves.”

“Do you know?” Clea asked.

Jon paused. Then he said, “No, but whatever it is, it’s people with something wrong among them. And warring on them won’t exorcise it.”

“Can you exorcise it?” Clea asked.

Jon paused again. “Yes. I can’t tell you how; but let’s say what’s troubling them is a lot simpler than what’s troubling us in Toromon.”

“Jon,” Clea asked suddenly, “what’s it like in Telphar? You know I’ll help you if I can, but tell me.”

The face on the visiphone was still. Then it drew a deep breath. “Clea, it’s like an open air tomb. The city is very unlike Toron. It was planned, all the streets are regular, there’s no Devil’s Pot, nor could there ever be one. Roadways wind above ground among the taller buildings. I’m in the Palace of the Stars right now. It was a magnificent building.” The face looked right and left. “It still is. They had amazing laboratories, lots of equipment, great silvered meeting halls under an immense ceiling that reproduced the stars on the ceiling. The electric plants still work. Most houses you can walk right in and turn on a light switch. Half the plumbing in the city is out, though. But everything in the palace still works. It must have been a beautiful place to live in. When they were evacuating during the radiation rise, very little marauding took place.…”

“The radiation…” began Clea.

Jon laughed, “Oh, that doesn’t bother us. It’s too complicated to explain now, but it doesn’t.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Clea said. “I figured if you were alive, then it obviously wasn’t bothering you. But Jon, and this isn’t government propaganda, because I made the discovery myself: whatever is behind the barrier caused the radiation rise that destroyed Telphar. Some place near Telphar is a projector that caused the rise, and it’s still functioning. This hasn’t been released to the public yet, but if you want to stop your war, you’ll never do it if the government can correctly blame the destruction of Telphar on the enemy. That’s all they need.”

“Clea, I haven’t finished telling you about Telphar. I told you that the electricity still worked. Well, most houses you go into, you turn on the light and find a couple of sixty-year-old corpses on the floor. On the roads you can find a wreck every hundred feet or so. There’re almost ten thousand corpses in the Stadium of the Stars. It isn’t very pretty. Arkor and I are the only two humans who have any idea of what the destruction of Telphar really amounted to. And we still believe we’re in the right.”

“Jon, I can’t hold back information.…”

“No, no,” Jon said. “I wouldn’t ask you to. Besides, I heard your last phone call. So it’s already out. I want you to do two things for me. One has to do with Dad. The other is to deliver a message. I overheard a conference call between Prime Minister Chargill and some of the members of the council. They’re about to ask Dad for a huge sum of money to finance the first aggressive drive in this war effort. Try and convince him that it’ll do more harm than good. Look, Clea, you’ve got a mathematical mind. Show him how this whole thing works. He doesn’t mean to be, but he’s almost as much responsible for this thing as any one individual could be. See if he can keep production from flooding the city. And for Toromon’s sake, keep an eye, a close eye on his supervisors. They’re going to tilt the island into the sea with all their cross-purposes intrigues. All I can do is start you on the right track, Sis, and you’ll have to take it from there.

“Now for the message. The one circuit I can’t break in on is the Royal Palace system. I can just overhear. Somehow I’ve got to get a message to the Duchess of Petra. Tell her to get to Telphar in the next forty-eight hours by way of the transit ribbon. Tell her there are two kids she owes a favor to. And tell her the girl she owes four or five favors. She’ll be able to find out who they are.”

Clea was scribbling. “Does the transit ribbon still work?” she asked.

“It was working when I escaped from prison,” Jon said. “I don’t see why it should have stopped now.”

“You used it?” Clea said. “That means you were in Toron!”

“That’s right. And I was at your party too.”

“Then it was…” She stopped. Then laughed, “I’m so glad, Jon. I’m so glad it was you after all.”

“Come on, Sis, tell me about yourself,” Jon said. “What’s been happening in the real world. I’ve been away from it a long time. Here in Telphar I don’t feel much closer. Right now I’m walking around in my birthday suit. On our way here we got into a shadowy situation and I had to abandon my clothes for fear of getting caught. I’ll explain that later, too. But what about you?”

“Oh, there’s nothing to tell. But to you I guess there is. I graduated, with honors. I’ve grown up. I’m engaged to Tomar. Did you know that? Dad approves, and we’re to be married as soon as the war’s over. I’m working on a great project, to find the inverse sub-trigonometric functions. Those are about the most important things in my life right now. I’m suppose to be working on the war effort, but except for this afternoon, I haven’t done much.”

“Fine,” Jon said. “That’s about the right proportions.”

“Now what about you? And the clothes?” She grinned into the visaphone, and he grinned back.

“Well—no, you wouldn’t believe it. At least not if I told it that way. Arkor, the friend who’s with me, is one of the forest people. He left the forest to spend some time in Toron, which is where I met him. Apparently he managed to accumulate an amazing store of information, about all sorts of things—electronics, languages, even music. You’d think he could read minds. Anyway, here we are, through the forest, across the prison mines, and in Telphar.”

“Jon, what were the mines like? It always made me wonder how Dad could use tetron when he knew that you were being whipped to get it.”

“You and I’ll get drunk some evening and I’ll tell you what it was like,” Jon said. “But not until. When you’re trying to convince Dad, bring that up about me and the mines.”

“Don’t worry,” she said. “I will.”

“Anyway,” Jon went on, “we had to get through the forest without being seen and with all those leaves it was pretty dark. Arkor could get through because he was a forest man and nobody would stop him. But because they’d have seen me, I had to go most of the way naked as a jaybird.”

Clea frowned. “I don’t understand. Are you sure you’re all right?”

Jon laughed. “Of course I’m all right. I can’t really explain to you just yet. I’m just so happy to see you again, to be able to talk to you. Sis, I’ve wanted to be free for so long, to see you and Dad again, and—there’s nothing wrong with me except the sniffles.”

It welled up in her like a wave and the tears flooded her lower lids, and then one overflowed and ran down the left side of her nose. “You see what you’re doing,” she said. And they laughed once more. “To see you again, Jon is so…fine.”

“I love you, Sis,” Jon said. “Thanks, and so long for a little while.”

“I’ll get your message out. So long.” The phone blinked dark and she sat there wondering if perhaps the tension wasn’t too much. But it wasn’t, and she had messages to deliver.

CHAPTER X

During the next couple of hours, two people died, miles apart.

* * * *

“Don’t be silly,” Rara was saying in the inn at the Devil’s Pot. “I’m a perfectly good nurse. Do you want to see my license?”

The white-haired old man sat very straight in his chair by the window. Blue seeped like liquid across the glass. “Why did I do it?” he said. “It was wrong. I—I love my country.”

Rara pulled the blanket from the back of the chair and tucked it around the stiff, trembling shoulders. “What are you talking about?” she said, but the birthmark over her face showed deep purple with worry.

He shook the blanket off and flung his hand across the table where the news directive lay.

Crown Prince Kidnaped!

King Declares War!

The trembling in Geryn’s shoulders became violent shaking.

“Sit back,” said Rara.

Geryn stood up.

“Sit down,” Rara repeated. “Sit down. You’re not well. Now sit down!”

Geryn lowered himself stiffly to the chair. He turned to Rara. “Did I start a war? I tried to stop it. That was all I wanted. Would it have happened if…”

“Sit back,” Rara said. “If you’re going to talk to somebody, talk to me. I can answer you. Geryn, you didn’t start the war.”

Geryn suddenly rose once more, staggered forward, slammed his hands on the table and began to cough.

“For pity’s sake,” Rara cried, trying to move the old man back into his chair, “will you sit down and relax! You’re not well! You’re not well at all!” From above the house came the faint beat of helicopter blades.

Geryn went back to his chair. Suddenly he leaned his head back, his sharp Adam’s apple shooting high in his neck and quivering. Rara jumped forward and tried to bring his head up. “Dear heavens,” she breathed. “Stop that. Now stop it, or you’ll hurt yourself.”

Geryn’s head came up straight again. “A war,” he said. “They made me start the—”

“No one made you do anything,” Rara said. “And you didn’t start the war.”

“Are you sure?” he asked. “No. You can’t be sure. No one can. Nobody.…”

“Will you please try to relax,” Rara repeated, tucking at the blanket.

Geryn relaxed. It went all through his body, starting at his hands. The stiff shoulders dropped a little, his head fell forward, the wall of muscle quivering across his stomach loosened, the back bent; and that frail fist of strength that had jarred life through his tautened body for seventy years, shaking inside his chest, it too relaxed. Then it stopped. Geryn crumpled onto the floor.

The shifting body pulled Rara down with him. Unaware that he was dead, she was trying to get him back into the chair, when the helicopter blades got very loud.

She looked up to see the window darken with a metal shadow. “Good lord,” she breathed. Then the glass shattered.

She screamed, careened around the table, and fled through the door, slamming it behind her.

Over the flexible metal ramp that hooked onto the window sill two men entered the room. Fire-blades poised, they walked to the crumpled body, lifted it between them, and carried it back to the window. Their arm bands showed the royal insignia of the palace guards.

* * * *

Tel was running down the street because someone was following him. He ducked into a side alley and skittered down a flight of stone steps. Somewhere overhead he heard a helicopter.

His heart was pounding like explosions in his chest, like the sea, like his ocean. Once he had looked through a six-inch crevice between glassy water and the top of a normally submerged cave and seen wet, orange starfish dripping from the ceiling and their reflections quivering with his own breath. Now he was trapped in the cave of the city, the tide of fear rising to lock him in. Footsteps passed above him.

Nearby was a ladder that led to a trap door which would put him in the hall of a tenement. He climbed it, emerged, and then turned up the regular steps to the roof. He walked across the tar-paper surface to the edge, leaned over, and peered into the alley. Two men, who may have been the people following him, approached from opposite ends of the alley. The sky was deepening toward evening and it was cool. The two men met, and then one pointed to the roof.

“Damn,” Tel muttered, ducked backward, and bit his tongue with surprise. He opened his mouth and breathed hard, holding the side of his jaw. The helicopter was coming closer.

Then something very light fell over him. He forgot his bitten tongue and struck out with his hands. It was strong, too. It jerked at his feet and he fell forward. It was not until it lifted him from the roof that he realized he was caught in a net. He was being drawn up toward the sound of the whirling helicopter blades.

* * * *

Just about that time the order came through. He didn’t even have time to say good-bye to Clea. Two other mathematicians in the corps had shown appropriate awe at Clea’s discovery and proceeded to locate the generator. The next-in-charge general, working on a strategy Tomar did not quite understand, decided that now was the time for an active strike. “Besides,” he added, “if we don’t give them some combat soon, we’ll lose—and I mean lose as in ‘misplace’—the war.”

The shadow of the control tower fell through the windshield and slipped across Tomar’s face. He pulled up his goggles and sighed. Active combat. What the hell would they be combating? The disorder, the disorganization was beginning to strike him as farcical. Though after the poisoned fish, the farcical was no longer funny.

The buildings on the airfield sunk back and down. The transit ribbon fell below him and the six other planes in the formation pulled up behind him. A moment later the island was a comb of darkness on the glittering foil of the evening sea.

Clouds banded the deep blue at the horizon. There were three stars out, the same stars that he had looked at as a boy when his sunup to sundown work day had ended. Between hunger and hunger there had been some times when you could look at the stars and wonder, as there were now between times of work and work.

The controls were set. There was nothing to do but wait for land to rise up over the edge of the world.

* * * *

As the end of the metal ribbon was a transparent crystal sphere, fifteen feet in diameter which hovered above the receiving stage. A dozen small tetron units sat around the room. By one ornate window a bank of forty-nine scarlet knobbed switches pointed to off. Two men stood on the metal catwalk that ran above the receiving stage, one young man with black hair, the other a dark giant with a triplex of scars down the left side of his face.

In another room, the corpses of the elders of Telphar sat stiff and decomposed on green velvet seats.

* * * *

It was evening in the solarium on top of the General Medical building. The patients were about to be herded from their deck chairs and game tables under the glass roof back to their wards, when a woman screamed. Then there was the sound of breaking glass. More people screamed.

Alter heard the roar of helicopter blades. People were running around her. Suddenly the crowd of bathrobed patients broke from in front of her. She touched the cast that covered her left shoulder and arm. People cried out. Then she saw.

The glass dome had been shattered at the edge, and the flexible metal ramp ran a dark ribbon from the copter to the edge of the solarium. The men that marched across had the insignia of the royal guards. She clamped her jaws together and moved behind the nurse. The men marched in, fire-blades high, among the overturned deck chairs. There were three stars visible, she noted irrelevantly, through the bubble dome.

Good lord! They were coming toward her!

The moment the guards recognized her, she realized the only way to get out was to cross the suddenly immense span of metal flooring to the stairwell. She ducked her head, broke from the crowd of patients and ran, wondering why she had been fool enough to wait this long. The guard tackled her and she heard screams again.

She fell to the hard floor and felt pain explode along the inside of her cast. The guard tried to lift her, and with her good arm she struck at his face. Then she held her palm straight and brought the edge down on the side of his neck.

She staggered and she felt herself slip to the floor. Then someone grabbed a handful of her hair and her head was yanked back. At first she closed her eyes. Then she had to open them. Night was moving above her through the dome of the solarium. Then the cracked edge of the glass passed over her, and it was colder, and the blur and roar of helicopter blades was above.

* * * *

“On course?”

“Dead on course,” said Tomar back into the microphone. Below, the rim of land slipped back under them. The moon bleached the edges of the vari-colored darknesses beneath them; then went down.

“What are you thinking about, Major?” came the voice from the speaker again.

“Not thinking about anything,” Tomar said. “Just thinking about waiting. It’s funny, that’s most of what you do in this army: wait. You wait to go out and fight. And once you go out, then you start waiting to turn around and come back.”

“Wonder what it’ll be like.”

“A few bombs over that generator, then we’ll have had active combat, and everyone will be happy.”

A laugh, mechanical, through the speaker. “Suppose they ‘active’ back?”

“If they cripple our planes like they’ve done before, we’ll make it to the island again.”

“I had to leave a hot cup of coffee back at the hangar, Major. I wish it was light so we could see what we were doing.”

“Stop bitching.”

“Hey, Major.”

“What?”

“I’ve invented a new kind of dice.”

“You would.”

“What you do is take fifteen centiunit pieces and arrange them in a four-by-four square with one corner missing. Then you take a sixteenth one and shoot it within forty-five degrees either way of the diagonal into the missing corner. It works out that no matter how you do it, if all the coins in the square are touching, two coins will fly off of the far edge. Each of those has a number and the two numbers that fly off are like the two numbers that come up on the dice. It’s better than regular dice because the chances are up on some combinations. And there’s a certain amount of skill involved too. The guys call it Randomax. That’s for random numbers and matrix.”

“I’ll play you a game someday,” Tomar said. “You know, if you used a smaller coin than a centiunit for the one you fire into the missing corner, say a deciunit, the chances that it would hit both corner coins would go up, that is your randomness.”

“Really?”

“Sure,” Tomar said. “My girl friend’s a mathematician, and she was telling me all about probability a few weeks ago. I bet she’d be interested in the game.”

“You know what, Major?”

“What?”

“I think you’re the best officer in the damn army.”

Such was the conversation before the first battle of the war.

* * * *

Such was the conversation Jon Koshar monitored in the laboratory tower of the Palace of the Stars in Telphar. “Oh damn,” he said. “Come on, Arkor. We’d better get going. If the Duchess doesn’t get here with Geryn soon.… Well, let’s not think about it.” He scribbled a note, set it in front of one visiphone and dialed the number of another that was on a stand in front of the receiving platform of the transit ribbon.

“There,” he said. “That’s got instructions to follow us as soon as she gets here. And she better not miss it.” They went down the metal steps to a double doorway that opened onto a road.

Two mechanical vehicles stood there, both with pre-controls set for similar destinations. Jon and Arkor climbed into one, pushed the ignition button, and the car shot forward along the elevated roadway. White mercury lights flooded the elevated strip as it wound through the city.

The road dipped and houses got wider and lower on each side. The horizon glowed purple and above that, deep yellow clouds dropped into late evening. There was a sound of planes overhead.

As the car halted at the barren limit of the last suburb of Telphar, a sudden white streak speared from the horizon. “Uh-oh,” said Jon. “That’s what I was afraid of.”

Something caught fire in the air, twisted wildly through the sky, and then began to circle down, flaming.

* * * *

“Major! Major! What happened to D-42?”

“Something got him. Pull over. Pull over everybody!”

“We can’t spot it. Where’d it come from?”

“All right, everybody. Break formation. Break formation, I said!”

“Major, I’m going to drop a bomb. Maybe we can see where that came from in the light. I thought you said cripple.”

“Never mind what I said. Drop it.”

“Major Tomar. This is B-6. We’ve been—” (Unintelligible static.)

Someone else gave a slow whistle through the microphone.

“Break formation, I said. Damn it, break formation.”

Over the plain, a sheet of red fire flapped up, and Jon and Arkor pulled back from the railing that edged the road. Another white streak left the horizon, and for a moment, in the glare, their shadows on the pavement were doubled in white and red.

The sound of the explosion reached them a moment later, as broken rocks leapt into visibility like a rotted jaw swung up through red fire.

Another sound behind them made them turn. The lighted roadways of Telphar looped the city like strands of pearls on skeletal fingers. A car came toward them.

Another wailing missile took the sky, and a moment later a screaming plane answered, tearing down the night. This one suddenly turned as its flaming motors caught once more and careened above their heads so close that they ducked and disappeared among the city towers: an explosion, then falling flame drooled the side of a building. “I hope that’s nowhere near the Palace of the Stars,” a voice said next to Jon. “We’ll have a great time getting back if it is.”

Jon whirled. The Duchess had gotten out of the car. The red light flared a moment in her hair, then died.

“No. That was nowhere near it,” Jon said. “Am I glad to see you.”

Tel and Alter, still in her cast and hospital robe, followed the Duchess out of the car.

“Well,” he said, “you brought the kids too.”

“It was better than leaving them back in Toron. Jon, Geryn is dead. I asked what to do, but I didn’t get any answer. So we lugged his body along just in case. But what do we do now?”

From the railing Arkor laughed.

“It’s not funny,” Jon said.

The Duchess looked overhead as another missile exploded. “I had hoped this wouldn’t happen. This means a war, Jon. A real one, and unstoppable.”

Another plane crashed, too close this time, and they ducked behind the cars. “Gee,” breathed Alter, which was the only thing anybody said.

Then Arkor cried, “Come on.”

“Where to?” asked Jon.

“Follow me,” Arkor repeated. “Everyone.”

“What about Geryn?”

“Leave that corpse behind,” Arkor told them. “He can’t help.”

“Look, do you know what’s going on?” Jon demanded.

“More than Geryn ever did,” the giant returned. “Now let’s get going.” They sprinted out along the road, then ducked under the railing and made their way across the rocky waste.

“Where are we going?” Tel whispered.

Jon called back over his shoulder, “That’s a very good question.”

* * * *

The plane got tipped, and for seven seconds, while the needles swung, he didn’t know where he was going, east or west, up or down. When the needles stopped, he saw that it hadn’t been any of the first three. Suddenly the green detector light flashed in the half darkness of the cabin. The generator! The radiation generator was right below him. Then he was blinded by a white flare outside the windshield. Oh, God damn!

He felt the jerk and the air suddenly rushed in cold behind him. There was a hell of a lot of noise and the needle quietly swung.… He was going down!

Land lit up outside the front window; a small block house set in the wrecked earth. There were three whirling antennae on the roof. That must be it! That must!

It happened in his arms and fingers, not in his head. Because suddenly he pushed the stick forward, and the plane, what was left of it, turned over and he was staring straight down, straight ahead, straight, straight below him. And coming closer.

It must have been his arms, because his head was thinking wildly about a time when a girl with pearls in her black hair had asked him what he had wanted, and he had said, ‘Nothing…nothing.…’ and realized he had been wrong because suddenly he wanted very much to… (The block house came up and hit him.)… Nothing.

* * * *

Tel and the Duchess screamed. The rest just drew breath quickly and staggered back. “He’s in there,” Arkor said. “That’s where your Lord of the Flames is.”

The landscape glowed with the encroaching light of the flaming torch, and they saw the blockhouse now with its whirling antennae on the roof. Before the plane hit, a darkness opened in the side of the blockhouse and three figures emerged and sprinted among the rocks.

“The middle one,” said Arkor. “That’s him, face him, concentrate on him.…”

“What do you…?” Tel began.

“You ride along with me, kids,” Arkor said, only he didn’t move. Two of the figures had fallen now, but the middle one was running toward them. The torch hit, and his shadow was suddenly flung across the broken earth to meet them.…

CHAPTER IX

The green of beetles’ wings…the red of polished carbuncle…a web of silver fire, and through the drifting blue smoke Jon hurled across the sky.

Then blackness, intense and cold. The horizon was tiny, jagged, maybe ten feet away. He reached a metal out and crawled expertly (not clumsily. Expertly!) across a crevice, but slowly, very slowly. The sky was sharp with stars, though the sun was dim to his light-sensitive rind. Like a sliding cyst, he edged over the chunk of rock that spun somewhere between Mars and Jupiter. Now he reached out with his mind to touch a second creature on another rock. Petra, he called. Where is he?

His orbit should take him between the three of us in a minute and a half.

Fine.

Jon, who is the third one? I still don’t understand.

Another mind joined them. You don’t understand yet? I was the third, I always was. I was the one who directed Geryn to make the plan in the first place for the kidnaping. What made you think that he was in contact with the triple beings?

I don’t know, Jon said. Some misunderstanding.

There was the laughter of children. Then Tel said, Hey, everybody, we’re with Arkor.

Shhh, said Alter. The misunderstanding was my fault, Jon. I told you that Geryn talked to himself, and that made you think it was him.

Get ready, Petra said. Here he comes.

Jon saw, or rather sensed the approach of another spinning asteroid, whirling toward them through the blackness. But it was inhabited. Yes! The three of them threw their thoughts across the rush of space.

There.…

* * * *

Roaring steam swirled above him. He raised his eye-stalks another twenty feet and looked toward the top of the cataract some four miles up. Then he lowered his siphon into the edge of the pool of pale green liquid methane and drank deeply. Far away in a beryl green sky, three suns rushed madly about one another and gave a little heat to this farthest of their six planets.

Now Jon flapped his slitherers down and began to glide away from the methane falls and up the nearly vertical mountain slope. Someone was coming toward him, with shiny red eye-stalks waving in greeting. “Greetings to the new colony,” the eye-stalks signaled.

Jon started to signal back. But suddenly he recognized (a feeling way at the back of his slitherers) who this was. He leaped forward and flung the double flaps of leathery flesh across his opponent and began to scramble back up the rocks. Jon had his tight, but was wondering where the hell were.…

Suddenly his eye-stalk caught the great form that he knew must be Arkor coming down over the rocks (with Alter and Tel. Yes, definitely; because the creature suddenly did a flying leap between two crags that could have only been under the girl-acrobat’s control), and a moment later that Petra had arrived at the other shore of the methane river. Using her slitherers for paddles, she struck out across the foaming current.

Think at him, concentrate.… There.…

* * * *

The air was water-clear. The desert was still, and he lay in the warm sand, under the light of the crescent moon. He was growing, adding facets; he let the pale illumination seep into his transparent body, decreasing his polarization cross-frequencies. The light was beautiful, too beautiful—dangerous! He began to tingle, to glow red-hot. His base burned with white heat and another layer of sand beneath him melted, fused, ran, and became part of his crystalline body.

He stepped up the polarization, his body clouded, and cooled once more. Music sang through him, and his huge upper facet reflected the stars.

Once more he lessened his polarization, and the light crept further and further into his being. His temperature rose. Vibrations suffused his transparency and the pulsing music made the three dust particles that had settled on his coaxial face seven hundred and thirty years ago dance above him. He felt their reflection deep in his prismatic center.

He felt it coming, suddenly, and tried to stop it. But the polarization index suddenly broke down completely. For one terrific moment of ecstasy the light of the moon and the stars poured completely through him. Chord after chord rang out in the desert night. Back and forth along his axis, colliding, shaking his substance, jarring him, pommeling him, came the vibrations. For one instant he was completely transparent. The next, he was white-hot. Before he could melt, he felt the crack start.

It shot the length of his forty-two mile, super-heated body. He was in two pieces! The radio disturbance alone covered a third of a galaxy. Twelve pieces fell away. The chord crashed again, and the crack whipped back and forth vivisecting him. Already he was nearly thirty-six thousand individual crystals, all of which had to grow again, thirty-six thousand minds. He was no more.

Jon, the voice sang through drumbled silicate.

Right over here, Petra, he hummed back. (The note was a perfect quarter tone below A-flat. Perfect! Not clumsy. Perfect!)

Where’s Arkor?

To their left the triple notes of an E-flat minor chord (Arkor, Tel, and Alter) sounded: Right here.

Just as they had made contact, before the music stopped (and once more their thoughts would become separate, individual, and they would lose awareness of each other and of the hundreds of other crystals that lay over the desert, under the clear perpetual night)—just then a strident dissonance pierced among them.

There, sang Petra.

There, hummed Jon.

There, came the triad in E-flat minor. They concentrated, tuned, turned their thoughts against the dissonance. There.…

* * * *

Jon rolled over and pushed the silk from his white shoulders and stretched. Through the blue pillars, the evening sky was yellow. Music, very light and fast, was coming from below the balcony. Suddenly a voice sounded beside him: “Your Majesty, your Majesty! You shouldn’t be resting now. They’re waiting for you downstairs. Tltltrlte will be furious if you’re late.”

“What do I care?” Jon responded. “Where’s my robe?”

The serving maid hastened away and returned with a sheer, shimmering robe, netted through with threads of royal black. The drape covered Jon’s shoulders, draped across his breasts, and fell to his thighs.

“My mirror,” said Jon.

The serving maid brought the mirror and Jon looked. Long, slightly oriental eyes sat wide-spaced in the ivory face over high cheekbones. Full breasts pushed tautly beneath the transluscent material, and the slender waist spread to sensual, generous hips. Jon almost whistled at his reflection.

The maid slipped clear plastic slippers on his feet, and Jon rose and walked toward the stairs. In the lobby, the throng hissed appreciatively as he descended. On one column hung a bird cage in which a three-headed cockatoo was singing to beat the band. Which was difficult to do, because the band was composed of fourteen copper-headed drums. (Fourteen was the royal number.)

Across the lobby wind instruments wailed, and Jon paused on the stairs. “Don’t worry,” the maid said, “I’m right behind you.”

Jon felt the terror rise. Hey, he called out mentally, is that you, Petra?

Like I said, right behind you.

Incidentally, how did I come up with this body?

I don’t know, dear, but you look devastating.

Gee, thanks, he said, projecting a mental sneer. Where’s Arkor and Company?

The music had stopped. There was only the sound of the three-headed bird.

There they are.

The winds screeched again, and at the entrance of the lobby, the people fell away from the door. There was Tltltrlte. He was tall, and dark, in a cloak in which there were many more black threads than in Jon’s. He unsheathed a sword, and began to come forward. “Your reign is through, Daughter of the Sun,” he announced. “It is time for a new cycle.”

“Very well,” said Jon.

As Tltltrlte advanced, the throng that crowded the lobby clapped their hands in terror and moved back further. Jon stood very straight.

As Tltltrlte came forward, his shoulders narrowed. He pushed back the hood of his cloak and a mass of ebony hair cascaded down his shoulders. With each step, his hips broadened and his waist narrowed. A very definite bulge of mammary glands now pushed up beneath his black silk tunic. As Tltltrlte reached the bottom of the steps, she raised her sword.

Think at him, came Arkor from the bird cage.

Think at him, came from Petra.

Jon saw the blade flash forward and then felt it slide into his abdomen.At her, he corrected.

At her, they answered.

As Jon toppled down the steps, dying, he asked, What the hell is this anyway?

We’re inhabiting a very advanced species of moss, Arkor explained, with the calmness that only a telepath can muster in certain confusing situations. Each individual starts off male, but eventually changes to female at the desired time.

Moss? asked Jon as he hit his head on the bottom step and died.

There.…

* * * *

The wave came again and thundered on the beach. He staggered backwards, just as the froth spumed up the sand. The sky was blue-black. He raised his fingers to his lips (seven long tines webbed together) and whined into the night. He lifted his transparent eyelids from his huge, luminous eyes to see if there wasn’t some faint trace of the boat. Spray fell on them, stung the rims, and he snapped all three lids over them, one after another. He whined again, and once more the wave grew before him.

He opened the two opaque lids, and this time thought he saw them far off through the greenish spray. The pentagonal sail rode above a billow-blue, wet, and full. It dipped, rose, and he pulled back his transparent eyelid again, this time when the wave was down, and thought he saw figures on the fibrous hammock of the boat. On the blue sail was the white circle of a Master Fisherman’s boat. His parent was a Master Fisherman. Yes, it was his parent coming to get him.

Another billow exploded and he crouched in the froth, digging his hind feet deep into the pebbly beach.

The crosshatch of planking scudded onto the shore, and they swarmed off. One wore a chain around his neck with the Master Fisherman’s seal. Another carried a seven-pronged fork. The two others were just boat-hands and wore identifying black belts of Kelpod shells.

“My offspring,” said the one with the seal. “My fins have smarted for you. I thought we would never swim together again.” He reached down and lifted Jon into his arms. Jon put his head against his parent’s chest and watched water beading down the pentagonal scales.

“I was frightened,” Jon said.

His parent laughed. “I was frightened too. Why did you swim out so far?”

“I wanted to see the island. But when I was swimming, I saw.…”

“What?”

Jon closed his eyelids.

His parent smiled again. “You’re sleepy. Come.” Now Jon felt himself carried to the water and into the waves. The spray fell warmly on his face now, and unafraid, he relaxed his gill slits as water fell across him and they climbed onto the boat.

Wind caught the sail, and the open-work of planking listed into the sea. Long clouds swung rapidly across the twin moons like the tines of the fishing forks the fishermen saluted the sacred phosphor fires with when they returned from their expeditions. He dreamed of his, a little, in the swell and drop. His parent had tied him to the boat, and so he floated at the end of a few feet of slack. Water rolled down his shoulders, slipped beneath his limp dorsal fin, and tickled. Then he dreamed of something else, the thing he had seen, glowing first beneath the water, then rising.… He whined suddenly, and shook his head.

He heard the others on the boat, their webbed feet slipping on the wet planks. He opened his eyes and looked up. The two boat-hands were holding onto stays and pointing off into the water. Now his parent had come up to them, holding a fishing spear, and they were joined by the Second Fisherman.

Jon scrambled from the water onto the plank. His parent put an arm around him and drew him closer. (Here he comes, Arkor said.) His other hand went to the seal of authority around his neck, as though it gave him some sort of protection.

“There it is,” Jon suddenly cried. “That’s what I saw. That’s why I was afraid to swim back.” (There it is, Jon said.)

A phosphorescent disk was shimmering under the surface of the water. The Second Fisherman raised his spear higher. “What is it?” he asked. (What is it this time? Petra wanted to know.)

Indistinct, yet nearly the size of the ship, it hovered almost three breast strokes from them, glowing beneath the surface.

(I’ll have a look, said Petra.) The Second Fisherman suddenly dove forward and disappeared. Still holding to the frame of the boat, Jon and his parent went under the water where they could see better.

One of Jon’s eyelids, the transparent one, was actually an envelope of tissue which he could flood with vitreous solution when he was submerged to form a correcting lens over his pupil.

Through the water he saw the Second Fisherman bubbling through the water toward the immense, transluscent hemisphere that dangled ahead of them. The Second Fisherman stopped with an underwater double-reverse and hovered near the thing. (It’s a huge jellyfish, Petra told them.) “Can’t figure out what it is,” the Second Fisherman signaled back. Then he extended his fork and jabbed at the membrane. The seven tines went in, came out.

The jellyfish moved, fast.

The tentacles hanging from the bottom of the bag raveled upward like snagged threads. The body bloated and surged sideways. Two tentacles wrapped around the Second Fisherman as he tried to swim away. (Eep, said Petra. These things hurt.)

Jon’s parent was on top of deck again, shouting orders to the boat-hands. The ship swung toward the thing which was now heaving to the surface.

(Look, let’s finish this thing up for good. Concentrate. That was Arkor. There.…)

(From beneath the water they felt Petra reach her mind into the pulsing mass: There.…)

(As the tentacles encased her and she jammed the spear home again and again through the leaking membrane, she felt Jon’s mind join in: There.…)

The boat rammed into the side of the jellyfish, the planks tearing away the membrane and the thick, stinging insides fountaining over them. Now it nearly turned over, and tentacles flapped from the water in wet, fleshy ropes. The Second Fisherman was caught in one of the snarls.

Their green faces were lighted from beneath by the milky glow.

(There.…) Suddenly it tore away from the planks, going down beneath the water. (There.…) The Second Fisherman’s head bobbed to the surface, shook the green fin that crested his skull, and laughed. (There.…)

3 to 6, 3 to 6, (Jon’s frequency oscillated from 3 to 6 as he drifted through clouds of super-heated gas) 3 to 6, 3 to 6—7 to 10! (Someone was coming.) U to 10, 7 to 10, (It was getting closer; suddenly:) 10 to 16! (Then:) 3 to 6, 7 to 10, 3 to 6, 7 to 10, (they had passed through each other. Hi, Petra said. Have you any idea where we are?)

(The temperature is somewhere near three quarters of a million degrees. Any ideas?)

9 to 27, 9 to 27, 9 to 27 (came puttering along and passed through both Jon and Petra;) 12 to 35, 10 to 37, (and then, again) 3 to 6, 7 to 10, 9 to 27, 9 to 27, 9 to 27 (We are halfway between the surface and the center of a star not unlike our sun, said Arkor. Note all the strange elements around.) 9 to 27, 9 to 27, 9 to 27.

7 to 10, 7 to 10, 7 to 10 (They keep on turning into one another, Petra said.) 7 to 10, 7 to 10, 7 to 10.

3 to 6, 3 to 6, 3 to 6 (At this temperature you would too if you were atomic, Jon told her.) 3 to 6, 3 to 6, 3 to 6.

9 to 27, 9 to 27, 9 to 27 (Where’s our friend? Arkor wanted to know.)

pi to e, pi to 2e, 2pi to 4e, 4pi to 8e, 8pi to 16e, 16pi to 32e.

(Speak of the… Jon started. Hey, we’ve got to do something about that. Not only is it transcendental, it’s increasing so fast he’ll eventually shake this star apart.) 3 to 6, 3 to 6, 3 to 6.

(So that’s what causes novas, said Petra.) 7 to 10, 7 to 10, 7 to 10.

(At the next oscillation, Arkor, acting as a side-coefficient, passed through the intruder.) 32^2pi to 64e (Arkor got out before the second extremity was reached. The wave cycle stuttered, having been reversed end on end.) 642pi to 32e (It tried to right itself and couldn’t because Jon spun through the lower end divisibility) 642pi to 16/9e (then Arkor jumped in, tail first it recovered and it resolved into:) 642pi to 4/3e, 642pi to 4/3e, 642pi to 4/3e (it quivered, its range no longer geometric).

(Watch this, said Petra, About face.… She gave it a sort of nudge, not passing through it, so that when it whirled to catch her, she was gone, and it was going the other way:)

4/3pi to 642e, 4/3pi to 642e, 4/3pi to 642e,

(I hope no one ever does that to me, said Petra. Look, the poor thing is contracting.)

4/3 to 640e, 4/3pi to 622, 4/3pi to 560, 4/3pi to 499,

(Somehow the e component chanced to slip through 125. Jon moved in like a shower of anti-theta-mazons and extracted a painless cube so fast that the intruder oscillated on it three times before it knew what had happened to it:)

4/3pi to 5^3e, 4/3pi to 5^3e, 4/3pi to 5^3e under high gravity—very high, that is, two to three million times that of earth, such as inside a star—in such warped space there is a subtle difference between 5^3and 125, though they represent the same number. It’s like the notes E-sharp and F, which are technically the same, but are distinguished between when played by a good violinist with a fine ear. When the root came loose, therefore, the variation threw the wave-length all off balance:) 4/3pi to 5e, 4/3pi to 5e, 4/3pi to 5e.…

(All right, everybody, concentrate—)

(There, there, there.…)

For one moment, the intruding oscillation turned, ducked, tried to escape, and couldn’t. It contracted into a small ball with a volume of 4/3pie^3, and disappeared.

There.…

* * * *

Jon Koshar shook his head, staggered forward, and went down on his knees in white sand. He blinked. He looked up. There were two shadows in front of him. Then he saw the city.

It was Telphar, stuck on a desert, under a double sun. The transit ribbon started across the desert, got the length of twelve pylons, and then crumpled.

As he stood up, something caught in the corner of his eye.

His eyes moved, and he saw a woman about twenty feet away from him. Her red hair fell straight to her shoulders in the dry heat. He blinked as she approached. She wore a straight skirt and had a notebook under her arm. “Petra?” he said, frowning. It was Petra, but Petra different.

“Jon,” she answered. “What happened to you?”

He looked down at himself. He was wearing a torn, dirty uniform. A prison uniform. His prison uniform!

“Arkor,” said Petra, suddenly. (Her voice was higher, less sure.)

They turned. Arkor stood in the sand, his feet wide over the white hillocks. The triple scars down his face welled bright blood in the hot light.

They came together now. “What’s going on?” Jon asked.

Arkor shrugged.

“What about the kids?” asked Petra.

“They’re still right here,” Arkor said, pointing to his head and grinning. Then his finger touched the opened scars. When he drew it away, he saw the blood and frowned. Then he looked at the City. The sun caught on the towers and slipped like bright liquid along the looping highways. “Hey,” Jon said to Petra. (No, he realized; it was Petra with a handful of years lopped off.) “What’s the notebook?”

She looked down at it, surprised to find it in her hands. Then she looked at her dress. Suddenly she laughed, and began to flip through the pages of the notebook. “Why, this is the book in which I finished my article on shelter architecture among the forest people. In fact this is what I was wearing the day I finished my article.”

“And you?” Jon asked Arkor.

Arkor looked at the blood on his finger. “My mark is bleeding, like the night the priest put it there.” He paused. “That was the night that I became Arkor, really. That was the time that I realized how the world was, the confusion, the stupidity, the fear. It was the night I decided to leave the forest.” Now he looked up at Jon. “That was the uniform you were wearing when you escaped from prison.”

“Yes,” said Jon. “I guess it was what I was wearing when I became me, too. That was the time when freedom seemed most bright.” He paused. “I was going to find it no matter what. Only somehow I felt I’d gotten sideswiped. I wonder whether I have or not.”

“Have you?” asked Petra. She glanced at the City. “I guess when I finished that essay, that’s when I really became myself, too. I remember I went through a whole sudden series of revelations about myself, and about society, and about how I felt about society, about being an aristocrat, even, what it meant and what it didn’t mean. And I suppose that’s why I’m here now.” She looked at the City again. “There he is,” she nodded.

“That’s right,” said Jon.

They started across the sand, now, making toward the shadow of the ruined transit ribbon. They reached it quicker than they thought, for the horizon was very close. The double shadows, one a bit lighter than the other, lay like two inked brush strokes over the page of the desert. “But how come we’re in our own bodies,” the Duchess asked, as they reached the shadow of the first pylon. “Shouldn’t we be inhabiting the forms of.…” Suddenly there was a sound, the shadow moved. Jon looked up at the ribbon above them and cried out.

As the metal tore away, they jumped back, and a moment later a length of the ribbon splashed down into the sand, where they had stood. They were still for a handful of breaths.

“You’re darn right he’s there,” Jon said. “Come on.”

They started again. Petra shook white grains from her notebook cover and they moved along the loose sand. A road seeped from under the desert, now, and began to rise toward Telphar. They mounted it and followed it toward the looming city. Before them the towers were dark streaks on the rich blue sky.

“You know, Petra’s question is a good one,” Arkor said few minutes later.

“Yeah,” said Jon. “I’ve been thinking about it too. We seem to be in our own bodies, only they’re different. Different as our bodies were at the most important moments of our lives. Maybe, somehow, we’ve come to a planet in some corner of the universe, where three beings almost identical to us, only different in that way, are doing, for some reason we’ll never know, almost exactly what we’re doing now.”

“It’s possible,” Arkor said. “With all the myriad possibilities of worlds, it’s conceivable that one might be like that, or like this.”

“Even to the point of talking about talking about it?” asked Petra. She answered herself. “Yes, I guess it could. But saying all this for reasons we don’t understand, and saying, ‘Saying all this for reasons we don’t understand.…’” She shuddered. “It’s not supposed to be that way. It gives me the creeps.”

There was another sound, and they froze. It was the low sound of some structure tumbling, but they couldn’t see anything.

Another fifty feet, when the road had risen ten feet off the ground and the first tower was beside them, they heard a cracking noise again. The road swayed beneath them. “Uh-oh,” Arkor said.

Then the road fell. They cried out, they scrambled; suddenly there was cracked concrete around them, and they had fallen. Above them was a jagged width of blue sky between the remaining edges of the road.

“My foot’s caught,” Petra cried out.

Arkor was beside her, tugging on the concrete slab that held her.

“Hold on a second,” Jon said. He grabbed a free metal strut that still vibrated in the rubble, and jammed it between the slab and the beam it lay on. Using the wreck of an I-beam for a fulcrum, he pried it up. “There, slip your foot out.”

Petra rolled away. “Is the bone broken?” he asked. “I got a friend of mine out of a mine accident that way, once.” He let the slab fall again. (And for a moment he stopped, thinking, I knew what to do. I wasn’t clumsy, I knew.…)

Petra rubbed her ankle. “No,” she said. “I just got my ankle wedged in that crevice, and the concrete fell on top.” She stood up, now, picking up the notebook. “Ow,” she said. “That hurts.”

Arkor held her arm. “Can you walk?”

“With difficulty,” Petra said, taking another step and clamping her teeth.

“Alter says to stand on your other foot and shake your injured one around to get the circulation back,” Arkor told her.

Petra gritted teeth, and stepped again. “A little better,” she said. “I’m scared. This really hurts. This may be a body that looks like mine, but it hurts, and it hurts like mine.” Suddenly she looked off into the city. “Oh hell,” she said. “He’s in there. Let’s go.”

They went forward again, this time under the road. The sidewalks, deserted and graying, slipped past. They passed a shopping section; teeth of broken glass gaped in the frames of store windows. Above, two roads veered and crossed, making a black, extended swastika on a patch of white clouds.

Then a sudden rumbling.

Silence.

They stopped.

Now a crash, thunderous and protracted. An odor of dust reached them. “He’s there,” Arkor said.

“Yes,” said Jon.

“I can.…”

Then the City exploded. There was one instant of very real agony for Jon as the pavement beneath his feet shot up at him, and he reached his mind out as a shard of concrete knocked in his face (all the time crying,No, no, I’ve just become Jon Koshar, I’m not supposed to…as a lost Prince had cried out half a year and half a universe away) and at the same time, There.…

Petra got a chance to see the face of the building beside them rip off a foot before the air blast tore the notebook from her hands, and at the same time she welled her thoughts from behind the bone confines of her skull. There.…

And Arkor’s thoughts (he never saw the explosion because he blinked just then) tore out through his eyelids as fragmented steel tore into them. There.…

* * * *

It was cold, it was black. For a moment they saw with a spectrum that reached from the star-wide waves of novas to the micro-micron skittering of neutrinos. And it was black, and completely cold. A rarefied breeze of ionized hydrogen (approximately two particles per cubic rod) floated over half a light year. Once, a herd of pale photons dashed through them from a deflected glare on some dying sun a trillion eons past. Other than that, there was silence, save for the hum of one lone galaxy, eternities away. They hovered, frozen, staring into nothing, above, below, behind, contemplating what they had seen.

Then, the green of beetles’ wings, and they flailed into the blood of sensation from the blackness, whirled into red flame the color of polished carbuncle, smoothly through the nerves and into the brain; then, before the blue smoke, burning blue through the lightning seared axion of their corporate organisms, they were snared within the heat and electric imminency of a web of silver fire.

CHAPTER XII

In the laboratory tower of Toron, the transparent bubble above the receiving stage brightened. In shimmering haze on the platform, the transparent figures solidified. Then Alter and Tel slipped beneath the rail on the stage and dropped down to the floor (Alter still wore the hospital robe and the cast on her left arm) while Arkor, Jon, and Petra used the metal stairway to descend. A battery of relays snapped somewhere and the scarlet heads of forty-nine switches by the window snapped to off. The globe faded.

“A bit more explanation,” Petra was saying. “Hey, kids, keep quiet.”

“Well, as far as the Lord of the Flames goes, on Earth anyway, it’s more or less trivial and irrelevant,” said Arkor. “You’re still right. This war is in Toromon, not outside it.”

“My curiosity is still peaked,” Jon said. “So give.”

“From what I gathered while I saw scanning the minds of those two who came out of the generator building with the Lord of the Flames (I should say the host of the Lord of the Flames), there’s a tribe behind the barrier which resembles more or less what man might have been forty or fifty thousand years ago. Physically they’re squat, thick-boned, and have the elements of a social system. Mentally they’re pretty thick and squat too. The Lord of the Flames got into one of them just about when he was at age four. Then he gave the kid about sixty thousand years worth of technical information. So he began building all sorts of goodies, forcing his people to help him, using some equipment from a ruined city that dates from pre-Great Fire times behind the barrier. That’s how the generators and the anti-aircraft guns got constructed.”

“Our war is still going on,” Jon said.

“Well, the Lord of the Flames is no longer with us,” said Petra. “We’ve chased it to the other end of the universe. Now that we’ve removed what external reason there was for the war, we’ve got to think about the internal ones.”

“What are you going to do immediately about the kids?” Jon asked.

“I think the best thing for them to do is to go off to my estate for a little while,” Petra said.

“It’s on an island, isn’t it?” Tel asked.

“That’s right,” Petra said.

“Gee, Alter. Now I can teach you how to fish, and we’ll be right by the sea.”

“What about Uske?” Arkor asked. “You can either walk into his room and interrupt an obscene dream he’s having, and present your case and be arrested for treason, or you can leave well enough alone at this point and wait till the opportunity comes to do something constructive.”

Suddenly Jon grinned. “Hey, you say he’s asleep?” He turned and bounded for the door.

“What are you going to do?” Petra called.

Jon looked at Arkor. “Read my mind,” he said.

Then Arkor laughed.

* * * *

In his bedroom, Uske rolled over through a silken rustle, opened one eye, and thought he heard a sound.

“Hey, stupid,” someone whispered.

Uske reached out of bed and pressed the night light. A dim orange glow did not quite fill half the room.

“Now don’t get panicky,” continued the voice. “You’re dreaming.”

“Huh?” Uske leaned on one elbow, blinked, and scratched his head with his other hand.

A shadow approached him, then stopped, naked, faceless, transparent, half in and half out of the light. “See,” came the voice. “A figment of your imagination.”

“Oh, I remember you,” Uske said.

“Fine,” said the shadow. “Do you know what I’ve been doing since the last time you saw me?”

“I couldn’t be less interested,” Uske said, turning over and looking the other way.

“I’ve been trying to stop the war. Do you believe me?”

“Look, figment, it’s three o’clock in the morning. I’ll believe it, but what’s it to you.”

“Just that I think I’ve succeeded.”

“I’ll give you two minutes before I pinch myself and wake up.” Uske turned back over.

“Look, what do you think is behind the radiation barrier?”

“I think very little about it, figgy. It doesn’t have very much to do with me.”

“It’s a primitive race that can’t possibly harm us, especially now that its—its generators have been knocked out. All of its artillery it got from a source that is now defunct. Look, Uske, I’m your guilty conscience. Wouldn’t it be fun to really be king for a while and stop the war? You declared war. Now declare peace. Then start examining the country and doing something about it.”

“Mother would never hear of it. Neither would Chargill. Besides, all this information is only a dream.”

“Exactly, Uske. You’re dreaming about what you really want. So how does this sound: make a deal with me as your guilty conscience and representative of yourself; if this dream turns out to be correct, then you declare peace. It’s the only logical thing. Come on, stand up for yourself, be a king. You’ll go down in history as having started a war. Wouldn’t you like to go down as having stopped it too?”

“You don’t understand.…”

“Yes, I know. A war is a bigger thing that the desires of one man, even if he is a king. But if you get things started on the right foot, you’ll have history on your side.”

“Your two minutes have been cut down to one; and it’s up.”

“I’m going; I’m going. But think about it, Uske.”

Uske switched off the light and the ghost went out. A few minutes later Jon crawled through the laboratory tower window, buttoning his shirt. Arkor shook his head, smiling. “Well,” he said. “Good try. Here’s hoping it does some good.”

Jon shrugged.

* * * *

In the morning, Rara got up early to sweep off the front steps of the inn (windows boarded, kitchen raided, but deserted now save for her; and she had the key); she swept to the left, looking right, then swept to the right, looked left, and said, “Dear Lord, you can’t stay there like that. Come on, now. Get on, be on your way.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.”

“For pity’s sake, woman, you can’t go around cluttering up the steps of an honest woman’s boarding house. We’re re-opening this week, soon as we get the broken windows repaired. Vandals didn’t leave a one, after the old owner died. Just got my license, so it’s all legal. Soon as we get the window, so you just move on.”

“I just got here, this morning.… They didn’t tell us where to go, they just turned us off the ship. And it was so dark, and I was tired.… I didn’t know the City was so big. I’m looking for my son—not so big! We used to be fishermen back on the mainland. I did a little weaving.”

“And your son ran off to the City and you ran off after him. Good luck in the New Land; welcome to the island of Opportunity. But just get up and move on.”

“But my son.…”

“There are more fishermen’s sons down here in the Devil’s Pot than you can shake a stick at—fishermen’s sons, farmers’ sons, blacksmiths’ sons, sons’ sons. And all of their mothers were weavers or water carriers, or chicken raisers. I must have talked to all of them at one time or another. I won’t even tell you to go down to the launch where they take the workers out to the aquariums and the hydroponic’s gardens. That’s what most of the young people do when they get here…if they can get a job. I won’t even tell you to go there, because there’re so many people that work there, you might miss him a dozen days running.”

“But the war—I thought he might have joined.…”

“Somewhere in this ridiculous mess,” interrupted Rara, her birthmark deepening in color, “I have misplaced a niece who was as close to me as any daughter or son ever was to any mother or father. All reports say that she’s dead. So you just be happy that you don’t know about yours. You be very happy, do you hear me!”

The woman was standing up now. “You say the launches to the factory? Which way are they?”

“I’m telling you not to go. They’re that way, down two streets, and to your left until you hit the docks. Don’t go.”

“Thank you,” the woman was saying, already off down the street. “Thank you.” As she reached the middle of the block, someone rounded the corner a moment later, sprinting. He brushed past the woman and ran toward the door of the inn.

“Tel,” whispered Rara. “Tel!”

“Hi, Rara.” He stopped, panting.

“Well, come in,” she said. “Come inside.” They stepped into the lobby of the inn. “Tel, do you know anything about what happened to Alter? I got a weird story from General Medical. And then you disappeared. My lord, I feel like a crazy fool opening this place. But if somehow she wanted to get to me, where would she go if I wasn’t here? And then, what am I to do anyway. I mean I have to eat, and—”

“Rara,” he said, and he said it so that she stopped talking. “Look I know where Alter is. And she’s safe. As far as you know, you don’t know where she is, if she’s alive or dead. But you suspect she isn’t alive. I’ll be going to her, but you don’t know that either. I just came to check on some things.”

“I’ve got all her things together right here. They gave me her clothes at the hospital, and put them all into a bundle in case we had to make a quick getaway. We had to do that once when we were working in a carnival where the manager suddenly took a liking to her and made himself a pest. She was twelve. He was a beast. Maybe you should take—”

“The fewer things I take the better,” Tel said. Then he saw the bundle on the table by the door. On top was a leather thong to which a few chips of colored shell still clung. “Maybe this,” he said, picking it up. “What shape is Geryn’s room in?”

“The place has been ransacked since they took him away,” she said. “Everybody and his brother has been picking at the place. What about Geryn, how is he?”

“Dead,” Tel said. “What I really came about was to burn his plans for the kidnaping.”

“Dead?” Rara asked. “Well, I’m not surprised. Oh, the plans! Why I burned those myself the minute I got back into his room. They were all over the table; why they didn’t take them all up right then, I’ll never—”

“Did you burn every last scrap?”

“And crumbled the ashes, and disposed of them one handful at a time over a period of three days by the docks. Every last scrap.”

“Then I guess there’s nothing for me to do,” he said. “You may not see me or Alter for a long time. I’ll give her your love.”

Rara bent down and kissed him on the cheek. “For Alter,” she said. Then she asked, “Tel?”

“What?”

“That woman you brushed by in the street when I saw you running up the block.…”

“Yes?”

“Did you ever see her before?”

“I didn’t look at her very carefully. I’m not sure. Why?”

“Never mind,” Rara said. “You just get on out of here before.… Well, just get.”

“So long, Rara.” He got.

* * * *

Not so high as the towers of the Royal Palace of Toron, the green tile balcony outside Clea’s window caught the breeze like the hem of an emerald woman passing the sea. There was water beyond the other houses, deeper blue than the sky, and still. She leaned over the balcony railing. On the white marble table were her notebook, a book on matter transmission, and her slide rule.

“Clea.”

She whirled at the voice, her black hair leaping across her shoulder in the low sun.

“Thanks for getting my message through.”

“This is you,” she said slowly. “In person now.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I’m not quite sure what to say,” she said, blinking. “Except I’m glad.”

“I’ve got some bad news,” he said.

“How do you mean?”

“Very bad news. It’ll hurt you.”

She looked puzzled, her head going to the side.

“Tomar’s dead.”

The head straightened, the black eyebrows pulled together, and her lower lip tautened across her teeth until her jaw muscles quivered. She nodded once, quickly, and said, “Yes.” Then, as quickly, she looked down and up at him. Her eyes were closed. “That…that hurts so much.”

He waited a few moments, and then said, “Here, let me show you something.”

“What?”

“Come over to the table. Here.” He took a handful of copper centiunit pieces from his pocket, moved her books and slide rule over, and arranged the coins in a square, four by four, only with one corner missing. Now he took a smaller, silver deciunit and put it on the table about a foot from the missing corner. “Shoot it into the gap there,” he said.

She put her forefinger on the silver disk, was still, and then snapped her finger. The silver circle shot across the foot of white marble, hit the corner, and two pieces of copper bounced away from the other side of the square. She looked at him, questioningly.

“It’s a gambling game, called Randomax. It’s getting sort of popular in the army.”

“Random for random numbers, max for matrix?”

“You’ve heard of it?”

“Just guessing.”

“Tomar wanted you to know about it. He said you might be interested in some of its aspects.”

“Tomar?”

“Just like I monitored your phone calls, I overheard him talking to another soldier about it before he—before the crash. He just thought you’d be interested.”

“Oh,” she said. She moved the silver circle away from the others, put the dislocated copper coins back in the square again, and flipped the smaller coin once more. Two different coins jumped away. “Damn,” Clea said, softly.

“Huh?” He looked up. Tears were running down her face.

“Damn,” she said. “It hurts.” She blinked and looked up again. “What about you? You still haven’t told me all that’s happened to you. Wait a moment.” She reached for her notebook, took a pencil up, and made a note.

“An idea?” he asked.

“From the game,” she told him. “Something I hadn’t thought of before.”

He smiled. “Does that solve all your problems on—what were they—sub-trigonometric functions?”

“Inverse sub-trigonometric functions,” she said. “No. It doesn’t go that simply. Did you stop your war?”

“I tried,” he said. “It doesn’t go that simply.”

“Are you free?”

“Yes.”

“I’m glad. How did it come about?”

“I used to be a very hardheaded, head-strong, sort of stupid kid, who was always doing things to get me into more trouble than it would get the people I did it to. That was about my only criterion for doing anything. Unfortunately I didn’t do it very well. So now, still head-strong, maybe not quite so stupid, I’ve at least picked up a little skill. I had to do something where the main point wasn’t whether it hurt me or not. They just had to be done. I had to go a long way, see a lot of things, and I guess it sort of widened my horizons, gave me some room to move around-some more freedom.”

“Childhood and a prison mine doesn’t give you very much, does it?”

“No.”

“What about the war, Jon?”

“Let’s put it this way. As far as what’s on the other side of the radiation barrier, which is pretty much out of commission now, there’s no need for a war. None whatsoever. If that gets seen and understood by the people who have to see and understand it, then fine. If not, well then, it isn’t that simple. Look, Clea, I just came by for a few minutes. I want to get out of the house before Dad sees me. Keep on talking to him. I’ll be disappearing for a while, so you’ll have to do it. Just don’t bother to tell him I’m alive.”

“Jon.…”

He smiled. “I mean I want to do it myself when I come back.”

She looked down a moment, and when she looked up he was going back into the house. She started to say good-bye, but bit back the words.

Instead, she sat down at the table; she opened the notebook; she cried a little bit. Then she started writing again.

EXPEDITER, by Mack Reynolds

The knock at the door came in the middle of the night, as Josip Pekic had always thought it would. He had been but four years of age when the knock had come that first time and the three large men had given his father a matter of only minutes to dress and accompany them. He could barely remember his father.

The days of the police state were over, so they told you. The cult of the personality was a thing of the past. The long series of five-year plans and seven-year plans were over and all the goals had been achieved. The new constitution guaranteed personal liberties. No longer were you subject to police brutality at the merest whim. So they told you.

But fears die hard, particularly when they are largely of the subconscious. And he had always, deep within, expected the knock.

He was not mistaken. The rap came again, abrupt, impatient. Josip Pekic allowed himself but one chill of apprehension, then rolled from his bed, squared slightly stooped shoulders, and made his way to the door. He flicked on the light and opened up, even as the burly, empty faced zombie there was preparing to pound still again.

There were two of them, not three as he had always dreamed. As three had come for his father, more than two decades before.

His father had been a rightist deviationist, so the papers had said, a follower of one of whom Josip had never heard in any other context other than his father’s trial and later execution. But he had not cracked under whatever pressures had been exerted upon him, and of that his son was proud.

He had not cracked, and in later years, when the cult of personality was a thing of the past, his name had been cleared and returned to the history books. And now it was an honor, rather than a disgrace, to be the son of Ljubo Pekic, who had posthumously been awarded the title Hero of the People’s Democratic Dictatorship.

But though his father was now a hero, Josip still expected that knock. However, he was rather bewildered at the timing, having no idea of why he was to be under arrest.

The first of the zombie twins said expressionlessly, “Comrade Josip Pekic?”

If tremor there was in his voice, it was negligible. He was the son of Ljubo Pekic. He said, “That is correct. Uh…to what do I owe this intrusion upon my privacy?” That last in the way of bravado.

The other ignored the question. “Get dressed and come with us, Comrade,” he said flatly.

At least they still called him comrade. That was some indication, he hoped, that the charges might not be too serious.

He chose his dark suit. Older than the brown one, but in it he felt he presented a more self-possessed demeanor. He could use the quality. Five foot seven, slightly underweight and with an air of unhappy self-deprecation, Josip Pekic’s personality didn’t exactly dominate in a group. He chose a conservative tie and a white shirt, although he knew that currently some frowned upon white shirts as a bourgeois affectation. It was all the thing, these days, to look proletarian, whatever that meant.

The zombies stood, watching him emptily as he dressed. He wondered what they would have said had he asked them to wait in the hallway until he was finished. Probably nothing. They hadn’t bothered to answer when he asked what the charge against him was.

He put his basic papers, his identity card, his student cards, his work record and all the rest in an inner pocket, and faced them. “I am ready,” he said as evenly as he could make it come.

They turned and led the way down to the street and to the black limousine there. And in it was the third one, sitting in the front seat, as empty of face as the other two. He hadn’t bothered to turn off the vehicle’s cushion jets and allow it to settle to the street. He had known how very quickly his colleagues would reappear with their prisoner.

Josip Pekic sat in the back between the two, wondering just where he was being taken, and, above all, why. For the life of him he couldn’t think of what the charge might be. True enough, he read the usual number of proscribed books, but no more than was common among other intellectuals, among the students and the country’s avant garde, if such you could call it. He had attended the usual parties and informal debates in the coffee shops where the more courageous attacked this facet or that of the People’s Dictatorship. But he belonged to no active organizations which opposed the State, nor did his tendencies attract him in that direction. Politics were not his interest.

At this time of the night, there was little traffic on the streets of Zagurest, and few parked vehicles. Most of those which had been rented for the day had been returned to the car-pool garages. It was the one advantage Josip could think of that Zagurest had over the cities of the West which he had seen. The streets were not cluttered with vehicles. Few people owned a car outright. If you required one, you had the local car pool deliver it, and you kept it so long as you needed transportation.

He had expected to head for the Kalemegdan Prison where political prisoners were traditionally taken, but instead, they slid off to the right at Partisan Square, and up the Boulevard of the November Revolution. Josip Pekic, in surprise, opened his mouth to say something to the security policeman next to him, but then closed it again and his lips paled. He knew where they were going, now. Whatever the charge against him, it was not minor.

A short kilometer from the park, the government buildings began. The Skupstina, the old Parliament left over from the days when Transbalkania was a backward, feudo-capitalistic power of third class. The National Bank, the new buildings of the Borba and the Politica. And finally, set back a hundred feet from the boulevard, the sullen, squat Ministry of Internal Affairs.

It had been built in the old days, when the Russians had still dominated the country, and in slavish imitation of the architectural horror known as Stalin Gothic. Meant to be above all efficient and imposing and winding up simply—grim.

Yes. Josip Pekic knew where they were going now.

* * * *

The limousine slid smoothly on its cushion of air, up the curved driveway, past the massive iron statue of the worker struggling against the forces of reaction, a rifle in one hand, a wrench in the other and stopped before, at last, the well-guarded doorway.

Without speaking, the two police who had come to his room opened the car door and climbed out. One made a motion with his head, and Josip followed. The limousine slid away immediately.

Between them, he mounted the marble stairs. It occurred to him that this was the route his father must have taken, two decades before.

He had never been in the building of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, before. Few Transbalkanians had, other than those who were employed in the MVD, or who came under the Ministry’s scrutiny.

Doors opened before them, closed behind them. Somewhat to Josip Pekic’s surprise the place was copiously adorned with a surplus of metal and marble statues, paintings and tapestries. It had similarities to one of Zagurest’s heavy museums.

Through doors and down halls and through larger rooms, finally to a smaller one in which sat alone at a desk a lean, competent and assured type who jittered over a heavy sheaf of papers with an electro-marking computer pen. He was nattily and immaculately dressed and smoked his cigarette in one of the small pipelike holders once made de rigueur through the Balkans by Marshal Tito.

The three of them came to a halt before his desk and, at long last, expression came to the faces of the zombies. Respect, with possibly an edge of perturbation. Here, obviously, was authority.

He at the desk finished a paper, tore it from the sheaf, pushed it into the maw of the desk chute from whence it would be transported to the auto-punch for preparation for recording. He looked up in busy impatience.

Then, to Josip Pekic’s astonishment, the other came to his feet quickly, smoothly and with a grin on his face. Josip hadn’t considered the possibility of being grinned at in the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

“Aleksander Kardelj,” he said in self-introduction, sticking out a lean hand to be shaken. “You’re Pekic, eh? We’ve been waiting for you.”

Josip shook, bewildered. He looked at the zombie next to him, uncomprehendingly.

He who had introduced himself, darted a look of comprehension from Josip to the two. He said disgustedly, but with mild humor oddly mixed, “What’s the matter, did these hoodlums frighten you?”

Josip fingered his chin nervously. “Of course not.”

One of the zombies shifted his feet. “We did nothing except obey orders.”

Kardelj grimaced in sour amusement. “I can imagine,” he grunted. “Milka, you see too many of those imported Telly shows from the West. I suspect you see yourself as a present day Transbalkanian G-Man.”

“Yes, Comrade,” Milka said, and then shook his head.

“Oh, hush up and get out,” Kardelj said. He flicked the cigarette butt from its holder with a thumb and took up a fresh one from a desk humidor and wedged it into the small bowl. He looked at Josip and grinned again, the action giving his face an unsophisticated youthful expression.

“You can’t imagine how pleased I am to meet you, at last,” he said. “I’ve been looking for you for months.”

Josip Pekic ogled him blankly. The name had come through to him at last. Aleksander Kardelj was seldom in the news, practically never photographed, and then in the background in a group of Party functionaries, usually with a wry smile on his face. But he was known throughout the boundaries of the State, if not internationally. Aleksander Kardelj was Number Two. Right-hand man of Zoran Jankez himself, second in command of the Party and rumored to be the brains behind the throne.

The zombies had gone, hurriedly.

“Looking for me?” Josip said blankly. “I haven’t been in hiding. You’ve made some mistake. All I am is a student of—”

“Of course, of course,” Kardelj said, humorously impatient. He took up a folder from his desk and shook it absently in Josip’s general direction. “I’ve studied your dossier thoroughly.” He flicked his eyes up at a wall clock. “Come along. Comrade Jankez is expecting us. We’ll leave explanations until then.”

In a daze, Josip Pekic followed him.

Comrade Jankez, Number One. Zoran Jankez, Secretary General of the Party, President of the U.B.S.R., the United Balkan Soviet Republics. Number One.

Josip could hardly remember so far back that Zoran Jankez wasn’t head of the Party, when his face, or sculptured bust, wasn’t to be seen in every store, on the walls of banks, railroad stations, barber shops, or bars. Never a newsreel but that part of it wasn’t devoted to Comrade Jankez, never a Telly newscast but that Number One was brought to the attention of the viewers. His coming to power had been a quiet, bloodless affair upon the death of the Number One who had preceded him, and he had remained in his position for a generation.

* * * *

Josip Pekic followed Aleksander Kardelj in a daze, through a door to the rear of the desk, and into a somewhat bigger room, largely barren of furniture save for a massive table with a dozen chairs about it. At the table, looking some ten years older than in any photo Josip had ever seen, sat Zoran Jankez.

He looked ten years older, and his face bore a heavy weariness, a grayness, that never came through in his publicity shots. He looked up from a report he was perusing and grunted a welcome to them.

Kardelj said in pleasurable enthusiasm, “Here he is, Zoran. Our Comrade Josip Pekic. The average young citizen of Transbalkania.”

Number One grunted again, and took in the less than imposing figure of Josip Pekic. Josip felt an urge to nibble at his fingernails, and repressed it. He had recently broken himself of the smoking habit and was hard put to find occupation for his hands when nervous.

Zoran Jankez growled an invitation for them to be seated and Kardelj adjusted his trousers to preserve the crease, threw one leg up along the heavy conference table, and rested on a buttock, looking at ease but as though ready to take off instantly.

Josip fumbled himself into one of the sturdy oaken chairs, staring back and forth at the two most powerful men of his native land. Thus far, no one had said anything that made any sense whatsoever to him since he had been hauled from his bed half an hour ago.

Zoran Jankez rasped, “I have gone through your dossier, Comrade. I note that you are the son of Hero of the People’s Democratic Dictatorship, Ljubo Pekic.”

“Yes, Comrade Jankez,” Josip got out. He fussed with his hands, decided it would be improper to stick them in his pockets.

Number One grunted. “I knew Ljubo well. You must realize that his arrest was before my time. I had no power to aid him. It was, of course, after my being elected to the Secretary Generalship that he was exonerated and his name restored to the list of those who have gloriously served the State. But then, of course, you bear no malice at this late date. Ljubo has been posthumously given the hero’s award.”

It wasn’t exactly the way Josip knew the story, but there was little point in his objecting. He simply nodded. He said, unhappily, “Comrades, I feel some mistake has been made. I…I have no idea—”

Kardelj was chuckling, as though highly pleased with some development. He held up a hand to cut Josip short and turned to his superior. “You see, Zoran. A most average, laudable young man. Born under our regime, raised under the People’s Democratic Dictatorship. Exactly our man.”

Zoran Jankez seemed not to hear the other. He was studying Josip heavily, all but gloomily.

A beefy paw went out and banged a button inset in the table and which Josip had not noticed before. Almost instantly a door in the rear opened and a white-jacketed servant entered, pushing a wheeled combination bar and hors d’oeuvres cart before him. He brought the lavishly laden wagon to within reach of the heavy-set Party head, his face in servile expressionlessness.

Jankez grunted something and the waiter, not quite bowing and scraping, retreated again from the room. Number One’s heavy lips moved in and out as his eyes went over the display.

Kardelj said easily, “Let me, Zoran.” He arose and brought a towel-wrapped bottle from a refrigerated bucket set into the wagon, and deftly took up a delicate three-ounce glass which he filled and placed before his superior. He took up another and raised his eyebrows at Josip Pekic who shook his head—a stomach as queasy as his wasn’t going to be helped by alcohol. Kardelj poured a short one for himself and resumed his place at the heavy conference table.

Jankez, his eyes small and piggish, took up a heavy slice of dark bread and ladled a full quarter pound of Danube caviar upon it. He took up the glass and tossed the chilled spirits back over his palate, grunted and stuffed the open sandwich into his mouth.

Josip’s eyes went to the hors d’oeuvres wagon. The spread would have cost him six months’ income.

Number One rumbled, his mouth full, “Comrade, I am not surprised at your confusion. We will get to the point immediately. Actually, you must consider yourself a very fortunate young man.” He belched, took another huge bite, then went on. “Have you ever heard the term, expediter?”

“I…I don’t know…I mean think so, Comrade Jankez.”

The party head poured himself some more of the yellow spirits and took down half of it. “It is not important,” he rasped. “Comrade Kardelj first came upon the germ of this project of ours whilst reading of American industrial successes during the Second World War. They were attempting to double, triple, quadruple their production of such war materiel as ships and aircraft in a matter of mere months. Obviously, a thousand bottlenecks appeared. All was confusion. So they resorted to expediters. Extremely competent efficiency engineers whose sole purpose was to seek out such bottlenecks and eliminate them. A hundred aircraft might be kept from completion by the lack of a single part. The expediter found them though they be as far away as England, and flew them by chartered plane to California. A score of top research chemists might be needed for a certain project in Tennessee, the expediter located them, though it meant the stripping of valued men from jobs of lesser importance. I need give no further examples. Their powers were sweeping. Their expense accounts unlimited. Their successes unbelievable.” Number One’s eyes went back to the piles of food, as though he’d grown tired of so much talk.

Josip fidgeted, still uncomprehending.

While the Party leader built himself a huge sandwich of Dalmatian ham and pohovano pile chicken, Aleksander Kardelj put in an enthusiastic word. “We’re adapting the idea to our own needs, Comrade. You have been selected to be our first expediter.”

If anything, Josip Pekic was more confused than ever. “Expediter,” he said blankly. “To…to expedite what?”

“That is for you to decide,” Kardelj said blithely. “You’re our average Transbalkanian. You feel as the average man in the street feels. You’re our what the Yankees call, Common Man.”

Josip said plaintively, “You keep saying that, but I don’t know what you mean, Comrade. Please forgive me, perhaps I’m dense, but what is this about me being uh, the average man? There’s nothing special about me. I…”

“Exactly,” Kardelj said triumphantly. “There’s nothing special about you. You’re the average man of all Transbalkania. We have gone to a great deal of difficulty to seek you out.”

Number One belched and took over heavily. “Comrade, we have made extensive tests in this effort to find our average man. You are the result. You are of average age, of average height, weight, of education, and of intelligence quotient. You finished secondary school, worked for several years, and have returned to the university where you are now in your second year. Which is average for you who have been born in your generation. Your tastes, your ambitions, your…dreams, Comrade Pekic, are either known to be, or assumed to be, those of the average Transbalkanian.” He took up a rich baklava dessert, saturated with honey, and devoured it.

Josip Pekic and his associates had wondered at some of the examinations and tests that had been so prevalent of recent date. He accepted the words of the two Party leaders. Very well, he was the average of the country’s some seventy million population. Well, then?

* * * *

Number One had pushed himself back in his chair, and Josip was only mildly surprised to note that the man seemed considerably paunchier than his photos indicated. Perhaps he wore a girdle in public.

Zoran Jankez took up a paper. “I have here a report from a journalist of the West who but recently returned from a tour of our country. She reports, with some indignation, that the only available eyebrow pencils were to be found on the black market, were of French import, and cost a thousand dinars apiece. She contends that Transbalkanian women are indignant at paying such prices.”

The Party head looked hopelessly at first Josip and then Kardelj. “What is an eyebrow pencil?”

Kardelj said, a light frown on his usually easygoing face, “I believe it is a cosmetic.”

“You mean like lipstick?”

Josip took courage. He flustered. “They use it to darken their eyebrows—women, I mean. From what I understand, it comes and goes in popularity. Right now, it is ultra-popular. A new, uh, fad originating in Italy, is sweeping the West.”

Number One stared at him. “How do you know all that?” he rasped.

Josip fiddled with the knot of his tie, uncomfortably. “It is probably in my dossier that I have journeyed abroad on four occasions. Twice to International Youth Peace Conferences, once as a representative to a Trades Union Convention in Vienna, and once on a tourist vacation guided tour. On those occasions I…ah…met various young women of the West.”

Kardelj said triumphantly, “See what I mean, Zoran? This comrade is priceless.”

Jankez looked at his right-hand man heavily. “Why, if our women desire this…this eyebrow pencil nonsense, is it not supplied them? Is there some ingredient we do not produce? If so, why cannot it be imported?” He picked at his uneven teeth with a thumbnail.

Kardelj held his lean hands up, as though in humorous supplication. “Because, Comrade, to this point we have not had expediters to find out such desires on the part of women comrades.”

Number One grunted. He took up another report. “Here we have some comments upon service in our restaurants, right here in Zagurest, from an evidently widely published American travel reporter. He contends that the fact that there is no tipping leads to our waiters being surly and inefficient.”

He glared up at his right-hand man. “I have never noticed when I have dined at the Sumadija or the Dva Ribara, that the waiters have been surly. And only last week I enjoyed cigansko pecenje, gypsy roast, followed by a very flaky cherry strudla, at the Gradski Podrum. The service was excellent.”

Kardelj cleared his throat. “Perhaps you receive better service than the average tourist, Zoran.”

Jankez growled, “The tourist trade is important. An excellent source of hard currencies.” He glowered across at Josip. “These are typical of the weaknesses you must ferret out, Comrade.”

He put the reports down with a grunt. “But these are comparatively minor. Last week a truck driver attached to a meat-packing house in Belbrovnik was instructed to deliver a load of frozen products to a town in Macenegro. When he arrived there, it was to find they had no refrigeration facilities. So he unloaded the frozen meat on a warehouse platform and returned to Belbrovnik. At this time of the year, obviously in four hours the meat was spoiled.” He glowered at Kardelj and then at Josip Pekic. “Why do things like this continually happen? How can we overtake the United States of the Americas and Common Europe, when on all levels our workers are afraid to take initiative? That truck driver fulfilled his instructions. He delivered the meat. He washed his hands of what happened to it afterward. Why, Comrades? Why did he not have the enterprise to preserve his valuable load, even, if necessary, make the decision to return with it to Belbrovnik?”

He grunted heavily and settled back into his chair as though through, finished with the whole question.

Aleksander Kardelj became brisk. He said to Josip Pekic with a smile, “This is your job. You are to travel about the country, finding bottlenecks, finding shortages, ferreting out mistakes and bringing them to the attention of those in position to rectify them.”

Josip said glumly, “But suppose…suppose they ignore my findings?”

Number One snorted, but said nothing.

Kardelj said jovially, “Tomorrow the announcements will go out to every man, woman and child in the People’s Democratic Dictatorship. Your word is law. You are answerable only to Comrade Jankez and myself. No restrictions whatsoever apply to you. No laws. No regulations. We will give you identification which all will recognize, and the bearer of which can do no wrong.”

Josip was flabbergasted. “But…but suppose I come up against some…well, someone high in the Party, or, well…some general or admiral? Some—”

Kardelj said jocularly, “You answer only to us, Comrade Pekic. Your power is limitless. Comrade Jankez did not exaggerate. Frankly, were cold statistics enough, Transbalkania has already at long last overtaken the West in per capita production. Steel, agriculture, the tonnage of coal mined, of petroleum pumped. All these supposed indications of prosperity.” He flung up his hands again in his semihumorous gesture of despair. “But all these things do not mesh. We cannot find such a simple matter as…as eyebrow pencils in our stores, nor can we be served acceptably in our restaurants and hotels. Each man passes the buck, as the Yankees say, and no man can care less whether or not school keeps. No man wants responsibility.”

Josip was aghast, all over again. “But…but me…only me. What could you expect a single person to do?”

“Don’t misunderstand, Comrade,” Kardelj told him with amused compassion. “You are but an experiment. If it works out, we will seek others who are also deemed potential expediters to do similar work. Now, are there any further questions?”

Josip Pekic stared miserably back and forth between the two, wondering wildly what they would say if he turned the whole thing down. His eyes lit on the dour, heavy Number One, and inwardly he shook his head. No. There was no question about that. You didn’t turn down Zoran Jankez. He looked at Aleksander Kardelj, and in spite of the other’s smiling face, he decided you didn’t turn down Number Two, either.

Josip said carefully, “From what you say, I…I can override anyone in Transbalkania, except yourselves. But…but what if I antagonize one of you? You know…with something I think I find wrong?”

The second in command of the Party chuckled, even as he fitted a fresh cigarette into his curved holder. “We’ve provided even for that, Comrade. Fifty thousand Common Europe francs have been deposited to your account in Switzerland. At any time you feel your revelations might endanger yourself, you are free to leave the country and achieve sanctuary abroad.” He chuckled whimsically again. “Given the position you will occupy, a man above all law, with the whole of the nation’s resources at his disposal, I cannot imagine you wishing to leave. The Swiss deposit is merely to give you complete confidence, complete security.”

* * * *

Number One was radiating fury as he stalked heavily down the corridors of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. On the surface, his face displayed nothing—which meant nothing. There was simply a raging aura of trouble.

Veljko Gosnjak, posted with one other before the office of Aleksander Kardelj, winced when he saw the Party head approaching. He muttered from the side of his mouth, “Watch out. He’s on a rampage. In this mood, he’d as well set you to filling salt shakers in the Nairebis mines as…”

But Zoran Jankez was now near enough that he might hear, and Veljko Gosnjak cut himself off abruptly and came to even stiffer attention.

Number One ignored them both and pushed on through the door.

Even as his right-hand man looked up from his work, Jankez was growling ominously. “Do you know the latest from that brain-wave experiment?”

Kardelj was close enough to the other personally to at least pretend lack of awe. He grinned and said, “You mean young Josip? Sit down, Zoran. A drink?”

The Number Two Party man swiveled slightly and punched out a code on a series of buttons. Almost immediately, an area of approximately one square foot sank down from the upper right-hand corner of his desk, to rise again bearing two chilled glasses.

Jankez snorted his anger but took up one of the glasses. “These everlasting gadgets from the West,” he growled. “One of these days, this confounded desk of yours will give you an electric shock that will set me to looking for a new assistant.” He threw the contents of the glass back over his palate. “If I don’t start looking before that time,” he added ominously.

However, he savored the drink, then put down the glass, pursed his lips and rumbled, “Where do you get this excellent slivovka, Aleksander?”

Kardelj sipped part of his own drink. He said lightly, “That is the only secret I keep from you, Zoran. However, I will give you this hint. Its proper name is sljivovica, rather than slivovka. It does not come from Slovenia. I am afraid, once you know its origin, I will no longer be of use to you.”

He laughed again. “But what is it that young Josip has done?”

His superior’s face resumed its dark expression. He growled, “You know Velimir Crvenkovski, of course.”

Kardelj raised scanty eyebrows. “Of course, Vice chairman of the Secretariat of Agriculture.”

Zoran Jankez had lowered his clumsy bulk into a chair. Now he said heavily, his voice dangerous. “Velimir and I were partisans together. It was I who converted him to the Party, introduced him to the works of Lenin while we squatted in foxholes in Macenegro.”

“Of course,” the other repeated. “I know the story very well. A good Party man, Comrade Crvenkovski, never failing to vote with you in meetings of the Executive Committee.”

“Yes,” Jankez growled ominously. “And your precious Josip Pekic, your expediter, has removed him from his position as supreme presider of agriculture in Bosnatia.”

Aleksander Kardelj cleared his throat. “I have just been reading the account. It would seem that production has fallen off considerably in the past five years in Bosnatia. Ah, Comrade Crvenkovski evidently had brought to his attention that wild life in the countryside, particularly birds, accounted for the loss of hundreds of thousands of tons of cereals and other produce annually.”

“A well-known fact,” Jankez rasped. He finished what remained of his drink, and reached forward to punch out the order for a fresh one. “What has that got to do with this pipsqueak using the confounded powers you invested him with to dismiss one of the best Party men in Transbalkania?”

His right-hand man had not failed to note that he was now being given full credit for the expediter idea. He said, still cheerfully, however, “It would seem that Comrade Crvenkovski issued top priority orders to kill off, by whatever means possible, all birds. Shotguns, poison, nets were issued by the tens of thousands to the peasants.”

“Well?” his superior said ominously. “Obviously, Velimir was clear minded enough to see the saving in gross production.”

“Um-m-m,” Kardelj said placatingly. “However, he failed to respond to the warnings of our agriculturists who have studied widely in the West. It seems as though the balance of nature calls for the presence of wildlife, and particularly birds. The increase in destructive insects has more than counterbalanced the amount of cereals the birds once consumed. Ah, Zoran,” he said with a wry smile, “I would suggest we find another position for Comrade Crvenkovski.”

* * * *

The secretary-receptionist looked up at long last at the very average looking young man before him. “Yes,” he said impatiently.

The stranger said, “I would like to see Comrade Broz.”

“Surely you must realize that the Commissar is one of the busiest men in Transbalkania, Comrade.” There was mocking sneer in the tone. “His time is not at the disposal of every citizen.”

The newcomer looked at the petty authority thoughtfully. “Do you so address everyone that enters this office?” he asked mildly.

The other stared at him flabbergasted. He suddenly banged upon a button on the desk.

When the security guard responded to the summons, he gestured curtly with his head at the newcomer. “Throw this fool out, Petar,” he rapped.

Josip Pekic shook his head, almost sadly. “No,” he said. “Throw this man out.” He pointed at the secretary-receptionist.

The guard called Petar blinked at each of them in turn.

Josip brought forth his wallet, fidgeted a moment with the contents, then flashed his credentials. “State expediter,” he said nervously. “Under direct authority of Comrade Zoran Jankez.” He looked at the suddenly terrified receptionist. “I don’t know what alternative work we can find to fit your talents. However, if I ever again hear of you holding down a position in which you meet the public, I will…will, ah, see you imprisoned.”

The other scurried from the room before Josip thought of more to say.

Josip Pekic looked at the guard for a long moment. He said finally, unhappy still, “What are you needed for around here?”

“Why yes, Comrade. I am the security guard.”

Petar, obviously no brain at the best, was taken aback.

“You didn’t answer my question.” Josip’s hands were jittering so he jammed them into his pockets.

Petar had to think back to remember the wording of the question in question. Finally he came up triumphantly with, “Yes, Comrade. I guard Comrade Broz and the others from assassins. I am armed.” He proudly displayed the Mikoyan Noiseless which he had holstered under his left shoulder.

Josip said, “Go back to your superior and inform him that I say you are superfluous on this assignment. No longer are commissars automatically to be guarded. Only under special circumstances. If…well, if our people dislike individual commissars sufficiently to wish to assassinate them, maybe they need assassination.”

Petar stared at him.

“Oh, get out,” Josip said, with attempted sharpness. But then, “What door leads to Comrade Broz’s office?”

Petar pointed, then got out. At least he knew how to obey orders, Josip decided. What was there about the police mentality? Were they like that before they became police, and the job sought them out? Or did the job make them all that way?

He pushed his way through the indicated door. The office beyond held but one inhabitant who stood, hands clasped behind his back, while he stared in obvious satisfaction at a wall of charts, maps and graphs.

The average young man looked at some of the lettering on the charts and shook his head. He said, his voice hesitant, “Commissar Broz?”

The other turned, frowning, not recognizing his caller and surprised to find him here without announcement. He said, “Yes, young man?”

Josip presented his credentials again.

Broz had heard of him. He hurried forth a chair, became expansive in manner. A cigar? A drink? A great pleasure to meet the Comrade Expediter. He had heard a great deal about the new experiment initiated by Comrade Jankez and ably assisted by Aleksander Kardelj. Happily, an expediter was not needed in the Transbalkanian Steel Complex. It was expanding in such wise as to be the astonishment of the world, both East and West.

“Yes,” Josip began glumly, “but—”

Broz was back on his feet and to his wall of charts and graphs. “See here,” he beamed expansively. “This curve is steel production. See how it zooms? A veritable Sputnik, eh? Our statistics show that we are rapidly surpassing even the most foremost of the Western powers.”

Josip Pekic said, almost apologetically in view of the other’s enthusiasm. “That’s what I came to discuss with you, Comrade. You see, I’ve been sitting around, ah, in the local wineshops, talking it over with the younger engineers and the men on the job.”

The other frowned at him. “Talking what over?”

“This new policy of yours.” Josip’s voice was diffident.

“You mean overtaking the steel production of the West, by utilizing all methods of production?” The commissar’s voice dropped. “I warn you Comrade, the germ of this idea originated with Zoran Jankez himself. We are old comrades and friends from back before the revolution.”

“I’m sure you are,” Josip said pessimistically, and suppressing an urge to bite at the skin of his thumb. “However…well, I’m not so sure Number One will admit your program originated with him. At least, it hasn’t worked out that way in the recent past when something soured.”

The other bug-eyed. He whispered, “That approaches cynical treason, Comrade.”

Josip half nodded, said discouragedly, “You forget. By Comrade Jankez’s own orders I…I can do no wrong. But so much for that. Now, well, this steel program. I’m afraid it’s going to have to be scrapped.”

“Scrapped!” the Commissar of the Transbalkanian Steel Complex stared at his visitor as though the other was rabid. “You fool! Our steel progress is the astonishment of the world! Why, not only are our ultramodern plants, built largely with foreign assistance, working on a twenty-four hour a day basis, but thousands of secondary smelters, some so small as to be operated by a handful of comrade citizens, in backyard establishments, by schoolchildren, working smelters of but a few tons monthly capacity in the schoolyard, by—”

* * * *

The newly created State Expediter held up a hand dispiritedly. “I know. I know. Thousands of these backyard smelters exist…uh…especially in parts of the country where there is neither ore nor fuel available.”

The commissar looked at him.

The younger man said, his voice seemingly deprecating his words, “The schoolchildren, taking time off from their studies, of course, bring scrap iron to be smelted. And they bring whatever fuel they can find, often pilfered from railway yards. And the more scrap and fuel they bring, the more praise they get. Unfortunately, the so-called scrap often turns out to be kitchen utensils, farm tools, even, on at least one occasion, some railroad tracks, from a narrow gauge line running up to a lumbering project, not in use that time of the year. Sooner or later, Comrade Broz, the nation is going to have to replace those kitchen utensils and farm tools and all the rest of the scrap that isn’t really quite scrap.”

The commissar began to protest heatedly, but Josip Pekic shook his head and tried to firm his less than dominating voice. “But even that’s not the worst of it. Taking citizens away from their real occupations, or studies, and putting them to smelting steel where no ore exists. The worst of it is, so my young engineer friends tell me, that while the steel thus produced might have been a marvel back in the days of the Hittites, it hardly reaches specifications today. Perhaps it might be used ultimately to make simple farm tools such as hoes and rakes; if so, it would make quite an endless circle, because that is largely the source of the so-called steel to begin with—tools, utensils and such. But it hardly seems usable in modern industry.”

The commissar had gone pale with anger by now. He put his two fists on his desk and leaned upon them, staring down at his seated visitor. “Comrade,” he bit out, “I warn you. Comrade Jankez is enthusiastic about my successes. Beyond that, not only is he an old comrade, but my brother-in-law as well.”

Josip Pekic nodded, unenthusiastically, and his voice continued to quiver. “So the trained engineers under you, have already warned me. However, Comrade Broz, you are…well, no longer Commissar of the Steel Complex. My report has already gone in to Comrades Jankez and Kardelj.”

* * * *

The knock came at the door in the middle of the night as Aleksander Kardelj had always thought it would.

From those early days of his Party career, when his ambitions had sent him climbing, pushing, tripping up others, on his way to the top, he had expected it eventually.

Oh, his had been a different approach, on the surface, an easygoing, laughing, gentler approach than one usually connected with members of the Secretariat of the Executive Committee of the Party, but it made very little difference in the very long view. When one fell from the heights, he fell just as hard, whether or not he was noted for his sympathetic easy humor.

The fact was, Aleksander Kardelj was not asleep when the fist pounded at his door shortly after midnight. He had but recently turned off, with a shaking hand, the Telly-Phone, after a less than pleasant conversation with President of the United Balkan Soviet Republics, Zoran Jankez.

For the past ten years, Kardelj had been able to placate Zoran Jankez, even though Number One be at the peak of one of his surly rages, rages which seemed to be coming with increasing frequency of late. As the socio-economic system of the People’s Democratic Dictatorship became increasingly complicated, as industrialization with its modern automation mushroomed in a geometric progression, the comparative simplicity of governing which applied in the past, was strictly of yesteryear. It had been one thing, rifle and grenades in hand, to seize the government, after a devastating war in which the nation had been leveled, and even to maintain it for a time, over illiterate peasants and unskilled proletarians. But industrialization calls for a highly educated element of scientists and technicians, nor does it stop there. One of sub-mentality can operate a shovel in a field, or even do a simple operation on an endless assembly line in a factory. But practically all workers must be highly skilled workers in the age of automation, and there is little room for the illiterate. The populace of the People’s Dictatorship was no longer a dumb, driven herd, and their problems were no longer simple ones.

Yes, Number One was increasingly subject to his rages these days. It was Aleksander Kardelj’s deepest belief that Jankez was finding himself out of his depth. He no longer was capable of understanding the problems which his planning bodies brought to his attention. And he who is confused, be he ditchdigger or dictator, is a man emotionally upset.

Zoran Jankez’s face had come onto the Telly-Phone screen already enraged. He had snapped to his right-hand man, “Kardelj! Do you realize what that…that idiot of yours has been up to now?”

Inwardly, Kardelj had winced. His superior had been mountingly difficult of late, and particularly these past few days. He said now, cajolingly, “Zoran, I—”

“Don’t call me Zoran, Kardelj! And please preserve me from your sickening attempts to fawn, in view of your treacherous recommendations of recent months.” He was so infuriated that his heavy jowls shook.

Kardelj had never seen him this furious. He said placatingly, “Comrade Jankez, I had already come to the conclusion that I should consult you on the desirability of revoking this young troublemaker’s credentials and removing him from the—”

“I am not interested in what you were going to do, Kardelj. I am already in the process of ending this traitor’s activities. I should have known, when you revealed he was the son of Ljubo Pekic, that he was an enemy of the State, deep within. I know the Pekic blood. It was I who put Ljubo to the question. Stubborn, wrong headed, a vicious foe of the revolution. And his son takes after him.”

Kardelj had enough courage left to say, “Comrade, it would seem to me that young Pekic is a tanglefoot, but not a conscious traitor. I—”

“Don’t call me comrade, Kardelj!” Number One roared. “I know your inner motivation. The reason you brought this agent provocateur, this Trotskyite wrecker, to this position of ridiculous power. The two of you are in conspiracy to undermine my authority. This will be brought before the Secretariat of the Executive Committee, Kardelj. You’ve gone too far, this time!”

Aleksander Kardelj had his shortcomings but he was no coward. He said, wryly, “Very well, sir. But would you tell me what Josip Pekic has done now? My office has had no report on him for some time.”

“What he has done! You fool, you traitorous fool, have you kept no record at all? He has been in the Macedonian area where my virgin lands program has been in full swing.”

Kardelj cleared his throat at this point.

Jankez continued roaring. “The past three years, admittedly, the weather has been such, the confounded rains failing to arrive on schedule, that we have had our troubles. But this fool! This blundering traitorous idiot!”

“What has he done?” Kardelj asked, intrigued in spite of his position of danger.

“For all practical purposes he’s ordered the whole program reversed. Something about a sandbowl developing, whatever that is supposed to mean. Something about introducing contour plowing, whatever nonsense that is. And even reforesting some areas. Some nonsense about watersheds. He evidently has blinded and misled the very men I had in charge. They are supporting him, openly.”

Jankez, Kardelj knew, had been a miner as a youth, with no experience whatsoever on the soil. However, the virgin lands project had been his pet. He envisioned hundreds upon thousands of square miles of maize, corn as the Americans called it. This in turn would feed vast herds of cattle and swine so that ultimately the United Balkan Soviet Republics would have the highest meat consumption in the world.

Number One was raging on. Something about a conspiracy on the part of those who surrounded him. A conspiracy to overthrow him, Zoran Jankez, and betray the revolution to the Western powers, but he, Zoran Jankez, had been through this sort of plot before. He, Zoran Jankez, knew the answers to such situations.

Aleksander Kardelj grinned humorously, wryly, and reached to flick off the screen. He twisted a cigarette into the small pipelike holder, lit it and waited for the inevitable.

It was shortly after that the knock came on his door.

* * * *

Zoran Jankez sat at his desk in the Ministry of Internal Affairs, a heavy military revolver close to his right hand, a half empty liter of sljivovica and a water tumbler, to his left. Red of eye, he pored over endless reports from his agents, occasionally taking time out to growl a command into his desk mike. Tired he was, from the long sleepless hours he was putting in, but Number One was in his element. As he had told that incompetent, Kardelj, he had been through this thing before. It was no mistake that he was Number One.

After a time he put a beefy hand down on the reports. He could feel the rage coming upon him. Of late, he realized, there most certainly had developed a plot to undermine his health by constant frustrations. Was there no one, no one at all, to take some of these trivialities off his shoulders? Must he do everything in the People’s Democratic Dictatorship? Make every decision and see it through?

He snapped into the mike, “Give me Lazar Jovanovic.” And then, when the police head’s shaven poll appeared in the screen of the Telly-Phone, “Comrade, I am giving you one last chance. Produce this traitor, Josip Pekic, within the next twenty-four hours, or answer to me.” He glared at the other, whose face had tightened in fear. “I begin to doubt the sincerity of your efforts, in this, Comrade Jovanovic.”

“But…but, Comrade, I—”

“That’s all!” Number One snapped. He flicked off the instrument, then glowered at it for a full minute. If Jovanovic couldn’t locate Pekic, he’d find someone who could. It was maddening that the pipsqueak had seemingly disappeared. To this point, seeking him had progressed in secret. There had been too much favorable publicity churned out in the early days of the expediter scheme to reverse matters to the point of having a public hue and cry. It was being done on the q.t.

But! Number One raged inwardly, if his police couldn’t find the criminal soon enough, a full-scale hunt and purge could well enough be launched. There was more to all this than met the eye. Oh, he, Zoran Jankez had been through it before, though long years had lapsed since it had been necessary. The traitors, the secret conspiracies, and then the required purges to clean the Party ranks still once again.

The gentle summons of his Telly-Phone tinkled, and he flicked it on with a rough brush of his hand.

And there was the youthful face of Josip Pekic, currently being sought high and low by the full strength of the Internal Affairs Secretariat. Youthful, yes, but even as he stared his astonishment, Zoran Jankez could see that the past months had wrought their changes on the other’s face. It was more mature, bore more of strain and weariness.

Before Jankez found his voice. Josip Pekic said diffidently, “I…I understand you’ve been, well…looking for me, sir.”

“Looking for you!” the Party head bleated, his rage ebbing in all but uncontrollably. For a moment he couldn’t find words.

Pekic said, his voice jittering, “I had some research to do. You see, sir, this…this project you and Kardelj started me off on—”

“I had nothing to do with it! It was Kardelj’s scheme, confound his idiocy!” Number One all but screamed.

“Oh? Well…well, I had gathered the opinion that both of you concurred. Anyway, like I say, the project from the first didn’t come off quite the way it started. I…well…we, were thinking in terms of finding out why waiters were surly, why workers and professionals and even officials tried to, uh, beat the rap, pass the buck, look out for themselves and the devil take the hindmost, and all those Americanisms that Kardelj is always using.”

Jankez simmered, but let the other go on. Undoubtedly, his police chief, Lazar Jovanovic was even now tracing the call, and this young traitor would soon be under wraps where he could do no more damage to the economy of the People’s Democratic Dictatorship.

“But, well, I found it wasn’t just a matter of waiters, and truckdrivers and such. It…well…ran all the way from top to bottom. So, I finally felt as though I was sort of butting my head against the wall. I thought I better start at…kind of…fundamentals, so I began researching the manner in which the governments of the West handled some of these matters.”

“Ah,” Jankez said as smoothly as he was able to get out. “Ah. And?” This fool was hanging himself.

The younger man frowned in unhappy puzzlement. “Frankly, I was surprised. I have, of course, read Western propaganda to the extent I could get hold of it in Zagurest, and listened to the Voice of the West on the wireless. I was also, obviously, familiar with our own propaganda. Frankly…well…I had reserved my opinion in both cases.”

* * * *

This in itself was treason, but Number One managed to get out, almost encouragingly, “What are you driving at, Josip Pekic?”

“I found in one Western country that the government was actually paying its peasants, that is, farmers, not to plant crops. The same government subsidized other crops, keeping the prices up to the point where they were hard put to compete on the international markets.”

Young Pekic made a moue, as though in puzzlement. “In other countries, in South America for instance, where the standard of living is possibly the lowest in the West and they need funds desperately to develop themselves, the governments build up large armies, although few of them have had any sort of warfare at all for over a century and have no threat of war.”

“What is all this about?” Number One growled. Surely, Lazar Jovanovic was on the idiot traitor’s trail by now.

Josip took a deep breath and hurried on nervously. “They’ve got other contradictions that seem unbelievable. For instance, their steel industry will be running at half capacity, in spite of the fact that millions of their citizens have unfulfilled needs, involving steel. Things like cars, refrigerators, stoves. In fact, in their so-called recessions, they’ll actually close down perfectly good, modern factories, and throw their people out of employment, at the very time that there are millions of people who need that factory’s product.”

Josip said reasonably, “Why, sir, I’ve come to the conclusion that the West has some of the same problems we have. And the main one is politicians.”

“What? What do you mean?”

“Just that,” Josip said with dogged glumness. “I…well, I don’t know about the old days. A hundred, even fifty years ago, but as society becomes more complicated, more intricate, I simply don’t think politicians are capable of directing it. The main problems are those of production and distribution of all the things our science and industry have learned to turn out. And politicians, all over the world, seem to foul it up.”

Zoran Jankez growled ominously, “Are you suggesting that I am incompetent to direct the United Balkan Soviet Republics?”

“Yes, sir,” Josip said brightly, as though the other had encouraged him. “That’s what I mean. You or any other politician. Industry should be run by trained, competent technicians, scientists, industrialists—and to some extent, maybe, by the consumers, but not by politicians. By definition, politicians know about politics, not industry. But somehow, in the modern world, governments seem to be taking over the running of industry and even agriculture. They aren’t doing such a good job, sir.”

Jankez finally exploded. “Where are you calling from, Pekic?” he demanded. “You’re under arrest!”

Josip Pekic cleared his throat, apologetically. “No, sir,” he said. “Remember? I’m the average Transbalkanian citizen. And it is to be assumed I’d, well…react the way any other would. The difference is, I had the opportunity. I’m in Switzerland.”

“Switzerland!” Number One roared. “You’ve defected. I knew you were a traitor, Pekic. Like father, like son! A true Transbalkanian would remain in his country and help it along the road to the future.”

The younger man looked worried. “Well, yes, sir,” he said. “I thought about that. But I think I’ve done about as much as I could accomplish. You see, these last few months, protected by those ‘can do no wrong’ credentials, I’ve been spreading this message around among all the engineers, technicians, professionals, all the more trained, competent people in Transbalkania. You’d be surprised how they took to it. I think it’s kind of…well, snowballing. I mean the idea that politicians aren’t capable of running industry. That if the United Balkan Soviet Republics are to ever get anywhere, some changes are going to have to be made.”

Number One could no more than glare.

Josip Pekic, rubbed his nose nervously, and said, in the way of uneasy farewell, “I just thought it was only fair for me to call you and give a final report. After all, I didn’t start all this. Didn’t originate the situation. It was you and Kardelj who gave me my chance. I just…well…expedited things.” His face faded from the screen, still apologetic of expression.

Zoran Jankez sat there for a long time, staring at the now dark instrument.

It was the middle of the night when the knock came at the door. But then, Zoran Jankez had always thought it would…finally.

ONE-SHOT, by James Blish

On the day that the Polish freighter Ludmilla laid an egg in New York harbor, Abner Longmans (“One-Shot”) Braun was in the city going about his normal business, which was making another million dollars. As we found out later, almost nothing else was normal about that particular week end for Braun. For one thing, he had brought his family with him—a complete departure from routine—reflecting the unprecedentedly legitimate nature of the deals he was trying to make. From every point of view it was a bad week end for the CIA to mix into his affairs, but nobody had explained that to the master of the Ludmilla.

I had better add here that we knew nothing about this until afterward; from the point of view of the storyteller, an organization like Civilian Intelligence Associates gets to all its facts backwards, entering the tale at the pay-off, working back to the hook, and winding up with a sheaf of background facts to feed into the computer for Next Time. It’s rough on the various people who’ve tried to fictionalize what we do—particularly for the lazy examples of the breed, who come to us expecting that their plotting has already been done for them—but it’s inherent in the way we operate, and there it is.

Certainly nobody at CIA so much as thought of Braun when the news first came through. Harry Anderton, the Harbor Defense chief, called us at 0830 Friday to take on the job of identifying the egg; this was when our records show us officially entering the affair, but, of course, Anderton had been keeping the wires to Washington steaming for an hour before that, getting authorization to spend some of his money on us (our clearance status was then and is now C&R—clean and routine).

I was in the central office when the call came through, and had some difficulty in making out precisely what Anderton wanted of us. “Slow down, Colonel Anderton, please,” I begged him. “Two or three seconds won’t make that much difference. How did you find out about this egg in the first place?”

“The automatic compartment bulkheads on the Ludmilla were defective,” he said. “It seems that this egg was buried among a lot of other crates in the dump-cell of the hold—”

“What’s a dump cell?”

“It’s a sea lock for getting rid of dangerous cargo. The bottom of it opens right to Davy Jones. Standard fitting for ships carrying explosives, radioactives, anything that might act up unexpectedly.”

“All right,” I said. “Go ahead.”

“Well, there was a timer on the dump-cell floor, set to drop the egg when the ship came up the river. That worked fine, but the automatic bulkheads that are supposed to keep the rest of the ship from being flooded while the cell’s open, didn’t. At least they didn’t do a thorough job. The Ludmilla began to list and the captain yelled for help. When the Harbor Patrol found the dump-cell open, they called us in.”

“I see.” I thought about it a moment. “In other words, you don’t know whether the Ludmilla really laid an egg or not.”

“That’s what I keep trying to explain to you, Dr. Harris. We don’t know what she dropped and we haven’t any way of finding out. It could be a bomb—it could be anything. We’re sweating everybody on board the ship now, but it’s my guess that none of them know anything; the whole procedure was designed to be automatic.”

“All right, we’ll take it,” I said. “You’ve got divers down?”

“Sure, but—”

“We’ll worry about the buts from here on. Get us a direct line from your barge to the big board here so we can direct the work. Better get on over here yourself.”

“Right.” He sounded relieved. Official people have a lot of confidence in CIA; too much, in my estimation. Some day the job will come along that we can’t handle, and then Washington will be kicking itself—or, more likely, some scapegoat—for having failed to develop a comparable government department.

Not that there was much prospect of Washington’s doing that. Official thinking had been running in the other direction for years. The precedent was the Associated Universities organization which ran Brookhaven; CIA had been started the same way, by a loose corporation of universities and industries all of which had wanted to own an ULTIMAC and no one of which had had the money to buy one for itself. The Eisenhower administration, with its emphasis on private enterprise and concomitant reluctance to sink federal funds into projects of such size, had turned the two examples into a nice fat trend, which ULTIMAC herself said wasn’t going to be reversed within the practicable lifetime of CIA.

* * * *

I buzzed for two staffers, and in five minutes got Clark Cheyney and Joan Hadamard, CIA’s business manager and social science division chief respectively. The titles were almost solely for the benefit of the T/O—that is, Clark and Joan do serve in those capacities, but said service takes about two per cent of their capacities and their time. I shot them a couple of sentences of explanation, trusting them to pick up whatever else they needed from the tape, and checked the line to the divers’ barge.

It was already open; Anderton had gone to work quickly and with decision once he was sure we were taking on the major question. The television screen lit, but nothing showed on it but murky light, striped with streamers of darkness slowly rising and falling. The audio went cloonck…oing, oing…bonk…oing… Underwater noises, shapeless and characterless.

“Hello, out there in the harbor. This is CIA, Harris calling. Come in, please.”

“Monig here,” the audio said. Boink…oing, oing…

“Got anything yet?”

“Not a thing, Dr. Harris,” Monig said. “You can’t see three inches in front of your face down here—it’s too silty. We’ve bumped into a couple of crates, but so far, no egg.”

“Keep trying.”

Cheyney, looking even more like a bulldog than usual, was setting his stopwatch by one of the eight clocks on ULTIMAC’s face. “Want me to take the divers?” he said.

“No, Clark, not yet. I’d rather have Joan do it for the moment.” I passed the mike to her. “You’d better run a probability series first.”

“Check.” He began feeding tape into the integrator’s mouth. “What’s your angle, Peter?”

“The ship. I want to see how heavily shielded that dump-cell is.”

“It isn’t shielded at all,” Anderton’s voice said behind me. I hadn’t heard him come in. “But that doesn’t prove anything. The egg might have carried sufficient shielding in itself. Or maybe the Commies didn’t care whether the crew was exposed or not. Or maybe there isn’t any egg.”

“All that’s possible,” I admitted. “But I want to see it, anyhow.”

“Have you taken blood tests?” Joan asked Anderton.

“Yes.”

“Get the reports through to me, then. I want white-cell counts, differentials, platelet counts, hematocrit and sed rates on every man.”

Anderton picked up the phone and I took a firm hold on the doorknob.

“Hey,” Anderton said, putting the phone down again. “Are you going to duck out just like that? Remember, Dr. Harris, we’ve got to evacuate the city first of all! No matter whether it’s a real egg or not—we can’t take the chance on it’s not being an egg!”

“Don’t move a man until you get a go-ahead from CIA,” I said. “For all we know now, evacuating the city may be just what the enemy wants us to do—so they can grab it unharmed. Or they may want to start a panic for some other reason, any one of fifty possible reasons.”

“You can’t take such a gamble,” he said grimly. “There are eight and a half million lives riding on it. I can’t let you do it.”

“You passed your authority to us when you hired us,” I pointed out. “If you want to evacuate without our O.K., you’ll have to fire us first. It’ll take another hour to get that cleared from Washington—so you might as well give us the hour.”

He stared at me for a moment, his lips thinned. Then he picked up the phone again to order Joan’s blood count, and I got out the door, fast.

* * * *

A reasonable man would have said that I found nothing useful on the Ludmilla, except negative information. But the fact is that anything I found would have been a surprise to me; I went down looking for surprises. I found nothing but a faint trail to Abner Longmans Braun, most of which was fifteen years cold.

There’d been a time when I’d known Braun, briefly and to no profit to either of us. As an undergraduate majoring in social sciences, I’d taken on a term paper on the old International Longshoreman’s Association, a racket-ridden union now formally extinct—although anyone who knew the signs could still pick up some traces on the docks. In those days, Braun had been the business manager of an insurance firm, the sole visible function of which had been to write policies for the ILA and its individual dock-wallopers. For some reason, he had been amused by the brash youngster who’d barged in on him and demanded the lowdown, and had shown me considerable lengths of ropes not normally in view of the public—nothing incriminating, but enough to give me a better insight into how the union operated than I had had any right to expect—or even suspect.

Hence I was surprised to hear somebody on the docks remark that Braun was in the city over the week end. It would never have occurred to me that he still interested himself in the waterfront, for he’d gone respectable with a vengeance. He was still a professional gambler, and according to what he had told the Congressional Investigating Committee last year, took in thirty to fifty thousand dollars a year at it, but his gambles were no longer concentrated on horses, the numbers, or shady insurance deals. Nowadays what he did was called investment—mostly in real estate; realtors knew him well as the man who had almost bought the Empire State Building. (The almost in the equation stands for the moment when the shoestring broke.)

Joan had been following his career, too, not because she had ever met him, but because for her he was a type study in the evolution of what she called “the extra-legal ego.” “With personalities like that, respectability is a disease,” she told me. “There’s always an almost-open conflict between the desire to be powerful and the desire to be accepted; your ordinary criminal is a moral imbecile, but people like Braun are damned with a conscience, and sooner or later they crack trying to appease it.”

“I’d sooner try to crack a Timkin bearing,” I said. “Braun’s ten-point steel all the way through.”

“Don’t you believe it. The symptoms are showing all over him. Now he’s backing Broadway plays, sponsoring beginning actresses, joining playwrights’ groups—he’s the only member of Buskin and Brush who’s never written a play, acted in one, or so much as pulled the rope to raise the curtain.”

“That’s investment,” I said. “That’s his business.”

“Peter, you’re only looking at the surface. His real investments almost never fail. But the plays he backs always do. They have to; he’s sinking money in them to appease his conscience, and if they were to succeed it would double his guilt instead of salving it. It’s the same way with the young actresses. He’s not sexually interested in them—his type never is, because living a rigidly orthodox family life is part of the effort towards respectability. He’s backing them to ‘pay his debt to society’—in other words, they’re talismans to keep him out of jail.”

“It doesn’t seem like a very satisfactory substitute.”

“Of course it isn’t,” Joan had said. “The next thing he’ll do is go in for direct public service—giving money to hospitals or something like that. You watch.”

She had been right; within the year, Braun had announced the founding of an association for clearing the Detroit slum area where he had been born—the plainest kind of symbolic suicide: Let’s not have any more Abner Longmans Brauns born down here. It depressed me to see it happen, for next on Joan’s agenda for Braun was an entry into politics as a fighting liberal—a New Dealer twenty years too late. Since I’m mildly liberal myself when I’m off duty, I hated to think what Braun’s career might tell me about my own motives, if I’d let it.

All of which had nothing to do with why I was prowling around the Ludmilla—or did it? I kept remembering Anderton’s challenge: “You can’t take such a gamble. There are eight and a half million lives riding on it—” That put it up into Braun’s normal operating area, all right. The connection was still hazy, but on the grounds that any link might be useful, I phoned him.

He remembered me instantly; like most uneducated, power-driven men, he had a memory as good as any machine’s.

“You never did send me that paper you was going to write,” he said. His voice seemed absolutely unchanged, although he was in his seventies now. “You promised you would.”

“Kids don’t keep their promises as well as they should,” I said. “But I’ve still got copies and I’ll see to it that you get one, this time. Right now I need another favor—something right up your alley.”

“CIA business?”

“Yes. I didn’t know you knew I was with CIA.”

Braun chuckled. “I still know a thing or two,” he said. “What’s the angle?”

“That I can’t tell you over the phone. But it’s the biggest gamble there ever was, and I think we need an expert. Can you come down to CIA’s central headquarters right away?”

“Yeah, if it’s that big. If it ain’t, I got lots of business here, Andy. And I ain’t going to be in town long. You’re sure it’s top stuff?”

“My word on it.”

He was silent a moment. Then he said, “Andy, send me your paper.”

“The paper? Sure, but—” Then I got it. I’d given him my word. “You’ll get it,” I said. “Thanks, Mr. Braun.”

I called headquarters and sent a messenger to my apartment to look for one of those long-dusty blue folders with the legal-length sheets inside them, with orders to scorch it over to Braun without stopping to breathe more than once. Then I went back myself.

The atmosphere had changed. Anderton was sitting by the big desk, clenching his fists and sweating; his whole posture telegraphed his controlled helplessness. Cheyney was bent over a seismograph, echo-sounding for the egg through the river bottom. If that even had a prayer of working, I knew, he’d have had the trains of the Hudson & Manhattan stopped; their rumbling course through their tubes would have blanked out any possible echo-pip from the egg.

“Wild goose chase?” Joan said, scanning my face.

“Not quite. I’ve got something, if I can just figure out what it is. Remember One-Shot Braun?”

“Yes. What’s he got to do with it?”

“Nothing,” I said. “But I want to bring him in. I don’t think we’ll lick this project before deadline without him.”

“What good is a professional gambler on a job like this? He’ll just get in the way.”

I looked toward the television screen, which now showed an amorphous black mass, jutting up from a foundation of even deeper black. “Is that operation getting you anywhere?”

“Nothing’s gotten us anywhere,” Anderton interjected harshly. “We don’t even know if that’s the egg—the whole area is littered with crates. Harris, you’ve got to let me get that alert out!”

“Clark, how’s the time going?”

Cheyney consulted the stopwatch. “Deadline in twenty-nine minutes,” he said.

“All right, let’s use those minutes. I’m beginning to see this thing a little clearer. Joan, what we’ve got here is a one-shot gamble; right?”

“In effect,” she said cautiously.

“And it’s my guess that we’re never going to get the answer by diving for it—not in time, anyhow. Remember when the Navy lost a barge-load of shells in the harbor, back in ’52? They scrabbled for them for a year and never pulled up a one; they finally had to warn the public that if it found anything funny-looking along the shore it shouldn’t bang said object, or shake it either. We’re better equipped than the Navy was then—but we’re working against a deadline.”

“If you’d admitted that earlier,” Anderton said hoarsely, “we’d have half a million people out of the city by now. Maybe even a million.”

“We haven’t given up yet, colonel. The point is this, Joan: what we need is an inspired guess. Get anything from the prob series, Clark? I thought not. On a one-shot gamble of this kind, the ‘laws’ of chance are no good at all. For that matter, the so-called ESP experiments showed us long ago that even the way we construct random tables is full of holes—and that a man with a feeling for the essence of a gamble can make a monkey out of chance almost at will.

“And if there ever was such a man, Braun is it. That’s why I asked him to come down here. I want him to look at that lump on the screen and—play a hunch.”

“You’re out of your mind,” Anderton said.

A decorous knock spared me the trouble of having to deny, affirm or ignore the judgment. It was Braun; the messenger had been fast, and the gambler hadn’t bothered to read what a college student had thought of him fifteen years ago. He came forward and held out his hand, while the others looked him over frankly.

He was impressive, all right. It would have been hard for a stranger to believe that he was aiming at respectability; to the eye, he was already there. He was tall and spare, and walked perfectly erect, not without spring despite his age. His clothing was as far from that of a gambler as you could have taken it by design: a black double-breasted suit with a thin vertical stripe, a gray silk tie with a pearl stickpin just barely large enough to be visible at all, a black Homburg; all perfectly fitted, all worn with proper casualness—one might almost say a formal casualness. It was only when he opened his mouth that One-Shot Braun was in the suit with him.

“I come over as soon as your runner got to me,” he said. “What’s the pitch, Andy?”

“Mr. Braun, this is Joan Hadamard, Clark Cheyney, Colonel Anderton. I’ll be quick because we need speed now. A Polish ship has dropped something out in the harbor. We don’t know what it is. It may be a hell-bomb, or it may be just somebody’s old laundry. Obviously we’ve got to find out which—and we want you to tell us.”

Braun’s aristocratic eyebrows went up. “Me? Hell, Andy, I don’t know nothing about things like that. I’m surprised with you. I thought CIA had all the brains it needed—ain’t you got machines to tell you answers like that?”

I pointed silently to Joan, who had gone back to work the moment the introductions were over. She was still on the mike to the divers. She was saying: “What does it look like?”

“It’s just a lump of something, Dr. Hadamard. Can’t even tell its shape—it’s buried too deeply in the mud.” Cloonk…Oing, oing…

“Try the Geiger.”

“We did. Nothing but background.”

“Scintillation counter?”

“Nothing, Dr. Hadamard. Could be it’s shielded.”

“Let us do the guessing, Monig. All right, maybe it’s got a clockwork fuse that didn’t break with the impact. Or a gyroscopic fuse. Stick a stethoscope on it and see if you pick up a ticking or anything that sounds like a motor running.”

* * * *

There was a lag and I turned back to Braun. “As you can see, we’re stymied. This is a long shot, Mr. Braun. One throw of the dice—one show-down hand. We’ve got to have an expert call it for us—somebody with a record of hits on long shots. That’s why I called you.”

“It’s no good,” he said. He took off the Homburg, took his handkerchief from his breast pocket, and wiped the hatband. “I can’t do it.”

“Why not?”

“It ain’t my kind of thing,” he said. “Look, I never in my life run odds on anything that made any difference. But this makes a difference. If I guess wrong—”

“Then we’re all dead ducks. But why should you guess wrong? Your hunches have been working for sixty years now.”

Braun wiped his face. “No. You don’t get it. I wish you’d listen to me. Look, my wife and my kids are in the city. It ain’t only my life, it’s theirs, too. That’s what I care about. That’s why it’s no good. On things that matter to me, my hunches don’t work.”

I was stunned, and so, I could see, were Joan and Cheyney. I suppose I should have guessed it, but it had never occurred to me.

“Ten minutes,” Cheyney said.

I looked up at Braun. He was frightened, and again I was surprised without having any right to be. I tried to keep at least my voice calm.

“Please try it anyhow, Mr. Braun—as a favor. It’s already too late to do it any other way. And if you guess wrong, the outcome won’t be any worse than if you don’t try at all.”

“My kids,” he whispered. I don’t think he knew that he was speaking aloud. I waited.

Then his eyes seemed to come back to the present. “All right,” he said. “I told you the truth, Andy. Remember that. So—is it a bomb or ain’t it? That’s what’s up for grabs, right?”

I nodded. He closed his eyes. An unexpected stab of pure fright went down my back. Without the eyes, Braun’s face was a death mask.

The water sounds and the irregular ticking of a Geiger counter seemed to spring out from the audio speaker, four times as loud as before. I could even hear the pen of the seismograph scribbling away, until I looked at the instrument and saw that Clark had stopped it, probably long ago.

Droplets of sweat began to form along Braun’s forehead and his upper lip. The handkerchief remained crushed in his hand.

Anderton said, “Of all the fool—”

“Hush!” Joan said quietly.

Slowly, Braun opened his eyes. “All right,” he said. “You guys wanted it this way. I say it’s a bomb.” He stared at us for a moment more—and then, all at once, the Timkin bearing burst. Words poured out of it. “Now you guys do something, do your job like I did mine—get my wife and kids out of there—empty the city—do something, do something!”

Anderton was already grabbing for the phone. “You’re right, Mr. Braun. If it isn’t already too late—”

Cheyney shot out a hand and caught Anderton’s telephone arm by the wrist. “Wait a minute,” he said.

“What d’you mean, ‘wait a minute’? Haven’t you already shot enough time?”

Cheyney did not let go; instead, he looked inquiringly at Joan and said, “One minute, Joan. You might as well go ahead.”

She nodded and spoke into the mike. “Monig, unscrew the cap.”

“Unscrew the cap?” the audio squawked. “But Dr. Hadamard, if that sets it off—”

“It won’t go off. That’s the one thing you can be sure it won’t do.”

“What is this?” Anderton demanded. “And what’s this deadline stuff, anyhow?”

“The cap’s off,” Monig reported. “We’re getting plenty of radiation now. Just a minute—Yeah. Dr. Hadamard, it’s a bomb, all right. But it hasn’t got a fuse. Now how could they have made a fool mistake like that?”

“In other words, it’s a dud,” Joan said.

“That’s right, a dud.”

Now, at last, Braun wiped his face, which was quite gray. “I told you the truth,” he said grimly. “My hunches don’t work on stuff like this.”

“But they do,” I said. “I’m sorry we put you through the wringer—and you too, colonel—but we couldn’t let an opportunity like this slip. It was too good a chance for us to test how our facilities would stand up in a real bomb-drop.”

“A real drop?” Anderton said. “Are you trying to say that CIA staged this? You ought to be shot, the whole pack of you!”

“No, not exactly,” I said. “The enemy’s responsible for the drop, all right. We got word last month from our man in Gdynia that they were going to do it, and that the bomb would be on board the Ludmilla. As I say, it was too good an opportunity to miss. We wanted to find out just how long it would take us to figure out the nature of the bomb—which we didn’t know in detail—after it was dropped here. So we had our people in Gdynia defuse the thing after it was put on board the ship, but otherwise leave it entirely alone.

“Actually, you see, your hunch was right on the button as far as it went. We didn’t ask you whether or not that object was a live bomb. We asked whether it was a bomb or not. You said it was, and you were right.”

The expression on Braun’s face was exactly like the one he had worn while he had been searching for his decision—except that, since his eyes were open, I could see that it was directed at me. “If this was the old days,” he said in an ice-cold voice, “I might of made the colonel’s idea come true. I don’t go for tricks like this, Andy.”

“It was more than a trick,” Clark put in. “You’ll remember we had a deadline on the test, Mr. Braun. Obviously, in a real drop we wouldn’t have all the time in the world to figure out what kind of a thing had been dropped. If we had still failed to establish that when the deadline ran out, we would have had to allow evacuation of the city, with all the attendant risk that that was exactly what the enemy wanted us to do.”

“So?”

“So we failed the test,” I said. “At one minute short of the deadline, Joan had the divers unscrew the cap. In a real drop that would have resulted in a detonation, if the bomb was real; we’d never risk it. That we did do it in the test was a concession of failure—an admission that our usual methods didn’t come through for us in time.

“And that means that you were the only person who did come through, Mr. Braun. If a real bomb-drop ever comes, we’re going to have to have you here, as an active part of our investigation. Your intuition for the one-shot gamble was the one thing that bailed us out this time. Next time it may save eight million lives.”

There was quite a long silence. All of us, Anderton included, watched Braun intently, but his impassive face failed to show any trace of how his thoughts were running.

When he did speak at last, what he said must have seemed insanely irrelevant to Anderton, and maybe to Cheyney too. And perhaps it meant nothing more to Joan than the final clinical note in a case history.

“It’s funny,” he said, “I was thinking of running for Congress next year from my district. But maybe this is more important.”

It was, I believe, the sigh of a man at peace with himself.

SHIPWRECK IN THE SKY, by Eando Binder

The flight was listed at GHQ as Project Songbird. It was sponsored by the Space Medicine Labs of the U.S. Air Force. And its pilot was Captain Dan Barstow.

A hand-picked man, Dan Barstow, chosen for the AF’s most important project of the year because he and his VX-3 had already broken all previous records set by hordes of V-2s, Navy Aerobees and anything else that flew the skyways.

Dan Barstow, first man to cross the sea of air and sight open, unlimited space. Pioneer flight to infinity. He grinned and hummed to himself as he settled down for the long jaunt. Too busy to be either thrilled or scared he considered the thirty-seven instruments he’d have to read, the twice that many records to keep, and the miles of camera film to run. He had been hand-picked and thoroughly conditioned to take it all without more than a ten percent increase in his pulse rate. So he worked as matter-of-factly as if he were down in the Gs Centrifuge of the Space Medicine Labs where he had been schooled for this trip for months.

He kept up a running fire of oral reports through his helmet radio, down to Rough Rock and his CO. “All Roger, sir…temperature falling fast but this rubberoid space suit keeps me cozy, no chills… Doc Blaine will be happy to hear that! Weightless sensations pretty queer and I feel upside-down as much as rightside-up, but no bad effects.… Taking shots of the sun’s corona now with color film…huh? Oh, yes, sir, it’s beautiful all right, now that you mention it. But, hell, sir, who’s got the time for aesthetics now?… Oops, that was a close one! Tenth meteor whizzing past. Makes me think of flak back on those Berlin bombing runs.”

Dan couldn’t help wincing when the meteors peppered down past. The “flak” of space. Below he could see the meteors flare up brightly as they hit the atmosphere. Most of those near his position were small, none bigger than a baseball, and Dan took comfort in the fact that his rocket was small too, in the immensity around him. A direct hit would be sheer bad luck, but the good old law of averages was on his side.

“Yes, Colonel, this tin can I’m riding is holding together okay,” Dan continued to Rough Rock. If he paused even a second in his reports a top-sergeant’s yell from the Colonel’s throat came back for him to keep talking. Every bit of information he could transmit to them was a vital revelation in this USAF-Alpha exploration of open space beyond Earth’s air cushion, with ceiling unlimited to infinity.

“Cosmic rays, sir? Sure, the reading shot up double on the Geiger…huh? Naw, I don’t feel a thing…like Doc Baird suspected, we invented a lot of Old Wives’ Tales in advance, before going into space. I feel fine, so you can put down cosmic ray intensity as a Boogey Man.… What’s that? Yeah, yeah, sir, the stars shine without winking up here. What else?… Space is inky black—no deep purples or queer more-than-blacks like some jetted-up writers dreamed up—just plain old ordinary dead black. Earth, sir?… Well, it does look dish-shaped from up here, concave.… Sure, I can see all the way to Europe and—say! Here’s something unexpected. I can see that hurricane off the coast of Florida.… You said it, sir! Once we install permanent space stations up here it will be easy to spot typhoons, volcano eruptions, tidal waves, earthquakes, what have you, the moment they start. If you ask me, with a good telescope you could even spot forest fires the minute they broke out, not to mention a sneak bombing on a target city—uh, sorry, sir, I forgot.”

Dan broke off and almost retched as his stomach turned a flip-flop to end all flip-flops. The VX-3 had reached the peak of its trajectory at over 1000 miles altitude and now turned down, lazily at first. He gulped oxygen from the emergency tube at his lips and felt better.

“Turning back on schedule, Rough Rock. Peak altitude 1037 miles. Everything fine, no danger. This was all a cinch.… HEY! Wait.… Something not in the books has popped up…stand by!”

Dan had felt the rocket swing a bit, strangely, as if gripped by a strong force. Instead of falling directly down toward Earth with a slight pitch, it slanted sideways and spun on its long axis. And then Dan saw what it was.…

Beneath, intercepting his trajectory, coming around fast over the curvature of Earth, was a tiny black worldlet, 998 miles above Earth. It might be an enormous meteor, but Dan felt he was right the first time. For it wasn’t falling like a meteor but swinging parallel to Earth’s surface on even keel.

He stared at the unexpected discovery, as amazed as if it were a fire-breathing dragon out of legend. For it was, actually, he realized in swift, stunned comprehension, more amazing than any legend.

Dan kept his voice calm. “Hello, Rough Rock.… Listen…nobody expected this…hold your hat, sir, and sit down. I’ve discovered a second moon of Earth!… Uhhuh, you heard me right! a second moon! Tie that, will you?… Sure, it’s tiny, less than a mile in diameter I’d say. Dead black in color. Guess that’s why telescopes never spotted it. Tiny and black, blends into the black backdrop of space. It has terrific speed. And that little maverick’s gravitational field caught my rocket.… Of course it can’t yank me away from Earth gravity, but the trouble is—yipe! my rocket and that moonlet may be in for a mutual collision course.…”

Dan’s trained eye suddenly saw that grim possibility. Barreling around Earth in a narrow orbit with a speed of something near or over 12,000 miles an hour the tiny new moon had, since his ascent, charged directly into his downward free fall. It was a chance in a thousand for a direct hit, except for one added factor—the moonlet exerted enough gravity pull out of its many-million ton bulk to warp the rocket into its path. And the thousand-to-one odds were thus wiped out, becoming even money.

“Nip and tuck,” reported Dan, answering the excited pleadings and questions from Rough Rock. “It won’t be a head-on crash. I may even miss entirely.… Oh, Lord! Not with that spire of rock sticking up from it.… I’m going to hit that…”

Dan had heard an atomic bomb blast once and it sounded like a string of them set off at once as the rocket smashed into the rocky prominence. The rock splintered. The rocket splintered. But Dan was not there to be splintered likewise. He had jammed down a button, at the critical moment, and the rocket’s emergency escape-hatch had ejected him a split-second before the violent impact.

But Dan blacked out, receiving some of the concussion of the exploding rocket. When his eyes snapped open he was floating like a feather in open, airless space. His rubberoid space suit, living up to its rigid tests, had inflated to its elastic limit. But it held and within its automatic units began feeding him oxygen, heat and radio-power. He had a chance, now, because he had been ejected cleanly from the rocket, without damage to the protective suit.

The stars wheeled dizzily around him. Dan finally saw the reason why. He was not just floating as a free agent in space. He was circling the black moonlet, at perhaps a thousand yards from its pitted surface.

“Hello, Rough Rock,” he called. “Still alive and kicking, sir. Only now, of all crazy-mad things, I’m a moon of this moon! The collision must have knocked me clear out of my down-to-Earth orbit.… I must have been ejected in the same direction as the moonlet’s course, in its gravity field.… I don’t know. Let an electronic brain figure it out some time.… Anyway, now I’m being dragged along in the orbit of the moonlet—how about that? Yes, sir, I’m circling down closer and closer to the moonlet.… No, don’t worry, sir. It was a weak gravity pull, only a fraction of an Earth-g. So I’m drifting down gently as a cloud.… Stand by for my landing on Earth’s second moon!”

The bloated figure in the bulging space suit circled the black stony surface several more times, in a narrowing spiral, and finally landed with a soft skidding bump that didn’t even jar Dan’s teeth. He bounced several times from a diminishing height of fifty-odd feet in grotesque slow-motion before he finally came to a stop.

He sat still for a moment, adjusting to the fantastic fact of being shipwrecked on an uncharted moonlet, crowding down his pulse rate which might be over ten percent normal now.

“Okay, Rough Rock, I hear you.… You’re telling me, sir?… Obviously, I’m marooned here. No rocket to leave with. No way to get back to terra firma…what? If you’ll pardon my saying so, sir, that’s a silly question.… Of course I’m scared! Scared green. Sorry about the rocket, sir, losing it for you.… Me, sir? Thank you, sir. But stop apologizing, will you? I know you haven’t got any duplicates of the VX-3 ready, no rescue rocket.…”

Dan listened a moment longer then broke in roughly. “Oh, for Pete’s sake, will you stop crying over me, sir? So I get mine here. I might have gotten it over Berlin, too. Forget it—sir.”

Dan grinned suddenly. “Look, what have I got to kick about? I’ll go out in a flash of glory—at least one headline will put it that way—and I’ll get credit in the history books as the man who discovered that Earth has two moons! What more could I ask, really?”

Dan blushed at the reply from Rough Rock. “Will you lay off please, Colonel? How else should a man take it? I’m still scared silly inside. But, look, I’ve really got something to report now. This little runt moon makes tracks around Earth in probably two hours minus. If I remember my Spacenautics right I’m already looking down over the Grand Canyon, heading west. I’m going to get a pretty terrific bird’s-eye view of the whole world in two more hours, which is just about how much oxygen I’ve got left.… Lucky, eh?”

Dan looked down, watching in fascination the majestic wheeling of the Earth below him. His little moonlet did not rotate, or rather it rotated once for each revolution around Earth, as the Moon did, keeping one face earthward, giving him an uninterrupted view. The Sierras on Earth hove into clear view and the broad Pacific. There would follow Hawaii, then Japan, Asia, Europe.… No, he saw he was slanting southwest. It would be across the equator, past Australia, perhaps near the South Pole, then up around over the top of the world past Greenland, following that great circle around the globe. In any case, his was the speediest trip around the world ever made by man!

“Before we’re out of mutual range, Rough Rock, I’m going to explore this new moon. Me and Columbus! Stand by for reports.”

Dan did his walking in huge leaps that propelled him fifty feet at a step with slight effort, due to the extremely feeble gravity of the tiny body. What did he weigh here? Probably no more than an ounce or two.

“Nothing much to report, Colonel. It’s a dead, airless pip-squeak planetoid, just a big mile-thick rock, probably. No life, no vegetation, no people, no nothing. Guess you might call me the Man in the Second Moon—and the joke’s on me! Well, one and three-quarter hours of oxygen left, by the gauge, or 105 minutes—sounds like more that way.… What’s that, sir? Your voice is getting faint. Any last requests from me? Well, one favor maybe. Pick up my body some day with another rocket.… Yeah, it’ll stay preserved up here in this deep-freeze of space.… Thanks, sir.… Can’t hear you much now. Going out of range. Give Betty my fondest. You know, the blonde.… Well, sir—goodbye now.”

Dan was glad that Rough Rock’s radio voice faded to a whispery nothingness. It wasn’t easy to stay casual now. There was nothing more to say, really, and he didn’t want to hear any more crying from the CO. The Old Man had sounded almost hysterical. He wanted just to be alone with his thoughts now, making his final peace with the universe.…

He checked the gauge with his watch—ninety minutes of oxygen to zero. Or, he thought with a grin, eternity minus ninety minutes.

He was beginning to have trouble breathing. But it was awesomely grand, watching the sweep of Earth beneath him, the procession of dots that were islands strung across the Pacific South Seas like a necklace of green beads. He was still within radio range of ships below at sea. Yet he didn’t contact them. He had nothing to say, like a ghost in the sky.

Idly, he kept pitching loose stones, watching their rifle-like speed away from him. Again a phenomenon of the weak gravity of the moonlet. Actually, he was able to pick up a boulder ten feet across and heave it away with ease. We who are about to die amuse ourselves, he thought. Then, because a thread of stubborn hope still clung in a corner of his mind, he got an idea. It had lurked just beyond his mental grasp for some time now. Something significant.…

Abruptly, face alight, Dan switched on his radio and contacted a ship below, asking them to relay him to Rough Rock with their more powerful transmitter.

“Ahoy, Rough Rock! Stop adding up my insurance, Colonel! I’m coming back.… No, sir, I haven’t gone out of my head, sir. It’s so simple it’s a laugh, sir.… See you in a few hours, sir!”

And he did.

Dan grinned when they hauled his dripping form from the sea. Aboard the search plane they cut him out of the space suit to which was still attached his emergency twin parachute. But his helmet was gone, ripped loose, for Dan had been breathing fresh Earth air during the long parachute descent.

They stared at him as at a dead man come alive.

“Impossible to escape?” He chuckled, repeating their babble. “That’s what I thought too, until I remembered those data tables on gravity and Escape Velocity and such—how, on the Moon, the Escape Velocity is much less than on Earth. And on that tiny second moon—well, my clue was when I threw a stone into the air and it never came back.”

Dan gulped hot coffee.

“I got off the moonlet myself then, got up to more than a mile above it where I was free of its feeble gravity. But I was still in the same orbit circling Earth. I’d have continued revolving as a human satellite forever, of course, but for this emergency gadget hooked to my belt.”

Dan held up the metal gun with its empty tank and needle-nose half burned away.

“Reaction pistol. Fires hydrazine and oxidizer, ordinary jet-rocket principle. Aiming it toward the stars, opposite earth, its reactive blasts shoved me Earthward, thanks to Newton. I needed a speed of about one-half mile a second. The powerful little jet gun had only my small mass to shove in free space, without gravity or friction. That broke me from free-fall around Earth to gravity-fall toward Earth.

“Then I spiraled down under gravity pull. I reached lung-filling air density just in time, before my oxygen gave out. One more danger was that I began heating up like a meteor due to air friction. I flung out a prayer first, followed by my twin parachutes, designed for extreme initial shock. They held. Slowed me to a paratrooper’s drift the rest of the way down.”

“Wait,” a puzzled pilot objected. “Your story doesn’t hang together. How did you get off that moonlet? How did you get up there, a mile above it, away from its gravity? There was nobody to throw you, like a stone.”

“I threw myself,” said Dan. “First I ran as fast as I could, maybe halfway around that moonlet, to get a good running start. And then—”

Dan Barstow’s grin then was undoubtedly the biggest grin in history.…

“Well, then, since the feeble gravity couldn’t pull me back again, what I really did was to jump clear off that moon.”

ZEN, by Jerome Bixby

It’s difficult, when you’re on one of the asteroids, to keep from tripping, because it’s almost impossible to keep your eyes on the ground. They never got around to putting portholes in spaceships, you know—unnecessary when you’re flying by GB, and psychologically inadvisable, besides—so an asteroid is about the only place, apart from Luna, where you can really see the stars.

There are so many stars in an asteroid sky that they look like clouds; like massive, heaped-up silver clouds floating slowly around the inner surface of the vast ebony sphere that surrounds you and your tiny foothold. They are near enough to touch, and you want to touch them, but they are so frighteningly far away…and so beautiful: there’s nothing in creation half so beautiful as an asteroid sky.

You don’t want to look down, naturally.

* * * *

I had left the Lucky Pierre to search for fossils (I’m David Koontz, the Lucky Pierre’s paleontologist). Somewhere off in the darkness on either side of me were Joe Hargraves, gadgeting for mineral deposits, and Ed Reiss, hopefully on the lookout for anything alive. The Lucky Pierre was back of us, her body out of sight behind a low black ridge, only her gleaming nose poking above like a porpoise coming up for air. When I looked back, I could see, along the jagged rim of the ridge, the busy reflected flickerings of the bubble-camp the techs were throwing together. Otherwise all was black, except for our blue-white torch beams that darted here and there over the gritty, rocky surface.

The twenty-nine of us were E.T.I. Team 17, whose assignment was the asteroids. We were four years and three months out of Terra, and we’d reached Vesta right on schedule. Ten minutes after landing, we had known that the clod was part of the crust of Planet X—or Sorn, to give it its right name—one of the few such parts that hadn’t been blown clean out of the Solar System.

That made Vesta extra-special. It meant settling down for a while. It meant a careful, months-long scrutiny of Vesta’s every square inch and a lot of her cubic ones, especially by the life-scientists. Fossils, artifacts, animate life…a surface chunk of Sorn might harbor any of these, or all. Some we’d tackled already had a few.

In a day or so, of course, we’d have the one-man beetles and crewboats out, and the floodlights orbiting overhead, and Vesta would be as exposed to us as a molecule on a microscreen. Then work would start in earnest. But in the meantime—and as usual—Hargraves, Reiss and I were out prowling, our weighted boots clomping along in darkness. Captain Feldman had long ago given up trying to keep his science-minded charges from galloping off alone like this. In spite of being a military man, Feld’s a nice guy; he just shrugs and says, “Scientists!” when we appear brightly at the airlock, waiting to be let out.

So the three of us went our separate ways, and soon were out of sight of one another. Ed Reiss, the biologist, was looking hardest for animate life, naturally.

But I found it.

* * * *

I had crossed a long, rounded expanse of rock—lava, wonderfully colored—and was descending into a boulder-cluttered pocket. I was nearing the “bottom” of the chunk, the part that had been the deepest beneath Sorn’s surface before the blow-up. It was the likeliest place to look for fossils.

But instead of looking for fossils, my eyes kept rising to those incredible stars. You get that way particularly after several weeks of living in steel; and it was lucky that I got that way this time, or I might have missed the Zen.

My feet tangled with a rock. I started a slow, light-gravity fall, and looked down to catch my balance. My torch beam flickered across a small, red-furred teddy-bear shape. The light passed on. I brought it sharply back to target.

My hair did not stand on end, regardless of what you’ve heard me quoted as saying. Why should it have, when I already knew Yurt so well—considered him, in fact, one of my closest friends?

The Zen was standing by a rock, one paw resting on it, ears cocked forward, its stubby hind legs braced ready to launch it into flight. Big yellow eyes blinked unemotionally at the glare of the torch, and I cut down its brilliance with a twist of the polarizer lens.

The creature stared at me, looking ready to jump halfway to Mars or straight at me if I made a wrong move.

I addressed it in its own language, clucking my tongue and whistling through my teeth: “Suh, Zen—”

In the blue-white light of the torch, the Zen shivered. It didn’t say anything. I thought I knew why. Three thousand years of darkness and silence…

I said, “I won’t hurt you,” again speaking in its own language.

The Zen moved away from the rock, but not away from me. It came a little closer, actually, and peered up at my helmeted, mirror-glassed head—unmistakably the seat of intelligence, it appears, of any race anywhere. Its mouth, almost human-shaped, worked; finally words came. It hadn’t spoken, except to itself, for three thousand years.

“You…are not Zen,” it said. “Why—how do you speak Zennacai?”

It took me a couple of seconds to untangle the squeaking syllables and get any sense out of them. What I had already said to it were stock phrases that Yurt had taught me; I knew still more, but I couldn’t speak Zennacai fluently by any means. Keep this in mind, by the way: I barely knew the language, and the Zen could barely remember it. To save space, the following dialogue is reproduced without bumblings, blank stares and What-did-you-says? In reality, our talk lasted over an hour.

“I am an Earthman,” I said. Through my earphones, when I spoke, I could faintly hear my own voice as the Zen must have heard it in Vesta’s all but nonexistent atmosphere: tiny, metallic, cricket-like.

“Eert…mn?”

I pointed at the sky, the incredible sky. “From out there. From another world.”

It thought about that for a while. I waited. We already knew that the Zens had been better astronomers at their peak than we were right now, even though they’d never mastered space travel; so I didn’t expect this one to boggle at the notion of creatures from another world. It didn’t. Finally it nodded, and I thought, as I had often before, how curious it was that this gesture should be common to Earthmen and Zen.

“So. Eert-mn,” it said. “And you know what I am?”

When I understood, I nodded, too. Then I said, “Yes,” realizing that the nod wasn’t visible through the one-way glass of my helmet.

“I am—last of Zen,” it said.

I said nothing. I was studying it closely, looking for the features which Yurt had described to us: the lighter red fur of arms and neck, the peculiar formation of flesh and horn on the lower abdomen. They were there. From the coloring, I knew this Zen was a female.

The mouth worked again—not with emotion, I knew, but with the unfamiliar act of speaking. “I have been here for—for—” she hesitated—“I don’t know. For five hundred of my years.”

“For about three thousand of mine,” I told her.

* * * *

And then blank astonishment sank home in me—astonishment at the last two words of her remark. I was already familiar with the Zens’ enormous intelligence, knowing Yurt as I did…but imagine thinking to qualify years with my when just out of nowhere a visitor from another planetary orbit pops up! And there had been no special stress given the distinction, just clear, precise thinking, like Yurt’s.

I added, still a little awed: “We know how long ago your world died.”

“I was child then,” she said, “I don’t know—what happened. I have wondered.” She looked up at my steel-and-glass face; I must have seemed like a giant. Well, I suppose I was. “This—what we are on—was part of Sorn, I know. Was it—” She fumbled for a word—“was it atom explosion?”

I told her how Sorn had gotten careless with its hydrogen atoms and had blown itself over half of creation. (This the E.T.I. Teams had surmised from scientific records found on Eros, as well as from geophysical evidence scattered throughout the other bodies.)

“I was child,” she said again after a moment. “But I remember—I remember things different from this. Air…heat…light…how do I live here?”

Again I felt amazement at its intelligence; (and it suddenly occurred to me that astronomy and nuclear physics must have been taught in Sorn’s “elementary schools”—else that my years and atom explosion would have been all but impossible). And now this old, old creature, remembering back three thousand years to childhood—probably to those “elementary schools”—remembering, and defining the differences in environment between then and now; and more, wondering at its existence in the different now—

And then I got my own thinking straightened out. I recalled some of the things we had learned about the Zen.

Their average lifespan had been 12,000 years or a little over. So the Zen before me was, by our standards, about twenty-five years old. Nothing at all strange about remembering, when you are twenty-five, the things that happened to you when you were seven…

But the Zen’s question, even my rationalization of my reaction to it, had given me a chill. Here was no cuddly teddy bear.

This creature had been born before Christ!

She had been alone for three thousand years, on a chip of bone from her dead world beneath a sepulchre of stars. The last and greatest Martian civilization, the L’hrai, had risen and fallen in her lifetime. And she was twenty-five years old.

“How do I live here?” she asked again.

I got back into my own framework of temporal reference, so to speak, and began explaining to a Zen what a Zen was. (I found out later from Yurt that biology, for the reasons which follow, was one of the most difficult studies; so difficult that nuclear physics actually preceded it!) I told her that the Zen had been, all evidence indicated, the toughest, hardest, longest-lived creatures God had ever cooked up: practically independent of their environment, no special ecological niche; just raw, stubborn, tenacious life, developed to a fantastic extreme—a greater force of life than any other known, one that could exist almost anywhere under practically any conditions—even floating in midspace, which, asteroid or no, this Zen was doing right now.

The Zens breathed, all right, but it was nothing they’d had to do in order to live. It gave them nothing their incredible metabolism couldn’t scrounge up out of rock or cosmic rays or interstellar gas or simply do without for a few thousand years. If the human body is a furnace, then the Zen body is a feeder pile. Maybe that, I thought, was what evolution always worked toward.

“Please, will you kill me?” the Zen said.

* * * *

I’d been expecting that. Two years ago, on the bleak surface of Eros, Yurt had asked Engstrom to do the same thing. But I asked, “Why?” although I knew what the answer would be, too.

The Zen looked up at me. She was exhibiting every ounce of emotion a Zen is capable of, which is a lot; and I could recognize it, but not in any familiar terms. A tiny motion here, a quiver there, but very quiet and still for the most part. And that was the violent expression: restraint. Yurt, after two years of living with us, still couldn’t understand why we found this confusing.

Difficult, aliens—or being alien.

“I’ve tried so often to do it myself,” the Zen said softly. “But I can’t. I can’t even hurt myself. Why do I want you to kill me?” She was even quieter. Maybe she was crying. “I’m alone. Five hundred years, Eert-mn—not too long. I’m still young. But what good is it—life—when there are no other Zen?”

“How do you know there are no other Zen?”

“There are no others,” she said almost inaudibly. I suppose a human girl might have shrieked it.

A child, I thought, when your world blew up. And you survived. Now you’re a young three-thousand-year-old woman…uneducated, afraid, probably crawling with neuroses. Even so, in your thousand-year terms, young lady, you’re not too old to change.

“Will you kill me?” she asked again.

And suddenly I was having one of those eye-popping third-row-center views of the whole scene: the enormous, beautiful sky; the dead clod, Vesta; the little creature who stood there staring at me—the brilliant-ignorant, humanlike-alien, old-young creature who was asking me to kill her.

For a moment the human quality of her thinking terrified me…the feeling you might have waking up some night and finding your pet puppy sitting on your chest, looking at you with wise eyes and white fangs gleaming…

Then I thought of Yurt—smart, friendly Yurt, who had learned to laugh and wisecrack—and I came out of the jeebies. I realized that here was only a sick girl, no tiny monster. And if she were as resilient as Yurt…well, it was his problem. He’d probably pull her through.

But I didn’t pick her up. I made no attempt to take her back to the ship. Her tiny white teeth and tiny yellow claws were harder than steel; and she was, I knew, unbelievably strong for her size. If she got suspicious or decided to throw a phobic tizzy, she could scatter shreds of me over a square acre of Vesta in less time than it would take me to yelp.

“Will you—” she began again.

I tried shakily, “Hell, no. Wait here.” Then I had to translate it.

* * * *

I went back to the Lucky Pierre and got Yurt. We could do without him, even though he had been a big help. We’d taught him a lot—he’d been a child at the blow-up, too—and he’d taught us a lot. But this was more important, of course.

When I told him what had happened, he was very quiet; crying, perhaps, just like a human being, with happiness.

Cap Feldman asked me what was up, and I told him, and he said, “Well, I’ll be blessed!”

I said, “Yurt, are you sure you want us to keep hands off…just go off and leave you?”

“Yes, please.”

Feldman said, “Well, I’ll be blessed.”

Yurt, who spoke excellent English, said, “Bless you all.”

I took him back to where the female waited. From the ridge, I knew, the entire crew was watching through binocs. I set him down, and he fell to studying her intently.

“I am not a Zen,” I told her, giving my torch full brilliance for the crew’s sake, “but Yurt here is. Do you see…I mean, do you know what you look like?”

She said, “I can see enough of my own body to—and—yes…”

“Yurt,” I said, “here’s the female we thought we might find. Take over.”

Yurt’s eyes were fastened on the girl.

“What—do I do now?” she whispered worriedly.

“I’m afraid that’s something only a Zen would know,” I told her, smiling inside my helmet. “I’m not a Zen. Yurt is.”

She turned to him. “You will tell me?”

“If it becomes necessary.” He moved closer to her, not even looking back to talk to me. “Give us some time to get acquainted, will you, Dave? And you might leave some supplies and a bubble at the camp when you move on, just to make things pleasanter.”

By this time he had reached the female. They were as still as space, not a sound, not a motion. I wanted to hang around, but I knew how I’d feel if a Zen, say, wouldn’t go away if I were the last man alive and had just met the last woman.

I moved my torch off them and headed back for the Lucky Pierre. We all had a drink to the saving of a great race that might have become extinct. Ed Reiss, though, had to do some worrying before he could down his drink.

“What if they don’t like each other?” he asked anxiously.

“They don’t have much choice,” Captain Feldman said, always the realist. “Why do homely women fight for jobs on the most isolated space outposts?”

Reiss grinned. “That’s right. They look awful good after a year or two in space.”

“Make that twenty-five by Zen standards or three thousand by ours,” said Joe Hargraves, “and I’ll bet they look beautiful to each other.”

We decided to drop our investigation of Vesta for the time being, and come back to it after the honeymoon.

Six months later, when we returned, there were twelve hundred Zen on Vesta!

Captain Feldman was a realist but he was also a deeply moral man. He went to Yurt and said, “It’s indecent! Couldn’t the two of you control yourselves at least a little? Twelve hundred kids!”

“We were rather surprised ourselves,” Yurt said complacently. “But this seems to be how Zen reproduce. Can you have only half a child?”

Naturally, Feld got the authorities to quarantine Vesta. Good God, the Zen could push us clear out of the Solar System in a couple of generations!

I don’t think they would, but you can’t take such chances, can you?

LANCELOT BIGGS COOKS A PIRATE, by Nelson Bond

The whole trouble started with Slops. Slops wasn’t a bad cook, you understand. He just wasn’t a cook at all, rightly speaking. He had what you might call a “tapioca complex.” It was tapioca for breakfast, tapioca for lunch, tapioca for dinner. Every day. Boiled tapioca, stewed tapioca, even fricasseed tapioca—

Ugh! When you hop gravs twice a month on a lugger shuttling between Earth and Venus, you can’t get by forever on a diet of ta—that stuff!

Anyhow, it finally got to be too much for even an iron-bellied old spacedog like Cap Hanson. So when we pulled into the Sun City airport, Cap said firmly, “You’re through, Slops. And I do mean through!” And he kicked our (alleged) chef off the Saturn, along with his clothing, his back pay, his harmonica and his ta—you know what.

Which left us way out on the end of a limb, for it turned out that there wasn’t a single spaceriding cook dry-docked in Sun City. While the Saturn was taking on its cargo for Earth, pepsin and medical supplies, mostly, with one or two holds full of mekel and clab, the Skipper did his doggonedest to scare up a grub-wrangler. But no soap.

An hour before we were scheduled to blast off, he ambled up to my control turret. He plumped himself into my easy chair and scratched his gray pate nervously.

“Damn it, Sparks,” he complained, “I thought I was doin’ the right thing when I fired Slops, but—”

“You were,” I told him. “By chucking that grease-ball off the ship you saved fourteen lives. The crew. They were planning on either mutiny or murder, they didn’t care which, if they had to eat one more dish of that goo.”

“But,” he continued worriedly, “in another hour we throw lugs for Earth. And we don’t have no cook. What the blue space are we goin’ to do?”

Our First Mate, Lancelot Biggs, had entered as the skipper was talking. Now he offered, helpfully, “I’ll ask Slops to come back if you want me to, Captain. I saw him at the Palace Bar—”

“No!” said the Cap and I in the same breath.

Biggs looked hurt. His wobbly Adam’s-apple bobbed in his throat like an unswallowed orange. And he defended, “Well, after all, tapioca’s good for you! It contains valuable food elements that—”

“Shut up!” howled Cap Hanson. He wasn’t in a mood to take advice from anybody, and especially Lancelot Biggs. Perhaps that was because our recent “transmuting trip,” in the course of which we had attempted to turn lead jars to platinum by exposure to cosmic radiation, had failed. The Corporation had carpeted Cap for that, and Cap was sore at Biggs because the whole thing had been Biggs’ idea in the beginning. “I’ll murder the guy who even mentions that—that stuff!”

Mr. Biggs said aggrievedly, “I was only trying to be helpful.”

“You’re as much help,” the skipper told him caustically, “as fins on a dicky-bird’s chest. Now, git out of here! G’wan! Git!”

Our lanky first mate turned and started to leave the turret. And then, suddenly—

“Wait a minute!” yelped Cap Hanson. “Where do you think you’re goin’, Mr. Biggs?”

Biggs gulped, “Why—why you told me to—”

“Never mind what I said! Do what I say! I think I’ve got the solution. Mr. Biggs, that cranium of yours appears to be stuffed with miscellaneous lore. Do you by any chance happen to know anything, about the art of cooking?”

“Who?” said Biggs. “Me? Why, no, Captain. But I don’t imagine it would be very difficult. After all, it is based on elementary chemical processes. By exposing certain organic substances to the action of hydrogen dioxide, under suitable thermostatic conditions—”

Cap Hanson’s jaw dropped open. He goggled me. “Wh-what’s he sayin’, Sparks?”

“He means,” I translated, “that cooking is easy. All you need is water, heat and victuals.”

The skipper grinned ghoulishly. “In that case, our problem’s solved. Mr. Biggs, you’ve just earned a new private office an’ a new unyform. You’ll find both of ’em below decks, third door on your right.”

It was Biggs’ turn to look shocked. His protuberant larynx performed a reverse Immelmann. “H-huh? But I’m not a cook, Captain. I’m your First Mate!

“You was my First Mate,” corrected the Old Man coolly, “until just now. The IPS codebook says, ‘It is the captain’s privilege to draft any member of crew or command for any duty in times of emergency.’ This is an emergency. An’ besides, you just got done sayin’ that cookin’ is simply a matter of exposin’ certain hoochamacallits to the action of thingamajigs. So—” He brushed his hairy paws with a gesture of finality, “That’s that! To the galley, Mr. Slops!”

* * * *

And he was right. That was that. But the funny part of it was that, forced to a showdown, Lancelot Biggs came through!

The first meal out, which was lunch served at noon Earthtime, I went down to the dining hall thinking anything might happen and expecting the worst. I got the shock of my life, and shocks are a not inconsiderable part of the life of a spacelugger radioman.

Mr. Lancelot Slops had pulled a banquet out of the hat! We had fried chicken with cream gravy, hot biscuits, candied yams, a side dish of stewed clab, Creole style, raisin pie, and the best damn coffee ever served on the wallowing old Saturn.

What the other men of the crew thought, I have no idea. They didn’t say. Every man-jack of ’em was so busy shoveling grub into his puss that the conversation was dead as a Martian herring. But after I’d bulged my belt to the last notch with fried pullet, I waddled into the galley and confronted Mr. Biggs.

“Biggs,” I said accusingly, “you’ve been holding out on us! Why didn’t you tell us before you could cook a meal like that?”

He shuffled his feet sheepishly. He said, “Was it all right, Sparks?”

“All right? It was terrific! I haven’t had such a feed since I was a kid.”

He looked relieved. “I’m glad. Because, you see, that was the first meal I ever cooked.”

“It was the first—what!”

“Mmm-hmm! But there were lots of cook books here in the galley. And I figured so long as I had to do it, I might as well do it right—” He grinned at me shyly. Once in a while I wondered, briefly, whether any, of us understood this strange, lanky genius, Lancelot Biggs. This was one of the times. “I—I found it rather interesting, Sparks, to tell you the truth. It is, just as I told Cap Hanson, just a matter of elementary chemistry. The pots and pans are the test-tubes; the stove is a huge Bunsen burner.”

I said admiringly, “I’ll hand you one thing, Mr. Biggs. You believe in sticking to theories, don’t you?”

“But of course. ‘Get the theory first’; that’s the big secret of success in any undertaking.” He looked pleased and a little excited, too. “We’re going to have a good trip home, Sparks. There’s plenty of food here to experiment with. And in the holds—”

It was just then that I caught my number being buzzed on the intercommunicating audio. I cut through and yelled, “Sparks speaking. What’s up?”

“Sparks?” It was my relief man calling from the radio room. “You’d better come up here on the double. A message from Sun City, and I think it’s bad news.”

“Right with you,” I hollered. I snapped a brief “See you later!” to Biggs and raced up the Jacob’s ladder to the turret. My relief man was there, also Cap Hanson and the second-in-command, Lt. Todd. All three of them looked a bit grim and a bit glum, and quite a bit apprehensive. My relief shoved a wire flimsy into my hand. It was a cipher message from Sun City spaceport. I knew the code as well as I know English and Universal, so I read it aloud.

“HANSON COMMANDER IPS SATURN EN ROUTE VENUS-EARTH. TURN BACK IMMEDIATELY FOR CONVOY. PIRATE HAKE REPORTED ON COORDINATES THREE FIFTEEN PLUS NINE OH NINE YOUR TRAJECTORY.” It was signed, “Allonby, Comm. S.S.C.B.”

I stared at Cap Hanson, wondering if my face were as queasy as my tummy felt. I said, “Hake! Runt Hake!”

Hanson said, “Yes, but that’s not the worst of it, Sparks. Tell him, Mr. Todd.”

Todd wet his lips and faltered, “We—we’re in a serious spot, Sparks. We accelerated to max twenty minutes ago and cut motors for the free run. And since we had—or thought we had—almost nine days of idleness, I told Chief Engineer Garrity he could take down that number Three hypatomic that’s been missing.”

That still didn’t make sense. I said, “So he took it down? So what? He can put it together again, can’t he?”

“No. He found the casing worn, melted it down for a recast. We—we can’t recast it for at least two days!”

* * * *

For the sake of you Earthlubbers who don’t get the lingo, let me say it in words of one syllable. We were in a hell of a jam! The hypatomics are the motors that operate spacecraft. In this case, one of them had shown signs of weakness. With the ship “free wheeling,” so to speak, in space, the engineers had taken down the faulty motor, discovered it needed remoulding, and had melted down the casing. As Todd had said, it would take at least two days—probably more—to recast the moulding, put the hyp together again, so we could blast.

But the worst of it was—Hake! Runt Hake. There are pirates and pirates in the wide transverses between the planets. Some of them are good guys, that is, if an outlaw can ever be considered a “good guy.” Like Lark O’Day, for instance, that gay, smiling bandit who always gave lugger captains a signed receipt for the cargoes he stole, and who had once let a tramp freighter go through untouched because the Captain acknowledged his life savings were wrapped up in the cargo. Who had once stopped a passenger superliner for the express purpose of stealing a single kiss from its charming passenger, the newly crowned “Miss Universe.”

But others were skunks and dogs and—well, think of the nastiest things you can think of. Then multiply by ten, add infinity, and you have Runt Hake.

Runt Hake was a killer. A throwback to the rotten old days when men’s first thoughts were of death and war and violence. He was a pirate not so much because of the value of the cargoes he lifted as because he liked to do battle. And he had a sadistic strain in him somewhere. His idea of good clean fun was to board a freighter—like the Saturn—unload the cargo at his convenience, then blast a slow leak through the outer hull.

After—I might mention—having first removed all lifeskiffs and bulgers from the ill-fated victim. Once, in the asteroid Sargossa, I saw a ship that had been scuttled by Runt Hake’s cutthroat crew. Its crew still remained with the ship. But not as recognizable human beings. As raw and frozen clots of pressured flesh.

Oh, a swell guy, this Runt Hake. And now we, disabled and helpless, were drifting right into the trajectory where he awaited us.

Cap Hanson said grimly, “There’s nothin’ much that we can do about it, of course. We’ve got one six millimeter rotor-gun for’rd. We’ll give him that.”

“And get ourselves blown to atoms,” interjected Todd, “with his pierce-guns. No, Skipper, that’s no good. But how about the Ampie? If we set out our Ampie, maybe—”

An “Ampie” is that strange, energy-devouring beast from Venus whose inordinate appetite for electrical power forms a shield for spaceships penetrating the Heaviside layers of the various planets. It wasn’t altogether a bad idea. But Hanson shook his head.

“No. It wouldn’t work. An Ampie couldn’t take a heat ray. There’s only one thing to do. Send word for the convoy to come on the double-quick—and hope it reaches us before we run into Hake.”

That was my cue. I shoved the relief man to hell off the bench and got the wobble-bug going. And, mister, I filled the ether with SOS’s—and added a couple of PDQ’s for good measure. I picked up an acknowledgment from Sun City, and threw them a hasty explanation. They wired back that the convoy cruiser would make all haste, and to not be frightened.

Ha! Can I help it if my knees chatter?

* * * *

There was one thing you could absolutely depend on Lancelot Biggs to do. And that was—stick his nose in at the wrong minute. For as we three were giving the sob-towel the good old go-over, the door popped open and who’ gangled in but Mr. Slops, First-Mate-and-Bottle-Washer! His face, in contrast to ours, was radiant with joy and delight. He had a grin on his phizz that stretched from here to there and back again. He chortled, “Hey, Cap—”

“Go ’way!” mourned Cap Hanson. “I’m thinking.”

“But, look!” Biggs, opened one hamlike paw. And there was a wee, gray ship-mouse. He placed it on the floor before him. “Look what I found in the No. 4 Bin. It acts so darned funny—”

“Go ’way!” repeated the skipper, still gloomily. “If you make me lose my temper—”

Biggs said, “But he does act funny—” And to tell you the truth, the little mouse did. Usually, you know, a mouse is the scaredyest thing alive. Put him down in a place like this, surrounded by giant humans, and he’ll run like mad to the darkest corner.

But this little twerp didn’t run. Matter of fact, he deliberately moved to the man nearest him, Todd, that was, and began to nuzzle himself against Todd’s shoe! Just as if the Lieutenant were an old and loved acquaintance! Mr. Biggs chuckled again.

“See that? Do you know what makes him act that way, Skipper? I’ll tell you. It’s the prol—”

“Mister Biggs!” The Old Man’s face was fiery red with rage. “This is no time for nonsense. Within hours, or perhaps minutes, we may all be dead! Now, for the last time, get out of here!”

Biggs, sort of stunned, said, “Y-yes, sir!” He retrieved his curiously-acting little pet from where it rubbed its soft muzzle against Todd’s shoelaces, put it in his pocket, and backed out the doorway. As he went he tossed me a beseeching wigwag. I nodded; then when no one was paying me any neverminds, joined him in the runway outside.

“What’s wrong, Sparks?” he demanded.

I gave it to him, both barrels. He had a right to know. Every man has a right to know when it’s bye-bye time. “But don’t tell the crew.” I warned. “The Old Man’ll do that if he thinks best.”

Biggs’ eyes were huge and round. “Runt Hake! Gee, no wonder the Skipper was cross.” He plunged into one of his characteristic silences. Then, suddenly, “Hey!”

“Hey, what?”

“They say Hake is a show-off. Likes to crack the whip on captured ships, ordering up big meals and so on before he scuttles it—”

“Well?” I said. “You think you’re going to poison him, maybe? Don’t be a dope. He’ll make you swallow a pussfull of everything you serve him.”

“Never mind. I’m not sure my idea is any good—yet! But have you got a book on physiochemistry?”

“In my office.”

“Swell. Get it for me, will you? I’ll explain later.”

Well, I got him the book and he jammed it into his pocket and disappeared toward the galley, jogging along like a stork on stilts. But I had no time, now, to laugh at Biggs’ physical or mental peculiarities.

Because my ears had just caught a sound they did not want to catch. The sound of metal grating on metal near the off-port. The banging of a mailed fist on permalloy, the asthmatic wheeze of the airlock, a sailor’s shout ending in a choked gurgle—

I charged back into the radioroom. “Cap,” I yelled, “at the airlock! Somebody. It must be—”

It was. Runt Hake and his pirates.

* * * *

You wouldn’t think, to look at Runt Hake, that he was a killer. True, he held a hand pierce gun on us as he approached, moving smoothly, lightly, up the runway. A half dozen men behind him also held their side arms poised, ready for action, while another half dozen deployed down the side corridors toward the engine rooms and control turrets. But as Hake came nearer he tossed back the quartzite headpiece of his bulger, and I saw that his hair was wheat-gold, his lips curved into something like a tender smile, his cheeks smooth, soft, boyish.

His voice was gentle, too. He said, “You offer no resistance, Captain? That is wise.”

Cap Hanson said, “Hake, I surrender my ship to you freely. But do not harm my men. That is all I ask. My men do not deserve—”

“But, Captain!” The slender little pirate’s eyebrows lifted archly. “Surely you are a little premature in your pleas? We have just arrived. There are so many, many things to be done before we—ah—enjoy our little pleasures.”

And then, as he said that, I saw why men cursed the name of Runt Hake. It was not in his face. His golden hair, his pink cheeks, his soft mouth—all these were but gilding for the rottenness within him. The real Hake was in his eyes. Those dancing, glinting, gloating eyes that leaped into swift, flaming delight as he hinted at that which was to come.

He was a devil. A pint-sized devil, perhaps, but a devil nonetheless. I knew, now, that the stories were all true; that we could expect no mercy of this man. He would amuse himself with us for a while, toying with us in feline fashion. Then he would leave. And we would stay. Like the broken things I had seen in the Sargossa.

He was speaking again. Softly, melodiously, as if he were a warrant officer at some cargo port on Earth rather than a midspace pirate appraising his “take”.

“The cargo, of course, Captain, is mine. Even now my men will be transferring it to my ship beside yours. But there are a few other things we will do while aboard. It is lonely, being in space for months on end. And we do not dine luxuriously. You have, I suppose, a well-stocked larder? With fine foods; wines, perhaps, to tempt the palate?”

Hanson tried again.

“We have, Hake. And they are all yours if you’ll promise me the men will be unharmed.” He hesitated. “Take me along as hostage, if you want to. That’ll be all right. But—”

“But, no, Captain! That would never do. I think you had best remain—with your men.” Again there was that tiny, dancing light in Hake’s eyes. “You see, many know my name, Captain, and I understand I have a small reputation. But none have ever seen my face—and lived. It would be unfortunate if I were to be identified, would it not?”

He turned to his followers.

“Disarm them,” he designated us negligently. “And. when the cargo has been transferred, have our men come in to dine. We will dine aboard the Saturn.”

* * * *

You Earthlubbers will think this part strange, maybe? That we showed no more resistance than this to Hake’s invasion? Well, I don’t blame you. I’ve read Martian Tales and Spaceways Weekly, too. The writers for those mags would like you to believe that every freighter captain is a horny-fisted John Paul Jones. But think it over! The Saturn was a lumbering old cow compared to Hake’s streamliner. Hanson had adopted the only sane policy. To placate the pirate, be nice to him, hope we could stall off his scuttling plans until the S.S.C.B. cruiser reached us.

So for more than two hours, unarmed and disconsolate, we of the Saturn sat around and diddled our fingers while Hake’s men, using our engine crew, the wipers and blasters, for porters, transferred the more valuable parts of our cargo to their ship. They didn’t take the bulk stuff. Just small necessities that could be fenced from a hideout on one of the rogue asteroids.

Meanwhile, Runt Hake had made at least one special trip. Down to the galley. He took Todd and Cap and me along so he could keep an eye on us. Down there we found Lancelot Biggs, quietly reading.

Hake said in that soft purr of his, “You —you’re the cook on this ship?”

Biggs answered, “Mmm-hmm.”

“You will address me,” suggested the little outlaw, “as ‘Sir.’ Very well, Slops. I want you to prepare a meal for us. A good meal. Fresh meats and vegetables. You have no idea—” He drawled this last to Hanson. “How one wearies of canned concentrates.”

Hanson just glowered. But Biggs looked confused. He said, “I—I’ll have to get produce from the storage bins if you want a big meal. This galley’s small—” He looked about him helplessly.

Hake nodded. “That is granted. But, mind you, attempt no medieval—ah—toxicological exploits. I remember the chef of the Spica tried something of the sort. Poor lad! He screamed horribly…I shall never forget it.”

I bet he wouldn’t! The louse. But I hoped, now, that Biggs would understand I had been right. He couldn’t pull any funny business on Runt and get away, with it.

He seemed to understand, all right. He said, goggling, “I’ll do the best I can—sir. It will take a little time, of course.”

“We have time and to spare,” agreed Hake. “A good meal, that is what we want. And now, gentlemen—?”

He motioned, us toward the turret room. We started to leave the galley. I was the last to pass through the door. As I did so, I felt a fumbling at my side. Mr. Biggs was shoving something into my pocket. He whispered in my ear, “Sparks—give each of our men a piece. Tell them to chew it!”

* * * *

FOR a moment my hopes flamed high. I didn’t know what Biggs had up his sleeve, but I dared dream that he had devised some way of overcoming the pirate menace. But when I managed to get away, unobserved, a few minutes later to see what he had thrust in my jacket, my hopes died as suddenly as they had been born.

The stuff was nothing but pepsin. Plain, ordinary pepsin; a by-product from the outspread Venusian ranches.

I was half minded to chuck the damn stuff away. I thought maybe worry, desperation, had made Biggs slips his gravs. Then I thought better of it. After all, he may have had some reason. And in a spot like this, any gamble was worth taking…

So, slowly, I started getting the stuff distributed around. I managed to slip half the package to Doug Enderby, the steward, with instructions to get it to the black gang. I met Chief Garrity ’tween decks, and gave him some for his engine room crew. Todd took a piece, wondering, reluctant, but put it in his mouth when I signalled him to do so. Me? Sure, I had some, too. After all, it tasted good. And a man might as well check out with a clean taste in his mouth.

The only man I couldn’t slip a piece to at any time was Cap Hanson. Runt Hake had the old eagle eye on the Skipper. Matter of fact, Hake had the eagle eye on all of us. He didn’t miss a trick, that murderous little squirt. Just before dinner was served he made my heart miss a beat when he asked, “What are you chewing on, Sparks? Gum?”

He gave me the fright and the out at the same time. I nodded. “Yeah,” I said. Then, fearful not to ask, “You want a piece?”

He shuddered delicately. “Barbarian custom. I do not want a piece.”

Boy, was that a break for our side!

* * * *

So, like I said, Biggs donged out the dinner call, and we all went into the mess hall. Talk about irony! Here we were, a score of honest, hard-working spacemen and an equal number of pirates, sitting down to the same table, eating the same meal.

Screwy? Sure—but that was Hake for you. As Mr. Biggs had said, he was a showoff. But don’t think he took any chances. We were unarmed, his men were walking hardware stores. As for the conviviality of that banquet, that was strictly on the stinko! To outward appearances, we were all palsy-walsy at the banquet table; actually we of the Saturn were being fattened for the slaughter to follow.

Still—well, you know the old gag. “The condemned man ate a hearty meal.” That’s what I did, and that’s what most of the other fellows did, too. Because Mr. Lancelot Slops had come up with another Q.E.D. that cooking is, after all, nothing but applied chemistry.

We had, just to make you drool a little, chilled consommé with a light sherry. Then a tempting wisp of baked whiting, served with Moselle Erdener Treppchen, and was the Old Man fuming! (He’d been saving that for his golden anniversary). Then a chicken sauté Florentine.

They were the preludes. The main drag-’em-out was a saddle of lamb accompanied by peas in mint, potatoes Parisienne, and served along with Pommard, 1974. The salad was a Salad Alma; the dessert was something which Biggs told me later was Plombière a l’Havane Friandises (pineapples, bananas, frozen custard, and not a damn bit of tapioca in it!)

This came along with the Piper Heidsieck, ’65. A demi-tasse was next, then liqueurs—

It was here that Runt Hake called a halt. “We’ll transfer the beverages,” he said, “to our own ship. We want no drunkenness aboard while we—ah—do that which is now necessary. Captain Hanson?”

He nodded significantly toward the turret room. I rose, so did Todd. Surprisingly, Biggs joined our group as we moved up deck. Hake said, with a malevolent regretfulness I shall never forget, “We have enjoyed our banquet exceedingly, Captain. But you understand I can allow nothing to stand in the way of my next—ah—duty. So—”

Hanson said stonily, “You will give us a lifeskiff before scuttling the Saturn, Hake?”

Hake lied, “Captain, I had planned to do that very thing. But a most unfortunate accident…it seems that some of my men were so careless as to blast holes in each of the skiffs. Of course if you’d still like to take your chances in the damaged craft—?”

Oh, he was a whipper, that Hake! I looked at Todd and saw the same thought mirrored in his eyes that I was thinking. This was our last chance. If we didn’t get Hake now, it would be too late. I tensed myself. If we could grab the pirate chieftain, maybe his men would not dare do anything for fear of hurting him. And Hake, quick as he was on the trigger, might not get us both before—

Then once again Lancelot Biggs intervened. To me he barked, “No! No, Sparks!” And to Hake, quietly, almost tenderly, “Why, Mr. Hake—it’s all a big mistake, isn’t it? These rough, nasty old men think you want to hurt them! And you don’t at all. Aren’t they the old meanies?”

* * * *

And then—hold your hats, folks!—and then Runt Hake’s soft mouth began to twitch! Yes, twitch! It pursed up like the mouth of a kid, his eyes wrinkled, and he began to blubber!

“Hurt them?” he complained. “Me hurt them? Why, I wouldn’t do a thing like that! I love them! They’re my pals.” And he tossed his pierce gun away, reached out and patted Biggs’ cheek!

Beside me I heard Lt. Todd whisper hoarsely, “Good gods of Greece, what is this?” I myself was stunned for a moment. But I had sense enough to stoop down and get Runt Hake’s gun before this crazy interlude had passed. “He’s blown his fuses!” I squalled. “Grab him, Todd! Mr. Biggs, come with me! You and I will round up his crew—”

But Biggs said quietly, “Take your time, Sparks. There’s no hurry. See?”

He stepped to the wall; flicked on the visiplate that showed the interior of the mess hall. And there, where a moment before, a grim-faced score of space pirates had maintained watch over our crew, now our crew were standing staring with blank, uncomprehending faces at twenty men who looked and acted for all the world like affectionate puppies!

They were hugging each other, patting each other’s arms and faces, murmuring soft words of endearment. It was stupefying. More than that—it was embarrassing! Off in one corner a bearded, one-eyed outlaw dandled a companion on his knee. Another burly bruiser, big enough to tear a man in half with his bare hands, was playing piggy-back with a buddy!

I gulped and stared and gulped again. I choked, “But, what—what—”

Biggs said suddenly, “Sparks! You didn’t give the Skipper a piece of that pepsin!”

“I didn’t get a chance. But how—”

Then I saw. The Skipper and Runt Hake were sitting in the same chair, murmuring soft words of tenderness at each other, stroking each other’s hair fondly. Just as I looked, the Old Man leaned forward and gave the pirate a big, juicy kiss on the forehead!

And just then there came a welcome interruption. The audio throbbed to electric life; a brusque voice rasped, “Calling the Saturn! Saturn, ahoy! S.S.C.B. Cruiser Iris calling. Stand by! We’ll come alongside you in twenty minutes…”

* * * *

Afterward, when Runt Hake and his pirates, still babbling incoherent protestations of endearment, had been removed to the patrol ship and taken back toward the Venusian prison that had long awaited them, we held a confab in my radio room. Todd was there, and Chief Garrity, and Lancelot Biggs and myself. Also a very foggy-eyed, befuddled Captain Hanson who seemed to be having a hard time keeping from saying we were all “dear, sweet boys”—as he had told us quite a few times in the past hour or so.

I couldn’t make head or tail of it. So I asked Biggs bluntly, “But what was it, Mr. Biggs? We all-know it was something you put in the food. Something from which the pepsin saved us. But what? Surely no drug would make a man act like that.”

Biggs grinned, his Adam’s-apple jerking amiably. “No, not a drug. But a chemical. Prolactin, to be exact. If you’ll remember, I started to tell you we were carrying a load of it to earth.”

“Prolactin?” said Todd. “What’s that?”

“An extract of the pituitary gland; the hormone that governs human affections. Prolactin is the hormone that is responsible for all acts of parental love. It causes roosters to brood and set on eggs, tomcats to give milk and milk-deficient females to become normal. It is commonly known as the ‘mother-love’ crystal.”

“And we,” I. said, “were carrying a load of it. I still don’t understand, though, why we had to chew the pepsin. And why it failed to turn all of us into bunny-huggers like—”

I glanced at the Old Man, then glanced away again. He looked at me fondly.

“Well, you see,” explained Biggs, “prolactin happens to be a pure protein. And pure proteins are insoluble in most things, alcohol, water, anything you might normally take in your diet.

“I cooked Hake’s banquet, and his goose, with liberal sprinklings of prolactin. But, as you had previously pointed out, I had to find some way of keeping our men from being affected by the hormone that disrupted their morale. Pepsin was the answer. Pepsin breaks down pure proteins into soluble peptones. That is why it is commonly used as a digestive agent.”

“Drwstbynlvy—” mumbled the Skipper soothingly.

“Eh?” I demanded, “What’s that?”

Biggs looked embarrassed. “I’m not sure,” he said, “but I think he’s saying, ‘You’re a dear sweet baby and I love you very much!’ Er—Sparks—I think maybe we’d better put him to bed until it wears off…”

So that was that. And maybe I shouldn’t have told you all this; I don’t know. Because the Skipper, recovered now from his spell of “maternal affection” is rather sensitive on the subject. And I’m still clicking the bug on the Saturn.

Anyhow, now you know. But if you ever tell Cap Hanson I told you, it’s going to be just too bad for I may have to catch the next express for Pluto and points west. Me and Biggs both. There’s not much “mother love” in Cap Hanson’s right cross!

SENTIMENT, INC., by Poul Anderson

He was twenty-two years old, fresh out of college, full of life and hope, and all set to conquer the world. Colin Fraser happened to be on vacation on Cape Cod, where she was playing summer stock, and went to more shows than he had planned. It wasn’t hard to get an introduction, and before long he and Judy Sanders were seeing a lot of each other.

“Of course,” she told him one afternoon on the beach, “my real name is Harkness.”

He raised his arm, letting the sand run through his fingers. The beach was big and dazzling white around them, the sea galloped in with a steady roar, and a gull rode the breeze overhead. “What was wrong with it?” he asked. “For a professional monicker, I mean.”

She laughed and shook the long hair back over her shoulders. “I wanted to live under the name of Sanders,” she explained.

“Oh—oh, yes, of course. Winnie the Pooh.” He grinned. “Soulmates, that’s what we are.” It was about then that he decided he’d been a bachelor long enough.

In the fall she went to New York to begin the upward grind—understudy, walk-on parts, shoestring-theaters, and roles in outright turkeys. Fraser returned to Boston for awhile, but his work suffered, he had to keep dashing off to see her.

By spring she was beginning to get places; she had talent and everybody enjoys looking at a brown-eyed blonde. His weekly proposals were also beginning to show some real progress, and he thought that a month or two of steady siege might finish the campaign. So he took leave from his job and went down to New York himself. He’d saved up enough money, and was good enough in his work, to afford it; anyway, he was his own boss—consulting engineer, specializing in mathematical analysis.

He got a furnished room in Brooklyn, and filled in his leisure time—as he thought of it—with some special math courses at Columbia. And he had a lot of friends in town, in a curious variety of professions. Next to Judy, he saw most of the physicist Sworsky, who was an entertaining companion though most of his work was too top-secret even to be mentioned. It was a happy period.

There is always a jarring note, to be sure. In this case, it was the fact that Fraser had plenty of competition. He wasn’t good-looking himself—a tall gaunt man of twenty-eight, with a dark hatchet face and perpetually-rumpled clothes. But still, Judy saw more of him than of anyone else, and admitted she was seriously considering his proposal and no other.

He called her up once for a date. “Sorry,” she answered. “I’d love to, Colin, but I’ve already promised tonight. Just so you won’t worry, it’s Matthew Snyder.”

“Hm—the industrialist?”

“Uh-huh. He asked me in such a way it was hard to refuse. But I don’t think you have to be jealous, honey. ‘Bye now.”

Fraser lit his pipe with a certain smugness. Snyder was several times a millionaire, but he was close to sixty, a widower of notably dull conversation. Judy wasn’t—Well, no worries, as she’d said. He dropped over to Sworsky’s apartment for an evening of chess and bull-shooting.

* * * *

It was early in May, when the world was turning green again, that Judy called Fraser up. “Hi,” she said breathlessly. “Busy tonight?”

“Well, I was hoping I’d be, if you get what I mean,” he said.

“Look, I want to take you out for a change. Just got some unexpected money and dammit, I want to feel rich for one evening.”

“Hmmm—” He scowled into the phone. “I dunno—”

“Oh, get off it, Galahad. I’ll meet you in the Dixie lobby at seven. Okay?” She blew him a kiss over the wires, and hung up before he could argue further. He sighed and shrugged. Why not, if she wanted to?

They were in a little Hungarian restaurant, with a couple of Tzigani strolling about playing for them alone, it seemed, when he asked for details. “Did you get a bonus, or what?”

“No.” She laughed at him over her drink. “I’ve turned guinea pig.”

“I hope you quit that job before we’re married!”

“It’s a funny deal,” she said thoughtfully. “It’d interest you. I’ve been out a couple of times with this Snyder, you know, and if anything was needed to drive me into your arms, Colin, it’s his political lectures.”

“Well, bless the Republican Party!” He laid his hand over hers, she didn’t withdraw it, but she frowned just a little.

“Colin, you know I want to get somewhere before I marry—see a bit of the world, the theatrical world, before turning hausfrau. Don’t be so—Oh, never mind. I like you anyway.”

Sipping her drink and setting it down again: “Well, to carry on with the story. I finally gave Comrade Snyder the complete brush-off, and I must say he took it very nicely. But today, this morning, he called asking me to have lunch with him, and I did after he explained. It seems he’s got a psychiatrist friend doing research, measuring brain storms or something, and—Do I mean storms? Waves, I guess. Anyway, he wants to measure as many different kinds of people as possible, and Snyder had suggested me. I was supposed to come in for three afternoons running—about two hours each time—and I’d get a hundred dollars per session.”

“Hm,” said Fraser. “I didn’t know psych research was that well-heeled. Who is this mad scientist?”

“His name is Kennedy. Oh, by the way, I’m not supposed to tell anybody; they want to spring it on the world as a surprise or something. But you’re different, Colin. I’m excited; I want to talk to somebody about it.”

“Sure,” he said. “You had a session already?”

“Yes, my first was today. It’s a funny place to do research—Kennedy’s got a big suite on Fifth Avenue, right up in the classy district. Beautiful office. The name of his outfit is Sentiment, Inc.”

“Hm. Why should a research-team take such a name? Well, go on.”

“Oh, there isn’t much else to tell. Kennedy was very nice. He took me into a laboratory full of all sorts of dials and meters and blinking lights and os—what do you call them? Those things that make wiggly pictures.”

“Oscilloscopes. You’ll never make a scientist, my dear.”

She grinned. “But I know one scientist who’d like to—Never mind! Anyway, he sat me down in a chair and put bands around my wrists and ankles—just like the hot squat—and a big thing like a beauty-parlor hair-drier over my head. Then he fiddled with his dials for awhile, making notes. Then he started saying words at me, and showing me pictures. Some of them were very pretty; some ugly; some funny; some downright horrible.… Anyway, that’s all there was to it. After a couple of hours he gave me a check for a hundred dollars and told me to come back tomorrow.”

“Hm.” Fraser rubbed his chin. “Apparently he was measuring the electric rhythms corresponding to pleasure and dislike. I’d no idea anybody’d made an encephalograph that accurate.”

“Well,” said Judy, “I’ve told you why we’re celebrating. Now come on, the regular orchestra’s tuning up. Let’s dance.”

They had a rather wonderful evening. Afterward Fraser lay awake for a long time, not wanting to lose a state of happiness in sleep. He considered sleep a hideous waste of time: if he lived to be ninety, he’d have spent almost thirty years unconscious.

* * * *

Judy was engaged for the next couple of evenings, and Fraser himself was invited to dinner at Sworsky’s the night after that. So it wasn’t till the end of the week that he called her again.

“Hullo, sweetheart,” he said exuberantly. “How’s things? I refer to Charles Addams Things, of course.”

“Oh—Colin.” Her voice was very small, and it trembled.

“Look, I’ve got two tickets to H. M. S. Pinafore. So put on your own pinafore and meet me.”

“Colin—I’m sorry, Colin. I can’t.”

“Huh?” He noticed how odd she sounded, and a leadenness grew within him. “You aren’t sick, are you?”

“Colin, I—I’m going to be married.”

“What?”

“Yes. I’m in love now; really in love. I’ll be getting married in a couple of months.”

“But—but—”

“I didn’t want to hurt you.” He heard her begin to cry.

“But who—how—”

“It’s Matthew,” she gulped. “Matthew Snyder.”

He sat quiet for a long while, until she asked if he was still on the line. “Yeah,” he said tonelessly. “Yeah, I’m still here, after a fashion.” Shaking himself: “Look, I’ve got to see you. I want to talk to you.”

“I can’t.”

“You sure as hell can,” he said harshly.

They met at a quiet little bar which had often been their rendezvous. She watched him with frightened eyes while he ordered martinis.

“All right,” he said at last. “What’s the story?”

“I—” He could barely hear her. “There isn’t any story. I suddenly realized I loved Matt. That’s all.”

“Snyder!” He made it a curse. “Remember what you told me about him before?”

“I felt different then,” she whispered. “He’s a wonderful man when you get to know him.”

And rich. He suppressed the words and the thought. “What’s so wonderful specifically?” he asked.

“He—” Briefly, her face was rapt. Fraser had seen her looking at him that way, now and then.

“Go on,” he said grimly. “Enumerate Mr. Snyder’s good qualities. Make a list. He’s courteous, cultured, intelligent, young, handsome, amusing—To hell! Why, Judy?”

“I don’t know,” she said in a high, almost fearful tone. “I just love him, that’s all.” She reached over the table and stroked his cheek. “I like you a lot, Colin. Find yourself a nice girl and be happy.”

His mouth drew into a narrow line. “There’s something funny here,” he said. “Is it blackmail?”

“No!” She stood up, spilling her drink, and the flare of temper showed him how overwrought she was. “He just happens to be the man I love. That’s enough out of you, good-bye, Mr. Fraser.”

He sat watching her go. Presently he took up his drink, gulped it barbarously, and called for another.

Chapter 2

Juan Martinez had come from Puerto Rico as a boy and made his own way ever since. Fraser had gotten to know him in the army, and they had seen each other from time to time since then. Martinez had gone into the private-eye business and made a good thing of it; Fraser had to get past a very neat-looking receptionist to see him.

“Hi, Colin,” said Martinez, shaking hands. He was a small, dark man, with a large nose and beady black eyes that made him resemble a sympathetic mouse. “You look like the very devil.”

“I feel that way, too,” said Fraser, collapsing into a chair. “You can’t go on a three-day drunk without showing it.”

“Well, what’s the trouble? Cigarette?” Martinez held out a pack. “Girl-friend give you the air?”

“As a matter of fact, yes; that’s what I want to see you about.”

“This isn’t a lonely-hearts club,” said Martinez. “And I’ve told you time and again a private dick isn’t a wisecracking superman. Our work is ninety-nine percent routine; and for the other one percent, we call in the police.”

“Let me give you the story,” said Fraser. He rubbed his eyes wearily as he told it. At the end, he sat staring at the floor.

“Well,” said Martinez, “it’s too bad and all that. But what the hell, there are other dames. New York has more beautiful women per square inch than any other city except Paris. Latch on to somebody else. Or if you want, I can give you a phone number—”

“You don’t understand,” said Fraser “I want you to investigate this; I want to know why she did it.”

Martinez squinted through a haze of smoke. “Snyder’s a rich and powerful man,” he said. “Isn’t that enough?”

“No,” said Fraser, too tired to be angry at the hint. “Judy isn’t that kind of a girl. Neither is she the kind to go overboard in a few days, especially when I was there. Sure, that sounds conceited, but dammit, I know she cared for me.”

“Okay. You suspect pressure was brought to bear?”

“Yeah. It’s hard to imagine what. I called up Judy’s family in Maine, and they said they were all right, no worries. Nor do I think anything in her own life would give a blackmailer or an extortionist anything to go on. Still—I want to know.”

Martinez drummed the desk-top with nervous fingers. “I’ll look into it if you insist,” he said, “though it’ll cost you a pretty penny. Rich men’s lives aren’t easy to pry into if they’ve got something they want to hide. But I don’t think we’d find out much; your case seems to be only one of a rash of similar ones in the past year.”

“Huh?” Fraser looked sharply up.

“Yeah. I follow all the news; and remember the odd facts. There’ve been a good dozen cases recently, where beautiful young women suddenly married rich men or became their mistresses. It doesn’t all get into the papers, but I’ve got my contacts. I know. In every instance, there was no obvious reason; in fact, the dames seemed very much in love with daddy.”

“And the era of the gold-digger is pretty well gone—” Fraser sat staring out the window. It didn’t seem right that the sky should be so full of sunshine.

“Well,” said Martinez, “you don’t need me. You need a psychologist.”

Psychologist!

“By God, Juan, I’m going to give you a job anyway!” Fraser leaped to his feet. “You’re going to check into an outfit called Sentiment, Inc.”

* * * *

A week later, Martinez said, “Yeah, we found it easily enough. It’s not in the phone-book, but they’ve got a big suite right in the high-rent district on Fifth. The address is here, in my written report. Nobody in the building knows much about ‘em, except that they’re a quiet, well-behaved bunch and call themselves research psychologists. They have a staff of four: a secretary-receptionist; a full-time secretary; and a couple of husky boys who may be bodyguards for the boss. That’s this Kennedy, Robert Kennedy. My man couldn’t get into his office; the girl said he was too busy and never saw anybody except some regular clients. Nor could he date either of the girls, but he did investigate them.

“The receptionist is just a working girl for routine stuff, married, hardly knows or cares what’s going on. The steno is unmarried, has a degree in psych, lives alone, and seems to have no friends except her boss. Who’s not her lover, by the way.”

“Well, how about Kennedy himself?” asked Fraser.

“I’ve found out a good bit, but it’s all legitimate,” said Martinez. “He’s about fifty years old, a widower, very steady private life. He’s a licensed psychiatrist who used to practice in Chicago, where he also did research in collaboration with a physicist named Gavotti, who’s since died. Shortly after that happened—

“No, there’s no suspicion of foul play; the physicist was an old man and died of a heart attack. Anyway, Kennedy moved to New York. He still practices, officially, but he doesn’t take just anybody; claims that his research only leaves him time for a few.” Martinez narrowed his eyes. “The only thing you could hold against him is that he occasionally sees a guy named Bryce, who’s in a firm that has some dealings with Amtorg.”

“The Russian trading corporation? Hm.”

“Oh, that’s pretty remote guilt by association, Colin. Amtorg does have legitimate business, you know. We buy manganese from them, among other things. And the rest of Kennedy’s connections are all strictly blue ribbon. Crème de la crème—business, finance, politics, and one big union-leader who’s known to be a conservative. In fact, Kennedy’s friends are so powerful you’d have real trouble doing anything against him.”

Fraser slumped in his chair. “I suppose my notion was pretty wild,” he admitted.

“Well, there is one queer angle. You know these rich guys who’ve suddenly made out with such highly desirable dames? As far as I could find out, every one of them is a client of Kennedy’s.”

“Eh?” Fraser jerked erect.

“’S a fact. Also, my man showed the building staff, elevator pilots and so on, pictures of these women, and a couple of ‘em were remembered as having come to see Kennedy.”

“Shortly before they—fell in love?”

“Well, that I can’t be sure of. You know how people are about remembering dates. But it’s possible.”

Fraser shook his dark head. “It’s unbelievable,” he said. “I thought Svengali was outworn melodrama.”

“I know something about hypnotism, Colin. It won’t do anything like what you think happened to those girls.”

Fraser got out his pipe and fumbled tobacco into it. “I think,” he said, “I’m going to call on Dr. Robert Kennedy myself.”

“Take it easy, boy,” said Martinez. “You been reading too many weird stories; you’ll just get tossed out on your can.”

Fraser tried to smile. It was hard—Judy wouldn’t answer his calls and letters any more. “Well,” he said, “it’ll be in a worthy cause.”

* * * *

The elevator let him out on the nineteenth floor. It held four big suites, with the corridor running between them. He studied the frosted-glass doors. On one side was the Eagle Publishing Company and Frank & Dayles, Brokers. On the other was the Messenger Advertising Service, and Sentiment, Inc. He entered their door and stood in a quiet, oak-paneled reception room. Behind the railing were a couple of desks, a young woman working at each, and two burly men who sat boredly reading magazines.

The pretty girl, obviously the receptionist, looked up as Fraser approached and gave him a professional smile. “Yes, sir?” she asked.

“I’d like to see Dr. Kennedy, please,” he said, trying hard to be casual.

“Do you have an appointment, sir?”

“No, but it’s urgent.”

“I’m sorry, sir; Dr. Kennedy is very busy. He can’t see anybody except his regular patients and research subjects.”

“Look, take him in this note, will you? Thanks.”

Fraser sat uneasily for some minutes, wondering if he’d worded the note correctly. I must see you about Miss Judy Harkness. Important. Well, what the devil else could you say?

The receptionist came out again. “Dr. Kennedy can spare you a few minutes, sir,” she said. “Go right on in.”

“Thanks.” Fraser slouched toward the inner door. The two men lowered their magazines to follow him with watchful eyes.

There was a big, handsomely-furnished office inside, with a door beyond that must lead to the laboratory. Kennedy looked up from some papers and rose, holding out his hand. He was a medium-sized man, rather plump, graying hair brushed thickly back from a broad, heavy face behind rimless glasses. “Yes?” His voice was low and pleasant. “What can I do for you?”

“My name’s Fraser.” The visitor sat down and accepted a cigarette. Best to act urbanely. “I know Miss Harkness well. I understand you made some encephalographic studies of her.”

“Indeed?” Kennedy looked annoyed, and Fraser recalled that Judy had been asked not to tell anyone. “I’m not sure; I would have to consult my records first.” He wasn’t admitting anything, thought Fraser.

“Look,” said the engineer, “there’s been a marked change in Miss Harkness recently. I know enough psychology to be certain that such changes don’t happen overnight without cause. I wanted to consult you.”

“I’m not her psychiatrist,” said Kennedy coldly. “Now if you will excuse me, I really have a lot to do—”

“All right,” said Fraser. There was no menace in his tones, only a weariness. “If you insist, I’ll play it dirty. Such abrupt changes indicate mental instability. But I know she was perfectly sane before. It begins to look as if your experiments may have—injured her mind. If so, I should have to report you for malpractice.”

Kennedy flushed. “I am a licensed psychiatrist,” he said, “and any other doctor will confirm that Miss Harkness is still in mental health. If you tried to get an investigation started, you would only be wasting your own time and that of the authorities. She herself will testify that no harm was done to her; no compulsion applied; and that you are an infernal busybody with some delusions of your own. Good afternoon.”

“Ah,” said Fraser, “so she was here.”

Kennedy pushed a button. His men entered. “Show this gentleman the way out, please,” he said.

Fraser debated whether to put up a fight, decided it was futile, and went out between the two others. When he got to the street, he found he was shaking, and badly in need of a drink.

* * * *

Fraser asked, “Jim, did you ever read Trilby?”

Sworsky’s round, freckled face lifted to regard him. “Years ago,” he answered. “What of it?”

“Tell me something. Is it possible—even theoretically possible—to do what Svengali did? Change emotional attitudes, just like that.” Fraser snapped his fingers.

“I don’t know,” said Sworsky. “Nuclear cross-sections are more in my line. But offhand, I should imagine it might be done…sometime in the far future. Thought-habits, associational-patterns, the labeling of this as good and that as bad, seem to be matters of established neural paths. If you could selectively alter the polarization of individual neurones—But it’s a pretty remote prospect; we hardly know a thing about the brain today.”

He studied his friend sympathetically. “I know it’s tough to get jilted,” he said, “but don’t go off your trolley about it.”

“I could stand it if someone else had gotten her in the usual kind of way,” said Fraser thinly. “But this—Look, let me tell you all I’ve found out.”

Sworsky shook his head at the end of the story. “That’s a mighty wild speculation,” he murmured. “I’d forget it if I were you.”

“Did you know Kennedy’s old partner? Gavotti, at Chicago.”

“Sure, I met him a few times. Nice old guy, very unworldly, completely wrapped up in his work. He got interested in neurology from the physics angle toward the end of his life, and contributed a lot to cybernetics. What of it?”

“I don’t know,” said Fraser; “I just don’t know. But do me a favor, will you, Jim? Judy won’t see me at all, but she knows you and likes you. Ask her to dinner or something. Insist that she come. Then you and your wife find out—whatever you can. Just exactly how she feels about the whole business. What her attitudes are toward everything.”

“The name is Sworsky, not Holmes. But sure, I’ll do what I can, if you’ll promise to try and get rid of this fixation. You ought to see a head-shrinker yourself, you know.”

In vino veritas—sometimes too damn much veritas.

* * * *

Toward the end of the evening, Judy was talking freely, if not quite coherently. “I cared a lot for Colin,” she said. “It was pretty wonderful having him around. He’s a grand guy. Only Matt—I don’t know. Matt hasn’t got half of what Colin has; Matt’s a single-track mind. I’m afraid I’m just going to be an ornamental convenience to him. Only if you’ve ever been so you got all dizzy when someone was around, and thought about him all the time he was away—well, that’s how he is. Nothing else matters.”

“Colin’s gotten a funny obsession,” said Sworsky cautiously. “He thinks Kennedy hypnotized you for Snyder. I keep telling him it’s impossible, but he can’t get over the idea.”

“Oh, no, no, no,” she said with too much fervor. “It’s nothing like that. I’ll tell you just what happened. We had those two measuring sessions; it was kind of dull but nothing else. And then the third time Kennedy did put me under hypnosis—he called it that, at least. I went to sleep and woke up about an hour later and he sent me home. I felt all good inside, happy, and shlo—slowly I began to see what Matt meant to me.

“I called him up that evening. He said Kennedy‘s machine did speed up people’s minds for a short while, sometimes, so they decided quick-like what they’d’ve worked out anyway. Kennedy is—I don’t know. It’s funny how ordinary he seemed at first. But when you get to know him, he’s like—God, almost. He’s strong and wise and good. He—” Her voice trailed off and she sat looking foolishly at her glass.

“You know,” said Sworsky, “perhaps Colin is right after all.”

“Don’t say that!” She jumped up and slapped his face. “Kennedy’sgood, I tell you! All you little lice sitting here making sly remarks behind his back, and he’s so, much bigger than all of you and—” She broke into tears and stormed out of the apartment.

Sworsky reported the affair to Fraser. “I wonder,” he said. “It doesn’t seem natural, I’ll agree. But what can anybody do? The police?”

“I’ve tried,” said Fraser dully. “They laughed. When I insisted, I damn near got myself jugged. That’s no use. The trouble is, none of the people who’ve been under the machine will testify against Kennedy. He fixes it so they worship him.”

“I still think you’re crazy. There must be a simpler hypothesis; I refuse to believe your screwy notions without some real evidence. But what are you going to do now?”

“Well,” said Fraser with a tautness in his voice, “I’ve got several thousand dollars saved up, and Juan Martinez will help. Ever hear the fable about the lion? He licked hell out of the bear and the tiger and the rhinoceros, but a little gnat finally drove him nuts. Maybe I can be the gnat.” He shook his head. “But I’ll have to hurry. The wedding’s only six weeks off.”

Chapter 3

It can be annoying to be constantly shadowed; to have nasty gossip about you spreading through the places where you work and live; to find your tires slashed; to be accosted by truculent drunks when you stop in for a quick one; to have loud horns blow under your window every night. And it doesn’t do much good to call the police; your petty tormentors always fade out of sight.

Fraser was sitting in his room some two weeks later, trying unsuccessfully to concentrate on matrix algebra, when the phone rang. He never picked it up without a fluttering small hope that it might be Judy, and it never was. This time it was a man’s voice: “Mr. Fraser?”

“Yeah,” he grunted. “Wha’dya want?”

“This is Robert Kennedy. I’d like to talk to you.”

Fraser’s heart sprang in his ribs, but he held his voice stiff. “Go on, then. Talk.”

“I want you to come up to my place. We may be having a long conversation.”

“Mmmm—well—” It was more than he had allowed himself to hope for, but he remained curt: “Okay. But a full report of this business, and what I think you’re doing, is in the hands of several people. If anything should happen to me—”

“You’ve been reading too many hard-boileds,” said Kennedy. “Nothing will happen. Anyway, I have a pretty good idea who those people are; I can hire detectives of my own, you know.”

“I’ll come over, then.” Fraser hung up and realized, suddenly, that he was sweating.

The night air was cool as he walked down the street. He paused for a moment, feeling the city like a huge impersonal machine around him, grinding and grinding. Human civilization had grown too big, he thought. It was beyond anyone’s control; it had taken on a will of its own and was carrying a race which could no longer guide it. Sometimes—reading the papers, or listening to the radio, or just watching the traffic go by like a river of steel—a man could feel horribly helpless.

He took the subway to Kennedy’s address, a swank apartment in the lower Fifties. He was admitted by the psychiatrist in person; no one else was around.

“I assume,” said Kennedy, “that you don’t have some wild idea of pulling a gun on me. That would accomplish nothing except to get you in trouble.”

“No,” said Fraser, “I’ll be good.” His eyes wandered about the living room. One wall was covered with books which looked used; there were some quality reproductions, a Capehart, and fine, massive furniture. It was a tasteful layout. He looked a little more closely at three pictures on the mantel: a middle-aged woman and two young men in uniform.

“My wife,” said Kennedy, “and my boys. They’re all dead. Would you like a drink?”

“No. I came to talk.”

“I’m not Satan, you know,” said Kennedy. “I like books and music, good wine, good conversation. I’m as human as you are, only I have a purpose.”

Fraser sat down and began charging his pipe. “Go ahead,” he said. “I’m listening.”

Kennedy pulled a chair over to face him. The big smooth countenance behind the rimless glasses held little expression. “Why have you been annoying me?” he asked.

“I?” Fraser lifted his brows.

Kennedy made an impatient gesture. “Let’s not chop words. There are no witnesses tonight. I intend to talk freely, and want you to do the same. I know that you’ve got Martinez sufficiently convinced to help you with this very childish persecution-campaign. What do you hope to get out of it?”

“I want my girl back,” said Fraser tonelessly. “I was hoping my nuisance-value—”

Kennedy winced a bit. “You know, I’m damned sorry about that. It’s the one aspect of my work which I hate. I’d like you to believe that I’m not just a scientific procurer. Actually, I have to satisfy the minor desires of my clients, so they’ll stay happy and agree to my major wishes. It’s the plain truth that those women have been only the minutest fraction of my job.”

“Nevertheless, you’re a free-wheeling son, doing something like that—”

“Really, now, what’s so horrible about it? Those girls are in love—the normal, genuine article. It’s not any kind of zombie state, or whatever your overheated imagination has thought up. They’re entirely sane, unharmed, and happy. In fact, happiness of that kind is so rare in this world that if I wanted to, I could pose as their benefactor.”

“You’ve got a machine,” said Fraser; “it changes the mind. As far as I’m concerned, that’s as gross a violation of liberty as throwing somebody into a concentration camp.”

“How free do you think anyone is? You’re born with a fixed heredity. Environment molds you like clay. Your society teaches you what and how to think. A million tiny factors, all depending on blind, uncontrollable chance, determine the course of your life—including your love-life.… Well, we needn’t waste any time on philosophy. Go on, ask some questions. I admit I’ve hurt you—unwittingly, to be sure—but I do want to make amends.”

“Your machine, then,” said Fraser. “How did you get it? How does it work.”

“I was practicing in Chicago,” said Kennedy, “and collaborating on the side with Gavotti. How much do you know of cybernetics? I don’t mean computers and automata, which are only one aspect of the field; I mean control and communication, in the animal as well as in the machine.”

“Well, I’ve read Wiener’s books, and studied Shannon’s work, too.” Despite himself, Fraser was thawing, just a trifle. “It’s exciting stuff. Communications-theory seems to be basic, in biology and psychology as well as in electronics.”

“Quite. The future may remember Wiener as the Galileo of neurology. If Gavotti’s work ever gets published, he’ll be considered the Newton. So far, frankly, I’ve suppressed it. He died suddenly, just when his machine was completed and he was getting ready to publish his results. Nobody but I knew anything more than rumors; he was inclined to be secretive till he had a fait accompli on hand. I realized what an opportunity had been given me, and took it; I brought the machine here without saying much to anyone.”

Kennedy leaned back in his chair. “I imagine it was mostly luck which took Gavotti and me so far,” he went on. “We made a long series of improbably good guesses, and thus telescoped a century of work into a decade. If I were religious, I’d be down on my knees, thanking the Lord for putting this thing of the future into my hands.”

“Or the devil,” said Fraser.

Briefly, anger flitted across Kennedy’s face. “I grant you, the machine is a terrible power, but it’s harmless to a man if it’s used properly—as I have used it. I’m not going to tell you just how it works; to be perfectly honest, I only understand a fraction of its theory and its circuits myself. But look, you know something of encephalography. The various basic rhythms of the brain have been measured. The standard method is already so sensitive that it can detect abnormalities like a developing tumor or a strong emotional disturbance, that will give trouble unless corrected. Half of Gavotti’s machine is a still more delicate encephalograph. It can measure and analyze the minute variations in electrical pulses corresponding to the basic emotional states. It won’t read thoughts, no; but once calibrated for a given individual, it will tell you if he’s happy, sorrowful, angry, disgusted, afraid—any fundamental neuro-glandular condition, or any combination of them.”

He paused. “All right,” said Fraser. “What else does it do?”

“It does not make monsters,” said Kennedy. “Look, the specific emotional reaction to a given stimulus is, in the normal individual, largely a matter of conditioned reflex, instilled by social environment or the accidental associations of his life.

“Anyone in decent health will experience fear in the presence of danger; desire in the presence of a sexual object, and so on. That’s basic biology, and the machine can’t change that. But most of our evaluations are learned. For instance, to an American the word ‘mother’ has powerful emotional connotations, while to a Samoan it means nothing very exciting. You had to develop a taste for liquor, tobacco, coffee—in fact most of what you consume. If you’re in love with a particular woman, it’s a focusing of the general sexual libido on her, brought about by the symbolizing part of your mind: she means something to you. There are cultures without romantic love, you know. And so on. All these specific, conditioned reactions can be changed.”

“How?”

Kennedy thought for a moment “The encephalographic part of the machine measures the exact pulsations in the individual corresponding to the various emotional reactions. It takes me about four hours to determine those with the necessary precision; then I have to make statistical analyses of the data, to winnow out random variations. Thereafter I put the subject in a state of light hypnosis—that’s only to increase suggestibility, and make the process faster. As I pronounce the words and names I’m interested in, the machine feeds back the impulses corresponding to the emotions I want: a sharply-focused beam on the brain center concerned.

“For instance, suppose you were an alcoholic and I wanted to cure you. I’d put you in hypnosis and stand there whispering ‘wine, whisky, beer, gin,’ and so on; meanwhile, the machine would be feeding the impulses corresponding to your reactions of hate, fear, and disgust into your brain. You’d come out unchanged, except that your appetite for alcohol would be gone; you could, in fact, come out hating the stuff so much that you’d join the Prohibition Party—though, in actual practice, it would probably be enough just to give you a mild aversion.”

“Mmmm—I see. Maybe.” Fraser scowled. “And the—subject—doesn’t remember what you’ve done?”

“Oh, no. It all takes place on the lower subconscious levels. A new set of conditioned neural pathways is opened, you see, and old ones are closed off. The brain does that by itself, through its normal symbolizing mechanism. All that happens is that the given symbol—such as liquor—becomes reflectively associated with the given emotional state, such as dislike.”

Kennedy leaned forward with an air of urgency. “The end result is in no way different from ordinary means of persuasion. Propaganda does the same thing by sheer repetition. If you’re courting a girl, you try to identify yourself in her mind with the things she desires, by appropriate behavior.… I’m sorry; I shouldn’t have used that example.… The machine is only a direct, fast way of doing this, producing a more stable result.”

“It’s still—tampering,” said Fraser. “How do you know you’re not creating side-effects, doing irreparable long-range damage?”

“Oh, for Lord’s sake!” exploded Kennedy. “Take your mind off that shelf, will you? I’ve told you how delicate the whole thing is. A few microwatts of power more or less, a frequency-shift of less than one percent, and it doesn’t work at all. There’s no effect whatsoever.” He cooled off fast, adding reflectively: “On the given subject, that is. It might work on someone else. These pulsations are a highly individual matter; I have to calibrate every case separately.”

There was a long period of silence. Then Fraser strained forward and said in an ugly voice:

“All right You’ve told me how you do it. Now tell me why. What possible reason or excuse, other than your own desire to play God? This thing could be the greatest psychiatric tool in history, and you’re using it to—pimp!”

“I told you that was unimportant,” said Kennedy quietly. “I’m doing much more. I set up in practice here in New York a couple of years ago. Once I had a few chance people under control—no, I tell you again, I didn’t make robots of them. I merely associated myself, in their own minds, with the father-image. That’s something I do to everyone who comes under the machine, just as a precaution if nothing else, Kennedy is all-wise, all-powerful; Kennedy can do no wrong. It isn’t a conscious realization; to the waking mind, I am only a shrewd adviser and a damn swell fellow. But the subconscious mind knows otherwise. It wouldn’t let my subjects act against me; it wouldn’t even let them want to.

“Well, you see how it goes. I got those first few people to recommend me to certain selected friends, and these in turn recommended me to others. Not necessarily as a psychiatrist; I have variously been a doctor, a counsellor, or merely a research-man looking for data. But I’m building up a group of the people I want. People who’ll back me up, who’ll follow my advice—not with any knowledge of being dominated, but because the workings of their own subconscious minds will lead them inevitably to think that my advice is the only sound policy to follow and my requests are things any decent man must grant.”

“Yeah,” said Fraser. “I get it. Big businessmen. Labor-leaders. Politicians. Military men. And Soviet spies!”

Kennedy nodded. “I have connections with the Soviets; their agents think I’m on their side. But it isn’t treason, though I may help them out from time to time.

“That’s why I have to do these services for my important clients, such as getting them the women they want—or, what I actually do more often, influencing their competitors and associates. You see, the subconscious mind knows I am all-powerful, but the conscious mind doesn’t. It has to be satisfied by occasional proofs that I am invaluable; otherwise conflicts would set in, my men would become unstable and eventually psychotic, and be of no further use to me.

“Of course,” he added, almost pedantically, “my men don’t know how I persuade these other people—they only know that I do, somehow, and their regard for their own egos, as well as for me, sets up a bloc which prevents them from reasoning out the fact that they themselves are dominated. They’re quite content to accept the results of my help, without inquiring further into the means than the easy rationalization that I have a ‘persuasive personality.’

“I don’t like what I’m doing, Fraser. But it’s got to be done.”

“You still haven’t said what’s got to be done,” answered the engineer coldly.

“I’ve been given something unbelievable,” said Kennedy. His voice was very soft now. “If I’d made it public, can you imagine what would have happened? Psychiatrists would use it, yes; but so would criminals, dictators, power-hungry men of all kinds. Even in this country, I don’t think libertarian principles could long survive. It would be too simple—

“And yet it would have been cowardly to break the machine and burn Gavotti’s notes. Chance has given me the power to be more than a chip in the river—a river that’s rapidly approaching a waterfall, war, destruction, tyranny, no matter who the Pyrrhic victor may be. I’m in a position to do something for the causes in which I believe.”

“And what are they?” asked Fraser.

Kennedy gestured at the pictures on the mantel. “Both my sons were killed in the last war. My wife died of cancer—a disease which would be licked now if a fraction of the money spent on armaments had been diverted to research. That brought it home to me; but there are hundreds of millions of people in worse cases. And war isn’t the only evil—there is poverty, oppression, inequality, want and suffering. It could be changed.

“I’m building up my own lobby, you might say. In a few more years, I hope to be the indispensable adviser of all the men who, between them, really run this country. And yes, I have been in touch with Soviet agents—have even acted as a transmitter of stolen information. The basic problem of spying, you know, is not to get the information in the first place as much as to get it to the homeland. Treason? No. I think not. I’m getting my toehold in world communism. I already have some of its agents; sooner or later, I’ll get to the men who really matter. Then communism will no longer be a menace.”

He sighed. “It’s a hard row to hoe. It’ll take my lifetime, at least; but what else have I got to give my life to?”

Fraser sat quiet. His pipe was cold, he knocked it out and began filling it afresh. The scratching of his match seemed unnaturally loud. “It’s too much,” he said. “It’s too big a job for one man to tackle. The world will stumble along somehow, but you’ll just get things into a worse mess.”

“I’ve got to try,” said Kennedy.

“And I still want my girl back.”

“I can’t do that; I need Snyder too much. But I’ll make it up to you somehow.” Kennedy sighed. “Lord, if you knew how much I’ve wanted to tell all this!”

With sudden wariness: “Not that it’s to be repeated. In fact, you’re to lay off me; call off your dogs. Don’t try to tell anyone else what I’ve told you. You’d never be believed and I already have enough power to suppress the story, if you should get it out somehow. And if you give me any more trouble at all, I’ll see to it that you—stop.”

“Murder?”

“Or commitment to an asylum. I can arrange that too.”

Fraser sighed. He felt oddly unexcited, empty, as if the interview had drained him of his last will to resist. He held the pipe loosely in his fingers, letting it go out.

“Ask me a favor,” urged Kennedy. “I’ll do it, if it won’t harm my own program. I tell you, I want to square things.”

“Well—”

“Think about it. Let me know.”

“All right.” Fraser got up. “I may do that.” He went out the door without saying goodnight.

Chapter 4

He sat with his feet on the table, chair tilted back and teetering dangerously, hands clasped behind his head, pipe filling the room with blue fog. It was his usual posture for attacking a problem.

And damn it, he thought wearily, this was a question such as he made his living on. An industrial engineer comes into the office. We want this and that—a machine for a very special purpose, let’s say. What should we do, Mr. Fraser? Fraser prowls around the plant, reads up on the industry, and then sits down and thinks. The elements of the problem are such-and-such; how can they be combined to yield a solution?

Normally, he uses the mathematical approach, especially in machine design. Most practicing-engineers have a pathetic math background—they use ten pages of elaborate algebra and rusty calculus to figure out something that three vector equations would solve. But you have to get the logical basics straight first, before you can set up your equations.

All right, what is the problem? To get Judy back. That means forcing Kennedy to restore her normal emotional reactions—no, he didn’t want her thrust into love of him; he just wanted her as she had been.

What are the elements of the problem? Kennedy acts outside the law, but he has blocked all official channels. He even has connections extending through the Iron Curtain.

Hmmmm—appeal to the FBI? Kennedy couldn’t have control over them—yet. However, if Fraser tried to tip off the FBI, they’d act cautiously, if they investigated at all. They’d have to go slow. And Kennedy would find out in time to do something about it.

Martinez could help no further. Sworsky had closer contact with Washington. He’d been so thoroughly cleared that they’d be inclined to trust whatever he said. But Sworsky doubted the whole story; like many men who’d suffered through irresponsible Congressional charges, he was almost fanatic about having proof before accusing anyone of anything. Moreover, Kennedy knew that Sworsky was Fraser’s friend; he’d probably be keeping close tabs on the physicist and ready to block any attempts he might make to help. With the backing of a man like Snyder, Kennedy could hire as many detectives as he wanted.

In fact, whatever the counter-attack, it was necessary to go warily. Kennedy’s threat to get rid of Fraser if the engineer kept working against him was not idle mouthing. He could do it—and, being a fanatic, would.

But Kennedy, like the demon of legend, would grant one wish—just to salve his own conscience. Only what should the wish be? Another woman? Or merely to be reconciled, artificially, to an otherwise-intolerable situation?

Judy, Judy, Judy!

Fraser swore at himself. Damn it to hell, this was a problem in logic. No room for emotion. Of course, it might be a problem without a solution. There are plenty of those.

He squinted, trying to visualize the office. He thought of burglary, stealing evidence—silly thought. But let’s see, now. What was the layout, exactly? Four suites on one floor of the skyscraper, three of them unimportant offices of unimportant men. And—

Oh, Lord!

Fraser sat for a long while, hardly moving. Then he uncoiled himself and ran, downstairs and into the street and to the nearest pay phone. His own line might be tapped—

“Hello, hello, Juan?… Yes, I know I got you out of bed, and I’m not sorry. This is too bloody important.… Okay, okay.… Look, I want a complete report on the Messenger Advertising Service.… When? Immediately, if not sooner. And I mean complete.… That’s right, Messenger.… Okay, fine. I’ll buy you a drink sometime.”

“Hello, Jim? Were you asleep too?… Sorry.… But look, would you make a list of all the important men you know fairly well? I need it bad.… No, don’t come over. I think I’d better not see you for a while. Just mail it to me.… All right, so I am paranoid.…”

* * * *

Jerome K. Ferris was a large man, with a sense of his own importance that was even larger. He sat hunched in the chair, his head dwarfed by the aluminum helmet, his breathing shallow. Around him danced and flickered a hundred meters, indicator lights, tubes. There was a low humming in the room, otherwise it was altogether silent, blocked and shielded against the outside world. The fluorescent lights were a muted glow.

Fraser sat watching the greenish trace on the huge oscilloscope screen. It was an intricate set of convolutions, looking more like a plate of spaghetti than anything else. He wondered how many frequencies were involved. Several thousand, at the very least.

“Fraser,” repeated Kennedy softly into the ear of the hypnotized man. “Colin Fraser. Colin Fraser.” He touched a dial with infinite care. “Colin Fraser. Colin Fraser.”

The oscilloscope flickered as he readjusted, a new trace appeared. Kennedy waited for a while, then: “Robert Kennedy. Sentiment, Inc. Robert Kennedy. Sentiment, Inc. Robert Kennedy. Sentiment—”

He turned off the machine, its murmur and glow died away. Facing Fraser with a tight little smile, he said: “All right. Your job is done. Are we even now?”

“As even, as we’ll ever get, I suppose,” said Fraser.

“I wish you’d trust me,” said Kennedy with a hint of wistfulness. “I’d have done the job honestly; you didn’t have to watch.”

“Well, I was interested,” said Fraser.

“Frankly, I still don’t see what you stand to gain by the doglike devotion of this Ferris. He’s rich, but he’s too weak and short-sighted to be a leader. I’d never planned on conditioning him for my purposes.”

“I’ve explained that,” said Fraser patiently. “Ferris is a large stockholder in a number of corporations. His influence can swing a lot of business my way.”

“Yes, I know. I didn’t grant your wish blindly, you realize. I had Ferris studied; he’s unable to harm me.” Kennedy regarded Fraser with hard eyes. “And just in case you still have foolish notions, please remember that I gave him the father-conditioning with respect to myself. He’ll do a lot for you, but not if it’s going to hurt me in any way.”

“I know when I’m licked,” said Fraser bleakly; “I’m getting out of town as soon as I finish those courses I’m signed up for.”

Kennedy snapped his fingers. “All right, Ferris, wake up now.”

Ferris blinked. “What’s been happening?” he asked.

“Nothing much,” said Kennedy, unbuckling the electrodes. “I’ve taken my readings. Thank you very much for the help, sir. I’ll see that you get due credit when my research is published.”

“Ah—yes. Yes.” Ferris puffed himself out. Then he put an arm around Fraser’s shoulder. “If you aren’t busy,” he said, “maybe we could go have lunch.”

“Thanks,” said Fraser. “I’d like to talk to you about a few things.”

He lingered for a moment after Ferris had left the room. “I imagine this is goodbye for us,” he said.

“Well, so long, at least. We’ll probably hear from each other again.” Kennedy shook Fraser’s hand. “No hard feelings? I did go to a lot of trouble for you—wangling your introduction to Ferris when you’d named him, and having one of my men persuade him to come here. And right when I’m so infernally busy, too.”

“Sure,” said Fraser. “It’s all right. I can’t pretend to love you for what you’ve done, but you aren’t a bad sort.”

“No worse than you,” said Kennedy with a short laugh. “You’ve used the machine for your own ends, now.”

“Yeah,” said Fraser. “I guess I have.”

* * * *

Sworsky asked, “Why do you insist on calling me from drugstores? And why at my office? I’ve got a home phone, you know.”

“I’m not sure but that our own lines are tapped,” said Fraser. “Kennedy’s a smart cookie, and don’t you forget it. I think he’s about ready to dismiss me as a danger, but you’re certainly being watched; you’re on his list.”

“You’re getting a persecution-complex. Honest, Colin, I’m worried.”

“Well, bear with me for a while. Now, have you had any information on Kennedy since I called last?”

“Hm, no. I did mention to Thomson, as you asked me to, that I’d heard rumors of some revolutionary encephalographic techniques and would be interested in seeing the work. Why did you want me to do that?”

“Thomson,” said Fraser, “is one of Kennedy’s men. Now look, Jim, before long you’re going to be invited to visit Kennedy. He’ll give you a spiel about his research and ask to measure your brain waves. I want you to say yes. Then I want to know the exact times of the three appointments he’ll give you—the first two, at least.”

“Hmmm—if Kennedy’s doing what you claim—”

“Jim, it’s a necessary risk, but I’m the one who’s taking it. You’ll be okay, I promise you; though perhaps later you’ll read of me being found in the river. You see, I got Kennedy to influence a big stockowner for me. One of the lesser companies in which he has a loud voice is Messenger. I don’t suppose Kennedy knows that. I hope not!”

* * * *

Sworsky looked as if he’d been sandbagged. He was white, and the hand that poured a drink shook.

“Lord,” he muttered. “Lord, Colin, you were right.”

Fraser’s teeth drew back from his lips. “You went through with it, eh?”

“Yes. I let the son hypnotize me, and afterward I walked off with a dreamy expression, as you told me to. Just three hours ago, he dropped around here in person. He gave me a long rigmarole about the stupidity of military secrecy, and how the Soviet Union stands for peace and justice. I hope I acted impressed; I’m not much of an actor.”

“You don’t have to be. Just so you didn’t overdo it. To one of Kennedy’s victims, obeying his advice is so natural that it doesn’t call for any awe-struck wonderment.”

“And he wanted data from me! Bombardment cross-sections. Critical values. Resonance levels. My Lord, if the Russians found that out through spies it’d save them three years of research. This is an FBI case, all right.”

“No, not yet.” Fraser laid an urgent hand on Sworsky’s arm. “You’ve stuck by me so far, Jim. Go along a little further.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Why—” Fraser’s laugh jarred out. “Give him what he wants, of course.”

* * * *

Kennedy looked up from his desk, scowling. “All right, Fraser,” he said. “You’ve been a damned nuisance, and it’s pretty patient of me to see you again. But this is the last time. Wha’d’you want?”

“It’s the last time I’ll need to see you, perhaps.” Fraser didn’t sit down. He stood facing Kennedy. “You’ve had it, friend; straight up.”

“What do you mean?” Kennedy’s hand moved toward his buzzer.

“Listen before you do anything,” said Fraser harshly. “I know you tried to bring Jim Sworsky under the influence. You asked him for top-secret data. A few hours ago, you handed the file he brought you on to Bryce, who’s no doubt at the Amtorg offices this minute. That’s high treason, Kennedy; they execute people for doing that.”

The psychologist slumped back.

“Don’t try to have your bully boys get rid of me,” said Fraser. “Sworsky is sitting by the phone, waiting to call the FBI. I’m the only guy who can stop him.”

“But—” Kennedy’s tongue ran around his lips. “But he committed treason himself. He gave me the papers!”

Fraser grinned. “You don’t think those were authentic, do you? I doubt if you’ll be very popular in the Soviet Union either, once they’ve tried to build machines using your data.”

Kennedy looked down at the floor. “How did you do it?” he whispered.

“Remember Ferris? The guy you fixed up for me? He owns a share of your next-door neighbor, the Messenger Advertising Service. I fed him a song and dance about needing an office to do some important work, only my very whereabouts had to be secret. The Messenger people were moved out without anybody’s knowing. I installed myself there one night, also a simple little electric oscillator.

“Encephalography is damn delicate work; it involves amplifications up to several million. The apparatus misbehaves if you give it a hard look. Naturally, your lab and the machine were heavily shielded, but even so, a radio emitter next door would be bound to throw you off. My main trouble was in lousing you up just a little bit, not enough to make you suspect anything.

“I only worked at that during your calibrating sessions with Sworsky. I didn’t have to be there when you turned the beam on him, because it would be calculated from false data and be so far from his pattern as to have no effect. You told me yourself how precise an adjustment was needed. Sworsky played along, then. Now we’ve got proof—not that you meddled with human lives, but that you are a spy.”

Kennedy sat without moving. His voice was a broken mumble. “I was going to change the world. I had hopes for all humankind. And you, for the sake of one woman—”

“I never trusted anybody with a messiah complex. The world is too big to change single-handed; you’d just have bungled it up worse than it already is. A lot of dictators started out as reformers and ended up as mass-executioners; you’d have done the same.”

Fraser leaned over his desk. “I’m willing to make a deal, though,” he went on. “Your teeth are pulled; there’s no point in turning you in. Sworsky and Martinez and I are willing just to report on Bryce, and let you go, if you’ll change back all your subjects. We’re going to read your files, and watch and see that you do it. Every one.”

Kennedy bit his lip. “And the machine—?”

“I don’t know. We’ll settle that later. Okay, God, here’s the phone number of Judy Harkness. Ask her to come over for a special treatment. At once.”

* * * *

A month later, the papers had a story about a plausible maniac who had talked his way into the Columbia University laboratories, where Gavotti’s puzzling machine was being studied, and pulled out a hammer and smashed it into ruin before he could be stopped. Taken to jail, he committed suicide in his cell. The name was Kennedy.

Fraser felt vague regret, but it didn’t take him long to forget it; he was too busy making plans for his wedding.

THE ISSAHAR ARTIFACTS, by J. F. Bone

The following manuscript was discovered during the excavation of a lateral connecting link between the North-South streamways in Narhil Province near Issahar on Kwashior. The excavator, while passing through a small valley about 20 yursts south of the city, was jammed by a mass of oxidized and partially oxidized metallic fragments. On most worlds this would not be unusual, but Kwashior has no recorded history of metallic artifacts. The terrestrial operator, with unusual presence of mind, reported the stoppage immediately. Assasul, the District Engineering monitor, realized instantly that no metallic debris should exist in that area, and in consequence ordered a most careful excavation in the event that the artifacts might have cultural significance.

The debris proved to be the remnants of an ancient spaceship similar to those described in Sector Chronicles IV through VII, but of much smaller size and cruder design—obviously a relic of pre-expansion days. Within the remnants of the ship was found a small box of metal covered with several thicknesses of tar and wax impregnated fabric which had been mostly destroyed. The metal itself was badly oxidized, but served to protect an inner wooden box that contained a number of thin sheets of a fragile substance composed mainly of cellulose which were brown and crumbling with age. The sheets were covered with runes of lingua antiqua arranged in regular rows, inscribed by hand with a carbon-based ink which has persisted remarkably well despite the degenerative processes of time. Although much of the manuscript is illegible, sufficient remains to settle for all time the Dannar-Marraket Controversy and lend important corroborating evidence to the Cassaheb Thesis of Terrestrial migrations.

The genuineness of this fragment has been established beyond doubt. Radiocarbon dating places its age at ten thousand plus or minus one hundred cycles, which would place it at the very beginning of the Intellectual Emergence. Its importance is beyond question. Its implications are shocking despite the fact that they conform to many of the early legends and form a solid foundation for Dannar’s Thesis which has heretofore been regarded as implausible. In the light of this material, the whole question of racial origins may well have to be reevaluated. Without further comment, the translated text is presented herewith. You may draw your own conclusions. Go with enlightenment.

—BARRAGON

Monitor of Cultural Origins and Relics

Kwashior Central Repository

* * * *

I have decided after some thought, to write this journal. It is, I suppose, a form of egotism—for I do not expect that it shall ever be read in the event that I am unable to leave this place. Yet it affords me a certain satisfaction to think that a part of me will remain long after I have returned to dust. In any event, I feel that one is not truly dead if a part of his personality remains. Many of the ancients such as Homer, Phidias, Confucius, Christ, da Vinci, Lincoln, Einstein, Churchill—and many others—live on through their works when otherwise they would long since have been forgotten and thus be truly dead. Earth’s history is full of such examples. And while I have no expectation of an immortality such as theirs, it flatters my ego to think that there will be some part of me which also will survive…

(Note: There are several lines following this which are obliterated, defaced or unreadable. There are more to follow. In the future such gaps in the content will be indicated thus:…)

…I expect that it is a basic trait of character, for spacemen must be gregarious, and although I am not truly a spaceman I have been in space and, in consequence, my character is no different from my ex-crewmates—at least in that respect. I think as time passes I shall miss the comfort of companionship, the sense of belonging to a group, the card games, the bull sessions, the endless speculation on what comes next, or what we will do when the voyage is over and we are again on Earth…

…I particularly recall Gregory. Odd, but I never knew his surname, or maybe it was his given name, for Gregory could function as well in one respect as the other. He would boast continually of what he would do to wine, women, and song once we returned to Earth. Poor Gregory. The meteor that hulled our ship struck squarely through the engine room where he was on duty. Probably he never knew that he had died. At least his fate had the mercy of being brief. Certainly it is not like mine. It was…given…

There was plenty of time for the survivors to reach the lifeboats, and in our decimated condition there were plenty of boats—which increased our chances of living by a factor of four…I suppose that it was foolish to give way to the feeling of every man for himself but I am not a spaceman trained to react automatically to emergencies. Neither am I a navigator or a pilot, although I can fly in an emergency. I am a biologist, a specialist member of the scientific staff—essentially an individualist. I knew enough to seal myself in, push the eject button and energize the drive. However, I did not know that a lifeboat had no acceleration compensators, and by the time the drive lever returned to neutral, I was far out in space and thoroughly lost. I could detect no lifeboats in the vicinity nor could I raise any on the radio. I later found that a transistor malfunctioned, but by then I was well out of range, stranded between the stars in the black emptiness of space. After reading the manual on lifeboat operation there was but one course open. I selected the nearest G-type star, set the controls on automatic, and went into cold sleep. There was nothing else to do. If I remained awake I would be dead of oxygen starvation long before I reached a habitable world. The only alternative was the half-death of frozen sleep and the long wait until the boat came within range of the sun I had selected.

* * * *

I awoke in orbit around this world, and after I recovered full use of my faculties and checked the analyzer, I decided to land. I’m afraid I did a rather bad job of it, since I used the chemical rockets too late, and the plasma jets scorched a considerable amount of acreage in the meadow where I finally came to rest. However, the residual radioactivity is low, and it is safe enough to walk outside.… The life boat is lying beside a small stream which empties into a circular pool of blue water in the center of a small meadow. The fiery trail of the jets and rockets has burned a hundred-foot-wide path across the meadow, and the upper edge of the pool, and ends in a broad, blackened circle surrounding the boat. I came down too fast the last few feet, and the drive tubes are a crumpled mess inextricably fused with the bent landing pads. This boat will never fly again without extensive repairs which I cannot perform. But the hull is otherwise sound, and I am comfortable enough except for a few rapidly healing bruises and contusions. In a few days I should be well enough to explore.…

I am surprised that this world is so capable of supporting human life. The consensus of scientific opinion has been that less than one out of 50,000 planets would be habitable. Yet I have struck paydirt on the first try. Perhaps I am lucky. At any rate I am alive, and my lifeboat, while somewhat damaged by an inept landing, is still sufficiently intact to serve as a shelter, and the survival kits are undamaged, which should make my stay here endurable if not pleasant…and we are learning a great deal about our galaxy with the development of the interstellar drive—not the least of which is that authoritative opinion is mere opinion and far from authoritative.

This world on which I find myself is in every respect but one similar to Earth. There is no animate life—only plants. No birds fly, no insects buzz, no animals rustle the silent underbrush. The only noise is the wind in the trees and grasses. I am utterly alone. It is a strange feeling, this loneliness. There is a feeling of freedom in it, a release from the too-close proximity of my fellow men. There is the pleasure of absolute privacy. But this will undoubtedly pall. Already I find that I am anxious for someone to talk to, someone with whom I can share ideas and plans. There…

…which I cannot explain. But one thing is certain. My first impression of this place was wrong. The life here, if not animate, is at least intelligent—and it is not friendly. Yet neither does it hate. It observes me with a slow, methodical curiosity that I can sense at the very threshold of consciousness. It is a peculiar sensation that is quite indescribable—unpleasant—but hardly terrifying. I suppose I can feel it more than a normal person because I am a biologist and it is part of my training and specialized skill to achieve a certain rapport with my surroundings. I first noticed it yesterday. It came suddenly, without warning, a vague uneasiness, like the feeling when one awakens from a partially remembered but unpleasant dream. And it has been increasing ever since.

* * * *

The principal impressions I received from this initial contact were an awareness of self and a recognizance of identity—the concept of cogito ergo sum came through quite clearly. I wonder what Descartes would think of an alien intelligence quoting his dogma.… I think it is animal, despite the absence of animal life in this area. The thought patterns are quick and flexible. And they have been increasing in power and precision at an appreciable rate. I am sure that it is aware of me. I shall call the feeling “it” until I can identify the source more accurately. Certainly “it” appears to be as good a description as any, since there is no consciousness of sex in the thought patterns. I wonder what sort of…and to my surprise I swore! I do not ordinarily curse or use obscenities—not because they are obscene but because they are a poor and inexact means of conveying ideas or impressions. But in this case they were particularly appropriate. No other words could so precisely describe my feelings. Me, a rational intelligence, succumbing to such low-level emotional stimuli! If this keeps on, the next thing I know I will be seeing little green men flitting through the trees.… Of course, this world is unnatural, which makes its effect on the nervous system more powerful, yet that does not explain the feeling of tension which I have been experiencing, the silent straining tension of an overloaded cable, the tension of a toy balloon overfull with air. I have a constant feeling of dreadful expectancy, of imminent disaster, mixed with a sense of pain and a lively—almost childlike—curiosity. To say that this is disquieting would be a complete understatement, this state of chronic disease, mixed with occasional rushes of terror. I am certain that my nervous system and emotional responses are being examined, and catalogued like a visceral preparation in an anatomy laboratory. There is something infinitely chilling about this mental dissection.

…and after a careful search of the area I found precisely nothing. You who may read this will probably laugh, but I cannot. To me this is no laughing matter. I find myself jumping at the slightest noise, an increase in the wind, the snap of an expanding hull plate, the crackle of static over my radio. I whirl around to see who, or what, is watching me. My skin crawls and prickles as though I were covered with ants. My mind is filled with black, inchoate dread. In three words, I’m scared stiff! Yet there is nothing tangible—nothing I should be frightened about, and this terrifies me even more. For I know where this continual fear and worry can lead—to what ends this incessant stimulation can reach.

* * * *

Under pressure my body reacts, preparing me to fight or flee. My adrenals pump hormones into my bloodstream, stimulating my heart and my sympathetic nervous system, making glucose more available to my muscles. My peripheral capillaries dilate. Intestinal activity stops as blood is channeled into the areas which my fear and my glands decide will need it most. I sweat. My vision blurs. All the manifold changes of the fight or flight syndrome are mobilized for instant action. But my body cannot be held in this state of readiness. The constant stimulation will ultimately turn my overworked adrenal glands into a jelly-like mess of cystic quivering goo. My general adaptation syndrome will no longer adapt. And I will die.

But I am not dead yet. And I have certain advantages. I am intelligent. I know what faces me. And I can adjust. That is one of the outstanding characteristics of the human race—the ability to adjust to our environment, or, failing that, to adjust our environment to us. In addition, I have my hands, tools, and materials to work with here in the lifeboat. And finally I am desperate! I should be able to accomplish something. There must be…

* * * *

…But it is not going well. There are too many parts which I do not know by sight. If I were a more competent electronicist I would have had the parts assembled now and would be sending a beacon signal clear across this sector. The pressure hasn’t been any help. It doesn’t get greater, but it has become more insisting—more demanding. I seem to feel that it wants something, that its direction has become more channelized. The conviction is growing within me that I am destined to be absorbed.

The fear with which I live is a constant thing. And I still keep looking for my enemy. In a strange, impersonal way it has become my enemy for though it does not hate, it threatens my life. My waking hours are hell and my sleep is nightmare. Strange how a man clings to life and sanity. It would be so easy to lose either. Of one thing I am certain—this cannot go on much longer. I cannot work under pressure. I must act. I shall try again to find my enemy and kill it before it kills me. It is no longer a question of…

…Never again shall I wish to be alone. If I get out of this alive I am going to haunt crowds. I will surround myself with people. Right now I would give my soul to have one—just one—person near me. Anyone. I feel certain that two of us could face this thing and lick it. If necessary we could face it back to back, each covering the other. I am now getting impressions. Sensory hallucinations. I am floating. I swim. I bathe luxuriantly in huge bathtubs and the water runs through my body as though I were a sponge. Have you ever felt porous?…

…and that last attack was a doozer! I wrecked a week’s work looking for the little man who wasn’t there. The urge to kill is becoming more intense. I want to destroy the author of my misery. Even though I am still a balanced personality—polite language for being sane—I can’t take much more of this. I will not go mad, but I will go into the adrenal syndrome unless I can end this soon.

Nothing I have done seems to help. For a while I was sure that the music tapes held the pressure back, but the enemy is used to them now. I am still working on the subspace beacon. The radio and most of the control linkages have gone into it. It looks like an electronicist’s nightmare, but if the survival manual is right, it will work. It has to work! I dread the time when I shall have to cannibalize the recorder. Can’t help thinking that Shakespeare was right when he wrote that bit about music soothing the savage breast. It may not soothe the enemy, for it isn’t savage, but it certainly soothes me, even though there’s something repetitive about it after a half a hundred playings. My breast’s savage all right. Fact is, it’s downright primitive when an attack starts. I can feel them coming now. I keep wondering how much longer I can last. Guess I’m getting morbid.…

More nightmares last night. I drowned three times and a purple octopus gave me an enema. Woke up screaming, but got an idea from it. Funny that I never thought of it before. Water’s the fountainhead of life, and there is no real reason for assuming my enemy is terrestrial. He could just as well be aquatic. I’ll find out today—maybe. Just to be doing something positive—even thinking—makes me feel better.…

* * * *

Got it! I know where it is! And I know how to kill it. Fact is, I’ve already done it! Now there’s no more pressure. God—what a relief! This morning I burned the meadow and cut down the nearest trees surrounding this clearing and nothing happened. I expected that. Then I checked the water. Nothing in the stream, but the pond was green!—filled almost to the edge with a mass of algae! A hundred-foot platter of sticky green slime, cohesive as glue and ugly as sin. It had to be it—and it was. I never saw algae that cohered quite like that. So I gave it about fifty gallons of rocket juice—red fuming nitric acid—right in the belly. Then I sat down and let the tension flow out of me, revelling in its pain, laughing like crazy as it turned brown—and the pressure disappeared. No tension at all now. The place is as quiet and peaceful as the grave. I want to laugh and laugh—and run through the burned meadow and roll in the ashes so grateful am I for my deliverance.

Got the idea of killing the monster from a splash of rocket fuel on the bank of the stream and my memory of the pain in the early feelings. But it was nothing compared to the feeling when the acid hit that damned mass of green slime! Even though my brain was screaming at me, I felt good. I should put a couple of hundred gallons into the stream just to make sure—but I can’t afford it. I need the fuel to run the generators to propagate the wave that’ll bring me home if someone hears it. And they’ll hear it all right. My luck is in. Now I’m going to sleep—sweet sleep that knits the ravelled sleeve of care—Shakespeare, old man, you had a phrase for everything! I love you. I love everything. I even feel sorry for that poor plant…of guilt. It couldn’t help the fact that my jets set up a mutation. And being intelligent it had to be curious. Of course, no one would believe me if I started talking about intelligent algae. But what’s so odd about that? Even the most complex life forms are just aggregations of individual cells working together. So if a few individual cells with rudimentary data-storage capacity got the idea of uniting why couldn’t they act like a complex organism?

* * * *

It is useless to speculate on what might have happened had that thing lived. But it’s dead now—burned to death in acid. And although destruction of intelligent life is repugnant to me, I cannot help feeling that it is perhaps better that it is gone. Considering how rapidly it developed during its few weeks of life, and the power it possessed, my mind is appalled at its potential. I’ve had my experience and that’s enough. Lord! but I’m tired. I feel like a wrung-out sponge. Guess I’ll rest for a little while…

…and received a reply to my signal! They heterodyned it right back along my own beam. They’ll be landing in a week. I don’t think I’ll take this manuscript with me. I couldn’t use it—and somehow I don’t feel like burning it. Maybe I’ll make a time capsule out of it. It will be amusing to speculate about what sort of a reaction it’ll provoke, providing it is ever read. I can see them now, huge-headed humans, wrinkling their noses and saying “Intelligent algae—fantastic—the man must have been mad!”

* * * *

The manuscript ends here—and of course we know that the “man” was not mad. He left behind a rich heritage indeed, for those few cells that escaped his wrath and floated down to the sea. Did we but know his origin we would erect a suitable memorial if we had to travel to the farthest reach of our galaxy. But the names he quotes are not in our repositories and as for the word “Earth” which he used for his homeworld, I need not remind my readers that the intelligent terrestrial inhabitants of the 22,748 planets of this sector use the term “Earth” or its synonyms “soil” and “world” to describe their planets. Of course, the term “Homewater” is gradually replacing this archaic concept as we extend our hegemony ever more widely across the disunited worlds of the galaxy.

At that it seems strange that the unknown author’s race should have passed. As individuals they had so many advantages, while we are so weak and individually so helpless. They could do almost everything except communicate and cooperate. We can do but little else, yet our larger aggregations can control entire worlds, some peopled perhaps with descendants of this very individual. It merely proves that Dannar’s statement in the preface of his Thesis is correct.

“United, cohesive cooperation is the source of irresistible strength.”

THE NEXT LOGICAL STEP, by Ben Bova

“I don’t really see where this problem has anything to do with me,” the CIA man said. “And, frankly, there are a lot of more important things I could be doing.”

Ford, the physicist, glanced at General LeRoy. The general had that quizzical expression on his face, the look that meant he was about to do something decisive.

“Would you like to see the problem first-hand?” the general asked, innocently.

The CIA man took a quick look at his wristwatch. “O.K., if it doesn’t take too long. It’s late enough already.”

“It won’t take very long, will it, Ford?” the general said, getting out of his chair.

“Not very long,” Ford agreed. “Only a lifetime.”

The CIA man grunted as they went to the doorway and left the general’s office. Going down the dark, deserted hallway, their footsteps echoed hollowly.

“I can’t overemphasize the seriousness of the problem,” General LeRoy said to the CIA man. “Eight ranking members of the General Staff have either resigned their commissions or gone straight to the violent ward after just one session with the computer.”

The CIA man scowled. “Is this area Secure?”

General LeRoy’s face turned red. “This entire building is as Secure as any edifice in the Free World, mister. And it’s empty. We’re the only living people inside here at this hour. I’m not taking any chances.”

“Just want to be sure.”

“Perhaps if I explain the computer a little more,” Ford said, changing the subject, “you’ll know what to expect.”

“Good idea,” said the man from CIA.

“We told you that this is the most modern, most complex and delicate computer in the world…nothing like it has ever been attempted before—anywhere.”

“I know that They don’t have anything like it,” the CIA man agreed.

“And you also know, I suppose, that it was built to simulate actual war situations. We fight wars in this computer…wars with missiles and bombs and gas. Real wars, complete down to the tiniest detail. The computer tells us what will actually happen to every missile, every city, every man…who dies, how many planes are lost, how many trucks will fail to start on a cold morning, whether a battle is won or lost…”

General LeRoy interrupted. “The computer runs these analyses for both sides, so we can see what’s happening to Them, too.”

The CIA man gestured impatiently. “War games simulations aren’t new. You’ve been doing them for years.”

“Yes, but this machine is different,” Ford pointed out. “It not only gives a much more detailed war game. It’s the next logical step in the development of machine-simulated war games.” He hesitated dramatically.

“Well, what is it?”

“We’ve added a variation of the electro-encephalograph…”

The CIA man stopped walking. “The electro-what?”

“Electro-encephalograph. You know, a recording device that reads the electrical patterns of your brain. Like the electro-cardiograph.”

“Oh.”

“But you see, we’ve given the EEG a reverse twist. Instead of using a machine that makes a recording of the brain’s electrical wave output, we’ve developed a device that will take the computer’s readout tapes, and turn them into electrical patterns that are put into your brain!”

“I don’t get it.”

General LeRoy took over. “You sit at the machine’s control console. A helmet is placed over your head. You set the machine in operation. You see the results.”

“Yes,” Ford went on. “Instead of reading rows of figures from the computer’s printer…you actually see the war being fought. Complete visual and auditory hallucinations. You can watch the progress of the battles, and as you change strategy and tactics you can see the results before your eyes.”

“The idea, originally, was to make it easier for the General Staff to visualize strategic situations,” General LeRoy said.

“But every one who’s used the machine has either resigned his commission or gone insane,” Ford added.

The CIA man cocked an eye at LeRoy. “You’ve used the computer.”

“Correct.”

“And you have neither resigned nor cracked up.”

General LeRoy nodded. “I called you in.”

Before the CIA man could comment, Ford said, “The computer’s right inside this doorway. Let’s get this over with while the building is still empty.”

They stepped in. The physicist and the general showed the CIA man through the room-filling rows of massive consoles.

“It’s all transistorized and subminiaturized, of course,” Ford explained. “That’s the only way we could build so much detail into the machine and still have it small enough to fit inside a single building.”

“A single building?”

“Oh yes; this is only the control section. Most of this building is taken up by the circuits, the memory banks, and the rest of it.”

“Hm-m-m.”

They showed him finally to a small desk, studded with control buttons and dials. The single spotlight above the desk lit it brilliantly, in harsh contrast to the semidarkness of the rest of the room.

“Since you’ve never run the computer before,” Ford said, “General LeRoy will do the controlling. You just sit and watch what happens.”

The general sat in one of the well-padded chairs and donned a grotesque headgear that was connected to the desk by a half-dozen wires. The CIA man took his chair slowly.

When they put one of the bulky helmets on him, he looked up at them, squinting a little in the bright light. “This…this isn’t going to…well, do me any damage, is it?”

“My goodness, no,” Ford said. “You mean mentally? No, of course not. You’re not on the General Staff, so it shouldn’t…it won’t…affect you the way it did the others. Their reaction had nothing to do with the computer per se…”

“Several civilians have used the computer with no ill effects,” General LeRoy said. “Ford has used it many times.”

The CIA man nodded, and they closed the transparent visor over his face. He sat there and watched General LeRoy press a series of buttons, then turn a dial.

“Can you hear me?” The general’s voice came muffled through the helmet.

“Yes,” he said.

“All right. Here we go. You’re familiar with Situation One-Two-One? That’s what we’re going to be seeing.”

Situation One-Two-One was a standard war game. The CIA man was well acquainted with it. He watched the general flip a switch, then sit back and fold his arms over his chest. A row of lights on the desk console began blinking on and off, one, two, three…down to the end of the row, then back to the beginning again, on and off, on and off…

And then, somehow, he could see it!

He was poised incredibly somewhere in space, and he could see it all in a funny, blurry-double-sighted, dream-like way. He seemed to be seeing several pictures and hearing many voices, all at once. It was all mixed up, and yet it made a weird kind of sense.

For a panicked instant he wanted to rip the helmet off his head. It’s only an illusion, he told himself, forcing calm on his unwilling nerves. Only an illusion.

But it seemed strangely real.

He was watching the Gulf of Mexico. He could see Florida off to his right, and the arching coast of the southeastern United States. He could even make out the Rio Grande River.

Situation One-Two-One started, he remembered, with the discovery of missile-bearing Enemy submarines in the Gulf. Even as he watched the whole area—as though perched on a satellite—he could see, underwater and close-up, the menacing shadowy figure of a submarine gliding through the crystal blue sea.

He saw, too, a patrol plane as it spotted the submarine and sent an urgent radio warning.

The underwater picture dissolved in a bewildering burst of bubbles. A missile had been launched. Within seconds, another burst—this time a nuclear depth charge—utterly destroyed the submarine.

It was confusing. He was everyplace at once. The details were overpowering, but the total picture was agonizingly clear.

Six submarines fired missiles from the Gulf of Mexico. Four were immediately sunk, but too late. New Orleans, St. Louis and three Air Force bases were obliterated by hydrogen-fusion warheads.

The CIA man was familiar with the opening stages of the war. The first missile fired at the United States was the signal for whole fleets of missiles and bombers to launch themselves at the Enemy. It was confusing to see the world at once; at times he could not tell if the fireball and mushroom cloud was over Chicago or Shanghai, New York or Novosibirsk, Baltimore or Budapest.

It did not make much difference, really. They all got it in the first few hours of the war; as did London and Moscow, Washington and Peking, Detroit and Delhi, and many, many more.

The defensive systems on all sides seemed to operate well, except that there were never enough anti-missiles. Defensive systems were expensive compared to attack rockets. It was cheaper to build a deterrent than to defend against it.

The missiles flashed up from submarines and railway cars, from underground silos and stratospheric jets; secret ones fired off automatically when a certain airbase command post ceased beaming out a restraining radio signal. The defensive systems were simply overloaded. And when the bombs ran out, the missiles carried dust and germs and gas. On and on. For six days and six firelit nights. Launch, boost, coast, re-enter, death.

* * * *

And now it was over, the CIA man thought. The missiles were all gone. The airplanes were exhausted. The nations that had built the weapons no longer existed. By all the rules he knew of, the war should have been ended.

Yet the fighting did not end. The machine knew better. There were still many ways to kill an enemy. Time-tested ways. There were armies fighting in four continents, armies that had marched overland, or splashed ashore from the sea, or dropped out of the skies.

Incredibly, the war went on. When the tanks ran out of gas, and the flame throwers became useless, and even the prosaic artillery pieces had no more rounds to fire, there were still simple guns and even simpler bayonets and swords.

The proud armies, the descendents of the Alexanders and Caesars and Temujins and Wellingtons and Grants and Rommels, relived their evolution in reverse.

The war went on. Slowly, inevitably, the armies split apart into smaller and smaller units, until the tortured countryside that so recently had felt the impact of nuclear war once again knew the tread of bands of armed marauders. The tiny savage groups, stranded in alien lands, far from the homes and families that they knew to be destroyed, carried on a mockery of war, lived off the land, fought their own countrymen if the occasion suited, and revived the ancient terror of hand-wielded, personal, one-head-at-a-time killing.

The CIA man watched the world disintegrate. Death was an individual business now, and none the better for no longer being mass-produced. In agonized fascination he saw the myriad ways in which a man might die. Murder was only one of them. Radiation, disease, toxic gases that lingered and drifted on the once-innocent winds, and—finally—the most efficient destroyer of them all: starvation.

Three billion people (give or take a meaningless hundred million) lived on the planet Earth when the war began. Now, with the tenuous thread of civilization burned away, most of those who were not killed by the fighting itself succumbed inexorably to starvation.

Not everyone died, of course. Life went on. Some were lucky.

A long darkness settled on the world. Life went on for a few, a pitiful few, a bitter, hateful, suspicious, savage few. Cities became pestholes. Books became fuel. Knowledge died. Civilization was completely gone from the planet Earth.

* * * *

The helmet was lifted slowly off his head. The CIA man found that he was too weak to raise his arms and help. He was shivering and damp with perspiration.

“Now you see,” Ford said quietly, “why the military men cracked up when they used the computer.”

General LeRoy, even, was pale. “How can a man with any conscience at all direct a military operation when he knows that that will be the consequence?”

The CIA man struck up a cigarette and pulled hard on it. He exhaled sharply. “Are all the war games…like that? Every plan?”

“Some are worse,” Ford said. “We picked an average one for you. Even some of the ‘brushfire’ games get out of hand and end up like that.”

“So…what do you intend to do? Why did you call me in? What can I do?”

“You’re with CIA,” the general said. “Don’t you handle espionage?”

“Yes, but what’s that got to do with it?”

The general looked at him. “It seems to me that the next logical step is to make damned certain that They get the plans to this computer…and fast!”

YEAR OF THE BIG THAW, by Marion Zimmer Bradley

You say that Matthew is your own son, Mr. Emmett?

Yes, Rev’rend Doane, and a better boy never stepped, if I do say it as shouldn’t. I’ve trusted him to drive team for me since he was eleven, and you can’t say more than that for a farm boy. Way back when he was a little shaver so high, when the war came on, he was bounden he was going to sail with this Admiral Farragut. You know boys that age—like runaway colts. I couldn’t see no good in his being cabin boy on some tarnation Navy ship and I told him so. If he’d wanted to sail out on a whaling ship, I ’low I’d have let him go. But Marthy—that’s the boy’s Ma—took on so that Matt stayed home. Yes, he’s a good boy and a good son.

We’ll miss him a powerful lot if he gets this scholarship thing. But I ’low it’ll be good for the boy to get some learnin’ besides what he gets in the school here. It’s right kind of you, Rev’rend, to look over this application thing for me.

Well, if he is your own son, Mr. Emmett, why did you write ‘birthplace unknown’ on the line here?

Rev’rend Doane, I’m glad you asked me that question. I’ve been turnin’ it over in my mind and I’ve jest about come to the conclusion it wouldn’t be nohow fair to hold it back. I didn’t lie when I said Matt was my son, because he’s been a good son to me and Marthy. But I’m not his Pa and Marthy ain’t his Ma, so could be I stretched the truth jest a mite. Rev’rend Doane, it’s a tarnal funny yarn but I’ll walk into the meetin’ house and swear to it on a stack o’Bibles as thick as a cord of wood.

You know I’ve been farming the old Corning place these past seven year? It’s good flat Connecticut bottom-land, but it isn’t like our land up in Hampshire where I was born and raised. My Pa called it the Hampshire Grants and all that was King’s land when his Pa came in there and started farming at the foot of Scuttock Mountain. That’s Injun for fires, folks say, because the Injuns used to build fires up there in the spring for some of their heathen doodads. Anyhow, up there in the mountains we see a tarnal power of quare things.

You call to mind the year we had the big thaw, about twelve years before the war? You mind the blizzard that year? I heard tell it spread down most to York. And at Fort Orange, the place they call Albany now, the Hudson froze right over, so they say. But those York folks do a sight of exaggerating, I’m told.

Anyhow, when the ice went out there was an almighty good thaw all over, and when the snow run off Scuttock mountain there was a good-sized hunk of farmland in our valley went under water. The crick on my farm flowed over the bank and there was a foot of water in the cowshed, and down in the swimmin’ hole in the back pasture wasn’t nothing but a big gully fifty foot and more across, rushing through the pasture, deep as a lake and brown as the old cow. You know freshet-floods? Full up with sticks and stones and old dead trees and somebody’s old shed floatin’ down the middle. And I swear to goodness, Parson, that stream was running along so fast I saw four-inch cobblestones floating and bumping along.

I tied the cow and the calf and Kate—she was our white mare; you mind she went lame last year and I had to shoot her, but she was just a young mare then and skittish as all get-out—but she was a good little mare.

Anyhow, I tied the whole kit and caboodle of them in the woodshed up behind the house, where they’d be dry, then I started to get the milkpail. Right then I heard the gosh-awfullest screech I ever heard in my life. Sounded like thunder and a freshet and a forest-fire all at once. I dropped the milkpail as I heard Marthy scream inside the house, and I run outside. Marthy was already there in the yard and she points up in the sky and yelled, “Look up yander!”

We stood looking up at the sky over Shattuck mountain where there was a great big—shoot now, I d’no as I can call its name but it was like a trail of fire in the sky, and it was makin’ the dangdest racket you ever heard, Rev’rend. Looked kind of like one of them Fourth-of-July skyrockets, but it was big as a house. Marthy was screaming and she grabbed me and hollered, “Hez! Hez, what in tunket is it?” And when Marthy cusses like that, Rev’rend, she don’t know what she’s saying, she’s so scared.

I was plumb scared myself. I heard Liza—that’s our young-un, Liza Grace, that got married to the Taylor boy. I heard her crying on the stoop, and she came flying out with her pinny all black and hollered to Marthy that the pea soup was burning. Marthy let out another screech and ran for the house. That’s a woman for you. So I quietened Liza down some and I went in and told Marthy it weren’t no more than one of them shooting stars. Then I went and did the milking.

But you know, while we were sitting down to supper there came the most awful grinding, screeching, pounding crash I ever heard. Sounded if it were in the back pasture but the house shook as if somethin’ had hit it.

Marthy jumped a mile and I never saw such a look on her face.

“Hez, what was that?” she asked.

“Shoot, now, nothing but the freshet,” I told her.

But she kept on about it. “You reckon that shooting star fell in our back pasture, Hez?”

“Well, now, I don’t ’low it did nothing like that,” I told her. But she was jittery as an old hen and it weren’t like her nohow. She said it sounded like trouble and I finally quietened her down by saying I’d saddle Kate up and go have a look. I kind of thought, though I didn’t tell Marthy, that somebody’s house had floated away in the freshet and run aground in our back pasture.

So I saddled up Kate and told Marthy to get some hot rum ready in case there was some poor soul run aground back there. And I rode Kate back to the back pasture.

It was mostly uphill because the top of the pasture is on high ground, and it sloped down to the crick on the other side of the rise.

Well, I reached the top of the hill and looked down. The crick were a regular river now, rushing along like Niagary. On the other side of it was a stand of timber, then the slope of Shattuck mountain. And I saw right away the long streak where all the timber had been cut out in a big scoop with roots standing up in the air and a big slide of rocks down to the water.

It was still raining a mite and the ground was sloshy and squanchy under foot. Kate scrunched her hooves and got real balky, not likin’ it a bit. When we got to the top of the pasture she started to whine and whicker and stamp, and no matter how loud I whoa-ed she kept on a-stamping and I was plumb scared she’d pitch me off in the mud. Then I started to smell a funny smell, like somethin’ burning. Now, don’t ask me how anything could burn in all that water, because I don’t know.

When we came up on the rise I saw the contraption.

Rev’rend, it was the most tarnal crazy contraption I ever saw in my life. It was bigger nor my cowshed and it was long and thin and as shiny as Marthy’s old pewter pitcher her Ma brought from England. It had a pair of red rods sticking out behind and a crazy globe fitted up where the top ought to be. It was stuck in the mud, turned halfway over on the little slide of roots and rocks, and I could see what had happened, all right.

The thing must have been—now, Rev’rend, you can say what you like but that thing must have flew across Shattuck and landed on the slope in the trees, then turned over and slid down the hill. That must have been the crash we heard. The rods weren’t just red, they were red-hot. I could hear them sizzle as the rain hit ’em.

In the middle of the infernal contraption there was a door, and it hung all to-other as if every hinge on it had been wrenched halfway off. As I pushed old Kate alongside it I heared somebody hollering alongside the contraption. I didn’t nohow get the words but it must have been for help, because I looked down and there was a man a-flopping along in the water.

He was a big fellow and he wasn’t swimming, just thrashin’ and hollering. So I pulled off my coat and boots and hove in after him. The stream was running fast but he was near the edge and I managed to catch on to an old tree-root and hang on, keeping his head out of the water till I got my feet aground. Then I hauled him onto the bank. Up above me Kate was still whinnying and raising Ned and I shouted at her as I bent over the man.

Wal, Rev’rend, he sure did give me a surprise—weren’t no proper man I’d ever seed before. He was wearing some kind of red clothes, real shiny and sort of stretchy and not wet from the water, like you’d expect, but dry and it felt like that silk and India-rubber stuff mixed together. And it was such a bright red that at first I didn’t see the blood on it. When I did I knew he were a goner. His chest were all stove in, smashed to pieces. One of the old tree-roots must have jabbed him as the current flung him down. I thought he were dead already, but then he opened up his eyes.

A funny color they were, greeny yellow. And I swear, Rev’rend, when he opened them eyes I felt he was readin’ my mind. I thought maybe he might be one of them circus fellers in their flying contraptions that hang at the bottom of a balloon.

He spoke to me in English, kind of choky and stiff, not like Joe the Portygee sailor or like those tarnal dumb Frenchies up Canady way, but—well, funny. He said, “My baby—in ship. Get—baby…” He tried to say more but his eyes went shut and he moaned hard.

I yelped, “Godamighty!” ’Scuse me, Rev’rend, but I was so blame upset that’s just what I did say, “Godamighty, man, you mean there’s a baby in that there dingfol contraption?” He just moaned so after spreadin’ my coat around the man a little bit I just plunged in that there river again.

Rev’rend, I heard tell once about some tomfool idiot going over Niagary in a barrel, and I tell you it was like that when I tried crossin’ that freshet to reach the contraption.

I went under and down, and was whacked by floating sticks and whirled around in the freshet. But somehow, I d’no how except by the pure grace of God, I got across that raging torrent and clumb up to where the crazy dingfol machine was sitting.

Ship, he’d called it. But that were no ship, Rev’rend, it was some flying dragon kind of thing. It was a real scarey lookin’ thing but I clumb up to the little door and hauled myself inside it. And, sure enough, there was other people in the cabin, only they was all dead.

There was a lady and a man and some kind of an animal looked like a bobcat only smaller, with a funny-shaped rooster-comb thing on its head. They all—even the cat-thing—was wearing those shiny, stretchy clo’es. And they all was so battered and smashed I didn’t even bother to hunt for their heartbeats. I could see by a look they was dead as a doornail.

Then I heard a funny little whimper, like a kitten, and in a funny, rubber-cushioned thing there’s a little boy baby, looked about six months old. He was howling lusty enough, and when I lifted him out of the cradle kind of thing, I saw why. That boy baby, he was wet, and his little arm was twisted under him. That there flying contraption must have smashed down awful hard, but that rubber hammock was so soft and cushiony all it did to him was jolt him good.

I looked around but I couldn’t find anything to wrap him in. And the baby didn’t have a stitch on him except a sort of spongy paper diaper, wet as sin. So I finally lifted up the lady, who had a long cape thing around her, and I took the cape off her real gentle. I knew she was dead and she wouldn’t be needin’ it, and that boy baby would catch his death if I took him out bare-naked like that. She was probably the baby’s Ma; a right pretty woman she was but smashed up something shameful.

So anyhow, to make a long story short, I got that baby boy back across that Niagary falls somehow, and laid him down by his Pa. The man opened his eyes kind, and said in a choky voice, “Take care—baby.”

I told him I would, and said I’d try to get him up to the house where Marthy could doctor him. The man told me not to bother. “I dying,” he says. “We come from planet—star up there—crash here—” His voice trailed off into a language I couldn’t understand, and he looked like he was praying.

I bent over him and held his head on my knees real easy, and I said, “Don’t worry, mister, I’ll take care of your little fellow until your folks come after him. Before God I will.”

So the man closed his eyes and I said, Our Father which art in Heaven, and when I got through he was dead.

I got him up on Kate, but he was cruel heavy for all he was such a tall skinny fellow. Then I wrapped that there baby up in the cape thing and took him home and give him to Marthy. And the next day I buried the fellow in the south medder and next meetin’ day we had the baby baptized Matthew Daniel Emmett, and brung him up just like our own kids. That’s all.

All? Mr. Emmett, didn’t you ever find out where that ship really came from?

Why, Rev’rend, he said it come from a star. Dying men don’t lie, you know that. I asked the Teacher about them planets he mentioned and she says that on one of the planets—can’t rightly remember the name, March or Mark or something like that—she says some big scientist feller with a telescope saw canals on that planet, and they’d hev to be pretty near as big as this-here Erie canal to see them so far off. And if they could build canals on that planet I d’no why they couldn’t build a flying machine.

I went back the next day when the water was down a little, to see if I couldn’t get the rest of them folks and bury them, but the flying machine had broke up and washed down the crick.

Marthy’s still got the cape thing. She’s a powerful saving woman. We never did tell Matt, though. Might make him feel funny to think he didn’t really b’long to us.

But—but—Mr. Emmett, didn’t anybody ask questions about the baby—where you got it?

Well, now, I’ll ’low they was curious, because Marthy hadn’t been in the family way and they knew it. But up here folks minds their own business pretty well, and I jest let them wonder. I told Liza Grace I’d found her new little brother in the back pasture, and o’course it was the truth. When Liza Grace growed up she thought it was jest one of those yarns old folks tell the little shavers.

And has Matthew ever shown any differences from the other children that you could see?

Well, Rev’rend, not so’s you could notice it. He’s powerful smart, but his real Pa and Ma must have been right smart too to build a flying contraption that could come so far.

O’course, when he were about twelve years old he started reading folks’ minds, which didn’t seem exactly right. He’d tell Marthy what I was thinkin’ and things like that. He was just at the pesky age. Liza Grace and Minnie were both a-courtin’ then, and he’d drive their boy friends crazy telling them what Liza Grace and Minnie were a-thinking and tease the gals by telling them what the boys were thinking about.

There weren’t no harm in the boy, though, it was all teasing. But it just weren’t decent, somehow. So I tuk him out behind the woodshed and give his britches a good dusting just to remind him that that kind of thing weren’t polite nohow. And Rev’rend Doane, he ain’t never done it sence.

EARTHMEN BEARING GIFTS, by Fredric Brown

DHAR Ry sat alone in his room, meditating. From outside the door he caught a thought wave equivalent to a knock, and, glancing at the door, he willed it to slide open.

It opened. “Enter, my friend,” he said. He could have projected the idea telepathically; but with only two persons present, speech was more polite.

Ejon Khee entered. “You are up late tonight, my leader,” he said.

“Yes, Khee. Within an hour the Earth rocket is due to land, and I wish to see it. Yes, I know, it will land a thousand miles away, if their calculations are correct. Beyond the horizon. But if it lands even twice that far the flash of the atomic explosion should be visible. And I have waited long for first contact. For even though no Earthman will be on that rocket, it will still be first contact—for them. Of course our telepath teams have been reading their thoughts for many centuries, but—this will be the first physical contact between Mars and Earth.”

Khee made himself comfortable on one of the low chairs. “True,” he said. “I have not followed recent reports too closely, though. Why are they using an atomic warhead? I know they suppose our planet is uninhabited, but still—”

“They will watch the flash through their lunar telescopes and get a—what do they call it?—a spectroscopic analysis. That will tell them more than they know now (or think they know; much of it is erroneous) about the atmosphere of our planet and the composition of its surface. It is—call it a sighting shot, Khee. They’ll be here in person within a few oppositions. And then—”

Mars was holding out, waiting for Earth to come. What was left of Mars, that is; this one small city of about nine hundred beings. The civilization of Mars was older than that of Earth, but it was a dying one. This was what remained of it: one city, nine hundred people. They were waiting for Earth to make contact, for a selfish reason and for an unselfish one.

* * * *

MARTIAN civilization had developed in a quite different direction from that of Earth. It had developed no important knowledge of the physical sciences, no technology. But it had developed social sciences to the point where there had not been a single crime, let alone a war, on Mars for fifty thousand years. And it had developed fully the parapsychological sciences of the mind, which Earth was just beginning to discover.

Mars could teach Earth much. How to avoid crime and war to begin with. Beyond those simple things lay telepathy, telekinesis, empathy….

And Earth would, Mars hoped, teach them something even more valuable to Mars: how, by science and technology—which it was too late for Mars to develop now, even if they had the type of minds which would enable them to develop these things—to restore and rehabilitate a dying planet, so that an otherwise dying race might live and multiply again.

Each planet would gain greatly, and neither would lose.

And tonight was the night when Earth would make its first sighting shot. Its next shot, a rocket containing Earthmen, or at least an Earthman, would be at the next opposition, two Earth years, or roughly four Martian years, hence. The Martians knew this, because their teams of telepaths were able to catch at least some of the thoughts of Earthmen, enough to know their plans. Unfortunately, at that distance, the connection was one-way. Mars could not ask Earth to hurry its program. Or tell Earth scientists the facts about Mars’ composition and atmosphere which would have made this preliminary shot unnecessary.

Tonight Ry, the leader (as nearly as the Martian word can be translated), and Khee, his administrative assistant and closest friend, sat and meditated together until the time was near. Then they drank a toast to the future—in a beverage based on menthol, which had the same effect on Martians as alcohol on Earthmen—and climbed to the roof of the building in which they had been sitting. They watched toward the north, where the rocket should land. The stars shone brilliantly and unwinkingly through the atmosphere.

* * * *

IN Observatory No. 1 on Earth’s moon, Rog Everett, his eye at the eyepiece of the spotter scope, said triumphantly, “Thar she blew, Willie. And now, as soon as the films are developed, we’ll know the score on that old planet Mars.” He straightened up—there’d be no more to see now—and he and Willie Sanger shook hands solemnly. It was an historical occasion.

“Hope it didn’t kill anybody. Any Martians, that is. Rog, did it hit dead center in Syrtis Major?”

“Near as matters. I’d say it was maybe a thousand miles off, to the south. And that’s damn close on a fifty-million-mile shot. Willie, do you really think there are any Martians?”

Willie thought a second and then said, “No.”

He was right.

HAPPY ENDING, by Fredric Brown and Mack Reynolds

There were four men in the lifeboat that came down from the space-cruiser. Three of them were still in the uniform of the Galactic Guards.

The fourth sat in the prow of the small craft looking down at their goal, hunched and silent, bundled up in a greatcoat against the coolness of space—a greatcoat which he would never need again after this morning. The brim of his hat was pulled down far over his forehead, and he studied the nearing shore through dark-lensed glasses. Bandages, as though for a broken jaw, covered most of the lower part of his face.

He realized suddenly that the dark glasses, now that they had left the cruiser, were unnecessary. He slipped them off. After the cinematographic grays his eyes had seen through these lenses for so long, the brilliance of the color below him was almost like a blow. He blinked, and looked again.

They were rapidly settling toward a shoreline, a beach. The sand was a dazzling, unbelievable white such as had never been on his home planet. Blue the sky and water, and green the edge of the fantastic jungle. There was a flash of red in the green, as they came still closer, and he realized suddenly that it must be a marigee, the semi-intelligent Venusian parrot once so popular as pets throughout the solar system.

Throughout the system blood and steel had fallen from the sky and ravished the planets, but now it fell no more.

And now this. Here in this forgotten portion of an almost completely destroyed world it had not fallen at all.

Only in some place like this, alone, was safety for him. Elsewhere—anywhere—imprisonment or, more likely, death. There was danger, even here. Three of the crew of the space-cruiser knew. Perhaps, someday, one of them would talk. Then they would come for him, even here.

But that was a chance he could not avoid. Nor were the odds bad, for three people out of a whole solar system knew where he was. And those three were loyal fools.

The lifeboat came gently to rest. The hatch swung open and he stepped out and walked a few paces up the beach. He turned and waited while the two spacemen who had guided the craft brought his chest out and carried it across the beach and to the corrugated-tin shack just at the edge of the trees. That shack had once been a space-radar relay station. Now the equipment it had held was long gone, the antenna mast taken down. But the shack still stood. It would be his home for a while. A long while. The two men returned to the lifeboat preparatory to leaving.

And now the captain stood facing him, and the captain’s face was a rigid mask. It seemed with an effort that the captain’s right arm remained at his side, but that effort had been ordered. No salute.

The captain’s voice, too, was rigid with unemotion. “Number One…”

“Silence!” And then, less bitterly. “Come further from the boat before you again let your tongue run loose. Here.” They had reached the shack.

“You are right, Number…”

“No. I am no longer Number One. You must continue to think of me as Mister Smith, your cousin, whom you brought here for the reasons you explained to the under-officers, before you surrender your ship. If you think of me so, you will be less likely to slip in your speech.”

“There is nothing further I can do—Mister Smith?”

“Nothing. Go now.”

“And I am ordered to surrender the—”

“There are no orders. The war is over, lost. I would suggest thought as to what spaceport you put into. In some you may receive humane treatment. In others—”

The captain nodded. “In others, there is great hatred. Yes. That is all?”

“That is all. And, Captain, your running of the blockade, your securing of fuel en route, have constituted a deed of high valor. All I can give you in reward is my thanks. But now go. Goodbye.”

“Not goodbye,” the captain blurted impulsively, “but hasta la vista, auf Wiedersehen, until the day…you will permit me, for the last time to address you and salute?”

The man in the greatcoat shrugged. “As you will.”

Click of heels and a salute that once greeted the Caesars, and later the pseudo-Aryan of the 20th Century, and, but yesterday, he who was now known as the last of the dictators. “Farewell, Number One!”

“Farewell,” he answered emotionlessly.

* * * *

Mr. Smith, a black dot on the dazzling white sand, watched the lifeboat disappear up into the blue, finally into the haze of the upper atmosphere of Venus. That eternal haze that would always be there to mock his failure and his bitter solitude.

The slow days snarled by, and the sun shone dimly, and the marigees screamed in the early dawn and all day and at sunset, and sometimes there were the six-legged baroons, monkey-like in the trees, that gibbered at him. And the rains came and went away again.

At nights there were drums in the distance. Not the martial roll of marching, nor yet a threatening note of savage hate. Just drums, many miles away, throbbing rhythm for native dances or exorcising, perhaps, the forest-night demons. He assumed these Venusians had their superstitions, all other races had. There was no threat, for him, in that throbbing that was like the beating of the jungle’s heart.

Mr. Smith knew that, for although his choice of destinations had been a hasty choice, yet there had been time for him to read the available reports. The natives were harmless and friendly. A Terran missionary had lived among them some time ago—before the outbreak of the war. They were a simple, weak race. They seldom went far from their villages; the space-radar operator who had once occupied the shack reported that he had never seen one of them.

So, there would be no difficulty in avoiding the natives, nor danger if he did encounter them.

Nothing to worry about, except the bitterness.

Not the bitterness of regret, but of defeat. Defeat at the hands of the defeated. The damned Martians who came back after he had driven them halfway across their damned arid planet. The Jupiter Satellite Confederation landing endlessly on the home planet, sending their vast armadas of spacecraft daily and nightly to turn his mighty cities into dust. In spite of everything; in spite of his score of ultra-vicious secret weapons and the last desperate efforts of his weakened armies, most of whose men were under twenty or over forty.

The treachery even in his own army, among his own generals and admirals. The turn of Luna, that had been the end.

His people would rise again. But not, now after Armageddon, in his lifetime. Not under him, nor another like him. The last of the dictators.

Hated by a solar system, and hating it.

It would have been intolerable, save that he was alone. He had foreseen that—the need for solitude. Alone, he was still Number One. The presence of others would have forced recognition of his miserably changed status. Alone, his pride was undamaged. His ego was intact.

* * * *

The long days, and the marigees’ screams, the slithering swish of the surf, the ghost-quiet movements of the baroons in the trees and the raucousness of their shrill voices. Drums.

Those sounds, and those alone. But perhaps silence would have been worse.

For the times of silence were louder. Times he would pace the beach at night and overhead would be the roar of jets and rockets, the ships that had roared over New Albuquerque, his capitol, in those last days before he had fled. The crump of bombs and the screams and the blood, and the flat voices of his folding generals.

Those were the days when the waves of hatred from the conquered peoples beat upon his country as the waves of a stormy sea beat upon crumbling cliffs. Leagues back of the battered lines, you could feel that hate and vengeance as a tangible thing, a thing that thickened the air, that made breathing difficult and talking futile.

And the spacecraft, the jets, the rockets, the damnable rockets, more every day and every night, and ten coming for every one shot down. Rocket ships raining hell from the sky, havoc and chaos and the end of hope.

And then he knew that he had been hearing another sound, hearing it often and long at a time. It was a voice that shouted invective and ranted hatred and glorified the steel might of his planet and the destiny of a man and a people.

It was his own voice, and it beat back the waves from the white shore, it stopped their wet encroachment upon this, his domain. It screamed back at the baroons and they were silent. And at times he laughed, and the marigees laughed. Sometimes, the queerly shaped Venusian trees talked too, but their voices were quieter. The trees were submissive, they were good subjects.

Sometimes, fantastic thoughts went through his head. The race of trees, the pure race of trees that never interbred, that stood firm always. Someday the trees—

But that was just a dream, a fancy. More real were the marigees and the kifs. They were the ones who persecuted him. There was the marigee who would shriek “All is lost!” He had shot at it a hundred times with his needle gun, but always it flew away unharmed. Sometimes it did not even fly away.

“All is lost!”

At last he wasted no more needle darts. He stalked it to strangle it with his bare hands. That was better. On what might have been the thousandth try, he caught it and killed it, and there was warm blood on his hands and feathers were flying.

That should have ended it, but it didn’t. Now there were a dozen marigees that screamed that all was lost. Perhaps there had been a dozen all along. Now he merely shook his fist at them or threw stones.

The kifs, the Venusian equivalent of the Terran ant, stole his food. But that did not matter; there was plenty of food. There had been a cache of it in the shack, meant to restock a space-cruiser, and never used. The kifs would not get at it until he opened a can, but then, unless he ate it all at once, they ate whatever he left. That did not matter. There were plenty of cans. And always fresh fruit from the jungle. Always in season, for there were no seasons here, except the rains.

But the kifs served a purpose for him. They kept him sane, by giving him something tangible, something inferior, to hate.

Oh, it wasn’t hatred, at first. Mere annoyance. He killed them in a routine sort of way at first. But they kept coming back. Always there were kifs. In his larder, wherever he did it. In his bed. He sat the legs of the cot in dishes of gasoline, but the kifs still got in. Perhaps they dropped from the ceiling, although he never caught them doing it.

They bothered his sleep. He’d feel them running over him, even when he’d spent an hour picking the bed clean of them by the light of the carbide lantern. They scurried with tickling little feet and he could not sleep.

He grew to hate them, and the very misery of his nights made his days more tolerable by giving them an increasing purpose. A pogrom against the kifs. He sought out their holes by patiently following one bearing a bit of food, and he poured gasoline into the hole and the earth around it, taking satisfaction in the thought of the writhings in agony below. He went about hunting kifs, to step on them. To stamp them out. He must have killed millions of kifs.

But always there were as many left. Never did their number seem to diminish in the slightest. Like the Martians—but unlike the Martians, they did not fight back.

Theirs was the passive resistance of a vast productivity that bred kifs ceaselessly, overwhelmingly, billions to replace millions. Individual kifs could be killed, and he took savage satisfaction in their killing, but he knew his methods were useless save for the pleasure and the purpose they gave him. Sometimes the pleasure would pall in the shadow of its futility, and he would dream of mechanized means of killing them.

He read carefully what little material there was in his tiny library about the kif. They were astonishingly like the ants of Terra. So much that there had been speculation about their relationship—that didn’t interest him. How could they be killed, en masse? Once a year, for a brief period, they took on the characteristics of the army ants of Terra. They came from their holes in endless numbers and swept everything before them in their devouring march. He wet his lips when he read that. Perhaps the opportunity would come then to destroy, to destroy, and destroy.

Almost, Mr. Smith forgot people and the solar system and what had been. Here in this new world, there was only he and the kifs. The baroons and the marigees didn’t count. They had no order and no system. The kifs—

In the intensity of his hatred there slowly filtered through a grudging admiration. The kifs were true totalitarians. They practiced what he had preached to a mightier race, practiced it with a thoroughness beyond the kind of man to comprehend.

Theirs the complete submergence of the individual to the state, theirs the complete ruthlessness of the true conqueror, the perfect selfless bravery of the true soldier.

But they got into his bed, into his clothes, into his food.

They crawled with intolerable tickling feet.

Nights he walked the beach, and that night was one of the noisy nights. There were high-flying, high-whining jet-craft up there in the moonlight sky and their shadows dappled the black water of the sea. The planes, the rockets, the jet-craft, they were what had ravaged his cities, had turned his railroads into twisted steel, had dropped their H-Bombs on his most vital factories.

He shook his fist at them and shrieked imprecations at the sky.

And when he had ceased shouting, there were voices on the beach. Conrad’s voice in his ear, as it had sounded that day when Conrad had walked into the palace, white-faced, and forgotten the salute. “There is a breakthrough at Denver, Number One! Toronto and Monterey are in danger. And in the other hemispheres—” His voice cracked. “—the damned Martians and the traitors from Luna are driving over the Argentine. Others have landed near New Petrograd. It is a rout. All is lost!”

Voices crying, “Number One, hail! Number One, hail!”

A sea of hysterical voices. “Number One, hail! Number One—”

A voice that was louder, higher, more frenetic than any of the others. His memory of his own voice, calculated but inspired, as he’d heard it on play-backs of his own speeches.

The voices of children chanting, “To thee, O Number One—” He couldn’t remember the rest of the words, but they had been beautiful words. That had been at the public school meet in the New Los Angeles. How strange that he should remember, here and now, the very tone of his voice and inflection, the shining wonder in their children’s eyes. Children only, but they were willing to kill and die, for him, convinced that all that was needed to cure the ills of the race was a suitable leader to follow.

“All is lost!”

And suddenly the monster jet-craft were swooping downward and starkly he realized what a clear target he presented, here against the white moonlit beach. They must see him.

The crescendo of motors as he ran, sobbing now in fear, for the cover of the jungle. Into the screening shadow of the giant trees, and the sheltering blackness.

He stumbled and fell, was up and running again. And now his eyes could see in the dimmer moonlight that filtered through the branches overhead. Stirrings there, in the branches. Stirrings and voices in the night. Voices in and of the night. Whispers and shrieks of pain. Yes, he’d shown them pain, and now their tortured voices ran with him through the knee-deep, night-wet grass among the trees.

The night was hideous with noise. Red noises, an almost tangible din that he could nearly feel as well as he could see and hear it. And after a while his breath came raspingly, and there was a thumping sound that was the beating of his heart and the beating of the night.

And then, he could run no longer, and he clutched a tree to keep from falling, his arms trembling about it, and his face pressed against the impersonal roughness of the bark. There was no wind, but the tree swayed back and forth and his body with it.

Then, as abruptly as light goes on when a switch is thrown, the noise vanished. Utter silence, and at last he was strong enough to let go his grip on the tree and stand erect again, to look about to get his bearings.

One tree was like another, and for a moment he thought he’d have to stay here until daylight. Then he remembered that the sound of the surf would give him his directions. He listened hard and heard it, faint and far away.

And another sound—one that he had never heard before—faint, also, but seeming to come from his right and quite near.

He looked that way, and there was a patch of opening in the trees above. The grass was waving strangely in that area of moonlight. It moved, although there was no breeze to move it. And there was an almost sudden edge, beyond which the blades thinned out quickly to barrenness.

And the sound—it was like the sound of the surf, but it was continuous. It was more like the rustle of dry leaves, but there were no dry leaves to rustle.

Mr. Smith took a step toward the sound and looked down. More grass bent, and fell, and vanished, even as he looked. Beyond the moving edge of devastation was a brown floor of the moving bodies of kifs.

Row after row, orderly rank after orderly rank, marching resistlessly onward. Billions of kifs, an army of kifs, eating their way across the night.

Fascinated, he stared down at them. There was no danger, for their progress was slow. He retreated a step to keep beyond their front rank. The sound, then, was the sound of chewing.

He could see one edge of the column, and it was a neat, orderly edge. And there was discipline, for the ones on the outside were larger than those in the center.

He retreated another step—and then, quite suddenly, his body was afire in several spreading places. The vanguard. Ahead of the rank that ate away the grass.

His boots were brown with kifs.

Screaming with pain, he whirled about and ran, beating with his hands at the burning spots on his body. He ran head-on into a tree, bruising his face horribly, and the night was scarlet with pain and shooting fire.

But he staggered on, almost blindly, running, writhing, tearing off his clothes as he ran.

This, then, was pain. There was a shrill screaming in his ears that must have been the sound of his own voice.

When he could no longer run, he crawled. Naked, now, and with only a few kifs still clinging to him. And the blind tangent of his flight had taken him well out of the path of the advancing army.

But stark fear and the memory of unendurable pain drove him on. His knees raw now, he could no longer crawl. But he got himself erect again on trembling legs, and staggered on. Catching hold of a tree and pushing himself away from it to catch the next.

Falling, rising, falling again. His throat raw from the screaming invective of his hate. Bushes and the rough bark of trees tore his flesh.

* * * *

Into the village compound just before dawn, staggered a man, a naked terrestrial. He looked about with dull eyes that seemed to see nothing and understand nothing.

The females and young ran before him, even the males retreated.

He stood there, swaying, and the incredulous eyes of the natives widened as they saw the condition of his body, and the blankness of his eyes.

When he made no hostile move, they came closer again, formed a wondering, chattering circle about him, these Venusian humanoids. Some ran to bring the chief and the chief’s son, who knew everything.

The mad, naked human opened his lips as though he were going to speak, but instead, he fell. He fell, as a dead man falls. But when they turned him over in the dust, they saw that his chest still rose and fell in labored breathing.

And then came Alwa, the aged chieftain, and Nrana, his son. Alwa gave quick, excited orders. Two of the men carried Mr. Smith into the chief’s hut, and the wives of the chief and the chief’s son took over the Earthling’s care, and rubbed him with a soothing and healing salve.

But for days and nights he lay without moving and without speaking or opening his eyes, and they did not know whether he would live or die.

Then, at last, he opened his eyes. And he talked, although they could make out nothing of the things he said.

Nrana came and listened, for Nrana of all of them spoke and understood best the Earthling’s language, for he had been the special protege of the Terran missionary who had lived with them for a while.

Nrana listened, but he shook his head. “The words,” he said, “the words are of the Terran tongue, but I make nothing of them. His mind is not well.”

The aged Alwa said, “Aie. Stay beside him. Perhaps as his body heals, his words will be beautiful words as were the words of the Father-of-Us who, in the Terran tongue, taught us of the gods and their good.”

So they cared for him well, and his wounds healed, and the day came when he opened his eyes and saw the handsome blue-complexioned face of Nrana sitting there beside him, and Nrana said softly, “Good day, Mr. Man of Earth. You feel better, no?”

There was no answer, and the deep-sunken eyes of the man on the sleeping mat stared, glared at him. Nrana could see that those eyes were not yet sane, but he saw, too, that the madness in them was not the same that it had been. Nrana did not know the words for delirium and paranoia, but he could distinguish between them.

No longer was the Earthling a raving maniac, and Nrana made a very common error, an error more civilized beings than he have often made. He thought the paranoia was an improvement over the wider madness. He talked on, hoping the Earthling would talk too, and he did not recognize the danger of his silence.

“We welcome you, Earthling,” he said, “and hope that you will live among us, as did the Father-of-Us, Mr. Gerhardt. He taught us to worship the true gods of the high heavens. Jehovah, and Jesus and their prophets the men from the skies. He taught us to pray and to love our enemies.”

And Nrana shook his head sadly, “But many of our tribe have gone back to the older gods, the cruel gods. They say there has been great strife among the outsiders, and no more remain upon all of Venus. My father, Alwa, and I are glad another one has come. You will be able to help those of us who have gone back. You can teach us love and kindliness.”

The eyes of the dictator closed. Nrana did not know whether or not he slept, but Nrana stood up quietly to leave the hut. In the doorway, he turned and said, “We pray for you.”

And then, joyously, he ran out of the village to seek the others, who were gathering bela-berries for the feast of the fourth event.

When, with several of them, he returned to the village, the Earthling was gone. The hut was empty.

Outside the compound they found, at last, the trail of his passing. They followed and it led to a stream and along the stream until they came to the tabu of the green pool, and could go no farther.

“He went downstream,” said Alwa gravely. “He sought the sea and the beach. He was well then, in his mind, for he knew that all streams go to the sea.”

“Perhaps he had a ship-of-the-sky there at the beach,” Nrana said worriedly. “All Earthlings come from the sky. The Father-of-Us told us that.”

“Perhaps he will come back to us,” said Alwa. His old eyes misted.

* * * *

Mr. Smith was coming back all right, and sooner than they had dared to hope. As soon in fact, as he could make the trip to the shack and return. He came back dressed in clothing very different from the garb the other white man had worn. Shining leather boots and the uniform of the Galactic Guard, and a wide leather belt with a holster for his needle gun.

But the gun was in his hand when, at dusk, he strode into the compound.

He said, “I am Number One, the Lord of all the Solar System, and your ruler. Who was chief among you?”

Alwa had been in his hut, but he heard the words and came out. He understood the words, but not their meaning. He said, “Earthling, we welcome you back. I am the chief.”

“You were the chief. Now you will serve me. I am the chief.”

Alwa’s old eyes were bewildered at the strangeness of this. He said, “I will serve you, yes. All of us. But it is not fitting that an Earthling should be chief among—”

The whisper of the needle gun. Alwa’s wrinkled hands went to his scrawny neck where, just off the center, was a sudden tiny pin prick of a hole. A faint trickle of red coursed over the dark blue of his skin. The old man’s knees gave way under him as the rage of the poisoned needle dart struck him, and he fell. Others started toward him.

“Back,” said Mr. Smith. “Let him die slowly that you may all see what happens to—”

But one of the chief’s wives, one who did not understand the speech of Earth, was already lifting Alwa’s head. The needle gun whispered again, and she fell forward across him.

“I am Number One,” said Mr. Smith, “and Lord of all the planets. All who oppose me, die by—”

And then, suddenly all of them were running toward him. His finger pressed the trigger and four of them died before the avalanche of their bodies bore him down and overwhelmed him. Nrana had been first in that rush, and Nrana died.

The others tied the Earthling up and threw him into one of the huts. And then, while the women began wailing for the dead, the men made council.

They elected Kallana chief and he stood before them and said, “The Father-of-Us, the Mister Gerhardt, deceived us.” There was fear and worry in his voice and apprehension on his blue face. “If this be indeed the Lord of whom he told us—”

“He is not a god,” said another. “He is an Earthling, but there have been such before on Venus, many many of them who came long and long ago from the skies. Now they are all dead, killed in strife among themselves. It is well. This last one is one of them, but he is mad.”

And they talked long and the dusk grew into night while they talked of what they must do. The gleam of firelight upon their bodies, and the waiting drummer.

The problem was difficult. To harm one who was mad was tabu. If he was really a god, it would be worse. Thunder and lightning from the sky would destroy the village. Yet they dared not release him. Even if they took the evil weapon-that-whispered-its-death and buried it, he might find other ways to harm them. He might have another where he had gone for the first.

Yes, it was a difficult problem for them, but the eldest and wisest of them, one M’Ganne, gave them at last the answer.

“O Kallana,” he said, “Let us give him to the kifs. If they harm him—” and old M’Ganne grinned a toothless, mirthless grin “—it would be their doing and not ours.”

Kallana shuddered. “It is the most horrible of all deaths. And if he is a god—”

“If he is a god, they will not harm him. If he is mad and not a god, we will not have harmed him. It harms not a man to tie him to a tree.”

Kallana considered well, for the safety of his people was at stake. Considering, he remembered how Alwa and Nrana had died.

He said, “It is right.”

The waiting drummer began the rhythm of the council-end, and those of the men who were young and fleet lighted torches in the fire and went out into the forest to seek the kifs, who were still in their season of marching.

And after a while, having found what they sought, they returned.

They took the Earthling out with them, then, and tied him to a tree. They left him there, and they left the gag over his lips because they did not wish to hear his screams when the kifs came.

The cloth of the gag would be eaten, too, but by that time, there would be no flesh under it from which a scream might come.

They left him, and went back to the compound, and the drums took up the rhythm of propitiation to the gods for what they had done. For they had, they knew, cut very close to the corner of a tabu—but the provocation had been great and they hoped they would not be punished.

All night the drums would throb.

* * * *

The man tied to the tree struggled with his bonds, but they were strong and his writhings made the knots but tighten.

His eyes became accustomed to the darkness.

He tried to shout, “I am Number One, Lord of—”

And then, because he could not shout and because he could not loosen himself, there came a rift in his madness. He remembered who he was, and all the old hatreds and bitterness welled up in him.

He remembered, too, what had happened in the compound, and wondered why the Venusian natives had not killed him. Why, instead, they had tied him here alone in the darkness of the jungle.

Afar, he heard the throbbing of the drums, and they were like the beating of the heart of night, and there was a louder, nearer sound that was the pulse of blood in his ears as the fear came to him.

The fear that he knew why they had tied him here. The horrible, gibbering fear that, for the last time, an army marched against him.

He had time to savor that fear to the uttermost, to have it become a creeping certainty that crawled into the black corners of his soul as would the soldiers of the coming army crawl into his ears and nostrils while others would eat away his eyelids to get at the eyes behind them.

And then, and only then, did he hear the sound that was like the rustle of dry leaves, in a dank, black jungle where there were no dry leaves to rustle nor breeze to rustle them.

Horribly, Number One, the last of the dictators, did not go mad again; not exactly, but he laughed, and laughed and laughed.…

LIGHTER THAN YOU THINK, by Nelson Bond

Some joker in the dear, dead days now virtually beyond recall won two-bit immortality by declaring that, “What this country needs is a good five-cent cigar.”

Which is, of course, Victorian malarkey. What this country really needs is a good five-cent nickel. Or perhaps a good cigar-shaped spaceship. There’s a fortune waiting somewhere out in space for the man who can go out there and claim it. A fortune! And if you think I’m just talking through my hat, lend an ear…

Joyce started the whole thing. Or maybe I did when for the umpteenth time I suggested she should marry me. She smiled in a way that showed she didn’t disapprove of my persistence, but loosed a salvo of devastating negatives.

“No deal,” she crisped decisively. “Know why? No dough!”

“But, sugar,” I pleaded, “two can live as cheaply as one—”

“This is true,” replied Joyce, “only of guppies. Understand, Don, I don’t mind changing my name from Carter to Mallory. In fact, I’d rather like to. But I have no desire whatever to be known to the neighbors as ‘that poor little Mrs. Mallory in last year’s coat.’

“I’ll marry you,” she continued firmly, “when, as and if you get a promotion.”

Her answer was by no stretch of the imagination a reason for loud cheers, handsprings and cartwheels. Because I’m a Federal employee. The United States Patent Office is my beat. There’s one nice thing to be said about working for the bewhiskered old gentleman in the star-spangled stovepipe and striped britches: it’s permanent. Once you get your name inscribed on the list of Civil Service employees it takes an act of Congress to blast it off again. And of course I don’t have to remind you how long it takes that body of vote-happy windbags to act. Terrapins in treacle are greased lightning by comparison.

But advancement is painfully slow in a department where discharges are unheard of and resignations rare. When I started clerking for this madhouse I was assistant to the assistant Chief Clerk’s assistant. Now, ten years later, by dint of mighty effort and a cultivated facility for avoiding Senatorial investigations, I’ve succeeded in losing only one of those redundant adjectives.

Being my secretary, Joyce certainly realized this. But women have a remarkable ability to separate business and pleasure. So:

“A promotion,” she insisted. “Or at least a good, substantial raise.”

“In case you don’t know it,” I told her gloomily, “you are displaying a lamentably vulgar interest in one of life’s lesser values. Happiness, not money, should be man’s chief goal.”

“What good is happiness,” demanded Joyce, “if you can’t buy money with it?”

“Why hoard lucre?” I sniffed. “You can’t take it with you.”

“In that case,” said Joyce flatly, “I’m not going. There’s no use arguing, Don. I’ve made up my mind—”

At this moment our dreary little impasse was ended by a sudden tumult outside my office. There was a squealing shriek, the shuffle of footsteps, the pounding of fists upon my door. And over all the shrill tones of an old, familiar voice high-pitched in triumph.

“Let me in! I’ve got to see him instantaceously. This time I’ve got it; I’ve absolutely got it!”

Joyce and I gasped, then broke simultaneously for the door as it flew open to reveal a tableau resembling the Laocoon group sans snake and party of the third part. Back to the door and struggling valiantly to defend it stood the receptionist, Miss Thomas. Held briefly but volubly at bay was a red-thatched, buck-toothed individual—and I do mean individual!—with a face like the map of Eire, who stopped wrestling as he saw us, and grinned delightedly.

“Hello, Mr. Mallory,” he said. “Hi, Miss Joyce.”

“Pat!” we both cried at once. “Pat Pending!”

* * * *

Miss Thomas, a relative newcomer to our bailiwick, seemed baffled by the warmth of our greeting. She entered the office with our visitor, and as Joyce and I pumphandled him enthusiastically she asked, “You—you know this gentleman, Mr. Mallory?”

“I should say we do!” I chortled. “Pat, you old naughty word! Where on earth have you been hiding lately?”

“Surely you’ve heard of the great Patrick Pending, Miss Thomas?” asked Joyce.

“Pending?” faltered Miss Thomas. “I seem to have heard the name. Or seen it somewhere—”

Pat beamed upon her companionably. Stepping to my desk, he up-ended the typewriter and pointed to a legend in tiny letters stamped into the frame: Reg. U.S. Pat. Off.—Pat. Pending.

“Here, perhaps?” he suggested. “I invented this. And the airplane, and the automobile, and—oh, ever so many things. You’ll find my name inscribed on every one.

“I,” he announced modestly, “am Pat Pending—the greatest inventulator of all time.”

Miss Thomas stared at me goggle-eyed.

“Is he?” she demanded. “I mean—did he?”

I nodded solemnly.

“Not only those, but a host of other marvels. The bacular clock, the transmatter, the predictograph—”

Miss Thomas turned on Pat a gaze of fawning admiration. “How wonderful!” she breathed.

“Oh, nothing, really,” said Pat, wriggling.

“But it is! Most of the things brought here are so absurd. Automatic hat-tippers, self-defrosting galoshes, punching bags that defend themselves—” Disdainfully she indicated the display collection of screwball items we call our Chamber of Horrors. “It’s simply marvelous to meet a man who has invented things really worth while.”

Honestly, the look in her eyes was sickening. But was Pat nauseated? Not he! The big goon was lapping it up like a famished feline. His simpering smirk stretched from ear to there as he murmured, “Now, Miss Thomas—”

“Sandra, Mr. Pending,” she sighed softly. “To you just plain…Sandy. Please?”

“Well, Sandy—” Pat gulped.

I said disgustedly, “Look, you two—break it up! Love at first sight is wonderful in books, but in a Federal office I’m pretty sure it’s unconstitutional, and it may be subversive. Would you mind coming down to earth? Pat, you barged in here squalling about some new invention. Is that correct?”

With an effort Pat wrenched his gaze from his new-found admirer and nodded soberly.

“That’s right, Mr. Mallory. And a great one, too. One that will revolutionate the world. Will you give me an applicaceous form, please? I want to file it immediately.”

“Not so fast, Pat. You know the routine. What’s the nature of this remarkable discovery?”

“You may write it down,” said Pat grandiloquently, “as Pat Pending’s lightening rod.”

I glanced at Joyce, and she at me, then both of us at Pending.

“But, Pat,” I exclaimed, “that’s ridiculous! Ben Franklin invented the lightning rod two hundred years ago.”

“I said lightening,” retorted my redheaded friend, “not lightning. My invention doesn’t conduct electricity to the ground, but from it.” He brandished a slim baton which until then I had assumed to be an ordinary walking-stick. “With this,” he claimed, “I can make things weigh as much or as little as I please!”

The eyes of Sandy Thomas needed only jet propulsion to become flying saucers.

“Isn’t he wonderful, Mr. Mallory?” she gasped.

But her enthusiasm wasn’t contagious. I glowered at Pending coldly.

“Oh, come now, Pat!” I scoffed. “You can’t really believe that yourself. After all, there are such things as basic principles. Weight is not a variable factor. And so far as I know, Congress hasn’t repealed the Law of Gravity.”

Pat sighed regretfully.

“You’re always so hard to convince, Mr. Mallory,” he complained. “But—oh, well! Take this.”

He handed me the baton. I stared at it curiously. It looked rather like a British swagger stick: slim, dainty, well balanced. But the ornamental gadget at its top was not commonplace. It seemed to be a knob or a dial of some kind, divided into segments scored with vernier markings. I gazed at Pending askance.

“Well, Pat? What now?”

“How much do you weigh, Mr. Mallory?”

“One sixty-five,” I answered.

“You’re sure of that?”

“I’m not. But my bathroom scales appeared to be. This morning. Why?”

“Do you think Miss Joyce could lift you?”

I said thoughtfully, “Well, that’s an idea. But I doubt it. She won’t even let me try to support her.”

“I’m serious, Mr. Mallory. Do you think she could lift you with one hand?”

“Don’t be silly! Of course not. Nor could you.”

“There’s where you’re wrong,” said Pending firmly. “She can—and will.”

He reached forward suddenly and twisted the metal cap on the stick in my hands. As he did so, I loosed a cry of alarm and almost dropped the baton. For instantaneously I experienced a startling, flighty giddiness, a sudden loss of weight that made me feel as if my soles were treading on sponge rubber, my shoulders sprouting wings.

“Hold on to it!” cried Pat. Then to Joyce, “Lift him, Miss Joyce.”

Joyce faltered, “How? Like th-this?” and touched a finger to my midriff. Immediately my feet left the floor. I started flailing futilely to trample six inches of ozone back to the solid floorboards. To no avail. With no effort whatever Joyce raised me high above her head until my dazed dome was shedding dandruff on the ceiling!

“Well, Mr. Mallory,” said Pat, “do you believe me now?”

“Get me down out of here!” I howled. “You know I can’t stand high places!”

“You now weigh less than ten pounds—”

“Never mind the statistics. I feel like a circus balloon. How do I get down again?”

“Turn the knob on the cane,” advised Pat, “to your normal weight. Careful, now! Not so fast!”

His warning came too late. I hit the deck with a resounding thud, and the cane came clattering after. Pat retrieved it hurriedly, inspected it to make sure it was not damaged. I glared at him as I picked myself off the floor.

“You might show some interest in me,” I grumbled. “I doubt if that stick will need a liniment rubdown tonight. Okay, Pat. You’re right and I’m wrong, as you usually are. That modern variation of a witch’s broomstick does operate. Only—how?”

“That dial at the top governs weight,” explained Pat. “When you turn it—”

“Skip that. I know how it is operated. I want to know what makes it work?”

“Well,” explained Pat, “I’m not certain I can make it clear, but it’s all tied in with the elemental scientific problems of mass, weight, gravity and electric energy. What is electricity, for example—”

“I used to know,” I frowned. “But I forget.”

Joyce shook her head sorrowfully.

“Friends,” she intoned, “let us all bow our heads. This is a moment of great tragedy. The only man in the world who ever knew what electricity is—and he has forgotten!”

“That’s the whole point,” agreed Pending. “No one knows what electricity really is. All we know is how to use it. Einstein has demonstrated that the force of gravity and electrical energy are kindred; perhaps different aspects of a common phenomenon. That was my starting point.”

“So this rod, which enables you to defy the law of gravity, is electrical?”

“Electricaceous,” corrected Pat. “You see, I have transmogrified the polarifity of certain ingredular cellulations. A series of disentrigulated helicosities, activated by hypermagnetation, set up a disruptular wave motion which results in—counter-gravity!”

And there you are! Ninety-nine percent of the time Pat Pending talks like a normal human being. But ask him to explain the mechanism of one of his inventions and linguistic hell breaks loose. He begins jabbering like a schizophrenic parrot reading a Sanskrit dictionary backward! I sighed and surrendered all hope of ever actually learning how his great new discovery worked. I turned my thoughts to more important matters.

“Okay, Pat. We’ll dismiss the details as trivial and get down to brass tacks. What is your invention used for?”

“Eh?” said the redhead.

“It’s not enough that an idea is practicable,” I pointed out. “It must also be practical to be of any value in this frenzied modern era. What good is your invention?”

“What good,” demanded Joyce, “is a newborn baby?”

“Don’t change the subject,” I suggested. “Or come to think of it, maybe you should. At the diaper level, life is just one damp thing after another. But how to turn Pat’s brainchild into cold, hard cash—that’s the question before the board now.

“Individual flight a la Superman? No dice. I can testify from personal experience that once you get up there you’re completely out of control. And I can’t see any sense in humans trying to fly with jet flames scorching their base of operations.

“Elevators? Derricks? Building cranes? Possible. But lifting a couple hundred pounds is one thing. Lifting a few tons is a horse of a different color.

“No, Pat,” I continued, “I don’t see just how—”

Sandy Thomas squeaked suddenly and grasped my arm.

“That’s it, Mr. Mallory!” she cried. “That’s it!”

“Huh? What’s what?”

“You wanted to know how Pat could make money from his invention. You’ve just answered your own question.”

“I have?”

“Horses! Horse racing, to be exact. You’ve heard of handicaps, haven’t you?”

“I’m overwhelmed with them,” I nodded wearily. “A secretary who repulses my honorable advances, a receptionist who squeals in my ear—”

“Listen, Mr. Mallory, what’s the last thing horses do before they go to the post?”

“Check the tote board,” I said promptly, “to find out if I’ve got any money on them. Horses hate me. They’ve formed an equine conspiracy to prove to me the ancient adage that a fool and his money are soon parted.”

“Wait a minute!” chimed in Joyce thoughtfully. “I know what Sandy means. They weigh in. Is that right?”

“Exactly! The more weight a horse is bearing, the slower it runs. That’s the purpose of handicapping. But if a horse that was supposed to be carrying more than a hundred pounds was actually only carrying ten—Well, you see?”

Sandy paused, breathless. I stared at her with a gathering respect.

“Never underestimate the power of a woman,” I said, “when it comes to devising new and ingenious methods of perpetrating petty larceny. There’s only one small fly in the ointment, so far as I can see. How do we convince some racehorse owner he should become a party to this gentle felony?”

“Oh, you don’t have to,” smiled Sandy cheerfully. “I’m already convinced.”

“You? You own a horse?”

“Yes. Haven’t you ever heard of Tapwater?”

“Oh, sure! That drip’s running all the time!”

Joyce tossed me a reproving glance.

“This is a matter of gravity, Donald,” she stated, “and you keep treating it with levity. Sandy, do you really own Tapwater? He’s the colt who won the Monmouth Futurity, isn’t he?”

“That’s right. And four other starts this season. That’s been our big trouble. He shows such promise that the judges have placed him under a terrific weight handicap. To run in next week’s Gold Stakes, for instance, he would have to carry 124 pounds. I was hesitant to enter him because of that. But with Pat’s new invention—” She turned to Pat, eyes glowing—“he could enter and win!”

Pat said uncertainly, “I don’t know. I don’t like gambling. And it doesn’t seem quite ethical, somehow—”

I asked Sandy, “Suppose he ran carrying 124. What would be the probable odds?”

“High,” she replied, “Very high. Perhaps as high as forty to one.”

“In that case,” I decided, “it’s not only ethical, it’s a moral obligation. If you’re opposed to gambling, Pat, what better way can you think of to put the parimutuels out of business?”

“And besides,” Sandy pointed out, “this would be a wonderful opportunity to display your new discovery before an audience of thousands. Well, Pat? What do you say?”

Pat hesitated, caught a glimpse of Sandy’s pleading eyes, and was lost.

“Very well,” he said. “We’ll do it. Mr. Mallory, enter Tapwater in the Gold Stakes. We’ll put on the most spectaceous exhibition in the history of gambilizing!”

* * * *

Thus it was that approximately one week later our piratical little crew was assembled once again, this time in the paddock at Laurel. In case you’re an inland aborigine, let me explain that Laurel race track (from the township of the same name) is where horse fanciers from the District of Columbia go to abandon their Capitol and capital on weekends.

We were briefing our jockey—a scrawny youth with a pair of oversized ears—on the use of Pat’s lightening rod. Being short on gray matter as well as on stature, he wasn’t getting it at all.

“You mean,” he said for the third or thirty-third time, “you don’t want I should hit the nag with this bat?”

“Heavens, no!” gasped Pat, blanching. “It’s much too delicate for that.”

“Don’t fool yourself, mister. Horses can stand a lot of leather.”

“Not the horse, stupid,” I said. “The bat. This is the only riding crop of its kind in the world. We don’t want it damaged. All you have to do is carry it. We’ll do the rest.”

“How about setting the dial, Don?” asked Joyce.

“Pat will do that just before the horses move onto the track. Now let’s get going. It’s weigh-in time.”

We moved to the scales with our rider. He stepped aboard the platform, complete with silks and saddle, and the spinner leaped to a staggering 102, whereupon the officials started gravely handing him little leather sacks.

“What’s this?” I whispered to Sandy. “Prizes for malnutrition? He must have won all the blackjacks east of the Mississippi.”

“The handicap,” she whispered back. “Lead weights at one pound each.”

“If he starts to lose,” I ruminated, “they’d make wonderful ammunition—”

“One hundred and twenty-four,” announced the chief weigher-inner. “Next entry!”

We returned to Tapwater. The jockey fastened the weights to his gear, saddled up and mounted. From the track came the traditional bugle call. Sandy nodded to Pat.

“All right, Pat. Now!”

Pending twisted the knob on his lightening rod and handed the stick to the jockey. The little horseman gasped, rose three inches in his stirrups, and almost let go of the baton.

“H-hey!” he exclaimed. “I feel funny. I feel—”

“Never mind that,” I told him. “Just you hold on to that rod until the race is over. And when you come back, give it to Pat immediately. Understand?”

“Yes. But I feel so—so lightheaded—”

“That’s because you’re featherbrained,” I advised him. “Now, get going. Giddyap, Dobbin!”

I patted Tapwater’s flank, and so help me Newton, I think that one gentle tap pushed the colt half way to the starting gate! He pattered across the turf with a curious bouncing gait as if he were running on tiptoe. We hastened to our seats in the grandstand.

“Did you get all the bets down?” asked Joyce.

I nodded and displayed a deck of ducats. “It may not have occurred to you, my sweet,” I announced gleefully, “but these pasteboards are transferrable on demand to rice and old shoes, the sweet strains of Oh, Promise Me! and the scent of orange blossoms. You insisted I should have a nest egg before you would murmur, ‘I do’? Well, after this race these tickets will be worth—” I cast a swift last glance at the tote board’s closing odds, quoting Tapwater at 35 to 1—“approximately seventy thousand dollars!”

“Donald!” gasped Joyce. “You didn’t bet all your savings?”

“Every cent,” I told her cheerfully. “Why not?”

“But if something should go wrong! If Tapwater should lose!”

“He won’t. See what I mean?”

For even as we were talking, the bell jangled, the crowd roared, and the horses were off. Eight entries surged from the starting gate. And already one full length out in front pranced the weight-free, lightfoot Tapwater!

At the quarter post our colt had stretched his lead to three lengths, and I shouted in Pending’s ear, “How much does that jockey weigh, anyway?”

“About six pounds,” said Pat. “I turned the knob to cancel one eighteen.”

At the half, all the other horses could glimpse of Tapwater was heels. At the three-quarter post he was so far ahead that the jockey must have been lonely. As he rounded into the stretch I caught a binocular view of his face, and he looked dazed and a little frightened. He wasn’t actually riding Tapwater. The colt was simply skimming home, and he was holding on for dear life to make sure he didn’t blow off the horse’s back. The result was a foregone conclusion, of course. Tapwater crossed the finish line nine lengths ahead, setting a new track record.

The crowd went wild. Over the hubbub I clutched Pat’s arm and bawled, “I’ll go collect our winnings. Hurry down to the track and swap that lightening rod for the real bat we brought along. He’ll have to weigh out again, you know. Scoot!”

The others vanished paddockward as I went for the big payoff. It was dreary at the totalizer windows. I was one of a scant handful who had bet on Tapwater, so it took no time at all to scoop into the valise I had brought along the seventy thousand bucks in crisp, green lettuce which an awed teller passed across the counter. Then I hurried back to join the others in the winner’s circle, where bedlam was not only reigning but pouring. Flashbulbs were popping all over the place, cameramen were screaming for just one more of the jockey, the owner, the fabulous Tapwater. The officials were vainly striving to quiet the tumult so they could award the prize. I found Pending worming his way out of the heart of the crowd.

“Did you get it?” I demanded.

He nodded, thrust the knobbed baton into my hand.

“You substituted the normal one?”

Again he nodded. Hastily I thrust the lightening rod out of sight into my valise, and we elbowed forward to share the triumphant moment. It was a great experience. I felt giddy with joy; I was walking on little pink clouds of happiness. Security was mine at last. And Joyce, as well.

“Ladies and gentlemen!” cried the chief official. “Your attention, please! Today we have witnessed a truly spectacular feat: the setting of a new track record by a champion racing under a tremendous handicap. I give you a magnificent racehorse—Tapwater!”

“That’s right, folks!” I bawled, carried away by the excitement. “Give this little horse a great big hand!”

Setting the example, I laid down the bag, started clapping vigorously. From a distance I heard Pat Pending’s agonized scream.

“Mr. Mallory—the suitcase! Grab it!”

I glanced down, belatedly aware of the danger of theft. But too late. The bag had disappeared.

“Hey!” I yelled. “Who swiped my bag? Police!”

“Up there, Mr. Mallory!” bawled Pat. “Jump!”

I glanced skyward. Three feet above my head and rising swiftly was the valise in which I had cached not only our winnings but Pat’s gravity-defying rod! I leaped—but in vain. I was still making feeble, futile efforts to make like the moon-hurdling nursery rhyme cow when quite a while later two strong young men in white jackets came and jabbed me with a sedative…

* * * *

Later, when time and barbiturates had dulled the biting edge of my despair, we assembled once again in my office and I made my apologies to my friends.

“It was all my fault,” I acknowledged. “I should have realized Pat hadn’t readjusted the rod when I placed it in my bag. It felt lighter. But I was so excited—”

“It was my fault,” mourned Pat, “for not changing it immediately. But I was afraid someone might see me.”

“Perhaps if we hired an airplane—?” I suggested.

Pat shook his head.

“No, Mr. Mallory. The rod was set to cancel 118 pounds. The bag weighed less than twenty. It will go miles beyond the reach of any airplane before it settles into an orbit around earth.”

“Well, there goes my dreamed-of fortune,” I said sadly. “Accompanied by the fading strains of an unplayed wedding march. I’m sorry, Joyce.”

“Isn’t there one thing you folks are overlooking?” asked Sandy Thomas. “My goodness, you’d think we had lost our last cent just because that little old bag flew away!”

“For your information,” I told her, “that is precisely what happened to me. My entire bank account vanished into the wild blue yonder. And some of Pat’s money, too.”

“But have you forgotten,” she insisted, “that we won the race? Of course the track officials were a wee bit suspicious when your suitcase took off. But they couldn’t prove anything. So they paid me the Gold Stakes prize. If we split it four ways, we all make a nice little profit.

“Or,” she added, “if you and Joyce want to make yours a double share, we could split it three ways.

“Or,” she continued hopefully, “if Pat wants to, we could make two double shares, and split it fifty-fifty?”

From the look in Pat’s eyes I knew he was stunned by this possibility. And from the look in hers, I felt she was going to make every effort to take advantage of his bewilderment.

So, as I said before, what this country needs is a good cigar-shaped spaceship. There’s a fortune waiting somewhere out in space for the man who can go out there and claim it. Seventy thousand bucks in cold, hard cash.

Indubitatiously!

RIYA’S FOUNDLING, by Algis Budrys

The loft of the feed-house, with its stacked grainsacks, was a B-72, a fort, a foxhole—any number of things, depending on Phildee’s moods.

Today it was a jumping-off place.

Phildee slipped out of his dormitory and ran across the yard to the feed-house. He dropped the big wooden latch behind him, and climbed up the ladder to the loft, depending on the slight strength of his young arms more than on his legs, which had to be lifted to straining heights before they could negotiate the man-sized rungs.

He reached the loft and stood panting, looking out over the farm through the loft door, at the light wooden fences around it, and the circling antenna of the radar tower.

Usually, he spent at least a little time each day crouched behind the grainsacks and being bigger and older, firing cooly and accurately into charging companies of burly, thick-lipped UES soldiers, or going over on one wing and whistling down on a flight of TT-34’s that scattered like frightened ducks before the fiery sleet of his wing rockets.

But today was different, today there was something he wanted to try.

He stood up on his toes and searched. He felt the touch of Miss Cowan’s mind, no different from that of anyone else—flat, unsystematic.

He sighed. Perhaps, somewhere, there was someone else like himself. For a moment, the fright of loneliness invaded him, but then faded. He took a last look at the farm, then moved away from the open door, letting his mind slip into another way of thinking.

His chubby features twisted into a scowl of concentration as he visualized reality. The scowl became a deeper grimace as he negated that reality, step by step, and substituted another.

F is for Phildee.

O is for Out.

R is for Reimann.

T is for Topology.

H is for heartsick hunger.

Abruptly, the Reimann fold became a concrete visualization. As though printed clearly in and around the air, which was simultaneously both around him and not around him, which existed/not existed in spacetime, he saw the sideslip diagram.

He twisted.

* * * *

Spring had come to Riya’s world; spring and the thousand sounds of it. The melted snow in the mountaintops ran down in traceries of leaping water, and the spring-crests raced along the creeks into the rivers. The riverbank grasses sprang into life; the plains turned green again.

Riya made her way up the path across the foothills, conscious of her shame. The green plain below her was dotted, two by two, with the figures of her people. It was spring, and Time. Only she was alone.

There was a special significance in the fact that she was here on this path in this season. The plains on either side of the brown river were her people’s territory. During the summer, the couples ranged over the grass until the dams were ready to drop their calves. Then it became the bulls’ duty to forage for their entire families until the youngsters were able to travel south to the winter range.

Through the space of years, the people had increased in numbers, the pressure of this steady growth making itself felt as the yearlings filled out on the winter range. It had become usual, as the slow drift northward was made toward the end of winter, for some of the people to split away from the main body and range beyond the gray mountains that marked the western limits of the old territories. Since these wanderers were usually the most willful and headstrong, they were regarded as quasi-outcasts by the more settled people of the old range.

But—and here Riya felt the shame pierce more strongly than ever—they had their uses, occasionally. Preoccupied in her shame, she involuntarily turned her head downward, anxious that none of the people be staring derisively upward at the shaggy brown hump of fur that was she, toiling up the path.

She was not the first—but that was meaningless. That other female people had been ugly or old, that the same unforgotten force that urged her up the mountain path had brought others here before her, meant only that she was incapable of accepting the verdict of the years that had thinned her pelt, dimmed her eyes, and broken the smooth rhythm of her gait.

In short, it meant that Riya Sair, granddam times over, spurned by every male on the old range, was willing to cross the gray mountains and risk death from the resentful wild dams for the thin hope that there was a male among the wildlings who would sire her calf.

She turned her head back to the path and hurried on, cringing in inward self-reproach at her speed.

Except for her age, Riya presented a perfect average of her people. She stood two yards high and two wide at the shoulders, a yard at the haunches, and measured three and a half yards from her muzzle to the rudimentary tail. Her legs were short and stumpy, cloven-hooved. Her massive head hung slightly lower than her shoulders, and could be lowered to within an inch or two of the ground. She was herbivorous, ruminant, and mammalian. Moreover, she had intelligence—not of a very high order, but adequate for her needs.

From a Terrestrial point of view, none of this was remarkable. Many years of evolution had gone into her fashioning—more years for her one species than for all the varieties of man that have ever been. Nevertheless, she did have some remarkable attributes.

It was one of these attributes that now enabled her to sense what happened on the path ahead of her. She stopped still, only her long fur moving in the breeze.

* * * *

Phildee—five, towheaded, round faced, chubby, dressed in a slightly grubby corduroy oversuit, and precocious—had his attributes, too. Grubby and tousled; branded with a thread of licorice from one corner of his mouth to his chin; involved in the loss of his first milk-tooth, as he was—he nevertheless slipped onto the path on Riya’s world, the highest product of Terrestrial evolution. Alice followed a white rabbit down a hole. Phildee followed Reimann down into a hole that, at the same time, followed him, and emerged—where?

Phildee didn’t know. He could have performed the calculation necessary to the task almost instantly, but he was five. It was too much trouble.

He looked up, and saw a gray slope of rock vaulting above him. He looked down, and saw it fall away toward a plain on which were scattered pairs of foraging animals. He felt a warm breeze, smelled it, saw it blow dust along the path, and saw Riya:

B is for big brown beast.

L is for looming large, looking lonely.

B? L? Bull? No—bison.

Bison:

bison (bi’sn) n. The buffalo

of the N. Amer. plains.

Phildee shook his head and scowled. No—not bison, either. What, then? He probed.

Riya took a step forward. The sight of a living organism other than a person was completely unfamiliar to her. Nevertheless, anything that small, and undeniably covered—in most areas, at least—with some kind of fur, could not, logically, be anything but a strange kind of calf. But—she stopped, and raised her head—if a calf, then where was the call?

Phildee’s probe swept past the laboring mind directly into her telepathic, instinctual centers.

Voiceless, with their environment so favorable that it had never been necessary for them to develop prehensile limbs, female people had nevertheless evolved a method of child care commensurate with their comparatively higher intelligence.

Soft as tender fingers, gentle as the human hand that smooths the awry hair back from the young forehead, Riya’s mental caress enfolded Phildee.

Phildee recoiled. The feeling was:

Warm Not candy in the mouth

Soft

Sweet

Candy in the mouth Familiar

Good

Tasty

Nice

The feeling was Not Familiar

Not Good

Not Tasty

Not Nice

WHY?:

M is for many motionless months.

T is for tense temper tantrums.

R is for rabid—NO!—rapid rolling wrench.

MTR. Mother.

Phildee’s mother wanted Phildee’s father. Phildee’s mother wanted green grass and apple trees, tight skirts and fur jackets on Fifth Avenue, men to turn and look, a little room where nobody could see her. Phildee’s mother had radiation burns. Phildee’s mother was dead.

He wavered; physically. Maintaining his position in this world was a process that demanded constant attention from the segment of his mind devoted to it. For a moment, even that small group of brain cells almost became involved in his reaction.

It was that which snapped him back into functioning logically. MTR was Mother. Mother was:

Tall “In Heaven’s Name, Doctor,

Thin when will this thing be over?”

White

Biped

BL was Riya. Riya was:

Big brown beast, looming large, looking lonely.

BL=MTR

Equation not meaningful, not valid.

Almost resolved, only a few traces of the initial conflict remained. Phildee put the tips of his right fingers to his mouth. He dug his toe into the ground, gouged a semicircular furrow, and smoothed it over with his sole.

Riya continued to look at him from where she was standing, two or three feet away. Haltingly, she reached out her mind again—hesitating not because of fear of another such reaction on Phildee’s part, for that had been far beyond her capacity to understand, but because even the slightest rebuff on the part of a child to a gesture as instinctive as a Terrestrial mother’s caress was something that none of the people had ever encountered before.

While her left-behind intellectual capacity still struggled to reconcile the feel of childhood with a visual image of complete unfamiliarity, the warm mind-caress went gently forth again.

Phildee made up his mind. Ordinarily, he was immune to the small emotional problems that beclouded less rational intellects. He was unused to functioning in other than a cause/effect universe. Mothers were usually—though sometimes not—matronly women who spent the greater part of roughly twenty years per child in conscious pre-occupation with, and/or subconscious or conscious rejection of, their offspring.

In his special case, Mother was a warm place, a frantic, hysteric voice, the pressure of the spasmodically contractile musculature linked to her hyperthyroid metabolism. Mother was a thing from before birth.

Riya—Riya bore a strong resemblance to an intelligent cow. In any physiological sense, she could no more be his mother than—

The second caress found him not unaccustomed to it. It enfolded his consciousness, tenderly, protectingly, empathetic.

Phildee gave way to instinct.

* * * *

The fur along the ridge of Riya’s spine prickled with a well-remembered happiness as she felt the hesitant answering surge in Phildee’s mind. Moving surely forward, she nuzzled his face. Phildee grinned. He ran his fingers through the thick fur at the base of her short neck.

Big warm wall of brown fur.

Cool, happy nose.

Happy, happy, eyes.

Great joy welled up in Riya. No shameful trot across the mountains faced her now. No hesitant approach to the huddled, suspicious wildlings was before her. The danger of sharp female hooves to be avoided, of skulking at the edge of the herd in hope of an anxious male, was a thing no longer to be half-fearfully approached.

With a nudge of her head, she directed Phildee down the path to the old range while she herself turned around. She stood motionless for a sweeping scan of the plain below her. The couples were scattered over the grass—but couples only, the females as yet unfulfilled.

This, too, was another joy to add to the greatest of all. So many things about her calf were incomprehensible—the only dimly-felt overtones of projected symbology that accompanied Phildee’s emotional reactions, the alien structure—so many, many things. Her mind floundered vainly through the complex data.

But all that was nothing. What did it matter? The Time had been, and for another season, she was a dam.

Phildee walked beside her down the path, one fist wrapped in the fur of her flank, short legs windmilling.

They reached the plain, and Riya struck out across it toward the greatest concentration of people, her head proudly raised. She stopped once, and deliberately cropped a mouthful of grass with unconcern, but resumed her pace immediately thereafter.

With the same unconcern, she nudged Phildee into the center of the group of people, and, ignoring them, began teaching her calf to feed.

Eat. (Picture of Phildee/calf on all fours, cropping the plains grass.)

Phildee stared at her in puzzlement. Grass was not food. He sent the data emphatically.

Riya felt the tenuous discontent. She replied with tender understanding. Sometimes the calf was hesitant.

Eat. (Gently, understandingly, but firmly. [Repetition of picture.]) She bent her head and pushed him carefully over, then held his head down with a gentle pressure of her muzzle. Eat.

Phildee squirmed. He slipped out from under her nose and regained his Feet. He looked at the other people, who were staring in puzzlement at Riya and himself.

He felt himself pushed forward again. Eat.

Abruptly, he realized the situation. In a culture of herbivores, what food could there be but herbiage? There would be milk, in time, but not for—he probed—months.

In probing, too, he found the visualization of his life with her ready at the surface of Riya’s mind.

There was no shelter on the plain. His fur was all the shelter necessary.

But I don’t have any fur.

In the fall, they would move to the southern range.

Walk? A thousand miles?

He would grow big and strong. In a year, he would be a sire himself.

* * * *

His reaction was simple, and practiced. He adjusted his reality concept to Reimannian topology. Not actually, but subjectively, he felt himself beginning to slip Earthward.

Riya stiffened in alarm. The calf was straying. The knowledge was relayed from her mother-centers to the telepathic functions.

Stop. You cannot go there. You must be with your mother. You are not grown. Stop. Stay with me. I will protect you. I love you.

* * * *

The universe shuddered. Phildee adjusted frantically. Cutting through the delicately maintained reality concept was a scrambling, jamming frequency of thought. In terror, he flung himself backward into Riya’s world. Standing completely still, he probed frantically into Riya’s mind.

And found her mind only fumblingly beginning to intellectualize the simple formulization of what her instinctive centers had computed, systematized, and activated before her conscious mind had even begun to doubt that everything was well.

His mind accepted the data, and computed.

Handless and voiceless, not so fast afoot in their bulkiness as the weakest month-old calf, the people had long ago evolved the restraints necessary for rearing their children.

If the calf romped and ran, his mother ran beside him, and the calf was not permitted to run faster than she. If a calf strayed from its sleeping mother, it strayed only so far, and then the mother woke—but the calf had already long been held back by the time her intelligence awoke to the straying.

The knowledge and computations were fed in Phildee’s rational centers. The Universe—and Earth—were closed to him. He must remain here.

But human children could not survive in this environment.

He had to find a solution—instantly.

He clinched his fists, feeling his arm muscles quiver.

His lower lip was pulled into his mouth, and his teeth sank in.

The diagram—the pattern—bigger—stronger—try—try—this is not real—this is real: brown earth, white clouds, blue sky—try—mouth full of warm salt…

F is for Phildee!

O is for Out!

R is for Riya!

T is for Topology!

H is for happiness and home!

Riya shook herself. She stood in the furrows of a plowed field, her eyes vacant with bewilderment. She stared uncomprehendingly at the walls and the radar tower, the concrete shoulders of the air raid bunkers. She saw antiaircraft quick-firers being hastily cranked around and down at her, heard Phildee’s shout that saved her life, and understood none of it.

But none of it mattered. Her strange calf was with her, standing beside her with his fingers locked in her fur, and she could feel the warm response in his mind as she touched him with her caress again.

She saw the other little calves erupting out of the low dormitory buildings, and something within her crooned.

Riya nuzzled her foundling. She looked about her at the War Orphans’ Relocation Farm with her happy, happy eyes.

ACCIDENTAL DEATH, by Peter Baily

The wind howled out of the northwest, blind with snow and barbed with ice crystals. All the way up the half-mile precipice it fingered and wrenched away at groaning ice-slabs. It screamed over the top, whirled snow in a dervish dance around the hollow there, piled snow into the long furrow plowed ruler-straight through streamlined hummocks of snow.

The sun glinted on black rock glazed by ice, chasms and ridges and bridges of ice. It lit the snow slope to a frozen glare, penciled black shadow down the long furrow, and flashed at the furrow’s end on a thing of metal and plastics, an artifact thrown down in the dead wilderness.

Nothing grew, nothing flew, nothing walked, nothing talked. But the thing in the hollow was stirring in stiff jerks like a snake with its back broken or a clockwork toy running down. When the movements stopped, there was a click and a strange sound began. Thin, scratchy, inaudible more than a yard away, weary but still cocky, there leaked from the shape in the hollow the sound of a human voice.

“I’ve tried my hands and arms and they seem to work,” it began. “I’ve wiggled my toes with entire success. It’s well on the cards that I’m all in one piece and not broken up at all, though I don’t see how it could happen. Right now I don’t feel like struggling up and finding out. I’m fine where I am. I’ll just lie here for a while and relax, and get some of the story on tape. This suit’s got a built-in recorder, I might as well use it. That way even if I’m not as well as I feel, I’ll leave a message. You probably know we’re back and wonder what went wrong.

“I suppose I’m in a state of shock. That’s why I can’t seem to get up. Who wouldn’t be shocked after luck like that?

“I’ve always been lucky, I guess. Luck got me a place in the Whale. Sure I’m a good astronomer but so are lots of other guys. If I were ten years older, it would have been an honor, being picked for the first long jump in the first starship ever. At my age it was luck.

“You’ll want to know if the ship worked. Well, she did. Went like a bomb. We got lined up between Earth and Mars, you’ll remember, and James pushed the button marked ‘Jump’. Took his finger off the button and there we were: Alpha Centauri. Two months later your time, one second later by us. We covered our whole survey assignment like that, smooth as a pint of old and mild which right now I could certainly use. Better yet would be a pint of hot black coffee with sugar in. Failing that, I could even go for a long drink of cold water. There was never anything wrong with the Whale till right at the end and even then I doubt if it was the ship itself that fouled things up.

“That was some survey assignment. We astronomers really lived. Wait till you see—but of course you won’t. I could weep when I think of those miles of lovely color film, all gone up in smoke.

* * * *

“I’m shocked all right. I never said who I was. Matt Hennessy, from Farside Observatory, back of the Moon, just back from a proving flight cum astronomical survey in the starship Whale. Whoever you are who finds this tape, you’re made. Take it to any radio station or newspaper office. You’ll find you can name your price and don’t take any wooden nickels.

“Where had I got to? I’d told you how we happened to find Chang, hadn’t I? That’s what the natives called it. Walking, talking natives on a blue sky planet with 1.1 g gravity and a twenty per cent oxygen atmosphere at fifteen p.s.i. The odds against finding Chang on a six-sun survey on the first star jump ever must be up in the googols. We certainly were lucky.

“The Chang natives aren’t very technical—haven’t got space travel for instance. They’re good astronomers, though. We were able to show them our sun, in their telescopes. In their way, they’re a highly civilized people. Look more like cats than people, but they’re people all right. If you doubt it, chew these facts over.

“One, they learned our language in four weeks. When I say they, I mean a ten-man team of them.

“Two, they brew a near-beer that’s a lot nearer than the canned stuff we had aboard the Whale.

“Three, they’ve a great sense of humor. Ran rather to silly practical jokes, but still. Can’t say I care for that hot-foot and belly-laugh stuff myself, but tastes differ.

“Four, the ten-man language team also learned chess and table tennis.

“But why go on? People who talk English, drink beer, like jokes and beat me at chess or table-tennis are people for my money, even if they look like tigers in trousers.

“It was funny the way they won all the time at table tennis. They certainly weren’t so hot at it. Maybe that ten per cent extra gravity put us off our strokes. As for chess, Svendlov was our champion. He won sometimes. The rest of us seemed to lose whichever Chingsi we played. There again it wasn’t so much that they were good. How could they be, in the time? It was more that we all seemed to make silly mistakes when we played them and that’s fatal in chess. Of course it’s a screwy situation, playing chess with something that grows its own fur coat, has yellow eyes an inch and a half long and long white whiskers. Could you have kept your mind on the game?

“And don’t think I fell victim to their feline charm. The children were pets, but you didn’t feel like patting the adults on their big grinning heads. Personally I didn’t like the one I knew best. He was called—well, we called him Charley, and he was the ethnologist, ambassador, contact man, or whatever you like to call him, who came back with us. Why I disliked him was because he was always trying to get the edge on you. All the time he had to be top. Great sense of humor, of course. I nearly broke my neck on that butter-slide he fixed up in the metal alleyway to the Whale’s engine room. Charley laughed fit to bust, everyone laughed, I even laughed myself though doing it hurt me more than the tumble had. Yes, life and soul of the party, old Charley…

“My last sight of the Minnow was a cabin full of dead and dying men, the sweetish stink of burned flesh and the choking reek of scorching insulation, the boat jolting and shuddering and beginning to break up, and in the middle of the flames, still unhurt, was Charley. He was laughing…

“My God, it’s dark out here. Wonder how high I am. Must be all of fifty miles, and doing eight hundred miles an hour at least. I’ll be doing more than that when I land. What’s final velocity for a fifty-mile fall? Same as a fifty thousand mile fall, I suppose; same as escape; twenty-four thousand miles an hour. I’ll make a mess…

* * * *

“That’s better. Why didn’t I close my eyes before? Those star streaks made me dizzy. I’ll make a nice shooting star when I hit air. Come to think of it, I must be deep in air now. Let’s take a look.

“It’s getting lighter. Look at those peaks down there! Like great knives. I don’t seem to be falling as fast as I expected though. Almost seem to be floating. Let’s switch on the radio and tell the world hello. Hello, earth…hello, again…and good-by…

“Sorry about that. I passed out. I don’t know what I said, if anything, and the suit recorder has no playback or eraser. What must have happened is that the suit ran out of oxygen, and I lost consciousness due to anoxia. I dreamed I switched on the radio, but I actually switched on the emergency tank, thank the Lord, and that brought me round.

“Come to think of it, why not crack the suit and breath fresh air instead of bottled?

“No. I’d have to get up to do that. I think I’ll just lie here a little bit longer and get properly rested up before I try anything big like standing up.

“I was telling about the return journey, wasn’t I? The long jump back home, which should have dumped us between the orbits of Earth and Mars. Instead of which, when James took his finger off the button, the mass-detector showed nothing except the noise-level of the universe.

“We were out in that no place for a day. We astronomers had to establish our exact position relative to the solar system. The crew had to find out exactly what went wrong. The physicists had to make mystic passes in front of meters and mutter about residual folds in stress-free space. Our task was easy, because we were about half a light-year from the sun. The crew’s job was also easy: they found what went wrong in less than half an hour.

“It still seems incredible. To program the ship for a star-jump, you merely told it where you were and where you wanted to go. In practical terms, that entailed first a series of exact measurements which had to be translated into the somewhat abstruse co-ordinate system we used based on the topological order of mass-points in the galaxy. Then you cut a tape on the computer and hit the button. Nothing was wrong with the computer. Nothing was wrong with the engines. We’d hit the right button and we’d gone to the place we’d aimed for. All we’d done was aim for the wrong place. It hurts me to tell you this and I’m just attached personnel with no space-flight tradition. In practical terms, one highly trained crew member had punched a wrong pattern of holes on the tape. Another equally skilled had failed to notice this when reading back. A childish error, highly improbable; twice repeated, thus squaring the improbability. Incredible, but that’s what happened.

“Anyway, we took good care with the next lot of measurements. That’s why we were out there so long. They were cross-checked about five times. I got sick so I climbed into a spacesuit and went outside and took some photographs of the Sun which I hoped would help to determine hydrogen density in the outer regions. When I got back everything was ready. We disposed ourselves about the control room and relaxed for all we were worth. We were all praying that this time nothing would go wrong, and all looking forward to seeing Earth again after four months subjective time away, except for Charley, who was still chuckling and shaking his head, and Captain James who was glaring at Charley and obviously wishing human dignity permitted him to tear Charley limb from limb. Then James pressed the button.

“Everything twanged like a bowstring. I felt myself turned inside out, passed through a small sieve, and poured back into shape. The entire bow wall-screen was full of Earth. Something was wrong all right, and this time it was much, much worse. We’d come out of the jump about two hundred miles above the Pacific, pointed straight down, traveling at a relative speed of about two thousand miles an hour.

“It was a fantastic situation. Here was the Whale, the most powerful ship ever built, which could cover fifty light-years in a subjective time of one second, and it was helpless. For, as of course you know, the star-drive couldn’t be used again for at least two hours.

“The Whale also had ion rockets of course, the standard deuterium-fusion thing with direct conversion. As again you know, this is good for interplanetary flight because you can run it continuously and it has extremely high exhaust velocity. But in our situation it was no good because it has rather a low thrust. It would have taken more time than we had to deflect us enough to avoid a smash. We had five minutes to abandon ship.

“James got us all into the Minnow at a dead run. There was no time to take anything at all except the clothes we stood in. The Minnow was meant for short heavy hops to planets or asteroids. In addition to the ion drive it had emergency atomic rockets, using steam for reaction mass. We thanked God for that when Cazamian canceled our downwards velocity with them in a few seconds. We curved away up over China and from about fifty miles high we saw the Whale hit the Pacific. Six hundred tons of mass at well over two thousand miles an hour make an almighty splash. By now you’ll have divers down, but I doubt they’ll salvage much you can use.

“I wonder why James went down with the ship, as the saying is? Not that it made any difference. It must have broken his heart to know that his lovely ship was getting the chopper. Or did he suspect another human error?

“We didn’t have time to think about that, or even to get the radio working. The steam rockets blew up. Poor Cazamian was burnt to a crisp. Only thing that saved me was the spacesuit I was still wearing. I snapped the face plate down because the cabin was filling with fumes. I saw Charley coming out of the toilet—that’s how he’d escaped—and I saw him beginning to laugh. Then the port side collapsed and I fell out.

“I saw the launch spinning away, glowing red against a purplish black sky. I tumbled head over heels towards the huge curved shield of earth fifty miles below. I shut my eyes and that’s about all I remember. I don’t see how any of us could have survived. I think we’re all dead.

“I’ll have to get up and crack this suit and let some air in. But I can’t. I fell fifty miles without a parachute. I’m dead so I can’t stand up.”

* * * *

There was silence for a while except for the vicious howl of the wind. Then snow began to shift on the ledge. A man crawled stiffly out and came shakily to his feet. He moved slowly around for some time. After about two hours he returned to the hollow, squatted down and switched on the recorder. The voice began again, considerably wearier.

“Hello there. I’m in the bleakest wilderness I’ve ever seen. This place makes the moon look cozy. There’s precipice around me every way but one and that’s up. So it’s up I’ll have to go till I find a way to go down. I’ve been chewing snow to quench my thirst but I could eat a horse. I picked up a short-wave broadcast on my suit but couldn’t understand a word. Not English, not French, and there I stick. Listened to it for fifteen minutes just to hear a human voice again. I haven’t much hope of reaching anyone with my five milliwatt suit transmitter but I’ll keep trying.

“Just before I start the climb there are two things I want to get on tape. The first is how I got here. I’ve remembered something from my military training, when I did some parachute jumps. Terminal velocity for a human body falling through air is about one hundred twenty m.p.h. Falling fifty miles is no worse than falling five hundred feet. You’d be lucky to live through a five hundred foot fall, true, but I’ve been lucky. The suit is bulky but light and probably slowed my fall. I hit a sixty mile an hour updraft this side of the mountain, skidded downhill through about half a mile of snow and fetched up in a drift. The suit is part worn but still operational. I’m fine.

“The second thing I want to say is about the Chingsi, and here it is: watch out for them. Those jokers are dangerous. I’m not telling how because I’ve got a scientific reputation to watch. You’ll have to figure it out for yourselves. Here are the clues:

(1) The Chingsi talk and laugh but after all they aren’t human. On an alien world a hundred light-years away, why shouldn’t alien talents develop? A talent that’s so uncertain and rudimentary here that most people don’t believe it, might be highly developed out there.

(2) The Whale expedition did fine till it found Chang. Then it hit a seam of bad luck. Real stinking bad luck that went on and on till it looks fishy. We lost the ship, we lost the launch, all but one of us lost our lives. We couldn’t even win a game of ping-pong.

“So what is luck, good or bad? Scientifically speaking, future chance events are by definition chance. They can turn out favorable or not. When a preponderance of chance events has occurred unfavorably, you’ve got bad luck. It’s a fancy name for a lot of chance results that didn’t go your way. But the gambler defines it differently. For him, luck refers to the future, and you’ve got bad luck when future chance events won’t go your way. Scientific investigations into this have been inconclusive, but everyone knows that some people are lucky and others aren’t. All we’ve got are hints and glimmers, the fumbling touch of a rudimentary talent. There’s the evil eye legend and the Jonah, bad luck bringers. Superstition? Maybe; but ask the insurance companies about accident prones. What’s in a name? Call a man unlucky and you’re superstitious. Call him accident prone and that’s sound business sense. I’ve said enough.

“All the same, search the space-flight records, talk to the actuaries. When a ship is working perfectly and is operated by a hand-picked crew of highly trained men in perfect condition, how often is it wrecked by a series of silly errors happening one after another in defiance of probability?

“I’ll sign off with two thoughts, one depressing and one cheering. A single Chingsi wrecked our ship and our launch. What could a whole planetful of them do?

“On the other hand, a talent that manipulates chance events is bound to be chancy. No matter how highly developed it can’t be surefire. The proof is that I’ve survived to tell the tale.”

* * * *

At twenty below zero and fifty miles an hour the wind ravaged the mountain. Peering through his polarized vizor at the white waste and the snow-filled air howling over it, sliding and stumbling with every step on a slope that got gradually steeper and seemed to go on forever, Matt Hennessy began to inch his way up the north face of Mount Everest.

AND ALL THE EARTH A GRAVE, by C. C. MacApp

It all began when the new bookkeeping machine of a large Midwestern coffin manufacturer slipped a cog, or blew a transistor, or something. It was fantastic that the error—one of two decimal places—should enjoy a straight run of okays, human and mechanical, clear down the line; but when the figures clacked out at the last clacking-out station, there it was. The figures were now sacred; immutable; and it is doubtful whether the President of the concern or the Chairman of the Board would have dared question them—even if either of those two gentlemen had been in town.

As for the Advertising Manager, the last thing he wanted to do was question them. He carried them (they were the budget for the coming fiscal year) into his office, staggering a little on the way, and dropped dazedly into his chair. They showed the budget for his own department as exactly one hundred times what he’d been expecting. That is to say, fifty times what he’d put in for.

When the initial shock began to wear off, his face assumed an expression of intense thought. In about five minutes he leaped from his chair, dashed out of the office with a shouted syllable or two for his secretary, and got his car out of the parking lot. At home, he tossed clothes into a travelling bag and barged toward the door, giving his wife a quick kiss and an equally quick explanation. He didn’t bother to call the airport. He meant to be on the next plane east, and no nonsense about it.…

* * * *

With one thing and another, the economy hadn’t been exactly in overdrive that year, and predictions for the Christmas season were gloomy. Early retail figures bore them out. Gift buying dribbled along feebly until Thanksgiving, despite brave speeches by the Administration. The holiday passed more in self-pity than in thankfulness among owners of gift-oriented businesses.

Then, on Friday following Thanksgiving, the coffin ads struck.

Struck may be too mild a word. People on the streets saw feverishly-working crews (at holiday rates!) slapping up posters on billboards. The first poster was a dilly. A toothy and toothsome young woman leaned over a coffin she’d been unwrapping. She smiled as if she’d just received overtures of matrimony from an eighty-year-old billionaire. There was a Christmas tree in the background, and the coffin was appropriately wrapped. So was she. She looked as if she had just gotten out of bed, or were ready to get into it. For amorous young men, and some not so young, the message was plain. The motto, “The Gift That Will Last More Than a Lifetime”, seemed hardly to the point.

Those at home were assailed on TV with a variety of bright and clever skits of the same import. Some of them hinted that, if the young lady’s gratitude were really precipitous, and the bedroom too far away, the coffin might be comfy.

Of course the more settled elements of the population were not neglected. For the older married man, there was a blow directly between the eyes: “Do You Want Your Widow to Be Half-Safe?” And, for the spinster without immediate hopes, “I Dreamt I Was Caught Dead Without My Virginform Casket!”

Newspapers, magazines and every other medium added to the assault, never letting it cool. It was the most horrendous campaign, for sheer concentration, that had ever battered at the public mind. The public reeled, blinked, shook its head to clear it, gawked, and rushed out to buy.

Christmas was not going to be a failure after all. Department store managers who had, grudgingly and under strong sales pressure, made space for a single coffin somewhere at the rear of the store, now rushed to the telephones like touts with a direct pronouncement from a horse. Everyone who possibly could got into the act. Grocery supermarkets put in casket departments. The Association of Pharmaceutical Retailers, who felt they had some claim to priority, tried to get court injunctions to keep caskets out of service stations, but were unsuccessful because the judges were all out buying caskets. Beauty parlors showed real ingenuity in merchandising. Roads and streets clogged with delivery trucks, rented trailers, and whatever else could haul a coffin. The Stock Market went completely mad. Strikes were declared and settled within hours. Congress was called into session early. The President got authority to ration lumber and other materials suddenly in starvation-short supply. State laws were passed against cremation, under heavy lobby pressure. A new racket, called boxjacking, blossomed overnight.

The Advertising Manager who had put the thing over had been fighting with all the formidable weapons of his breed to make his plant managers build up a stockpile. They had, but it went like a toupee in a wind tunnel. Competitive coffin manufacturers were caught napping, but by Wednesday after Thanksgiving they, along with the original one, were on a twenty-four hour, seven-day basis. Still only a fraction of the demand could be met. Jet passenger planes were stripped of their seats, supplied with Yankee gold, and sent to plunder the world of its coffins.

It might be supposed that Christmas goods other than caskets would take a bad dumping. That was not so. Such was the upsurge of prosperity, and such was the shortage of coffins, that nearly everything—with a few exceptions—enjoyed the biggest season on record.

On Christmas Eve the frenzy slumped to a crawl, though on Christmas morning there were still optimists out prowling the empty stores. The nation sat down to breathe. Mostly it sat on coffins, because there wasn’t space in the living rooms for any other furniture.

There was hardly an individual in the United States who didn’t have, in case of sudden sharp pains in the chest, several boxes to choose from. As for the rest of the world, it had better not die just now or it would be literally a case of dust to dust.

Of course everyone expected a doozy of a slump after Christmas. But our Advertising Manager, who by now was of course Sales Manager and First Vice President also, wasn’t settling for any boom-and-bust. He’d been a frustrated victim of his choice of industries for so many years that now, with his teeth in something, he was going to give it the old bite. He gave people a short breathing spell to arrange their coffin payments and move the presents out of the front rooms. Then, late in January, his new campaign came down like a hundred-megatonner.

Within a week, everyone saw quite clearly that his Christmas models were now obsolete. The coffin became the new status symbol.

The auto industry was of course demolished. Even people who had enough money to buy a new car weren’t going to trade in the old one and let the new one stand out in the rain. The garages were full of coffins. Petroleum went along with Autos. (Though there were those who whispered knowingly that the same people merely moved over into the new industry. It was noticeable that the center of it became Detroit.) A few trucks and buses were still being built, but that was all.

Some of the new caskets were true works of art. Others—well, there was variety. Compact models appeared, in which the occupant’s feet were to be doubled up alongside his ears. One manufacturer pushed a circular model, claiming that by all the laws of nature the foetal position was the only right one. At the other extreme were virtual houses, ornate and lavishly equipped. Possibly the largest of all was the “Togetherness” model, triangular, with graduated recesses for Father, Mother, eight children (plus two playmates), and, in the far corner beyond the baby, the cat.

The slump was over. Still, economists swore that the new boom couldn’t last either. They reckoned without the Advertising Manager, whose eyes gleamed brighter all the time. People already had coffins, which they polished and kept on display, sometimes in the new “Coffin-ports” being added to houses. The Advertising Manager’s reasoning was direct and to the point. He must get people to use the coffins; and now he had all the money to work with that he could use.

The new note was woven in so gradually that it is not easy to put a finger on any one ad and say, “It began here.” One of the first was surely the widely-printed one showing a tattooed, smiling young man with his chin thrust out manfully, lying in a coffin. He was rugged-looking and likable (not too rugged for the spindly-limbed to identify with) and he oozed, even though obviously dead, virility at every pore. He was probably the finest-looking corpse since Richard the Lion-Hearted.

Neither must one overlook the singing commercials. Possibly the catchiest of these, a really cute little thing, was achieved by jazzing up the Funeral March.

It started gradually, and it was all so un-violent that few saw it as suicide. Teen-agers began having “Popping-off parties”. Some of their elders protested a little, but adults were taking it up too. The tired, the unappreciated, the ill and the heavy-laden lay down in growing numbers and expired. A black market in poisons operated for a little while, but soon pinched out. Such was the pressure of persuasion that few needed artificial aids. The boxes were very comfortable. People just closed their eyes and exited smiling.

The Beatniks, who had their own models of coffin—mouldy, scroungy, and without lids, since the Beatniks insisted on being seen—placed their boxes on the Grant Avenue in San Francisco. They died with highly intellectual expressions, and eventually were washed by the gentle rain.

Of course there were voices shouting calamity. When aren’t there? But in the long run, and not a very long one at that, they availed naught.

* * * *

It isn’t hard to imagine the reactions of the rest of the world. So let us imagine a few.

The Communist Bloc immediately gave its Stamp of Disapproval, denouncing the movement as a filthy Capitalist Imperialist Pig plot. Red China, which had been squabbling with Russia for some time about a matter of method, screamed for immediate war. Russia exposed this as patent stupidity, saying that if the Capitalists wanted to die, warring upon them would only help them. China surreptitiously tried out the thing as an answer to excess population, and found it good. It also appealed to the well-known melancholy facet of Russian nature. Besides, after pondering for several days, the Red Bloc decided it could not afford to fall behind in anything, so it started its own program, explaining with much logic how it differed.

An elderly British philosopher endorsed the movement, on the grounds that a temporary setback in Evolution was preferable to facing up to anything.

The Free Bloc, the Red Bloc, the Neutral Bloc and such scraps as had been too obtuse to find themselves a Bloc were drawn into the whirlpool in an amazingly short time, if in a variety of ways. In less than two years the world was rid of most of what had been bedeviling it.

Oddly enough, the country where the movement began was the last to succumb completely. Or perhaps it is not so odd. Coffin-maker to the world, the American casket industry had by now almost completely automated box-making and gravedigging, with some interesting assembly lines and packaging arrangements; there still remained the jobs of management and distribution. The President of General Mortuary, an ebullient fellow affectionately called Sarcophagus Sam, put it well. “As long as I have a single prospective customer, and a single Stockholder,” he said, mangling a stogie and beetling his brows at the one reporter who’d showed up for the press conference, “I’ll try to put him in a coffin so I can pay him a dividend.”

* * * *

Finally, though, a man who thought he must be the last living human, wandered contentedly about the city of Denver looking for the coffin he liked best. He settled at last upon a rich mahogany number with platinum trimmings, an Automatic Self-Adjusting Cadaver-contour Innerspring Wearever-Plastic-Covered Mattress with a built in bar. He climbed in, drew himself a generous slug of fine Scotch, giggled as the mattress prodded him exploringly, closed his eyes and sighed in solid comfort. Soft music played as the lid closed itself.

From a building nearby a turkey-buzzard swooped down, cawing in raucous anger because it had let its attention wander for a moment. It was too late. It clawed screaming at the solid cover, hissed in frustration and finally gave up. It flapped into the air again, still grumbling. It was tired of living on dead small rodents and coyotes. It thought it would take a swing over to Los Angeles, where the pickings were pretty good.

As it moved westward over parched hills, it espied two black dots a few miles to its left. It circled over for a closer look, then grunted and went on its way. It had seen them before. The old prospector and his burro had been in the mountains for so long the buzzard had concluded they didn’t know how to die.

The prospector, whose name was Adams, trudged behind his burro toward the buildings that shimmered in the heat, humming to himself now and then or addressing some remark to the beast. When he reached the outskirts of Denver he realized something was amiss. He stood and gazed at the quiet scene. Nothing moved except some skinny packrats and a few sparrows foraging for grain among the unburied coffins.

“Tarnation!” he said to the burro. “Martians?”

A half-buried piece of newspaper fluttered in the breeze. He walked forward slowly and picked it up. It told him enough so that he understood.

“They’re gone, Evie,” he said to the burro, “all gone.” He put his arm affectionately around her neck. “I reckon it’s up to me and you agin. We got to start all over.” He stood back and gazed at her with mild reproach. “I shore hope they don’t favor your side of the house so much this time.”

DEAD RINGER, by Lester del Rey

Dane Phillips slouched in the window seat, watching the morning crowds on their way to work and carefully avoiding any attempt to read Jordan’s old face as the editor skimmed through the notes. He had learned to make his tall, bony body seem all loose-jointed relaxation, no matter what he felt. But the oversized hands in his pockets were clenched so tightly that the nails were cutting into his palms.

Every tick of the old-fashioned clock sent a throb racing through his brain. Every rustle of the pages seemed to release a fresh shot of adrenalin into his blood stream. This time, his mind was pleading. It has to be right this time.…

Jordan finished his reading and shoved the folder back. He reached for his pipe, sighed, and then nodded slowly. “A nice job of researching, Phillips. And it might make a good feature for the Sunday section, at that.”

It took a second to realize that the words meant acceptance, for Phillips had prepared himself too thoroughly against another failure. Now he felt the tautened muscles release, so quickly that he would have fallen if he hadn’t been braced against the seat.

He groped in his mind, hunting for words, and finding none. There was only the hot, sudden flame of unbelieving hope. And then an almost blinding exultation.

* * * *

Jordan didn’t seem to notice his silence. The editor made a neat pile of the notes, nodding again. “Sure. I like it. We’ve been short of shock stuff lately and the readers go for it when we can get a fresh angle. But naturally you’d have to leave out all that nonsense on Blanding. Hell, the man’s just buried, and his relatives and friends—”

“But that’s the proof!” Phillips stared at the editor, trying to penetrate through the haze of hope that had somehow grown chilled and unreal. His thoughts were abruptly disorganized and out of his control. Only the urgency remained. “It’s the key evidence. And we’ve got to move fast! I don’t know how long it takes, but even one more day may be too late!”

Jordan nearly dropped the pipe from his lips as he jerked upright to peer sharply at the younger man. “Are you crazy? Do you seriously expect me to get an order to exhume him now? What would it get us, other than lawsuits? Even if we could get the order without cause—which we can’t!”

Then the pipe did fall as he gaped open-mouthed. “My God, you believe all that stuff. You expected us to publish it straight!”

“No,” Dane said thickly. The hope was gone now, as if it had never existed, leaving a numb emptiness where nothing mattered. “No, I guess I didn’t really expect anything. But I believe the facts. Why shouldn’t I?”

He reached for the papers with hands he could hardly control and began stuffing them back into the folder. All the careful documentation, the fingerprints—smudged, perhaps, in some cases, but still evidence enough for anyone but a fool—

“Phillips?” Jordan said questioningly to himself, and then his voice was taking on a new edge. “Phillips! Wait a minute, I’ve got it now! Dane Phillips, not Arthur! Two years on the Trib. Then you turned up on the Register in Seattle? Phillip Dean, or some such name there.”

“Yeah,” Dane agreed. There was no use in denying anything now. “Yeah, Dane Arthur Phillips. So I suppose I’m through here?”

Jordan nodded again and there was a faint look of fear in his expression. “You can pick up your pay on the way out. And make it quick, before I change my mind and call the boys in white!”

* * * *

It could have been worse. It had been worse before. And there was enough in the pay envelope to buy what he needed—a flash camera, a little folding shovel from one of the surplus houses, and a bottle of good scotch. It would be dark enough for him to taxi out to Oakhaven Cemetery, where Blanding had been buried.

It wouldn’t change the minds of the fools, of course. Even if he could drag back what he might find, without the change being completed, they wouldn’t accept the evidence. He’d been crazy to think anything could change their minds. And they called him a fanatic! If the facts he’d dug up in ten years of hunting wouldn’t convince them, nothing would. And yet he had to see for himself, before it was too late!

He picked a cheap hotel at random and checked in under an assumed name. He couldn’t go back to his room while there was a chance that Jordan still might try to turn him in. There wouldn’t be time for Sylvia’s detectives to bother him, probably, but there was the ever-present danger that one of the aliens might intercept the message.

He shivered. He’d been risking that for ten years, yet the likelihood was still a horror to him. The uncertainty made it harder to take than any human-devised torture could be. There was no way of guessing what an alien might do to anyone who discovered that all men were not human—that some were…zombies.

There was the classic syllogism: All men are mortal; I am a man; therefore, I am mortal. But not Blanding—or Corporal Harding.

It was Harding’s “death” that had started it all during the fighting on Guadalcanal. A grenade had come flying into the foxhole where Dane and Harding had felt reasonably safe. The concussion had knocked Dane out, possibly saving his life when the enemy thought he was dead. He’d come to in the daylight to see Harding lying there, mangled and twisted, with his throat torn. There was blood on Dane’s uniform, obviously spattered from the dead man. It hadn’t been a mistake or delusion; Harding had been dead.

It had taken Dane two days of crawling and hiding to get back to his group, too exhausted to report Harding’s death. He’d slept for twenty hours. And when he awoke, Harding had been standing beside him, with a whole throat and a fresh uniform, grinning and kidding him for running off and leaving a stunned friend behind.

It was no ringer, but Harding himself, complete to the smallest personal memories and personality traits.

* * * *

The pressures of war probably saved Dane’s sanity while he learned to face the facts. All men are mortal; Harding is not mortal; therefore, Harding is not a man! Nor was Harding alone—Dane found enough evidence to know there were others.

The Tribune morgue yielded even more data. A man had faced seven firing squads and walked away. Another survived over a dozen attacks by professional killers. Fingerprints turned up mysteriously “copied” from those of men long dead. Some of the aliens seemed to heal almost instantly; others took days. Some operated completely alone; some seemed to have joined with others. But they were legion.

Lack of a clearer pattern of attack made him consider the possibility of human mutation, but such tissue was too wildly different, and the invasion had begun long before atomics or X-rays. He gave up trying to understand their alien motivations. It was enough that they existed in secret, slowly growing in numbers while mankind was unaware of them.

When his proof was complete and irrefutable, he took it to his editor—to be fired, politely but coldly. Other editors were less polite. But he went on doggedly trying and failing. What else could he do? Somehow, he had to find the few people who could recognize facts and warn them. The aliens would get him, of course, when the story broke, but a warned humanity could cope with them. Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.

Then he met Sylvia by accident after losing his fifth job—a girl who had inherited a fortune big enough to spread his message in paid ads across the country. They were married before he found she was hard-headed about her money. She demanded a full explanation for every cent beyond his allowance. In the end, she got the explanation. And while he was trying to cash the check she gave him, she visited Dr. Buehl, to come back with a squad of quiet, refined strong-arm boys who made sure Dane reached Buehl’s “rest home” safely.

Hydrotherapy…Buehl as the kindly firm father image…analysis…hypnosis that stripped every secret from him, including his worst childhood nightmare.

His father had committed a violent, bloody suicide after one of the many quarrels with Dane’s mother. Dane had found the body.

Two nights after the funeral, he had dreamed of his father’s face, horror-filled, at the window. He knew now that it was a normal nightmare, caused by being forced to look at the face in the coffin, but the shock had lasted for years. It had bothered him again, after his discovery of the aliens, until a thorough check had proved without doubt that his father had been fully human, with a human, if tempestuous, childhood behind him.

* * * *

Dr. Buehl was delighted. “You see, Dane? You know it was a nightmare, but you don’t really believe it even now. Your father was an alien monster to you—no adult is quite human to a child. And that literal-minded self, your subconscious, saw him after he died. So there are alien monsters who return from death. Then you come to from a concussion. Harding is sprawled out unconscious, covered with blood—probably your blood, since you say he wasn’t wounded, later.

“But after seeing your father, you can’t associate blood with yourself—you see it as a horrible wound on Harding. When he turns out to be alive, you’re still in partial shock, with your subconscious dominant. And that has the answer already. There are monsters who come back from the dead! An exaggerated reaction, but nothing really abnormal. We’ll have you out of here in no time.”

No non-directive psychiatry for Buehl. The man beamed paternally, chuckling as he added what he must have considered the clincher. “Anyhow, even zombies can’t stand fire, Dane, so you can stop worrying about Harding. I checked up on him. He was burned to a crisp in a hotel fire two months ago.”

It was logical enough to shake Dane’s faith, until he came across Milo Blanding’s picture in a magazine article on society in St. Louis. According to the item, Milo was a cousin of the Blandings, whose father had vanished in Chile as a young man, and who had just rejoined the family. The picture was of Harding!

An alien could have gotten away by simply committing suicide and being carried from the rest home, but Dane had to do it the hard way, watching his chance and using commando tactics on a guard who had come to accept him as a harmless nut.

In St. Louis, he’d used the “Purloined Letter” technique to hide—going back to newspaper work and using almost his real name. It had seemed to work, too. But he’d been less lucky about Harding-Blanding. The man had been in Europe on some kind of a tour until his return only this last week.

Dane had seen him just once then—but long enough to be sure it was Harding—before he died again.

This time, it was in a drunken auto accident that seemed to be none of his fault, but left his body a mangled wreck.

* * * *

It was almost dark when Dane dismissed the taxi at the false address, a mile from the entrance to the cemetery. He watched it turn back down the road, then picked up the valise with his camera and folding shovel. He shivered as he moved reluctantly ahead. War had proved that he would never be a brave man and the old fears of darkness and graveyards were still strong in him. But he had to know what the coffin contained now, if it wasn’t already too late.

It represented the missing link in his picture of the aliens. What happened to them during the period of regrowth? Did they revert to their natural form? Were they at all conscious while the body reshaped itself into wholeness? Dane had puzzled over it night after night, with no answer.

Nor could he figure how they could escape from the grave. Perhaps a man could force his way out of some of the coffins he had inspected. The soil would still be soft and loose in the grave and a lot of the coffins and the boxes around them were strong in appearance only. A determined creature that could exist without much air for long enough might make it. But there were other caskets that couldn’t be cracked, at least without the aid of outside help.

What happened when a creature that could survive even the poison of embalming fluids and the draining of all the blood woke up in such a coffin? Dane’s mind skittered from it, as always, and then came back to it reluctantly.

There were still accounts of corpses turned up with the nails and hair grown long in the grave. Could normal tissues stand the current tricks of the morticians to have life enough for such growth? The possibility was absurd. Those cases had to be aliens—ones who hadn’t escaped. Even they must die eventually in such a case—after weeks and months! It took time for hair to grow.

And there were stories of corpses that had apparently fought and twisted in their coffins still. What was it like for an alien then, going slowly mad while it waited for true death? How long did madness take?

He shivered again, but went steadily on while the cemetery fence appeared in the distance. He’d seen Blanding’s coffin—and the big, solid metal casket around it that couldn’t be cracked by any amount of effort and strength. He was sure the creature was still there, unless it had a confederate. But that wouldn’t matter. An empty coffin would also be proof.

* * * *

Dane avoided the main gate, unsure about whether there would be a watchman or not. A hundred feet away, there was a tree near the ornamental spikes of the iron fence. He threw his bag over and began shinnying up. It was difficult, but he made it finally, dropping onto the soft grass beyond. There was the trace of the Moon at times through the clouds, but it hadn’t betrayed him, and there had been no alarm wire along the top of the fence.

He moved from shadow to shadow, his hair prickling along the base of his neck. Locating the right grave in the darkness was harder than he had expected, even with an occasional brief use of the small flashlight. But at last he found the marker that was serving until the regular monument could arrive.

His hands were sweating so much that it was hard to use the small shovel, but the digging of foxholes had given him experience and the ground was still soft from the gravediggers’ work. He stopped once, as the Moon came out briefly. Again, a sound in the darkness above left him hovering and sick in the hole. But it must have been only some animal.

He uncovered the top of the casket with hands already blistering.

Then he cursed as he realized the catches were near the bottom, making his work even harder.

He reached them at last, fumbling them open. The metal top of the casket seemed to be a dome of solid lead, and he had no room to maneuver, but it began swinging up reluctantly, until he could feel the polished wood of the coffin.

Dane reached for the lid with hands he could barely control. Fear was thick in his throat now. What could an alien do to a man who discovered it? Would it be Harding there—or some monstrous thing still changing? How long did it take a revived monster to go mad when it found no way to escape?

He gripped the shovel in one hand, working at the lid with the other. Now, abruptly, his nerves steadied, as they had done whenever he was in real battle. He swung the lid up and began groping for the camera.

His hand went into the silk-lined interior and found nothing! He was too late. Either Harding had gotten out somehow before the final ceremony or a confederate had already been here. The coffin was empty.

* * * *

There were no warning sounds this time—only hands that slipped under his arms and across his mouth, lifting him easily from the grave. A match flared briefly and he was looking into the face of Buehl’s chief strong-arm man.

“Hello, Mr. Phillips. Promise to be quiet and we’ll release you. Okay?” At Dane’s sickened nod, he gestured to the others. “Let him go. And, Tom, better get that filled in. We don’t want any trouble from this.”

Surprise came from the grave a moment later. “Hey, Burke, there’s no corpse here!”

Burke’s words killed any hopes Dane had at once. “So what? Ever hear of cremation? Lots of people use a regular coffin for the ashes.”

“He wasn’t cremated,” Dane told him. “You can check up on that.” But he knew it was useless.

“Sure, Mr. Phillips. We’ll do that.” The tone was one reserved for humoring madmen. Burke turned, gesturing. “Better come along, Mr. Phillips. Your wife and Dr. Buehl are waiting at the hotel.”

The gate was open now, but there was no sign of a watchman; if one worked here, Sylvia’s money would have taken care of that, of course. Dane went along quietly, sitting in the rubble of his hopes while the big car purred through the morning and on down Lindell Boulevard toward the hotel. Once he shivered, and Burke dug out hot brandied coffee. They had thought of everything, including a coat to cover his dirt-soiled clothes as they took him up the elevator to where Buehl and Sylvia were waiting for him.

She had been crying, obviously, but there were no tears or recriminations when she came over to kiss him. Funny, she must still love him—as he’d learned to his surprise he loved her. Under different circumstances…

“So you found me?” he asked needlessly of Buehl. He was operating on purely automatic habits now, the reaction from the night and his failure numbing him emotionally. “Jordan got in touch with you?”

Buehl smiled back at him. “We knew where you were all along, Dane. But as long as you acted normal, we hoped it might be better than the home. Too bad we couldn’t stop you before you got all mixed up in this.”

“So I suppose I’m committed to your booby-hatch again?”

Buehl nodded, refusing to resent the term. “I’m afraid so, Dane—for a while, anyhow. You’ll find your clothes in that room. Why don’t you clean up a little? Take a hot bath, maybe. You’ll feel better.”

* * * *

Dane went in, surprised when no guards followed him. But they had thought of everything. What looked like a screen on the window had been recently installed and it was strong enough to prevent his escape. Blessed are the poor, for they shall be poorly guarded!

He was turning on the shower when he heard the sound of voices coming through the door. He left the water running and came back to listen. Sylvia was speaking.

“—seems so logical, so completely rational.”

“It makes him a dangerous person,” Buehl answered, and there was no false warmth in his voice now. “Sylvia, you’ve got to admit it to yourself. All the reason and analysis in the world won’t convince him he’s wrong. This time we’ll have to use shock treatment. Burn over those memories, fade them out. It’s the only possible course.”

There was a pause and then a sigh. “I suppose you’re right.”

Dane didn’t wait to hear more. He drew back, while his mind fought to accept the hideous reality. Shock treatment! The works, if what he knew of psychiatry was correct. Enough of it to erase his memories—a part of himself. It wasn’t therapy Buehl was considering; it couldn’t be.

It was the answer of an alien that had a human in its hands—one who knew too much!

He might have guessed. What better place for an alien than in the guise of a psychiatrist? Where else was there the chance for all the refined, modern torture needed to burn out a man’s mind? Dane had spent ten years in fear of being discovered by them—and now Buehl had him.

Sylvia? He couldn’t be sure. Probably she was human. It wouldn’t make any difference. There was nothing he could do through her. Either she was part of the game or she really thought him mad.

Dane tried the window again, but it was hopeless. There would be no escape this time. Buehl couldn’t risk it. The shock treatment—or whatever Buehl would use under the name of shock treatment—would begin at once. It would be easy to slip, to use an overdose of something, to make sure Dane was killed. Or there were ways of making sure it didn’t matter. They could leave him alive, but take his mind away.

In alien hands, human psychiatry could do worse than all the medieval torture chambers!

* * * *

The sickness grew in his stomach as he considered the worst that could happen. Death he could accept, if he had to. He could even face the chance of torture by itself, as he had accepted the danger while trying to have his facts published. But to have his mind taken from him, a step at a time—to watch his personality, his ego, rotted away under him—and to know that he would wind up as a drooling idiot.…

He made his decision, almost as quickly as he had come to realize what Buehl must be.

There was a razor in the medicine chest. It was a safety razor, of course, but the blade was sharp and it would be big enough. There was no time for careful planning. One of the guards might come in at any moment if they thought he was taking too long.

Some fear came back as he leaned over the wash basin, staring at his throat, fingering the suddenly murderous blade. But the pain wouldn’t last long—a lot less than there would be under shock treatment, and less pain. He’d read enough to feel sure of that.

Twice he braced himself and failed at the last second. His mind flashed out in wild schemes, fighting against what it knew had to be done.

The world still had to be warned! If he could escape, somehow…if he could still find a way.… He couldn’t quit, no matter how impossible things looked.

But he knew better. There was nothing one man could do against the aliens in this world they had taken over. He’d never had a chance. Man had been chained already by carefully developed ridicule against superstition, by carefully indoctrinated gobbledegook about insanity, persecution complexes, and all the rest.

For a second, Dane even considered the possibility that he was insane. But he knew it was only a blind effort to cling to life. There had been no insanity in him when he’d groped for evidence in the coffin and found it empty!

He leaned over the wash basin, his eyes focused on his throat, and his hand came down and around, carrying the razor blade through a lethal semicircle.

* * * *

Dane Phillips watched fear give place to sickness on his face as the pain lanced through him and the blood spurted.

He watched horror creep up to replace the sickness while the bleeding stopped and the gash began closing.

By the time he recognized his expression as the same one he’d seen on his father’s face at the window so long ago, the wound was completely healed.

THE CRYSTAL CRYPT, by Philip K. Dick

“Attention, Inner-Flight ship! Attention! You are ordered to land at the Control Station on Deimos for inspection. Attention! You are to land at once!”

The metallic rasp of the speaker echoed through the corridors of the great ship. The passengers glanced at each other uneasily, murmuring and peering out the port windows at the small speck below, the dot of rock that was the Martian checkpoint, Deimos.

“What’s up?” an anxious passenger asked one of the pilots, hurrying through the ship to check the escape lock.

“We have to land. Keep seated.” The pilot went on.

“Land? But why?” They all looked at each other. Hovering above the bulging Inner-Flight ship were three slender Martian pursuit craft, poised and alert for any emergency. As the Inner-Flight ship prepared to land the pursuit ships dropped lower, carefully maintaining themselves a short distance away.

“There’s something going on,” a woman passenger said nervously. “Lord, I thought we were finally through with those Martians. Now what?”

“I don’t blame them for giving us one last going over,” a heavy-set business man said to his companion. “After all, we’re the last ship leaving Mars for Terra. We’re damn lucky they let us go at all.”

“You think there really will be war?” A young man said to the girl sitting in the seat next to him. “Those Martians won’t dare fight, not with our weapons and ability to produce. We could take care of Mars in a month. It’s all talk.”

The girl glanced at him. “Don’t be so sure. Mars is desperate. They’ll fight tooth and nail. I’ve been on Mars three years.” She shuddered. “Thank goodness I’m getting away. If—”

“Prepare to land!” the pilot’s voice came. The ship began to settle slowly, dropping down toward the tiny emergency field on the seldom visited moon. Down, down the ship dropped. There was a grinding sound, a sickening jolt. Then silence.

“We’ve landed,” the heavy-set business man said. “They better not do anything to us! Terra will rip them apart if they violate one Space Article.”

“Please keep your seats,” the pilot’s voice came. “No one is to leave the ship, according to the Martian authorities. We are to remain here.”

A restless stir filled the ship. Some of the passengers began to read uneasily, others stared out at the deserted field, nervous and on edge, watching the three Martian pursuit ships land and disgorge groups of armed men.

The Martian soldiers were crossing the field quickly, moving toward them, running double time.

This Inner-Flight spaceship was the last passenger vessel to leave Mars for Terra. All other ships had long since left, returning to safety before the outbreak of hostilities. The passengers were the very last to go, the final group of Terrans to leave the grim red planet, business men, expatriates, tourists, any and all Terrans who had not already gone home.

“What do you suppose they want?” the young man said to the girl. “It’s hard to figure Martians out, isn’t it? First they give the ship clearance, let us take off, and now they radio us to set down again. By the way, my name’s Thacher, Bob Thacher. Since we’re going to be here awhile—”

* * * *

The port lock opened. Talking ceased abruptly, as everyone turned. A black-clad Martian official, a Province Leiter, stood framed against the bleak sunlight, staring around the ship. Behind him a handful of Martian soldiers stood waiting, their guns ready.

“This will not take long,” the Leiter said, stepping into the ship, the soldiers following him. “You will be allowed to continue your trip shortly.”

An audible sigh of relief went through the passengers.

“Look at him,” the girl whispered to Thacher. “How I hate those black uniforms!”

“He’s just a Provincial Leiter,” Thacher said. “Don’t worry.”

The Leiter stood for a moment, his hands on his hips, looking around at them without expression. “I have ordered your ship grounded so that an inspection can be made of all persons aboard,” he said. “You Terrans are the last to leave our planet. Most of you are ordinary and harmless—I am not interested in you. I am interested in finding three saboteurs, three Terrans, two men and a woman, who have committed an incredible act of destruction and violence. They are said to have fled to this ship.”

Murmurs of surprise and indignation broke out on all sides. The Leiter motioned the soldiers to follow him up the aisle.

“Two hours ago a Martian city was destroyed. Nothing remains, only a depression in the sand where the city was. The city and all its people have completely vanished. An entire city destroyed in a second! Mars will never rest until the saboteurs are captured. And we know they are aboard this ship.”

“It’s impossible,” the heavy-set business man said. “There aren’t any saboteurs here.”

“We’ll begin with you,” the Leiter said to him, stepping up beside the man’s seat. One of the soldiers passed the Leiter a square metal box. “This will soon tell us if you’re speaking the truth. Stand up. Get on your feet.”

The man rose slowly, flushing. “See here—”

“Are you involved in the destruction of the city? Answer!”

The man swallowed angrily. “I know nothing about any destruction of any city. And furthermore—”

“He is telling the truth,” the metal box said tonelessly.

“Next person.” The Leiter moved down the aisle.

A thin, bald-headed man stood up nervously. “No, sir,” he said. “I don’t know a thing about it.”

“He is telling the truth,” the box affirmed.

“Next person! Stand up!”

One person after another stood, answered, and sat down again in relief. At last there were only a few people left who had not been questioned. The Leiter paused, studying them intently.

“Only five left. The three must be among you. We have narrowed it down.” His hand moved to his belt. Something flashed, a rod of pale fire. He raised the rod, pointing it steadily at the five people. “All right, the first one of you. What do you know about this destruction? Are you involved with the destruction of our city?”

“No, not at all,” the man murmured.

“Yes, he’s telling the truth,” the box intoned.

“Next!”

“Nothing—I know nothing. I had nothing to do with it.”

“True,” the box said.

The ship was silent. Three people remained, a middle-aged man and his wife and their son, a boy of about twelve. They stood in the corner, staring white-faced at the Leiter, at the rod in his dark fingers.

“It must be you,” the Leiter grated, moving toward them. The Martian soldiers raised their guns. “It must be you. You there, the boy. What do you know about the destruction of our city? Answer!”

The boy shook his head. “Nothing,” he whispered.

The box was silent for a moment. “He is telling the truth,” it said reluctantly.

“Next!”

“Nothing,” the woman muttered. “Nothing.”

“The truth.”

“Next!”

“I had nothing to do with blowing up your city,” the man said. “You’re wasting your time.”

“It is the truth,” the box said.

For a long time the Leiter stood, toying with his rod. At last he pushed it back in his belt and signalled the soldiers toward the exit lock.

“You may proceed on your trip,” he said. He walked after the soldiers. At the hatch he stopped, looking back at the passengers, his face grim. “You may go—But Mars will not allow her enemies to escape. The three saboteurs will be caught, I promise you.” He rubbed his dark jaw thoughtfully. “It is strange. I was certain they were on this ship.”

Again he looked coldly around at the Terrans.

“Perhaps I was wrong. All right, proceed! But remember: the three will be caught, even if it takes endless years. Mars will catch them and punish them! I swear it!”

* * * *

For a long time no one spoke. The ship lumbered through space again, its jets firing evenly, calmly, moving the passengers toward their own planet, toward home. Behind them Deimos and the red ball that was Mars dropped farther and farther away each moment, disappearing and fading into the distance.

A sigh of relief passed through the passengers. “What a lot of hot air that was,” one grumbled.

“Barbarians!” a woman said.

A few of them stood up, moving out into the aisle, toward the lounge and the cocktail bar. Beside Thacher the girl got to her feet, pulling her jacket around her shoulders.

“Pardon me,” she said, stepping past him.

“Going to the bar?” Thacher said. “Mind if I come along?”

“I suppose not.”

They followed the others into the lounge, walking together up the aisle. “You know,” Thacher said, “I don’t even know your name, yet.”

“My name is Mara Gordon.”

“Mara? That’s a nice name. What part of Terra are you from? North America? New York?”

“I’ve been in New York,” Mara said. “New York is very lovely.” She was slender and pretty, with a cloud of dark hair tumbling down her neck, against her leather jacket.

They entered the lounge and stood undecided.

“Let’s sit at a table,” Mara said, looking around at the people at the bar, mostly men. “Perhaps that table over there.”

“But someone’s there already,” Thacher said. The heavy-set business man had sat down at the table and deposited his sample case on the floor. “Do we want to sit with him?”

“Oh, it’s all right,” Mara said, crossing to the table. “May we sit here?” she said to the man.

The man looked up, half-rising. “It’s a pleasure,” he murmured. He studied Thacher intently. “However, a friend of mine will be joining me in a moment.”

“I’m sure there’s room enough for us all,” Mara said. She seated herself and Thacher helped her with her chair. He sat down, too, glancing up suddenly at Mara and the business man. They were looking at each other almost as if something had passed between them. The man was middle-aged, with a florid face and tired, grey eyes. His hands were mottled with the veins showing thickly. At the moment he was tapping nervously.

“My name’s Thacher,” Thacher said to him, holding out his hand. “Bob Thacher. Since we’re going to be together for a while we might as well get to know each other.”

The man studied him. Slowly his hand came out. “Why not? My name’s Erickson. Ralf Erickson.”

“Erickson?” Thacher smiled. “You look like a commercial man, to me.” He nodded toward the sample case on the floor. “Am I right?”

The man named Erickson started to answer, but at that moment there was a stir. A thin man of about thirty had come up to the table, his eyes bright, staring down at them warmly. “Well, we’re on our way,” he said to Erickson.

“Hello, Mara.” He pulled out a chair and sat down quickly, folding his hands on the table before him. He noticed Thacher and drew back a little. “Pardon me,” he murmured.

“Bob Thacher is my name,” Thacher said. “I hope I’m not intruding here.” He glanced around at the three of them, Mara, alert, watching him intently, heavy-set Erickson, his face blank, and this person. “Say, do you three know each other?” he asked suddenly.

There was silence.

The robot attendant slid over soundlessly, poised to take their orders. Erickson roused himself. “Let’s see,” he murmured. “What will we have? Mara?”

“Whiskey and water.”

“You, Jan?”

The bright slim man smiled. “The same.”

“Thacher?”

“Gin and tonic.”

“Whiskey and water for me, also,” Erickson said. The robot attendant went off. It returned at once with the drinks, setting on the table. Each took his own. “Well,” Erickson said, holding his glass up. “To our mutual success.”

* * * *

All drank, Thacher and the three of them, heavy-set Erickson, Mara, her eyes nervous and alert, Jan, who had just come. Again a look passed between Mara and Erickson, a look so swift that he would not have caught it had he not been looking directly at her.

“What line do you represent, Mr. Erickson?” Thacher asked.

Erickson glanced at him, then down at the sample case on the floor. He grunted. “Well, as you can see, I’m a salesman.”

Thacher smiled. “I knew it! You get so you can always spot a salesman right off by his sample case. A salesman always has to carry something to show. What are you in, sir?”

Erickson paused. He licked his thick lips, his eyes blank and lidded, like a toad’s. At last he rubbed his mouth with his hand and reached down, lifting up the sample case. He set it on the table in front of him.

“Well?” he said. “Perhaps we might even show Mr. Thacher.”

They all stared down at the sample case. It seemed to be an ordinary leather case, with a metal handle and a snap lock. “I’m getting curious,” Thacher said. “What’s in there? You’re all so tense. Diamonds? Stolen jewels?”

Jan laughed harshly, mirthlessly. “Erick, put it down. We’re not far enough away, yet.”

“Nonsense,” Erick rumbled. “We’re away, Jan.”

“Please,” Mara whispered. “Wait, Erick.”

“Wait? Why? What for? You’re so accustomed to—”

“Erick,” Mara said. She nodded toward Thacher. “We don’t know him, Erick. Please!”

“He’s a Terran, isn’t he?” Erickson said. “All Terrans are together in these times.” He fumbled suddenly at the catch lock on the case. “Yes, Mr. Thacher. I’m a salesman. We’re all salesmen, the three of us.”

“Then you do know each other.”

“Yes.” Erickson nodded. His two companions sat rigidly, staring down. “Yes, we do. Here, I’ll show you our line.”

He opened the case. From it he took a letter-knife, a pencil sharpener, a glass globe paperweight, a box of thumb tacks, a stapler, some clips, a plastic ashtray, and some things Thacher could not identify. He placed the objects in a row in front of him on the table top. Then he closed the sample case.

“I gather you’re in office supplies,” Thacher said. He touched the letter-knife with his finger. “Nice quality steel. Looks like Swedish steel, to me.”

Erickson nodded, looking into Thacher’s face. “Not really an impressive business, is it? Office supplies. Ashtrays, paper clips.” He smiled.

“Oh—” Thacher shrugged. “Why not? They’re a necessity in modern business. The only thing I wonder—”

“What’s that?”

“Well, I wonder how you’d ever find enough customers on Mars to make it worth your while.” He paused, examining the glass paperweight. He lifted it up, holding it to the light, staring at the scene within until Erickson took it out of his hand and put it back in the sample case. “And another thing. If you three know each other, why did you sit apart when you got on?”

They looked at him quickly.

“And why didn’t you speak to each other until we left Deimos?” He leaned toward Erickson, smiling at him. “Two men and a woman. Three of you. Sitting apart in the ship. Not speaking, not until the check-station was past. I find myself thinking over what the Martian said. Three saboteurs. A woman and two men.”

Erickson put the things back in the sample case. He was smiling, but his face had gone chalk white. Mara stared down, playing with a drop of water on the edge of her glass. Jan clenched his hands together nervously, blinking rapidly.

“You three are the ones the Leiter was after,” Thacher said softly. “You are the destroyers, the saboteurs. But their lie detector—Why didn’t it trap you? How did you get by that? And now you’re safe, outside the check-station.” He grinned, staring around at them. “I’ll be damned! And I really thought you were a salesman, Erickson. You really fooled me.”

Erickson relaxed a little. “Well, Mr. Thacher, it’s in a good cause. I’m sure you have no love for Mars, either. No Terran does. And I see you’re leaving with the rest of us.”

“True,” Thacher said. “You must certainly have an interesting account to give, the three of you.” He looked around the table.

“We still have an hour or so of travel. Sometimes it gets dull, this Mars-Terra run. Nothing to see, nothing to do but sit and drink in the lounge.” He raised his eyes slowly. “Any chance you’d like to spin a story to keep us awake?”

Jan and Mara looked at Erickson. “Go on,” Jan said. “He knows who we are. Tell him the rest of the story.”

“You might as well,” Mara said.

Jan let out a sigh suddenly, a sigh of relief. “Let’s put the cards on the table, get this weight off us. I’m tired of sneaking around, slipping—”

“Sure,” Erickson said expansively. “Why not?” He settled back in his chair, unbuttoning his vest. “Certainly, Mr. Thacher. I’ll be glad to spin you a story. And I’m sure it will be interesting enough to keep you awake.”

* * * *

They ran through the groves of dead trees, leaping across the sun-baked Martian soil, running silently together. They went up a little rise, across a narrow ridge. Suddenly Erick stopped, throwing himself down flat on the ground. The others did the same, pressing themselves against the soil, gasping for breath.

“Be silent,” Erick muttered. He raised himself a little. “No noise. There’ll be Leiters nearby, from now on. We don’t dare take any chances.”

Between the three people lying in the grove of dead trees and the City was a barren, level waste of desert, over a mile of blasted sand. No trees or bushes marred the smooth, parched surface. Only an occasional wind, a dry wind eddying and twisting, blew the sand up into little rills. A faint odor came to them, a bitter smell of heat and sand, carried by the wind.

Erick pointed. “Look. The City—There it is.”

They stared, still breathing deeply from their race through the trees. The City was close, closer than they had ever seen it before. Never had they gotten so close to it in times past. Terrans were never allowed near the great Martian cities, the centers of Martian life. Even in ordinary times, when there was no threat of approaching war, the Martians shrewdly kept all Terrans away from their citadels, partly from fear, partly from a deep, innate sense of hostility toward the white-skinned visitors whose commercial ventures had earned them the respect, and the dislike, of the whole system.

“How does it look to you?” Erick said.

The City was huge, much larger than they had imagined from the drawings and models they had studied so carefully back in New York, in the War Ministry Office. Huge it was, huge and stark, black towers rising up against the sky, incredibly thin columns of ancient metal, columns that had stood wind and sun for centuries. Around the City was a wall of stone, red stone, immense bricks that had been lugged there and fitted into place by slaves of the early Martian dynasties, under the whiplash of the first great Kings of Mars.

An ancient, sun-baked City, a City set in the middle of a wasted plain, beyond groves of dead trees, a City seldom seen by Terrans—but a City studied on maps and charts in every War Office on Terra. A City that contained, for all its ancient stone and archaic towers, the ruling group of all Mars, the Council of Senior Leiters, black-clad men who governed and ruled with an iron hand.

The Senior Leiters, twelve fanatic and devoted men, black priests, but priests with flashing rods of fire, lie detectors, rocket ships, intra-space cannon, many more things the Terran Senate could only conjecture about. The Senior Leiters and their subordinate Province Leiters—Erick and the two behind him suppressed a shudder.

“We’ve got to be careful,” Erick said again. “We’ll be passing among them, soon. If they guess who we are, or what we’re here for—”

He snapped open the case he carried, glancing inside for a second. Then he closed it again, grasping the handle firmly. “Let’s go,” he said. He stood up slowly. “You two come up beside me. I want to make sure you look the way you should.”

* * * *

Mara and Jan stepped quickly ahead. Erick studied them critically as the three of them walked slowly down the slope, onto the plain, toward the towering black spires of the City.

“Jan,” Erick said. “Take hold of her hand! Remember, you’re going to marry her; she’s your bride. And Martian peasants think a lot of their brides.”

Jan was dressed in the short trousers and coat of the Martian farmer, a knotted rope tied around his waist, a hat on his head to keep off the sun. His skin was dark, colored by dye until it was almost bronze.

“You look fine,” Erick said to him. He glanced at Mara. Her black hair was tied in a knot, looped through a hollowed-out yuke bone. Her face was dark, too, dark and lined with colored ceremonial pigment, green and orange stripes across her cheeks. Earrings were strung through her ears. On her feet were tiny slippers of perruh hide, laced around her ankles, and she wore long translucent Martian trousers with a bright sash tied around her waist. Between her small breasts a chain of stone beads rested, good-luck charms for the coming marriage.

“All right,” Erick said. He, himself, wore the flowing grey robe of a Martian priest, dirty robes that were supposed to remain on him all his life, to be buried around him when he died. “I think we’ll get past the guards. There should be heavy morning traffic on the road.”

They walked on, the hard sand crunching under their feet. Against the horizon they could see specks moving, other persons going toward the City, farmers and peasants and merchants, bringing their crops and goods to market.

“See the cart!” Mara exclaimed.

They were nearing a narrow road, two ruts worn into the sand. A Martian hufa was pulling the cart, its great sides wet with perspiration, its tongue hanging out. The cart was piled high with bales of cloth, rough country cloth, hand dipped. A bent farmer urged the hufa on.

“And there.” She pointed, smiling.

A group of merchants riding small animals were moving along behind the cart, Martians in long robes, their faces hidden by sand masks. On each animal was a pack, carefully tied on with rope. And beyond the merchants, plodding dully along, were peasants and farmers in an endless procession, some riding carts or animals, but mostly on foot.

Mara and Jan and Erick joined the line of people, melting in behind the merchants. No one noticed them; no one looked up or gave any sign. The march continued as before. Neither Jan nor Mara said anything to each other. They walked a little behind Erick, who paced with a certain dignity, a certain bearing becoming his position.

Once he slowed down, pointing up at the sky. “Look,” he murmured, in the Martian hill dialect. “See that?”

Two black dots circled lazily. Martian patrol craft, the military on the outlook for any sign of unusual activity. War was almost ready to break out with Terra. Any day, almost any moment.

“We’ll be just in time,” Erick said. “Tomorrow will be too late. The last ship will have left Mars.”

“I hope nothing stops us,” Mara said. “I want to get back home when we’re through.”

* * * *

Half an hour passed. They neared the City, the wall growing as they walked, rising higher and higher until it seemed to blot out the sky itself. A vast wall, a wall of eternal stone that had felt the wind and sun for centuries. A group of Martian soldiers were standing at the entrance, the single passage-gate hewn into the rock, leading to the City. As each person went through the soldiers examined him, poking his garments, looking into his load.

Erick tensed. The line had slowed almost to a halt. “It’ll be our turn, soon,” he murmured. “Be prepared.”

“Let’s hope no Leiters come around,” Jan said. “The soldiers aren’t so bad.”

Mara was staring up at the wall and the towers beyond. Under their feet the ground trembled, vibrating and shaking. She could see tongues of flame rising from the towers, from the deep underground factories and forges of the City. The air was thick and dense with particles of soot. Mara rubbed her mouth, coughing.

“Here they come,” Erick said softly.

The merchants had been examined and allowed to pass through the dark gate, the entrance through the wall into the City. They and their silent animals had already disappeared inside. The leader of the group of soldiers was beckoning impatiently to Erick, waving him on.

“Come along!” he said. “Hurry up there, old man.”

Erick advanced slowly, his arms wrapped around his body, looking down at the ground.

“Who are you and what’s your business here?” the soldier demanded, his hands on his hips, his gun hanging idly at his waist. Most of the soldiers were lounging lazily, leaning against the wall, some even squatting in the shade. Flies crawled on the face of one who had fallen asleep, his gun on the ground beside him.

“My business?” Erick murmured. “I am a village priest.”

“Why do you want to enter the City?”

“I must bring these two people before the magistrate to marry them.” He indicated Mara and Jan, standing a little behind him. “That is the Law the Leiters have made.”

The soldier laughed. He circled around Erick. “What do you have in that bag you carry?”

“Laundry. We stay the night.”

“What village are you from?”

“Kranos.”

“Kranos?” The soldier looked to a companion. “Ever heard of Kranos?”

“A backward pig sty. I saw it once on a hunting trip.”

The leader of the soldiers nodded to Jan and Mara. The two of them advanced, their hands clasped, standing close together. One of the soldiers put his hand on Mara’s bare shoulder, turning her around.

“Nice little wife you’re getting,” he said. “Good and firm-looking.” He winked, grinning lewdly.

Jan glanced at him in sullen resentment. The soldiers guffawed. “All right,” the leader said to Erick. “You people can pass.”

Erick took a small purse from his robes and gave the soldier a coin. Then the three of them went into the dark tunnel that was the entrance, passing through the wall of stone, into the City beyond.

They were within the City!

“Now,” Erick whispered. “Hurry.”

Around them the City roared and cracked, the sound of a thousand vents and machines, shaking the stones under their feet. Erick led Mara and Jan into a corner, by a row of brick warehouses. People were everywhere, hurrying back and forth, shouting above the din, merchants, peddlers, soldiers, street women. Erick bent down and opened the case he carried. From the case he quickly took three small coils of fine metal, intricate meshed wires and vanes worked together into a small cone. Jan took one and Mara took one. Erick put the remaining cone into his robe and snapped the case shut again.

“Now remember, the coils must be buried in such a way that the line runs through the center of the City. We must trisect the main section, where the largest concentration of buildings is. Remember the maps! Watch the alleys and streets carefully. Talk to no one if you can help it. Each of you has enough Martian money to buy your way out of trouble. Watch especially for cut-purses, and for heaven’s sake, don’t get lost.”

Erick broke off. Two black-clad Leiters were coming along the inside of the wall, strolling together with their hands behind their backs. They noticed the three who stood in the corner by the warehouses and stopped.

“Go,” Erick muttered. “And be back here at sundown.” He smiled grimly. “Or never come back.”

Each went off a different way, walking quickly without looking back. The Leiters watched them go. “The little bride was quite lovely,” one Leiter said. “Those hill people have the stamp of nobility in their blood, from the old times.”

“A very lucky young peasant to possess her,” the other said. They went on. Erick looked after them, still smiling a little. Then he joined the surging mass of people that milled eternally through the streets of the City.

At dusk they met outside the gate. The sun was soon to set, and the air had turned thin and frigid. It cut through their clothing like knives.

Mara huddled against Jan, trembling and rubbing her bare arms.

“Well?” Erick said. “Did you both succeed?”

Around them peasants and merchants were pouring from the entrance, leaving the City to return to their farms and villages, starting the long trip back across the plain toward the hills beyond. None of them noticed the shivering girl and the young man and the old priest standing by the wall.

“Mine’s in place,” Jan said. “On the other side of the City, on the extreme edge. Buried by a well.”

“Mine’s in the industrial section,” Mara whispered, her teeth chattering. “Jan, give me something to put over me! I’m freezing.”

“Good,” Erick said. “Then the three coils should trisect dead center, if the models were correct.” He looked up at the darkening sky. Already, stars were beginning to show. Two dots, the evening patrol, moved slowly toward the horizon. “Let’s hurry. It won’t be long.”

They joined the line of Martians moving along the road, away from the City. Behind them the City was losing itself in the sombre tones of night, its black spires disappearing into darkness.

They walked silently with the country people until the flat ridge of dead trees became visible on the horizon. Then they left the road and turned off, walking toward the trees.

“Almost time!” Erick said. He increased his pace, looking back at Jan and Mara impatiently.

“Come on!”

They hurried, making their way through the twilight, stumbling over rocks and dead branches, up the side of the ridge. At the top Erick halted, standing with his hands on his hips, looking back.

“See,” he murmured. “The City. The last time we’ll ever see it this way.”

“Can I sit down?” Mara said. “My feet hurt me.”

Jan pulled at Erick’s sleeve. “Hurry, Erick! Not much time left.” He laughed nervously. “If everything goes right we’ll be able to look at it—forever.”

“But not like this,” Erick murmured. He squatted down, snapping his case open. He took some tubes and wiring out and assembled them together on the ground, at the peak of the ridge. A small pyramid of wire and plastic grew, shaped by his expert hands.

At last he grunted, standing up. “All right.”

“Is it pointed directly at the City?” Mara asked anxiously, looking down at the pyramid.

Erick nodded. “Yes, it’s placed according—” He stopped, suddenly stiffening. “Get back! It’s time! Hurry!”

Jan ran, down the far side of the slope, away from the City, pulling Mara with him. Erick came quickly after, still looking back at the distant spires, almost lost in the night sky.

“Down.”

Jan sprawled out, Mara beside him, her trembling body pressed against his. Erick settled down into the sand and dead branches, still trying to see. “I want to see it,” he murmured. “A miracle. I want to see—”

A flash, a blinding burst of violet light, lit up the sky. Erick clapped his hands over his eyes. The flash whitened, growing larger, expanding. Suddenly there was a roar, and a furious hot wind rushed past him, throwing him on his face in the sand. The hot dry wind licked and seared at them, crackling the bits of branches into flame. Mara and Jan shut their eyes, pressed tightly together.

“God—” Erick muttered.

The storm passed. They opened their eyes slowly. The sky was still alive with fire, a drifting cloud of sparks that was beginning to dissipate with the night wind. Erick stood up unsteadily, helping Jan and Mara to their feet. The three of them stood, staring silently across the dark waste, the black plain, none of them speaking.

The City was gone.

At last Erick turned away. “That part’s done,” he said. “Now the rest! Give me a hand, Jan. There’ll be a thousand patrol ships around here in a minute.”

“I see one already,” Mara said, pointing up. A spot winked in the sky, a rapidly moving spot. “They’re coming, Erick.” There was a throb of chill fear in her voice.

“I know.” Erick and Jan squatted on the ground around the pyramid of tubes and plastic, pulling the pyramid apart. The pyramid was fused, fused together like molten glass. Erick tore the pieces away with trembling fingers. From the remains of the pyramid he pulled something forth, something he held up high, trying to make it out in the darkness. Jan and Mara came close to see, both staring up intently, almost without breathing.

“There it is,” Erick said. “There!”

In his hand was a globe, a small transparent globe of glass. Within the glass something moved, something minute and fragile, spires almost too small to be seen, microscopic, a complex web swimming within the hollow glass globe. A web of spires. A City.

Erick put the globe into the case and snapped it shut. “Let’s go,” he said. They began to lope back through the trees, back the way they had come before. “We’ll change in the car,” he said as they ran. “I think we should keep these clothes on until we’re actually inside the car. We still might encounter someone.”

“I’ll be glad to get my own clothing on again,” Jan said. “I feel funny in these little pants.”

“How do you think I feel?” Mara gasped. “I’m freezing in this, what there is of it.”

“All young Martian brides dress that way,” Erick said. He clutched the case tightly as they ran. “I think it looks fine.”

“Thank you,” Mara said, “but it is cold.”

“What do you suppose they’ll think?” Jan asked. “They’ll assume the City was destroyed, won’t they? That’s certain.”

“Yes,” Erick said. “They’ll be sure it was blown up. We can count on that. And it will be damn important to us that they think so!”

“The car should be around here, someplace,” Mara said, slowing down.

“No. Farther on,” Erick said. “Past that little hill over there. In the ravine, by the trees. It’s so hard to see where we are.”

“Shall I light something?” Jan said.

“No. There may be patrols around who—”

He halted abruptly. Jan and Mara stopped beside him. “What—” Mara began.

A light glimmered. Something stirred in the darkness. There was a sound.

“Quick!” Erick rasped. He dropped, throwing the case far away from him, into the bushes. He straightened up tensely.

A figure loomed up, moving through the darkness, and behind it came more figures, men, soldiers in uniform. The light flashed up brightly, blinding them. Erick closed his eyes. The light left him, touching Mara and Jan, standing silently together, clasping hands. Then it flicked down to the ground and around in a circle.

A Leiter stepped forward, a tall figure in black, with his soldiers close behind him, their guns ready. “You three,” the Leiter said. “Who are you? Don’t move. Stand where you are.”

He came up to Erick, peering at him intently, his hard Martian face without expression. He went all around Erick, examining his robes, his sleeves.

“Please—” Erick began in a quavering voice, but the Leiter cut him off.

“I’ll do the talking. Who are you three? What are you doing here? Speak up.”

“We—we are going back to our village,” Erick muttered, staring down, his hands folded. “We were in the City, and now we are going home.”

One of the soldiers spoke into a mouthpiece. He clicked it off and put it away.

“Come with me,” the Leiter said. “We’re taking you in. Hurry along.”

“In? Back to the City?”

One of the soldiers laughed. “The City is gone,” he said. “All that’s left of it you can put in the palm of your hand.”

“But what happened?” Mara said.

“No one knows. Come on, hurry it up!”

There was a sound. A soldier came quickly out of the darkness. “A Senior Leiter,” he said. “Coming this way.” He disappeared again.

* * * *

“A Senior Leiter.” The soldiers stood waiting, standing at a respectful attention. A moment later the Senior Leiter stepped into the light, a black-clad old man, his ancient face thin and hard, like a bird’s, eyes bright and alert. He looked from Erick to Jan.

“Who are these people?” he demanded.

“Villagers going back home.”

“No, they’re not. They don’t stand like villagers. Villagers slump—diet, poor food. These people are not villagers. I myself came from the hills, and I know.”

He stepped close to Erick, looking keenly into his face. “Who are you? Look at his chin—he never shaved with a sharpened stone! Something is wrong here.”

In his hand a rod of pale fire flashed. “The City is gone, and with it at least half the Leiter Council. It is very strange, a flash, then heat, and a wind. But it was not fission. I am puzzled. All at once the City has vanished. Nothing is left but a depression in the sand.”

“We’ll take them in,” the other Leiter said. “Soldiers, surround them. Make certain that—”

“Run!” Erick cried. He struck out, knocking the rod from the Senior Leiter’s hand. They were all running, soldiers shouting, flashing their lights, stumbling against each other in the darkness. Erick dropped to his knees, groping frantically in the bushes. His fingers closed over the handle of the case and he leaped up. In Terran he shouted to Mara and Jan.

“Hurry! To the car! Run!” He set off, down the slope, stumbling through the darkness. He could hear soldiers behind him, soldiers running and falling. A body collided against him and he struck out. Someplace behind him there was a hiss, and a section of the slope went up in flames. The Leiter’s rod—

“Erick,” Mara cried from the darkness. He ran toward her. Suddenly he slipped, falling on a stone. Confusion and firing. The sound of excited voices.

“Erick, is that you?” Jan caught hold of him, helping him up. “The car. It’s over here. Where’s Mara?”

“I’m here,” Mara’s voice came. “Over here, by the car.”

A light flashed. A tree went up in a puff of fire, and Erick felt the singe of the heat against his face. He and Jan made their way toward the girl. Mara’s hand caught his in the darkness.

“Now the car,” Erick said. “If they haven’t got to it.” He slid down the slope into the ravine, fumbling in the darkness, reaching and holding onto the handle of the case. Reaching, reaching—

He touched something cold and smooth. Metal, a metal door handle. Relief flooded through him. “I’ve found it! Jan, get inside. Mara, come on.” He pushed Jan past him, into the car. Mara slipped in after Jan, her small agile body crowding in beside him.

“Stop!” a voice shouted from above. “There’s no use hiding in that ravine. We’ll get you! Come up and—”

The sound of voices was drowned out by the roar of the car’s motor. A moment later they shot into the darkness, the car rising into the air. Treetops broke and cracked under them as Erick turned the car from side to side, avoiding the groping shafts of pale light from below, the last furious thrusts from the two Leiters and their soldiers.

Then they were away, above the trees, high in the air, gaining speed each moment, leaving the knot of Martians far behind.

“Toward Marsport,” Jan said to Erick. “Right?”

Erick nodded. “Yes. We’ll land outside the field, in the hills. We can change back to our regular clothing there, our commercial clothing. Damn it—we’ll be lucky if we can get there in time for the ship.”

“The last ship,” Mara whispered, her chest rising and falling. “What if we don’t get there in time?”

Erick looked down at the leather case in his lap. “We’ll have to get there,” he murmured. “We must!”

* * * *

For a long time there was silence. Thacher stared at Erickson. The older man was leaning back in his chair, sipping a little of his drink. Mara and Jan were silent.

“So you didn’t destroy the City,” Thacher said. “You didn’t destroy it at all. You shrank it down and put it in a glass globe, in a paperweight. And now you’re salesmen again, with a sample case of office supplies!”

Erickson smiled. He opened the briefcase and reaching into it he brought out the glass globe paperweight. He held it up, looking into it. “Yes, we stole the City from the Martians. That’s how we got by the lie detector. It was true that we knew nothing about a destroyed City.”

“But why?” Thacher said. “Why steal a City? Why not merely bomb it?”

“Ransom,” Mara said fervently, gazing into the globe, her dark eyes bright. “Their biggest City, half of their Council—in Erick’s hand!”

“Mars will have to do what Terra asks,” Erickson said. “Now Terra will be able to make her commercial demands felt. Maybe there won’t even be a war. Perhaps Terra will get her way without fighting.” Still smiling, he put the globe back into the briefcase and locked it.

“Quite a story,” Thacher said. “What an amazing process, reduction of size—A whole City reduced to microscopic dimensions. Amazing. No wonder you were able to escape. With such daring as that, no one could hope to stop you.”

He looked down at the briefcase on the floor. Underneath them the jets murmured and vibrated evenly, as the ship moved through space toward distant Terra.

“We still have quite a way to go,” Jan said. “You’ve heard our story, Thacher. Why not tell us yours? What sort of line are you in? What’s your business?”

“Yes,” Mara said. “What do you do?”

“What do I do?” Thacher said. “Well, if you like, I’ll show you.” He reached into his coat and brought out something. Something that flashed and glinted, something slender. A rod of pale fire.

The three stared at it. Sickened shock settled over them slowly.

Thacher held the rod loosely, calmly, pointing it at Erickson. “We knew you three were on this ship,” he said. “There was no doubt of that. But we did not know what had become of the City. My theory was that the City had not been destroyed at all, that something else had happened to it. Council instruments measured a sudden loss of mass in that area, a decrease equal to the mass of the City. Somehow the City had been spirited away, not destroyed. But I could not convince the other Council Leiters of it. I had to follow you alone.”

Thacher turned a little, nodding to the men sitting at the bar. The men rose at once, coming toward the table.

“A very interesting process you have. Mars will benefit a great deal from it. Perhaps it will even turn the tide in our favor. When we return to Marsport I wish to begin work on it at once. And now, if you will please pass me the briefcase—”

THE JUPITER WEAPON, by Charles L. Fontenay

Trella feared she was in for trouble even before Motwick’s head dropped forward on his arms in a drunken stupor. The two evil-looking men at the table nearby had been watching her surreptitiously, and now they shifted restlessly in their chairs.

Trella had not wanted to come to the Golden Satellite. It was a squalid saloon in the rougher section of Jupiter’s View, the terrestrial dome-colony on Ganymede. Motwick, already drunk, had insisted.

A woman could not possibly make her way through these streets alone to the better section of town, especially one clad in a silvery evening dress. Her only hope was that this place had a telephone. Perhaps she could call one of Motwick’s friends; she had no one on Ganymede she could call a real friend herself.

Tentatively, she pushed her chair back from the table and arose. She had to brush close by the other table to get to the bar. As she did, the dark, slick-haired man reached out and grabbed her around the waist with a steely arm.

Trella swung with her whole body, and slapped him so hard he nearly fell from his chair. As she walked swiftly toward the bar, he leaped up to follow her.

There were only two other people in the Golden Satellite: the fat, mustached bartender and a short, square-built man at the bar. The latter swung around at the pistol-like report of her slap, and she saw that, though no more than four and a half feet tall, he was as heavily muscled as a lion.

His face was clean and open, with close-cropped blond hair and honest blue eyes. She ran to him.

“Help me!” she cried. “Please help me!”

He began to back away from her.

“I can’t,” he muttered in a deep voice. “I can’t help you. I can’t do anything.”

* * * *

The dark man was at her heels. In desperation, she dodged around the short man and took refuge behind him. Her protector was obviously unwilling, but the dark man, faced with his massiveness, took no chances. He stopped and shouted:

“Kregg!”

The other man at the table arose, ponderously, and lumbered toward them. He was immense, at least six and a half feet tall, with a brutal, vacant face.

Evading her attempts to stay behind him, the squat man began to move down the bar away from the approaching Kregg. The dark man moved in on Trella again as Kregg overtook his quarry and swung a huge fist like a sledgehammer.

Exactly what happened, Trella wasn’t sure. She had the impression that Kregg’s fist connected squarely with the short man’s chin before he dodged to one side in a movement so fast it was a blur. But that couldn’t have been, because the short man wasn’t moved by that blow that would have felled a steer, and Kregg roared in pain, grabbing his injured fist.

“The bar!” yelled Kregg. “I hit the damn bar!”

At this juncture, the bartender took a hand. Leaning far over the bar, he swung a full bottle in a complete arc. It smashed on Kregg’s head, splashing the floor with liquor, and Kregg sank stunned to his knees. The dark man, who had grabbed Trella’s arm, released her and ran for the door.

Moving agilely around the end of the bar, the bartender stood over Kregg, holding the jagged-edged bottleneck in his hand menacingly.

“Get out!” rumbled the bartender. “I’ll have no coppers raiding my place for the likes of you!”

Kregg stumbled to his feet and staggered out. Trella ran to the unconscious Motwick’s side.

“That means you, too, lady,” said the bartender beside her. “You and your boy friend get out of here. You oughtn’t to have come here in the first place.”

“May I help you, Miss?” asked a deep, resonant voice behind her.

She straightened from her anxious examination of Motwick. The squat man was standing there, an apologetic look on his face.

She looked contemptuously at the massive muscles whose help had been denied her. Her arm ached where the dark man had grasped it. The broad face before her was not unhandsome, and the blue eyes were disconcertingly direct, but she despised him for a coward.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t fight those men for you, Miss, but I just couldn’t,” he said miserably, as though reading her thoughts. “But no one will bother you on the street if I’m with you.”

“A lot of protection you’d be if they did!” she snapped. “But I’m desperate. You can carry him to the Stellar Hotel for me.”

* * * *

The gravity of Ganymede was hardly more than that of Earth’s moon, but the way the man picked up the limp Motwick with one hand and tossed him over a shoulder was startling: as though he lifted a feather pillow. He followed Trella out the door of the Golden Satellite and fell in step beside her. Immediately she was grateful for his presence. The dimly lighted street was not crowded, but she didn’t like the looks of the men she saw.

The transparent dome of Jupiter’s View was faintly visible in the reflected night lights of the colonial city, but the lights were overwhelmed by the giant, vari-colored disc of Jupiter itself, riding high in the sky.

“I’m Quest Mansard, Miss,” said her companion. “I’m just in from Jupiter.”

“I’m Trella Nuspar,” she said, favoring him with a green-eyed glance. “You mean Io, don’t you—or Moon Five?”

“No,” he said, grinning at her. He had an engaging grin, with even white teeth. “I meant Jupiter.”

“You’re lying,” she said flatly. “No one has ever landed on Jupiter. It would be impossible to blast off again.”

“My parents landed on Jupiter, and I blasted off from it,” he said soberly. “I was born there. Have you ever heard of Dr. Eriklund Mansard?”

“I certainly have,” she said, her interest taking a sudden upward turn. “He developed the surgiscope, didn’t he? But his ship was drawn into Jupiter and lost.”

“It was drawn into Jupiter, but he landed it successfully,” said Quest. “He and my mother lived on Jupiter until the oxygen equipment wore out at last. I was born and brought up there, and I was finally able to build a small rocket with a powerful enough drive to clear the planet.”

She looked at him. He was short, half a head shorter than she, but broad and powerful as a man might be who had grown up in heavy gravity. He trod the street with a light, controlled step, seeming to deliberately hold himself down.

“If Dr. Mansard succeeded in landing on Jupiter, why didn’t anyone ever hear from him again?” she demanded.

“Because,” said Quest, “his radio was sabotaged, just as his ship’s drive was.”

“Jupiter strength,” she murmured, looking him over coolly. “You wear Motwick on your shoulder like a scarf. But you couldn’t bring yourself to help a woman against two thugs.”

He flushed.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “That’s something I couldn’t help.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know. It’s not that I’m afraid, but there’s something in me that makes me back away from the prospect of fighting anyone.”

Trella sighed. Cowardice was a state of mind. It was peculiarly inappropriate, but not unbelievable, that the strongest and most agile man on Ganymede should be a coward. Well, she thought with a rush of sympathy, he couldn’t help being what he was.

* * * *

They had reached the more brightly lighted section of the city now. Trella could get a cab from here, but the Stellar Hotel wasn’t far. They walked on.

Trella had the desk clerk call a cab to deliver the unconscious Motwick to his home. She and Quest had a late sandwich in the coffee shop.

“I landed here only a week ago,” he told her, his eyes frankly admiring her honey-colored hair and comely face. “I’m heading for Earth on the next spaceship.”

“We’ll be traveling companions, then,” she said. “I’m going back on that ship, too.”

For some reason she decided against telling him that the assignment on which she had come to the Jupiter system was to gather his own father’s notebooks and take them back to Earth.

* * * *

Motwick was an irresponsible playboy whom Trella had known briefly on Earth, and Trella was glad to dispense with his company for the remaining three weeks before the spaceship blasted off. She found herself enjoying the steadier companionship of Quest.

As a matter of fact, she found herself enjoying his companionship more than she intended to. She found herself falling in love with him.

Now this did not suit her at all. Trella had always liked her men tall and dark. She had determined that when she married it would be to a curly-haired six-footer.

She was not at all happy about being so strongly attracted to a man several inches shorter than she. She was particularly unhappy about feeling drawn to a man who was a coward.

The ship that they boarded on Moon Nine was one of the newer ships that could attain a hundred-mile-per-second velocity and take a hyperbolic path to Earth, but it would still require fifty-four days to make the trip. So Trella was delighted to find that the ship was the Cometfire and its skipper was her old friend, dark-eyed, curly-haired Jakdane Gille.

“Jakdane,” she said, flirting with him with her eyes as in days gone by, “I need a chaperon this trip, and you’re ideal for the job.”

“I never thought of myself in quite that light, but maybe I’m getting old,” he answered, laughing. “What’s your trouble, Trella?”

“I’m in love with that huge chunk of man who came aboard with me, and I’m not sure I ought to be,” she confessed. “I may need protection against myself till we get to Earth.”

“If it’s to keep you out of another fellow’s clutches, I’m your man,” agreed Jakdane heartily. “I always had a mind to save you for myself. I’ll guarantee you won’t have a moment alone with him the whole trip.”

“You don’t have to be that thorough about it,” she protested hastily. “I want to get a little enjoyment out of being in love. But if I feel myself weakening too much, I’ll holler for help.”

The Cometfire swung around great Jupiter in an opening arc and plummeted ever more swiftly toward the tight circles of the inner planets. There were four crew members and three passengers aboard the ship’s tiny personnel sphere, and Trella was thrown with Quest almost constantly. She enjoyed every minute of it.

She told him only that she was a messenger, sent out to Ganymede to pick up some important papers and take them back to Earth. She was tempted to tell him what the papers were. Her employer had impressed upon her that her mission was confidential, but surely Dom Blessing could not object to Dr. Mansard’s son knowing about it.

All these things had happened before she was born, and she did not know what Dom Blessing’s relation to Dr. Mansard had been, but it must have been very close. She knew that Dr. Mansard had invented the surgiscope.

This was an instrument with a three-dimensional screen as its heart. The screen was a cubical frame in which an apparently solid image was built up of an object under an electron microscope.

* * * *

The actual cutting instrument of the surgiscope was an ion stream. By operating a tool in the three-dimensional screen, corresponding movements were made by the ion stream on the object under the microscope. The principle was the same as that used in operation of remote control “hands” in atomic laboratories to handle hot material, and with the surgiscope very delicate operations could be performed at the cellular level.

Dr. Mansard and his wife had disappeared into the turbulent atmosphere of Jupiter just after his invention of the surgiscope, and it had been developed by Dom Blessing. Its success had built Spaceway Instruments, Incorporated, which Blessing headed.

Through all these years since Dr. Mansard’s disappearance, Blessing had been searching the Jovian moons for a second, hidden laboratory of Dr. Mansard. When it was found at last, he sent Trella, his most trusted secretary, to Ganymede to bring back to him the notebooks found there.

Blessing would, of course, be happy to learn that a son of Dr. Mansard lived, and would see that he received his rightful share of the inheritance. Because of this, Trella was tempted to tell Quest the good news herself; but she decided against it. It was Blessing’s privilege to do this his own way, and he might not appreciate her meddling.

* * * *

At midtrip, Trella made a rueful confession to Jakdane.

“It seems I was taking unnecessary precautions when I asked you to be a chaperon,” she said. “I kept waiting for Quest to do something, and when he didn’t I told him I loved him.”

“What did he say?”

“It’s very peculiar,” she said unhappily. “He said he can’t love me. He said he wants to love me and he feels that he should, but there’s something in him that refuses to permit it.”

She expected Jakdane to salve her wounded feelings with a sympathetic pleasantry, but he did not. Instead, he just looked at her very thoughtfully and said no more about the matter.

He explained his attitude after Asrange ran amuck.

Asrange was the third passenger. He was a lean, saturnine individual who said little and kept to himself as much as possible. He was distantly polite in his relations with both crew and other passengers, and never showed the slightest spark of emotion … until the day Quest squirted coffee on him.

It was one of those accidents that can occur easily in space. The passengers and the two crewmen on that particular waking shift (including Jakdane) were eating lunch on the center-deck. Quest picked up his bulb of coffee, but inadvertently pressed it before he got it to his lips. The coffee squirted all over the front of Asrange’s clean white tunic.

“I’m sorry!” exclaimed Quest in distress.

The man’s eyes went wide and he snarled. So quickly it seemed impossible, he had unbuckled himself from his seat and hurled himself backward from the table with an incoherent cry. He seized the first object his hand touched—it happened to be a heavy wooden cane leaning against Jakdane’s bunk—propelled himself like a projectile at Quest.

Quest rose from the table in a sudden uncoiling of movement. He did not unbuckle his safety belt—he rose and it snapped like a string.

For a moment Trella thought he was going to meet Asrange’s assault. But he fled in a long leap toward the companionway leading to the astrogation deck above. Landing feet-first in the middle of the table and rebounding, Asrange pursued with the stick upraised.

In his haste, Quest missed the companionway in his leap and was cornered against one of the bunks. Asrange descended on him like an avenging angel and, holding onto the bunk with one hand, rained savage blows on his head and shoulders with the heavy stick.

Quest made no effort to retaliate. He cowered under the attack, holding his hands in front of him as if to ward it off. In a moment, Jakdane and the other crewman had reached Asrange and pulled him off.

* * * *

When they had Asrange in irons, Jakdane turned to Quest, who was now sitting unhappily at the table.

“Take it easy,” he advised. “I’ll wake the psychosurgeon and have him look you over. Just stay there.”

Quest shook his head.

“Don’t bother him,” he said. “It’s nothing but a few bruises.”

“Bruises? Man, that club could have broken your skull! Or a couple of ribs, at the very least.”

“I’m all right,” insisted Quest; and when the skeptical Jakdane insisted on examining him carefully, he had to admit it. There was hardly a mark on him from the blows.

“If it didn’t hurt you any more than that, why didn’t you take that stick away from him?” demanded Jakdane. “You could have, easily.”

“I couldn’t,” said Quest miserably, and turned his face away.

Later, alone with Trella on the control deck, Jakdane gave her some sober advice.

“If you think you’re in love with Quest, forget it,” he said.

“Why? Because he’s a coward? I know that ought to make me despise him, but it doesn’t any more.”

“Not because he’s a coward. Because he’s an android!”

“What? Jakdane, you can’t be serious!”

“I am. I say he’s an android, an artificial imitation of a man. It all figures.

“Look, Trella, he said he was born on Jupiter. A human could stand the gravity of Jupiter, inside a dome or a ship, but what human could stand the rocket acceleration necessary to break free of Jupiter? Here’s a man strong enough to break a spaceship safety belt just by getting up out of his chair against it, tough enough to take a beating with a heavy stick without being injured. How can you believe he’s really human?”

Trella remembered the thug Kregg striking Quest in the face and then crying that he had injured his hand on the bar.

“But he said Dr. Mansard was his father,” protested Trella.

“Robots and androids frequently look on their makers as their parents,” said Jakdane. “Quest may not even know he’s artificial. Do you know how Mansard died?”

“The oxygen equipment failed, Quest said.”

“Yes. Do you know when?”

“No. Quest never did tell me, that I remember.”

“He told me: a year before Quest made his rocket flight to Ganymede! If the oxygen equipment failed, how do you think Quest lived in the poisonous atmosphere of Jupiter, if he’s human?”

Trella was silent.

“For the protection of humans, there are two psychological traits built into every robot and android,” said Jakdane gently. “The first is that they can never, under any circumstances, attack a human being, even in self defense. The second is that, while they may understand sexual desire objectively, they can never experience it themselves.

“Those characteristics fit your man Quest to a T, Trella. There is no other explanation for him: he must be an android.”

* * * *

Trella did not want to believe Jakdane was right, but his reasoning was unassailable. Looking upon Quest as an android, many things were explained: his great strength, his short, broad build, his immunity to injury, his refusal to defend himself against a human, his inability to return Trella’s love for him.

It was not inconceivable that she should have unknowingly fallen in love with an android. Humans could love androids, with real affection, even knowing that they were artificial. There were instances of android nursemaids who were virtually members of the families owning them.

She was glad now that she had not told Quest of her mission to Ganymede. He thought he was Dr. Mansard’s son, but an android had no legal right of inheritance from his owner. She would leave it to Dom Blessing to decide what to do about Quest.

Thus she did not, as she had intended originally, speak to Quest about seeing him again after she had completed her assignment. Even if Jakdane was wrong and Quest was human—as now seemed unlikely—Quest had told her he could not love her. Her best course was to try to forget him.

Nor did Quest try to arrange with her for a later meeting.

“It has been pleasant knowing you, Trella,” he said when they left the G-boat at White Sands. A faraway look came into his blue eyes, and he added: “I’m sorry things couldn’t have been different, somehow.”

“Let’s don’t be sorry for what we can’t help,” she said gently, taking his hand in farewell.

Trella took a fast plane from White Sands, and twenty-four hours later walked up the front steps of the familiar brownstone house on the outskirts of Washington.

Dom Blessing himself met her at the door, a stooped, graying man who peered at her over his spectacles.

“You have the papers, eh?” he said, spying the brief case. “Good, good. Come in and we’ll see what we have, eh?”

She accompanied him through the bare, windowless anteroom which had always seemed to her such a strange feature of this luxurious house, and they entered the big living room. They sat before a fire in the old-fashioned fireplace and Blessing opened the brief case with trembling hands.

“There are things here,” he said, his eyes sparkling as he glanced through the notebooks. “Yes, there are things here. We shall make something of these, Miss Trella, eh?”

“I’m glad they’re something you can use, Mr. Blessing,” she said. “There’s something else I found on my trip, that I think I should tell you about.”

She told him about Quest.

“He thinks he’s the son of Dr. Mansard,” she finished, “but apparently he is, without knowing it, an android Dr. Mansard built on Jupiter.”

“He came back to Earth with you, eh?” asked Blessing intently.

“Yes. I’m afraid it’s your decision whether to let him go on living as a man or to tell him he’s an android and claim ownership as Dr. Mansard’s heir.”

Trella planned to spend a few days resting in her employer’s spacious home, and then to take a short vacation before resuming her duties as his confidential secretary. The next morning when she came down from her room, a change had been made.

Two armed men were with Dom Blessing at breakfast and accompanied him wherever he went. She discovered that two more men with guns were stationed in the bare anteroom and a guard was stationed at every entrance to the house.

“Why all the protection?” she asked Blessing.

“A wealthy man must be careful,” said Blessing cheerfully. “When we don’t understand all the implications of new circumstances, we must be prepared for anything, eh?”

There was only one new circumstance Trella could think of. Without actually intending to, she exclaimed:

“You aren’t afraid of Quest? Why, an android can’t hurt a human!”

Blessing peered at her over his spectacles.

“And what if he isn’t an android, eh? And if he is—what if old Mansard didn’t build in the prohibition against harming humans that’s required by law? What about that, eh?”

Trella was silent, shocked. There was something here she hadn’t known about, hadn’t even suspected. For some reason, Dom Blessing feared Dr. Eriklund Mansard … or his heir … or his mechanical servant.

* * * *

She was sure that Blessing was wrong, that Quest, whether man or android, intended no harm to him. Surely, Quest would have said something of such bitterness during their long time together on Ganymede and aspace, since he did not know of Trella’s connection with Blessing. But, since this was to be the atmosphere of Blessing’s house, she was glad that he decided to assign her to take the Mansard papers to the New York laboratory.

Quest came the day before she was scheduled to leave.

Trella was in the living room with Blessing, discussing the instructions she was to give to the laboratory officials in New York. The two bodyguards were with them. The other guards were at their posts.

Trella heard the doorbell ring. The heavy oaken front door was kept locked now, and the guards in the anteroom examined callers through a tiny window.

Suddenly alarm bells rang all over the house. There was a terrific crash outside the room as the front door splintered. There were shouts and the sound of a shot.

“The steel doors!” cried Blessing, turning white. “Let’s get out of here.”

He and his bodyguards ran through the back of the house out of the garage.

Blessing, ahead of the rest, leaped into one of the cars and started the engine.

The door from the house shattered and Quest burst through. The two guards turned and fired together.

He could be hurt by bullets. He was staggered momentarily.

Then, in a blur of motion, he sprang forward and swept the guards aside with one hand with such force that they skidded across the floor and lay in an unconscious heap against the rear of the garage. Trella had opened the door of the car, but it was wrenched from her hand as Blessing stepped on the accelerator and it leaped into the driveway with spinning wheels.

Quest was after it, like a chunky deer, running faster than Trella had ever seen a man run before.

Blessing slowed for the turn at the end of the driveway and glanced back over his shoulder. Seeing Quest almost upon him, he slammed down the accelerator and twisted the wheel hard.

The car whipped into the street, careened, and rolled over and over, bringing up against a tree on the other side in a twisted tangle of wreckage.

With a horrified gasp, Trella ran down the driveway toward the smoking heap of metal. Quest was already beside it, probing it. As she reached his side, he lifted the torn body of Dom Blessing. Blessing was dead.

“I’m lucky,” said Quest soberly. “I would have murdered him.”

“But why, Quest? I knew he was afraid of you, but he didn’t tell me why.”

“It was conditioned into me,” answered Quest “I didn’t know it until just now, when it ended, but my father conditioned me psychologically from my birth to the task of hunting down Dom Blessing and killing him. It was an unconscious drive in me that wouldn’t release me until the task was finished.

“You see, Blessing was my father’s assistant on Ganymede. Right after my father completed development of the surgiscope, he and my mother blasted off for Io. Blessing wanted the valuable rights to the surgiscope, and he sabotaged the ship’s drive so it would fall into Jupiter.

“But my father was able to control it in the heavy atmosphere of Jupiter, and landed it successfully. I was born there, and he conditioned me to come to Earth and track down Blessing. I know now that it was part of the conditioning that I was unable to fight any other man until my task was finished: it might have gotten me in trouble and diverted me from that purpose.”

More gently than Trella would have believed possible for his Jupiter-strong muscles, Quest took her in his arms.

“Now I can say I love you,” he said. “That was part of the conditioning too: I couldn’t love any woman until my job was done.”

Trella disengaged herself.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “Don’t you know this, too, now: that you’re not a man, but an android?”

He looked at her in astonishment, stunned by her words.

“What in space makes you think that?” he demanded.

“Why, Quest, it’s obvious,” she cried, tears in her eyes. “Everything about you … your build, suited for Jupiter’s gravity … your strength … the fact that you were able to live in Jupiter’s atmosphere after the oxygen equipment failed. I know you think Dr. Mansard was your father, but androids often believe that.”

He grinned at her.

“I’m no android,” he said confidently. “Do you forget my father was inventor of the surgiscope? He knew I’d have to grow up on Jupiter, and he operated on the genes before I was born. He altered my inherited characteristics to adapt me to the climate of Jupiter … even to being able to breathe a chlorine atmosphere as well as an oxygen atmosphere.”

Trella looked at him. He was not badly hurt, any more than an elephant would have been, but his tunic was stained with red blood where the bullets had struck him. Normal android blood was green.

“How can you be sure?” she asked doubtfully.

“Androids are made,” he answered with a laugh. “They don’t grow up. And I remember my boyhood on Jupiter very well.”

He took her in his arms again, and this time she did not resist. His lips were very human.

THE MAN WHO HATED MARS, by Randall Garrett

“I want you to put me in prison!” the big, hairy man said in a trembling voice.

He was addressing his request to a thin woman sitting behind a desk that seemed much too big for her. The plaque on the desk said:

LT. PHOEBE HARRIS

TERRAN REHABILITATION SERVICE

Lieutenant Harris glanced at the man before her for only a moment before she returned her eyes to the dossier on the desk; but long enough to verify the impression his voice had given. Ron Clayton was a big, ugly, cowardly, dangerous man.

He said: “Well? Dammit, say something!”

The lieutenant raised her eyes again. “Just be patient until I’ve read this.” Her voice and eyes were expressionless, but her hand moved beneath the desk.

Clayton froze. She’s yellow! he thought. She’s turned on the trackers! He could see the pale greenish glow of their little eyes watching him all around the room. If he made any fast move, they would cut him down with a stun beam before he could get two feet.

She had thought he was going to jump her. Little rat! he thought, somebody ought to slap her down!

He watched her check through the heavy dossier in front of her. Finally, she looked up at him again.

“Clayton, your last conviction was for strong-arm robbery. You were given a choice between prison on Earth and freedom here on Mars. You picked Mars.”

He nodded slowly. He’d been broke and hungry at the time. A sneaky little rat named Johnson had bilked Clayton out of his fair share of the Corey payroll job, and Clayton had been forced to get the money somehow. He hadn’t mussed the guy up much; besides, it was the sucker’s own fault. If he hadn’t tried to yell—

Lieutenant Harris went on: “I’m afraid you can’t back down now.”

“But it isn’t fair! The most I’d have got on that frame-up would’ve been ten years. I’ve been here fifteen already!”

“I’m sorry, Clayton. It can’t be done. You’re here. Period. Forget about trying to get back. Earth doesn’t want you.” Her voice sounded choppy, as though she were trying to keep it calm.

Clayton broke into a whining rage. “You can’t do that! It isn’t fair! I never did anything to you! I’ll go talk to the Governor! He’ll listen to reason! You’ll see! I’ll—”

“Shut up!” the woman snapped harshly. “I’m getting sick of it! I personally think you should have been locked up—permanently. I think this idea of forced colonization is going to breed trouble for Earth someday, but it is about the only way you can get anybody to colonize this frozen hunk of mud.

“Just keep it in mind that I don’t like it any better than you do—and I didn’t strong-arm anybody to deserve the assignment! Now get out of here!”

She moved a hand threateningly toward the manual controls of the stun beam.

Clayton retreated fast. The trackers ignored anyone walking away from the desk; they were set only to spot threatening movements toward it.

Outside the Rehabilitation Service Building, Clayton could feel the tears running down the inside of his face mask. He’d asked again and again—God only knew how many times—in the past fifteen years. Always the same answer. No.

When he’d heard that this new administrator was a woman, he’d hoped she might be easier to convince. She wasn’t. If anything, she was harder than the others.

The heat-sucking frigidity of the thin Martian air whispered around him in a feeble breeze. He shivered a little and began walking toward the recreation center.

There was a high, thin piping in the sky above him which quickly became a scream in the thin air.

He turned for a moment to watch the ship land, squinting his eyes to see the number on the hull.

Fifty-two. Space Transport Ship Fifty-two.

Probably bringing another load of poor suckers to freeze to death on Mars.

That was the thing he hated about Mars—the cold. The everlasting damned cold! And the oxidation pills; take one every three hours or smother in the poor, thin air.

The government could have put up domes; it could have put in building-to-building tunnels, at least. It could have done a hell of a lot of things to make Mars a decent place for human beings.

But no—the government had other ideas. A bunch of bigshot scientific characters had come up with the idea nearly twenty-three years before. Clayton could remember the words on the sheet he had been given when he was sentenced.

“Mankind is inherently an adaptable animal. If we are to colonize the planets of the Solar System, we must meet the conditions on those planets as best we can.

“Financially, it is impracticable to change an entire planet from its original condition to one which will support human life as it exists on Terra.

“But man, since he is adaptable, can change himself—modify his structure slightly—so that he can live on these planets with only a minimum of change in the environment.”

* * * *

So they made you live outside and like it. So you froze and you choked and you suffered.

Clayton hated Mars. He hated the thin air and the cold. More than anything, he hated the cold.

Ron Clayton wanted to go home.

The Recreation Building was just ahead; at least it would be warm inside. He pushed in through the outer and inner doors, and he heard the burst of music from the jukebox. His stomach tightened up into a hard cramp.

They were playing Heinlein’s Green Hills of Earth.

There was almost no other sound in the room, although it was full of people. There were plenty of colonists who claimed to like Mars, but even they were silent when that song was played.

Clayton wanted to go over and smash the machine—make it stop reminding him. He clenched his teeth and his fists and his eyes and cursed mentally. God, how I hate Mars!

* * * *

When the hauntingly nostalgic last chorus faded away, he walked over to the machine and fed it full of enough coins to keep it going on something else until he left.

At the bar, he ordered a beer and used it to wash down another oxidation tablet. It wasn’t good beer; it didn’t even deserve the name. The atmospheric pressure was so low as to boil all the carbon dioxide out of it, so the brewers never put it back in after fermentation.

He was sorry for what he had done—really and truly sorry. If they’d only give him one more chance, he’d make good. Just one more chance. He’d work things out.

He’d promised himself that both times they’d put him up before, but things had been different then. He hadn’t really been given another chance, what with parole boards and all.

Clayton closed his eyes and finished the beer. He ordered another.

He’d worked in the mines for fifteen years. It wasn’t that he minded work really, but the foreman had it in for him. Always giving him a bad time; always picking out the lousy jobs for him.

Like the time he’d crawled into a side-boring in Tunnel 12 for a nap during lunch and the foreman had caught him. When he promised never to do it again if the foreman wouldn’t put it on report, the guy said, “Yeah. Sure. Hate to hurt a guy’s record.”

Then he’d put Clayton on report anyway. Strictly a rat.

Not that Clayton ran any chance of being fired; they never fired anybody. But they’d fined him a day’s pay. A whole day’s pay.

He tapped his glass on the bar, and the barman came over with another beer. Clayton looked at it, then up at the barman. “Put a head on it.”

The bartender looked at him sourly. “I’ve got some soapsuds here, Clayton, and one of these days I’m gonna put some in your beer if you keep pulling that gag.”

That was the trouble with some guys. No sense of humor.

Somebody came in the door and then somebody else came in behind him, so that both inner and outer doors were open for an instant. A blast of icy breeze struck Clayton’s back, and he shivered. He started to say something, then changed his mind; the doors were already closed again, and besides, one of the guys was bigger than he was.

The iciness didn’t seem to go away immediately. It was like the mine. Little old Mars was cold clear down to her core—or at least down as far as they’d drilled. The walls were frozen and seemed to radiate a chill that pulled the heat right out of your blood.

Somebody was playing Green Hills again, damn them. Evidently all of his own selections had run out earlier than he’d thought they would.

Hell! There was nothing to do here. He might as well go home.

“Gimme another beer, Mac.”

He’d go home as soon as he finished this one.

He stood there with his eyes closed, listening to the music and hating Mars.

A voice next to him said: “I’ll have a whiskey.”

The voice sounded as if the man had a bad cold, and Clayton turned slowly to look at him. After all the sterilization they went through before they left Earth, nobody on Mars ever had a cold, so there was only one thing that would make a man’s voice sound like that.

Clayton was right. The fellow had an oxygen tube clamped firmly over his nose. He was wearing the uniform of the Space Transport Service.

“Just get in on the ship?” Clayton asked conversationally.

The man nodded and grinned. “Yeah. Four hours before we take off again.” He poured down the whiskey. “Sure cold out.”

Clayton agreed. “It’s always cold.” He watched enviously as the spaceman ordered another whiskey.

Clayton couldn’t afford whiskey. He probably could have by this time, if the mines had made him a foreman, like they should have.

Maybe he could talk the spaceman out of a couple of drinks.

“My name’s Clayton. Ron Clayton.”

The spaceman took the offered hand. “Mine’s Parkinson, but everybody calls me Parks.”

“Sure, Parks. Uh—can I buy you a beer?”

Parks shook his head. “No, thanks. I started on whiskey. Here, let me buy you one.”

“Well—thanks. Don’t mind if I do.”

They drank them in silence, and Parks ordered two more.

“Been here long?” Parks asked.

“Fifteen years. Fifteen long, long years.”

“Did you—uh—I mean—” Parks looked suddenly confused.

Clayton glanced quickly to make sure the bartender was out of earshot. Then he grinned. “You mean am I a convict? Nah. I came here because I wanted to. But—” He lowered his voice. “—we don’t talk about it around here. You know.” He gestured with one hand—a gesture that took in everyone else in the room.

Parks glanced around quickly, moving only his eyes. “Yeah. I see,” he said softly.

“This your first trip?” asked Clayton.

“First one to Mars. Been on the Luna run a long time.”

“Low pressure bother you much?”

“Not much. We only keep it at six pounds in the ships. Half helium and half oxygen. Only thing that bothers me is the oxy here. Or rather, the oxy that isn’t here.” He took a deep breath through his nose tube to emphasize his point.

Clayton clamped his teeth together, making the muscles at the side of his jaw stand out.

Parks didn’t notice. “You guys have to take those pills, don’t you?”

“Yeah.”

“I had to take them once. Got stranded on Luna. The cat I was in broke down eighty some miles from Aristarchus Base and I had to walk back—with my oxy low. Well, I figured—”

* * * *

Clayton listened to Parks’ story with a great show of attention, but he had heard it before. This “lost on the moon” stuff and its variations had been going the rounds for forty years. Every once in a while, it actually did happen to someone; just often enough to keep the story going.

This guy did have a couple of new twists, but not enough to make the story worthwhile.

“Boy,” Clayton said when Parks had finished, “you were lucky to come out of that alive!”

Parks nodded, well pleased with himself, and bought another round of drinks.

“Something like that happened to me a couple of years ago,” Clayton began. “I’m supervisor on the third shift in the mines at Xanthe, but at the time, I was only a foreman. One day, a couple of guys went to a branch tunnel to—”

It was a very good story. Clayton had made it up himself, so he knew that Parks had never heard it before. It was gory in just the right places, with a nice effect at the end.

“—so I had to hold up the rocks with my back while the rescue crew pulled the others out of the tunnel by crawling between my legs. Finally, they got some steel beams down there to take the load off, and I could let go. I was in the hospital for a week,” he finished.

Parks was nodding vaguely. Clayton looked up at the clock above the bar and realized that they had been talking for better than an hour. Parks was buying another round.

Parks was a hell of a nice fellow.

There was, Clayton found, only one trouble with Parks. He got to talking so loud that the bartender refused to serve either one of them any more.

* * * *

The bartender said Clayton was getting loud, too, but it was just because he had to talk loud to make Parks hear him.

Clayton helped Parks put his mask and parka on and they walked out into the cold night.

Parks began to sing Green Hills. About halfway through, he stopped and turned to Clayton.

“I’m from Indiana.”

Clayton had already spotted him as an American by his accent.

“Indiana? That’s nice. Real nice.”

“Yeah. You talk about green hills, we got green hills in Indiana. What time is it?”

Clayton told him.

“Jeez-krise! Ol’ spaship takes off in an hour. Ought to have one more drink first.”

Clayton realized he didn’t like Parks. But maybe he’d buy a bottle.

Sharkie Johnson worked in Fuels Section, and he made a nice little sideline of stealing alcohol, cutting it, and selling it. He thought it was real funny to call it Martian Gin.

Clayton said: “Let’s go over to Sharkie’s. Sharkie will sell us a bottle.”

“Okay,” said Parks. “We’ll get a bottle. That’s what we need: a bottle.”

It was quite a walk to the Shark’s place. It was so cold that even Parks was beginning to sober up a little. He was laughing like hell when Clayton started to sing.

“We’re going over to the Shark’s

To buy a jug of gin for Parks!

Hi ho, hi ho, hi ho!”

One thing about a few drinks; you didn’t get so cold. You didn’t feel it too much, anyway.

* * * *

The Shark still had his light on when they arrived. Clayton whispered to Parks: “I’ll go in. He knows me. He wouldn’t sell it if you were around. You got eight credits?”

“Sure I got eight credits. Just a minute, and I’ll give you eight credits.” He fished around for a minute inside his parka, and pulled out his notecase. His gloved fingers were a little clumsy, but he managed to get out a five and three ones and hand them to Clayton.

“You wait out here,” Clayton said.

He went in through the outer door and knocked on the inner one. He should have asked for ten credits. Sharkie only charged five, and that would leave him three for himself. But he could have got ten—maybe more.

When he came out with the bottle, Parks was sitting on a rock, shivering.

“Jeez-krise!” he said. “It’s cold out here. Let’s get to someplace where it’s warm.”

“Sure. I got the bottle. Want a drink?”

Parks took the bottle, opened it, and took a good belt out of it.

“Hooh!” he breathed. “Pretty smooth.”

As Clayton drank, Parks said: “Hey! I better get back to the field! I know! We can go to the men’s room and finish the bottle before the ship takes off! Isn’t that a good idea? It’s warm there.”

They started back down the street toward the spacefield.

“Yep, I’m from Indiana. Southern part, down around Bloomington,” Parks said. “Gimme the jug. Not Bloomington, Illinois—Bloomington, Indiana. We really got green hills down there.” He drank, and handed the bottle back to Clayton. “Pers-nally, I don’t see why anybody’d stay on Mars. Here y’are, practic’ly on the equator in the middle of the summer, and it’s colder than hell. Brrr!

“Now if you was smart, you’d go home, where it’s warm. Mars wasn’t built for people to live on, anyhow. I don’t see how you stand it.”

That was when Clayton decided he really hated Parks.

And when Parks said: “Why be dumb, friend? Whyn’t you go home?” Clayton kicked him in the stomach, hard.

“And that, that—” Clayton said as Parks doubled over.

He said it again as he kicked him in the head. And in the ribs. Parks was gasping as he writhed on the ground, but he soon lay still.

Then Clayton saw why. Parks’ nose tube had come off when Clayton’s foot struck his head.

Parks was breathing heavily, but he wasn’t getting any oxygen.

That was when the Big Idea hit Ron Clayton. With a nosepiece on like that, you couldn’t tell who a man was. He took another drink from the jug and then began to take Parks’ clothes off.

The uniform fit Clayton fine, and so did the nose mask. He dumped his own clothing on top of Parks’ nearly nude body, adjusted the little oxygen tank so that the gas would flow properly through the mask, took the first deep breath of good air he’d had in fifteen years, and walked toward the spacefield.

* * * *

He went into the men’s room at the Port Building, took a drink, and felt in the pockets of the uniform for Parks’ identification. He found it and opened the booklet. It read:

PARKINSON, HERBERT J.

Steward 2nd Class, STS

Above it was a photo, and a set of fingerprints.

Clayton grinned. They’d never know it wasn’t Parks getting on the ship.

Parks was a steward, too. A cook’s helper. That was good. If he’d been a jetman or something like that, the crew might wonder why he wasn’t on duty at takeoff. But a steward was different.

Clayton sat for several minutes, looking through the booklet and drinking from the bottle. He emptied it just before the warning sirens keened through the thin air.

Clayton got up and went outside toward the ship.

“Wake up! Hey, you! Wake up!”

Somebody was slapping his cheeks. Clayton opened his eyes and looked at the blurred face over his own.

From a distance, another voice said: “Who is it?”

The blurred face said: “I don’t know. He was asleep behind these cases. I think he’s drunk.”

Clayton wasn’t drunk—he was sick. His head felt like hell. Where the devil was he?

“Get up, bud. Come on, get up!”

Clayton pulled himself up by holding to the man’s arm. The effort made him dizzy and nauseated.

The other man said: “Take him down to sick bay, Casey. Get some thiamin into him.”

Clayton didn’t struggle as they led him down to the sick bay. He was trying to clear his head. Where was he? He must have been pretty drunk last night.

He remembered meeting Parks. And getting thrown out by the bartender. Then what?

Oh, yeah. He’d gone to the Shark’s for a bottle. From there on, it was mostly gone. He remembered a fight or something, but that was all that registered.

The medic in the sick bay fired two shots from a hypo-gun into both arms, but Clayton ignored the slight sting.

“Where am I?”

“Real original. Here, take these.” He handed Clayton a couple of capsules, and gave him a glass of water to wash them down with.

When the water hit his stomach, there was an immediate reaction.

“Oh, Christ!” the medic said. “Get a mop, somebody. Here, bud; heave into this.” He put a basin on the table in front of Clayton.

It took them the better part of an hour to get Clayton awake enough to realize what was going on and where he was. Even then, he was plenty groggy.

* * * *

It was the First Officer of the STS-52 who finally got the story straight. As soon as Clayton was in condition, the medic and the quartermaster officer who had found him took him up to the First Officer’s compartment.

“I was checking through the stores this morning when I found this man. He was asleep, dead drunk, behind the crates.”

“He was drunk, all right,” supplied the medic. “I found this in his pocket.” He flipped a booklet to the First Officer.

The First was a young man, not older than twenty-eight with tough-looking gray eyes. He looked over the booklet.

“Where did you get Parkinson’s ID booklet? And his uniform?”

Clayton looked down at his clothes in wonder. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know? That’s a hell of an answer.”

“Well, I was drunk,” Clayton said defensively. “A man doesn’t know what he’s doing when he’s drunk.” He frowned in concentration. He knew he’d have to think up some story.

“I kind of remember we made a bet. I bet him I could get on the ship. Sure—I remember, now. That’s what happened; I bet him I could get on the ship and we traded clothes.”

“Where is he now?”

“At my place, sleeping it off, I guess.”

“Without his oxy-mask?”

“Oh, I gave him my oxidation pills for the mask.”

The First shook his head. “That sounds like the kind of trick Parkinson would pull, all right. I’ll have to write it up and turn you both in to the authorities when we hit Earth.” He eyed Clayton. “What’s your name?”

“Cartwright. Sam Cartwright,” Clayton said without batting an eye.

“Volunteer or convicted colonist?”

“Volunteer.”

The First looked at him for a long moment, disbelief in his eyes.

It didn’t matter. Volunteer or convict, there was no place Clayton could go. From the officer’s viewpoint, he was as safely imprisoned in the spaceship as he would be on Mars or a prison on Earth.

* * * *

The First wrote in the log book, and then said: “Well, we’re one man short in the kitchen. You wanted to take Parkinson’s place; brother, you’ve got it—without pay.” He paused for a moment.

“You know, of course,” he said judiciously, “that you’ll be shipped back to Mars immediately. And you’ll have to work out your passage both ways—it will be deducted from your pay.”

Clayton nodded. “I know.”

“I don’t know what else will happen. If there’s a conviction, you may lose your volunteer status on Mars. And there may be fines taken out of your pay, too.

“Well, that’s all, Cartwright. You can report to Kissman in the kitchen.”

The First pressed a button on his desk and spoke into the intercom. “Who was on duty at the airlock when the crew came aboard last night? Send him up. I want to talk to him.”

Then the quartermaster officer led Clayton out the door and took him to the kitchen.

The ship’s driver tubes were pushing it along at a steady five hundred centimeters per second squared acceleration, pushing her steadily closer to Earth with a little more than half a gravity of drive.

* * * *

There wasn’t much for Clayton to do, really. He helped to select the foods that went into the automatics, and he cleaned them out after each meal was cooked. Once every day, he had to partially dismantle them for a really thorough going-over.

And all the time, he was thinking.

Parkinson must be dead; he knew that. That meant the Chamber. And even if he wasn’t, they’d send Clayton back to Mars. Luckily, there was no way for either planet to communicate with the ship; it was hard enough to keep a beam trained on a planet without trying to hit such a comparatively small thing as a ship.

But they would know about it on Earth by now. They would pick him up the instant the ship landed. And the best he could hope for was a return to Mars.

No, by God! He wouldn’t go back to that frozen mud-ball! He’d stay on Earth, where it was warm and comfortable and a man could live where he was meant to live. Where there was plenty of air to breathe and plenty of water to drink. Where the beer tasted like beer and not like slop. Earth. Good green hills, the like of which exists nowhere else.

Slowly, over the days, he evolved a plan. He watched and waited and checked each little detail to make sure nothing would go wrong. It couldn’t go wrong. He didn’t want to die, and he didn’t want to go back to Mars.

Nobody on the ship liked him; they couldn’t appreciate his position. He hadn’t done anything to them, but they just didn’t like him. He didn’t know why; he’d tried to get along with them. Well, if they didn’t like him, the hell with them.

If things worked out the way he figured, they’d be damned sorry.

He was very clever about the whole plan. When turn-over came, he pretended to get violently spacesick. That gave him an opportunity to steal a bottle of chloral hydrate from the medic’s locker.

And, while he worked in the kitchen, he spent a great deal of time sharpening a big carving knife.

Once, during his off time, he managed to disable one of the ship’s two lifeboats. He was saving the other for himself.

The ship was eight hours out from Earth and still decelerating when Clayton pulled his getaway.

* * * *

It was surprisingly easy. He was supposed to be asleep when he sneaked down to the drive compartment with the knife. He pushed open the door, looked in, and grinned like an ape.

The Engineer and the two jetmen were out cold from the chloral hydrate in the coffee from the kitchen.

Moving rapidly, he went to the spares locker and began methodically to smash every replacement part for the drivers. Then he took three of the signal bombs from the emergency kit, set them for five minutes, and placed them around the driver circuits.

He looked at the three sleeping men. What if they woke up before the bombs went off? He didn’t want to kill them though. He wanted them to know what had happened and who had done it.

He grinned. There was a way. He simply had to drag them outside and jam the door lock. He took the key from the Engineer, inserted it, turned it, and snapped off the head, leaving the body of the key still in the lock. Nobody would unjam it in the next four minutes.

Then he began to run up the stairwell toward the good lifeboat.

He was panting and out of breath when he arrived, but no one had stopped him. No one had even seen him.

He clambered into the lifeboat, made everything ready, and waited.

The signal bombs were not heavy charges; their main purposes was to make a flare bright enough to be seen for thousands of miles in space. Fluorine and magnesium made plenty of light—and heat.

Quite suddenly, there was no gravity. He had felt nothing, but he knew that the bombs had exploded. He punched the LAUNCH switch on the control board of the lifeboat, and the little ship leaped out from the side of the greater one.

Then he turned on the drive, set it at half a gee, and watched the STS-52 drop behind him. It was no longer decelerating, so it would miss Earth and drift on into space. On the other hand, the lifeship would come down very neatly within a few hundred miles of the spaceport in Utah, the destination of the STS-52.

Landing the lifeship would be the only difficult part of the maneuver, but they were designed to be handled by beginners. Full instructions were printed on the simplified control board.

Clayton studied them for a while, then set the alarm to waken him in seven hours and dozed off to sleep.

He dreamed of Indiana. It was full of nice, green hills and leafy woods, and Parkinson was inviting him over to his mother’s house for chicken and whiskey. And all for free.

Beneath the dream was the calm assurance that they would never catch him and send him back. When the STS-52 failed to show up, they would think he had been lost with it. They would never look for him.

When the alarm rang, Earth was a mottled globe looming hugely beneath the ship. Clayton watched the dials on the board, and began to follow the instructions on the landing sheet.

He wasn’t too good at it. The accelerometer climbed higher and higher, and he felt as though he could hardly move his hands to the proper switches.

He was less than fifteen feet off the ground when his hand slipped. The ship, out of control, shifted, spun, and toppled over on its side, smashing a great hole in the cabin.

Clayton shook his head and tried to stand up in the wreckage. He got to his hands and knees, dizzy but unhurt, and took a deep breath of the fresh air that was blowing in through the hole in the cabin.

It felt just like home.

* * * *

Bureau of Criminal Investigation

Regional Headquarters

Cheyenne, Wyoming

20 January 2102

To: Space Transport Service

Subject: Lifeship 2, STS-52

Attention Mr. P. D. Latimer

Dear Paul,

I have on hand the copies of your reports on the rescue of the men on the disabled STS-52. It is fortunate that the Lunar radar stations could compute their orbit.

The detailed official report will follow, but briefly, this is what happened:

The lifeship landed—or, rather, crashed—several miles west of Cheyenne, as you know, but it was impossible to find the man who was piloting it until yesterday because of the weather.

He has been identified as Ronald Watkins Clayton, exiled to Mars fifteen years ago.

Evidently, he didn’t realize that fifteen years of Martian gravity had so weakened his muscles that he could hardly walk under the pull of a full Earth gee.

As it was, he could only crawl about a hundred yards from the wrecked lifeship before he collapsed.

Well, I hope this clears up everything.

I hope you’re not getting the snow storms up there like we’ve been getting them.

John B. Remley

Captain, CBI

NAVY DAY, by Harry Harrison

General Wingrove looked at the rows of faces without seeing them. His vision went beyond the Congress of the United States, past the balmy June day to another day that was coming. A day when the Army would have its destined place of authority.

He drew a deep breath and delivered what was perhaps the shortest speech ever heard in the hallowed halls of Congress:

“The General Staff of the U.S. Army requests Congress to abolish the archaic branch of the armed forces known as the U.S. Navy.”

The aging Senator from Georgia checked his hearing aid to see if it was in operating order, while the press box emptied itself in one concerted rush and a clatter of running feet that died off in the direction of the telephone room. A buzz of excited comment ran through the giant chamber. One by one the heads turned to face the Naval section where rows of blue figures stirred and buzzed like smoked-out bees. The knot of men around a paunchy figure heavy with gold braid broke up and Admiral Fitzjames climbed slowly to his feet.

Lesser men have quailed before that piercing stare, but General Wingrove was never the lesser man. The admiral tossed his head with disgust, every line of his body denoting outraged dignity. He turned to his audience, a small pulse beating in his forehead.

“I cannot comprehend the general’s attitude, nor can I understand why he has attacked the Navy in this unwarranted fashion. The Navy has existed and will always exist as the first barrier of American defense. I ask you, gentlemen, to ignore this request as you would ignore the statements of any person…er, slightly demented. I should like to offer a recommendation that the general’s sanity be investigated, and an inquiry be made as to the mental health of anyone else connected with this preposterous proposal!”

The general smiled calmly. “I understand, Admiral, and really don’t blame you for being slightly annoyed. But, please let us not bring this issue of national importance down to a shallow personal level. The Army has facts to back up this request—facts that shall be demonstrated tomorrow morning.”

Turning his back on the raging admiral, General Wingrove included all the assembled solons in one sweeping gesture.

“Reserve your judgment until that time, gentlemen, make no hasty judgments until you have seen the force of argument with which we back up our request. It is the end of an era. In the morning the Navy joins its fellow fossils, the dodo and the brontosaurus.”

The admiral’s blood pressure mounted to a new record and the gentle thud of his unconscious body striking the floor was the only sound to break the shocked silence of the giant hall.

* * * *

The early morning sun warmed the white marble of the Jefferson Memorial and glinted from the soldiers’ helmets and the roofs of the packed cars that crowded forward in a slow-moving stream. All the gentlemen of Congress were there, the passage of their cars cleared by the screaming sirens of motorcycle policemen. Around and under the wheels of the official cars pressed a solid wave of government workers and common citizens of the capital city. The trucks of the radio and television services pressed close, microphones and cameras extended.

The stage was set for a great day. Neat rows of olive drab vehicles curved along the water’s edge. Jeeps and half-tracks shouldered close by weapons carriers and six-bys, all of them shrinking to insignificance beside the looming Patton tanks. A speakers’ platform was set up in the center of the line, near the audience.

At precisely 10 a.m., General Wingrove stepped forward and scowled at the crowd until they settled into an uncomfortable silence. His speech was short and consisted of nothing more than amplifications of his opening statement that actions speak louder than words. He pointed to the first truck in line, a 2½-ton filled with an infantry squad sitting stiffly at attention.

The driver caught the signal and kicked the engine into life; with a grind of gears it moved forward toward the river’s edge. There was an indrawn gasp from the crowd as the front wheels ground over the marble parapet—then the truck was plunging down toward the muddy waters of the Potomac.

The wheels touched the water and the surface seemed to sink while taking on a strange glassy character. The truck roared into high gear and rode forward on the surface of the water surrounded by a saucer-shaped depression. It parked two hundred yards off shore and the soldiers, goaded by the sergeant’s bark, leapt out and lined up with a showy present arms.

The general returned the salute and waved to the remaining vehicles. They moved forward in a series of maneuvers that indicated a great number of rehearsal hours on some hidden pond. The tanks rumbled slowly over the water while the jeeps cut back and forth through their lines in intricate patterns. The trucks backed and turned like puffing ballerinas.

The audience was rooted in a hushed silence, their eyeballs bulging. They continued to watch the amazing display as General Wingrove spoke again:

“You see before you a typical example of Army ingenuity, developed in Army laboratories. These motor units are supported on the surface of the water by an intensifying of the surface tension in their immediate area. Their weight is evenly distributed over the surface, causing the shallow depressions you see around them.

“This remarkable feat has been accomplished by the use of the Dornifier. A remarkable invention that is named after that brilliant scientist, Colonel Robert A. Dorn, Commander of the Brooke Point Experimental Laboratory. It was there that one of the civilian employees discovered the Dorn effect—under the Colonel’s constant guidance, of course.

“Utilizing this invention the Army now becomes master of the sea as well as the land. Army convoys of trucks and tanks can blanket the world. The surface of the water is our highway, our motor park, our battleground—the airfield and runway for our planes.”

Mechanics were pushing a Shooting Star onto the water. They stepped clear as flame gushed from the tail pipe; with the familiar whooshing rumble it sped down the Potomac and hurled itself into the air.

“When this cheap and simple method of crossing oceans is adopted, it will of course mean the end of that fantastic medieval anachronism, the Navy. No need for billion-dollar aircraft carriers, battleships, drydocks and all the other cumbersome junk that keeps those boats and things afloat. Give the taxpayer back his hard-earned dollar!”

Teeth grated in the Naval section as carriers and battleships were called “boats” and the rest of America’s sea might lumped under the casual heading of “things.” Lips were curled at the transparent appeal to the taxpayer’s pocketbook. But with leaden hearts they knew that all this justified wrath and contempt would avail them nothing. This was Army Day with a vengeance, and the doom of the Navy seemed inescapable.

The Army had made elaborate plans for what they called “Operation Sinker.” Even as the general spoke the publicity mills ground into high gear. From coast to coast the citizens absorbed the news with their morning nourishment.

“…Agnes, you hear what the radio said! The Army’s gonna give a trip around the world in a B-36 as first prize in this limerick contest. All you have to do is fill in the last line, and mail one copy to the Pentagon and the other to the Navy…”

The Naval mail room had standing orders to burn all the limericks when they came in, but some of the newer men seemed to think the entire thing was a big joke. Commander Bullman found one in the mess hall:

The Army will always be there,

On the land, on the sea, in the air

So why should the Navy

Take all of the gravy…

to which a seagoing scribe had added:

And not give us ensigns our share?

The newspapers were filled daily with photographs of mighty B-36’s landing on Lake Erie, and grinning soldiers making mock beachhead attacks on Coney Island. Each man wore a buzzing black box at his waist and walked on the bosom of the now quiet Atlantic like a biblical prophet.

Radio and television also carried the thousands of news releases that poured in an unending flow from the Pentagon Building. Cards, letters, telegrams and packages descended on Washington in an overwhelming torrent. The Navy Department was the unhappy recipient of deprecatory letters and a vast quantity of little cardboard battleships.

The people spoke and their representatives listened closely. This was an election year. There didn’t seem to be much doubt as to the decision, particularly when the reduction in the budget was considered.

It took Congress only two months to make up its collective mind. The people were all pro-Army. The novelty of the idea had fired their imaginations.

They were about to take the final vote in the lower house. If the amendment passed it would go to the states for ratification, and their votes were certain to follow that of Congress. The Navy had fought a last-ditch battle to no avail. The balloting was going to be pretty much of a sure thing—the wet water Navy would soon become ancient history.

For some reason the admirals didn’t look as unhappy as they should.

* * * *

The Naval Department had requested one last opportunity to address the Congress. Congress had patronizingly granted permission, for even the doomed man is allowed one last speech. Admiral Fitzjames, who had recovered from his choleric attack, was the appointed speaker.

“Gentlemen of the Congress of the United States. We in the Navy have a fighting tradition. We ‘damn the torpedoes’ and sail straight ahead into the enemy’s fire if that is necessary. We have been stabbed in the back—we have suffered a second Pearl Harbor sneak attack! The Army relinquished its rights to fair treatment with this attack. Therefore we are counter-attacking!” Worn out by his attacking and mixed metaphors, the Admiral mopped his brow.

“Our laboratories have been working night and day on the perfection of a device we hoped we would never be forced to use. It is now in operation, having passed the final trials a few days ago.

“The significance of this device cannot be underestimated. We are so positive of its importance that—we are demanding that the Army be abolished!”

He waved his hand toward the window and bellowed one word.

“LOOK!”

Everyone looked. They blinked and looked again. They rubbed their eyes and kept looking.

Sailing majestically up the middle of Constitution Avenue was the battleship Missouri.

The Admiral’s voice rang through the room like a trumpet of victory.

“The Mark-1 Debinder, as you see, temporarily lessens the binding energies that hold molecules of solid matter together. Solids become liquids, and a ship equipped with this device can sail anywhere in the world—on sea or land. Take your vote, gentlemen; the world awaits your decision.”

THE JUDAS VALLEY, by Robert Silverberg & Randall Garrett

Peter Wayne took the letter out of the machine, broke the seal, and examined it curiously. It was an official communication from the Interstellar Exploration Service. It read:

FROM: Lieutenant General Martin Scarborough, I.E.S.

TO: Captain Peter Wayne, Preliminary Survey Corps

Report immediately to this office for assignment to I.E.S. Lord Nelson. Full briefing will be held at 2200 hours, 14 April 2103.

By order of the Fleet Commandant.

It was short, brief, and to the point. And it gave no information whatsoever. Peter Wayne shrugged resignedly, put the letter down on his bed, walked over to the phone, and dialed a number.

A moment later, a girl’s face appeared—blonde-haired, with high cheekbones, deep blue-green eyes, and an expression of the lips that intriguingly combined desirability and crisp military bearing.

“Lieutenant James speaking,” she said formally. Then, as Wayne’s image appeared on her screen, she grinned. “Hi, Pete. What’s up?”

“Listen, Sherri,” Wayne said quickly. “I’m going to have to cancel that date we had for tomorrow night. I just got my orders.”

The girl laughed. “I was just going to call you, I got a fac-sheet too. Looks as though we won’t see each other for a while, Pete.”

“What ship are you getting?”

“The Lord Nelson.”

It was Wayne’s turn to laugh. “It looks as though we will be seeing each other. That’s my ship too. We can keep our date in the briefing room.”

Her face brightened. “Good! I’ll see you there, then,” she said. “I’ve got to get my gear packed.”

“Okay,” Wayne said. “Let’s be on time, you know how General Scarborough is.”

She smiled. “Don’t worry, Peter. I’ll be there. So long for now.”

“Bye, Sherri.” He cut the connection, watched the girl’s face melt away into a rainbow-colored diamond of light, and turned away. There were a lot of things to do before he would be ready to leave Earth for an interstellar tour of duty.

He wondered briefly as he started to pack just what was going on. There was usually much more notice on any big jump of this order. Something special was up, he thought, as he dragged his duffle-bag out of the closet.

* * * *

He was at the briefing room at 2158 on the nose. The Interstellar Exploration Service didn’t much go for tardiness, but they didn’t pay extra if you got there a half-hour early. Captain Peter Wayne made it a point of being at any appointment two minutes early—no more, no less.

The room was starting to fill up, with men and women Wayne knew well, had worked with on other expeditions, had lived with since he’d joined the IES. They looked just as puzzled as he probably did, he saw; they knew they were being called in on something big, and in the IES big meant big.

At precisely 2200, Lieutenant General Scarborough emerged from the inner office, strode briskly up the aisle of the briefing room, and took his customary stance on the platform in front. His face looked stern, and he held his hands clasped behind his back. His royal blue uniform was neat and trim. Over his head, the second hand of the big clock whirled endlessly. In the silence of the briefing room, it seemed to be ticking much too loudly.

The general nodded curtly and said, “Some of you are probably wondering why the order to report here wasn’t more specific. There are two reasons for that. In the first place, we have reason to believe that we have found a substantial deposit of double-nucleus beryllium.”

There was a murmur of sound in the briefing room. Wayne felt his heart starting to pound; D-N beryllium was big. So big that a whole fleet of IES ships did nothing but search the galaxy for it, full time.

“Naturally,” the general continued, “we don’t want any of this information to leak out, just in case it should prove false. The prospect of enough D-N beryllium to make fusion power really cheap could cause a panic if we didn’t handle it properly. The Economics Board has warned us that we’ll have to proceed carefully if there actually is a big deposit on this planet.”

Captain Wayne stared uneasily at Sherri James, who frowned and chewed her lip. To his left, a short, stubby private named Manetti murmured worriedly, “That means trouble. D-N beryllium always means trouble. There’s a catch somewhere.”

General Scarborough, on the platform, said, “There’s a second reason for secrecy. I think it can better be explained by a man who has the evidence first-hand.”

He paused and looked around the room. “Four weeks ago, the Scout Ship Mavis came back from Fomalhaut V.” There was a dead silence in the briefing room.

“Lieutenant Jervis, will you tell the crew exactly what happened on Fomalhaut V?”

* * * *

Lieutenant Jervis stepped forward and took his place on the platform. He was small and wiry, with a hawk nose and piercingly intense eyes. He cleared his throat and smiled a little sheepishly.

“I’ve told this story so many times that it doesn’t even sound real to me any more. I’ve told it to the Supreme Senate Space Committee, to half the top brass in the IES, and to a Board of Physicians from the Medical Department.

“As well as I can remember it, it goes something like this.”

Laughter rippled through the room.

“We orbited around Fomalhaut V for a Scouting Survey,” Jervis said. “The planet is hot and rocky, but it has a breathable atmosphere. The detectors showed various kinds of metals in the crust, some of them in commercially feasible concentration. But the crust is so mountainous and rocky that there aren’t very many places to land a ship.

“Then we picked up the double-nucleus beryllium deposit on our detectors. Nearby, there was a small, fairly level valley, so we brought the ship down for a closer check. We wanted to make absolutely positive that it was double-nucleus beryllium before we made our report.”

He paused, as if arranging the story he wanted to tell in his mind, and went on. “The D-N beryllium deposit lies at the top of a fairly low mountain about five miles from the valley. We triangulated it first, and then we decided we ought to send up a party to get samples of the ore if it were at all possible.

“I was chosen to go, along with another member of the crew, a man named Lee Bellows. We left the ship at about five in the morning, and spent most of the day climbing up to the spot where we had detected the beryllium. We couldn’t get a sample; the main deposit is located several feet beneath the surface of the mountaintop, and the mountain is too rough and rocky to climb without special equipment. We got less than halfway before we had to stop.”

Wayne felt Sherri nudge him, and turned to nod. He knew what she was thinking. This was where he came in; it was a job that called for a specialist, a trained mountaineer—such as Captain Peter Wayne. He frowned and turned his attention back to the man on the platform.

* * * *

“We made all the readings we could,” Jervis continued. “Then we headed back to our temporary base.”

His face looked troubled. “When we got back, every man at the base was dead.”

Silence in the room. Complete, utter, deafening silence.

“There were only nine of us in the ship,” Jervis said. He was obviously still greatly affected by whatever had taken place on Fomalhaut V. “With seven of us dead, that left only Bellows and myself. We couldn’t find out what had killed them. They were lying scattered over the valley floor for several yards around the ship. They looked as though they had suddenly dropped dead at whatever they were doing.”

Peter Wayne made use of his extra few inches of height to glance around the briefing room. He saw row on row of tense faces—faces that reflected the same emotions he was feeling. Space exploration was something still new and mostly unknown, and even the experienced men of IES still knew fear occasionally. The galaxy was a big place; unknown terrors lurked on planets unimaginably distant. Every now and then, something like this would come up—something to give you pause, before you ventured into space again.

“We couldn’t find out what had killed them,” Jervis said again. “They were lying scattered every which way, with no clues at all.” The small man’s fingers were trembling from relived fright. “Bellows and I were pretty scared, I’ll have to admit. We couldn’t find a sign of what had killed the men—they’d just—just died.”

There was a quiver in his voice. It was obvious he could never take the story lightly, no matter how many times he had to tell it.

Wayne heard Private Manetti mutter, “There’s always a price for D-N beryllium.”

“The Scout Ship hadn’t been molested,” Jervis went on. “I went inside and checked it over. It was untouched, undisturbed in every way. I checked the control panel, the cabins, everything. All unbothered. The ship was empty and dead. And—outside—

“When I came out, Bellows was dead too.” He took a deep breath. “I’m afraid I panicked then. I locked myself inside the ship, set the autocontrols, and headed back to Earth at top velocity. I set the ship in an orbit around the moon and notified headquarters. I was quarantined immediately, of course, to make sure I wasn’t carrying anything. The medics checked me over carefully. I wasn’t and am not now carrying any virus or bacteria unknown to Terrestrial medicine.

“Since I’m the only one who knows exactly where this valley is, the general has asked me to guide the Lord Nelson to the exact spot. Actually, it could be found eventually with the D-N beryllium as a guide. But the Mavis was in orbit around Fomalhaut V for two weeks before we found the D-N beryllium deposit, and the Service feels that we shouldn’t waste any time.”

The lieutenant sat down, and General Scarborough resumed his place on the platform.

* * * *

“That’s the situation,” Scarborough said bluntly. “You know the setup, now—and I think some of you see how your specialities are going to fit into the operation. As Lieutenant Jervis pointed out, we don’t know what killed the crew of the Mavis; therefore, we are going to take every possible precaution. As far as we know, there are no inimical life forms on Fomalhaut V—but it’s possible that there are things we don’t know about, such as airborne viruses that kill in a very short time. If so, then Lieutenant Jervis is immune to the virus and is not a transmitter or carrier of it.

“However, to guard against such a possibility, no one will leave the Lord Nelson, once it has landed, without wearing a spacesuit. The air is breathable, but we’re taking no chances. Also, no one will go out alone; scouting parties will always be in pairs, with wide open communication with the ship. And at no time will more than ten percent of the ship’s company be outside at any one time.”

Wayne made a rough mental computation. The Lord Nelson holds sixty. That means no more than six out at any single time. They really must be worried.

“Aside from those orders, which were decided on by the Service Command, you’ll be under the direct orders of Colonel Nels Petersen. Colonel Petersen.”

Petersen was a tall, hard-faced man with a touch of gray at his temples. He stepped forward and stared intently at the assembled crew.

* * * *

“Our job is to make the preliminary preparations for getting D-N beryllium out of the crust of Fomalhaut V. We’re supposed to stay alive while we do it. Therefore, our secondary job is to find out what it was that killed the scouting expedition of the Mavis. There are sixty of us going aboard the Lord Nelson tomorrow, and I’d like to have sixty aboard when we come back. Got that?”

He leaned forward, stretched upward on his toes, and smiled mechanically. “Fine. Now, you all know your jobs, but we’re going to have to work together as a team. We’re going to have to correlate our work so that we’ll know what we’re doing. So don’t think we won’t have anything to do during the two weeks it will take us to get to Fomalhaut V. We’re going to work it as though it were a shakedown cruise. If anyone doesn’t work out, he’ll be replaced, even if we have to turn around and come back to Earth. On a planet which has wiped out a whole scouting expedition, we can’t afford to have any slip-ups. And that means we can’t afford to have anyone aboard who doesn’t know what he’s doing or doesn’t care. Is that clear?”

It was.

“All right,” said the colonel. “Let’s go out and get acquainted with the Lord Nelson.”

* * * *

The briefing session broke up well past midnight, and the group that shortly would become the crew of the Lord Nelson filtered out of the building and into the cool spring air. Each man had a fairly good idea of his job and each man knew the dangers involved. No one had backed out.

“What d’ye think of it, Pete?” Sherri James asked, as they left together. “Sounds pretty mean.”

“I wish we knew what the answers were beforehand,” Wayne said. He glanced down at Sherri. The moon was full, and its rays glinted brightly off her golden hair. “It’s a risky deal, as Petersen said. Nine men go out, and eight die—of what? Just dead, that’s all.”

“It’s the way the game goes,” Sherri said. “You knew that when you joined the corps.” They turned down the main road of the IES compound and headed for the snack bar.

Wayne nodded. “I know, kid. It’s a job, and it has to be done. But nobody likes to walk into an empty planet like that knowing that eight of the last nine guys who did didn’t come back.”

He put his arm around her and they entered the snack bar that way. Most of the other crew-members were there already; Wayne sensed the heightening tenseness on their faces.

“Two nuclear fizzes,” he said to the pfc at the bar. “With all the trimmings.”

“What’s the matter, Captain?” said a balding, potbellied major a few stools down, who was nursing a beer. “How come the soft drinks tonight, Wayne?”

Peter grinned. “I’m in training, Major Osborne. Gotta kill the evil green horde from Rigel Seven, and I don’t dare drink anything stronger than sarsaparilla.”

“How about the amazon, then?” Osborne said, gesturing at Sherri. “Her too?”

“Me too,” Sherri said.

Osborne stared at his beer. “You two must be in Scarborough’s new project, then.” He squinted at Peter, who nodded almost imperceptibly.

“You’ll need luck,” Osborne said.

“No we won’t,” Wayne said. “Not luck. We’ll need more than just luck to pull us through.”

The nuclear fizzes arrived. He began to sip it quietly. A few more members of the crew entered the snack bar. Their faces were drawn tensely.

He guzzled the drink and looked up at Sherri, who was sucking down the last of the soda. “Let’s get going, Lieutenant James. The noncoms are coming, and we don’t want them to make nasty remarks about us.”

* * * *

The Lord Nelson blasted off the next evening, after a frenzied day of hurried preparations. The crew of sixty filed solemnly aboard, Colonel Petersen last, and the great hatch swung closed.

There was the usual routine loudspeaker-business while everyone quickly and efficiently strapped into his acceleration cradle, and then the ship leaped skyward. It climbed rapidly, broke free of Earth’s grasp, and, out past the moon, abruptly winked out of normal space into overdrive. It would spend the next two weeks in hyperspace, short-cutting across the galaxy to Fomalhaut V.

It was a busy two weeks for everyone involved. Captain Peter Wayne, as a central part of the team, spent much of his time planning his attack. His job would be the actual climbing of the mountain where the double-nucleus beryllium was located. It wasn’t going to be an easy job; the terrain was rough, the wind, according to Jervis, whipped ragingly through the hills, and the jagged peaks thrust into the air like the teeth of some mythical dragon.

Study of the three-dimensional aerial photographs taken from the Mavis showed that the best route was probably up through one end of the valley, through a narrow pass that led around the mountain, and up the west slope, which appeared to offer better handholds and was less perpendicular than the other sides of the mountain.

This time, the expedition would have the equipment to make the climb. There were ropes, picks, and crampons, and sets of metamagnetic boots and grapples. With metamagnetic boots, Wayne thought, they’d be able to walk up the side of the mountain almost as easily as if it were flat.

He studied the thick, heavy soles of the boots for a moment, then set to work polishing. Wayne liked to keep his boots mirror-bright; it wasn’t required, but it was a habit of his nonetheless.

He set to work vigorously. Everyone aboard the ship was working that way. Sherri James, who was in charge of the Correlation Section, had noticed the same thing the day before. Her job was to co-ordinate all the information from various members of the expedition, run them through the computers, and record them. She had been busy since blastoff, testing the computers, checking and rechecking them, being overly efficient.

“I know why we’re doing it,” she said. “It keeps our mind off the end of the trip. When we spend the whole day working out complicated circuits for the computers, or polishing mountain boots, or cleaning the jet tubes, it’s just so we don’t have to think about Fomalhaut V. It helps to concentrate on details.”

Wayne nodded and said nothing. Sherri was right. There was one thought in everyone’s mind: what was the deadly secret of the valley?

There was another thought, after that:

Will we find it out in time?

* * * *

After two weeks of flight through the vast blackness of interstellar space, the Lord Nelson came out of overdrive and set itself in an orbit around Fomalhaut V. Lieutenant Jervis, the sole survivor of the ill-fated Mavis, located the small valley between the giant crags that covered the planet, and the huge spherical bulk of the spaceship settled gently to the floor of the valley.

They were gathered in the central room of the ship ten minutes after the all-clear rang through the corridors, informing everyone that the landing had been safely accomplished. From the portholes they could see the white bones of the Mavis’s crew lying on the reddish sand of the valley bottom.

“There they are,” Jervis said quietly. “Just bones. Those were my shipmates.”

Wayne saw Sherri repress a shudder. Little heaps of bones lay here and there on the sand, shining brightly in the hot sun. That was the crew of the Mavis—or what was left of them.

Colonel Petersen entered the room and confronted the crew. “We’re here,” he said. “You know the schedule from now on. No one’s to leave the ship until we’ve made a check outside, and after that—assuming it’s OK to go out—no more than six are to leave the ship at any one time.”

He pointed to a row of metal magnetic tabs clinging to the wall nearest the corridor that led to the airlock. “When you go out, take one of those tabs and touch it on your suit. There are exactly six tabs. If none are there, don’t go out. It’s as simple as that.”

Four men in spacesuits entered the room, followed by two others. The leader of the group saluted. “We’re ready, sir,” he said.

“Go out and get a look at the bodies,” the colonel told the men, who were Medical Corpsmen. “You know the procedure. Air and sand samples too, of course.”

The leader saluted again, turned, and left. Wayne watched the six spacesuited figures step one at a time to the wall, withdraw one of the metal tabs, and affix it to the outer skin of his suit. Then they went outside.

Captain Wayne and Sherri James stood by one of the portholes and watched the six medics as they bent over the corpses outside. “I don’t get it, I just don’t understand,” Wayne said quietly.

* * * *

“What don’t you get?” Sherri asked.

“Those skeletons. Those men have only been dead for two months, and they’ve been reduced to nothing but bones already. Even the fabric of their clothing is gone. Why? There must be something here that causes human flesh to deteriorate much faster than normal.”

“It does look pretty gruesome,” Sherri agreed. “I’m glad we’ve been ordered to keep our spacesuits on. I wouldn’t want to be exposed to anything that might be out there.”

“I wonder—” Wayne muttered.

“What? What’s the matter?”

Wayne pointed to one figure lying on the sand. “See that? What’s that over his head?”

“Why—it’s a space helmet!”

“Yeah,” said Wayne. “The question is: was he wearing just the helmet, or the whole suit? If he was wearing the whole suit, we’re not going to be as well protected as we thought, even with our fancy suits.”

Fifteen minutes passed slowly before the medics returned, and five minutes more before they had passed through the decontamination chambers and were allowed into the ship proper. A ring of tense faces surrounded them as they made their report.

* * * *

The leader, a tall, bespectacled doctor named Stevelman, was the spokesman. He shrugged when Colonel Petersen put forth the question whose answer everyone waited for.

“I don’t know,” the medic replied. “I don’t know what killed them. There’s dry bones out there, but no sign of anything that might have done it. It’s pretty hard to make a quick diagnosis on a skeleton, Colonel.”

“What about the one skeleton with the bubble helmet?” Peter Wayne asked. “Did you see any sign of a full suit on him?”

Stevelman shook his head. “Not a sign, sir.”

Colonel Petersen turned and glanced at Lieutenant Jervis. “Do you remember what the circumstances were, Lieutenant?”

Jervis shrugged. “I don’t recall it very clearly, sir. I honestly couldn’t tell you whether they were wearing suits or bubble-helmets or anything. I was too upset at the time to make careful observations.”

“I understand,” Petersen said.

But the medic had a different theory. He pointed at Jervis and said, “That’s a point I’ve meant to make, Lieutenant. You’re a trained space scout. Your psychological records show that you’re not the sort of man given to panic or to become confused.”

“Are you implying that there’s something improper about my statement, Dr. Stevelman?”

The medic held up a hand. “Nothing of the sort, Lieutenant. But since you’re not the sort to panic, even in such a crisis as the complete destruction of the entire crew of your scout ship, you must have been ill—partly delirious from fever. Not delirious enough to cause hallucinations, but just enough to impair your judgment.”

Jervis nodded. “That is possible,” he said.

“Good,” said Stevelman. “I have two tentative hypotheses, then.” He turned to the colonel. “Should I state them now, Colonel Petersen?”

“There’s to be no secrecy aboard this ship, Doctor. I want every man and woman on the ship to know all the facts at all times.”

“Very well,” the medic said. “I’d suggest the deaths were caused by some unknown virus—or, perhaps, by some virulent poison that occurred occasionally, a poisonous smog of some kind that had settled in the valley for a time and then dissipated.”

Wayne frowned and shook his head. Both hypotheses made sense.

“Do you have any suggestions, Doctor?” Petersen said.

“Since we don’t have any direct information about why those men died, Colonel, I can’t make any definite statements. But I can offer one bit of advice to everyone: wear your suits and be alert.”

* * * *

During the week that followed, several groups went out without suffering any ill effects. A short service was held for the eight of the Mavis and then the skeletons were buried in the valley.

They ran a check on the double-nucleus beryllium toward the end of the week, after it had been fairly safely established that no apparent harm was going to come to them. Wayne and Sherri were both in the crew that went outside to set up the detector.

“You man the detector plate,” said Major MacDougal, who was in charge of the group, turning to Wayne.

He put his hand on the plate and waited for the guide coordinates to be set. MacDougal fumbled at the base of the detector for a moment, and the machine began picking up eloptic radiations.

Wayne now looked down at the detector plate. “Here we are,” he said. “The dial’s oscillating between four and eight, all right. The stuff’s here.”

MacDougal whistled gently. “It’s really sending, isn’t it!” He pointed toward the mountaintop. “From up there, too. It’s going to be a nice climb. Okay, pack the detector up and let’s get back inside.”

They entered the airlock and passed on into the ship.

“The D-N beryllium is up there, sir,” Major MacDougal said. “It’s going to be a devil of a job to get up to find the stuff.”

“That’s what Captain Wayne’s here for,” Petersen said. “Captain, what do you think? Can you get up here?”

“It would have been easier to bring along a helicopter,” Wayne said wryly. “Pity the things don’t fit into spaceships. But I think I can get up there. I’d like to try surveying the lay of the land, first. I want to know all the possible routes before I start climbing.”

“Good idea,” Petersen said. “I’ll send you out with three men to do some preliminary exploring. Boggs! Manetti! MacPherson! Suit up and get with it!”

* * * *

Wayne strode toward the spacesuit locker, took out his suit, and donned it. Instead of the normal space boots, he put on the special metamagnetic boots for mountain climbing. The little reactors in the back of the calf activated the thick metal sole of each boot so that it would cling tightly to the metallic rock of the mountain. Unlike ordinary magnetism, the metamagnetic field acted on all metals, even when they were in combination with other elements.

His team of three stood before him in the airlock room. He knew all three of them fairly well from Earthside; they were capable, level-headed men, and at least one—Boggs—had already been out in the valley surveying once, and so knew the area pretty well.

He pulled on the boots and looked up. “We’re not going to climb the mountain this time, men. We’ll just take a look around it to decide which is the best way.”

“You have any ideas, sir?” Sergeant Boggs asked.

“From looking at the photographs, I’d guess that the western approach is the best. But I may be wrong. Little details are hard to see from five hundred miles up, even with the best of instruments, and there may be things in our way that will make the west slope impassible. If so, we’ll try the southern side. It looks pretty steep, but it also seems rough enough to offer plenty of handholds.”

“Too bad we couldn’t have had that helicopter you were talking about,” said Boggs.

Wayne grinned. “With these winds? They’d smash us against the side of the mountain before we’d get up fifty feet. You ought to know, Sergeant—you’ve been out in them once already.”

“They’re not so bad down in this valley, sir,” Boggs said. “The only time you really notice them is when you climb the escarpment at the northern end. They get pretty rough up there.”

Wayne nodded. “You can see what kind of a job we’ll have. Even with metamagnetic boots and grapples, we’ll still have to use the old standbys.” He looked at the men. “Okay; we’re all ready. Let’s go.”

They unhooked four of the six tabs from the wall and donned them. Then they moved on into the airlock and closed the inner door. The air was pumped out, just as though the ship were in space or on a planet with a poisonous atmosphere. As far as anyone knew, the atmosphere of Fomalhaut V actually was poisonous. Some of the tension had relaxed after a week spent in safety, but there was always the first expedition to consider; no one took chances.

When all the air had been removed, a bleeder valve allowed the outer air to come into the chamber. Then the outer door opened, and the four men went down the ladder to the valley floor.

* * * *

Wayne led the way across the sand in silence. The four men made their way toward the slope on the western side of the valley. Overhead, the bright globe of Fomalhaut shed its orange light over the rugged landscape.

When they reached the beginning of the slope, Wayne stopped and looked upwards. “Doesn’t look easy,” he grunted. “Damned rough hill, matter of fact. MacPherson, do you think you could make it to the top?”

Corporal MacPherson was a small, wiry man who had the reputation of being a first-rank mountaineer. He had been a member of the eighteenth Mount Everest Party, and had been the second of that party to reach the summit of the towering peak.

“Sure I can, sir,” he said confidently. “Shall I take the rope?”

“Go ahead. You and Manetti get the rope to the top, and Sergeant Boggs and I will follow up.”

“Righto, sir.”

Corporal MacPherson reached his gloved hands forward and contracted his fingers. The tiny microswitches in his gloves actuated the relays, and his hands clung to the rock. Then he put his boots against the wall and began to move up the steep escarpment.

Private Manetti followed after him. The two men were lashed together by the light plastisteel cable. The sergeant held the end of the cable in his hands, waiting for the coil to be paid out.

Wayne watched the two men climb, while a chill wind whipped down out of the mountains and raised the sand in the valley. It was less than eighty feet to the precipice edge above, but it was almost perpendicular, and as they climbed, the buffeting winds began to press against their bodies with ever-increasing force.

They reached the top and secured the rope, and then they peered over the edge and signalled that Wayne and the sergeant should start up.

“We’re coming,” Wayne shouted, and returned the signal. It was at that instant that he felt something slam against the sole of his heavy metamagnetic boot. It was as though something had kicked him savagely on the sole of his right foot.

He winced sharply at the impact. Then, somewhat puzzled he looked down at the boot. He felt something move under the sand. He tried to step back, and almost tripped. It was as though his right foot were stuck firmly to the sand!

He pushed himself back, and with a tremendous heave managed to pull himself free. He braced his body against the cliff, lifted his foot, and looked at it.

Hanging from his boot sole was one of the ugliest monstrosities he had ever seen, unusually grotesque.

* * * *

It was about the size and shape of a regulation football, and was covered with a wrinkled, reddish hide. At one end was a bright red gash of a mouth studded with greenish, gnashing teeth. From the other end of the creature’s body protruded a long, needle-like projection which had imbedded itself in the metal sole of Wayne’s boot.

“Good God! If I’d been wearing ordinary boots, that thing would have stuck clear into my foot!”

He hefted the weighted pick with one hand and swung, catching the monster with the point. It sank in and ripped through the creature, spilling red-orange blood over the sand. Shuddering a little, Wayne put his other foot on the dead thing and pulled his right boot free of the needle beak.

He started to say something, but he had a sudden premonition that made him look up in time. Sergeant Boggs put both hands against the Captain’s shoulder and pushed.

“What the hell?” Wayne asked in surprise as he felt the shove. He almost fell to the sand, but he had had just enough warning to allow him to keep his balance. He put out a foot and staggered wildly.

A sudden strange noise caused him to turn and look back. Five needles were jabbing viciously up out of the sand in the spot where he would have fallen.

“You out of your head, Boggs?” he started to ask—but before the last word was out of his mouth, the sergeant charged in madly and tried to push him over again. He was fighting like a man gone berserk—which he was.

Wayne grabbed him by the wrist and flipped him desperately aside. The sergeant fell, sprawled out for a moment on the sand, then bounced to his feet again. His eyes were alight with a strange, terrifying flame.

Silently, he leaped for Wayne. The captain slammed his fist forward, sending it crashing into Boggs’s midsection. The sergeant came back with a jab to the stomach that pushed Wayne backward. Again the deadly needles flicked up from the ground, but they did not strike home.

Wayne gasped for breath and reached out for Boggs. Boggs leaped on him, trying to push Wayne down where the beaks could get to him. Wayne sidestepped, threw Boggs off balance, and clubbed down hard with his fist.

Boggs wandered dizzily for a second before Wayne’s other fist came blasting in, knocking the breath out of him. A third blow, and the sergeant collapsed on the sand.

Wayne paused and caught his breath. The sergeant remained unconscious. Wayne shook his head uncertainly, wondering what had come over the mild-mannered Boggs. A chilling thought struck him: was this what happened to the crew of the Mavis?

* * * *

He looked up the cliff, where the other two men were still peering over the edge.

“MacPherson! Manetti! Come down! We’re going back to the ship!”

He heaved the unconscious body of Sergeant Boggs over his shoulder like a potato-sack, and waited for the two men to come down. They drew near.

“Boggs must have gone out of his head,” Wayne said. “He jumped me like a madman.”

They had nothing to say, so he turned and began to trudge back to the Lord Nelson, trying to assemble the facts in his mind. They followed alongside.

What was behind the attack? After seeing the monster, why had Boggs attempted to push his superior officer over into the sand? There were other little beasts under that sand; why would Boggs want one of them—there seemed to be dozens—to jab him with its needle of a beak?

And what were the beastly little animals, anyway?

There were no answers. But the answers would have to come, soon.

He tossed Boggs into the airlock and waited for the others to catch up. They climbed up the ladder and said nothing as the airlock went through its cycle and the antibacterial spray covered them.

* * * *

Colonel Petersen looked at him across the desk and put the palms of his hands together. “Then, as I understand it, Captain, Sergeant Boggs tried to push you over into the sand when this—ah—monster jabbed you in the foot?”

“That’s right, sir,” Wayne said. He felt uncomfortable. This wasn’t a formal court-martial; it was simply an inquiry into the sergeant’s actions. Charges would be preferred later, if there were any to be preferred.

Sergeant Boggs stood stolidly on the far side of the room. A livid bruise along his jaw testified to the struggle that had taken place. One eye was puffed, and his expression was an unhappy one. Near him, MacPherson and Private Manetti stood stiffly at attention.

The colonel looked at Boggs. “What’s your side of the story, Sergeant?”

The non-com’s face didn’t change. “Sir, the captain’s statement isn’t true.”

“What’s that?” Wayne asked angrily.

“Quiet, Captain,” Petersen said. “Go ahead, Boggs.”

The sergeant licked his bruised lips. “I was about to start up the rope when, for no reason at all, he struck me in the stomach. Then he hit me again a few more times, and I passed out.”

“Did he say anything when he did this?” the Colonel asked.

“No, sir.”

Wayne frowned. What was the sergeant trying to do? What the devil was he up to?

“Corporal MacPherson,” the colonel said, “Did you witness the fight?”

“Yes, sir,” the small man said, stepping a pace forward.

“Describe it.”

“Well, sir, we were up on top of the cliff, and we called—or rather, I called for the captain and the sergeant to come on up. Sergeant Boggs took a hold of the rope and then the captain hit him in the belly, sir. He hit him twice more and the sergeant fell down. Then the captain told us to come down, which we did, sir. That was all.” He gestured with his hands to indicate he had no more to say.

Wayne could hardly believe his ears. Making an effort, he managed to restrain himself.

“Private Manetti, do you have anything to add to that?” the colonel asked.

“No, sir. It happened just like that, sir. We both seen the entire thing. That’s the way it happened. The captain hauled off and let him have it.”

The colonel swivelled around and let his cold eyes rest on Wayne. “Captain, you have stated that Sergeant Boggs did not talk to either of these two men after you struck him. That eliminates any collusion.”

“Yes, sir,” Wayne said stonily.

“I talked to both men separately, and they tell substantially the same story. The records of all three of these men are excellent. The sergeant claims he never saw any monster of the type you describe, and the group I sent out to check says that there is no body of any alien animal anywhere near the spot. How do you explain the discrepancies between your story and theirs?”

* * * *

Wayne glared angrily at the three men. “They’re lying, sir,” he said evenly. “I don’t know why they’re doing it. The whole thing took place exactly as I told you.”

“I find that very difficult to believe, Captain.”

“Is that a formal accusation, sir?”

Petersen shrugged and rubbed his hands against his iron-grey temples. “Captain,” he said finally, “you have a very fine record. You have never before been known to strike an enlisted man for any cause whatever. I hold that in your favor.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“On the other hand, the evidence here definitely indicates that your story is not quite true. Now, we know that Lieutenant Jervis acted peculiarly after the crew of the Mavis met its mysterious end, and the Medical Corps thinks that whatever is causing the deaths could also cause mental confusion. Therefore, I am remanding you to the custody of the Medical Corps for observation. You’ll be kept in close confinement until this thing is cleared up.”

Wayne frowned bitterly. “Yes, sir,” he said.

* * * *

Peter Wayne sat in his cell in the hospital sector and stared at the wall in confusion. What in blazes was going on? What possible motive would three enlisted men have to frame him in this way? It didn’t make any sense.

Was it possible that he really had gone off his rocker? Had he imagined the little beast under the sand?

He lifted his foot and looked again at the sole. There it was: a little pit about an eighth of an inch deep.

The colonel had explained it away easily enough, saying that he might possibly have stepped on a sharp rock. Wayne shook his head. He knew he wasn’t nuts. But what the hell was going on?

There were no answers. But he knew that the eventual answer, when it came, would have something to do with the mystery of the Mavis’s eight corpses.

It was late that afternoon when Sherri James came storming into the hospital sector. She was wearing a spacesuit, and she was brandishing a pass countersigned by Colonel Petersen himself. She was determined to enter.

“The medics didn’t want to let me in,” she explained. “But I told them I’d wear a spacesuit if it would make them any happier.”

“Sherri! What the devil are you doing here?”

“I just wanted to check on you,” she said. Her voice sounded oddly distorted coming over the speaker in the helmet. “You’re supposed to have blown your wig or something. Did you?”

“No. Of course not.”

“I didn’t think so.” She unscrewed her helmet quickly. “Listen, Peter, there’s something funny going on aboard this ship.”

“I’ve known that a long time,” he said.

“I think Boggs and those other two are trying to frame you,” she said, her voice low. “Do you know of anyone aboard named Masters?”

“Masters?” Wayne repeated. “Not that I know of—why?”

“Well, I overheard Boggs talking to one of the other men. I didn’t hear very clearly, but it sounded as though he said: ‘We’ve got to get Moore out and turn him over to Masters.’ Bill Moore is one of my computermen—tall, skinny fellow.”

Wayne nodded, frowning. “Yeah, but who is Masters? This is the queerest thing I ever heard of.”

Footsteps sounded in the corridor outside.

“Better put your helmet on,” Wayne advised. “Whoever’s coming might not like to see you this way.”

Quickly, she slipped the helmet back on. “I don’t know what’s going on,” she said. “But I intend to find out.”

* * * *

One of the medics entered the cell without knocking and came up to Sherri. “You’ll have to go now, Lieutenant,” he said. “We’re going to perform some tests on the captain now.”

Sherri bristled. “Tests? What kind of tests?”

“Nothing very serious,” the medic said. “Just a routine checkup to clarify some points we’re interested in.”

“All right,” Sherri said. “You won’t find anything the matter with him.” She left.

“Come with me, Captain,” said the medic politely. He unlocked the cell door and, equally politely, drew a needle-beam pistol. “Don’t try anything, please, sir. I have my orders.”

Silently, Wayne followed the medic into the lab. Several other medics were standing around watching him, with Stevelman, the head man, in the back.

“Over this way, Captain,” Stevelman called.

There was a box sitting on a table in the middle of the room. It was full of sand.

“Give me your hand, please, Captain,” the medic said tonelessly.

In a sudden flash of insight, Wayne realized what was in the box. He thought fast but moved slowly. He held out his hand, but just as the medic took it, he twisted suddenly away.

His hand flashed out and grasped the other’s wrist in a steely grip. The medic’s fingers tightened on the needle-beam, and managed to pull the trigger. A bright beam flared briefly against the lab’s plastalloy floor, doing nothing but scorching it slightly. Wayne’s other hand balled into a fist and came up hard against the medic’s jaw.

He grabbed the needle-beam pistol from the collapsing man’s limp hand and had the other three men covered before the slugged medic had finished sagging to the floor.

“All of you! Raise your hands!”

They paid no attention to him. Instead of standing where they were, they began to move toward him. Wayne swore and, with a quick flip of his thumb, turned the beam down to low power and pulled the trigger three times in quick succession.

The three men fell as though they’d been pole-axed, knocked out by the low-power beam.

“The whole ship’s gone crazy,” he murmured softly, looking at the three men slumped together on the lab floor. “Stark, staring, raving nuts.”

He took one step and someone jumped him from behind. The needle-beam pistol spun from his hand and slithered across the floor as Wayne fell under the impact of the heavy body. Apparently the whole Medical Corps was out to knock him down today.

He twisted rapidly as an arm encircled his neck, and rammed an elbow into the newcomer’s midsection. Then he jerked his head back, smashing the back of his skull into his opponent’s nose.

The hold around his neck weakened, and Wayne tore himself loose from the other’s grasp. He jumped to his feet, but the other man was a long way from being unconscious. A stinging right smashed into Wayne’s mouth, and he felt the taste of blood. Hastily he wiped the trickle away with the back of his hand.

With his nose pouring blood, Wayne’s antagonist charged in. His eyes burned with the strange flame that had been gleaming in Boggs’s face out on the desert in the valley. He ploughed into Wayne’s stomach with a savage blow that rocked Wayne back.

He grunted and drove back with a flurry of blows. The other aimed a wild blow at Wayne’s head; Wayne seized the wrist as the arm flew past his ear, and twisted, hard. The medic flipped through the air and came to rest against the wall with a brief crunching impact. He moaned and then lapsed into silence.

* * * *

Quickly, Wayne grabbed the gun off the floor and planted his back to the wall, looking around for new antagonists. But there was evidently no one left who cared to tangle with him, and the four medics strewn out on the floor didn’t seem to have much fight left in them.

Wayne crossed the room in a couple of strides and bolted the door. Then he walked over to the box of sand. If it contained what he suspected—

He stepped over to the lab bench and picked out a long steel support rod from the equipment drawer. He placed the rod gently against the sand, and pushed downward, hard. There was a tinny scream, and a six-inch needle shot up instantly through the surface.

“Just what I thought,” Wayne murmured. “Can you talk, you nasty little brute?” He prodded into the sand—more viciously this time. There was a flurry of sand, and the football-shaped thing came to the surface, clashing its teeth and screaming shrilly.

Wayne cursed. Then he turned the needle gun back up to full power and calmly burned the thing to a crisp. An odor of singed flesh drifted up from the ashes on the sand.

* * * *

He stooped and fumbled in Stevelman’s pocket, pulling out a ring of keys.

“They better be the right ones,” he told the unconscious medic. Holstering the needle gun, he walked over to the medical stores cabinet, hoping that the things he needed would be inside. He knew exactly what he was facing now, and what he would have to do.

He checked over the labels, peering through the neatly-arranged racks for the substance he was searching for.

Finally he picked a large plastine container filled with a white, crystalline powder. Then he selected a couple of bottles filled with a clear, faintly yellow liquid, and took a hypodermic gun from the rack. He relocked the cabinet.

Suddenly a knock sounded. He stiffened, sucked in his breath, and turned to face the door.

“Who’s there?” he asked cautiously, trying to counterfeit Stevelman’s voice.

“Harrenburg,” said a rumbling voice. “I’m on guard duty. Heard some noise coming from in there a while back, and thought I’d look in. Everything all right, Dr. Stevelman? I mean—”

“Everything’s fine, Harrenburg,” Wayne said, imitating the medic’s thin, dry voice. “We’re running some tests on Captain Wayne. They’re pretty complicated affairs, and I’d appreciate it if you didn’t interrupt again.”

“Sure, sir,” the guard said. “Just a routine check, sir. Colonel Petersen’s orders. Sorry if I’ve caused any trouble, sir.”

“That’s all right,” Wayne said. “Just go away and let us continue, will you?”

There was the sound of the guard’s footsteps retreating down the corridor. Wayne counted to ten and turned back to the things he had taken from the cabinet.

The bottles of liquid and the hypo gun went into his belt pouch. He tucked the big bottle of white powder under his left arm and cautiously unbolted and opened the door. There was no sign of anyone in the corridor. Good, he thought. It was a lucky thing Harrenburg had blundered along just then, and not two minutes later.

He stepped outside the Medic Section and locked the door behind him with the key he’d taken from Stevelman. After turning the needle gun back to low power again in order to keep from killing anyone, he started on tiptoe toward the stairway that led into the bowels of the ship.

After about ten paces, he saw a shadow on the stairway, and cowered in a dark recess while two crewmen passed, talking volubly. Once they were gone, he came out and continued on his way.

It took quite a while to get where he was going, since it involved hiding and ducking two or three more times along the way, but he finally reached the big compartment where the water repurifiers were. He climbed up the ladder to the top of the reserve tank, opened the hatch, and emptied the contents of the jar into the ship’s water supply.

“That ought to do it,” he said to himself. Smiling, he carefully smashed the jar and dropped the fragments down the waste chute. He surveyed his handiwork for a moment, then turned and headed back.

He hadn’t been seen going down, and he didn’t want to be seen going out. If anyone even suspected that he had tampered with the water supply, all they would have to do would be to run the water through the purifiers. That would undo everything Wayne had been carefully preparing.

* * * *

He made his way safely back up to the main deck and headed through the quiet ship toward the airlock. He wasn’t so lucky this time; a guard saw him.

“Where you goin’, Captain?” the guard demanded, starting to lift his gun. “Seems to me you ought to be in the brig, and—”

Wayne made no reply. He brought his gun up in a rapid motion and beamed the man down. The guard toppled, a hurt expression on his face.

Wayne raced to the airlock. He didn’t bother with a spacesuit—not now, when he knew that the air was perfectly harmless outside. He opened the inner door, closed it, and opened the outer door.

Then, grinning gleefully, he pressed the button that would start the pumping cycle. The outer door started to close automatically, and Wayne just barely managed to get outside and onto the ladder before it clanged shut. As soon as the great hatch had sealed itself, the pumps started exhausting the air from the airlock. No one could open the doors until the pumping cycle was over.

He climbed down the ladder and began walking over toward the western wall. He would have to keep away from the ship for a while, and the rocks were as good a place as any to hide out.

* * * *

It was dark. Fomalhaut had set, leaving the moonless planet in utter blackness, broken only by the cold gleam of the stars. The lights streaming from the portholes of the Lord Nelson gave a small degree of illumination to the valley.

The valley. It was spread out before him, calm and peaceful, rippling dunes of sand curling out toward the mountains. The valley, he knew, was a betrayer—calm and quiet above, alive with an army of hideous vermin a few feet below its surface.

He started to walk, and moistened his lips. He knew he was going to get awfully thirsty in the next few hours, but there was not the slightest help for it. There hadn’t been any way to carry water from the ship.

“I can wait,” he told himself. He stared back at the circular bulk of the Lord Nelson behind him, and his fingers trembled a little. He had known, when he joined the Corps, that space was full of traps like this one—but this was the first time he had actually experienced anything like this. It was foul.

Something slammed into his boot sole, and this time Wayne knew what it was.

“Persistent, aren’t you!” He jerked his foot up. This monster hadn’t stuck as the other one had, but he saw the tip of the needle-beak thrashing around wildly in the loose sand. Wayne thumbed the gun up to full power, and there was a piercing shriek as the gun burned into the sand. There was a sharp shrill sound, and the odor of something burning. He spat.

The little beasts must be all over the floor of the valley! Scurrying frantically, like blood-red giant crabs, sidling up and down beneath the valley, searching upward for things to strike at. How they must hate his metamagnetic boots, he thought!

He kept on walking, expecting to feel the impact of another thrust momentarily, but he was not molested again. They must be getting wise, he thought. They know they can’t get through my boots, and so they’re leaving me alone. That way they don’t call attention to themselves.

A new, more chilling question struck him:

Just how smart are they?

He had made it to the wall and was climbing up the treacherous slope when the airlock door opened, and someone stood outlined in the bright circle of light that cut into the inky blackness. An amplified voice filled the valley and ricocheted back off the walls of the mountains, casting eerie echoes down on the lone man on the desert.

“CAPTAIN WAYNE! THIS IS COLONEL PETERSEN SPEAKING. DON’T YOU REALIZE THAT YOU’RE A SICK MAN? YOU MAY DIE OUT THERE. COME BACK. THAT’S AN ORDER, CAPTAIN. REPEAT: COME BACK. THAT’S AN ORDER!”

“I’m afraid an order from you just doesn’t hold much weight for me right now, Colonel,” Wayne said quietly, to himself. Silently he went on climbing the escarpment, digging into the rough rock.

He kept on climbing until he found the niche for which he had been heading. He dragged himself in and sat down, as comfortably as possible. He began to wait.

* * * *

Dawn came in less than three hours, as Fomalhaut burst up over the horizon and exploded in radiance over the valley. With dawn came a patrol of men, slinking surreptitiously across the valley, probably with orders to bring him in. Wayne was ensconced comfortably in his little rock niche, hidden from the men in the valley below, but with a perfect view of everything that went on. The wind whistled around the cliffs, ceaselessly moaning a tuneless song. He felt like standing up and shouting wildly, “Here I am! Here I am!” but he repressed the perverse urge.

The patrol group stood in a small clump in the valley below, seemingly waiting for something. Moments passed, and then it became apparent what that something was. Hollingwood, the metallurgist, appeared, dragging with him the detector. They were going to look for Captain Wayne with it, just as they had searched out the double-nucleus beryllium.

Wayne frowned. It was a possibility he hadn’t thought about. They could easily detect the metal in his boots! And he didn’t dare take them off; he’d never make it back across that hellish stretch of sand without them. He glanced uneasily at his watch. How much longer do I have to keep evading them? he wondered. It was a wearing task.

It looked as though it would be much too long.

The muzzle of the detector began to swing back and forth slowly and precisely, covering the valley inch by inch. He heard their whispered consultations drifting up from below, though he couldn’t make out what they were saying.

* * * *

They finished with the valley, evidently concluding he wasn’t there, and started searching the walls. Wayne decided it was time to get out while the getting was good. He crawled slowly out of the niche and wriggled along the escarpment, heading south, keeping low so the men in the valley wouldn’t see him.

Unfortunately, he couldn’t see them either. He kept moving, hoping they wouldn’t spot him with the detector. He wished he had the metamagnetic hand grapples with him. For one thing, the sharp rock outcroppings sliced his hands like so much meat. For another, he could have dropped the grapples somewhere as a decoy.

Oh, well, you can’t think of everything, Wayne told himself. He glanced at his watch. How long was it going to take?

He heard the scrape of boot leather on a rock somewhere ahead of him. He glanced up sharply, seeing nothing, and scowled. They had spotted him.

They were laying a trap.

Cautiously, he climbed over a huge boulder, making no sound. There was one man standing behind it, waiting, apparently, for Wayne to step around into view. He peered down, trying to see who it was. It seemed to be Hollingwood, the dignified, austere metallurgist.

Wayne smiled grimly, picked up a heavy rock, and dropped it straight down, square on the man’s helmet. The plexalloy rang like a bell through the clear early-morning air, and the man dropped to his knees, dazed by the shock.

* * * *

Knowing he had just a moment to finish the job, Wayne pushed off against the side of the rock and plummeted down, landing neatly on the metallurgist’s shoulders. The man reeled and fell flat. Wayne spun him over and delivered a hard punch to the solar plexus. “Sorry, Dave,” he said softly. The metallurgist gasped and curled up in a tight ball. Wayne stood up. It was brutal, but it was the only place you could hit a man wearing a space helmet.

One down, Wayne thought. Fifty-eight to go. He was alone against the crew—and, for all he knew, against all fifty-nine of them.

Hollingwood groaned and stretched. Wayne bent and, for good measure, took off the man’s helmet and tapped him none too gently on the skull.

There was the sound of footsteps, the harsh chitch-chitch of feet against the rock. “He’s up that way,” he heard a deep voice boom.

That meant the others had heard the rock hitting Hollingwood’s plexalloy helmet. They were coming toward him.

Wayne sprang back defensively and glanced around. He hoped there were only five of them, that the rule of six was still being maintained. Otherwise things could become really complicated, as they hunted him relentlessly through the twisted gulleys.

He hated to have to knock out too many of the men; it just meant more trouble later. Still, there was no help for it, if he wanted there to be any later. He thought of the bleached bones of the crew of the Mavis, and shuddered.

It was something of an advantage not to be wearing a helmet. Even with the best of acoustical systems, hearing inside a helmet tended to be distorted and dimmed. The men couldn’t hear him as well as he could hear them. And since they couldn’t hear themselves too well, they made a little more noise than he did.

A space boot came into view around a big rock, and Wayne aimed his needle-beam at the spot where the man’s head would appear.

When the head came around the rock, Wayne fired. The man dropped instantly. Sorry, friend, Wayne apologized mentally. Two down. Fifty-seven to go. The odds were still pretty heavy.

He knew he had to move quickly now; the others had seen the man drop, and by now they should have a pretty good idea exactly where Wayne was.

He picked up a rock and lobbed it over a nearby boulder, then started moving cat-like in the other direction. He climbed up onto another boulder and watched two men move away from him. They were stepping warily, their beam guns in their hands. Wayne wiped away a bead of perspiration, aimed carefully, and squeezed the firing stud twice.

Four down. Fifty-five to go.

* * * *

A moment later, something hissed near his ear. Without waiting, he spun and rolled off the boulder, landing cat-like on his feet. Another crewman was standing on top of a nearby boulder. Wayne began to sweat; this pursuit seemed to be indefinitely prolonged, and it was beginning to look unlikely that he could avoid them forever.

He had dropped his pistol during the fall; it was wedged between a couple of rocks several feet away.

He heard someone call: “I got him. He fell off the rock. We’ll take him back down below.”

Then another voice—ominously. “He won’t mind. He’ll be glad we did it for him—afterwards.”

“I’ll go get him,” said the first voice. The man stepped around the side of the boulder—just in time to have a hard-pitched rock come thunking into his midsection.

“Oof!” he grunted, took a couple of steps backwards, and collapsed.

Five down. Fifty-four to go. It could go on forever this way.

“What’s the matter?” asked the man who had replied to the first one with those chilling words.

“Nothing,” said Wayne, in a fair imitation of the prostrate crewman’s voice. “He’s heavy. Come help me.”

Then he reached down and picked up the fallen man’s beam gun. He took careful aim.

When the sixth man stepped around the rock, he fired. The beam went wide of the mark, slowing the other down, and Wayne charged forward. He pounded two swift punches into the amazed crewman, who responded with a woozy, wild blow. Wayne ducked and let the fist glide past his ear, then came in hard with a solid body-blow and let the man sag to the ground. He took a deep breath.

Six down and only fifty-three to go.

* * * *

He crawled back to the edge of the precipice and peered down into the valley. There was no one to be seen. It was obvious that Colonel Petersen was still enforcing the six-man rule.

As he watched, he saw the airlock door open. A spacesuited figure scrambled down the ladder and sprinted across the deadly sand of the valley floor.

It was Sherri! Wayne held his breath, expecting at any moment that one of the little monsters beneath the sand would sink its vicious needle upward into Sherri’s foot. But her stride never faltered.

As she neared the precipice, another figure appeared at the airlock door and took aim with a gun.

Wayne thumbed his own needle-beam pistol up to full and fired hastily at the distant figure. At that distance, even the full beam would only stun. The figure collapsed backwards into the airlock, and Wayne grinned in satisfaction.

Seven down. Fifty-two to go.

He kept an eye on the airlock door and a finger on his firing stud, waiting to see if anyone else would come out. No one else did.

As soon as Sherri was safely up to the top of the precipice, Wayne ran to meet her.

“Sherri! What the devil did you come out here for?”

“I had to see you,” she said, panting for breath. “If you’ll come back to the ship before they beam you down, we can prove to Colonel Petersen that you’re all right. We can show them that the Masters—”

She realized suddenly what she said and uttered a little gasp. She had her pistol out before the surprised Wayne could move.

He stared coldly at the pistol, thinking bitterly that this was a hell of a way for it all to finish. “So they got you too,” he said. “That little display at the airlock was a phony. You were sent out here to lure me back into the ship. Just another Judas.”

She nodded slowly. “That’s right,” she said. “We all have to go to the Masters. It is—it—is—is—”

Her eyes glazed, and she swayed on her feet. The pistol wavered and swung in a feeble spiral, no longer pointed at Wayne. Gently, he took it from her nerveless fingers and caught her supple body as she fell.

He wiped his forehead dry. Up above, the sun was climbing toward the top of the sky, and its beams raked the planet below, pouring down heat.

* * * *

He glanced at his wristwatch while waiting for his nerves to stop tingling. Sherri must have been the last one—the drug must have taken effect at last, and not a moment too soon. He decided to wait another half hour before he tried to get into the spaceship, just the same.

The huge globe of the Lord Nelson stood forlornly in the center of the valley. The airlock door stayed open; no one tried to close it.

Wayne’s mouth was growing dry; his tongue felt like sandpaper. Nevertheless, he forced himself to sit quietly, watching the ship closely for the full half hour, before he picked up Sherri, tied his rope around her waist, and lowered her to the valley floor. Then he wandered around the rocks, collecting the six unconscious men, and did the same for them.

He carried them all, one by one, across the sand, burning a path before him with the needle beam.

Long before he had finished his task, the sand was churning loathsomely with the needles of hundreds and thousands of the monstrous little beasts. They were trying frantically to bring down the being that was so effectively thwarting their plans, jabbing viciously with their upthrust beaks. The expanse of sand that was the valley looked like a pincushion, with the writhing needles ploughing through the ground one after another. Wayne kept the orifice of his beam pistol hot as he cut his way back and forth from the base of the cliff to the ship.

When he had dumped the seven unconscious ones all inside the airlock, he closed the outer door and opened the inner one. There was not a sound from within.

Fifty-nine down, he thought, and none to go.

He entered the ship and dashed down the winding staircase to the water purifiers to change the water in the reservoir tanks. Thirsty as he was, he was not going to take a drink until the water had been cleared of the knockout drug he had dropped into the tanks.

After that came the laborious job of getting everyone in the ship strapped into their bunks for the takeoff. It took the better part of an hour to get all sixty of them up—they had fallen all over the ship—and nestled in the acceleration cradles. When the job was done, he went to the main control room and set the autopilot to lift the spaceship high into the ionosphere.

Then, sighting carefully on the valley far below, he dropped a flare bomb.

“Goodbye, little monsters,” he said exultantly.

For a short space of time, nothing happened. Then the viewplate was filled with a deadly blue-white glare. Unlike an ordinary atomic bomb, the flare bomb would not explode violently; it simply burned, sending out a brilliant flare of deadly radiation that would crisp all life dozens of feet below the ground.

He watched the radiation blazing below. Then it began to die down, and when the glare cleared away, all was quiet below.

The valley was dead.

When it was all over, Wayne took the hypodermic gun from his pouch, filled it with the anti-hypnotic drug that he had taken from the medical cabinet, and began to make his rounds. He fired a shot into each and every one aboard. He had no way of knowing who had been injected by the small monsters and who had not, so he was taking no chances.

Then he went to the colonel’s room. He wanted to be there when the Commanding Officer awoke.

* * * *

The entire crew of the Lord Nelson was gathered in the big mess hall. Wayne stared down at the tired, frightened faces of the puzzled people looking up at him, and continued his explanation.

“Those of you who were under the control of the monsters know what it was like. They had the ability to inject a hypnotic drug into a human being through a normal space boot with those stingers of theirs. The drug takes effect so fast that the victim hardly has any idea of what has happened to him.”

“But why do they do it?” It was Hollingwood, the metallurgist, looking unhappy with a tremendous bruise on his head where Wayne had clobbered him.

“Why does a wasp sting a spider? It doesn’t kill the spider, it simply stuns it. That way, the spider remains alive and fresh so that young wasps can feed upon it at their leisure.”

Wayne glanced over to his right. “Lieutenant Jervis, you’ve been under the effect of the drug longer than any of us. Would you explain what really happened when the Mavis landed?”

The young officer stood up. He was pale and shaken, but his voice was clear and steady.

“Just about the same thing that almost happened here,” Jervis said. “We all walked around the valley floor and got stung one at a time. The things did it so quietly that none of us knew what was going on until we got hit ourselves. When we had all been enslaved, we were ready to do their bidding. They can’t talk, but they can communicate by means of nerve messages when that needle is stuck into you.”

Nearly half the crew nodded in sympathy. Wayne studied them, wondering what it must have been like. They knew; he could only guess.

“Naturally,” Jervis went on, “those who have already been injected with the drug try to get others injected. When everyone aboard the Mavis had been stung, they ordered me to take the ship home and get another load of Earthmen. Apparently they like our taste. I had to obey; I was completely under their power. You know what it’s like.”

“And what happened to the others—the eight men you left behind?” asked Colonel Petersen.

Jervis clenched his teeth bitterly. “They just laid down on the sand—and waited.”

“Horrible!” Sherri said.

Jervis fell silent. Wayne was picturing the sight, and knew everyone else was, too—the sight of hordes of carnivorous little aliens burrowing up through the sand and approaching the eight Earthmen who lay there, alive but helpless. Approaching them—and beginning to feed.

Just when the atmosphere began to grow too depressing, Wayne decided to break the spell. “I’d like to point out that the valley’s been completely cauterized,” he said. “The aliens have been wiped out. And I propose to lead a mission out to reconnoitre for the double-nucleus beryllium.”

He looked around. “MacPherson? Boggs? Manetti? You three want to start over where we left off the last time?”

Sergeant Boggs came up to him. “Sir, I want you to understand that—”

“I know, Boggs,” Wayne said. “Let’s forget all about it. There’s work to be done.”

“I’m sorry I misjudged you, Wayne. If it hadn’t been for your quick action, this crew would have gone the way of the Mavis.”

“Just luck, Colonel,” Wayne said. “If it hadn’t been for those heavy-soled climbing boots, I’d probably be lying out there with the rest of you right now.”

Colonel Petersen grinned. “Thanks to your boots, then.”

Wayne turned to his team of three. “Let’s get moving, fellows. We’ve wasted enough time already.”

“Do we need spacesuits, sir?” Manetti asked.

“No, Manetti. The air’s perfectly fine out there,” Wayne said. “But I’d suggest you wear your climbing boots.” He grinned. “You never can tell when they’ll come in handy.”

NATIVE SON, by T. D. Hamm

Tommy Benton, on his first visit to Earth, found the long-anticipated wonders of twenty-first-century New York thrilling the first week, boring and unhappy the second week, and at the end of the third he was definitely ready to go home.

The never-ending racket of traffic was torture to his abnormally acute ears. Increased atmospheric pressure did funny things to his chest and stomach. And quick and sure-footed on Mars, he struggled constantly against the heavy gravity that made all his movements clumsy and uncoordinated.

The endless canyons of towering buildings, with their connecting Skywalks, oppressed and smothered him. Remembering the endless vistas of rabbara fields beside a canal that was like an inland sea, homesickness flooded over him.

He hated the people who stared at him with either open or hidden amusement. His Aunt Bee, for instance, who looked him up and down with frank disapproval and said loudly, “For Heavens sake, Helen! Take him to a good tailor and get those bones covered up!”

Was it his fault he was six inches taller than Terran boys his age, and had long, thin arms and legs? Or that his chest was abnormally developed to compensate for an oxygen-thin atmosphere? I’d like to see her, he thought fiercely, out on the Flatlands; she’d be gasping like a canal-fish out of water.

Even his parents, happily riding the social merry-go-round of Terra, after eleven years in the Martian flatlands, didn’t seem to understand how he felt.

“Don’t you like Earth, Tommy?” queried his mother anxiously.

“Oh…it’s all right, I guess.”

“…‘A nice place to visit’…” said his father sardonically.

“…‘but I wouldn’t live here if they gave me the place!’…” said his mother, and they both burst out laughing for no reason that Tommy could see. Of course, they did that lots of times at home and Tommy laughed with them just for the warm, secure feeling of belonging. This time he didn’t feel like laughing.

“When are we going home?” he repeated stubbornly.

His father pulled Tommy over in the crook of his arm and said gently, “Well, not right away, son. As a matter of fact, how would you like to stay here and go to school?”

Tommy pulled away and looked at him incredulously.

“I’ve been to school!”

“Well, yes,” admitted his father. “But only to the colony schools. You don’t want to grow up and be an ignorant Martian sandfoot all your life, do you?”

“Yes, I do! I want to be a Martian sandfoot. And I want to go home where people don’t look at me and say, ‘So this is your little Martian!’”

Benton, Sr., put his arm around Tommy’s stiffly resistant shoulders. “Look here, old man,” he said persuasively. “I thought you wanted to be a space engineer. You can’t do that without an education you know. And your Aunt Bee will take good care of you.”

Tommy faced him stubbornly. “I don’t want to be any old spaceman. I want to be a sandfoot like old Pete. And I want to go home.”

Helen bit back a smile at the two earnest, stubborn faces so ridiculously alike, and hastened to avert the gathering storm.

“Now look, fellows. Tommy’s career doesn’t have to be decided in the next five minutes…after all, he’s only ten. He can make up his mind later on if he wants to be an engineer or a rabbara farmer. Right now, he’s going to stay here and go to school…and I’m staying with him.”

Resolutely avoiding both crestfallen faces, Helen, having shepherded Tommy to bed, returned to the living room acutely conscious of Big Tom’s bleak, hurt gaze at her back.

“Helen, you’re going to make a sissy out of the boy,” he said at last. “There isn’t any reason why he can’t stay here at home with Bee.”

Helen turned to face him.

“Earth isn’t home to Tommy. And your sister Bee told him he ought to be out playing football with the boys instead of hanging around the house.”

“But she knows the doctor said he’d have to take it easy for a year till he was accustomed to the change in gravity and air-pressure,” he answered incredulously.

“Exactly. She also asked me,” Helen went on grimly, “if I thought he’d be less of a freak as he got older.”

Tom Benton swore. “Bee always did have less sense than the average hen,” he gritted. “My son a freak! Hell’s-bells!”

Tommy, arriving at the hall door in time to hear the tail-end of the sentence, crept back to bed feeling numb and dazed. So even his father thought he was a freak.

* * * *

The last few days before parting was one of strain for all of them. If Tommy was unnaturally subdued, no one noticed it; his parents were not feeling any great impulse toward gaiety either.

They all went dutifully sight-seeing as before; they saw the Zoo, and went shopping on the Skywalks, and on the last day wound up at the great showrooms of “Androids, Inc.”

Tommy had hated them on sight; they were at once too human and too inhuman for comfort. The hotel was full of them, and most private homes had at least one. Now they saw the great incubating vats, and the processing and finally the showroom where one of the finished products was on display as a maid, sweeping and dusting.

“There’s one that’s a dead-ringer for you, Helen. If you were a little better looking, that is.” Tommy’s dad pretended to compare them judicially. Helen laughed, but Tommy looked at him with a resentfulness. Comparing his mother to an Android.…

“They say for a little extra you can get an exact resemblance. Maybe I’d better have one fixed up like you to take back with me,” Big Tom added teasingly. Then as Helen’s face clouded over, “Oh, hon, you know I was only kidding. Let’s get out of here; this place gives me the collywobbles. Besides, I’ve got to pick up my watch.”

But his mother’s face was still unhappy and Tommy glowered sullenly at his father’s back all the way to the watch-shop.

It was a small shop, with an inconspicuous sign down in one corner of the window that said only, “KRUMBEIN—watches,” and was probably the most famous shop of its kind in the world. Every spaceman landing on Terra left his watch to be checked by the dusty, little old man who was the genius of the place. Tommy ranged wide-eyed about the clock and chronometer crammed interior. He stopped fascinated before the last case. In it was a watch…but, what a watch! Besides the regulation Terran dial, it had a second smaller dial that registered the corresponding time on Mars. Tommy’s whole heart went out to it in an ecstasy of longing. He thought wistfully that if you could know what time it was there, you could imagine what everyone was doing and it wouldn’t seem so far away. Haltingly, he tried to explain.

“Look, Mom,” he said breathlessly. “It’s almost five o’clock at home. Douwie will be coming up to the barn to be fed. Gosh, do you suppose old Pete will remember about her?”

His mother smiled at him reassuringly. “Of course he will, silly. Don’t forget he was the one who caught and tamed her for you.”

Tommy gulped as he thought of Douwie. Scarcely as tall as himself; the big, rounded, mouselike ears, and the flat, cloven pads that could carry her so swiftly over the sandy Martian flatlands. One of the last dwindling herds of native Martian douwies, burden-carriers of a vanished race, she had been Tommy’s particular pride and joy for the last three years.

Behind him, Tommy heard his mother murmur under her breath, “Tom…the watch; could we?”

And his Dad regretfully, “It’s a pretty expensive toy for a youngster, Helen. And even a rabbara raiser’s bank account has limits.”

“Of course, dear; it was silly of me.” Helen smiled a little ruefully. “And if Mr. Krumbein has your watch ready, we must go. Bee and some of her friends are coming over, and it’s only a few hours ’till you…leave.”

Big Tom squeezed her elbow gently, understandingly, as she blinked back quick tears. Trailing after them, Tommy saw the little by-play and his heart ached. The guilt-complex building up in him grew and deepened.

He knew he had only to say, “Look, I don’t mind staying. Aunt Bee and I will get along swell,” and everything would be all right again. Then the terror of this new and complex world—as it would be without a familiar face—swept over him and kept him silent.

His overwrought feelings expressed themselves in a nervously rebelling stomach, culminating in a disgraceful moment over the nearest gutter. The rest of the afternoon he spent in bed recuperating.

In the living room Aunt Bee spoke her mind in her usual, high-pitched voice.

“It’s disgraceful, Helen. A boy his age.… None of the Bentons ever had nerves.”

His mother’s reply was inaudible, but on the heels of his father’s deeper tones, Aunt Bee’s voice rose in rasping indignation.

“Well! I never! And from my own brother, too. From now on don’t come to me for help with your spoiled brat. Good-bye!”

The door slammed indignantly, his mother chuckled, and there was a spontaneous burst of laughter. Tommy relaxed and lay back happily. Anyway, that was the last of Aunt Bee!

* * * *

The next hour or two passed in a flurry of ringing phones, people coming and going, and last-minute words and reminders. Then suddenly it was time to leave. Dad burst in for a last quick hug and a promise to send him pictures of Douwie and her foal, due next month; Mother dropped a hasty kiss on his hair and promised to hurry back from the Spaceport. Then Tommy was alone, with a large, painful lump where his heart ought to be.

The only activity was the almost noiseless buzzing as the hotel android ran the cleaner over the living room. Presently even that ceased, and Tommy lay relaxed and inert, sleepily watching the curtains blow in and out at the open window. Thirty stories above the street the noises were pleasantly muffled and remote, and his senses drifted aimlessly to and fro on the tides of half-sleep.

Drowsily his mind wandered from the hotel’s android servants…to the strictly utilitarian mechanical monstrosity at home, known affectionately as “Old John”…to the android showroom where they had seen the one that Dad said looked like Mother.…

He jolted suddenly, sickeningly awake. Suppose, his mind whispered treacherously, suppose that Dad had ordered one to take Mom’s place…not on Mars, but here while she returned to Mars with him. Suppose that instead of Mom he discovered one of those Things…or even worse, suppose he went on from day to day not even knowing.…

It was a bad five minutes; he was wet with perspiration when he lay back on his pillows, a shaky smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. He had a secret defense against the Terror. He giggled a little at the thought of what Aunt Bee would say if she knew.

And what had brought him back from the edge of hysteria was the triumphant knowledge that with the abnormally acute hearing bred in the thin atmosphere of Mars, no robot ever created could hide from him the infinitesimal ticking of the electronic relays that gave it life. Secure at last, his overstrung nerves relaxed and he slid gratefully over the edge of sleep.

He woke abruptly, groping after some vaguely remembered sound. A soft clicking of heels down the hall.… Of course, his mother back from the Spaceport! Now she would be stopping at his door to see if he were asleep. He lay silently; through his eyelashes he could see her outlined in the soft light from the hall. She was coming in to see if he was tucked in. In a moment he would jump up and startle her with a hug, as she leaned over him. In a moment.…

Screaming desperately, he was out of bed, backing heedlessly across the room. He was still screaming as the low sill of the open window caught him behind the knees and toppled him thirty stories to the street.

Alone in the silent room, Helen Benton stood dazed, staring blindly at the empty window.

Tommy’s parting gift from his father slid from her hand and lay on the carpet, still ticking gently.

It was 9:23 on Mars.

JUBILEE, by Richard A. Lupoff

Early autumn sunlight brightened the kitchen in the modest domus on the Via Palmae. Aelius reached across the table to take Dulcis’ hand. “Thank you for last night, Dulcis. I guess I was preoccupied at first. But you were very sweet. You...”

Before he could finish the sentence he was interrupted by the shock of Livia’s cold nose against his thigh. He looked at the marsupial bitch. One of her pups had stuck its head out of her pouch and Aelius said, “Well, will you look at that. It’s about time.”

Dulcis rounded the table and knelt on the malachite floor. Its polished greenness retained the night’s cool. This was going to be a scorcher. Sometimes the third month of the year was cool in Novum Ostia, when autumn set in early, but this year summer had been fierce and it refused to loosen its grip. The whole continent of Terra Australis seemed like a baked portion of the Jews’ unleavened bread.

Livia whined and Dulcis reached up and scooped a dollop of wheat cereal and honey from Aelius’ plate. She put the food into Livia’s dish and the bitch trotted across the kitchen and snuffled curiously at the treat. She was still nursing two pups and her appetite, always good, was outstanding.

Aelius growled. “You’re the one who’s always saying not to feed her off our plates, Dulcis. We shouldn’t do that, it only encourages her to beg. How many times have you told me that?” He lifted his glass and took a deep draught of freshly squeezed orange juice.

She stood behind his chair and leaned forward, her breasts pressed against his head, her face at an odd angle to his own. “You’re right, my darling. As ever. But she has babies. Just look at that one. Pointed ears, and those big shiny eyes. The world is brand new to him. Let Livia have her treat.”

Aelius grinned. He looked at his watch. “I’d better get a move on. Today of all days.”

Dulcis kissed him on the ear, then moved away. Livia had cleaned cleaned up her treat and Dulcis scooped the remaining cereal from the pot into the bitch’s dish. Livia sat on her haunches, watching Dulcis. The pup disappeared back into his mother’s pouch. Almost at once another miniature marsupial dog poked its head from Livia’s pouch.

“There he is again,” Aelius laughed.

Dulcis frowned. “No he’s not. That’s the girl.”

“Oh, come on. You can’t tell.”

“Sure I can. The other one looks like a boy. This is the girl.” Dulcis stroked Livia’s sleek head, tugged gently at her pointed ears. She didn’t try to touch the tiny head peering from Livia’s pouch. Dulcis said, “What a good girl you are, Livia. What a good mommy. What beautiful babies you have.”

Livia’s tail thumped the malachite floor. She waited for Dulcis to step away before tucking into the second bowl of cereal and honey.

Dulcis said, “The babies don’t even look alike. The boy has darker fur and he’s much more aggressive. This one has to be a girl. Look—she has a beauty mark on her cheek. See, Aelius, the disk of golden fur against the black?”

Aelius shook his head. “Celadus will have my head if I’m late today of all days. Caesar Viventius himself flying in from Terra Nipponsis to welcome the crew back from their expedition to Martes. This should be the biggest news day of the century.”

“Then you’re working with Celadus today?”

“I wouldn’t exactly say working with him. You know, every once in a while Celadus gets on his high horse and decides to be an executive. You’d think he was a senator, not just a news broadcast editor.”

Dulcis shook her head sympathetically. “Who’ll you be with?”

“Celadus wants me at the caelumportis when Caesar’s caelumvola touches down. I’ll be reporting. And then just hours later Isis reaches ground. The first craft to visit another planet...”

“We’ve been going to Luna for 200 years.”

“Indeed. If you consider a mere moon a planet...”

“By reason, Aelius, if you consider its size and...”

“Please, Dulcis, let’s not quarrel.”

“You’re right, Aelius. I’m sorry. What were you saying?”

Again Aelius lifted his glass and poured the last of his orange juice down his gullet. “I’m just saying that this expedition has been titanic news. The journey itself, the landing on Martes of Amaterasu, the loss of the spatiumnavis, the rescue by Isis...”

“And the brave nautae who gave their lives...”

“All for the greater glory of Rome, my darling.”

“Yes, all for the greater glory of Rome.”

“Well, Caesar Callistus Viventius himself wants to be on hand to welcome the heroes back to Tellus. And who am I, an humble journalist, to speak other than words of praise, eh?”

“I just don’t understand why it took 200 years after first visiting Luna, then setting up bases there, to build a spatiumnavis and travel to Martes. I mean, the navii are pretty much alike, aren’t they, Aelius? You report on these things all the time. You ought to know.”

Aelius smiled. “We Romans have always been timid about innovation.”

“Some would say, thorough, or at most cautious, rather than timid.”

“And who’s to quarrel with success, eh?” Aelius took up his portfolio and headed for the door. The portfolio was marked with the double jubilee logotype in gilt and green enamel. You couldn’t go anywhere without seeing the intertwined D and M that would surely provide collectible jewelry and plaques and junk dinnerware to make merchants rich for decades to come. He stopped and patted Livia on the head and was rewarded with a snuffle of her cold nose against his palm. He peered at the sunlight through the kitchen window and turned back for a light, broad brimmed hat. His black, balding pate seemed a magnet for strong sunlight, and too much of it gave him fierce headaches.

As he stepped from the house he heard Dulcis ask once more who he was going to work with. He muttered, “Avita, you know.” Indeed, Dulcis knew Avita, and Aelius knew that Dulcis did not care at all for Avita. Well, there was nothing that Aelius could do about it. Celadus was the boss, Celadus gave out the assignments, and Celadus said that Aelius and Avita were to work today’s events together.

Aelius heard a dish break against the green malachite floor as he turned into the Via Palmae. He suspected that it was his favorite dish, but he did not turn back to investigate. He climbed into his little sun-powered car and headed for work.

As he guided the car along the Via Palmae he reviewed the day’s plans in his mind. And he thought about Avita. She was a fine broadcaster. She had wonderful presence—the camera loved her, as the expression had it. Aelius did most of the research and writing for their reports, but Avita took an interest in the material. She didn’t just mouth Aelius’s words, as had some he had worked with.

His route carried him across the Via Fuligo and past a boarded-up shop front.

In a stuffy room behind the boarded-up shop, two men and a woman leaned over a table of native eucalyptus wood. All three were dressed in drab garb, without ornament. Each wore a dagger at the waist. There was little to distinguish their genders save the woman’s long, stringy hair and the meager, pointed breasts that poked sharply through her coarse shirt.

Sheets of paper littered the tabletop. A pot of Aegptian-style ink had been allowed to stand open, and had dried into a black, powdery substance. A small amphora of local wine stood open near the table’s edge. Despite the day’s heat, a small fire burned on a clay-brick hearth and added its smoke to the room’s stuffiness.

A muscular, scowling man spoke. “This is the day. This is the last time we’ll go over this plan. And it’s a one-time chance. If we fail today, it’s all over. We’re probably dead. By Mithras, they’ll crucify us. Caesar Viventius will personally hammer in the nails.”

“You’re dramatizing, Trux. We all know this is important. Don’t go acting as if you were on a stage.” The speaker was the group’s lone woman. She was not much taller than average, but her skeletal thinness was her dominant feature. Rather than making her appear tiny and fragile, it somehow gave her the appearance of a rickety giant, a stick figure who might reach down and clutch at her victim, throttling her prey like a vengeful phantasm.

Trux pounded a fist on the tabletop. “Dramatizing, am I, Tenua?” He pushed himself to his feet and leaned forward, looming over the others.

The second man, fleshy and dark-visaged, was sweating in the hot, airless room. Dark circles showed where perspiration had soaked his garment at armpits and chest. He belly was pressed against the eucalyptus-wood table. He reached for a heavy mug, lifted the amphora and poured himself a quantity of wine. He flashed bloodshot eyes from the looming Trux to the skeletal Tenua.

“We’re in this for the money,” the fat man said.

“We’re in it for the people of Terra Australis and for the freedom of peoples in every land.” Trux raised a hand as if he intended to strike the drinking mug from the fat man’s grasp, but he held himself back. “Don’t ascribe your own crass motives to others, Pinguis. There are still some idealists in this world.”

Pinguis raised his drinking mug. He held it to his chin, then dipped his tongue into the dark wine like a great, fleshy cat sampling a puddle. “When the money arrives from our masters in Uwajima—“

Now Trux did strike the mug from Pinguis’ hand. The mug smashed on the rough brick floor. The largest piece bounced into the fireplace. A trail of wine, like thin blood, led to the flames. “Our colleagues,” Trux barked. “Our only masters are the tyrants of Italia, lording it over all the globe, pretending that all men are citizens of Rome, or can earn citizenship by serving the eagles. And we believe them. Fools believe them.”

Pinguis gazed mournfully at the fragments of his smashed drinking mug. He reached across the table and wrapped fat fingers around Trux’s empty mug. He filled it from the amphora and again dipped his oddly pointed tongue, catlike, into the wine. “Colleagues, masters, whatever. So long as their aurii are made of real gold. And so long as they pay up.”

“They have so far, haven’t they?”

“But once the deed is done, and they need us no longer, Trux? What then?”

Trux shook his head. “They will pay.”

Throughout the exchange Tenua had watched in silence, a cynic’s smile playing across her lips. Now she shook her head as if bemused by a pair of squabbling children. “Shall we go over the plan once more? Or shall we just sit here stifling while Caesar’s caelumvola arrives from Terra Nipponsis and the spatiumnavis returns from Martes?”

The two men grumbled. Fat Pinguis, apparently satisfied that the wine was not poisoned, tilted his head back and drank deeply from his mug. A generous trickle of dark wine spilled over his chin and dripped onto his belly, adding a darker stain to the sweat-marked garment.

Trux said, “You’re right, Tenua. Here, let’s review this once more.”

Pinguis sighed. “All right. I could do this in my sleep. But if we must, we must.”

The largest sheet was a map of Nova Ostia and the surrounding countryside. The caelumportis where both Caesar Viventius’ caelumvola and the spatiumnavis Isis would touch Roman soil this day was circled in red. The journey from Nova Ostia itself was not long. A ground vehicle could cover the distance in half an hour, easily.

“The explosives are loaded,” Trux said. “If either of you have any doubts—Pinguis, Tenua—state them now. Once we cross the Pons Meretrix and head out the Via Brassica to the Pratum Grandis road and thence to the caelumportis...”

“The die is cast,” Pinguis completed Trux’s sentence.

“We have crossed the Rubicon,” Tenua added.

“How apt, darling.” Trux grunted an unformed word. “The first Caesar crossed the Rubicon and entered Rome. And we shall cross the Pons Meretrix, cross the River Diamantina, and it shall be our own Rubicon.”

“The plan, Trux, the plan.” Tenua’s tone was impatient. She watched Pinguis fill his drinking mug still again and tilt it and his head simultaneously.

“The plan.” Trux lifted a pen and moved it across the map. Its point scratched dryly. He cursed, dipped the pen in the inkpot and cursed more violently when he saw that the ink had dried. He looked around but saw no water to add to the dried ink. Instead he tipped the amphora and dribbled a fine stream of wine into the dried ink. He stirred the concoction with his pen, then tested it on the edge of the map and grunted with satisfaction.

Pinguis muttered, “A waste.”

Trux traced the route that they would take from the shop on Via Fuligo, across the Pons Meretrix to the Pratus Grandis road and to the caelumportis. “Our friends from Uwajima will be represented at the ceremonies. Caesar wants this to be a celebration for all the world, but he wants all the world to remember that it’s a Roman world and a Roman triumph.”

“All right,” Tenua put in. “We know that Caesar’s caelumvola reaches the caelumportis an hour before noon.”

“And the tyrant will have a fancy feast, as usual, before anything else.” Pinguis managed a smirk.

“Of course you would think first of that,” Tenua hissed.

“Squab,” Pinguis said, as if he could taste the succulent bird. “Honeyed redfish. Quails’ eggs. Breads and cakes. And I’ll bet he’s got a miniature wine cellar right there on his caelumvola.”

Tenua shook her head. “Don’t be a fool. He’ll be served from the local stores, or from the private stock of a Nova Ostian senator.”

Trux growled, “Shut up and listen to me. The spatiumnavis Isis is expected at the middle of the afternoon, and Caesar wants to witness its landing personally.”

“Who wouldn’t? It will be a great sight. There will be crowds there. I still worry about our being stalled in a jam on the road, or caught in a multitude at the caelumnavis.” Tenua’s voice had the odd tang of those born and raised in westernmost Terra Australis. Here in Novum Ostia she sometimes had trouble making herself understood, and had been taken more than once for some sort of outlandish barbarian.

Trux shook his head. “Not to worry.” He spoke with the harsh simplicity of a native of the metropolis. He even pronounced the city’s name Novoscha, as if it were some village in northernmost Dacia.

A knot in the burning eucalyptus wood on the hearth exploded with a violent report. Trux leaped as if prodded with a hot poker, reaching for the dagger at his waist. Scrawny Tenua lunged sideways, scrambling into a crouched position, her hands curled into claws like those of the rare marsupial tiger of Terra Australis’s eastern forests. Fat Pinguis shoved against the table. His chair tilted on its legs and toppled backwards. Pinguis’s weight landed atop the flimsy chair and smashed it to smithereens.

Each of the three looked at the others, then Tenua permitted herself a nervous laugh.

Trux completed his review of their plan. When Caesar’s guests from Terra Nipponsis created a distraction, Pinguis and Tenua would rush toward Caesar and the nautae, freshly emerged from Isis. Caesar’s guards were no fools. They would have remained undistracted by the Nipponsii, but would rush to halt Pinguis and Tenua. It was then that Trux himself would strike, hurling a concentrated bundle of Cathayan exploding powder at Caesar.

If Trux failed, if the others remained captive, they were armed as well with explosive bundles. They could detonate them, taking their captives with them to Hades. but Trux would not fail. He could not fail. He must not.

The assassination of the supreme tyrant would be the signal for uprisings throughout the world. The age of Rome would be at an end. No longer would arrogant Italia dominate the globe and all its lands and seas. People of every continent and country would determine their own destinies.

By Mithras, a long overdue age of gold would dawn at last.

The three plotters left their den by a rear exit, and made their way to a battered, grime-coated car. They climbed into it. Trux seated himself comfortably while Tenua took the steering yoke.

Once Rome was dismembered, Trux thought, they might very well go back to the old system of slaves, a system abandoned by Rome hundreds of years ago. It would be very pleasant, Trux thought, to own men and women. To be able to command their every action, their very lives or deaths. With the machinery that existed today, slaves were not needed. For those tasks that could not be taken over by machinery, free workers were more efficient and productive. If anything, the problem was one of finding enough jobs for the available workers, not the other way around.

All of that would change.

Tenua pulled the vehicle around the building containing the boarded-up shop and guided it through a littered alley. The morning sun blazed on the Via Fuligo. The vehicle accelerated from the mouth of the alley and turned toward the Pons Meretrix, toward the Pratus Grandis road, toward Caesar’s caelumvola and the spatiumnavis Isis and toward the events that would change the destiny of the world.

The Via Fuligo intersected with the Via Brassica. Standing in an upstairs room, gazing into the bright morning on the Via Fuligo, Aelius watched the filthy, battered vehicle lurch by. It was headed toward the Pons Meretrix.

Aelius nodded to himself. He jammed his light straw hat onto his head and spun on his heel. “All right,” he said, “let’s go, Avita. Celadus is already at the ‘portis, and if we don’t hustle out there we’ll miss the big show and he’ll roast our hides for his dinner.”

“You’re so eloquent, Aelius.” Avita was short and busty, and favored costumes that permitted taller men to see the shadowed valley between her breasts. She wore a locket there, suspended by a chain of fine electrum. The contents of the locket she refused to divulge. No man was known to have seen those contents, though many had tried.

They loaded their gear into an agency van. Heavier equipment, they knew, was already at the landing site, but they wanted to have their hand-held sight-and-sound recorders with them.

“Isis is returning directly from Martes, isn’t she?” Avita asked.

Aelius watched her out of the corner of his eye. This was information that Avita already had. Perhaps she was going over it just to refresh her mind. “That’s right.”

Avita shook her head. She wore her hair longer than Dulcis. The perfect blue-black waves caught the morning sunlight like a flame. “I don’t see why. I’d thought they would dock at Luna and then shuttle down. Wouldn’t that be easier? And safer?”

“Politics, everything’s politics. Caesar Viventius wants to be the first to welcome them. And he didn’t want to go to Luna to do it. He wanted it here in Terra Australis. The double jubilee, all of that.”

“Right, just remind me, why don’t you?”

Aelius shook his head. He steered the van around an immense industrial freighter powered by solar panels the size of a small playing field. Beneath its belly, Aelius knew, were the heavy batteries that were charged during the day and permitted the freighter to run all night if need be. The freighter carried the double jubilee logotype on its side. The intertwined D and M worked with laurel leaves and gilt were covered with dust and grime. Even before the jubilee celebration had reached its climax, the tawdry decorations were chipping and fading away. Aelius muttered a curse.

“What was that?”

Aelius grinned. “I was just wishing that they’d ban those things from city streets. Make ‘em unload in the suburbs, or at least get in and out of town at night. No matter.”

“Did you ever wonder what the world would be like if the plot had succeeded?”

Startled, Aelius gaped at Avita, then looked back just in time to avoid crashing into the back of a grimy, battered conveyance containing a woman and two men. They had reached the Pons Meretrix and the battered vehicle had stalled in the middle of the arching span.

Aelius jumped out of the van and ran to the stalled passenger conveyance. The driver was a tall woman, almost skeletally gaunt. Beside her sat a powerfully built, square-jawed individual. A fat blob sprawled behind them.

“What’s the matter?” Aelius demanded. “There ought to be a legionary here to keep traffic moving. Doesn’t anybody do anything right in this town any more?”

The gaunt woman said, “The car’s been sluggish all morning. Now it’s stopped altogether.” Aelius could hear the vehicle’s motor humming feebly. Actually it sounded more like a moan.

“Look at this, look at your panel! For Jupiter’s sake, when did you last clean the thing off?”

The man seated beside the driver muttered something Aelius couldn’t make out. The man clambered from the car and peered at the panel. “Hades’ name, you’re right. Just a moment.” He opened a compartment and produced an old shirt. He rubbed it across the solar panel. Again, again.

Aelius could hear the car’s motor hum more steadily.

“Thank you, stranger.” The square-jawed man climbed back into the car and the gaunt woman pulled it away.

Aelius muttered and climbed back into the van. Avita laughed. The van surged forward. Behind them, a row of vehicles had halted and their drivers had set up a clamor of complaint. The line now moved across the Pons Meretrix. Ahead, Aelius could see the ramp that carried vehicles from the Via Brassica onto the caelumportis road.

Avita said, “You never answered my question.”

“What question was that?”

“If the plot had succeeded. If Marcus Brutus and Gaius Cassius and the rest had not been such incompetents. Or if Caesar Julius hadn’t been smart enough to plant a spy among them and have the plot smashed before it could get into play.”

Aelius shook his head. “Historians and fantasizers have wondered about that for a thousand years, haven’t they?”

“But what do you think, Aelius? What do you think?” she repeated. She laid her hand on his thigh, emphasizing her question. Maybe it was just the bright sun warming them both through the van’s glass, but Avita’s hand felt red hot on Aelius’ leg. Red hot, and yet not unpleasant.

He said, “I don’t think history would have been much different and I don’t think the world would be much different today. History is moved by great forces. Individual men and women are merely the instruments of destiny. If one tool is broken or lost, the fates merely pick up another to do their work.”

Avita shook her head. Her tresses swung with the motion. “I’m not so sure, Aelius. I think if the first Caesar had died, Rome would have followed a different course.”

Aelius frowned. “How so?”

“I don’t know for sure. I think the Republic would have failed. I think some strongman would have seized the reins of state, made himself the master of Rome.”

“Maybe so.” The van was on the caelumportis road now. Legionaries lined the road, their metal accouterments polished so they reflected the sunlight like beacons, the variously colored crests on their glittering ceremonial helmets marking their units and rank.

“Maybe so,” Aelius continued. “But even so, what if that had come about? Rome was already the greatest power in the world. Really the only power that towered above all others. Carthage was long gone. Egypt, Syria, Judaea were all vassals of Rome. The Cathayans might have proved rivals of Rome, but when our nations had their encounter the Cathayans proved accommodating. And of course the people of the western continents were more than willing to make peace with our ancestors.”

Avita snorted. “What do you mean, our ancestors? Does this look like the skin of an Italian?” She held her hand before Aelius’ face. He saw the dark, sleek skin of one descended from the original inhabitants of Terra Australis.

“You don’t have to be Italian to be Roman,” Aelius said. “That’s much of Rome’s greatness.”:

Avita said, “Right. And when was the last time we had a Caesar who wasn’t Italian?”

“It will come. It will come.”

“Terra Australis has been a Roman province for 500 years. Most of us have been citizens for centuries. For what that may be worth.”

“History will have its own way,” Aelius asserted. The traffic ahead was growing denser. In the distance he could see the buildings of Pratum Grandis where the caelumportis had been built more than a century earlier. Even they were decorated with the grant double jubilee logotype.

Maybe Avita was tired of the subject, for she changed it. “What do you think the natae found on Martes? The government’s been tight-lipped about it. Even the likes of us who always know everything first...” She left her sentence hanging between them.

Aelius shook his head. “I’ll tell you one thing they didn’t find, and that was Etruscans.” He laughed scornfully at the notion that some of the wilder journalists of Novum Ostia had kicked around.

“Don’t laugh, Aelius.”

“You don’t take that guff seriously, do you?”

“Well, I just don’t know. The Etruscans went somewhere. Unless you think they went to Atlantis.”

“Oh, please.” Aelius snorted. “One silly legend on top of another.”

“Well, what do you think, then?”

“I’m sure we’ll find out.”

But Avita wasn’t quite ready to let go of the subject. “Something got Amaterasu. Whatever you think of Rome and Italia, Roman engineering is reliable.”

“Sure. That’s why that car stalled in front of us on the Pons Meretrix.”

“You saw how they got started again, Aelius.”

“And you think Etruscans destroyed Amaterasu but let Isis land and rescue the survivors and return safely to Tellus. That makes a lot of sense.”

There was a glint high against the dazzling blue of morning. Aelius and Avita both saw it. Avita asked, “Do you think that’s Caesar Viventius’ caelumvola, coming in from Terra Nipponsis?”

Aelius shook his head. “Might be. Might even be Isis herself. She has to circle Tellus several times, slowing all the while, before she can land.”

From the cabin of Isis, Terra Australis looked like a great sandy map, with reddish-gray outcroppings of mountain ranges, green forests in the east and glittering blue lakes and rivers. Beyond the greatest of Roman provinces the great western ocean spread in silvery splendor.

Lucius, Navicularis, stood with one hand against the metallic bulkhead, the other to his chin in characteristic pose. He had started the voyage four years before, launching with his crew from Luna. Isis had been constructed there, as had her sister spatiumnavis, Amaterasu. Lucius had been clean-shaven then. Now he sported a reddish beard like those his ancestors had worn in Terra Occidens.

And now Amaterasu lay on the sandy, rock-strewn surface of another world, while Isis struggled to return, not to her place of birth on Luna but to the home planet Tellus. The engineers had calculated that a landing on Tellus was possible, abut only at the hands of the greatest of naviculari.

Lucius turned to address his three chief officers. Sabbina, Gubernatrix; Septimus, Machinator; Drusilla, Nunciatrix. “Dear friends, you have come through Hades with me.” He reached to clasp the hands of each in turn. “Now we face our final test.” He turned his back to them and gazed through Isis’ glass once again.

A junior gubernator sat at the controls. Junior at the beginning of our great adventure, Lucius thought. After four years and the greatest voyage in the history of humankind, Antoninus was far from junior, save in comparison to Sabbina.

“Sabbina,” Lucius asked, “have you full confidence in the course you have plotted for us?”

The gubernatrix smiled wryly. “The mechanical computator has spoken, O Navicularis. The holy oracle says that the odds are in our favor.”

“And the state of the navis itself, Septimus?”

“She’ll not fly to pieces before we touch solum. After that, I imagine that Isis will wind up in a museum. I wouldn’t want to try to fly her again, but she’ll get us to Pratum Grandis all right.” He paused. “If we’re lucky.”

Lucius made a low, inarticulate sound. Septimus’ assurance was actually greater than he’d hoped for. “And you, Drusilla. You’ve been speaking with Novum Ostia?”

Drusilla said, “Caesar Viventius himself will welcome us back to Tellus.”

Lucius smiled. “Of course.”

“Of course, Navicularis. I suppose they’re planning a hero’s welcome for us all. A triumph in the grand old fashion.”

Drusilla, her skin the burnished copper hue and her neatly braided hair the black of her own ancestors, nodded.

“All right.” Lucius inhaled deeply, pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes and motioned Antoninus from the spatiumnavis’s controls. Isis had crossed Tellus’ terminator into darkness. Beneath her electrum and diorite coated hull province after province flashed by in blackness. The great cities of Tellus had illuminated their buildings and roadways and open air stadia, knowing that Isis was to pass overhead.

This was the welcome home of a planet whose dreams and prayers had ridden into the ocean of space with the navia Isis and Amaterasu, whose tears had been shed at the loss of Amaterasu, whose masses had thrilled at word of the rescue of Amaterasu’s survivors, who waited now with bated breath to receive the men and women who had blazed their trail through the universe and returned to tell the tale.

Lucius’ sure hands needed no testing to get the feel of Isis’ controls. He was no remote commander. He had handled the spatiumnavis through her most difficult maneuvers, including the landing on Martes’ mossy plain after the crash of Amaterasu and her takeoff and escape after the attack of the barbarians who had already slaughtered most of Amaterasu’s brave nautae.

Maybe it was Rome’s success that had led to those nautae’s deaths. None on Tellus challenged a roman citizen. Oh, there was the occasional robbery late at night when some unwary celebrant left a tavern reeling and defenseless. And of course there were the gladiatorial contests where outlandishly costumed and vaingloriously titled performers mocked the once serious combat of swordsmen and netmen.

But the majesty of Rome was respected everywhere. The notion that a Roman navis—spatiumnavis, he reminded himself—could be attacked by a gang of howling thugs... It was as much shocking as offensive.

“Machinator Septimus, the engines seem a trifle sluggish. Are you sure we have full power and function?”

Septimus studied his own console. “We are running on very lean fuel, Navicularis. There’s none to spare. If I enrich the mixture we may not have enough to land safely.”

Lucius nodded. Through Isis’ glass he could see the spatiumnavis’s engine nacelles, left and right, mounted on pylons beyond the ship’s main edificium. Glittering with polish and enameled proudly with the eagles of Rome four years ago, the nacelles were now pitted with meteorites, scarred by Isis’ passage through even the thin atmosphere of Martes, and, most shameful of all, gouged by the rocks and spears of the savages of an alien planet.

“We’ll do what we must, then.” Lucius shot a glance at Drusilla. “Nunciatrix, what is the state of our passengers?”

“As well as can be expected. Aside from the two we lost in passage, all still survive.”

“Still in shock?”

“Resting, Navicularis.”

Lucius smiled. The Greeks had contributed much to Roman culture, even to the language of the world state. One of Lucius’ favorite words came from the Greek. Euphemism. He nodded, gazed downward. Isis screamed low over the western ocean. Terra Australis appeared on the horizon. It was afternoon in Novum Ostia. He made a conscious effort to relax, closing his eyes for a brief moment and rolling his shoulders to loosen muscles. He inhaled the ship’s stale atmosphere, anticipating with pleasure the fresh, clean air of Tellus.

He caught a glint of the glassed towers of the Pratum Grandis and smiled in anticipation.

Avita finished her description of Caesar Viventius’s arrival at Pratum Grandis and wiped her brow with a light cloth. Aelius never ceased to be amazed at her ability to look cool and elegant in the hot sunlight, blustery wind, or moments of plain or fancy stress.

Maybe that was the difference between talent and the rest of us, he though. We can write, we can direct, we can make the pictures and capture the sounds and deliver them to millions of Roman citizens and subjects all over the world. But we’re not talent. That was a term reserved for people like Avita.

Caesar Viventius had made his expected speech to the assembled purveyors of information to the people of Tellus. Celadus had supervised his minions, Aelius and Avita among them, jostling for position and angles with the gatherers and disseminators of rival organizations, and he seemed pleased with Aelius’ and Avita’s performance.

Now Caesar Viventius and his party mounted the ceremonial stand from which they would observe the landing of Isis and to which the nautae would be escorted to be greeted by Caesar Viventius himself. Senators, magistrates and quaestors in their distinctively marked togas, lictors carrying their ceremonial bundles of rods, the procurator of Terra Australis and the praefectus of Novum Ostia jostled for position near Viventius.

Caesar’s caelumvola stood nearby, guarded by legionaries in sparkling ceremonial armor. No sooner had Caesar and his party descended to the pratum than the aircraft was rolled to a covered shelter and rubbed and polished to a dazzling brightness. Then it was rolled back to stand near Caesar’s pavilion, as much a symbol of his authority and the majesty of the state as had been the ancient Caesars’ chariots with their curried and pampered teams of geldings.

Avita stood beside Aelius and lay her hand lightly on his arm. He looked down at the gesture but did not move his arm away. Avita followed his gaze toward the east. She knew that tracking instruments and recording devices had homed on Isis before this, but now she was able to make out the spatiumnavis’ approach to the Pratum Grandis.

Isis’ shape bespoke the strengths and traditions of Roman engineering. Avita could almost feel the solid strength of the craft as it dropped toward the field. She had looked at pictures of its departure for Martes and admired its lines and the fine sheen of its skin. The newly launched Isis had looked and moved like an Aegyptian goddess. Now the spatiumnavis looked and moved like an old woman, tired by a lifetime of labor and burdened with a lifetime of suffering.

The spatiumnavis circled the Pratum Grandis, dropping steadily toward the ground. The movement of the ship was deceptive. It seemed at any moment that Isis would touch the ground, but her skids, blackened and pitted, remained separated from the surface.

A glow like waves of heat rising from the sun-baked desert into the tired air emanated from Isis’ engines. The navicularis must have touched the ship’s controls, for the glow assumed a darkish color, then faded.

Isis touched the solum of Terra Australis, trembled like a creature in despair, then settled onto her skids. Squads of legionaries marched toward the ship. They surrounded Isis on all sides. A double column formed between the ship and Caesar Viventius’s reviewing stand.

An ostium slowly swung open in Isis’ hull, and legionaries hastened to station themselves in position to help nautae to the ground. The first to debark from Isis was the navicularis Lucius. He stood blinking in the bright sunlight of Terra Australis. For a moment his knees buckled and it seemed that he might fall, but he took the arm of a legionary and steadied himself. He turned and looked over his shoulder, into the darkness of Isis’ interior, then swung back, smiled determinedly, and advanced between the rows of legionaries. Ahead of him stood Caesar’s pavilion, and in it, Caesar himself.

Viventius watched the opening of the ostium in silence. The functionaries who surrounded him watched him like hawks, eager to pick up the first clue to Caesar’s reaction and to show on their faces the emotions that Caesar felt.

Caesar turned his attention from his endlessly squabbling entourage to the men and women emerging from the spatiumnavis. No longer was he so certain that today’s ceremony had been wisely planned. Indeed, it was the Ides, the five hundredth anniversary of the proclamation of the Roman province of Terra Australis and the millennial anniversary of the failed attempt upon the life of Caesar Julius.

It would be a close shave, but Viventius could greet these brave sailors of the sea of space and still return to Italia, to Rome herself, and preside over the grand jubilee celebration in the Eternal City. But it might have been better to send a delegation to welcome the brave nautae, to invite them to Rome for a triumph of their own.

Viventius rubbed his clean-shaven chin. Too late to change plans now. He strained his eyes against the bright southern sun and peered into the face of the leader of the Martes expedition, Lucius Navicularis. The man looked haggard, exhausted, on the verge of collapse. The reports that Isis had sent back, and Amaterasu before her destruction, did not bode well for Roman colonization of Martes.

The planet of the god of war had lived up to its sanguinary tint and its bloodthirsty name. Amaterasu had landed safely while Isis remained in orbit around the planet. Amaterasu’s officers and her nautae had behaved according to instructions, according to plan. They had maintained precautions, surveyed the area surrounding their landing site, determined whether Martes in general, and this region in particular, was inhabited.

And Martes was inhabited. Amaterasu had messaged to Isis and hence to both Luna and Tellus that Martes was inhabited. But by whom? By what? Had men of Tellus visited the red planet in the distant past, established colonies there, then been cut off from the mother planet as history’s wheel slowly turned?

Such an event would not be unprecedented. There were records of lost and rediscovered colonies on Tellus. Why not on other worlds? Caesar’s head reeled with the thought. What ancient states had arisen upon Tellus, what marvels had their machinators devised, and all lost to the modern world state?

The people of Terra Nipponsis, of Uwajima—suppose they were not truly native to those lands, but were the descendants of ancient visitors from Rome? What if Atlantis was a reality, and not merely a figment of the Greek imagination? What if the Hebrews’ myth of a Garden of Eden was not wholly a myth, but an attenuated and distorted memory of—of what? What if the denizens of Martes were not descended from ancient visitors from Tellus, but in fact the very opposite was the case?

A senator—what was his name?—took Caesar’s elbow? “Are you all right, sir?’

Viventius shook his head.

“Are you all right?”

“Yes. Yes. It was the glare, that was all. Thank you.”

The senator, looking concerned, retreated.

Lucius Navicularis stood before Caesar’s reviewing stand. He looked into the face of the chief of the world state, the leader of the Universal Republic. Caesar’s cheeks were smooth and his hair, an alloy of silver and iron, was carefully curled and oiled. Lucius felt his own staleness and filth. Once he would have quivered at the thought of being received by Caesar Viventius himself. Now he would give his laurels and his triumph all for a long, hot soak.

To one side of Caesar’s stand he could see a group of men and women in eccentric garb. He recognized them by their facial features and their clothing as Uwajimae. A violent, restless people who had never fully settled into the comfortable discipline of Roman citizenry.

A band was playing, horns blaring and drums pounding. Lucius felt heavy. He knew that returning to Tellus’ gravity would have this effect, but still it was an effort to remain upright. He looked behind him and saw Sabbina, Septimus, Drusilla, his three chief officers, struggling to maintain a proper bearing in the presence of Caesar himself.

The band ceased its blaring and its pounding. Caesar was speaking. The words were meaningless to Lucius. He knew they would be the platitudes of Roman patriotism, steadfastness, courage, but while he could see Caesar’s lips forming the words, all he could hear was a grating bleating sound like a goat making a speech.

The sun glinted off the musicians’ instruments and off the armor and the weapons of the legionaries. Caesar’s caelumvola shone like a sculpture of obsidian and electrum.

A trio of persons had broken from the crowd beyond Caesar’s reviewing stand and were running toward the twin lines of legionaries that marked the path from Isis to the stand and that surrounded the stand itself.

The tallest of the Uwajimae pointed a object at the three who were running. A blocky, muscular man. A tall woman, little more than dark skin stretched over long, thin bones. A fat man, staggering and sprawling behind them.

A bright light flashed from the object that the Uwajiman had pointed. Lucius had never seen anything like it. The blocky man exploded like a knot in a fireplace. Bits of flesh and spatters of blood flew. The light flashed twice more and the tall woman and the fat man exploded as well.

Legionaries were already running to stop the three, but they arrived in time only to be splattered with blood and gore. A centurion had taken the Uwajiman in custody, had seized the object that had sent the bright flash toward the three who were now dead.

Pandemonium reigned on the Pratum Grandis.

Aelius and Avita had trained their gear on Caesar Viventius and Lucius Navicularis, but now they too were running to the site of the sudden carnage, recording the event for the audience who depended on them for their daily news. Celadus was screaming at them but Aelius and Avita had anticipated his instructions.

For just a moment, Aelius swung back toward Caesar. He was surrounded by aides. A thousand years had passed, and this time it was not Caesar’s own trusted friends but those who hated the Universal Republic who had attempted to assassinate the master of Rome.

A different plan, a different tactic, but the same outcome. Caesar lived.

FINAL CALL, by John Gregory Betancourt

The last man in the world sat alone in a room, contemplating suicide. What did he have left to live for? He began adding up good and bad points in his life; the score depressed him.

Then the telephone rang. He leaped to his feet, staring in surprise. Perhaps he wasn’t the last, he thought. It rang again. This time he grabbed it.

“Hello? Hello?” he called.

“Hello,” breathed a soft, silky, feminine voice. His heart skipped a dozen beats. “Do you have a moment?”

“Yes!” he cried. “This is Roger Thomas—I can’t believe you found me! Thank God! And just in time—”

“I’m glad,” she said. “My name’s PATSI, your Personal Automated Telephone Survey, Inc., and I’d love to interview you about new improved TastyFlakes®—”

He slammed down the receiver. And once more he took up count of all the good and bad things left in his lonely world.

* * * *

An hour later, he hanged himself with the telephone cord.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

“Unknown Things,” by Reginald Bretnor, was first published in Twilight Zone magazine, February, 1989. Reprinted by permission of the author’s estate.

Captives of the Flame, by Samuel R. Delany, originally appeared in 1963.

“Expediter,” by Mack Reynolds, originally appeared in Analog Science Fact & Fiction, May 1963.

“One-Shot,” by James Blish, originally appeared in Astounding Science Fiction August 1955.

“Shipwreck in the Sky” by Eando Binder originally appeared in Fantastic Universe March 1954.

“Zen,” by Jerome Bixby, originally appeared in Galaxy Science Fiction, October 1952.

“Lancelot Biggs Cooks a Pirate,” by Nelson Bond originally appeared in Fantastic Adventures, Feb. 1940.

“Sentiment, Inc.,” by Poul Anderson, originally appeared in Science Fiction Stories, 1953.

“The Issahar Artifacts,” by J.F. Bone originally appeared in Amazing Science Fiction Stories April 1960.

“The Next Logical Step,” by Ben Bova originally appeared in Analog Science Fact & Fiction May 1962.

“Year of the Big Thaw,” by Marion Zimmer Bradley originally appeared in Fantastic Universe, May 1954

“Earthmen Bearing Gifts,” by Fredric Brown originally appeared in Galaxy magazine, June 1960.

“Happy Ending,” by Fredric Brown and Mack Reynolds originally appeared in Fantastic Universe, September 1957.

“Lighter Than You Think,” by Nelson Bond originally appeared in Fantastic Universe August 1957.

“Riya’s Foundling,” by Algis Budrys originally appeared in Science Fiction Stories, 1953.

“Accidental Death,” by Peter Baily originally appeared in Astounding Science Fiction February 1959.

“And All the Earth a Grave,” by C. C. MacApp originally appeared in Galaxy Science Fiction, December 1963.

“Dead Ringer,” by Lester del Rey originally appeared in Galaxy Science Fiction, November 1956.

“The Crystal Crypt,” by Philip K. Dick originally appeared in Planet Stories, January 1954.

“The Jupiter Weapon,” by Charles L. Fontenay originally appeared in Amazing Science Fiction Stories, March 1959.

“The Man Who Hated Mars,” by Randall Garrett originally appeared in Amazing Stories, September 1956.

“Navy Day,” by Harry Harrison originally appeared in If Worlds of Science Fiction, January 1954.

“Native Son,” by T. D. Hamm originally appeared in Imagination Stories of Science and Fantasy, July 1953.

“Jubilee,” by Richard A. Lupoff, originally appeared in Alternate Tyrants (1997). Reprinted by permission of the author.

“Final Call,” by John Gregory Betancourt, originally appeared in Playing in Wonderland. Copyright © 1994 by John Gregory Betancourt. Reprinted by permission of the author.

Table of Contents

COPYRIGHT INFO

A NOTE FROM THE PUBLISHER

UNKNOWN THINGS, by Reginald Bretnor

CAPTIVES OF THE FLAME, by Samuel R. Delany (Part 1)

CAPTIVES OF THE FLAME, by Samuel R. Delany (Part 2)

EXPEDITER, by Mack Reynolds

ONE-SHOT, by James Blish

SHIPWRECK IN THE SKY, by Eando Binder

ZEN, by Jerome Bixby

LANCELOT BIGGS COOKS A PIRATE, by Nelson Bond

SENTIMENT, INC., by Poul Anderson

THE ISSAHAR ARTIFACTS, by J. F. Bone

THE NEXT LOGICAL STEP, by Ben Bova

YEAR OF THE BIG THAW, by Marion Zimmer Bradley

EARTHMEN BEARING GIFTS, by Fredric Brown

HAPPY ENDING, by Fredric Brown and Mack Reynolds

LIGHTER THAN YOU THINK, by Nelson Bond

RIYA’S FOUNDLING, by Algis Budrys

ACCIDENTAL DEATH, by Peter Baily

AND ALL THE EARTH A GRAVE, by C. C. MacApp

DEAD RINGER, by Lester del Rey

THE CRYSTAL CRYPT, by Philip K. Dick

THE JUPITER WEAPON, by Charles L. Fontenay

THE MAN WHO HATED MARS, by Randall Garrett

NAVY DAY, by Harry Harrison

THE JUDAS VALLEY, by Robert Silverberg & Randall Garrett

NATIVE SON, by T. D. Hamm

JUBILEE, by Richard A. Lupoff

FINAL CALL, by John Gregory Betancourt

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS