COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

Cover artwork copyright © 2011 by Andrew Doran / Fotolia.

“The Man Who Made Friends with Electricity,” by Fritz Leiber, originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. Copyright © 1962 by Mercury Press.

“Time Bum,” by C.M. Kornbluth, originally appeared in Fantastic, January/February 1953. Copyright © 1953 by C.M. Kornbluth.

“The Human Equations,” by Dave Creek, originally appeared in Analog Science Fiction and Fact, November 2002. Copyright © 2002 by Dave Creek. Reprinted by permission of the author.

“The Gun,” by Philip K. Dick, originally appeared in Planet Stories, September 1952.

“Not Stupid Enough,” by George H. Scithers, originally appaered in Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact, May 1971. Copyright © 1971 by Conde Nast. Reprinted by permission of the author’s estate.

“Jackpot,” by E.C. Tubb, copyright © 1962, 2004 by E.C. Tubb. Reprinted by permission of Cosmos Literary Agency.

“The Killing Streets,” by Colin Harvey, originally appeared in Interzone. Copyright 2009 by Colin Harvey. Reprinted by permission of the author.

“Moon Dive,” by Sydney J. Bounds, copyright © 2003 by Sydney J. Bounds. Reprinted by permission of Cosmos Literary Agency.

“Charon’s Curse,” by John Glasby Copyright © 2004 by John Glasby. Reprinted by permission of Cosmos Literary Agency.

“The Hunted Heroes,” by Robert Silverberg, originally appeared in Amazing Stories September 1956.

“Night of the Squealers,” by Michael McCarty and Mark McLaughlin, originally appeared in Punktown: Third Eye. Copyright 2004 by Michael McCarty and Mark McLaughlin. Reprinted by permission of the authors.

“Chaos,” by John Russell Fearn, is reprinted by permission of Cosmos Literary Agency.

“And Happiness Everlasting,” by Gerald Warfield, originally appeared in Timelines: Stories Inspired by HG Wells’ The Time Machine. Copyright © 2011 by Gerald Warfield. Reprinted by permission of the author.

“The 7th Order,” by Jerry Sohl, originally appeared in Galaxy Science Fiction, March 1952.

“Monkey on his Back,” by Charles V. De Vet, originally appeared in Galaxy magazine, June 1960.

“The Calm Man,” by Frank Belknap Long, originally appeared in Fantastic Universe, May 1954.

“Alien Still Life,” by John Gregory Betancourt, is copyright © 2012 by John Gregory Betancourt. In very different form, parts of it are incorporated in the opening chapters of his novel Pacifica (cowritten with Linda E. Bushyager).

“A Question of Courage,” by J. F. Bone, originally appeared in Amazing Stories, December 1960.

“Angels and Moths” by Costi Gurgu, originally appeared in Ages of Wonder. Copyright © 2009 by Constantinos Gurgu. Reprinted by permission of the author.

“Second Landing,” by Murray Leinster, originally appeared in Thrilling Wonder, Winter 1954. Copyright © 1953 by Standard Magazines, Inc.

“The Einstein-Rosen Hunter-Gatherer Society,” by George S. Walker, originally appeared in Helix: A Speculative Fiction Quarterly #8 (April 2008). Copyright © 2008 by George S. Walker. Reprinted by permission of the author.

“Wind,” by Charles L. Fontenay, originally appeared in Amazing Science Fiction Stories, April 1959.

“Star Mother,” by Robert F. Young, originally appeared in Amazing Stories, January 1959.

“The Sky Is Falling,” by Lester Del Rey, originally appeared in Galaxy. Copyright © 1954, 1963 by Galaxy Publishing Corp.

THE MAN WHO MADE FRIENDS WITH ELECTRICITY, by Fritz Leiber

When Mr. Scott showed Peak House to Mr. Leverett, he hoped he wouldn’t notice the high-tension pole outside the bedroom window, because it had twice before queered promising rentals—so many elderly people were foolishly nervous about electricity. There was nothing to be done about the pole except try to draw prospective tenants’ attention away from it—electricity follows the hilltops and these lines supplied more than half of the juice used in Pacific Knolls.

But Mr. Scott’s prayers and suave misdirections were in vain—Mr. Leverett’s sharp eyes lit on the “negative feature” the instant they stepped out on the patio. The old New Englander studied the short thick wooden column, the 18-inch ridged glass insulators, the black transformer box that stepped down voltage for this house and a few others lower on the slope. His gaze next followed the heavy wires swinging off rhythmically four abreast across the empty gray-green hills. Then he cocked his head as his ears caught the low but steady frying sound, varying from a crackle to a buzz, of electrons leaking off the wires through the air.

“Listen to that!” Mr. Leverett said, his dry voice betraying excitement for the first time in the tour. “Fifty thousand volts if there’s five! A power of power!”

“Must be unusual atmospheric conditions today—normally you can’t hear a thing,” Mr. Scott responded lightly, twisting the truth a little.

“You don’t say?” Mr. Leverett commented, his voice dry again, but Mr. Scott knew better than to encourage conversation about a negative feature. “I want you to notice this lawn,” he launched out heartily. “When the Pacific Knolls Golf Course was subdivided, the original owner of Peak House bought the entire eighteenth green and—”

For the rest of the tour Mr. Scott did his state-certified real estate broker’s best, which in Southern California is no mean performance, but Mr. Leverett seemed a shade perfunctory in the attention he accorded it. Inwardly Mr. Scott chalked up another defeat by the damn pole.

On the quick retrace, however, Mr. Leverett insisted on their lingering on the patio. “Still holding out,” he remarked about the buzz with an odd satisfaction. “You know, Mr. Scott, that’s a restful sound to me. Like wind or a brook or the sea. I hate the clatter of machinery—that’s the other reason I left New England—but this is like a sound of nature. Downright soothing. But you say it comes seldom?”

Mr. Scott was flexible—it was one of his great virtues as a salesman.

“Mr. Leverett,” he confessed simply, “I’ve never stood on this patio when I didn’t hear that sound. Sometimes it’s softer, sometimes louder, but it’s always there. I play it down, though, because most people don’t care for it.”

“Don’t blame you,” Mr. Leverett said. “Most people are a pack of fools or worse. Mr. Scott, are any of the people in the neighboring houses Communists to your knowledge?”

“No, sir!” Mr. Scott responded without an instant’s hesitation. “There’s not a Communist in Pacific Knolls. And that’s something, believe me, I’d never shade the truth on.”

“Believe you,” Mr. Leverett said. “The east’s packed with Communists. Seem scarcer out here. Mr. Scott, you’ve made yourself a deal. I’m taking a year’s lease on Peak House as furnished and at the figure we last mentioned.”

“Shake on it!” Mr. Scott boomed. “Mr. Leverett, you’re the kind of person Pacific Knolls wants.”

They shook. Mr. Leverett rocked on his heels, smiling up at the softly crackling wires with a satisfaction that was already a shade possessive.

“Fascinating thing, electricity,” he said. “No end to the tricks it can do or you can do with it. For instance, if a man wanted to take off for elsewhere in an elegant flash, he’d only have to wet down the lawn good and take twenty-five foot of heavy copper wire in his two bare hands and whip the other end of it over those lines. Whang! Every bit as good as Sing Sing and a lot more satisfying to a man’s inner needs.”

Mr. Scott experienced a severe though momentary sinking of heart and even for one wildly frivolous moment considered welshing on the verbal agreement he’d just made. He remembered the red-haired lady who’d rented an apartment from him solely to have a quiet place in which to take an overdose of barbiturates. Then he reminded himself that Southern California is, according to a wise old saw, the home (actual or aimed-at) of the peach, the nut and the prune; and while he’d had few dealings with real or would-be starlets, he’d had enough of crackpots and retired grouches. Even if you piled fanciful death wishes and a passion for electricity atop rabid anti-communist and anti-machine manias, Mr. Leverett’s personality was no more than par for the S. Cal. course.

Mr. Leverett said shrewdly, “You’re worrying now, aren’t you, I might be a suicider? Don’t. Just like to think my thoughts. Speak them out too, however peculiar.”

Mr. Scott’s last fears melted and he became once more his pushingly congenial self as he invited Mr. Leverett down to the office to sign the papers.

Three days later he dropped by to see how the new tenant was making out and found him in the patio ensconced under the buzzing pole in an old rocker.

“Take a chair and sit,” Mr. Leverett said, indicating one of the tubular modern pieces. “Mr. Scott, I want to tell you I’m finding Peak House every bit as restful as I hoped. I listen to the electricity and let my thoughts roam. Sometimes I hear voices in the electricity—the wires talking, as they say. You’ve heard of people who hear voices in the wind?”

“Yes, I have,” Mr. Scott admitted a bit uncomfortably and then, recalling that Mr. Leverett’s check for the first quarter’s rent was safely cleared, was emboldened to speak his own thoughts. “But wind is a sound that varies a lot. That buzz is pretty monotonous to hear voices in.”

“Pshaw,” Mr. Leverett said with a little grin that made it impossible to tell how seriously he meant to be taken. “Bees are highly intelligent insects, entomologists say they even have a language, yet they do nothing but buzz. I hear voices in the electricity.”

He rocked silently for a while after that and Mr. Scott sat.

“Yep, I hear voices in the electricity,” Mr. Leverett said dreamily. “Electricity tells me how it roams the forty-eight states—even the forty-ninth by way of Canadian power lines. Electricity goes everywhere today—into our homes, every room of them, into our offices, into government buildings and military posts. And what it doesn’t learn that way it overhears by the trace of it that trickles through our phone lines and over our air waves. Phone electricity’s the little sister of power electricity, you might say, and little pitchers have big ears. Yep, electricity knows everything about us, our every last secret. Only it wouldn’t think of telling most people what it knows, because they believe electricity is a cold mechanical force. It isn’t—it’s warm and pulsing and sensitive and friendly underneath, like any other live thing.”

Mr. Scott, feeling a bit dreamy himself now, thought what good advertising copy that would make—imaginative stuff, folksy but poetic.

“And electricity’s got a mite of viciousness too,” Mr. Leverett continued. “You got to tame it. Know its ways, speak it fair, show no fear, make friends with it. Well now, Mr. Scott,” he said in a brisker voice, standing up, “I know you’ve come here to check up on how I’m caring for Peak House. So let me give you the tour.”

And in spite of Mr. Scott’s protests that he had no such inquisitive intention, Mr. Leverett did just that.

Once he paused for an explanation: “I’ve put away the electric blanket and the toaster. Don’t feel right about using electricity for menial jobs.”

As far as Mr. Scott could see, he had added nothing to the furnishings of Peak House beyond the rocking chair and a large collection of Indian arrow heads.

Mr. Scott must have talked about the latter when he got home, for a week later his nine-year-old son said to him, “Hey, Dad, you know that old guy you unloaded Peak House onto?”

“Rented is the only proper expression, Bobby.”

“Well, I went up to see his arrow heads. Dad, it turns out he’s a snake-charmer!”

Dear God, thought Mr. Scott, I knew there was going to be something really impossible about Leverett. Probably likes hilltops because they draw snakes in hot weather.

“He didn’t charm a real snake, though, Dad, just an old extension cord. He squatted down on the floor—this was after he showed me those crumby arrow heads—and waved his hands back and forth over it and pretty soon the end with the little box on it started to move around on the floor and all of a sudden it lifted up, like a cobra out of a basket. It was real spooky!”

“I’ve seen that sort of trick,” Mr. Scott told Bobby. “There’s a fine thread attached to the end of the wire pulling it up.”

“I’d have seen a thread, Dad.”

“Not if it were the same color as the background,” Mr. Scott explained. Then he had a thought. “By the way Bobby, was the other end of the cord plugged in?”

“Oh it was, Dad! He said he couldn’t work the trick unless there was electricity in the cord. Because you see, Dad, he’s really an electricity-charmer. I just said snake-charmer to make it more exciting. Afterwards we went outside and he charmed electricity down out of the wires and made it crawl all over his body. You could see it crawl from part to part.”

“But how could you see that?” Mr. Scott demanded, struggling to keep his voice casual. He had a vision of Mr. Leverett standing dry and sedate, entwined by glimmering blue serpents with flashing diamond eyes and fangs that sparked.

“By the way it would make his hair stand on end, Dad. First on one side of his head, then on the other. Then he said, ‘Electricity, crawl down my chest,’ and a silk handkerchief hanging out of his top pocket stood out stiff and sharp. Dad, it was almost as good as the Museum of Science and Industry!”

Next day Mr. Scott dropped by Peak House, but he got no chance to ask his carefully thought-out questions, for Mr. Leverett greeted him with, “Reckon your boy told you about the little magic show I put on for him yesterday. I like children, Mr. Scott. Good Republican children like yours, that is.”

“Why yes, he did,” Mr. Scott admitted, disarmed and a bit flustered by the other’s openness.

“I only showed him the simplest tricks, of course. Kid stuff.”

“Of course,” Mr. Scott echoed. “I guessed you must have used a fine thread to make the extension cord dance.”

“Reckon you know all the answers, Mr. Scott,” the other said, his eyes flashing. ‘But come across to the patio and sit for a while.”

The buzzing was quite loud that day, yet after a bit Mr. Scott had to admit to himself that it was a restful sound. And it had more variety than he’d realized—mounting crackles, fading sizzles, hisses, hums, clicks, sighs. If you listened to it long enough, you probably would begin to hear voices.

Mr. Leverett, silently rocking, said, “Electricity tells me about all the work it does and all the fun it has—dances, singing, big crackling band concerts, trips to the stars, foot races that make rockets seem like snails. Worries, too. You know that electric breakdown they had in New York? Electricity told me why. Some of its folks went crazy—overwork, I guess—and just froze. It was a while before they could send others in from outside New York and heal the crazy ones and start them moving again through the big copper web. Electricity tells me it’s fearful the same thing’s going to happen in Chicago and San Francisco. Too much pressure.

“Electricity doesn’t mind working for us. It’s generous-hearted and it loves its job. But it would be grateful for a little more consideration—a little more recognition of its special problems.

“It’s got its savage brothers to contend with, you see the wild electricity that rages in storms and haunts the mountaintops and comes down to hunt and kill. Not civilized like the electricity in the wires, though it will be some day.

“For civilized electricity’s a great teacher. Shows us how to live clean and in unity and brother-love. Power fails one place, electricity’s rushing in from everywhere to fill the gap. Serves Georgia same as Vermont, Los Angeles same as Boston. Patriotic too—only revealed its greatest secrets to true-blue Americans like Edison and Franklin. Did you know it killed a Swede when he tried that kite trick? Yep, electricity’s the greatest power for good in all the U.S.A.”

Mr. Scott thought sleepily of what a neat little electricity cult Mr. Leverett could set up, every bit as good as Science of Mind or Krishna Venta or the Rosicrucians. He could imagine the patio full of earnest seekers while Krishna Leverett—or maybe High Electro Leverett—dispensed wisdom from his rocker, interpreting the words of the humming wires. Better not suggest it, though—in Southern California such things had a way of coming true.

Mr. Scott felt quite easy at heart as he went down the hill, though he did make a point of telling Bobby not to bother Mr. Leverett any more.

But the prohibition didn’t apply to himself. During the next months Mr. Scott made a point of dropping in at Peak House from time to time for a dose of “electric wisdom.” He came to look forward to these restful, amusingly screwy breaks in the hectic round. Mr. Leverett appeared to do nothing whatever except sit in his rocker in the patio, yet stayed happy and serene. There was a lesson for anybody in that, if you thought about it.

Occasionally Mr. Scott spotted amusing side effects of Mr. Leverett’s eccentricity. For instance, although he sometimes let the gas and water bills go, he always paid up phone and electricity on the dot.

And the newspapers eventually did report short but severe electric breakdowns in Chicago and San Francisco. Smiling a little frowningly at the coincidences, Mr. Scott decided he could add fortune-telling to the electricity cult he’d imaged for Mr. Leverett. “Your life’s story foretold in the wires!”—more novel, anyway, than crystal balls or Talking with God.

Only once did the touch of the gruesome, that had troubled Mr. Scott in his first conversation with Mr. Leverett, come briefly back, when the old man chuckled and observed, “Recall what I told you about whipping a copper wire up there? I’ve thought of a simpler way, just squirt the hose at those H-T lines in a hard stream, gripping the metal nozzle. Might be best to use the hot water and throw a box of salt in the heater first.” When Mr. Scott heard that he was glad that he’d warned Bobby against coming around.

But for the most part Mr. Leverett maintained his mood of happy serenity.

When the break in that mood came, it did so suddenly, though afterwards Mr. Scott realized there had been one warning note sounded when Mr. Leverett had added onto a rambling discourse, “By the way, I’ve learned that power electricity goes all over the world, just like the ghost electricity in radios and phones. It travels to foreign shores in batteries and condensers. Roams the lines in Europe and Asia. Some of it even slips over into Soviet territory. Wants to keep tabs on the Communists, I guess. Electric freedom-fighters.”

On his next visit Mr. Scott found a great change. Mr. Leverett had deserted his rocking chair to pace the patio on the side away from the pole, though every now and then he would give a quick funny look up over his shoulder at the dark muttering wires.

“Glad to see you, Mr. Scott. I’m real shook up. Reckon I better tell someone about it so if something happens to me they’ll be able to tell the FBI. Though I don’t know what they’ll be able to do.

“Electricity just told me this morning it’s got a world government—it had the nerve to call it that—and that it doesn’t care a snap for either us or the Soviets and that there’s Russian electricity in our wires and American electricity in theirs—it shifts back and forth with never a quiver of shame.

“When I heard that you could have knocked me down with a paper dart.

“What’s more, electricity’s determined to stop any big war that may come, no matter how rightful that war be or how much in defense of America. If the buttons are pushed for the atomic missiles, electricity’s going to freeze and refuse to budge. And it’ll flash out and kill anybody who tries to set them off another way.

“I pleaded with electricity, I told it I’d always thought of it as American and true—reminded it of Franklin and Edison—finally I commanded it to change its ways and behave decent, but it just chuckled at me with never a spark of love or loyalty.

“Then it threatened me back! It told me if I tried to stop it, if I revealed its plans it would summon down its savage brothers from the mountains and with their help it would seek me out and kill me! Mr. Scott, I’m all alone up here with electricity on my window sill. What am I going to do?”

Mr. Scott had considerable difficulty soothing Mr. Leverett enough to make his escape. In the end he had to promise to come back in the morning bright and early—silently vowing to himself that he’d be damned if he would.

His task was not made easier when the electricity overhead, which had been especially noisy this day, rose in a growl and Mr. Leverett turned and said harshly, “Yes, I hear!”

That night the Los Angeles area had one of its very rare thunderstorms, accompanied by gales of wind and torrents of rain. Palms and pines and eucalyptus were torn down, earth cliffs crumbled and sloshed, and the great square concrete spillways ran brimful from the hills to the sea.

The lightning was especially fierce. Several score Angelinos, to whom such a display was a novelty, phoned civil defense numbers to report or inquire fearfully about atomic attack.

Numerous freak accidents occurred. To the scene of one of these Mr. Scott was summoned next morning bright and early by the police—because it had occurred on a property he rented and because he was the only person known to be acquainted with the deceased.

The previous night Mr. Scott had awakened at the height of the storm when the lightning had been blinding as a photoflash and the thunder had cracked like a mile-long whip just above the roof. At that time he had remembered vividly what Mr. Leverett had said about electricity threatening to summon its wild giant brothers from the hills. But now, in the bright morning, he decided not to tell the police about that or say anything to them at all about Mr. Leverett’s electricity mania—it would only complicate things to no purpose and perhaps make the fear at his heart more crazily real.

Mr. Scott saw the scene of the freak accident before anything was moved, even the body—except there was now, of course, no power in the heavy corroded wire wrapped tight as a bullwhip around the skinny shanks with only the browned and blackened fabric of cotton pyjamas between.

The police and the power-and-light men reconstructed the accident this way: At the height of the storm one of the high-tension lines had snapped a hundred feet away from the house and the end, whipped by the wind and its own tension, had struck back freakishly through the open bedroom window of Peak House and curled once around the legs of Mr. Leverett, who had likely been on his feet at the time, killing him instantly.

One had to strain that reconstruction, though, to explain the additional freakish elements in the accident—the facts that the high-tension wire had struck not only through the bedroom window, but then through the bedroom door to catch the old man in the hall, and that the black shiny cord of the phone was wrapped like a vine twice around the old man’s right arm, as if to hold him back from escaping until the big wire had struck.

TIME BUM, by C.M. Kornbluth

Harry Twenty-Third Street suddenly burst into laughter. His friend and sometimes roper Farmer Brown looked inquisitive.

“I just thought of a new con,” Harry Twenty-Third Street said, still chuckling.

Farmer Brown shook his head positively. “There’s no such thing, my man,” he said. “There are only new switches on old cons. What have you got—a store con? Shall you be needing a roper?” He tried not to look eager as a matter of principle, but everybody knew the Farmer needed a connection badly. His girl had two-timed him on a badger game, running off with the chump and marrying him after an expensive, month-long buildup.

Harry said, “Sorry, old boy. No details. It’s too good to split up. I shall rip and tear the suckers with this con for many a year, I trust, before the details become available to the trade. Nobody, but nobody, is going to call copper after I take him. It’s beautiful and it’s mine. I will see you around, my friend.”

Harry got up from the booth and left, nodding cheerfully to a safe-blower here, a fixer there, on his way to the locked door of the hangout. Naturally he didn’t nod to such small fry as pickpockets and dope peddlers. Harry had his pride.

The puzzled Farmer sipped his lemon squash and concluded that Harry had been kidding him. He noticed that Harry had left behind him in the booth a copy of a magazine with a space ship and a pretty girl in green bra and pants on the cover.

* * * *

“A furnished…bungalow?” the man said hesitantly, as though he knew what he wanted but wasn’t quite sure of the word.

“Certainly, Mr. Clurg,” Walter Lachlan said. “I’m sure we can suit you. Wife and family?”

“No,” said Clurg. “They are…far away.” He seemed to get some secret amusement from the thought. And then, to Walter’s horror, he sat down calmly in empty air beside the desk and, of course, crashed to the floor looking ludicrous and astonished.

Walter gaped and helped him up, sputtering apologies and wondering privately what was wrong with the man. There wasn’t a chair there. There was a chair on the other side of the desk and a chair against the wall. But there just wasn’t a chair where Clurg had sat down.

Clurg apparently was unhurt; he protested against Walter’s apologies, saying: “I should have known, Master Lachlan. It’s quite all right; it was all my fault. What about the bang—the bungalow?”

Business sense triumphed over Walter’s bewilderment. He pulled out his listings and they conferred on the merits of several furnished bungalows. When Walter mentioned that the Curran place was especially nice, in an especially nice neighborhood—he lived up the street himself—Clurg was impressed.

“I’ll take that one,” he said. “What is the…feoff?” Walter had learned a certain amount of law for his real-estate license examination; he recognized the word. “The rent is seventy-five dollars,” he said. “You speak English very well, Mr. Clurg.” He hadn’t been certain that the man was a foreigner until the dictionary word came out. “You have hardly any accent.”

“Thank you,” Clurg said, pleased. “I worked hard at it. Let me see—seventy-five is six twelves and three.” He opened one of his shiny-new leather suitcases and calmly laid six heavy little paper rolls on Walter’s desk. He broke open a seventh and laid down three mint-new silver dollars. “There I am,” he said. “I mean, there you are.”

Walter didn’t know what to say. It had never happened before. People paid by check or in bills. They just didn’t pay in silver dollars. But it was money—why shouldn’t Mr. Clurg pay in silver dollars if he wanted to? He shook himself, scooped the rolls into his top desk drawer, and said: “I’ll drive you out there, if you like. It’s nearly quitting time anyway.”

* * * *

Walter told his wife Betty over the dinner table: “We ought to have him in some evening. I can’t imagine where on Earth he comes from. I had to show him how to turn on the kitchen range. When it went on he said, ‘Oh, yes—electricity!’ and laughed his head off. And he kept ducking the question when I tried to ask him in a nice way. Maybe he’s some kind of a political refugee.”

“Maybe…” Betty began dreamily and then shut her mouth. She didn’t want Walter laughing at her again. As it was, he made her buy her science-fiction magazines downtown instead of at neighborhood newsstands. He thought it wasn’t becoming for his wife to read them. He’s so eager for success, she thought sentimentally.

That night while Walter watched a television variety show, she read a story in one of her magazines. (Its cover, depicting a space ship and a girl in green bra and shorts, had been prudently torn off and thrown away.) It was about a man from the future who had gone back in time, bringing with him all sorts of marvelous inventions. In the end the Time Police punished him for unauthorized time traveling. They had come back and got him, brought him back to his own time. She smiled. It would be nice if Mr. Clurg, instead of being a slightly eccentric foreigner, were a man from the future with all sorts of interesting stories to tell and a satchelful of gadgets that could be sold for millions and millions of dollars.

After a week they did have Clurg over for dinner. It started badly. Once more he managed to sit down in empty air and crash to the floor. While they were brushing him off he said fretfully: “I can’t get used to not—” and then said no more.

He was a picky eater. Betty had done one of her mother’s specialties, veal cutlet with tomato sauce, topped by a poached egg. He ate the egg and sauce, made a clumsy attempt to cut up the meat, and abandoned it. She served a plate of cheese, half a dozen kinds, for dessert, and Clurg tasted them uncertainly, breaking off a crumb from each, while Betty wondered where that constituted good manners. His face lit up when he tried a ripe cheddar. He popped the whole wedge into his mouth and said to Betty: “I will have that, please.”

“Seconds?” asked Walter. “Sure. Don’t bother, Betty. I’ll get it.” He brought back a quarter-pound wedge of the cheddar.

Walter and Betty watched silently as Clurg calmly ate every crumb of it. He sighed.

“Very good. Quite like—”

The word, Walter and Betty later agreed, was see-mon-joe. They were able to agree quite early in the evening, because Clurg got up after eating the cheese, said warmly, “Thank you so much!” and walked out of the house.

Betty said, “What—on—Earth!”

Walter said uneasily, “I’m sorry, doll. I didn’t think he’d be quite that peculiar—”

“—But after all!”

“—Of course he’s a foreigner. What was that word?”

He jotted it down.

While they were doing the dishes, Betty said, “I think he was drunk. Falling-down drunk.”

“No,” Walter said. “It’s exactly the same thing he did in my office. As though he expected a chair to come to him instead of him going to a chair.” He laughed and said uncertainly, “Or maybe he’s royalty. I read once about Queen Victoria never looking around before she sat down, she was so sure there’d be a chair there.”

“Well, there isn’t any more royalty, not to speak of,” she said angrily, hanging up the dish towel. “What’s on TV tonight?”

“Uncle Miltie. But…uh…I think I’ll read. Uh…where do you keep those magazines of yours, doll? Believe I’ll give them a try.”

She gave him a look that he wouldn’t meet, and she went to get him some of her magazines. She also got a slim green book which she hadn’t looked at for years. While Walter flipped uneasily through the magazines, she studied the book. After about ten minutes she said: “Walter. Seemonjoe. I think I know what language it is!”

He was instantly alert. “Yeah? What?”

“It should be spelled c-i-m-a-n-g-o, with little jiggers over the C and G. It means ‘Universal food’ in Esperanto.”

“Where’s Esperanto?” he demanded.

“Esperanto isn’t anywhere. It’s an artificial language. I played around with it a little once. It was supposed to end war and all sorts of things. Some people called it the language of the future.” Her voice was tremulous.

Walter said, “I’m going to get to the bottom of this.”

* * * *

He saw Clurg go into the neighborhood movie for the matinee. That gave him about three hours.

Walter hurried to the Curran bungalow, remembered to slow down, and tried hard to look casual as he unlocked the door and went in. There wouldn’t be any trouble—he was a good citizen, known and respected—he could let himself into a tenant’s house and wait for him to talk about business if he wanted to.

He tried not to think of what people would think if he should be caught rifling Clurg’s luggage, as he intended to do. He had brought along an assortment of luggage keys. Surprised by his own ingenuity, he had got them at a locksmith’s by saying his own key was lost and he didn’t want to haul a heavy packed bag downtown.

But he didn’t need the keys. In the bedroom closet the two suitcases stood, unlocked.

There was nothing in the first except uniformly new clothes, bought locally at good shops.

The second was full of the same. Going through a rather extreme sports jacket, Walter found a wad of paper in the breast pocket. It was a newspaper page. A number had been penciled on a margin; apparently the sheet had been torn out and stuck into the pocket and forgotten. The dateline on the paper was July 18th, 2403.

Walter had some trouble reading the stories at first, but found it was easy enough if he read them aloud and listened to his voice.

One said:

TAIM KOP NABD: PROSKYOOTR ASKS DETH

Patrolm’n Oskr Garth V thi Taim Polis w’z arest’d toodei at hiz hom, 4365 9863th Suit, and bookd at 9768th Prisint on m——. tchardg’z ’v Polis-Ekspozh’r. Thi aledjd Ekspozh’r okurd hwaile Garth w’z on dooti in thi Twenti-Furst Sentch’ri. It konsist’d ’v hiz admish’n too a sit’zen ’v thi Twenti-Furst Sentch’ri that thi Taim Polis ekzisted and woz op’rated fr’m thi Twenti-Fifth Sentch’ri. Thi Proskypot’rz Ofis sed thi deth pen’lti wil be askt in vyoo ’v thi heinus neitch’r ’v thi ofens, hwitch thret’nz thi hwol fabrik ’v Twenti-Fifth-Sentch’ri eksiz-tens.

There was an advertisement on the other side:

BOIZ AND YUNG MEN!

SERV EUR SENTCH’RI!

ENLIST IN THI TAIM POLIS RSURV NOW!

RIMEMB’R—’V THI AJEZ! ONLY IN THI TAIM POLIS KAN EU PROTEKT EUR SIVILIZASHON FR’M VARENS! THEIR IZ NO HAIER SERVIS TOO AR KULTCH’R! THEIR IZ NO K’REER SO FAS’NATING AZ A K’REER IN THI TAIM POLIS!

Underneath it another ad asked:

HWAI BI ASHEEMPD UV EUR TCHAIRZ?

GET ROLFASTS!

No uth’r tcheir haz thi immidjit respons uv a Rolfast. Sit enihweir—eur Rolfast iz ther! Eur Rolfast metl partz ar solid gold to avoid tairsum polishing. Eur Rolfast beirings are thi fain’st six-intch dupliks di’mondz for long wair.

Walter’s heart pounded. Gold—to avoid tiresome polishing! Six-inch diamonds—for long wear!

And Clurg must be a time policeman. “Only in the time police can you see the pageant of the ages!” What did a time policeman do? He wasn’t quite clear about that. But what they didn’t do was let anybody else—anybody earlier—know that the Time Police existed. He, Walter Lachlan of the Twentieth Century, held in the palm of his hand Time Policeman Clurg of the Twenty-Fifth Century—the Twenty-Fifth Century where gold and diamonds were common as steel and glass in this!

* * * *

He was there when Clurg came back from the matinee. Mutely, Walter extended the page of newsprint. Clurg snatched it incredulously, stared at it, and crumpled it in his fist. He collapsed on the floor with a groan.

“I’m done for!” Walter heard him say.

“Listen, Clurg,” Walter said. “Nobody ever needs to know about this—nobody.”

Clurg looked up with sudden hope in his eyes. “You will keep silent?” he asked wildly. “It is my life!”

“What’s it worth to you?” Walter demanded with brutal directness. “I can use some of those diamonds and some of that gold. Can you get it into this century?”

“It would be missed. It would be over my mass-balance,” Clurg said. “But I have a Duplix. I can copy diamonds and gold for you; that was how I made my feoff money.”

He snatched an instrument from his pocket—a fountain pen, Walter thought.

“It is low in charge. It would Duplix about five kilograms in one operation—”

“You mean,” Walter demanded, “that if I brought you five kilograms of diamonds and gold you could duplicate it? And the originals wouldn’t be harmed? Let me see that thing. Can I work it?”

Clurg passed over the “fountain pen.” Walter saw that within the case was a tangle of wires, tiny tubes, lenses—he passed it back hastily.

Clurg said, “That is correct. You could buy or borrow jewelry and I could duplix it. Then you could return the originals and retain the copies. You swear by your contemporary God that you would say nothing?”

Walter was thinking. He could scrape together a good thirty thousand dollars by pledging the house, the business, his own real estate, the bank account, the life insurance, the securities. Put it all into diamonds, of course and then—doubled! Overnight!

“I’ll say nothing,” he told Clurg. “If you come through.” He took the sheet from the twenty-fifth-century newspaper from Clurg’s hands and put it securely in his own pocket. “When I get those diamonds duplicated,” he said, “I’ll burn this paper and forget the rest. Until then, I want you to stay close to home. I’ll come around in a day or so with the stuff for you to duplicate.”

Clurg nervously promised.

* * * *

The secrecy, of course, didn’t include Betty. He told her when he got home, and she let out a yell of delight. She demanded the newspaper, read it avidly, and then demanded to see Clurg.

“I don’t think he’ll talk,” Walter said doubtfully. “But if you really want to…”

She did, and they walked to the Curran bungalow. Clurg was gone, lock, stock and barrel, leaving not a trace behind. They waited for hours, nervously.

At last Betty said, “He’s gone back.”

Walter nodded. “He wouldn’t keep his bargain, but by God I’m going to keep mine. Come along. We’re going to the Enterprise.”

“Walter,” she said. “You wouldn’t—would you?”

* * * *

He went alone, after a bitter quarrel.

At the Enterprise office, he was wearily listened to by a reporter, who wearily looked over the twenty-fifth-century newspaper. “I don’t know what you’re peddling, Mr. Lachlan,” he said, “but we like people to buy their ads in the Enterprise. This is a pretty bare-faced publicity grab.”

“But—” Walter sputtered.

“Sam, would you please ask Mr. Morris to come up here if he can?” the reporter was saying into the phone. To Walter he explained, “Mr. Morris is our press-room foreman.”

The foreman was a huge, white-haired old fellow, partly deaf. The reporter showed him the newspaper from the twenty-fifth century and said, “How about this?”

Mr. Morris looked at it and smelled it and said, showing no interest in the reading matter: “American Type Foundry Futura number nine, discontinued about ten years ago. It’s been hand-set. The ink—hard to say. Expensive stuff, not a news ink. A book ink, a job-printing ink. The paper, now, I know. A nice linen rag that Benziger jobs in Philadelphia.”

“You see, Mr. Lachlan? It’s a fake.” The reporter shrugged.

Walter walked slowly from the city room. The press-room foreman knew. It was a fake. And Clurg was a faker. Suddenly Walter’s heels touched the ground after twenty-four hours and stayed there. Good God, the diamonds! Clurg was a conman! He would have worked a package switch! He would have had thirty thousand dollars’ worth of diamonds for less than a month’s work!

He told Betty about it when he got home, and she laughed unmercifully. “Time Policeman” was to become a family joke between the Lachlans.

* * * *

Harry Twenty-Third Street stood, blinking, in a very peculiar place. Peculiarly, his feet were firmly encased, up to the ankles, in a block of clear plastic.

There were odd-looking people, and a big voice was saying: “May it please the court. The People of the Twenty-Fifth Century versus Harold Parish, alias Harry Twenty-Third Street, alias Clurg, of the Twentieth Century. The charge is impersonating an officer of the Time Police. The Prosecutor’s Office will ask the death penalty in view of the heinous nature of the offense, which threatens the whole fabric—”

THE HUMAN EQUATIONS, by Dave Creek

As many times as I’d been called upon to banish Volatile people to Earth, few of them had ever attacked me.

The final time it happened was within the New Lancaster Habitat, home to 10,000 New Order Mennonites, known as the “Habitat of the Gentle People.” Moments after I arrived at the farm of Bishop Anna Troyer and her son, Samuel, I knew it contained at least one exception.

As I stepped onto the porch, I couldn’t help thinking that the Troyer home looked like something out of history: wooden structure, metal gutters, the porch sporting a swing and rocking chairs. An even more primitive-looking building, the barn, stood in the rear. Between them was an electric car, and a larger vehicle that probably harvested the crops. In fields both adjacent to the Troyer home and directly overhead, I could see people working in the sprawling fields scattered troughout the habitat.

The heat and humidity of the habitat’s interior washed over me. It was only mid-morning and already conditions here were oppressive; why would people work in those fields all day? I wished I could’ve come about a week later when the habitat was due to turn colder. It was a practical measure; the apple, cherry, and pear trees needed that cold snap to blossom.

I knocked on the flimsy-looking door, which was a thin frame of wood surrounding a fine metal mesh. Out of the shadows within the house, two figures resolved themselves. Bishop Troyer was dressed in a gray one-piece dress beneath an apron of the same color, and wore her snow-white hair up, topped with a finely pleated white hat. I knew she was only middle-aged, about sixty, but her deeply lined face made her look decades older. Being a Mennonite, I thought, must be a rough life. I knew it could even be deadly. Bishop Troyer’s husband Amos had died eight years earlier when a grain harvester rolled over on him—not an uncommon fate for farmers here, apparently.

Samuel was twenty, broad-shouldered, and with skin burnished by countless hours beneath reflected sunlight. He was wearing a farmer’s overalls and thick-soled boots.

Bishop Troyer didn’t speak, just glared at me, but she still opened the door—Congregationalist courtesy, no doubt. I stepped inside, grateful for the respite from the heat. “I’m Triage Officer Leo Bakri. I’m here to carry out the Order of Banishment on Samuel Troyer.”

The only thing that saved me was that although Samuel was big, he wasn’t a trained fighter, and that my New Human reflexes are faster than those of most Volatiles. His right fist swung at my face, and I grabbed it with my right hand and twisted sharply, measuring my force so I wouldn’t break his wrist. Samuel yelped and sank to one knee. I placed my hand on the butt of my stunner but didn’t draw it.

Bishop Troyer went to her son’s side and held his shoulders. I wondered if she was trying to comfort or restrain her son.

I felt the chill of perspiration drying on my forehead. The house wasn’t climate-controlled, but it was cooler than the habitat’s current outdoor setting. Too much like a “natural” environment, too uncontrolled, I thought. Why should any environment be uncomfortable for the Humans living in it?

Bishop Troyer said, “You realize that sending Samuel down there is a certain death sentence?”

I said, “You know the seriousness of Samuel’s crime.”

“I still have trouble believing that Samuel would—”

“Attack someone the way he just attacked me?”

Samuel looked up at me. “You’re taking me away from my mom, you bastard!”

“Samuel!” Bishop Troyer said. “Even in such a time, you’ll not use that kind of language.”

“Mom, he’s taking my life away.”

I said, “Samuel, you know the law. There are no appeals.

Bishop Troyer said, “Triage Officer Bakri, you must understand my son doesn’t want to leave his home.”

In my heart of hearts, I didn’t think his home was anything to fight for. The many shelves and a mantle above the fireplace (now there was a danger!) here in the living room were crowded with, I believed the term was, “knick-knacks.” They included small stylized figurines with vaguely Human form, tiny woven baskets of an unknown (at least to me) significance, and flat, unmoving pictures of loved ones. The paintings on the walls seemed to be originals by talented but untrained artists. The comp in one corner was a bulky console-and-monitor combination.

Samuel Troyer said, “You didn’t prove anything—”

I told him, “We have cubes. They show you inside a shop within the Shosha Habitat, assaulting its manager, Saburo Endo.”

Bishop Troyer stood. She held her hand out to Samuel, who took his place beside her and said, “That’s not evidence to us. My people don’t use that kind of technology.”

“With all respect to your beliefs, the Shosha authorities do make decisions based upon that technology. We also have nearly a half-dozen witnesses to the assault against Mr Endo. You know the penalty for traveling to another habitat to commit violence.”

Samuel Troyer tilted his head and squeezed his eyes shut. “I didn’t go there to commit violence.” Then he looked me right in the eye. “I just wanted to see what it was like somewhere you don’t have to get up in the middle of the night to milk cows. Or spend half your days just growing food. Where you have time to read and to think—”

Bishop Troyer shook her head. “It looks as if you’ve spent too much time thinking already, and it’s allowed ungodly ideas to get into your head. I never should’ve agreed to that trip. You’re too young. You don’t understand why our way of life is so important to us.”

Samuel’s voice held a bitterness I guessed he’d been nurturing for some time. “You always said these places were so evil. I wanted to decide for myself. I always expected to come back here. And I did. I wanted to find a way to make a different kind of life for myself here, with you.”

I said, “You knew you were here only on probation, awaiting your sentence.”

“On something that wasn’t a crime. I just wanted something nice for my mother.”

“A gold necklace worth six months pay on Shosha.”

Bishop Troyer said, “My son had never been to another habitat. He had no concept of a market economy.”

“You should have taught him, then. To let a Volatile—”

“I am so sick of hearing Samuel referred to by that term. I suppose you’re what they call a New Human?”

“I am.” I allowed a little pride to come through in my tone of voice. Nothing wrong with faster reflexes, added strength, or more immunity to disease. Not to mention the moral improvements. Less prone to violence. More inclined to find peaceful solutions. “I’m from Newton Habitat.” Customarily, Banishment Orders were carried out by Triage Officers from habitats other than those involved in the original crime. The Earth-circling habitats have two common rules—live as you wish, but anyone can leave whenever they want. And anyone who commits the slightest physical assault is immediately banished.

Samuel shook his head. “Great. Not just a New Human, but a scientist. You think you’re better than I am.”

I shifted my weight from one foot to another. No one seemed likely to offer me a seat. And I wasn’t sure I’d accept it—the Troyers’ living room chairs were wooden, some upholstered with actual cloth, everything apparently hand-crafted. I supposed that was fine if you liked that kind of thing, but it all seemed unnatural and wasteful of time and resources to me. “Statistics show a Volatile is more likely to act inappropriately. A point you helped prove on Shosha.”

Samuel wiggled his fingers in front of my face. “They were so upset that these hands touched their precious property.”

“In Shosha, it’s called stealing.”

“And the shopkeeper—

“—Mr. Endo—”

“—was rude. He yelled at me in front of all those people in the market square. And he grabbed my arm so hard it hurt.”

“You wouldn’t let go of the necklace.”

Samuel shook his head. “It was mine. I’d picked it up. I tried to tell them I’d send them something in trade later.”

“That’s when the real crime happened. When you struck Mr. Endo.”

“He wouldn’t let go of my arm. He started it.”

I said, “And I’m finishing it. Get your things.”

Samuel pointed to one of the upholstered chairs. “There’s my bag.” His shoulders slumped, as if having prepared the bag also meant acknowledging his crime. He picked the bag up and stood passively, his attention focused on his mother.

I told him, “You can see that I’m accustomed to dealing with Volatiles. If you try to assault me or anyone else again, I’m stunning you and carrying you to the port. If you give me your word you won’t be violent, I’ll let your mother come along.”

Bishop Troyer folded her hands in front of her. “Thank you, Triage Officer.” She looked meaningfully at her son. “We may be plain unaltered Humans, but we won’t be any trouble.”

I said, “My car’s waiting.”

* * * *

I insisted that both Bishop Troyer and Samuel ride in the rear of my borrowed police cruiser. The car mostly drove itself, which let me keep an eye on them on a heads-up vid display.

As we drove off her property, Bishop Troyer said, “All this for a trinket I wouldn’t have wanted anyway.”

Samuel said, “The gold was from what you call the good Earth. I know you miss it there, even if you never want to go back. The shopkeeper said it was hand-crafted, not replicated.”

I said, “They just say that, Samuel. That’s a typical ploy to get a little extra money out of a tourist.”

Samuel’s mouth gaped open. “He’d lie?”

“Plenty of shopkeepers in plenty of habitats will do the same thing.”

Bishop Troyer said, “It’s one reason we chose a different path in this place.”

New Lancaster Habitat was a typical kilometer-long cylinder, its homes mostly single-family dwellings scattered across a broad landscape of furrowed fields. Most Human colonists brought workbots, nanotech, and grav pallets, along with virtualities and newsnets. They desired the conveniences of Earthly existence even while they sought more living space or the opportunity to form a unique societal structure.

Not here. Workers harvested timothy and clover in the countless fields that curved upward and met two-tenths of a kilometer overhead. I didn’t understand the pull of such an existence. The repetitive toil, the eternal cycle of artificially-generated seasons with the rituals of planting and harvesting, and all for what?

I supposed that was why we have dozens of habitats circling the homeworld. Live as you want, without anyone abridging your freedoms.

But that was just what Samuel Troyer had tried to do to Mr. Endo in Shosha.

I said, “If Samuel had struck someone here in New Lancaster, it would’ve been a purely internal matter. But it’s gone inter-habitat. It’s the equivalent of a diplomatic incident on Earth.”

Samuel sat with his hands in his lap, as if waiting for his mother and me to settle this between ourselves. I had to wonder if the anger he’d shown just moments ago had been only momentarily suppressed.

Bishop Troyer asked, “Can’t you give Samuel some leniency? He’s never been in trouble before.”

“Could I suggest you render unto Caesar that which is—”

“That is an inappropriate context for that reference, Triage Officer. And you will not use my religious beliefs as a pretext for taking my son from me.”

I took a deep breath. “I apologize.”

Samuel rolled his eyes at that, which I pointed out to Bishop Troyer. “You see his attitude? Haven’t you glimpsed that before?”

Bishop Troyer cast a hard look at her son. “Only…aimed at me.”

“With all respect,” I said, “Perhaps Samuel found it all too easy in Shosha, a place where no one knew him, that he could intimidate anyone who challenged him as he committed his mischief. Add to that, not realizing his actions were being recorded in holographic vid and immersion sound.”

Samuel said, “Perhaps you should take me away. I might finally find respect down there on Earth.”

Bishop Troyer said, “Don’t even pretend to feel that way. I’m still your mother, I’ll always care for you the way no one else can.”

I said, “You can still care about your son, Bishop Troyer. He just can’t continue to live here.”

Bishop Troyer turned a stern visage toward the vid input. “We’re talking about a 20 year old boy who committed an inadvertent theft, and who struck a shopkeeper. Meanwhile, we don’t seem concerned that we’re about to send Samuel down to a planet where some countries still mandate the death penalty for non-violent crimes. The PacFed doesn’t believe you have a soul, Triage Officer, or even that Samuel or I do, and it wouldn’t be illegal to kill us for no reason. The Eastern Sword chops the hands off of thieves. Do you need more examples?”

I said, “A condition of establishing Human habitats in Earth orbit was that we could only ship back malcontents or criminals if a government agreed to take responsibility for them. That makes it difficult for us, but if Samuel doesn’t go to Earth, that would mean someone who committed violence wouldn’t be dealt with. Our entire system will fall apart, in every habitat. Samuel will leave. But he goes somewhere he’s wanted.”

“What kind of place will have me? What kind of people can I live near?”

I said, “Most of the world falls into two major categories, culturally.”

Samuel frowned. “Yes, Euro-American and Afro-Asian. I’ve been to college, thank you.”

“Your culture here most closely resembles Euro-American. I’ve gotten you a good job on the English Strait. Reclamation duty. They’re desperate for manpower there.”

Samuel asked, “Manpower? What’s that?”

“People who perform physical labor, or sometimes skilled tasks.”

“Why would anyone perform physical labor back on Earth?”

“Some societies there also reject nanotech, just as your own does.”

“What if I refused to work? What could they do to me?”

“You wouldn’t get paid. You wouldn’t be able to buy food or clothes or shelter.”

“Oh, I see, these are places like Shosha.”

“Much worse than Shosha. Hard work, very little pay. Hard to get ahead. Harder still to save for old age.”

“They don’t even take care of old people?”

“You have to save enough so you can get by when you’re too old to work.”

We’d arrived at the habitat’s southern cap. I flashed my Triage Services shield at the nearest lift, asking the civilians gathered there to take the next one. I didn’t think Samuel would become violent again, but I wanted to keep things simple.

Aboard the lift, we all grabbed handrails as the habitat’s floor, and the pseudo-gravity of its rotation, fell away. Looking across the 1-kilometer distance to the northern cap, I saw people who had donned wings and were flying along the cylinder’s center. “That surprises me,” I muttered, and when Samuel tilted his head in a questioning look I pointed out the fliers.

“It’s simple tech,” Samuel said. “As natural as the flight of birds.”

Then it was off the lift, in zero-G conditions now, and into the passenger waiting area. Both Bishop Troyer and Samuel glided awkwardly through the broad tube that led from the revolving cylinder of New Lancaster to its stationary hub. I’d made sure we arrived only minutes before departure; I didn’t want to draw this out. I’d only allowed Bishop Troyer to come along because I thought her presence would help me deal with Samuel until I got him aboard the shuttle.

We reached the broad waiting area. About three dozen other passengers were also waiting to board the shuttle down to Earth. I’m sure my sigh of relief was audible. Gone were the organic smells and too-warm, too-moist air that had assaulted me when I first entered New Lancaster proper. I marveled at the small comforts I found in filtered air, smooth white surfaces, and decorative cube images of planets and galaxies that were the same in any such chamber.

Another flash of the shield, this time toward a customs officer. He said, “Don’t worry, Triage Officer, we’ll get you seated first, in just a moment.

As we all moved to one side and grabbed handrails, I sneaked a glance at Bishop Troyer. Her mouth had tightened into a narrow line that emphasized the wrinkles in her face. I’d seen similar expressions before, on dozens of frustrated parents’ faces—she was coming to grips with the reality that she was about to lose Samuel. She couldn’t prevent me physically from taking him, and they’d had no legal options or I wouldn’t have arrived at their doorstep. “I know this is difficult,” I said, “But look at the broader view—”

Bishop Troyer said, “I don’t have a broader view. I only know I’m losing my son.”

Samuel was grinning. “Let him spin his fairy tales, Mom.”

Bishop Troyer’s lips pursed and she looked at me. “Have your say.”

“Human history, from the 19th Century onward. Conflicts between empires give way to the superpowers, whose disputes dominate the 20th Century. Some of those disputes involve intermediaries, often on the Asian continent. But after two global conflicts, wars became localized or internal. The world’s countries were learning to live in peace. But in the very first year of this century, Humanity sees war waged by individuals.”

Bishop Troyer lowered her gaze. “We’re a sinful race.”

“This is where it starts. With a simple assault, and the most basic disrespect for another person.”

Bishop Troyer said, “You spout your theories of history and how Human society evolves as if they’re as certain as the laws of physics you worship.”

I said, “That’s a good analogy. The laws of physics have been called the ‘cold equations.’ My job is to make sure legal consequences approach that same certainty.”

“Then you, Mr. Bakri, are even colder than the laws of physics. Perhaps you embody the human equations. And if I refuse to let Samuel go?”

“I can take you into custody, too.”

Samuel said to me, “I’ll go to Earth.”

Bishop Troyer said, “Samuel, no!”

“Mom, what kind of choice do I have? I’m young, I can adapt.”

Like you adapted on Shosha? I thought, but wasn’t about to say aloud.

Bishop Troyer asked her son, “Do you know the danger’s you’ll face there?”

Samuel said, “Radiation. Marauders. Leftover nanoweapons.”

“We have to find you something somewhere else.”

I said, “Most countries aren’t interested in taking a Volatile. They don’t want our—”

“Castoffs? Rejects?”

“I believe you’re both good people. It’s just that Samuel did something that can’t be tolerated in this community.”

Bishop Troyer offered me a sad smile. “I have my own beliefs about what can be tolerated and what cannot. As does everyone who has received our undeserved gift—God’s love. We reciprocate that gift by building a community filled with Christ’s attributes. Forgiveness is one of those attributes.”

I didn’t have anything to say to that.

“Don’t worry,” Bishop Troyer said. “I’m not a proselytizer. I’m willing to speak in the limited terms of everyday life. Did it ever occur to you that maybe Samuel thought he was in the right?”

“You’ve seen the vid?”

“I have. I don’t approve of what he did, but I don’t believe it’s worth banishment.”

Both of Samuel’s eyebrows raised and his jaw dropped open. “How did you see it?”

“The farm’s comp. It has HabNet access.”

“But you never allowed me to—”

“To fritter away your time on foolishness—games and useless knowledge disguised as revealed truths or wisdom? No, I never did. But this is different. I had to see for myself what happened.”

I kept quiet. I thought letting this little drama play out might be the best thing for me.

Samuel said, “You had no right—”

“I have every right to know about my son’s actions. It was foolish to let you go there. I can only ask the Lord’s forgiveness. If only your father had lived—”

Samuel wagged his finger before his mother’s face. “It always comes back to that, doesn’t it? The sacred Amos Troyer, who could do no wrong—”

Bishop Troyer knocked Samuel’s hand aside, and by his reaction, you would’ve thought she’d slapped him full in the face. “You will respect your father.”

Samuel recovered quickly, and his features hardened into an expression that belied his youth. “I’ve always respected my father. It’s your attitude toward him that wears me down.”

Bishop Troyer extended her hand toward Samuel’s face. He flinched, then seemed to realize his mother’s touch would be gentle this time. Anna Troyer caressed her son’s face. “I’ll always love you despite how you treat me.”

Samuel said, “I know, Mom. It’s just…I have to make my own decisions now.”

The customs officer caught my eye and waved me toward the embarcation sleeve. I told Bishop Troyer, “I have to accompany Samuel down to the surface.”

Bishop Troyer told me, “My son didn’t understand.”

“We don’t care whether he understood. We care only that he not repeat his actions, whether in Shosha or here in New Lancaster.”

“He wouldn’t have. I’d have made sure of it.”

“He’s a Volatile. We couldn’t be sure. Now we will be.”

Mother and son embraced, held on tight, cried. I started to touch Bishop Troyer on her shoulder but couldn’t bring myself to. I coughed softly. The Troyers took the hint and said their final goodbyes. Bishop Troyer told me, “I’ll pray for him. And for you, and those who create our laws.”

I thought it only appropriate to say, “Thank you.” Then Samuel and I left. I didn’t dare look back at the grieving mother.

* * * *

Samuel sat next to me quietly during the entire half-hour trip. I wondered how many of the other passengers might also be Volatiles, though I didn’t recognize any Triage Officers from other habitats.

We’d be landing in the desert linking the sloping plain that was once England’s Shakespeare Cliff to the ruins of the French village of Sangatte. It was only during the shuttle’s final approach that Samuel said, “Tell my mother everything will be all right. Even if it won’t.”

This Volatile’s concern for his mother stole at my heart in a way I hadn’t anticipated. I could almost forgive Samuel for attacking me back in the New Lancaster Habitat.

Almost. I didn’t respond to his request, and Samuel didn’t make it again.

The shuttle settled to the barren ground and Samuel and I followed the other passengers, about six or seven, who were getting off.

Bright light and blowing dust made me squeeze my eyes to slits as I followed Samuel out of the shuttle and stepped onto dusty ground. Close to the horizon, I saw the reclamation facility that fought the losing battle to reclaim this strait as fertile ground. Nanotech conflicts had left the land full of unwanted surprises, from transformation mines to death-tech. The suggestion had already been made in some quarters to let it return to its “natural” state, to become the English Channel again. As if natural meant static, unchanging, safe.

A tall man in a crisp uniform and wearing a breathing mask walked up to us and introduced himself as StraitForce Lieutenant Phillipe Cassell. “I’ll take the boy now,” Cassell said, his voice stern and metallic through the mask.

“Where’s my mask?” Samuel demanded.

“You’ll get one when you earn one,” Cassell said. He pulled Samuel toward a waiting personnel carrier. Samuel looked back at me and said, “Goodbye.”

My mouth was dry and I choked back words. By the time I raised my hand to wave, it was to Samuel’s retreating back.

That’s when a sharp crack came from overhead and I was knocked to the ground. I lifted my head from the dust just in time to see the rear of the personnel carrier blasted away. Armed men and women were popping up from beneath the ground. They were aiming weapons and squeezing triggers, but I didn’t hear discharges and didn’t see flashes of light.

I got up and ran toward Samuel Troyer and Lieutenant Cassell, who were lying next to the carrier’s wreckage. I pulled my stunner and got off a few shots, without hitting anyone.

Samuel pulled me down next to him, clearly glad to see a familiar face, even mine. He seemed unhurt; Cassell’s chest and face were ruins. Before we could say anything to each other, Samuel slumped to the ground. Whether unconscious or dead, I didn’t know.

A scuffling sound to my right, and I raised my weapon at a gunner advancing toward me.

Some New Human I was. The gunner was quicker and even though I still didn’t hear a discharge or see a flash I slumped to the ground next to Samuel.

* * * *

I found out what happened when I woke up in the reclamation facility’s hospital. A Channel Separatist raid on the reclamation facility had ended with nine raiders dead, but 52 workers killed and 142 others, including Samuel, suffering nano-infestation.

The Separatists had sprayed destructive nanotech over much of the facility. I was lucky; being a New Human gave me some resistance to such intruders, and my status as a Triage Officer meant I was one of the first attended to. Yes, I’m aware of the irony. The doctors flushed out my system successfully, and I was out of the hospital within hours.

Samuel, though, wasn’t so lucky. The tiny disassemblers roamed through his bloodstream and throughout his nervous system, altering his body with an excruciating slowness.

I went to see him every few hours over a period of three days after the attack. Samuel’s body was literally turning to dust. His feet crumbled away within hours of the infestation, and his legs were gone in a day. The nanotech made sure Samuel’s skin closed around the parts of his body that remained, but did nothing to relieve his pain. “I’m bearing it,” he told me through gritted teeth, “because I want to live.” Once when I found him sobbing uncontrollably, he said, “I’m not crying for myself. It’s my mother. I have to get better. I don’t want her to know I’m suffering.”

Doctors pumped him full of reconstruction nanotech and implanted temporary artificial organs as his intestines, liver, kidneys, heart, lungs, and other organs failed, then became dust.

69 hours into his agony, doctors had given up on saving Samuel and were issuing frantic petitions to London and Paris for permission to euthenize him. The reply never came. He was, after all, only a Volatile.

The separatist attack told me no one was safe, and that it didn’t matter who you were. Lieutenant Cassell had only been doing his duty. Samuel Troyer was a mixed-up young man who hadn’t done anything that deserved a death sentence—something I’d realized in the final moments of Samuel’s life.

All that remained of him was a head and an upper torso. He was breathing through artificial lungs and could still manage halting speech. Moments before he died, Samuel said he felt a comforting presence nearby, someone other than myself or the doctors. I knew he was a spiritual man, and I was glad that he’d received this vision in his final moments. But then Samuel’s demeanor changed. His face contorted, and not from pain; his nerves couldn’t transmit pain anymore. He forced one word out before he died: “Abandoned.”

I couldn’t speculate on what it was Samuel saw or heard, or who had abandoned him, though I had my own ideas.

* * * *

Within a day of Samuel’s death I was standing on Bishop Troyer’s porch on another sweltering morning, knocking on her door again. I considered it a mercy that she hadn’t been allowed down to the Strait to see her son, because of the continuing separatist danger. I peered through the door’s wire mesh, and saw a long wooden table set up in the living room, with plates and casserole dishes full of food spread across it.

The door opened halfway, and Bishop Troyer stood there, dressed in a white dress with a white cape. I’d expected her to look withered and worn, but she stood upright and sturdy. I wondered how long her newfound energy would last once the other mourners were gone. I wondered how long she might live.

The soft background conversations filtering through the doorway stopped one by one as guests noticed my presence.

“I know I’m probably not welcome here,” I said.

Bishop Troyer’s eyes seemed to perceive every wrong I’d ever perpetuated in my life, every broken promise, every petty insult. Every time I thought of myself as morally superior to a Volatile, because I was a New Human.

Never mind taking her only child to his undeserved death.

“Of course you’re welcome here, Triage Officer.”

“I’m not a Triage Officer any longer.” At Bishop Troyer’s questioning look, I said, “I’ve resigned. I won’t be banishing any more Vol…any more citizens.”

Bishop Troyer opened the door further. “Enter in the spirit of forgiveness.”

I stepped inside, aware of all the eyes upon me. Mourners, most of whom would have known Samuel Troyer at his best as well as his worst. Bishop Troyer and I moved into one corner of the room and spoke quietly as other conversations rose again.

I told her, “I realized being a Triage Officer had only been my way of dealing with my own fears. I told myself others were responsible for them. Eliminate those others from my life, and I’d be secure. The fact that I operated with the habitats’ laws on my side was only an excuse.”

“And your new job?”

“Within a month, I’ll be joining the Earth Alliance exploratory craft Laika as Chief security officer.”

“Are you so eager to explore? Or are you leaving your past behind?”

“I don’t think I’ll know for awhile.”

Bishop Troyer looked thoughtful, not as haunted. “Then my son’s death served some small purpose. Tell me how he died.”

I hesitated, and Bishop Troyer said, “I’m sure he asked you to spare me the details. He always wanted to protect me.”

I felt the corners of my mouth turn up just a little. “It was all he said to me on the way down to Earth. Tell you everything was all right, even if it wasn’t.”

“And as he was dying?”

“He didn’t want you to know he was suffering.”

“His suffering has ended, and he’s with the Lord. You know you failed him.”

I lowered my head. “Yes, I do.”

I started at the touch of Bishop Troyer’s fingers beneath my chin. “Then you mustn’t fail me. I want to believe that the more he suffered, the more heroic he became.”

“He did.”

“Then don’t give me the peaceful, sanitized version of his death.”

So I told her, and she listened and didn’t say anything, but her eyes closed tightly halfway through my description of Samuel’s suffering and death. By the time I’d finished my tale she had one hand over her eyes and her chin was quivering. When she started to sob, her hand moved to cover her mouth, and she turned her back toward the friends and relatives who’d come to grieve with her.

Eventually Bishop Troyer composed herself. “I can’t provide your forgiveness, Leo Bakri, and you won’t find it out among the stars. It’ll only be within your own heart. A lesson I’ve learned.” Her mouth quivered, and she raised her hand to it again. I could hear her muffled voice. “Oh, Samuel, why was I so foolish?” Anna Troyer looked at me. “He promised he’d be a better, more respectful son. Just let him do this one thing, he said. It’s all I’d ever wanted. That’s why I let him go. Because of what I wanted.”

She turned away from me then, and joined the other mourners. As I was leaving I paused in the doorway, aware that Bishop Troyer and I were embarking on a shared journey.

THE GUN, by Philip K. Dick

The Captain peered into the eyepiece of the telescope. He adjusted the focus quickly.

“It was an atomic fission we saw, all right,” he said presently. He sighed and pushed the eyepiece away. “Any of you who wants to look may do so. But it’s not a pretty sight.”

“Let me look,” Tance the archeologist said. He bent down to look, squinting. “Good Lord!” He leaped violently back, knocking against Dorle, the Chief Navigator.

“Why did we come all this way, then?” Dorle asked, looking around at the other men. “There’s no point even in landing. Let’s go back at once.”

“Perhaps he’s right,” the biologist murmured. “But I’d like to look for myself, if I may.” He pushed past Tance and peered into the sight.

He saw a vast expanse, an endless surface of gray, stretching to the edge of the planet. At first he thought it was water but after a moment he realized that it was slag, pitted, fused slag, broken only by hills of rock jutting up at intervals. Nothing moved or stirred. Everything was silent, dead.

“I see,” Fomar said, backing away from the eyepiece. “Well, I won’t find any legumes there.” He tried to smile, but his lips stayed unmoved. He stepped away and stood by himself, staring past the others.

“I wonder what the atmospheric sample will show,” Tance said.

“I think I can guess,” the Captain answered. “Most of the atmosphere is poisoned. But didn’t we expect all this? I don’t see why we’re so surprised. A fission visible as far away as our system must be a terrible thing.”

He strode off down the corridor, dignified and expressionless. They watched him disappear into the control room.

As the Captain closed the door the young woman turned. “What did the telescope show? Good or bad?”

“Bad. No life could possibly exist. Atmosphere poisoned, water vaporized, all the land fused.”

“Could they have gone underground?”

The Captain slid back the port window so that the surface of the planet under them was visible. The two of them stared down, silent and disturbed. Mile after mile of unbroken ruin stretched out, blackened slag, pitted and scarred, and occasional heaps of rock.

Suddenly Nasha jumped. “Look! Over there, at the edge. Do you see it?”

They stared. Something rose up, not rock, not an accidental formation. It was round, a circle of dots, white pellets on the dead skin of the planet. A city? Buildings of some kind?

“Please turn the ship,” Nasha said excitedly. She pushed her dark hair from her face. “Turn the ship and let’s see what it is!”

The ship turned, changing its course. As they came over the white dots the Captain lowered the ship, dropping it down as much as he dared. “Piers,” he said. “Piers of some sort of stone. Perhaps poured artificial stone. The remains of a city.”

“Oh, dear,” Nasha murmured. “How awful.” She watched the ruins disappear behind them. In a half-circle the white squares jutted from the slag, chipped and cracked, like broken teeth.

“There’s nothing alive,” the Captain said at last. “I think we’ll go right back; I know most of the crew want to. Get the Government Receiving Station on the sender and tell them what we found, and that we—”

He staggered.

The first atomic shell had struck the ship, spinning it around. The Captain fell to the floor, crashing into the control table. Papers and instruments rained down on him. As he started to his feet the second shell struck. The ceiling cracked open, struts and girders twisted and bent. The ship shuddered, falling suddenly down, then righting itself as automatic controls took over.

The Captain lay on the floor by the smashed control board. In the corner Nasha struggled to free herself from the debris.

Outside the men were already sealing the gaping leaks in the side of the ship, through which the precious air was rushing, dissipating into the void beyond. “Help me!” Dorle was shouting. “Fire over here, wiring ignited.” Two men came running. Tance watched helplessly, his eyeglasses broken and bent.

“So there is life here, after all,” he said, half to himself. “But how could—”

“Give us a hand,” Fomar said, hurrying past. “Give us a hand, we’ve got to land the ship!”

It was night. A few stars glinted above them, winking through the drifting silt that blew across the surface of the planet.

Dorle peered out, frowning. “What a place to be stuck in.” He resumed his work, hammering the bent metal hull of the ship back into place. He was wearing a pressure suit; there were still many small leaks, and radioactive particles from the atmosphere had already found their way into the ship.

Nasha and Fomar were sitting at the table in the control room, pale and solemn, studying the inventory lists.

“Low on carbohydrates,” Fomar said. “We can break down the stored fats if we want to, but—”

“I wonder if we could find anything outside.” Nasha went to the window. “How uninviting it looks.” She paced back and forth, very slender and small, her face dark with fatigue. “What do you suppose an exploring party would find?”

Fomar shrugged. “Not much. Maybe a few weeds growing in cracks here and there. Nothing we could use. Anything that would adapt to this environment would be toxic, lethal.”

Nasha paused, rubbing her cheek. There was a deep scratch there, still red and swollen. “Then how do you explain—it? According to your theory the inhabitants must have died in their skins, fried like yams. But who fired on us? Somebody detected us, made a decision, aimed a gun.”

“And gauged distance,” the Captain said feebly from the cot in the corner. He turned toward them. “That’s the part that worries me. The first shell put us out of commission, the second almost destroyed us. They were well aimed, perfectly aimed. We’re not such an easy target.”

“True.” Fomar nodded. “Well, perhaps we’ll know the answer before we leave here. What a strange situation! All our reasoning tells us that no life could exist; the whole planet burned dry, the atmosphere itself gone, completely poisoned.”

“The gun that fired the projectiles survived,” Nasha said. “Why not people?”

“It’s not the same. Metal doesn’t need air to breathe. Metal doesn’t get leukemia from radioactive particles. Metal doesn’t need food and water.”

There was silence.

“A paradox,” Nasha said. “Anyhow, in the morning I think we should send out a search party. And meanwhile we should keep on trying to get the ship in condition for the trip back.”

“It’ll be days before we can take off,” Fomar said. “We should keep every man working here. We can’t afford to send out a party.”

Nasha smiled a little. “We’ll send you in the first party. Maybe you can discover—what was it you were so interested in?”

“Legumes. Edible legumes.”

“Maybe you can find some of them. Only—”

“Only what?”

“Only watch out. They fired on us once without even knowing who we were or what we came for. Do you suppose that they fought with each other? Perhaps they couldn’t imagine anyone being friendly, under any circumstances. What a strange evolutionary trait, inter-species warfare. Fighting within the race!”

“We’ll know in the morning,” Fomar said. “Let’s get some sleep.”

* * * *

The sun came up chill and austere. The three people, two men and a woman, stepped through the port, dropping down on the hard ground below.

“What a day,” Dorle said grumpily. “I said how glad I’d be to walk on firm ground again, but—”

“Come on,” Nasha said. “Up beside me. I want to say something to you. Will you excuse us, Tance?”

Tance nodded gloomily. Dorle caught up with Nasha. They walked together, their metal shoes crunching the ground underfoot. Nasha glanced at him.

“Listen. The Captain is dying. No one knows except the two of us. By the end of the day-period of this planet he’ll be dead. The shock did something to his heart. He was almost sixty, you know.”

Dorle nodded. “That’s bad. I have a great deal of respect for him. You will be captain in his place, of course. Since you’re vice-captain now—”

“No. I prefer to see someone else lead, perhaps you or Fomar. I’ve been thinking over the situation and it seems to me that I should declare myself mated to one of you, whichever of you wants to be captain. Then I could devolve the responsibility.”

“Well, I don’t want to be captain. Let Fomar do it.”

Nasha studied him, tall and blond, striding along beside her in his pressure suit. “I’m rather partial to you,” she said. “We might try it for a time, at least. But do as you like. Look, we’re coming to something.”

They stopped walking, letting Tance catch up. In front of them was some sort of a ruined building. Dorle stared around thoughtfully.

“Do you see? This whole place is a natural bowl, a huge valley. See how the rock formations rise up on all sides, protecting the floor. Maybe some of the great blast was deflected here.”

They wandered around the ruins, picking up rocks and fragments. “I think this was a farm,” Tance said, examining a piece of wood. “This was part of a tower windmill.”

“Really?” Nasha took the stick and turned it over. “Interesting. But let’s go; we don’t have much time.”

“Look,” Dorle said suddenly. “Off there, a long way off. Isn’t that something?” He pointed.

Nasha sucked in her breath. “The white stones.”

“What?”

Nasha looked up at Dorle. “The white stones, the great broken teeth. We saw them, the Captain and I, from the control room.” She touched Dorle’s arm gently. “That’s where they fired from. I didn’t think we had landed so close.”

“What is it?” Tance said, coming up to them. “I’m almost blind without my glasses. What do you see?”

“The city. Where they fired from.”

“Oh.” All three of them stood together. “Well, let’s go,” Tance said. “There’s no telling what we’ll find there.” Dorle frowned at him.

“Wait. We don’t know what we would be getting into. They must have patrols. They probably have seen us already, for that matter.”

“They probably have seen the ship itself,” Tance said. “They probably know right now where they can find it, where they can blow it up. So what difference does it make whether we go closer or not?”

“That’s true,” Nasha said. “If they really want to get us we haven’t a chance. We have no armaments at all; you know that.”

“I have a hand weapon.” Dorle nodded. “Well, let’s go on, then. I suppose you’re right, Tance.”

“But let’s stay together,” Tance said nervously. “Nasha, you’re going too fast.”

Nasha looked back. She laughed. “If we expect to get there by nightfall we must go fast.”

* * * *

They reached the outskirts of the city at about the middle of the afternoon. The sun, cold and yellow, hung above them in the colorless sky. Dorle stopped at the top of a ridge overlooking the city.

“Well, there it is. What’s left of it.”

There was not much left. The huge concrete piers which they had noticed were not piers at all, but the ruined foundations of buildings. They had been baked by the searing heat, baked and charred almost to the ground. Nothing else remained, only this irregular circle of white squares, perhaps four miles in diameter.

Dorle spat in disgust. “More wasted time. A dead skeleton of a city, that’s all.”

“But it was from here that the firing came,” Tance murmured. “Don’t forget that.”

“And by someone with a good eye and a great deal of experience,” Nasha added. “Let’s go.”

They walked into the city between the ruined buildings. No one spoke. They walked in silence, listening to the echo of their footsteps.

“It’s macabre,” Dorle muttered. “I’ve seen ruined cities before but they died of old age, old age and fatigue. This was killed, seared to death. This city didn’t die—it was murdered.”

“I wonder what the city was called,” Nasha said. She turned aside, going up the remains of a stairway from one of the foundations. “Do you think we might find a signpost? Some kind of plaque?”

She peered into the ruins.

“There’s nothing there,” Dorle said impatiently. “Come on.”

“Wait.” Nasha bent down, touching a concrete stone. “There’s something inscribed on this.”

“What is it?” Tance hurried up. He squatted in the dust, running his gloved fingers over the surface of the stone. “Letters, all right.” He took a writing stick from the pocket of his pressure suit and copied the inscription on a bit of paper. Dorle glanced over his shoulder. The inscription was:

FRANKLIN APARTMENTS

“That’s this city,” Nasha said softly. “That was its name.”

Tance put the paper in his pocket and they went on. After a time Dorle said, “Nasha, you know, I think we’re being watched. But don’t look around.”

The woman stiffened. “Oh? Why do you say that? Did you see something?”

“No. I can feel it, though. Don’t you?”

Nasha smiled a little. “I feel nothing, but perhaps I’m more used to being stared at.” She turned her head slightly. “Oh!”

Dorle reached for his hand weapon. “What is it? What do you see?” Tance had stopped dead in his tracks, his mouth half open.

“The gun,” Nasha said. “It’s the gun.”

“Look at the size of it. The size of the thing.” Dorle unfastened his hand weapon slowly. “That’s it, all right.”

The gun was huge. Stark and immense it pointed up at the sky, a mass of steel and glass, set in a huge slab of concrete. Even as they watched the gun moved on its swivel base, whirring underneath. A slim vane turned with the wind, a network of rods atop a high pole.

“It’s alive,” Nasha whispered. “It’s listening to us, watching us.”

The gun moved again, this time clockwise. It was mounted so that it could make a full circle. The barrel lowered a trifle, then resumed its original position.

“But who fires it?” Tance said.

Dorle laughed. “No one. No one fires it.”

They stared at him. “What do you mean?”

“It fires itself.”

They couldn’t believe him. Nasha came close to him, frowning, looking up at him. “I don’t understand. What do you mean, it fires itself?”

“Watch, I’ll show you. Don’t move.” Dorle picked up a rock from the ground. He hesitated a moment and then tossed the rock high in the air. The rock passed in front of the gun. Instantly the great barrel moved, the vanes contracted.

* * * *

The rock fell to the ground. The gun paused, then resumed its calm swivel, its slow circling.

“You see,” Dorle said, “it noticed the rock, as soon as I threw it up in the air. It’s alert to anything that flies or moves above the ground level. Probably it detected us as soon as we entered the gravitational field of the planet. It probably had a bead on us from the start. We don’t have a chance. It knows all about the ship. It’s just waiting for us to take off again.”

“I understand about the rock,” Nasha said, nodding. “The gun noticed it, but not us, since we’re on the ground, not above. It’s only designed to combat objects in the sky. The ship is safe until it takes off again, then the end will come.”

“But what’s this gun for?” Tance put in. “There’s no one alive here. Everyone is dead.”

“It’s a machine,” Dorle said. “A machine that was made to do a job. And it’s doing the job. How it survived the blast I don’t know. On it goes, waiting for the enemy. Probably they came by air in some sort of projectiles.”

“The enemy,” Nasha said. “Their own race. It is hard to believe that they really bombed themselves, fired at themselves.”

“Well, it’s over with. Except right here, where we’re standing. This one gun, still alert, ready to kill. It’ll go on until it wears out.”

“And by that time we’ll be dead,” Nasha said bitterly.

“There must have been hundreds of guns like this,” Dorle murmured. “They must have been used to the sight, guns, weapons, uniforms. Probably they accepted it as a natural thing, part of their lives, like eating and sleeping. An institution, like the church and the state. Men trained to fight, to lead armies, a regular profession. Honored, respected.”

Tance was walking slowly toward the gun, peering nearsightedly up at it. “Quite complex, isn’t it? All those vanes and tubes. I suppose this is some sort of a telescopic sight.” His gloved hand touched the end of a long tube.

Instantly the gun shifted, the barrel retracting. It swung—

“Don’t move!” Dorle cried. The barrel swung past them as they stood, rigid and still. For one terrible moment it hesitated over their heads, clicking and whirring, settling into position. Then the sounds died out and the gun became silent.

Tance smiled foolishly inside his helmet. “I must have put my finger over the lens. I’ll be more careful.” He made his way up onto the circular slab, stepping gingerly behind the body of the gun. He disappeared from view.

“Where did he go?” Nasha said irritably. “He’ll get us all killed.”

“Tance, come back!” Dorle shouted. “What’s the matter with you?”

“In a minute.” There was a long silence. At last the archeologist appeared. “I think I’ve found something. Come up and I’ll show you.”

“What is it?”

“Dorle, you said the gun was here to keep the enemy off. I think I know why they wanted to keep the enemy off.”

They were puzzled.

“I think I’ve found what the gun is supposed to guard. Come and give me a hand.”

“All right,” Dorle said abruptly. “Let’s go.” He seized Nasha’s hand. “Come on. Let’s see what he’s found. I thought something like this might happen when I saw that the gun was—”

“Like what?” Nasha pulled her hand away. “What are you talking about? You act as if you knew what he’s found.”

“I do.” Dorle smiled down at her. “Do you remember the legend that all races have, the myth of the buried treasure, and the dragon, the serpent that watches it, guards it, keeping everyone away?”

She nodded. “Well?”

Dorle pointed up at the gun.

“That,” he said, “is the dragon. Come on.”

* * * *

Between the three of them they managed to pull up the steel cover and lay it to one side. Dorle was wet with perspiration when they finished.

“It isn’t worth it,” he grunted. He stared into the dark yawning hole. “Or is it?”

Nasha clicked on her hand lamp, shining the beam down the stairs. The steps were thick with dust and rubble. At the bottom was a steel door.

“Come on,” Tance said excitedly. He started down the stairs. They watched him reach the door and pull hopefully on it without success. “Give a hand!”

“All right.” They came gingerly after him. Dorle examined the door. It was bolted shut, locked. There was an inscription on the door but he could not read it.

“Now what?” Nasha said.

Dorle took out his hand weapon. “Stand back. I can’t think of any other way.” He pressed the switch. The bottom of the door glowed red. Presently it began to crumble. Dorle clicked the weapon off. “I think we can get through. Let’s try.”

The door came apart easily. In a few minutes they had carried it away in pieces and stacked the pieces on the first step. Then they went on, flashing the light ahead of them.

They were in a vault. Dust lay everywhere, on everything, inches thick. Wood crates lined the walls, huge boxes and crates, packages and containers. Tance looked around curiously, his eyes bright.

“What exactly are all these?” he murmured. “Something valuable, I would think.” He picked up a round drum and opened it. A spool fell to the floor, unwinding a black ribbon. He examined it, holding it up to the light.

“Look at this!”

They came around him. “Pictures,” Nasha said. “Tiny pictures.”

“Records of some kind.” Tance closed the spool up in the drum again. “Look, hundreds of drums.” He flashed the light around. “And those crates. Let’s open one.”

Dorle was already prying at the wood. The wood had turned brittle and dry. He managed to pull a section away.

It was a picture. A boy in a blue garment, smiling pleasantly, staring ahead, young and handsome. He seemed almost alive, ready to move toward them in the light of the hand lamp. It was one of them, one of the ruined race, the race that had perished.

For a long time they stared at the picture. At last Dorle replaced the board.

“All these other crates,” Nasha said. “More pictures. And these drums. What are in the boxes?”

“This is their treasure,” Tance said, almost to himself. “Here are their pictures, their records. Probably all their literature is here, their stories, their myths, their ideas about the universe.”

“And their history,” Nasha said. “We’ll be able to trace their development and find out what it was that made them become what they were.”

Dorle was wandering around the vault. “Odd,” he murmured. “Even at the end, even after they had begun to fight they still knew, someplace down inside them, that their real treasure was this, their books and pictures, their myths. Even after their big cities and buildings and industries were destroyed they probably hoped to come back and find this. After everything else was gone.”

“When we get back home we can agitate for a mission to come here,” Tance said. “All this can be loaded up and taken back. We’ll be leaving about—”

He stopped.

“Yes,” Dorle said dryly. “We’ll be leaving about three day-periods from now. We’ll fix the ship, then take off. Soon we’ll be home, that is, if nothing happens. Like being shot down by that—”

“Oh, stop it!” Nasha said impatiently. “Leave him alone. He’s right: all this must be taken back home, sooner or later. We’ll have to solve the problem of the gun. We have no choice.”

Dorle nodded. “What’s your solution, then? As soon as we leave the ground we’ll be shot down.” His face twisted bitterly. “They’ve guarded their treasure too well. Instead of being preserved it will lie here until it rots. It serves them right.”

“How?”

“Don’t you see? This was the only way they knew, building a gun and setting it up to shoot anything that came along. They were so certain that everything was hostile, the enemy, coming to take their possessions away from them. Well, they can keep them.”

Nasha was deep in thought, her mind far away. Suddenly she gasped. “Dorle,” she said. “What’s the matter with us? We have no problem. The gun is no menace at all.”

The two men stared at her.

“No menace?” Dorle said. “It’s already shot us down once. And as soon as we take off again—”

“Don’t you see?” Nasha began to laugh. “The poor foolish gun, it’s completely harmless. Even I could deal with it alone.”

“You?”

Her eyes were flashing. “With a crowbar. With a hammer or a stick of wood. Let’s go back to the ship and load up. Of course we’re at its mercy in the air: that’s the way it was made. It can fire into the sky, shoot down anything that flies. But that’s all! Against something on the ground it has no defenses. Isn’t that right?”

Dorle nodded slowly. “The soft underbelly of the dragon. In the legend, the dragon’s armor doesn’t cover its stomach.” He began to laugh. “That’s right. That’s perfectly right.”

“Let’s go, then,” Nasha said. “Let’s get back to the ship. We have work to do here.”

* * * *

It was early the next morning when they reached the ship. During the night the Captain had died, and the crew had ignited his body, according to custom. They had stood solemnly around it until the last ember died. As they were going back to their work the woman and the two men appeared, dirty and tired, still excited.

And presently, from the ship, a line of people came, each carrying something in his hands. The line marched across the gray slag, the eternal expanse of fused metal. When they reached the weapon they all fell on the gun at once, with crowbars, hammers, anything that was heavy and hard.

The telescopic sights shattered into bits. The wiring was pulled out, torn to shreds. The delicate gears were smashed, dented.

Finally the warheads themselves were carried off and the firing pins removed.

The gun was smashed, the great weapon destroyed. The people went down into the vault and examined the treasure. With its metal-armored guardian dead there was no danger any longer. They studied the pictures, the films, the crates of books, the jeweled crowns, the cups, the statues.

At last, as the sun was dipping into the gray mists that drifted across the planet they came back up the stairs again. For a moment they stood around the wrecked gun looking at the unmoving outline of it.

Then they started back to the ship. There was still much work to be done. The ship had been badly hurt, much had been damaged and lost. The important thing was to repair it as quickly as possible, to get it into the air.

With all of them working together it took just five more days to make it spaceworthy.

* * * *

Nasha stood in the control room, watching the planet fall away behind them. She folded her arms, sitting down on the edge of the table.

“What are you thinking?” Dorle said.

“I? Nothing.”

“Are you sure?”

“I was thinking that there must have been a time when this planet was quite different, when there was life on it.”

“I suppose there was. It’s unfortunate that no ships from our system came this far, but then we had no reason to suspect intelligent life until we saw the fission glow in the sky.”

“And then it was too late.”

“Not quite too late. After all, their possessions, their music, books, their pictures, all of that will survive. We’ll take them home and study them, and they’ll change us. We won’t be the same afterwards. Their sculpturing, especially. Did you see the one of the great winged creature, without a head or arms? Broken off, I suppose. But those wings— It looked very old. It will change us a great deal.”

“When we come back we won’t find the gun waiting for us,” Nasha said. “Next time it won’t be there to shoot us down. We can land and take the treasure, as you call it.” She smiled up at Dorle. “You’ll lead us back there, as a good captain should.”

“Captain?” Dorle grinned. “Then you’ve decided.”

Nasha shrugged. “Fomar argues with me too much. I think, all in all, I really prefer you.”

“Then let’s go,” Dorle said. “Let’s go back home.”

The ship roared up, flying over the ruins of the city. It turned in a huge arc and then shot off beyond the horizon, heading into outer space.

* * * *

Down below, in the center of the ruined city, a single half-broken detector vane moved slightly, catching the roar of the ship. The base of the great gun throbbed painfully, straining to turn. After a moment a red warning light flashed on down inside its destroyed works.

And a long way off, a hundred miles from the city, another warning light flashed on, far underground. Automatic relays flew into action. Gears turned, belts whined. On the ground above a section of metal slag slipped back. A ramp appeared.

A moment later a small cart rushed to the surface.

The cart turned toward the city. A second cart appeared behind it. It was loaded with wiring cables. Behind it a third cart came, loaded with telescopic tube sights. And behind came more carts, some with relays, some with firing controls, some with tools and parts, screws and bolts, pins and nuts. The final one contained atomic warheads.

The carts lined up behind the first one, the lead cart. The lead cart started off, across the frozen ground, bumping calmly along, followed by the others. Moving toward the city.

To the damaged gun.

NOT STUPID ENOUGH, by George H. Scithers

Bill Wilkes stared, wide-eyed and open-mouthed, at the nearly naked Immigration official. He closed his mouth and firmly reminded himself that he was light-years from Earth, and the thatched roof and log beams of the Customs and Immigration shed should have warned him. Still—Bill glanced back over his shoulder and out across the small spaceport at the reassuring bulk of the freighter that had just delivered him and a dozen other passengers to Garth. Even the unloading equipment was no more than a few dozen years out of date; and then, suddenly, this. Bill turned back to the impressively muscular humanoid to study more carefully the headband and feather, worn Amerindian style, and the bronze-headed ax, belted to the Garthian’s hip.

The Garthian official finished with the passenger ahead of Bill. He glanced up, noticed Bill’s stare, and twitched a bushy green eyebrow in response. “Cultural shock? ’S fact, this gets it over earlier than if we be in Terran costume,” he said, with hardly a trace of an accent, as he reached for the young Earthman’s travel document. After a moment, he looked up from the document at Bill, eyebrows pulled together in a puzzled scowl. “You be connected with that Wilkes who—”

“His grandson,” said Bill. “I heard that in spite of what happened, you have been putting up statues of him, and I wanted to find out what—”

“Not in spite,” said the big humanoid “Because of.” He stopped scowling, twitched his eyebrows. He gestured at a heap of pillows on a low log platform nearby. “Be seated, wait. After I check the others on, we talk.” The Garthian turned to the next passenger in line, reached for his travel document.

While the rest of the passengers filed past Immigration and moved on to claim their baggage from Customs, Bill sat on a pillow. His initial worry gradually turned to indignation, then both were forgotten as he watched a small, furry day-bat scurry around the floor of the shed with wings furled. Emboldened by the young Earthman’s stillness, the day-bat hopped up onto the pillows, then opened its wings and flitted off. Bill glanced up; the big Garthian was approaching. Bill stood up, remembering his indignation; but before he could speak, the Garthian plopped his muscular body down on the pillows, stretched himself in a prodigious yawn, and relaxed.

“Be comfortable, please,” said the Garthian. He twitched his eyebrows as he looked up at Bill. The Earthman started to speak, then grinned instead and sat down. “What do you know about the visit of your ancestor here?” asked the big humanoid.

“Well,” said Bill, squirming for a more comfortable position on the pillows, “I’ve read his diary. And the official report of the expedition he was on, which doesn’t say too much. The thing you’ve got to remember is that back then, Earth—Terra—was still in the Neo-Victorian reaction to the Hallucinated Age. At least, grandfather was, and it sort of gave him a jolt when the local mayor or chief or whoever he was, invited him to…uh—”

“Help service his woman?” The big Garthian twitched an eyebrow in amusement. “Of course even by then, our wisemen and your biographers…no, no, biologists, decided we be not interfertile, even though we correspond in bore and stroke.”

“Bore and—? Oh.” Bill felt his face go warm, saw the Garthian twitch his bushy green eyebrows again, and grinned back.

“High-Chief-by-Election Khlaj was conservative and—you do not have the word—one who observes proper ritual. So, interfertile or not, he extended invitation to service in the proper form. ’S fact, he got a jolt when your ancestor spoke forth a lecture on promiscuity. And then…”

* * * *

The leader of the first Terran expedition to Garth had been in the middle of supper when Dr. Wilkes burst in, panting, “I have it, I have it!”

“Sit down, damnit, Doctor, and stop waving your arms around,” Captain Smithson had grumbled. “The green-hairs aren’t attacking, are they?”

“No. Hardly. Just the—reverse,” Dr. Wilkes had said, between puffs. “They invited me—to an orgy.”

“Well, well, Doctor,” the captain had said. “You’re the expedition’s psychologist; you don’t have to ask me for permission to…ah…observe the natives’ religious—”

“No, no, you don’t understand. It isn’t religious at all; it isn’t even public…I mean it isn’t even—”

“Do sit down,” the captain had said firmly. He had taken another mouthful of supper, then said, “Orgies tend to be something less than private, Dr. Wilkes. And while I wouldn’t presume to prescribe in your field of study, an occasional one does do some—”

“That’s just it. They never get together in private; all their procreative activity is in indecent groups and orgies.”

“So?” the expedition’s botanist had asked. “Maybe something in their instincts requires that they—”

“No, no, no. I talked to them. Preached to them, almost. They just never thought of being private about it, you know, monogamous. But with a little persuasion—”

“Persuasion!”

“Don’t you see? That’s the key to the whole Garthian behavioristic complex. No interspecific competition of exclusive access to the chosen female, no system of paternal descent, no basis even for monotheism replacing polytheistic idolatry, which is the basis for the concept of a law-bound universe, on which our whole scientific—”

“Yes, yes, but aren’t you getting a bit emotionally involved?” the captain had asked.

“Involved? Even…even tomcats don’t invite their neighbors in for…for…you’ve seen how primitive they are, living in dirty huts—”

“It seems to me,” the expedition’s zoologist had objected, “that you are getting emotional. The huts are clean, even if they’re built of rammed earth. And I’ve never seen a tribe of tomcats with an elected chief and a system of letters of credit, even if they are written on pieces of bark. And the bridgekeeper on the river a couple dozen kilometers west has been doing some interesting work on the statistics of day-bat breeding. Furthermore—”

“I AM NOT GETTING EMOTIONAL.”

“Furthermore, I haven’t seen any signs of a, as you call it, polymorphic idolatry to get replaced.”

“Polytheistic, you pot-head. And if you can’t see it’s our plain duty to enlighten these poor savages, then—”

“Pot-head? I am not going to sit here and get insulted by a sanctimonious shrink who’s meddling—”

“GENTLEMEN!” the captain had bellowed at that point. “That’s better. Dr. Wilkes, if you do not shut up and sit down, I shall have the chief machinist make me some irons so I can put you in them. Just because we are one hundred thirty-five light-years from Terra is no reason we can’t have a quiet, peaceful supper at the end of a hard day. I daresay Chief Khlaj keeps better order during his orgies than some of the meals in this madhouse, and—”

* * * *

“…Your ancestor began his crusade to reform all Garth,” the big Garthian native said. “He persuaded the captain of the expedition to allow it, saying that it was to our own good. So in spite of the Terran rules—”

“Yes, that was the biggest problem,” said Bill, rolling over onto his stomach and tucking a pillow under one elbow. “According to grandfather’s diary, he had as hard a time persuading the captain not to interfere as he did persuading…uh…Chief Khlaj to give up orgies in favor of restricting sex to just the…uh…essential two participants. Talking the young bucks into the idea of not sharing their mates was almost easy, compared to those two. He had a lot in the diary about substitution and sublimation and reinforcement of post-adolescent intraspecific competition which I didn’t—still don’t understand at all.”

“Well, ’s fact that my folk didn’t understand that part either. What they did understand was that he said giving up orgies meant getting Terran technology. That wasn’t fact, as they found out; but at the time it did make sense.” The Garthian twitched his eyebrows; Bill found himself smiling back.

“But—” Bill’s smile faded. “He didn’t mean to lie. According to the diary, he thought if he got you going with monogamy, then monotheism and the whole idea of a rational universe running on universal laws would take hold, superseding a lot of local superstitions and capricious gods and like that. Instead—”

“Instead, there were no capricious gods until your ancestor persuaded the village storyteller to invent some.”

“Only, Grandfather didn’t realize he—the storyteller—was inventing them on demand, though he did mention the storyteller seemed to have an endless supply.” He glanced out the side of the Customs and Immigration shed, away from the spaceport, spotted a pair of thin lines strung from tree to tree through the woods. “Hey, you do have electric power, then.”

“’S fact. We decided there be no reason to cut down trees and cut off branches and put trees back in holes. Our power lines be strung from trees already there. And drains and running water in some of the towns.” The big native rolled over, sat up. “Of course, we insisted the first visiting Terran running-water engineer be not admitted to Garth until a drains engineer has been here and started teaching and building. Otherwise”—his eyebrows lifted as he looked directly at the young Earthman—“it be as bad as a man who teaches first and learns afterwards.”

* * * *

Bill felt his face go warm. He sat up, glared at the big Garthian sprawled on the pillows beside him. “Now look, none of you guys…people…knew about the way your sexes and things worked then either.”

“Two genders and three sexes?” The Garthian twitched his eyebrows lazily.

“And…and I don’t quite understand it even yet,” Bill said. “Could you—?”

“Your ancestor had all the facts himself. He visited the Hereditary-Bridgekeeper Tjarl shortly after he—your ancestor—began his crusade for procreative propriety, and while Hereditary-Bridgekeeper Tjarl was even then puzzling over the results of his day-bat breeding…”

* * * *

“Perhaps,” the hereditary-bridgekeeper had said, “animals do not inherit characteristics in the same clear way that plants do. I have not yet found out, because of the other problem, which seems to be even more interesting than the first.” He had gestured at a tidy row of wicker cages, each containing from two to a half dozen furry day-bats.

The engineer of the first expedition, one of three Earthmen visiting the bridgekeeper, had been itching to ask about the bridge itself, for he’d never seen a warren truss executed entirely in wood with bronze fastenings before; but the bridgekeeper spoke no Terran, and the engineer had to depend on Dr. Wilkes for translation into the local language. The expedition’s botanist had asked for more details, through Dr. Wilkes, of the Garthian’s hobby, before the engineer changed the topic.

“Yes, yes,” the hereditary-bridgekeeper had said, “it is that the number of males so affects whether there are day-bat pups. One male, any number of females, no pups. Two males, and in fourteen out of thirty cages, none of the females had pups, not counting, of course, two cages that my third son dropped and broke, and three more where one of the males died. After that, I decided the number of females in the cage be immaterial; either none had pups, or all, always excepting one or two who didn’t like their mates or something.” He had twitched his eyebrows then. “Day-bat females are like all women. Contrary. Howsoever, we had then ten man-bodylengths of decking of the bridge to replace before the seed-shipping season. My third son and my second daughter took over the day-bat breeding then, and did almost as well as I.

“Let’s see now; with three males in a cage, but five of eighteen cages were without pups, again not counting cages with escaped or sick day-bats.” He had sighed then. “It is not a simple, done-again-easily trial, like the famous Wilj and his measurement of the increase of speed of down-dropping weights from whence he called out the number-rule that all weights—but you Terrans be far beyond our feeble efforts in the study of non-alive things.”

The engineer had demanded Dr. Wilkes get more details from the bridgekeeper, saying this Wilj sounded like a Garthian Galileo or Newton, but Hereditary-Bridgekeeper Tjarl had resumed his account before the psychologist could translate the Terran engineer’s question.

“Then,” the Garthian had said, “with four males in each cage, we have two out of fourteen cages without pups, leaving out the three cages that my fourth son’s pet fnurr got into. I cannot yet decide if the rule underlying is one half, one third, one fourth; or if it is one half, one fourth, one eighth; with two, then three, then four males.” The native had shaken his head slowly. “It would be much easier if I knew if number-rules in animal-study be simple numbers or messy ones. Or, maybe, I do no better than measure the mood of the lady day-bats, and you know what the mood of any female can be.” He had twitched one eyebrow then…“Now, for the other Terran visitor, I show the bridge and his questions answer.” The botanist had followed the bridgekeeper’s second son back to the wicker cages of lively day-bats, while the other two Terrans followed the bridgekeeper up the abutment of the bridge.

* * * *

“…And your ancestor,” the Garthian Immigration official asked Bill, “did his diary hold comment on the bridgekeeper’s work?”

Bill shook his head. “He didn’t think much…uh—”

“Go on, speak fact; it be safe.”

“Yeah…uh…well, Dr. Wilkes…Grandfather didn’t think much of whatever the bridgekeeper was computing on, but he did get all excited about his doing anything scientific since he—the bridge keeper lived alone with his woman and their kids. He figured this proved his argument about monogamy and monotheism and modern technology.” He paused, frowned at the big Garthian, who seemed about to go into convulsions. “But when he tried this in his speech on giving up orgies, at the next village, the…the audience…hey!”

The muscular Garthian rolled off the pillows, jerking and squirming, yelping and wheezing. Bill scrambled to his feet, wide-eyed with bewilderment, then suddenly realized the Garthian was laughing. He slumped back on the pillows and sat, scowling while the Garthian rolled on the floor.

“I be sorry, young Wilkes,” the Immigration official finally gasped. He stood up, eyebrows still twitching, brushed himself off, and then stretched his big body on the pillows beside Bill again. “The listeners, ’s fact they would laugh and be thinking he be telling a joke. Hereditary-bridgekeepers be in our jokes as traveling salesmen in yours.”

“Oh.” Bill started to relax, then frowned in puzzlement. “But how? If they’re off by themselves—”

“With all the traffic to market and back over the bridge for him to see over and pick from?”

“Oh.” Bill grinned slowly. “I see. Anyway, Grandfather…uh…went along with the joke, even put it in as a joke on himself, from then on. He must have had a way of talking, getting people—Garthians—all enthusiastic about something. He kept getting guys so sold on his idea that they’d join him and then go out and preach on their own. Of course, not having Earth gadgets and things to show off put the Garthian…uh…assistants back a bit, but they did know the language better. I think he had about ten of them when…when the trouble started.”

“But about the day-bat breeding?”

“No pups unless there are two males, and then only half the time?” Bill looked thoughtfully at the native sprawled comfortably beside him. “You’re trying to find out if I can figure it out?”

The Garthian nodded, face suddenly serious. “Your ancestor did not; it was Hereditary-Bridgekeeper Tjarl who found out why, for villages and villages around the Terran landing site, women stopped becoming predicate…no, that is not the word…pregnant.”

Bill chewed his lip. “Three sexes and two genders. If there were two kinds of males, and you had to have the right one…no, that’s not it, since with one male there were never any pups. And with two…hey, it’s like going to a bureau drawer for socks in the dark, and if there’re two kinds and you want a pair…no, that’s not it either; with three, you always got a pair.” He glanced at the Garthian, grinned at his bewildered expression, and explained.

“Two kinds of socks in a drawer. You can’t tell which is which when you pick them out. If you take three, you’re sure to have a pair, because if one’s black and the other’s, say, white, then the third one’s got to be either black or white and you’ve got a pair…pair! That’s it.”

“Pair?” asked the big native, sitting up.

“With socks, you gotta have two of the same kind. But for…uh breeding, you gotta have opposite kinds, so if you got three, then let’s see, you’d get a fifty-fifty chance that the first two turn out to be the same, so there’s half that chance that the third is like the first two. But that would make it a quarter—one fourth—of the cages without pups, not two out of fourteen, or whatever it was.”

“Real number-results do be messy, ’s fact,” said the big Garthian. “Hereditary-Bridgekeeper Tjarl came to the same thinking you do now.” He twitched his eyebrows once. “But without the trips to the clothes-bucket to get socks. It outcomes as you think, that we be of two genders, male and female; but three sexes, female, one kind of male, other kind of male. Germ cells from all three be necessary for conceptions.”

“Two kinds of males.” Bill stared at the Garthian for a moment. “Uh which kind are you?”

“No usable way to tell. Only difference is which kind of germ cells I make. And it be that we change, now and then, from one male sex to the other.”

“Damn. No wonder you guys have orgies,” said Bill, shaking his head. “Or at least enough of an orgy for your women to…uh…meet one of each kind of male. But that monogamy crusade Grandfather was on—”

“Without that, Hereditary-Bridgekeeper Tjarl would not easily have persuaded folk of his discovery, so it was not all bad. At the time, however…”

* * * *

“Well,” Dr. Wilkes had snapped, “I hope it’s important. Your ’copter landed in the middle of one of the biggest crowds I’ve had yet. I’ll take hours to get them back out of the woods and settled—”

“It’s important, Doctor. What’s more, you aren’t about to collect your audience again, today or ever. This foolishness has—”

“Sir! This is unheard of! I am conducting a—”

“You have been conducting a genocidal pogrom. There hasn’t been a Garthian woman got with child since you started your blasted preaching in the villages, and it’s been spreading, as far as the natives can tell, as fast as your prudery crusade, for the past three months.”

“Sir! I will not stand here—”

“You, Doctor, will get in that ’copter or be carried there.”

Dr. Wilkes got.

* * * *

Back at the expedition’s base camp, they had landed to find High-Chief-by-Election Rhyl—High-Chief-by-Election Khlaj having been impeached—and a half-dozen other Garthians waiting for them.

“What’s this?” the expedition’s captain had demanded.

“Trial,” the expedition’s botanist had explained. He had become pretty fluent in the local dialects in the past three months, while Wilkes was away on crusade. “Judge, jury, the works.” He had smirked then. “And an indictment, even if it is written on a sheet of bark.”

“Indictment? Now look here,” Dr. Wilkes had shouted, shifting to the local dialect of Garthian. “Are you blaming me for this supposed infertility of your women?” He had gone on at some length, pointing out that he was hardly expected to know the details of Garthian genetics; diagnosing the sudden lack of pregnancies in the regions he’d been preaching to as a psychosomatic, to be combated by closer adherence to the principles of private, proper procreative practices; and denouncing any theories that might be advanced by anyone of loose morals, such as hereditary-bridgetenders.

He had stopped for breath at last, whereupon Chief Rhyl announced that he and the jury would withdraw to consider sentence.

“SENTENCE? Now? When they haven’t even—” Dr. Wilkes turned to the captain: “Are you going to put up with this…this—Why the prosecution hasn’t even stated—”

“Don’t need to,” the botanist had said, dryly. “Not after that confession of yours.”

“Confession?” the captain had asked. “But he hadn’t even heard the charge.”

“Well, seeing that he didn’t wait to hear what it was before he started yelling, that rather confirms it.”

The captain had grinned, started to snicker. Dr. Wilkes had demanded, “Just what in Space am I charged with, then? I told them I didn’t understand their genetics, but—”

“Exactly. And the indictment was for the crime of stupidity.”

“Stupidity?” Bill Wilkes asked. “In the diary—” He frowned. “But stupidity? But if he didn’t know—”

The muscular native sat up suddenly, face serious. “I know. You Earthmen do not count stupidity among the crimes. But things do.” He pulled from his belt the bronze-headed ax and held it out to Bill. “If you run your hand over the edge, hard, ax will cut. It makes no difference if you didn’t know, or meant well. The ax does not care. Be stupid, get cut. ’S fact?”

Bill nodded slowly. “Uh…yeah. It…it is fact, O.K. So that’s why the expedition got cut short—the diary didn’t say, and the official report just talked around it, but—”

“But your ancestor was expelled from Garth for extreme stupidity.”

“Yeah.” Bill sighed. “I sort of suspect the captain was glad to get away before your people thought of raising a charge of Genocide or Indigenous Interference.”

The big Garthian twitched his eyebrows a few times as he put away his ax, then lay back on the pillows again. “Why should we? We were being stupid, too—following your ancestor. And as for the stop of pregnancies, that was easy to fix. Fun, too.”

Bill grinned. “Then…hey, that’s the thing Grandfather never could understand—how you guys managed to get anything done without intraspecific competition…uh…you know, competing for wives and stuff. Instead, you just invite in the neighbors and…you know.”

“So? We be puzzled about how you manage with so much competition. ’S fact, though, that with you, take the job of immigrations. You would have a clerk, and a high clerk to be bossy to him, and a higher clerk over him, and then a committee to be boss over them, all because of your competition-drive. Here, I be in charge. If I do well, other Garthians leave my job alone. If I do badly, I get expelled from job. You see? Low drive to be bossy, low drive to keep other person from interfering. Works out almost the same, both ways.”

“And so, you’re the…the only one to decide I’ll get onto the planet? I suppose, because Grandfather was so stupid, you’re afraid that…hey, what about the statues? Or—”

“Statues we be putting up of your ancestor?” He looked somehow embarrassed for a moment as he went on, “Look at it from the Garthian position, be Garthian for a short time. Earthmen arrive out of the sky, with flying machines, overwhelming powers, great wisdom, everything. All suddenly, we be stupid, weak, nothing. And your ancestor told us we were even wrong in our way of reproducing, in groups; and if we changed, we could be like Earthmen. Hereditary-Bridgekeeper Tjarl said no, we must reproduce our way. So: your ancestor was wrong and Hereditary-Bridgekeeper Tjarl was right.”

“So the statues are to…to remind you guys how dense Terrans can be? And you’re worried that I’m not smart enough to allow onto your planet?”

“Partly fact, partly not,” said the big Garthian. “’S fact we be careful who we let onto planet now. And ’s fact your ancestor be…well, the standard of stupidity on Garth. He be very useful, telling us always that Earthmen are not all smarter, just started sooner, telling us we can catch up in our own way.” He sat up beside Bill, put a thick arm across the young man’s shoulders. “You be not stupid, young Wilkes. It is the other way around, with the importance of keeping…how you say…down your ancestor’s reputation.”

“You mean?” Bill grinned.

“’S fact. You’re not stupid enough to run around loose on Garth.”

JACKPOT, by E. C. Tubb

The sphere was two inches in diameter and of a blackness so intense it appeared a two-dimensional circle against the gray, crackle-finish of the test bench.

“Something new?”

McCarty crossed the compartment in three easy strides. He eased the pack from broad shoulders took the pipe from his mouth and poked the sphere with the stem. The thing was solid but light; the thrust of the pipe sent it rolling across the bench.

“Careful!”

Larman reached out a hand to form a barrier The sphere came to a halt. McCarty raised a bushy eyebrow.

“Dangerous?”

It was, Larman knew, a question tantamount to an insult. McCarty knew that Larman had better sense than to introduce anything dangerous into the ship. Only an idiot would deliberately court disaster and Larman was far from that.

“Not dangerous,” he said stiffly. “Only curious.”

“How can you be certain?”

McCarty squatted and examined the sphere, sucking at his pipe as he did so. He never smoked it, only sucked it, and it was a habit which grated on his companion’s nerves. It was odd, thought Larman, how hateful that pipe made McCarty. His own habit, that of chewing gum was, of course nothing in comparison.

“I’ve tested it,” said Larman. He stilled the unspoken protest. “Not in the ship. I assembled a test-rig outside and gave it the works. It’s as dangerous as putty…”

McCarty twitched his eyebrows.

“A native brought it,” explained Larman. He had grown used to the others signals. “While you were away. How did you make out?”

“Nothing worth the trouble of hauling. Well?”

“He came about an hour after you’d gone. I took a chance and gave him a handful of beads for it.” Larman drew a deep breath. This was his moment.

“A handful of beads!” McCarty almost exploded “For something as valuable as putty!”

“No. For the Jackpot!”

* * * *

Every trader dreamed of the Jackpot. Hard-bitten wanderers woke in their patched- up cans smiling like babies at the thought of it. Burned-out wrecks wept m their liquor and dragged themselves out for one more try at finding it. A few, a very few, found it. The Jackpot! The thing that spelt fortune.

Glusky had found it on Eridani IV, a weed he had smoked in lieu of tobacco—and found he had stumbled on the secret of doubling the life-span. Hilbrain had, literally, fallen over it on Rigel VII, the ore he had sworn at now lined half the rocket tubes in the galaxy. Bensen, Kildare, a handful of others, all keeping alive the legend. One for ten thousand traders who died broke or simply vanished. It was enough.

“Are you sure?” McCarty didn’t raise his voice but muscle made ridges along the line of his jaw. It was no time for joking.

“I’m sure.” Larman reached out and picked up the sphere. He rolled it between his palms then threw it at the other man. “Catch!”

McCarty caught. He stared down at the pool of utter blackness cradled in his hands, then at Larman, then at the sphere again. When he put it down he was frowning.

“What is it?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know!”

McCarty was tired. He’d had a hard three days trading with the natives without financial success and his nerves were ragged with the effort of adhering to the complicated ritual governing such operations. His head ached, too, from the weight of the translator and he wanted a shower. With a visible effort he controlled himself.

“Listen,” he said dangerously. “If you’re playing some kind of stupid game—”

“You listen.” Larman could afford to be curt. It was his turn to be dominant. “I told you that I’d tested it. Just in case you’ve forgotten I’m an engineer and a good one. I also know something about physics, chemistry, metallurgy and a few other subjects. I mention this in case you imagine that I’m a fool.”

McCarty grunted. Larman knew no more than any good explorer-trader had to know but that didn’t automatically absolve him from being an idiot. Who but a fool would continuously chew cud like a cow? Who, if it came to that, would be a trader in the first place if they had all their marbles?

Captains, of course, were different. McCarty was the captain.

“I’ve tested it,” repeated Larman hastily. He had recognized McCarty’s expression. “I don’t know what it is but it’s something new to modem science.” Lovingly he picked up the sphere.

“It’s the Jackpot!”

* * * *

They tested it. They did everything Larman had already done and a lot more besides. It wouldn’t cut, it couldn’t be drilled, it couldn’t be crushed, cracked or shattered. It resisted acid and alkali, heat and cold, vibration and radiation. It was an enigma and McCarty didn’t like enigmas.

“It’s light,” he said. “If it’s metal then it has to be hollow.”

“It isn’t metal.” Larman pushed goggles up on his forehead, the searing blue-white flame of the atomic cutter dying as he flipped the switch. That cutter was designed to shear through inch-thick high temperature alloy. The sphere hadn’t been affected.

“All right,” snapped McCarty. “So it isn’t metal. So how about you telling me what it is?”

“I don’t know.”

McCarty grunted. Gingerly he touched the sphere and found it, as usual, the same temperature as before. Said temperature being a few degrees lower than its immediate surroundings—in this case his own hand. The base on which it rested, a block of native wood, showed no sign of the fierce heat of the cutter.

Larrnan watched the gesture and pursed his lips.

“We can speculate,” he said, “but we can’t be sure. Our information, at this stage, is purely negative.”

“We know what it isn’t,” said McCarty. “We don’t know what it is.” He replaced the sphere on its base, his fingers lingering the ebony surface. “Let’s try an electric arc.2

They tried an electric arc. They tried two focused burners. They tried X-rays and ice and, from his expression, Larman had the suspicion that McCarty was trying prayer. The sun went down and they were still trying. Later, in the snug confines of the living compartment, Larman summed up what they had learned.

“It’s indestructible, as far as we know, that is. It seems totally absorbent to all sources of energy. Light, radiation, even the friction-heat generated by attempting to penetrate it, all are absorbed. The thing must be soaking up energy all the time—the temperature differential tells us that.”

“Like a sponge,” said McCarty. He lay on his bunk, thoughtfully sucking his pipe, the little burbling noises blending with the soft purr of the fan.

“Exactly!” Larman was triumphant. “A kind of static matrix of stress force capable of soaking up a tremendous amount of energy.”

“Why tremendous?”

“Its weight for one thing, its bulk for another and look at the way we’ve poured energy into it without any kind of reaction. Anyway, my guess is that the thing was made to do just that.”

McCarty nodded. Larman made sense. The sphere was obviously an artifact and yet…

He thought of the planet on which they had landed, the semi-tropical climate with the semi-tropical vegetation, the entire lack of any sign of civilization. Kaldar II was a primitive world, the natives living a standard, pre-urban existence based on tribal culture, hunting and natural harvesting. They, certainly, hadn’t manufactured the sphere.

But if they hadn’t, who had?

And why?

* * * *

Larman screwed a jeweler’s glass into one eye, steadied the hair-fine probe in his right hand and stooped over the sphere. Minutely he examined, not for the first time, the area of blackness magnified in his vision. It was like staring into a bottomless pit.

Irritably he straightened and rubbed his eyes. He was alone in the ship, McCarty had gone down to the village to ask questions about the sphere and, knowing the intricate procedure adhered to by the natives, there was no telling how long he would be. In the meantime Larman was trying to solve a mystery.

The mystery being the sphere.

Nothing, he reasoned, and McCarty had agreed with him, was made without a reason. The sphere was an artifact, it had been manufactured, it must serve a purpose. Unless they discovered what that purpose was then the sphere, instead of being the Jackpot, was just a scientific novelty. True, they could take it back and have the scientists drool over it but while that might spell fame it didn’t spell fortune. The cash would go to the bright spark who figured out a way to use it—not to the ones who didn’t recognize its worth.

Grimly he replaced the glass and probed again at the sphere.

He was still probing when McCarty returned.

“Find anything?”

“No.” Larman eased his aching back. “You?”

“Nothing that would hurt if you put it in your eye.” McCarty helped himself to water, swallowing three measures before emptying the paper cup over his head. “Those natives!”

Larman nodded his sympathy. The natives were tall humanoids, blue-skinned and eight-fingered. They spoke a gushing sibilance with occasional grunts, which the translators broke down into a weird kind of broken, disjointed English. They had a system of ritual symbolism, which made the most rigid Earth Court Etiquette seem like a free-for-all at a teen-age banquet. And they smelt.

“So they don’t know where the sphere came from?” Larman sighed his disappointment. McCarty surprised him.

“They know, all right,” he said. “They dug it out of the ground. What it is and who made it is something else.” He helped himself to more water, sat down and stretched. “It isn’t indigenous to this culture that’s for certain.”

“A previous race?”

“Perhaps. Or visitors way back. Who can tell?”

Lannan wasn’t surprised. Kaldar II wouldn’t be the first planet that had experienced the rise and fall of many civilizations, nor would it have been the first to have been visited by other races. He wasn’t surprised but he was disappointed. If the sphere was a lone freak then hitting the Jackpot would be that much harder. He said so. McCarty shrugged.

“If we can’t crack it then what’s the difference?”

“A lot of difference!” Larman was annoyed. “Maybe they only do whatever they’re supposed to do if paired or in series.” He blinked. “Maybe that’s it?”

“Maybe that’s what?”

“The answer.” Larman was excited. “Look at it in a logical way. We have something that soaks up energy, right?”

“So?”

“So maybe that’s just what it is. A means of strong power. A battery!”

“Batteries are usually carried around,” reminded McCarty. Larman waved aside the objection.

“What do you do with your dead flashlight cells? Toss hem aside, that’s what. Well perhaps whoever dumped this thing simply replaced it with another just as you do with your flashlight cells.”

McCarty thought about it for a moment.

“But if it could be recharged?”

“Perhaps he was in a hurry, or careless, or simply didn’t care. Perhaps anything.” Larman screwed the glass back into his eye. “Shut up, now, and let me work!”

* * * *

He didn’t find what he was looking for but, as he pointed out, it didn’t really matter.

“I was hoping to find a couple of minute openings,” Larman explained. “Connections, sort of, but that would be silly. Whoever used it wanted to connect it up fast so they wouldn’t have used tiny openings.”

What would they have used?” McCarty had caught some of Larman’s enthusiasm.

“I don’t know. An electronic field, perhaps, or a negative material to the sphere itself.” For a moment Larman looked worried, then he cheered up. “It isn’t important.”

“How do you make that out?” It was hot inside the ship and McCarty was sweating even though he, like Larman, had stripped to the waist. Larman grinned.

“Simple. No matter how effective this thing is it must have a critical point. I mean, there must be a time when we just can’t force any more energy into it. A full-charge point if you like.”

“So?”

“So my guess is that something will happen then. They must have built in a device to indicate the amount of charge the thing has or something to tell when it is fully charged. When that happens we may learn something.”

He gestured to the rig he had assembled around the sphere.

“I’m going to feed it energy and, at the same time, check continuously for any signs of electro-magnetic variation, radiation, the works. I’ve even mounted it on a scale to check the weight and rigged a couple of microphones set for ultrasonic.”

McCarty sucked at his pipe and frowned.

“I don’t like it,” he said.

“What don’t you like?”

“All this,” McCarty gestured towards the equipment.

“Suppose something should go wrong?”

“Such as?” Larman was contemptuous. McCarty’s frown deepened.

“I don’t know. Anything.” He tried to think of something to explain his fears. Larman didn’t give him time.

“Nothing can go wrong,” he said with lordly superiority.

“I know that. Everything is under full control.” He waved an admonishing finger. “After the way we tested the sphere outside I’m surprised that you should even consider it dangerous. Anyway,” he added the final point, “”I can’t run this control outside unless we dismantle half the ship.”

That, as he knew it would, silenced the captain.

But nothing could shut down McCarty’s thoughts.

* * * *

Greed for the Jackpot struggled with concern for his ship as he watched Larman set to work. He winced as twin beams of heat impinged against the sphere, the blue-white jets swallowed into the blackness. Desperately he tried to imagine what contrivances the aliens had used to warrant such batteries.

He couldn’t. Each time he tried to visualize something he boggled at the amount of power a fully charged sphere must contain. Even his pipe gave him no comfort and he paced the compartment like a trapped lion much to Larman’s annoyance.

“If you can’t sit still,” he yapped, “then go outside. You’re ruining my concentration.”

“You—”

McCarty didn’t finish what he was about to say. Instead he stiffened, his teeth clamping his pipe so hard that they cut through the stem. Larman stared at him then followed the direction of his gaze.

He swallowed.

The sphere had changed.

It was no longer a ball of utter blackness. Now it had a silver sheen, a mirror effect of unbelievable beauty, like an iridescent mother-of-pearl, shining and wonderful as it sat, bathed in the twin flames from the focused burners.

“It’s charged!” Larman switched off the burners. “McCarty! It’s charged!”

“It’s changing!”

It was true. The glowing mother-of-pearl took on a bluish tinge and a wave of heat struck the two men. The silvery blue became brighter, brighter and the air in the compartment was suddenly stifling in its oven temperature.

“Get out of here!”

Larman wasn’t a small man but McCarty picked him up as if he had been a baby. He lunged towards the door, driven on by his own, nameless fears, the glowing ball of the sphere spurring his efforts. He fell through the door, reached the outer lock and tossed Larman outside. It was fifteen feet to the ground but McCarty didn’t hesitate. He jumped as he felt the skin of his naked back blister from the heat pouring from the sphere. He hit, rolled in the thick grass and dragged Larman to his feet. Together they raced from the ship.

They had covered maybe two hundred yards before the blast picked them up and hurled them like dolls.

“We were lucky,” said Larman shakily. He felt himself again, hardly believing that, aside from bruises, they were unharmed. The thick grass had saved them, of course, that and incredible luck. McCarty snorted.

“Luck?” He snorted again.

Looking at the still-glowing crater where the ship had been Larman could appreciate his feelings.

“Nothing to worry about,” said McCarty bitterly. “It’s as safe as houses. I’ve everything under perfect control.” He glared at the other man. “You fool! Where were you when they dished out brains?”

Larman tried to defend himself. McCarty didn’t listen.

“A battery,” he raved. “A simple thing like a flashlight cell. Man, did you have any idea of the power that thing soaked up?”

“I—”

“The Jackpot!” McCarty groaned at the thought of it. He groaned again as he stared at the hole where the ship had stood.

“Stranded,” he said bitterly. “And for why? Because the fool I carried with me didn’t have the imagination of a louse. He couldn’t even make a guess at what he’d found.”

“Now wait a minute!” Larman smarted under the injustice of it. “Could you?”

“I can now,” said McCarty. “I half-guessed before but you seemed so certain. A bomb, that’s what it was. A dirty, sly, underhanded time-bomb!”

“But—the natives?”

“Not the natives. I don’t know who made it or when but that’s what it was. Maybe the natives recognized the danger once, I don’t know, but I’ll bet it was buried for a reason. What else could you do with a thing like that?”

Nothing, except perhaps freeze it in ice or dump it in space. While it could receive energy it was a potential danger and nothing could stop it receiving energy. Deep in the ground the absorption-rate would be slowed and, when it finally blew, the damage wouldn’t be so bad.

Looking at the crater Larman marveled at the power of the sphere. Most of the force had been confined by the ship but even so it had been considerable. And he had been the one to feed it that little bit of extra energy it had needed to reach critical point.

McCarty was right, of course, he could see that now. The sphere had been a war-weapon, scattered by a race at war with Kaldar and, the more he thought of it, the more diabolical a weapon it appeared. Small, indestructible, a thing that simply sat and soaked up the energy from the sun until, all at once, wham!

And he had thought he’d found the Jackpot.

McCarty grunted and he climbed to his feet beside the other man. A file of natives approached them from the edge of the jungle. The wind blew from them and Larman’s stomach protested at the scent. It protested still more when he remembered that, if he wanted to eat, it would have to be in their village.

He forgot his stomach as he saw what they carried.

Each native wore a smile and held out his left hand in readiness for beads, to them wealth unimagined.

The other hand carried, in the full glare of the brilliant sun, a two-inch ball of utter blackness.

They had found their Jackpot.

THE KILLING STREETS, by Colin Harvey

The earth is rich in textures and smells. It hurtles by, your clawed hands scrabbling at earth, stones and tree roots, your prey’s odours hooked into your nostrils, pulling you along with fragrant fingers of meat and blood and ordure. Upwards you go and the too-bright sky burns your eyes and your victims’ screams scour your eardrums, but it doesn’t matter, for your killing bite crunches bone and the hot sweet taste of blood fills your mouth. You spit out the foul cotton and polyester wrapping and as your grasping bite clamps onto the corpse so that you can pull your victim into the hole you erupted from, its head lolls over and you know with a shock of recognition who it belongs to—

* * * *

The phone ringing woke Thom. He scrabbled for it down the side of the chair. “Yeah?”

“You napping?” Marian’s cool tones were blurred by a lousy line, but he could still hear the reproach beneath her amusement.

“Nah, just letting the cat out.” He rubbed his eyes with thumb and forefinger, squinting. The watery spring sunshine streamed through the window. At least it would charge the roof panels a little, and anything that cut their power bills to the merely astronomical helped.

Lately he had been falling asleep in the daytime, but there was little else to do but watch Sky’s latest feel-good pap or be lectured by the Beeb on street-safety, and at least the TV hibernated if he stayed still too long.

“You checked, first?”

“Nah, I put him out to face the first passing Snark.” It came out sharper than he’d meant. “Joking. Course I did, love.”

His unexpected half-apology seemed to catch her off guard, for she fell silent. He flicked the deep-screen on for the dog-racing—he’d put a couple of quid on a hound running at Hammersmith—but instead found himself watching a bulletin on a Bubo outbreak in Ghent. He’d never liked Belgians, they were too boring, but he wouldn’t wish the plague on anyone. “You still there?” He said at last.

“Yeah, sorry,” she said with a sudden catch of breath that made him wonder if she’d been crying. “You at home?”

“What have you forgotten?” He tried to sound amused, but it came out querulous. “I was on my way to sign on.”

“I forgot your Auntie’s prescription. Could you drop it in at the pharmacy?”

He checked the time. “I have to sign on first.”

“Okay,” she said.

He accessed Auntie’s pension file, printed off the prescription, and gathered the ID needed to prove he was the old woman’s proxy.

And afterwards he would take his chances and sneak over for a couple of hours with Liv.

* * * *

He pulled the front door closed behind him.

The air smelled of dust and neglect, the East wind whipping bits of paper into the air. Turning his collar up he stared at St. Mary Redcliffe, its spire now dwarfed by the ultra-highs soaring from their islands on the nearby river. The windmills that had given the hill its name were back, now with giant blades shaped like hundred-foot-high Spitfire propellers. He listened for a minute then satisfied, set off alongside Victoria Park, whose grounds were scarred with Snarkhills, passing the burned out wreck of an old petrol-engined Skoda.

YouGov’s SnarkWatch site showed the locations of each Snark attack. Theory was that they returned to the scenes of their previous kills, and that people who travelled by the same route all the time were more likely to be attacked. But no one knew for sure, even now, a decade after Animal Lib warriors mistakenly let them out of Orton Industries’ bio-research labs, instead of the mink and chinchillas they’d targeted. That the liberators had signed their own death warrants had been scant consolation to the thousands of victims since.

Thom walked quickly, humming some thrash-metal to set a pace, keeping close to the terraced houses, and skipping across the road as he reached the lamp-post which had never worked as far as he could remember, but was a useful landmark and impromptu gallows when necessary. He passed another Snarkhill, the soft new asphalt forming a miniature volcano cone. Another lesson learned the hard way—pedestrians should avoid new tarmac, which was fractionally softer than older road surfaces.

Crossing into the next street he heard a rumbling, and held his breath. Rumour was that Snarks weren’t the worst bio-weapon to have escaped the labs, that there were things that would eat their victim’s brains and leave them superficially unharmed and ready to be used as a zombie against the Asiatics, others that would paralyze and use their prey as a live host for their offspring. Thom guessed that that was just bollocks fed to the plebs by The Daily Mail and its sister rags.

The Snarks were bad enough and unlike the urban myths were actually out there. They had the digging ability of a mole crossed with super-fast reflexes and a rapacious appetite. That was bad enough. Thom wondered what maniac would design an animal that could also out-breed rabbits and survive where cockroaches couldn’t.

“The Old Cold War made people do some bad things,” Marian had said in her dogmatic way when he’d voiced such a question. “And the war’s worse this time round.” He wondered how she knew.

He saw a dog ahead and froze. Feral or domestic, he wondered, and was answered when it scratched at a door. When there was no answer, the mangy poodle barked. Thom tiptoed even more lightly, while trying to speed up as well. He reached the next corner just as he heard the rumbling, saw the slight pressure wave pushing up the tarmac, and just as the door to the house opened, and the old woman reached out to drag it in, the paving slabs mushroomed upwards, and something shaped like a mole -but whose head was as big as the old woman- exploded out of the ground, taking them both in one bite of more and bigger teeth than any animal had a right to have.

While it was busy dragging its prey back down into the hole, he was off and running to Auntie Beth’s house. His head was splitting, and he felt as if he would be sick at any minute.

* * * *

“It was almost on the front doorstep,” he called to Auntie Beth, pouring boiling water into the kettle. “Never seen one so close to a house. They don’t like the concrete.” No one knew if that was true. Orton’s prompt arrest and suspiciously speedy suicide, and the lynch mob that had stormed Orton Industry’s labs meant that people didn’t know as much as they should about them. Some such as Thom’s mates down the pub said that that was deliberate.

Up in her bedroom he gently pulled the old woman’s skinny legs out of bed. She groaned, and noticing the bed sores he resolved to move her more often. “The shakes are bad today,” he said, referring to the palsy that made her limbs quiver. On her few good days, Beth Hyde was still the same woman who had raised him after her staunchly Christian sister and brother-in-law had been shipped off to a camp. Luckily, their teenage son had already started to behave in ways that made it obvious that he didn’t share their unfashionable -and by the end of the Jihad increasingly provocative—views, so he escaped their fate.

Today was like most days, though, with Beth no longer able to remember who she was, who he was, and worst of all, where the toilet was. Sniffing, he winced, and chattered as he guided her to the bathroom. “It’s the people who keep to routine who seem to get caught by the Snarks.” Looking away as he lifted her nightie to nominally preserve her dignity, he sat her on the lavatory.

“Marian’s got a promotion,” he said, realizing that today was a bad day—Beth could barely stand- and breaking off some of the cheap toilet paper. “We can eat meat four times a week.” And spoon-feed Auntie the left-overs the next day, as he would today, after washing and dressing her. Once, the Government had paid carers an allowance, before the pensioner’s numbers exploded and those of the carers dwindled. “I don’t know what her job involves,” he added. He had stopped asking; something clerical at the Department of Work and Pensions. It had needed a first-class Honours degree to get it, and he was grateful they were so lucky, if tired of feeling so useless. She often told him he shouldn’t resent the Official Secrets Act precluding her discussing it with him—that it kept him safe from the hardened criminals looking for information from partners such as him. “A shame Marian’s such a stickler for the rules,” he thought aloud as he turned Auntie around. “It’d be nice to have some bloody idea of what she does.”

* * * *

He pushed through the Jobcentre doors with a minute to spare for his interview -being late would have cost him a week’s money- then had to wait forty minutes to see his Benefit Provider; it gave him time to get his breath back. The pink and turquoise chairs had been gaudy when they were installed two years earlier, but now were as drab as before the last overhaul.

From the jobcentre he took the new raised walkways across to the pharmacist, where he dropped in the prescription, proved that he was her proxy and signed that he would pick up the medicine the next day. All of which could have been done electronically, he thought sourly, but it filled up the day. But he had the rest of it to himself. He hummed a jazz revival of Every Time You Say Good-bye.

* * * *

Liv opened the door with a smile. “You took your time.”

He kissed her. “I had to take a detour.”

As they fell into bed, Thom told her about Auntie, and Liv’s face clouded. “If you moved in with me—” he hushed her with a finger to her lips. It was an old discussion. Liv’s parents had had to use every trick in the book to reduce the inheritance tax on the sixth-floor flat, but still, although it was all she would ever have, there wasn’t room for her, two boys and Thom and Auntie.

They spent the next two hours in bed, though as the afternoon wore on and they dressed Liv slowly grew ever more tense, as she did every afternoon he’d spent with her; the school her sons attended took every precaution possible, using Thumpers to simulate footsteps but though attacks on buses were rare, they still happened from time to time—some of the Snarks seemed to be able to recognize the decoys as fakes.

When the boys burst through the door Liv’s relief was as palpable as always. Thomas the younger son gave Thom a toothy grin, but Dan only grunted, doggedly showing no sign of friendliness -even after a year.

“I’ll be going,” Thom said. She begged him to stay, but he shook his head. “I need to get home. Good little man must have the dinner waiting.”

* * * *

Rush hour usually brought with it increased Snark attacks though today’s trip home was uneventful. Thom noticed more people wearing respirators than usual, despite the air quality being much better than in summer. He asked Marian about it when she came through the door, pulling her own mask off.

“Been an outbreak of Blacktongue,” she said.

While she ran a bath—she would soak in the water as if to wash away the stains of the day- he cooked vegetables to stretch the Lasagne further. “Good day?” He asked when she emerged from the bathroom, hair turbaned up with a towel, dressing-gown half undone, though it didn’t arouse him. He had to think of Liv on the few occasions when he and Marian made love.

She didn’t answer, but retreated to the bedroom to dress.

He shrugged. “I guess not, then.”

They ate dinner in front of the television, Marian forking Lasagne into her mouth like a machine.

Another evening passed almost silently with a woman he didn’t love but couldn’t leave, barely four miles away from the woman he loved but couldn’t afford to be with.

He went to bed too early, pleading a headache. It wasn’t completely a lie; his limbs were aching.

* * * *

The prey are getting harder to catch; they wrap themselves in fast-moving metal boxes that taste foul and are often too quick to trap. Yesterday you caught two at once, an old one with a small furry thing that was barely a bite on its own but served as an appetizer for the main meal. Even had you been already full—rather than starving—it would have only satisfied you for a few days, though they are better than the morsels that flock through the spaces below. But you need to feed again, and soon.

Dinner is moving around up there, you can sense them, share their feelings sometimes, smell their fear as they go about their lives.

“Have you got any cash?” Thom asked. He could have stayed in bed, but sharing breakfast gave him company, and he sensed that Marian liked it.

“Again?” Marian asked, though he sensed she secretly liked him asking. It gave her power.

“I lost a bit on a dog yesterday.”

“Oh, Thom, you’re not turning into a gambling addict?”

He shrugged. He had actually given the money to Liv, who didn’t have enough to live on. He was finding it hard to think this morning so instead of replying, he just stared at her over the cereal.

She gave him a fifty. “I should transfer it to your card.”

“A lot of places don’t like taking cards,” he said.

“Leaves too many traces,” she said with a nasty smile.

“Not like they can’t tell where we are by tracking our phones, anyway.” They were the government, police, anyone in authority who formed an amorphous, resented mass in Thom’s mind.

He studied Marian, tried to see her as she had been when he’d met her at Uni; before he’d got such a crap grade that he was unemployable and the laughter and sex had soured. Ten years on she had barely changed physically, though she dressed better and styled her hair regularly. The only real difference, he decided, was the permanent downtown in the corners of her mouth.

“What?” She had looked up and caught him gazing at her.

“Nothing much,” he said.

She didn’t pursue it. Once she would have. Instead, she asked, “When are you going to see Auntie?”

Before he could answer his mobi warbled. He stared at the caller-avatar in surprise before answering. “Amir,” he said to the cartoon Bollywood idol. “How you doing?”

“Good, mate. Long time, eh?” Before Thom could reply, Amir added, voice so loud that Marian could probably hear every word. “I got a bit of a problem, and wondered if you could help me.”

“Long as it’s legit,” Thom said, aware of Marian’s gaze. He grinned at her, and she raised her eyebrows with a smile.

“Course, it is, man. I ain’t gonna offer you no Black, not with that Gauleiter Missus of yours.”

Thom mouthed sorry at Marian and said, “She’s only civil service, mate.”

“Might as well be the fecking Stasi, pal. They all the same; all talk-talk-talking to one another trying to drive us on-tre-pren-oors out of business. Listen, I got a man had an accident overnight, left me shorthanded. I’m doing the full eco-refit on an old terraced place in Bishopston. It’s only one day’s work, if my man turns back in tomorrow.”

You mean, if you can get someone else to work on the Black, Thom thought. Cash in hand would never be driven out, not while men like Amir were around, despite all the government’s efforts, which had led some to complain that penalties for untaxed income were almost as bad as for murder. “You’ll need to make it worth my while,” Thom said. “They’ll dock me a day’s pay, plus I need to arrange a sitter for Auntie, and there’s the cost of getting there.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Amir said. “I’ll cover your dole plus a tenner plus the cost of the fare. Get the Bedminster mono across to Zetland Road and we’ll pick you up.” The line went dead.

Marian smiled. “Looks like your day’s taken care of.”

He felt absurdly cheerful. “Looks like it is.”

* * * *

It felt odd walking with Marian to the monorail station, changing his normal semi-random shuffle to her more ordinary pace. But while her walk was regular, she always thoroughly checked the route so that they avoided previous kill-sites.

She and most of the rest of the crowded compartment left when they reached the City Centre. “I’m working late tonight.” She gave him a farewell peck.

He had bought a Ten-journey card—it was only marginally more expensive than a return. “Just in case Amir’s man doesn’t turn up tomorrow,” he had explained to an amused Marian. With it burning a hole in his pocket, he toyed with the idea of sneaking off to meet Liv, or even riding the mono out to journey’s end at Filton for the sheer fun it, but he squashed both ideas.

But as soon as he was alone he rang Marian, sans avatar.

She also answered Bareface. “You’re up early.” She smiled.

“I couldn’t wait to see you.”

“Flannel merchant,” she said, her colour rising, but she could only half-hide her pleasure.

“I’ve got a job.” He pulled an apologetic face. “Sorry.” He added, “It’s only for today, I think.”

She said, “I can’t expect you to turn down work to see me. But if you keep doing it…” she raised an eyebrow in mock-threat. “What about Auntie Beth? Will Marian take care of her?”

Will she bollocks, Thom thought. “No, she’s tied up. I’ll go across at lunch-time.”

“Why don’t I visit her?” Liv said.

“You sure? I don’t want to put you to any trouble….” It was an unexpected relief. He’d half-expected to not be able to call in on Auntie at all.

“I wouldn’t offer if it was any trouble,” Liv said with a smile. “Where did you say you kept the key?”

“Third brick below the doorbell,” he said. “You’re an angel.”

* * * *

When he descended the steps of the Zetland Road terminus Amir was waiting for him with four other men, two of them in the cab of a flat-bed, two more sitting in the back. Amir clapped him on the shoulder in greeting. The others nodded, but didn’t speak. They barely talked all day, except to ask for tools or help as they fitted the sleek black panels. Thom guessed that Amir had warned them that he was married to a civil servant and therefore suspect.

The redbrick house was merely one in countless rows of bay-windowed Edwardian terraces with stained glass over the front door whose ground floor was now uninhabitable without Snark-proofing.

Amir’s men had already covered the entire ground floor with a concrete-floored recycling tank into which flowed the run-off from dishwashers, washing machines, baths and showers while the water doubled as Snark-proofing. The conversion required the lounge to be moved up a floor and the bedrooms to the attic: Inevitably some space was lost, but it saved lives.

“What you going to do with the tiles?” Thom asked Amir in the afternoon, as they stacked them in the flatbed while the others clamped the solar panels to roof joists in their place.

“Sell ’em,” Amir said. “It’s added profit. You interested?”

“Nah, thanks” Thom said. “We’re panelled up with Solars.”

As Thom finished stacking the tiles, Amir hefted the turbine, a compact version of those covering Windmill Hill. “We’ll fit this and we’re done - we made better time than I expected. Fancy a pint?”

Thom weighed up how long it would take to Liv’s. “Not just yet,” he said. “I have something to do first.” He gave Amir a little wink.

Amir grinned back. “That’s more like my old school-mate.” He clapped Thom on the shoulder. “I was beginning to worry that Marian was turning you into a saint.”

* * * *

The boys were at late-class as usual on Tuesdays so Thom was able to snatch a stolen hour with Liv. But too soon she was kissing him good-bye, fastening a shirt button that he had missed. “You ought to get Auntie to the Doctors. She didn’t look too good.”

“Tomorrow,” he promised. As they kissed again, he groaned. “Oh can’t I stay?” He sang falsetto, “Just a little bit longer?”

“You promised to meet Amir and the boys,” She said. “Go!”

Riding back on the mono, Thom saw Marian. He was about to call out to her, but she looked so furtive that when she changed lines he instead followed her. She was dressed in a scruffy jacket without the Pashmina he had bought her for her last birthday, minus the make-up she normally needed to face the world and wearing a pair of thick-rimmed glasses -as a disguise, he guessed from her behaviour.

She walked briskly to a large Georgian building facing an open square paved with flagstones, emerging an hour later in her usual clothes. He tailed her until he was sure that she was going home. Only then did he resume his journey.

* * * *

Next day was back to normal, though it was hard to adjust after a day of having some purpose, of making something. In fact, having worked even for one day made it harder to cope with his usual lack of a central purpose.

“Did you have a good night?” Marian seemed to crunch her cereal with extra ferocity, but it was probably his hangover making it sound so loud.

“Yep,” he said, and to forestall any complaints she may have made about drinking his earnings away added, “Amir was buying.”

“That was good of him.”

“Probably charity for old time’s sake,” Thom said, screwing up his eyes at the hit of extra strong coffee. “But I don’t mind long as he don’t rub it in. He said something about getting a bonus for finishing early, but I think that’s crap.”

“What about your Aunt?” Marian said.

“Looked in on the way to the pub,” he lied fluently, though she had asked the question a little too casually. Does she suspect? He wondered. “That’s why I met him after work. I didn’t think I could leave her all day.” He put a little emphasis on the ‘all’ and was gratified to see her flush.

“What plans today?” He said. “Want to meet for lunch?” He didn’t really want to meet, but Amir had suggested it, when they had talked about it the night before, after—Thom realized now- one beer too many. “Try something unexpected,” Amir had said. “Watch her reaction.”

Marian looked nonplussed. “I—no, I can’t. Sorry, I have to work through lunch. Sorry.” She said, “What will you do instead?”

“I’ll check the website for jobs,” he said. “Fetch Auntie’s prescription—I didn’t get a chance yesterday- and get her shopping. The usual.”

He sighed, and she reached across and squeezed his hand. “If we could get her in a home…” She said, but they both knew that there were too few places that would take a semi-continent woman who on good days could just remember who she was.

“It’s okay,” he said, knowing that she didn’t cope well with illness -she could barely bear to be around any invalid, let alone someone as ill as Auntie. Marian’s limit was to share Saturday afternoon visits with him, and they were the shortest of the week.

She squeezed his hand. “Thanks.”

“What for?”

“Understanding.”

He smiled; obscurely disappointed that she had turned down the lunch offer, even though he’d expected her to.

Later he surfed the net, while the TV showed a programme on the slow death of the cattle industry, from increasing costs and dwindling profit, multiple disease outbreaks, and finally rural Snarks. The narrator said, “An upside of the mass move from dairy to cereal is that as crops don’t attract Snarks, the farmers are safe if they take sensible precautions.” Thom thought of the down-side—increasingly starving Snarks moving into the cities.

When he checked the jobsite, predictably most vacancies called for PhDs. He toyed with the idea of returning to Uni, but with Marian earning, they’d have to fund it themselves, and that would tip them over the edge of solvency. With a sigh, he exited the JobSite and checked SnarkWatch, noting recent kill sites.

Marian had urged him to spend longer with Auntie, prompted—he guessed- by her own guilt, so he left earlier than usual. He took the street parallel to the route he’d taken before, so that the Snark wouldn’t sense a pattern. Several times he found himself walking a straight line and started to hop from crack to crack for a minute or two, humming Bob Marley, ensuring his rhythm was irregular enough to not attract a Snark.

A corpse hung from a lamp-post, and he shivered, wondering what urban justice had prompted the hanging; the St Vitus Dance-like thrashings of Blacktongue seemed to draw Snarks, and flash-mob lynchings grew common as the disease mutated -it seemed- at will. Or it could simply have been that someone accused the man of petty theft. The body seemed to still twitch but it must have been the breeze or his imagination. He walked on, his mood soured.

Auntie seemed worse today, barely responding at all when he tried to ease her out of bed, so he left her where she lay. When he tried to feed her, she turned her head away, groaning. He had to get her to the toilet, however much pain it caused her. It was then that he noticed the bruising on her legs, and felt her forehead. “You’re burning up, Auntie.”

He called Marian on his mobile for advice, but went straight through to her voicemail, so hung up without leaving a message.

Then he took a bowl of warm soapy water to Auntie while she sat on the throne. He washed her, while trying to screen out her cries. After helping Auntie into a dressing gown, Thom shepherded her into her box-sized lounge where he sat her in a chair, while he rushed over to the pharmacy. He hoped that he might be able to log onto a public terminal there, and check Auntie’s symptoms.

But the terminal returned a dozen answers and the pharmacist seemed unsure, asking him a barrage of whispered questions to which he didn’t have the answers, while she looked around as if a flash-mob might coalesce at any moment.

Heading back, he wondered whether to call Liv, but decided instead to send her a text; “Can’t make it today. Sorry.” She might feel as let down as he did, but if Auntie had something serious, he couldn’t risk exposing her to it.

Back at Monmouth Street, Auntie felt even hotter. Worried about dehydration, he mixed boiling water from the kettle with honey and lemon, then with some cold water to make it drinkable. But she seemed even more desperate not to eat or drink and as she wriggled and squirmed to avoid the cup, he saw her tongue and went cold.

He couldn’t believe that he hadn’t noticed it before.

Auntie Beth retracted the black lump as if suddenly lucid; it may have been his imagination, but he thought he saw momentary fear in her eyes and wondered if she knew deep down how deadly her symptoms were.

* * * *

He skulked around the library, looking for internal surveillance cameras, waiting for a careless user to leave their desk with the machine still logged onto the net. Eventually he found one, and Googled vague terms like ‘swollen tongue.’ Apart from the obvious one he found no mention of other infections. He managed reach a free Australian site via a couple of detours and typed in ‘Blacktongue,’ but the machine immediately locked down. He shook his head in frustration and walked away as Library Security sauntered in, their casual behaviour not fooling him for a second.

On the way back he felt a distant rumbling several times, and changed his rhythm and direction to create an illusion of randomness. He heard a scream, quickly cut off, from a couple of streets away. He could feel them, something he’d never noticed before. And when he reached home and poured himself a glass of water, the surface of it shook as if there were a distant earthquake. He poked his tongue out in the mirror. Was it his imagination, or was it slightly swollen?

He was racking his brains wondering where he could get answers when his mobi rang. “Amir,” he said, as Icon switched to Bareface. “I was just about to call you.”

“That building you followed your missus to last night,” Amir said without preamble. “The one you sent us the Pic of.”

“Uh-huh.” Thom wondered if he might yet regret his drunken confession. “It said Colston Enterprises on the front plate.”

“That’s bollocks, mate. It’s DWP Fraud Surveillance. Told you they was all bloody Stasi. You’re married to a Snoop.” Amir paused. “Course, if I was mixed up in the wrong kind of things, like, I might have a mate who was involved in selling alternative-sourced pharmaceuticals. You know?”

“And might this mate—”

“If I was, which of course I’m not.”

“But if you were, would this mate be unemployed?”

“By the law of averages, people like that are.”

“So he might recognize someone from the Stasi?”

“Again, by the law of averages…”

“I understand.” Thom paused. “Well,” he said, “Could your mate do me a favour? I need a temporary Net-User ID.”

Amir’s eyes narrowed and Thom wondered how much he should tell his old friend. He had no proof it was Blacktongue (yeah, right said a cynical inner voice), nor that he was infectious. Amir said, “What you need it for?”

“A friend of mine is in some trouble—I don’t want Marian involved,” Thom said.

“I’ll text you the details,” Amir said. “You’ll have thirty minutes, so use it quick.”

“Sure.” Thom hung up. Seconds later, his mobi bleeped. Crash-and-burns were self-eradicating and in theory left no traces. If he were quick he could search the net, then report his phone missing straight after, denying any knowledge of the search. He headed for the front door. “Might as well do it on the move.”

For once, he had to consciously remember to change rhythm, and several times he thought that he heard a rumble coming nearer. When he finally managed to find what he was looking for, he stopped, and stared at the screen. Blacktongue’s symptoms matched Auntie Beth’s exactly. The shaking, swollen tongue, joints bruised from internal bleeding.

The virus was usually caused by insect bites, as it was in the original bovine disease that gave the geneticists their template. But then the bastards had made it still more lethal, making it temporarily communicable by touch. Thom was surprised that the Chinese or Iranians -or whoever was really behind it- had limited the infectious period to only twenty-four hours, but guessed that uncertainty would add to the panic its mere presence would cause.

Worse, symptoms included headaches and nausea. Maybe it wasn’t a simple hangover he had had. In which case, Lisa and the boys were as good as dead.

He tossed the mobi into a bin as if it burned his hand. Googling even only a semi-official site with ‘Blacktongue’ would set off alarms in government surveillance sites and they could use the mobi to track him. He danced his way past the rumblings of the subterranean predators to Auntie Beth’s house, humming ‘Spy in the House of Love.’ He was oddly calm: Perhaps the grief and then the anger would come later. If he was infected, it would have been by now.

Auntie Beth had fallen out of bed and was lying face down on the carpet. Her breathing was ragged, her eyes sightless when he lifted and turned her, but her feet were beating a manic percussion on the floor, and her hands and arms twitched and flexed to an internal metronome. Her tongue was now so swollen that the black slab of flesh poked out of her mouth, even when he tried to close it.

Thom put her down and walked across to the mantelpiece above a fire that hadn’t been lit in decades. He gazed at the pictures; Marian and Thom on their wedding day; Thom aged eleven in his school uniform, grinning toothily at the camera; Auntie Beth in her early forties, holding a young boy by the hand -he stared shyly at the camera, and Thom barely recognized himself; Auntie as a young woman with another woman, whom Thom guessed to be her lost love; and a fairly recent one, taken just before the old woman began the slow spiral into premature senility, of Thom flanked by Auntie and Marian; he couldn’t remember who had taken any of them.

He walked back to the spasming body, and put his hands on her head. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’d end it for you now, but a mercy killing needs to be done right, and I’m not sure I wouldn’t stuff it up.”

He picked up the antique land-phone and dialled Marian’s number. Before she could answer, he put down the phone. What was the point of telling her that Auntie had Blacktongue?

“I can’t hack this, Auntie,” he said from the doorway. “I hope it ends quick, and you don’t suffer, love.” He pulled the door shut behind him.

He stopped at a little kiosk that sold items whose provenance the buyer didn’t ask, and bought a voice-only disposable mobi for which he paid cash. When the elderly Turk asked for ID, Thom said casually, “I’ve left it at home. I’ll bring it in tomorrow.” The shopkeeper smiled and added ten pounds to the price, which Thom paid without arguing.

Outside, he dialled Liv and wasn’t surprised at her cautious “hello,” to an unknown voice-only number. “I can’t talk for long,” he said. “I just called to tell you that I love you, and the boys. I’ll call you later. No, nothing’s wrong.”

He set off for the city centre, singing neo-reggae songs that had a slower beat than normal, weaving across the pavement, at times into the road, wiping his nose occasionally, trying to sort out the confusion of feelings inside him.

When he reached his destination, he called Liv again and said, “I’m going to call you once, then hang up. When I call you again, straight after, don’t answer, don’t speak at all. Just keep quiet.” He cut the line, and murmured, “I can’t give you hope, darling, I can’t give you justice. But I can give you revenge.” He settled down to wait.

* * * *

Marian’s eyes widened as she saw Thom waiting across the square. He crossed quickly before Marian could descend the steps and joined her at the top, where they would be safe from even the biggest Snark, should one surface.

The square was empty but for a few late commuters, hurrying home before it got dark. Daytime felt safer, whether or not it was. For all their technology, people were still cavemen under the skin, scared of the predators beyond the campfire.

“You knew, didn’t you?” He said loudly, phone in hand, his foot tapping in time to the pulsing of the virus through his blood. Somewhere, a Snark was circling, digging its way through the soil.

Marion smiled, and the knowledge in her eyes chilled his blood. “Knew what?”

Thom leaned forward. “Can’t hear you,” he said, hoping that deafness was a symptom of Blacktongue. Marian repeated the question. “That Auntie Beth had Blacktongue,” he replied. “That I’d get it…and…”

“Infect your whore?” Marian shouted, then shrugged. “That’s what you get for screwing around.”

“She isn’t—”

“She might as well be!” Between words, Marian’s lips were a line so thin as to be invisible. “Why? Wasn’t I enough?”

He swallowed, his tongue already feeling too big for his mouth. “Because. There’s only so much TV you can watch in a day. Because she doesn’t make me feel so bloody useless?”

“It’s my fault?” Her eyes widened, and he saw shock turn to anger.

“Not your fault. But you have a job. She doesn’t, so it makes us equals.”

“And I’m supposed to pay for you and your whore?”

Thom could see now how it might have looked. It was easier for Marian to believe that he paid for sex, than to believe that he was trying to care for a second family. He shook his head. “We’ll—we would have taken our chances, if it had come to it. Why are you so bloody angry, anyway? Christ, it’s not as if we had anything—”

“I thought we did!” Marian shouted. “I loved you, even when you turned into a whining, walking lump of self-pity.”

“You never showed it.”

“I never show anything, dummy!” She said, wiping her eye angrily. “Why do you think that I stayed with you? I could live in reasonable comfort on my own, not in a dump like we have.”

They stared at one another in silence, and both sighed. Something that should have been so obvious but had got wrapped in the cotton wool in Thom’s brain seeped through. “Why haven’t you got Blacktongue?”

Marian shrugged. “Luck, I guess.” Her smirk told him she lied.

“There’s a cure—”

“No, it’s a vaccine,” Marian said. “It’s nearly impossible to synthesize, so it’s rarer than rocking-horse shit. You see why it’s kept quiet?”

“So the story’s true, then?” Thom nodded, understanding. “Don’t want the plebs being cured, do we, draining the state? Sometimes I wonder if the bastards let these things out on purpose to keep our numbers down.”

“That’s just paranoia,” Marian said. “Don’t be silly.”

“Is it? The state’s always worked on fear to keep people in line.” He added, “You need it for your work.” Marian’s eyes widened as he continued, “If you’re buying bootleg meds as part of a sting, you might catch something.”

She said, “They’re often how it’s spread. But how—”

“Your suspects know,” he said.

She mouthed an ‘oh,’ and said, “Catch Blacktongue early and you can stop it, though it leaves you needing medication for the rest of your life. I take the pills in work.”

His laugh was a bitter snort. “I suppose I’ve got no chance of getting my hands on any?” He felt the oppressive presence of a Snark rumbling by on the next street.

She looked down, scraped her foot on the step. “I got the vaccine for you,” she said. “But only enough for one person. It’s up to you if you want it.”

“So Liv dies, like Auntie’s dying now.”

“Auntie’s old!” Marian said, her eyes glinting. “She has no quality of life.”

“Did you give it to her on purpose?”

“No! Of course not! What sort of monster—”

“Would infect other people, innocent people? How’d you do it?”

“I didn’t,” Marian said. “But there are people who will break in for a few hundred quid, while the target’s out. Just leave an infected fly buzzing around to spread the virus. Or someone immunized who’ll brush up against the target during the infectious window.”

“The target? A nice, sterile name for an innocent woman.”

“Your whore isn’t innocent!”

“Her name,” he snarled, gripping her arm, “is Liv. She has a name. She has kids. Is it their fault, too?”

Her eyes widened. “I didn’t know—I, I just followed you one day, waited for you to come out, saw her. I didn’t know.”

“Will you let Liv and her children die?” He said. He grabbed her arm and dragged her down the steps.

“Stop it!” She tried to reach into her bag, but her right arm was clamped in his hands, and the bag was hanging over her left shoulder so that she couldn’t unzip it left-handed. He guessed she was carrying a taser or pepper spray “Let go of me!”

Instead he dragged her down the steps into the danger zone. “Commuters have to cross this.” He chin-cocked the cracked paving slabs onto which he dragged her, the weak spot in the route to the other side of the square, and the steps up to the monorail stop, and safety. “You’re not the only one who can work things out.” He stamped his feet, letting the delicious, delirious twitching have its way at last, drumming his heels on the ground right next to a couple of upraised slabs, imitating the symptoms of Blacktongue. “You might be safe from the virus, but you won’t survive a Snark attack.”

“Thom, please.” She tried to wriggle free, but he gripped her left arm in his right hand, to pull her around in a parody of a dance. “Please, Thom, let me go. I’ll give you the vaccine. Here,” she said, trying to pull free, “let me give it you now.”

But he held on tight. “Come on, Marian, let’s dance!” He began to jump up and down on the spot. “Let’s pogo!” All his life he seemed to have been scared, or miserable or both. Knowing it couldn’t get any worse was weirdly liberating. “White Riot! White Riot! White, white, white, white riot!” He yelled at the top of his voice, trying to remember the lines to some of Auntie Beth’s obscurer taste in music.

“Thom, for God’s sake!” Her shriek almost drowned out the distant rumbling.

“No more heroes anymore!” He bellowed. “Dah-dah-DAH-dah-DAH-dah-dah-—”

“THOM!”

He paused, panting. He could hear the rumbling. “What’s it going to be, Marian? You want to die as well?” He still hadn’t let go of her.

“I can give you the vaccine—”

“What about Liv? The boys? An eight-year-old and a teenager—do they deserve to die because their Mum met the wrong bloke?”

“I can only get one dose at the moment,” she gabbled, eyes wide. “I can get another tomorrow, maybe one the day after that, but I can’t get more than three—”

“Do—they—deserve—to—die?” He shouted the words, and she shook her head as the rumbling grew louder. His head was splitting and he was freaking out; he thought it had gone dark for a moment, and that his paws—hands- had gripped stones.

“No. No. I thought—” she shook her head, as if as confused as him. “I didn’t know about them. Of course they don’t.”

“Then get them the vaccine!” Thom begged. “Give Liv one dose tonight.”

“But what about you?”

“I’m a dead man, anyway, aren’t I?” Thom said, knowing that it was true. What was there to look forward to? Empty days of watching TV and screwing a woman he didn’t love, or living in poverty with the one he did. “They just haven’t turned off my heart yet,” he said. “Do you promise, Marian? Promise to get them the vaccine? To take care of them?”

Marian nodded, as the rumbling grew louder—

—It’s scrabbling at the stones, the scent of the prey nearly enough to make it swoon, but there are rocks in the way, if it can just get through…

“Run, Marian!” He shouted, jumping away from her. “Tip-toe, but tip-toe bloody quick, woman! Run for your life! And look after them!”

He pogo-ed, shouting and singing in a circle around another pushed up slab. He risked a look, and Marian was half-running, half-skipping in an erratic dance up the steps. He shouted, “Marian! Blacktongue attracts them!”

“What?”

“I can share their thoughts!” He saw her mouth hang open. “I can sense another one!”

He took the phone from his pocket; whispered, “Bye, love.”

He could smell wet fur and earth and carrion. He started to sing Redemption Song as the slabs in front of him erupted.

CHARON’S CURSE, by John Glasby

The ship from Earth was a mere thirty thousand miles from Jupiter when Major Melvin Jamieson entered the control room. An important man in spite of his unimpressive appearance; his sharp features outlined a hard mouth which seemed set in a perpetual sneer. Carl Naysmith, the captain of the Endeavor gave him a brief nod of recognition, then gestured him towards a chair.

As you see, Major,” Naysrnith said, waving a hand towards the large visiplate, “the Endeavor is on schedule. Another seventeen days and we should reach the orbit of Pluto, the first manned vessel to venture to the outer reaches of the solar system.”

Jamieson gave the visiplate a cursory glance, then said without preamble, “I’ve just opened the orders given me before we left Earth.” He held up the sheet of paper in his hand. “I’ve already carried out the first part of them. All of the molecular disruptors have been armed and are ready to be deployed on my command.” He tried to shape his mouth into a grim smile and failed miserably.

“May I ask why you’ve done that?” Naysmith asked. “I’ve received no such orders and as captain of this vessel—”

Jamieson interrupted him brusquely and consulted the paper in his hand. “Whether you’re aware of it or not, Captain Naysmitn, the First Directive issued by the Terran Government is that the entire solar system must be made absolutely safe for human colonization. Five years ago, Mars was completely sterilized to ensure that no unknown or dangerous organisms exist there.

“We’ve known for some time that large oceans exist beneath the ice on Europa, Jupiter’s fourth largest moon. Evidence gathered from the last unmanned probe to this planet shows that some form of alien life exists in those seas. The Directive specifically states that all forms of extraterrestrial life found in the solar system must be eliminated. That is why Euopa must be totally destroyed before such life can pose any threat to our future expansion.”

“And I presume you’ll consult with Doctor Marland, the biologist on board, before you carry out this act of destruction?”

“That won’t be necessary. I’ve no doubt she’ll object strongly to this course of action, but there’s nothing she can do to prevent it. The Directive overrules all other considerations.”

“And what is it I’m unable to prevent?” Sheila Marland had entered the control room unnoticed.

Before Jamieson could answer, Naysmith said, “Europa has to be destroyed. The military authorities on Earth believe there’s intelligent life in those oceans on that moon, life which could pose a threat to the human race.”

“Nonsense. You can’t do that. If there is intelligent life there, it has to be studied scientifically, not destroyed. Any life that exists on Europa is either some form of marine life, or simply a very primitive kind like that in Earth’s oceans a billion years ago.”

She turned to Naysmith. “Can’t you stop him, Carl? This is supposed to be a scientific expedition to study Pluto and its moon, not a military operation.”

Naysmith shrugged resignedly. “I’m afraid that the Prime Directive which the Major has overrules everything else. I don’t agree with it; in fact I object to it most strongly.”

Jamieson walked towards the visiplate, staring intently at the awe-inspiring scene. Jupiter loomed vast to one side, the Great Red Spot showing clearly. Three of the moons were visible, with Europa very close to the center. Io lay closest to the ship with Ganymede further away.

Without removing his gaze from the scene, Jamieson said sharply, “I want you to alter course slightly, Captain. I’ll give you the exact coordinates.”

He waited until Naysmith had taken up his position at the controls, then reeled off the numbers. Slowly, the image changed until Europa hung against the blackness in the exact center of the screen. Taking a small communicator from his pocket, Jamieson spoke rapidly into it.

There was no visible sign that anything was happening. The molecular disruptor beams were completely invisible. For almost five minutes, the picture on the visiplate remained unchanged. Then, without warning, Europa exploded. One second, the satellite was there; the next, it had vanished as completely as if it had never existed.

Satisfied, Jamieson said, “You may now resume our course to Pluto, Captain. My work here is done for the time being.”

When the military man had left the control room, Naysmith leaned back in his chair and ran a hand across his forehead. He knew Sheila was watching him closely with an expression of utter horror in her eyes.

Finally, she said, “There was no reason for him to do that, you know. To destroy an entire species just because the Government thinks that, at some time in the distant future, they might pose a threat to Earth.”

Naysmith sighed. “Unfortunately, the Government doesn’t think the way we scientists do.” As well as being captain of the Endeavor, he was also an eminent astronomer. “The only thing which concerns them is to colonize all of the possible planets and moons in the solar system. There isn’t enough room on Earth now. Mars is being; populated. The big corporations are setting up mining operations on most of the planetary moons.”

“So why this expedition to Pluto?” Sheila eyed the big viewing screen musingly. Already, Jupiter was failing away into the void behind them. Ahead lay mighty Saturn, Uranus and Neptune and then, far out towards the rim, tiny Pluto.

“From what I’ve been able to learn, there’s something odd about Charon, its moon.”

“Odd?”

“Yes. One theory is that Pluto was once a satellite of Neptune, which was torn away from that planet millions of years ago. That would explain its peculiar elliptical orbit, but if that were the case, it would have been the only double satellite in the entire solar system. What makes it even more mysterious is that Charon is half the size of Pluto. I suppose you could call it a double planet.”

“So you don’t go along with the theory that Pluto was once one of Neptune’s satellites?”

“No. But I’m hoping we’ll find some answers when we get there.”

“So how big is Charon?”

“About seven hundred and fifty miles in diameter. It takes only six and a half days to go around Pluto, the same time that the planet rotates on its axis.”

“So there shouldn’t be any problem landing on it?”

“None that 1 can foresee. It’s composed primarily of ice, possibly frozen methane. At least, it’s highly improbable there’s any form of life there. We may be able to carry out our observations without Jamieson breathing down our necks, threatening to destroy everything in sight.”

* * * *

Fourteen days later, the Endeavor entered a decelerating orbit to match their velocity with that of Pluto. In the rear visiplate, the Sun was now nothing more than a very bright star. Ahead of the vessel, Pluto showed as a small disc with Charon readily visible under high magnification.

The vessel was now on automatic and Naysmith had time to stand and watch the strange double world hanging against the utter blackness. So many questions to be answered, he thought. He could understand why Charon orbited the planet in exactly the same time it took Pluto to rotate on its axis. Gravity explained that quite satisfactorily. What he couldn’t fully understand was why Charon was there at all.

A satellite half the size of the parent planet! Was it just a freak of planetary formation, which had happened in the far distant past when the solar system came into existence? Or was there some other explanation that continued to elude him? With an effort, he pushed these thoughts from his mind. All of this was mere speculation. Until they actually landed on Charon and investigated that frozen moon thoroughly, everything was just conjecture.

He glanced at the chronometer on the wall. A meeting had been convened in another five minutes. He knew that Jamieson would attend and the thought sparked a sense of anger. He had been led to believe that this was purely a scientific mission, yet already the other had shown, quite clearly, that the military were really in command. Scarcely had the thought crossed his mind than the door slid open and Jamieson came in. There were two military men behind him and Naysmith felt his emotions harden still further as the men took up positions on either side of the door. Sheila Marland entered two minutes later.

She threw the soldiers a quick glance but said nothing, keeping her thoughts to herself.

When they were seated, Naysmith said tautly, “Now that we’ve almost reached our objective, it’s time to decide on what we intend to do. Our prime function, as I see it, is to make a landing on Charon. The general belief is that this satellite is composed solely of methane ice with no rocky core. However, until we’ve carried out drilling operations, we can’t be absolutely certain of that.”

Jamieson turned to Sheila. “I understand you’re also a microbiologist. You intend to take samples and examine them for the presence of bacteria and other microorganisms?”

“That’s correct. We know there are a few which could probably survive even under the extreme conditions we have here.”

“And if you find any?”

“Naturally, we’ll study them—under strict laboratory conditions, of course. We have all of the necessary facilities here on board the ship.”

Jamieson pursed his lips into a hard line. “I’m not sure I can allow that. Bringing unknown organisms on board the ship could pose a highly dangerous threat to all of us.”

“So your answer would be to vaporize Charon just as you did Europa?” Naysmith sat taut and straight in his chair. He had no doubt this was the only course open to men such as Jamieson. Kill anything that was not indigenous to Earth, without reason, without question.

He now realized why almost all of the crew were soldiers acting under the Major’s direct command. The Terran Government evidently wanted Pluto and Charon as armed outposts on the rim of the solar system—either to guard against imaginary invaders from some other planetary system, or jumping off points whenever they succeeded in venturing out to the stars. He felt suddenly sick in his stomach. Clearly there was no place for true scientists now.

* * * *

Against the light gravity, the Endeavor landed without incident. All around the ship, amid the eternal silence, lay a great sheet of ice. Pluto stood poised above the completely smooth horizon. Now, after the long days and weeks of the journey, everything was a hive of activity.

In the control room, Carl and Sheila stood watching the scene outside, ready to suit up. The landscape was unlike anything Carl had seen before. Over the past ten years, he had visited a number of the satellites of Jupiter and Saturn, had walked on the red deserts of Mars. But in all these instances, there had been variations in the terrain. Craters and the ancient riverbeds of Mars, strewn with huge boulders, throwing grotesque shadows across the ground. Even the moons of the major planets were pockmarked by meteoric impacts.

But outside the vessel, the ground appeared perfectly smooth as far as the eye could see with scarcely a blemish to mar the surface. It seemed utterly unreal.

Sheila came to stand beside him. “Ready to go out?” she asked.

He gave a shaky nod. “Somehow, I’ve got a funny feeling about all of this.”

“That’s nothing more than your imagination, Carl. I felt the same when I first went to the Moon, standing on a new world so different from Earth. Nothing has happened here for billions of years. I’d say it’s the one place in the entire solar system where nothing has ever happened.”

“Let’s hope you’re right. Because at the first sign of anything he doesn’t understand, Jamieson will have this world, and probably Pluto as well, vaporized.”

Ten minutes later they prepared to step out of the ship and onto the Charonian surface. The suits they wore were far different to those worn by the first astronauts decades earlier. Made of plastimetal, they clung to every contour of the body, allowing complete freedom of movement. Only the much lower gravity hampered them a little as they climbed down the short metal-runged ladder and stepped onto the incredibly smooth ground. Ice crystals gave slightly beneath their boots.

Above their heads, the sky was black but filled with more stars than Naysmith had ever seen. He noticed that Jamieson, some distance away, was also staring up into the heavens but Naysmith guessed that the Major’s thought were far different to his own. To the Major, those multitudinous points of light represented more worlds to conquer once the solar system had been colonized and a faster than light propulsion system could be developed. At the moment, that was just a dream—but it might be realized some time in the future and then men like Jamieson would come into their own.

He experienced a sudden hatred for the man and all he stood for, but the feeling passed instantly. Quite without warning, the ground beneath his feet shuddered. He saw the others who had come out of the ship—Sheila, Jamieson and three soldiers who were manhandling the heavy drilling equipment down the ladder, stagger and fall as the intensity of the quake hurled them off their feet.

The low gravity prevented any injury. Getting cautiously to his feet, he stared about him, seeking the origin of this strange phenomenon. At first, he could see nothing out of the ordinary. The glassy surface appeared unchanged.

Then he noticed Sheila pointing and turned as quickly as he could. Perhaps two miles away, a gaping circular hole showed in the ground. Even from that distance, it looked huge. A beam of intensely brilliant light poured from it.

The small ultrawave communicator in his helmet crackled faintly. Then Jamieson’s harsh voice sounded.

“All of you! Remain where you are. No one is to go near that hole—or whatever it is—until we know what we’re dealing with. Quite clearly, Charon is not as devoid of life as we thought.”

Naysmith spoke tersely, knowing his voice would reach everyone wearing a space helmet. “Whatever it is, Jamieson, we’ll find out nothing just standing here.” Moving awkwardly in the low gravity, he edged towards the gaping aperture.

“Stay where you are, Captain,” Jamieson cut in.

Naysmith continued walking. “I’m not under your command, Major,” he called back. “I came here to carry out scientific observations, along with Doctor Marland.”

There was a pause, then the Major’s voice came on again as he attempted to assert his authority. “Don’t forget that the military came along for your protection, Naysmith.”

“I’m aware of that,” Carl answered. “But this is a scientific expedition. This is something we never expected, something we nave to investigate. By all means have your men ready for any danger.”

Cautiously, Naysmith approached the vast circular aperture. The strange radiance still poured upward from it but now it was less brilliant. Sheila came to stand beside him, clinging tightly to his arm as they both stared down into the stupendous sight.

The sides of the tremendous shaft were perfectly smooth, every single detail clearly delineated in the light. It seemed to stretch down into the very core. Along its length were wide, circular openings, clearly extending laterally in all directions.

“What in God’s name is it?” Sheila’s voice was oddly muted in his communicator.

Naysmith hesitated before replying, his mind still whirling at the implications of what he saw. Then he managed to say, “It’s a space station.”

Jamieson had heard him, for his voice rasped, “A space station? That’s impossible. This must be millions, if not billions, of years old. Even something nuclear-powered couldn’t possibly be still functioning after all that time.”

From the edge of his vision, Naysmith saw the Major move forward, teetering on the rim of the opening.

“I realize it isn’t easy to take all of this in, Major,” Carl said. “But we have to believe the evidence of our own eyes. What we’re seeing now is something completely alien. Charon is not a moon of Pluto as we’ve always thought. Whoever—or whatever—constructed this must have been as technologically superior to us as we are to the apes.”

“And no doubt you have a theory as to why it’s here?”

“I’d say that’s fairly obvious. The human race—indeed the entire solar system—has been observed and monitored for countless millions of years. Whatever instruments are down there, they clearly detected our approach, which is why this airlock opened automatically once we set foot on the surface. I’d say we’ve been invited to enter.”

“Do you think that’s wise?” Sheila cautioned. “After all, we’ve no idea who these aliens are. It could be a trap.”

“For once, I agree with Doctor Marland,” Jamieson said, stepping back from the edge. “And as far as I can see, there’s no way down that shaft.”

“There has to be,” Carl declared. “This is clearly an airlock of some kind. My guess is that some form of antigravity is acting within this station.”

“You think they could have been sufficiently advanced for that?” Sheila asked.

Naysmith sucked in a deep breath. “There’s only one way to find out,” he said flatly.

He knew he was taking an awful chance but equally, they would learn nothing by just standing there. Almost without thinking, he took three steps forward, over the rim of the opening, out into empty space. For a heart-stopping moment, he thought he would plunge headlong down that awesome shaft.

Then he was drifting slowly downward, the smooth walls rising leisurely on either side. With an effort, he tilted his head and looked up. Four other figures were visible, moving down behind him. Sheila was there and he’d known Jaraieson would follow. Evidently, the Major had ordered two soldiers to accompany him in case of trouble.

Inwardly, Naysmith felt certain this massive space station was no longer occupied. Those who had constructed it would have left long before mankind had evolved on Earth. Only instruments would have been left to maintain a constant watch, patiently waiting for the evolution of any intelligent life.

Level after level passed by his vision, some brilliantly illuminated, others in complete darkness. Then, after what seemed an interminable period, he reached the bottom. Almost at once, gravity returned and as far as he could judge, it closely approximated that on Earth. A few moments later, the others joined him.

“This is almost beyond belief.” Jamieson stared around at the vast space in which they found themselves. Banks of instruments, miles long, occupied three of the curved walls. The ceiling was so far above their heads it was almost lost to sight. Seven massive corridors radiated from this central region, stretching away to the limit of their vision.

“An alien space station more than seven hundred miles in diameter.” Sheila’s face was a pale blur behind the transparent vizor. “But why—?”

“Why is it here, disguised as a moon of Pluto?” Carl turned from his contemplation of the tremendous arrays of colored lights which flashed on and off in strangely hypnotic sequences. “I think the facts speak for themselves. Someone out there, some race in the galaxy, far older than the human race, has been keeping watch on planetary systems, waiting for life to appear. I’d say that, long ago, when mankind began to evolve, this station detected it and sent a signal to somewhere.”

“But why?” Jamieson queried. “What could they hope to gain by that?”

“Who knows? We’re dealing with aliens here. It’s impossible even to guess what their motives were. Somehow, I don’t think we’re the only race to have been kept under constant surveillance all these billions of years.”

Jamieson reached a decision. “Until we find out more, I’m placing this station under military command. Now we know there are other races out there, beyond our solar system, we must search this place thoroughly. There could be weapons here far more powerful than anything we have at present. The sooner we find them and learn how to use them, the sooner we can defend Earth if it should come under attack from space.”

“Is that all you can think of? Bigger and better weapons!” Naysmith’s tone was sharp. “There could also be information here, knowledge, which could be of great benefit to mankind. And, if possible, I want to try to discover where this race came from.”

It was several moments before Jamieson replied. Then, reluctantly, he said, “Very well. You may carry out your investigations. But under no circumstances will you be allowed to interfere with my men.” Almost grudgingly, he added, “Perhaps it would be useful to know where these aliens came from. It’s even possible they know we’re here, although they may be light years away.”

* * * *

By the end of the tenth day they had examined only a minute part of the gigantic space station. Corridor after corridor opened out along the great central shaft. Even though Jamieson had drafted in twenty of his men, they still knew little about either the builders or its purpose. Naysmith’s belief that it was only one of thousands, perhaps millions, scattered throughout the galaxy, was still only conjecture.

There were strange letters and symbols everywhere, but it was impossible to decipher them. And there was the silence, deep and absolute. The countless machines and instruments functioned without sound and the power that energized them seemed limitless. Small shuttles, automatically operated, now transported them for miles, deep into the station.

Then, Naysmith came upon a part of the huge station he had not visited before. From what little he knew about the general layout, it was well removed from the central area. The corridor he had taken suddenly ended in a vast door. Unlike other doors they had encountered, blocking off certain passages, this one did not open automatically as he approached.

Baffled, he stood for several minutes studying it closely, then ran his fingertips over the carved walls on either side. The small protuberance cast no shadow in the all-pervading radiance. He pressed it gently, then more forcibly, felt it move.

Soundlessly, the great door slid aside.

In the center of the massive space stood a strange-looking craft, its outlines completely alien.

Stunned by what he saw, he called to the others, waited until they carne up.

“This is some kind of starship,” Jamieson said after a brief pause. “But it’s unlike anything I’ve ever—”

He broke off abruptly. A voice suddenly sounded inside their heads.

Now that you have discovered this vessel, it is time for you to know everything. Countless races such as yourselves have evolved within the galaxy since it was formed. We were among the first and, unlike most of the others, we went out among the stars, not to conquer, but to observe and guide.

This vessel will travel far faster than light. It can take you to the stars. At the moment, it is programmed to return you to your home planet. Once there, the decision how to use it is yours.

“This changes everything.” Jamieson’s voice held a note of intense exultation. “Once the military on Earth get their hands on this ship, their scientists will soon have a fleet of them ready.”

Naysmith swung on him. “I won’t let you do that. You’ve already destroyed one satellite. Now you want to—”

He stopped. There was a weapon in the Major’s hand, pointed directly at him. A little further away, several of the soldiers were also covering Sheila and himself.

“I’m afraid you don’t understand the position, Naysmith. The Endeavor is now no longer of any use to us.” He spoke rapidly into his communicator.

“I’m giving orders for the Endeavor’s engines to be destroyed. Now I’m taking everyone on board this vessel back to Earth. You and Doctor Marland, however, will remain here. I’m afraid you both pose a menace to the Terran Government and can no longer be trusted.”

Naysmth watched tautly as the last of the men climbed on board the alien starship. There was nothing tie could do. They were marooned within this space station.

A wide section of the curved ceiling opened to reveal a portion of the star-flecked heavens. Soundlessly, the great starship lifted and moved towards the airlock. Within seconds, it was gone. Their brief view of the stars was wiped away as the steel doors of the airlock closed.

“I suppose I should have foreseen something like this where Jameson was concerned.” Carl tried desperately to keep the bitterness and despair from his voice.

Sheila opened her mouth to speak, but—

Those of your kind who have taken the starship and returned to your homeworld are like most of the others we have observed, filled only with greed and a lust for power.

“Then why have you let them go? Once they discover the secret of interstellar flight, there’ll be no stopping them.”

There was a long pause, a waiting silence. Then:

Our period of observation and assessment is now over. The two of you are possessed only with a natural curiosity, a desire to know more of the universe. The outer locks have now been closed. There is an atmosphere inside this vessel, which is compatible to your needs. It, too, can travel far in excess of light and will take you to a planet, far from your own, one different from that which you call Earth.

As for those who have taken the starship, they will return to your mother world and there a virus will be released into the atmosphere. Within days Earth and all of those other worlds where colonies have been established will be completely devoid of life!

MOON DIVE, by Sydney J. Bounds

How was Gloria coping?

As soon as she phrased the question, Ramona recalled a favorite saying of her mother: ‘No news is good news.’ Sometimes, perhaps, but it wasn’t necessarily so. She told herself she wasn’t worried.

Tango music played softly from her private stock of discs. The research sub, Lobster Two, swung gently with the tide at the bottom of the cable coming down the borehole; somebody had guessed right when they designed the lower end to be flexible.

Rock-a-bye baby, except there were no trees under Europa’s ice cap.

Why should she worry? Gloria was senior and had insisted on taking the first risk; and there was a risk. A robot sub had tested the waters of Europa and failed to return, leaving no clue to the reason for its disappearance. If she didn’t come back there would be a vacancy for the senior position.

“Are you awake?” Paul’s voice traveled down the cable, interrupting her dream of being the expedition’s only marine biologist.

“Si. It’s quiet here, peaceful. What’s it like up top?”

“Cold, so I keep busy.”

“I’d keep you busy,” she murmured, foot tapping to the sweet and low, “if I were up there, lover.”

“I heard that. Nothing from Gloria yet?”

“Nada,” she agreed.

It annoyed her that he seemed to prefer Gloria. What did he see in that diet freak, tall and thin as one of those ridiculous models back home? Even though he was no gaucho from the pampas, Paul was the only male on Europa and so they had to share. And, because he got to choose, that made him Mr. Smug.

More bone than meat, she reflected, with a straggly beard that reminded her of a nanny goat. Still, he was a first class engineer and they depended on him to get them to the surface and back to Earth.

Even so, even if she was still wearing her thermal suit, she’d rather be below the ice where the thermometer read a fraction above freezing point. Rather than up top looking out at the desert of ice that was Europa’s surface.

It wasn’t just the big freeze that got to her. Jupiter, a huge beach ball, striped ochre and pale orange, hung suspended overhead, forever threatening to fall. After the deep trenches of the Pacific, the view was frightening and she didn’t think she’d ever be able to face it without a shudder.

She dreamed a little of her attic flat off the Avenida Corrientes, and the smell of roasting coffee beans from the café around the corner. Small as it was, the flat was a luxury mansion compared to the cramped interior of the submersible. Her reclining seat was comfortable enough, providing she didn’t move; any careless movement resulted in an assault by sharp-edged lockers or a battering from metal-clad tubes or—

The sonar echoed ping and she came alert. Letters tapped out, were automatically amplified and transmitted upstairs:

TROUBLE. NEED HELP.

She keyed back: HEAR YOU. WHAT TROUBLE?

Ramona didn’t wait for an answer. She was busy preparing to leave; Paul would hear, but only she could take action. She started her countdown while tapping on her morse key: COMING.

Paul’s voice came down the wire, his last words before she cast off: “Take care—I don’t want to lose both of you.”

Gloria replied and the sound filled the sub: BLIND. I’M BLIND.

Lobster Two, disconnected from the cable, eased forward, descending, following the sonar trail. Ramona stared through the forward porthole into dark water.

She searched for a light from Lobster One. Nothing. As she manipulated the joystick it occurred to her that if Gloria disappeared, she would be the expedition’s sole marine biologist; fame and fortune would be hers alone. She put temptation behind her; they were a team and she was part of it.

Blind? What did Gloria mean by that? How could she be blind? Before they’d left Earth all three had passed tough medicals. The sub had portholes, searchlights and video screens. It didn’t make sense.

As the sub sank lower the temperature rose and Ramona stripped off her thermal suit, revealing an ample amount of olive-colored flesh. Perhaps too ample. The hell with dieting; she liked to cook and she liked her food.

The deeper she went, the higher the temperature climbed. They knew the center of Europa was both radioactive and volcanic; perhaps the core was molten—but she had no intention of diving that deep to find out.

She was moving faster, and she didn’t need instruments to tell her that Lobster Two was caught in a current that swept her along like a piece of jetsam, taking her deeper. They had anticipated that Jupiter’s gravity would make the ocean tidal, but not to this extent. She would have to ride it out.

She switched on her searchlight; it would be ironic if she crashed into Lobster One and ended the whole mission.

There was an eerie glow ahead, the faintest luminosity contrasting with the inky dark; sweat rolled down her naked body. She glanced at the pressure gauge and her lips compressed; the Lobster series had proved themselves in the depths of Earth’s oceans, but they had limits.

The forward screen, pointing down, showed a fiery red; lava flowed and water boiled into a fog of steam; geysers jetted upwards. The noise of a subterranean eruption blotted out her sonar.

After the near silence just below the ice cap, the noise was deafening. She checked that her cameras were running; these images alone would be worth a fortune back home.

Searing light flashed and blossomed and flared like a furnace exploding as deep rumbles shook the submersible and tossed it about. She imagined the hull rupturing and knew fear. The joystick seemed immovable, and she had no doubt she would be cooked like a lobster if she couldn’t ascend quickly.

She stared into a vision that would have convinced an old-time preacher he was looking into the mouth of Hell and tasting brimstone. And this was the crucible for life beyond Earth, they’d hoped…

The geiger chattered to remind her the radiation count was going up.

The sub was beginning to ascend, but slowly; the controls were sluggish. Sweat oozed from her pores until she felt she was in a sauna. She released ballast and Lobster Two rose up that bit faster.

After a while she relaxed, tension easing as she realized she was out of the current and the controls were working again.

Ping…

Sonar made contact with Lobster One. A screen showed a fuzzy image of Gloria’s sub and, somehow, it looked different. The hull appeared to be covered by…covered by what?

She closed the gap between them, studying the strange transformation. Water blurred her vision; dust—or microbes?—hung in suspension. Could the covering on Gloria’s sub be algae? Or amoebae? A thrill shot through her; it seemed they had discovered a primitive life form.

Or not so primitive. Something detached itself from the hull of Lobster One and undulated towards her. It had the appearance of a carpet woven with many strands of different colors. A plant?

It rippled through the water as if propelling itself, the colors subtly changing. From one angle it seemed translucent.

This matting covered Lobster One’s windows and electronic eyes; no wonder Gloria was blind.

I SEE YOU, she tapped out. LIFE HAS FOUND YOU.

They had dreamed of finding Europan life, and now they were going to be famous, providing they got back.

She manoeuvred closer and the mat jiggled; she changed her position to make sure she got it on camera. CCD images recorded it and then the camera eye was covered.

What had attracted it? Obviously it detected her: light, she thought, both subs were showing lights. She switched off all her lights, and waited. After an interval, the camera eye worked again.

SWITCH OFP LIGHTS, she tapped. WAIT.

She risked a dim glow, enough to observe her immediate neighborhood, and saw the mat standing off from her. It drifted, waving gently. Was it exhibiting curiosity? Trying to communicate? Sheer nonsense, she told herself; at most, this was a kind of seaweed.

She waited in the near-dark until the carpet broke up into individual members and floated away from Lobster One.

THANKS, Gloria transmitted. MUST RETURN WITH NEWS. Her sub began to ascend. Ramona followed and the solitary Europan followed her.

Watching, Ramona murmured, “I think I shall name you Algy.”

WHO GOES UP FIRST? She asked Gloria, wiping sweat from her body. Whoever was first to the surface had Paul to herself for a while, and she was excited,

EXPEDITION NOW JUSTIFIED. BUDGET INCREASE FOR FUTURE.

Si! Ramona thought, let’s keep it official, that’s if Paul will—

A red lamp blinked rapidly to get her attention; a klaxon squawked till she switched it off. What now? She gave her full attention to the instrument panel, recalling basic training: ‘In a submersible, there is no such thing as a non-serious emergency.’

The hull monitor registered a weakness. Santa Maria! Was she going to drown down here? The double hull structure had proved itself under tests, but panic gnawed at the edge of her consciousness; she had to fight it to work the morse key.

EMERGENCY. HULL GIVING UNDER PRESSURE.

GO UP TO REDUCE PRESSURE. Gloria began to circle, searchlight switched on again, looking for damage.

I SEE SOMETHING ON YOUR HULL. PERHAPS A CREATURE BORING. LOOKS LIKE. A LEECH IS THE NEAREST.

Ramona ejected more ballast.

STILL ATTACHED, Gloria keyed. MAKE SPEED FOR CABLE.

Ramona began to feel cold, even though she was nowhere near the ice cap yet; it was the chill of approaching death.

The hull should have been proof against anything; it was an alloy of steel with rare elements. Then she remembered that undersea volcanoes on Earth threw up the same rare elements—and here was a life form that fed on them.

Algy remained distant, watching.

Gloria tapped, JOIN LOCKS. ELECTRIFY HULL.

I’ll try anything, Ramona thought, holding down fear; if it doesn’t work I’ve lost nothing. She should have thought of it herself, but she was stressed out of her mind.

Gloria manoeuvred to match airlocks, hull to hull; something they had only practiced once.

Research subs were so packed with gear they could not hold two people; but the double lock arrangement could hold one in an emergency. Hulls touched and latched. Ramona reached across, with some difficulty, to open her door.

Tools…she groped in a locker and found pliers, ripped out a cable and bared the wire. She taped the end to the metal hull and the lights shorted out.

It was a tight squeeze getting to the doorway and into the lock, but she managed, losing only some skin. She slammed the door and locked it. There was nothing to do now but wait and hope; cut off, the wait seemed to go on forever. It couldn’t be more than minutes, of course. Sweat froze on her. Fear gripped her mind. She wondered what was happening, if anything.

It was dark and she imagined things until cramp tortured her legs, reducing her to an animal in pain; the double lock was barely the size of a small cupboard.

Gloria opened her door and called, “It worked! The leech, or whatever, dropped off.”

Ramona refrained from comment when she saw her superior’s pale and skinny body. She tried not to wrinkle her nose at the smell leaking into the lock; she never noticed her own.

“Gracias!” she gasped, trying to straighten her legs.

Gloria closed the door, and Ramona opened hers; no water inside. She wriggled through and flopped in her recliner, dogged the lock.

She spent a few minutes massaging her muscles to ease the cramp, then removed the wire to the hull and replaced a fuse. She switched on again. The lights worked, and she checked the instrument board; nothing vital down.

Beyond the window she saw the leech, a bloated thing, floating away. It didn’t get far before Algy pounced, engulfing it. Was he really digesting it? Good for you, Algy!

The sub responded when she moved the joystick, and relief flooded her. Sonar picked up the cable to the surface as she ascended, homing on it. Algy was still following as the bottom of the cable came into view.

Gloria tapped out: GO UP FIRST. THAT IS AN ORDER.

Ramona wasn’t going to argue. She struggled into her thermal suit, rnanoeuvred Lobster Two till the sub was securely attached to the cable, then spoke to Paul on the phone.

“Put the coffee on, lover, and wind me up, very steady, please—hull damaged.”

“You’re not supposed to damage property that’s only on loan. They’ll take it out of your salary.”

She felt the sub rise towards the shaft drilled through the ice and felt light-headed. She saw Algy undulating; he had a new rhythm to his motion now, and she wondered: was it just her imagination or was he really waving goodbye?

THE HUNTED HEROES, by Robert Silverberg

“Let’s keep moving,” I told Val. “The surest way to die out here on Mars is to give up.” I reached over and turned up the pressure on her oxymask to make things a little easier for her. Through the glassite of the mask, I could see her face contorted in an agony of fatigue.

And she probably thought the failure of the sandcat was all my fault, too. Val’s usually about the best wife a guy could ask for, but when she wants to be she can be a real flying bother.

It was beyond her to see that some grease monkey back at the Dome was at fault—whoever it was who had failed to fasten down the engine hood. Nothing but what had stopped us could stop a sandcat: sand in the delicate mechanism of the atomic engine.

But no; she blamed it all on me somehow: So we were out walking on the spongy sand of the Martian desert. We’d been walking a good eight hours.

“Can’t we turn back now, Ron?” Val pleaded. “Maybe there isn’t any uranium in this sector at all. I think we’re crazy to keep on searching out here!”

I started to tell her that the UranCo chief had assured me we’d hit something out this way, but changed my mind. When Val’s tired and overwrought there’s no sense in arguing with her.

I stared ahead at the bleak, desolate wastes of the Martian landscape. Behind us somewhere was the comfort of the Dome, ahead nothing but the mazes and gullies of this dead world.

“Try to keep going, Val.” My gloved hand reached out and clumsily enfolded hers. “Come on, kid. Remember—we’re doing this for Earth. We’re heroes.”

She glared at me. “Heroes, hell!” she muttered. “That’s the way it looked back home, but, out there it doesn’t seem so glorious. And UranCo’s pay is stinking.”

“We didn’t come out here for the pay, Val.”

“I know, I know, but just the same—”

It must have been hell for her. We had wandered fruitlessly over the red sands all day, both of us listening for the clicks of the counter. And the geigers had been obstinately hushed all day, except for their constant undercurrent of meaningless noises.

Even though the Martian gravity was only a fraction of Earth’s, I was starting to tire, and I knew it must have been really rough on Val with her lovely but unrugged legs.

“Heroes,” she said bitterly. “We’re not heroes—we’re suckers! Why did I ever let you volunteer for the Geig Corps and drag me along?”

Which wasn’t anywhere close to the truth. Now I knew she was at the breaking point, because Val didn’t lie unless she was so exhausted she didn’t know what she was doing. She had been just as much inflamed by the idea of coming to Mars to help in the search for uranium as I was. We knew the pay was poor, but we had felt it a sort of obligation, something we could do as individuals to keep the industries of radioactives-starved Earth going. And we’d always had a roving foot, both of us.

No, we had decided together to come to Mars—the way we decided together on everything. Now she was turning against me.

I tried to jolly her. “Buck up, kid,” I said. I didn’t dare turn up her oxy pressure any higher, but it was obvious she couldn’t keep going. She was almost sleep-walking now.

We pressed on over the barren terrain. The geiger kept up a fairly steady click-pattern, but never broke into that sudden explosive tumult that meant we had found pay-dirt. I started to feel tired myself, terribly tired. I longed to lie down on the soft, spongy Martian sand and bury myself.

I looked at Val. She was dragging along with her eyes half-shut. I felt almost guilty for having dragged her out to Mars, until I recalled that I hadn’t. In fact, she had come up with the idea before I did. I wished there was some way of turning the weary, bedraggled girl at my side back into the Val who had so enthusiastically suggested we join the Geigs.

Twelve steps later, I decided this was about as far as we could go.

I stopped, slipped out of the geiger harness, and lowered myself ponderously to the ground. “What’samatter, Ron?” Val asked sleepily. “Something wrong?”

“No, baby,” I said, putting out a hand and taking hers. “I think we ought to rest a little before we go any further. It’s been a long, hard day.”

It didn’t take much to persuade her. She slid down beside me, curled up, and in a moment she was fast asleep, sprawled out on the sands.

Poor kid, I thought. Maybe we shouldn’t have come to Mars after all. But, I reminded myself, someone had to do the job.

A second thought appeared, but I squelched it:

Why the hell me?

I looked down at Valerie’s sleeping form, and thought of our warm, comfortable little home on Earth. It wasn’t much, but people in love don’t need very fancy surroundings.

I watched her, sleeping peacefully, a wayward lock of her soft blonde hair trailing down over one eyebrow, and it seemed hard to believe that we’d exchanged Earth and all it held for us for the raw, untamed struggle that was Mars. But I knew I’d do it again, if I had the chance. It’s because we wanted to keep what we had. Heroes? Hell, no. We just liked our comforts, and wanted to keep them. Which took a little work.

* * * *

Time to get moving. But then Val stirred and rolled over in her sleep, and I didn’t have the heart to wake her. I sat there, holding her, staring out over the desert, watching the wind whip the sand up into weird shapes.

The Geig Corps preferred married couples, working in teams. That’s what had finally decided it for us—we were a good team. We had no ties on Earth that couldn’t be broken without much difficulty. So we volunteered.

And here we are. Heroes. The wind blasted a mass of sand into my face, and I felt it tinkle against the oxymask.

I glanced at the suit-chronometer. Getting late. I decided once again to wake Val. But she was tired. And I was tired too, tired from our wearying journey across the empty desert.

I started to shake Val. But I never finished. It would beso nice just to lean back and nuzzle up to her, down in the sand. So nice. I yawned, and stretched back.

* * * *

I awoke with a sudden startled shiver, and realized angrily I had let myself doze off. “Come on, Val,” I said savagely, and started to rise to my feet.

I couldn’t.

I looked down. I was neatly bound in thin, tough, plastic tangle-cord, swathed from chin to boot-bottoms, my arms imprisoned, my feet caught. And tangle-cord is about as easy to get out of as a spider’s web is for a trapped fly.

It wasn’t Martians that had done it. There weren’t any Martians, hadn’t been for a million years. It was some Earthman who had bound us.

I rolled my eyes toward Val, and saw that she was similarly trussed in the sticky stuff. The tangle-cord was still fresh, giving off a faint, repugnant odor like that of drying fish. It had been spun on us only a short time ago, I realized.

“Ron—”

“Don’t try to move, baby. This stuff can break your neck if you twist it wrong.” She continued for a moment to struggle futilely, and I had to snap, “Lie still, Val!”

“A very wise statement,” said a brittle, harsh voice from above me. I looked up and saw a helmeted figure above us. He wasn’t wearing the customary skin-tight pliable oxysuits we had. He wore an outmoded, bulky spacesuit and a fishbowl helmet, all but the face area opaque. The oxygen cannisters weren’t attached to his back as expected, though. They were strapped to the back of the wheelchair in which he sat.

Through the fishbowl I could see hard little eyes, a yellowed, parchment-like face, a grim-set jaw. I didn’t recognize him, and this struck me odd. I thought I knew everyone on sparsely-settled Mars. Somehow I’d missed him.

What shocked me most was that he had no legs. The spacesuit ended neatly at the thighs.

He was holding in his left hand the tanglegun with which he had entrapped us, and a very efficient-looking blaster was in his right.

“I didn’t want to disturb your sleep,” he said coldly. “So I’ve been waiting here for you to wake up.”

I could just see it. He might have been sitting there for hours, complacently waiting to see how we’d wake up. That was when I realized he must be totally insane. I could feel my stomach-muscles tighten, my throat constrict painfully.

Then anger ripped through me, washing away the terror. “What’s going on?” I demanded, staring at the half of a man who confronted us from the wheelchair. “Who are you?”

“You’ll find out soon enough,” he said. “Suppose now you come with me.” He reached for the tanglegun, flipped the little switch on its side to MELT, and shot a stream of watery fluid over our legs, keeping the blaster trained on us all the while. Our legs were free.

“You may get up now,” he said. “Slowly, without trying to make trouble.” Val and I helped each other to our feet as best we could, considering our arms were still tightly bound against the sides of our oxysuits.

“Walk,” the stranger said, waving the tanglegun to indicate the direction. “I’ll be right behind you.” He holstered the tanglegun.

I glimpsed the bulk of an outboard atomic rigging behind him, strapped to the back of the wheelchair. He fingered a knob on the arm of the chair and the two exhaust ducts behind the wheel-housings flamed for a moment, and the chair began to roll.

Obediently, we started walking. You don’t argue with a blaster, even if the man pointing it is in a wheelchair.

* * * *

“What’s going on, Ron?” Val asked in a low voice as we walked. Behind us the wheelchair hissed steadily.

“I don’t quite know, Val. I’ve never seen this guy before, and I thought I knew everyone at the Dome.”

“Quiet up there!” our captor called, and we stopped talking. We trudged along together, with him following behind; I could hear thecrunch-crunch of the wheelchair as its wheels chewed into the sand. I wondered where we were going, and why. I wondered why we had ever left Earth.

The answer to that came to me quick enough: we had to. Earth needed radioactives, and the only way to get them was to get out and look. The great atomic wars of the late 20th Century had used up much of the supply, but the amount used to blow up half the great cities of the world hardly compared with the amount we needed to put them back together again.

In three centuries the shattered world had been completely rebuilt. The wreckage of New York and Shanghai and London and all the other ruined cities had been hidden by a shining new world of gleaming towers and flying roadways. We had profited by our grandparents’ mistakes. They had used their atomics to make bombs. We used ours for fuel.

It was an atomic world. Everything: power drills, printing presses, typewriters, can openers, ocean liners, powered by the inexhaustible energy of the dividing atom.

But though the energy is inexhaustible, the supply of nuclei isn’t. After three centuries of heavy consumption, the supply failed. The mighty machine that was Earth’s industry had started to slow down.

And that started the chain of events that led Val and me to end up as a madman’s prisoners, on Mars. With every source of uranium mined dry on Earth, we had tried other possibilities. All sorts of schemes came forth. Project Sea-Dredge was trying to get uranium from the oceans. In forty or fifty years, they’d get some results, we hoped. But there wasn’t forty or fifty years’ worth of raw stuff to tide us over until then. In a decade or so, our power would be just about gone. I could picture the sort of dog-eat-dog world we’d revert back to. Millions of starving, freezing humans tooth-and-clawing in it in the useless shell of a great atomic civilization.

So, Mars. There’s not much uranium on Mars, and it’s not easy to find or any cinch to mine. But what little is there, helps. It’s a stopgap effort, just to keep things moving until Project Sea-Dredge starts functioning.

Enter the Geig Corps: volunteers out on the face of Mars, combing for its uranium deposits.

And here we are, I thought.

* * * *

After we walked on a while, a Dome became visible up ahead. It slid up over the crest of a hill, set back between two hummocks on the desert. Just out of the way enough to escape observation.

For a puzzled moment I thought it was our Dome, the settlement where all of UranCo’s Geig Corps were located, but another look told me that this was actually quite near us and fairly small. A one-man Dome, of all things!

“Welcome to my home,” he said. “The name is Gregory Ledman.” He herded us off to one side of the airlock, uttered a few words keyed to his voice, and motioned us inside when the door slid up. When we were inside he reached up, clumsily holding the blaster, and unscrewed the ancient spacesuit fishbowl.

His face was a bitter, dried-up mask. He was a man who hated.

The place was spartanly furnished. No chairs, no tape-player, no decoration of any sort. Hard bulkhead walls, rivet-studded, glared back at us. He had an automatic chef, a bed, and a writing-desk, and no other furniture.

Suddenly he drew the tanglegun and sprayed our legs again. We toppled heavily to the floor. I looked up angrily.

“I imagine you want to know the whole story,” he said. “The others did, too.”

Valerie looked at me anxiously. Her pretty face was a dead white behind her oxymask. “What others?”

“I never bothered to find out their names,” Ledman said casually. “They were other Geigs I caught unawares, like you, out on the desert. That’s the only sport I have left—Geig-hunting. Look out there.”

He gestured through the translucent skin of the Dome, and I felt sick. There was a little heap of bones lying there, looking oddly bright against the redness of the sands. They were the dried, parched skeletons of Earthmen. Bits of cloth and plastic, once oxymasks and suits, still clung to them.

Suddenly I remembered. There had been a pattern there all the time. We didn’t much talk about it; we chalked it off as occupational hazards. There had been a pattern of disappearances on the desert. I could think of six, eight names now. None of them had been particularly close friends. You don’t get time to make close friends out here. But we’d vowed it wouldn’t happen to us.

It had.

“You’ve been hunting Geigs?” I asked. “Why?What’ve they ever done to you?”

He smiled, as calmly as if I’d just praised his house-keeping. “Because I hate you,” he said blandly. “I intend to wipe every last one of you out, one by one.”

I stared at him. I’d never seen a man like this before; I thought all his kind had died at the time of the atomic wars.

I heard Val sob, “He’s a madman!”

“No,” Ledman said evenly. “I’m quite sane, believe me. But I’m determined to drive the Geigs—and UranCo—off Mars. Eventually I’ll scare you all away.”

“Just pick us off in the desert?”

“Exactly,” replied Ledman. “And I have no fears of an armed attack. This place is well fortified. I’ve devoted years to building it. And I’m back against those hills. They couldn’t pry me out.” He let his pale hand run up into his gnarled hair. “I’ve devoted years to this. Ever since—ever since I landed here on Mars.”

“What are you going to do with us?” Val finally asked, after a long silence.

He didn’t smile this time. “Kill you,” he told her. “Not your husband. I want him as an envoy, to go back and tell the others to clear off.” He rocked back and forth in his wheelchair, toying with the gleaming, deadly blaster in his hand.

We stared in horror. It was a nightmare—sitting there, placidly rocking back and forth, a nightmare.

I found myself fervently wishing I was back out there on the infinitely safer desert.

“Do I shock you?” he asked. “I shouldn’t—not when you see my motives.”

“We don’t see them,” I snapped.

“Well, let me show you. You’re on Mars hunting uranium, right? To mine and ship the radioactives back to Earth to keep the atomic engines going. Right?”

I nodded over at our geiger counters.

“We volunteered to come to Mars,” Val said irrelevantly.

“Ah—two young heroes,” Ledman said acidly. “How sad. I could almost feel sorry for you. Almost.”

“Just what is it you’re after?” I said, stalling, stalling.

“Atomics cost me my legs,” he said. “You remember the Sadlerville Blast?” he asked.

“Of course.” And I did, too. I’d never forget it. No one would. How could I forget that great accident—killing hundreds, injuring thousands more, sterilizing forty miles of Mississippi land—when the Sadlerville pile went up?

“I was there on business at the time,” Ledman said. “I represented Ledman Atomics. I was there to sign a new contract for my company. You know who I am, now?”

I nodded.

“I was fairly well shielded when it happened. I never got the contract, but I got a good dose of radiation instead. Not enough to kill me,” he said. “Just enough to necessitate the removal of—” he indicated the empty space at his thighs. “So I got off lightly.” He gestured at the wheelchair blanket.

I still didn’t understand. “But why kill us Geigs? Wehad nothing to do with it.”

“You’re just in this by accident,” he said. “You see, after the explosion and the amputation, my fellow-members on the board of Ledman Atomics decided that a semi-basket case like myself was a poor risk as Head of the Board, and they took my company away. All quite legal, I assure you. They left me almost a pauper!” Then he snapped the punchline at me.

“They renamed Ledman Atomics. Who did you say you worked for?”

I began, “Uran—”

“Don’t bother. A more inventive title than Ledman Atomics, but not quite as much heart, wouldn’t you say?” He grinned. “I saved for years; then I came to Mars, lost myself, built this Dome, and swore to get even. There’s not a great deal of uranium on this planet, but enough to keep me in a style to which, unfortunately, I’m no longer accustomed.”

He consulted his wrist watch. “Time for my injection.” He pulled out the tanglegun and sprayed us again, just to make doubly certain. “That’s another little souvenir of Sadlerville. I’m short on red blood corpuscles.”

He rolled over to a wall table and fumbled in a container among a pile of hypodermics. “There are other injections, too. Adrenalin, insulin. Others. The Blast turned me into a walking pin-cushion. But I’ll pay it all back,” he said. He plunged the needle into his arm.

My eyes widened. It was too nightmarish to be real. I wasn’t seriously worried about his threat to wipe out the entire Geig Corps, since it was unlikely that one man in a wheelchair could pick us all off. No, it wasn’t the threat that disturbed me, so much as the whole concept, so strange to me, that the human mind could be as warped and twisted as Ledman’s.

I saw the horror on Val’s face, and I knew she felt the same way I did.

“Do you really think you can succeed?” I taunted him. “Really think you can kill every Earthman on Mars? Of all the insane, cockeyed—”

Val’s quick, worried head-shake cut me off. But Ledman had felt my words, all right.

“Yes! I’ll get even with every one of you for taking away my legs! If we hadn’t meddled with the atom in the first place, I’d be as tall and powerful as you, today—instead of a useless cripple in a wheelchair.”

“You’re sick, Gregory Ledman,” Val said quietly. “You’ve conceived an impossible scheme of revenge and now you’re taking it out on innocent people who’ve done nothing, nothing at all to you. That’s not sane!”

His eyes blazed. “Who are you to talk of sanity?”

Uneasily I caught Val’s glance from a corner of my eye. Sweat was rolling down her smooth forehead faster than the auto-wiper could swab it away.

“Why don’t you do something? What are you waiting for, Ron?”

“Easy, baby,” I said. I knew what our ace in the hole was. But I had to get Ledman within reach of me first.

“Enough,” he said. “I’m going to turn you loose outside, right after—”

“Get sick!” I hissed to Val, low. She began immediately to cough violently, emitting harsh, choking sobs. “Can’t breathe!” She began to yell, writhing in her bonds.

That did it. Ledman hadn’t much humanity left in him, but there was a little. He lowered the blaster a bit and wheeled one-hand over to see what was wrong with Val. She continued to retch and moan most horribly. It almost convinced me. I saw Val’s pale, frightened face turn to me.

He approached and peered down at her. He opened his mouth to say something, and at that moment I snapped my leg up hard, tearing the tangle-cord with a snicking rasp, and kicked his wheelchair over.

The blaster went off, burning a hole through the Dome roof. The automatic sealers glued-in instantly. Ledman went sprawling helplessly out into the middle of the floor, the wheelchair upended next to him, its wheels slowly revolving in the air. The blaster flew from his hands at the impact of landing and spun out near me. In one quick motion I rolled over and covered it with my body.

* * * *

Ledman clawed his way to me with tremendous effort and tried wildly to pry the blaster out from under me, but without success. I twisted a bit, reached out with my free leg, and booted him across the floor. He fetched up against the wall of the Dome and lay there.

Val rolled over to me.

“Now if I could get free of this stuff,” I said, “I could get him covered before he comes to. But how?”

“Teamwork,” Val said. She swivelled around on the floor until her head was near my boot. “Push my oxymask off with your foot, if you can.”

I searched for the clamp and tried to flip it. No luck, with my heavy, clumsy boot. I tried again, and this time it snapped open. I got the tip of my boot in and pried upward. The oxymask came off, slowly, scraping a jagged red scratch up the side of Val’s neck as it came.

“There,” she breathed. “That’s that.”

I looked uneasily at Ledman. He was groaning and beginning to stir.

Val rolled on the floor and her face lay near my right arm. I saw what she had in mind. She began to nibble the vile-tasting tangle-cord, running her teeth up and down it until it started to give. She continued unfailingly.

Finally one strand snapped. Then another. At last I had enough use of my hand to reach out and grasp the blaster. Then I pulled myself across the floor to Ledman, removed the tanglegun, and melted the remaining tangle-cord off.

My muscles were stiff and bunched, and rising made me wince. I turned and freed Val. Then I turned and faced Ledman.

“I suppose you’ll kill me now,” he said.

“No. That’s the difference between sane people and insane,” I told him. “I’m not going to kill you at all. I’m going to see to it that you’re sent back to Earth.”

“No!” he shouted. “No! Anything but back there. I don’t want to face them again—not after what they did to me—”

“Not so loud,” I broke in. “They’ll help you on Earth. They’ll take all the hatred and sickness out of you, and turn you into a useful member of society again.”

“I hate Earthmen,” he spat out. “I hate all of them.”

“I know,” I said sarcastically. “You’re just all full of hate. You hated us so much that you couldn’t bear to hang around on Earth for as much as a year after the Sadlerville Blast. You had to take right off for Mars without a moment’s delay, didn’t you? You hated Earth so much you hadto leave.”

“Why are you telling all this to me?”

“Because if you’d stayed long enough, you’d have used some of your pension money to buy yourself a pair of prosthetic legs, and then you wouldn’t need this wheelchair.”

Ledman scowled, and then his face went belligerent again. “They told me I was paralyzed below the waist. That I’d never walk again, even with prosthetic legs, because I had no muscles to fit them to.”

“You left Earth too quickly,” Val said.

“It was the only way,” he protested. “I had to get off—”

“She’s right,” I told him. “The atom can take away, but it can give as well. Soon after you left they developedatomic-powered prosthetics—amazing things, virtually robot legs. All the survivors of the Sadlerville Blast were given the necessary replacement limbs free of charge. All except you. You were so sick you had to get away from the world you despised and come here.”

“You’re lying,” he said. “It’s not true!”

“Oh, but it is,” Val smiled.

I saw him wilt visibly, and for a moment I almost felt sorry for him, a pathetic legless figure propped up against the wall of the Dome at blaster-point. But then I remembered he’d killed twelve Geigs—or more—and would have added Val to the number had he had the chance.

* * * *

“You’re a very sick man, Ledman,” I said. “All this time you could have been happy, useful on Earth, instead of being holed up here nursing your hatred. You might have been useful, on Earth. But you decided to channel everything out as revenge.”

“I still don’t believe it—those legs. I might have walked again. No—no, it’s all a lie. They told me I’d never walk,” he said, weakly but stubbornly still.

I could see his whole structure of hate starting to topple, and I decided to give it the final push.

“Haven’t you wondered how I managed to break the tangle-cord when I kicked you over?”

“Yes—human legs aren’t strong enough to break tangle-cord that way.”

“Of course not,” I said. I gave Val the blaster and slipped out of my oxysuit. “Look,” I said. I pointed to my smooth, gleaming metal legs. The almost soundless purr of their motors was the only noise in the room. “I was in the Sadlerville Blast, too,” I said. “But I didn’t go crazy with hate when I lost mylegs.”

Ledman was sobbing.

“Okay, Ledman,” I said. Val got him into his suit, and brought him the fishbowl helmet. “Get your helmet on and let’s go. Between the psychs and the prosthetics men, you’ll be a new man inside of a year.”

“But I’m a murderer!”

“That’s right. And you’ll be sentenced to psych adjustment. When they’re finished, Gregory Ledman the killer will be as dead as if they’d electrocuted you, but there’ll be a new—and sane—Gregory Ledman.” I turned to Val.

“Got the geigers, honey?”

For the first time since Ledman had caught us, I remembered how tired Val had been out on the desert. I realized now that I had been driving her mercilessly—me, with my chromium legs and atomic-powered muscles. No wonder she was ready to fold! And I’d been too dense to see how unfair I had been.

She lifted the geiger harnesses, and I put Ledman back in his wheelchair.

Val slipped her oxymask back on and fastened it shut.

“Let’s get back to the Dome in a hurry,” I said. “We’ll turn Ledman over to the authorities. Then we can catch the next ship for Earth.”

“Go back? Go back? If you think I’m backing down now and quitting you can find yourself another wife! After we dump this guy I’m sacking in for twenty hours, and then we’re going back out there to finish that search-pattern. Earth needs uranium, honey, and I know you’d never be happy quitting in the middle like that.” She smiled. “I can’t wait to get out there and start listening for those tell-tale clicks.”

I gave a joyful whoop and swung her around. When I put her down, she squeezed my hand, hard.

“Let’s get moving, fellow hero,” she said.

I pressed the stud for the airlock, smiling.

NIGHT OF THE SQUEALERS, by Michael McCarty and Mark McLaughlin

“Mmrrrrwww. Mmrrrrrrwww. Mmmrrrrrrrwwww.”

Keaton looked up from his eighth round of solitaire, which he was losing, just like the seven before. Some damned jazz cat was prowling around. The noise seemed to be coming from the hall outside the door of the storage bay. He spun around in his wheeled chair and kicked the door shut. He had no idea how one of those cats could have found its way from Elliot’s top-floor office, all the way down to the Dungeon. It was as if they knew he was allergic to them, and they wanted to shake a little dander in his path, just for kicks.

He spun back to face his desk. The five of spades had to be buried under one of the unturned cards. He gathered up the deck, shuffled and started a new game. Cards helped him to pass the time until the next ship arrived.

He was handling the boredom a lot better than his two Choom co-workers, Lang and Grot. They spent their time sweeping the storage bay, over and over and over and.…

“Take five, guys,” Keaton said. “You’re gonna wear away the floor with all that sweeping. It’s clean, okay?”

The two Chooms turned toward him, smiling their razor-sliced ear-to-ear smiles. They shook their heads like excited Earth puppies. Then they went back to sweeping.

Keaton smiled. “Pumpkinheads,” he whispered to the queen of hearts. “Look who I’m working with. A couple of jack-o’-lanterns.”

Still, he was glad to have their company. They were hard workers and they were always cheery, even though they worked in the Dungeon. That’s what he called the basement-level storage bay, since it was so gloomy and a little clammy, too. The ceiling was covered with a cobwebbed mess of air ducts, wires and damp water pipes—it looked like someone had strung a giant’s guts from the rafters.

At least the Dungeon was better than the noisy typing and beeping monitors on the second level with all those creepy Tikkihottos, who had those gruesome feelers for eyes. It was even better than the office of his boss, Elliot. The night manager was a fat, bald man whose workspace smelled of old cheese sandwiches and unchanged litter boxes. Elliot was always playing loud jazz music, and he kept a bunch of cats that triggered Keaton’s allergies. Only Elliot was allowed to have pets at work. The company treated him like a king, though Keaton considered him more of a joker.

Tranquility, Inc., the company they worked for, was an Oasis operation that used to employ slave labor—androids, clones and mutants. Five years ago, the Earth corporation Mesopotamia bought the company, replacing the slaves with humans, Chooms and the Tikkihottos. Production went up tenfold, but so did theft. The company brought Elliot from Earth to help with their security and inventory problems—but the only things he brought to the company were his cats and old jazz records.

Keaton used to spend his work hours eating lotus and reading Earth books. But with Mesopotamia’s recent policy of random drug testing, getting caught with lotus in his system would be grounds for losing his job—and it was hard enough to find work in Punktown.

So solitaire and synthesized cigarettes were his drugs of choice now. He knew the syn-cigs were worse for him than real cigarettes—and harder to give up than lotus—but he couldn’t break the habit.

Keaton’s job performance evaluation was in two weeks. He’d probably just get his usual review—“adequate, needs improvement in the following areas,” meaning all areas—with his usual two-and-a-half percent cost-of-living raise. He wanted to return to Earth, since he hadn’t been there for years. But he knew he would probably never go back. Too much damned effort. He didn’t even go back for his mother’s funeral.

Lang and Grot started humming some monotonous religious Choom chant that sounded to Keaton like kaz-kaz-kaz-kaz, cabron-cabron-cabron-cabron.

“Guys, turn down the chanting,” he said. “I’m trying to concentrate on my game and you’re driving me nucking futs.”

Lang and Grot gleefully shook their heads, and then continued with their chanting at a softer, barely audible level.

Tranquility, Inc. was a combination warehouse and distribution center. The space barges that landed there were basically giant greenhouses that would grow crops from their home planets, and by the time they reached Oasis, would harvest them. Those plants could never grow under the harsh conditions of Oasis, so the harvests were a highly valuable commodity. The barge crews usually took a few days to finish up their harvests and unload their ships. Teleportation between planets was more common than space flights, but teleportation had one major problem: it made vegetables taste funny. A nauseating, burnt-rubber after-taste. So the agriculture industry had to stick with space travel.

It had been more than two weeks since the last ship had landed at Tranquility, Inc., which was located far outside even the outskirts of Punktown’s Industrial Square. There were no buildings near the warehouse. Potential neighbors feared that a space barge might crash into them. That left Keaton and his gang stranded out in an enormous, otherwise empty lot that stretched kilometers in all directions.

A red light lit up on the wall above Keaton’s desk. That meant a ship was coming in and the tracker ray would lock on it and then automatically land it.

“It’s going to be a while, guys,” Keaton said to the two Chooms, who kept staring at the red light. “Those Tikkihottos are slow. It’ll take them half an hour to enter all the authorization data, and we can’t help with unloading until then. They should put more Chooms in that department. That would speed things up. They only have two right now.”

“Yes. Freder and Josaphat,” Grot said, leaning on his broom.

While we’re waiting, you two should grab a bite to eat.”

Lang and Grot looked at each other and nodded. They sat on the floor next to Keaton’s desk, where they both pulled plastic bags out of their pockets and started snacking on dilkies. Lang held out some for Keaton, but he shook his head. He always had a hard time eating the fried, gritty roots. They always left a greasy yet oddly dusty taste in his mouth. The Chooms had no problem eating the forage—with their extra rows of molars, it was like eating Earth cotton candy.

Keaton kept playing solitaire, hand after hand. He looked down and noticed that the Chooms had finished eating and were simply watching the red light again. He checked his watch: forty-five minutes since the ship had landed. That was odd. Even with those slow Tikkihottos, it usually never took that long.

He checked his communications radio next. It was on and working, so he should have received a call by now. He pushed the button down and said, “Wheaton or Percy—are you there?”

No answer.

Keaton decided to call on the other Chooms. “Freder or Josaphat—do you hear me?” He didn’t know the names of any of the Tikkihottos and didn’t want to talk to them anyway.

Again, no answer.

Silence from Chooms, the most helpful folks on the whole planet?

Keaton was starting to worry.

* * * *

Keaton waited another fifteen minutes and then decided it was time for some investigating.

He went up to the space barge with Lang and Grot. The ship, quaintly named Busy Bee, was docked, but no one was around—no crew members, no Tranquility, Inc. technicians, not even an ugly old Tikkihotto. He couldn’t understand what was going on. By now the landing area should have been swarming with activity. He had worked with the Busy Bee a few times before and remembered the access code for the airlock. So he went aboard with the Chooms, armed with freshly charged faser-sticks. A single shock from a faser-stick couldn’t kill anybody, but it sure as Hell could knock practically any living creature on its ass.

There were flame-guns and plasma capsule blasters in Elliot’s office, but those were not allowed on the ships. Firing weapons like those on a space barge could cause an explosion, since most of the larger ships had lunglilies growing onboard to keep the air fresh. Lunglilies were carnivorous plants equipped with huge, brightly colored bladders that gave off puffs of pure oxygen. On the home world of the plants, the oxygen drew smaller creatures to the leafy predators. Onboard space barges, the crew fed the lunglilies soy protein, which Keaton thought was probably a big disappointment for the plants. He’d never found soy satisfying as an entree option, so why should a lunglily be any different?

He didn’t know where the Busy Bee had been manufactured, but he knew it couldn’t be Earth. The ceilings were too low. Plus, the designs on the walls incorporated complex alien pictograms that reminded him of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics. Of course, the written language of the Pharaohs had never included images of starships or aliens with tentacles instead of arms.

“Wheaton? Percy?” Keaton yelled. “Freder? Josaphat?” The names echoed down the corridors.

They walked through the ship, utterly perplexed by the disappearance of both the crew and the Tranquility, Inc. employees who should have been onboard by now. Lang and Grot whispered nervously to each other—it took a lot to rattle a Choom. Plus, there were odd, flowering silver vines growing here and there on the ship. Keaton had never seen anything like it before. Weeds, running rampant on a space barge? The vines grew out of storage cupboards, desk drawers and toilets—any nook or cranny where something organic might have been left behind.

At one point, they turned down a corridor and saw that the path was completely blocked by silver vines. Keaton recalled from his earlier visits to the Busy Bee that this hall was lined with snack machines.

The three walked to the ship’s administrative offices, hoping to find the captain or at least a well-informed secretary. But instead, they found two dead animals on the floor, with silver vines growing out of various orifices.

“What the fuck is that?” Keaton said, giving the closest carcass a little kick for emphasis. The barges were prohibited from bringing livestock or other life-forms, including pets, onboard.

Keaton bent down for a better look at one of the dead things. He held his nose, since excrement was leaking out of it. The creature looked like some kind of enormous rat, about the size of a healthy tomcat, covered with bony plates like those of a nine-banded armadillo. It had a cruel, batlike face, a mouth loaded with pointed yellow teeth, and a sharp stinger for a tail. Both of the creatures had been stabbed in the eye—one still had a screwdriver embedded in it skull. Evidently somebody had figured out a weak spot. So where was that person now?

“Damn. A thing like that has no business being on a barge,” Keaton said. The Chooms nodded solemnly.

“Smells like krogg,” Lang said.

Next they headed toward the crop chambers. Maybe that’s where all the crew members were. Halfway there, they reached an area where five major hallways met. There was a vine-choked Starblast Coffee kiosk in the center of the intersection.

“Wheaton? Percy? Freder? Josaphat?” Keaton yelled, louder and more urgently, hoping that his voice would carry through most of the ship from here. “Anybody home? Come on, wake up, folks! There’s work to be done!”

This time, his shouts brought a response: a chorus of hungry squeals, like wild hogs on the rampage.

A dozen of the rat-armadillo beasts swarmed down one of the hallways, straight at them. Their squealing was so loud and high-pitched, it hurt Keaton’s ears. Grot was standing closest to that hall, and in a flash they were all over him, tearing at his flesh.

“Holy krogg! Get off him!” Keaton screamed. He poked frantically at the creatures’ faces with his faser-stick, but that only seemed to enrage them. They would back off for a moment, slightly dazed, and then charge forward again.

Keaton and Lang ran back toward the ship’s airlock. Soon the squealers following them were joined by even more from other parts of the ship. At one point Keaton looked back, and saw that the entire hall behind him was practically a snarling wall of rolling, writhing squealers, all striving to be the first to feed.

As he ran, he suddenly realized that Lang was no longer by his side. He glanced back again and saw that the Choom had fallen. A second later, the squealers were upon him, ripping him to ribbons.

Keaton reached the airlock, raced through and closed the entrance behind him. He stopped to catch his breath, and look around the empty landing bay.

Still empty.

Where were all the other Tranquility, Inc. employees?

A little squealer, no bigger than a kitten, ran out from under a nearby tool cart and bit his shoe. With a startled cry, he zapped the tiny thing’s head with his faser-stick five times, killing it.

So. The squealers were already out of the ship. On the loose.

That gave him a good idea of where most of his coworkers were: shredded and wetly nestled inside of numerous digestive tracts.

Krogg.

He walked to the elevator area and pressed the UP button. Elliot was on the top floor—hopefully the squealers hadn’t found their way there yet.

He pulled a syn-cig out of a pack in his shirt pocket, lit it and inhaled. This little episode would be an interesting test of Elliot’s managerial skills. With any luck, the fat bastard would decide to pack up his jazz records and cats and head straight back to Earth.

Maybe I’d better get my ass back to Earth, too, Keaton thought as he stepped into the elevator. While my ass is still attached.

* * * *

Elliot sat in his executive leather chair, listening to the wailing horn of John Coltrane, which sounded like the musical equivalent of axe murder, on his Victrola gramophone. It had cost him a small fortune to get Earth jazz records, but hey, what else was money for, besides doughnuts and catfood?

He sat every night, working at his desk and listening to his collection with his cats, all named after famous twentieth-century Earth jazz musicians. Chet Baker was an orange tabby, Zoot Sims was a Siamese, Duke Ellington was a long-haired Persian and Bix Beiderbecke was an Angora who had a chronic problem with runny eyes. Louis Armstrong was a Burmese, Charlie Parker was a Manx and John Coltrane was a fat brown tom who was licking himself in time to his namesake’s music.

Elliot sipped his coffee—fresh-ground, none of that Starblast crap. He had started organizing some invoices when Keaton rushed in, slammed and locked the door behind him.

“Break out the guns and blasters!” Keaton shouted.

Elliot yawned. “Oh, give it a rest. My cats aren’t that bad. Would it help if I bought you some antihistamines?”

Keaton sneezed. “Damned cats! No, I’m not talking about them. Look out your office window.”

“Have you been eating lotus again?” The night manager sighed heavily. “I’m really busy right now, so why don’t you–”

“Look out your window, you stupid piece of krogg!”

Elliot stared at the Keaton. “There’s no need for that kind of language. Now just settle down and tell me—Hey, is that blood on your shoe?”

Keaton looked down. “Yeah, I guess it is. It must have splashed on me after the space creatures tore up Lang. Or maybe Grot. I’m not sure. I was too busy being scared kroggless at the time.”

Elliot rose from his office chair, crossed the room and looked out his office window, down toward the landing bay.

“Where is everybody?” the night manager said.

Keaton lifted the needle from the record. The second the music ended, both men could hear a distant chorus of squeals, echoing throughout the building.

“Sounds like pigs,” Elliot said.

“Yeah,” Keaton said, “except pigs don’t travel in packs eating everyone in their path. The squealers do.”

“Squealers? Never heard of them.” The manager continued to look out the window, trying to catch sight of an employee. “Where did everybody go?”

“Listen. I’m just calling them squealers because they squeal and I don’t know what else to call them.” Keaton grabbed some tissues from a box on Elliot’s desk and wiped the blood off his shoe. “I’m pretty sure they’ve eaten most of the other employees. The Busy Bee brought them in, along with some weird silver vines. The squealers are all over the place. I ran into two of them in the hall outside your office, but they were small and I managed to kill them with my faser-stick.”

“Oh, no! Come see this!” Elliot said. “Down there! This can’t be happening.”

Keaton rushed to the night manager’s side and looked out the window. A small group of Tranquility, Inc. employees was running across the landing bay, followed closely by a pack of squealers. There were six employees and probably about four-hundred of the predators. The creatures soon caught up with the workers and ripped them to shreds, feasting with lightning speed. When they were done, the squealers moved on, leaving behind nothing more than a large stain on the bay floor.

“Krogg! We’re dead meat,” Elliot said, sweating profusely. “What are they?”

“Aliens. What else? They look like a cross between a rat and an armadillo, and maybe a pirahna, too. Somebody on the Busy Bee got sloppy and let some aggressive life-forms onboard. The squealers and those silver vines. The vines are growing everywhere in that ship.”

“That must mean those monsters don’t eat plants,” Elliot said. “Great. We have plenty of cargo bays filled with harvests waiting for distribution, but that won’t satisfy those squealers, will it? No, they’ll want to eat us. But we should be safe in here. The walls are steel-plated. Only a nuclear blast could get through.”

“I just though of something,” Keaton said. “Sometimes one of your cats will find its way down to my work area. How do you suppose it gets down there?”

The night manager thought for a moment. “Oh, I know. A few weeks back, I heard a mouse or something in one of the air ducts, so I took off the grid so my cats could go in there and get it. I guess I forgot to close it. I’d better block off that duct—it’s by the floor right behind my desk.”

Elliot found the cover grid and screwed it back down over the opening in the wall. Then Keaton helped him to push a filing cabinet in front of it.

The night manager looked around his office. “Oh, no. Charlie Parker isn’t here. He must be in the ducts. I hope he finds a good place to hide.”

Keaton grabbed some more tissues, this time to wipe at his eyes and nose. “Damn. I’m trapped in here with my allergies and all these cats.” He waved a handful of tissues at the computer. “What are you waiting for? Contact the home office, Punktown authorities, somebody who can rescue us!”

“Oh! Right!” Elliot rushed to his desk, sat down in front of the computer and–

That’s when one of the squealers broke into the office through another air duct in the ceiling. Six more of the squealers jumped out of the opening after it.

Elliot reached into a desk drawer, pulled out an old Earth pistol and fired at the first squealer. The bullet ricocheted off its armor and missed Keaton’s head by half an inch.

Keaton began to poke the squealers’ faces with his faser-stick, but these creatures were full-grown—the jolt only stunned them temporarily.

Suddenly the cats went into a frenzy. They began hissing, their backs arched and their claws flailing. John Coltrane jumped in front of one of the squealers, ready to attack.

The squealer sneezed, like Keaton did when he’d entered the office.

The cats started scratching and biting at the faces of the alien predators. The squealers didn’t fight back. They couldn’t—they were too busy sneezing, coughing and gagging. Their eyes exuded stringy mucus. One of the squealers coughed up a blood-streaked shower of thick yellow fluid.

“Hey! The squealers are allergic to your cats!” Keaton said. He picked up Zoot Sims and rubbed the cat against his chest and legs. “Get some of their hair on you! Hurry!”

“I can do better than that! I combed all the cats about an hour ago.” Elliot reached into his trash bin and pulled out two handfuls of loose cat-hair. He handed one to Keaton and the two men began to spread the hair all over their clothes.

The squealers began to gurgle and gasp, desperately fighting for breath. The cats continued to bite and claw at their heads, ripping at their batlike shouts and ears, rubbing their fur—and dander—all over the faces of their enemies. A few minutes later, the squealers collapsed to the floor. Soon all of the repulsive alien creatures were dead, asphyxiated by their own phlegm.

Keaton grabbed another handful of tissues and blew his nose. “I think we’re going to be okay. You’d better contact the authorities.” He walked around the office, looking at the dead squealers. Their eyes, noses and mouths were completely clotted with blood and snot. As he walked by the window, he happened to look down at the landing bay.

“Elliot!” he shouted. “Look what’s happening now!”

The two men stood at the window and watched as, far below, the Manx cat known as Charlie Parker chased a horde of sneezing, gagging squealers across the landing bay.

“Elliot,” Keaton said, “how many Earth cats do you suppose there are on this world?”

The night manager shrugged. “Who can say? As far as I know, I have the only cats on the whole planet. Why?”

“Think about it. This building isn’t sealed shut. The squealers will find a way out. They’re no longer a problem for Tranquility, Inc.—but they are now for Punktown. We’ve got to figure out how to get hundreds, thousands of cats here as soon as possible.” Keaton looked at all the cats in the office. “Do any of these have kittens on the way?”

“I doubt it,” Elliot said. “They’re neutered males.” He then returned to his computer. “I’ll take care of everything here. Could you get us something to eat? After all this excitement, my blood-sugar level is at rock-bottom. I really need to get some food in me. You’re covered with cat hair, so you should be okay.”

“Oh, sure.” Keaton unlocked the door and walked down the hall. A few squealers ran toward him, but they ran away as soon as they got a snootful of cat dander.

Two floors down, he found an employee lounge with snack machines. In mid-air, right in the center of the room, a silvery something was fluttering. It looked like a butterfly made out of leaves. It flew up to one of the snack machines and managed to wriggle its way inside.

Curious, Keaton watched as the strange flying thing tore a hole in a bag of potato chips and crawled in.

He then bought some snacks from another machine, turning away from the machine with the silver interloper for only thirty seconds.

When he turned back, the invaded machine was filled with writhing silvery vines.

“Oh, great,” Keaton said. “That’s all we need.”

CHAOS, by John Russell Fearn

For nearly two hours Nal Folan had been seated almost motionless, held in the grip of profound abstract reasoning. In this time only his right hand had moved, turning over the sheets of light durable metal foiling covered with a maze of figures and mathematical computations. He had been working alone in complete silence, a single living man in the midst of a towering array of scientific apparatus.

Finally he laid aside the last sheet of foiling, stretched muscular arms, and got to his feet. He was tall, young, and dressed in a brief toga-like costume, his legs and arms almost bare. Nal Folan was a perfect creature of his race. Product of a magnificent science built up through generations.

The timepiece on the far wall of the huge laboratory showed him it was still early in the evening. He nodded to himself, brushed the thick black hair from his forehead with his hand, and then hurried to the door. A short walk down a gleaming corridor and up a flight of emergency steps brought him to the immense flat roof which extended over the entire area of the laboratory. Save for a distant figure the square expanse was deserted.

But the distant figure was all Nal Folan wished to see. He smiled to himself and walked swiftly across the space, his soft-footed sandals making hardly any noise. Before he had covered more than half the distance however the figure turned and began to hurry towards him—a graceful girl in brief garments similar to his own, her black hair streaming to her shoulders.

“Nal,” she murmured, as they seized each other’s hands.

He did not answer for a moment. Gently he kissed her oval face, looked for a moment into the darkness of her eyes. Then putting his arm about her waist he walked with her to the high metal rail which entirely encircled the roof parapet

“I thought you’d forget,” she said, smiling up at him. “With so many other things on your mind.”

“It would take more than wave-mechanics to make me forget you, Mydia,” he answered. “You said you’d meet me around this time on the laboratory roof, and that’s enough for me. You didn’t have any difficulty in getting here, did you?”

“Not particularly. I used the stairway from the street.”

He nodded. “Good. As long as we remain up here on this roof we’re within bounds. But we can’t go down into the laboratory, of course. Visitors are not allowed—not even when they are as beautiful as you are. Old man Grifa would go crazy if he found the rule had been broken.”

They were both quiet for a moment. Over in the west the sun had vanished in the magenta and orange of the warm spring evening. The sky was pale blue and empty, a star or two winking here and there. No wind stirred. From this high eminence the young roan and woman had an uninterrupted view of the city, a metropolis wider than it was high, nowhere rising above three stories except in the case of this laboratory.

The buildings were all of white metal, incorrodible, gleaming now with the strings of lights in the windows. Faintly, drifting on the still air, came the hum of the mighty engines which controlled the aircraft, the radio-television systems, the atomic power-houses, and the climate.

“Not a bad city to live in,” Nal Folan commented at length, his elbows on the rail and his young, powerful body half stooped as he gazed towards the west.

“Atlantis?” The girl smiled. “It’s a wonderful city, Nal, and you know it. Yet even with our scientific perfection I suppose there is still a good deal to be learned. You and your wave-mechanics theory, for instance.”

Nal Folan meditated, his keen gray eyes shifting to the distant Sphinx and Pyramids just outside the city. The Sphinx was a recent creation, a gigantic idol of stone etched out by scientific engineers, a traditional god which the race still revered despite their immense grasp of scientific realities. The Pyramids were for a very different purpose. They housed the ashes of the city fathers who had at last come to the end of their three-centuries span.

“Just what,” the girl asked presently, “are you trying to do in the laboratory, Nal? You’ve only given me vague hints. It’s important, isn’t it?”

He straightened up and regarded her. “Important enough, yes. Grifa and the others are coming tomorrow morning to see my demonstration. If it is successful I may become the Third Physicist. After that, a few more years say, and then I’ll have the same position as Grifa himself. That’s worth striving for.”

“That I know,” Mydia said. “You’ve mentioned it many times. But it still doesn’t explain what you are doing. Please remember that I’m only a very commonplace machine-minder in the climatic powerhouse and—”

“Commonplace!” Nal caught her shoulders and shook her gently. “If beauty were commonplace, which it isn’t even in this city, you might be right. Certainly not otherwise. My work?” He seemed suddenly conscious of her question. “It is a method of proving that an electron-area is not limited to being merely a microscopic probability.”

Mydia looked at him solemnly, her pretty face troubled. Then she sighed. “It serves me right,” she said. “I shouldn’t have asked you. I don’t know the first thing about electron-areas.”

“Then why bother?” he asked, smiling. “I asked you to come here after your machine shift so that we could talk—not of mathematics and probabilities but about ourselves. You and me—our coming marriage—the things we intend to do.”

Mydia was silent, looking down at the city. Men and women were going back and forth. Silent vehicles skimmed up and down the broad avenues. To the east the emptiness of the sky was broken as an exploration flyer, detailed to seek out fresh lands for expansion, came down on the guiding radio-beam.

“You—haven’t changed your mind?” Nal whispered frowning.

The girl laughed. “Of course not! Can’t I be silent for a moment or two without you thinking that? I was just considering. It’s so safe now for us to be married, to have children, and not be afraid that they will be destroyed. It was so different in our grandparent’s time.”

Nal nodded, reminded of events of two generations ago, six hundred years. At that time the entire race had fled through the void from the fourth planet nearest the sun. Gigantic geological changes and the consequent evaporation of their normal air and oceans had driven them out to this safer world.

Now they could look upon the planet they had left and see the merciless corrosion of ferric oxide going on before their eyes. But here they were safe, established. In this one city, the only city so far on Earth, the third world, was encompassed the entire nucleus of the mighty race—twenty thousand of them.

“We have to expand, colonize, marry, intermarry—spread ourselves all over the world,” Nal murmured, repeating the words of Brada, their monarch. “That is right and as it should be. We are not upsetting anybody who normally belongs to this planet. Except for us it has no intelligent life.”

The twilight deepened. The girl moved slightly.

“Are we going home, Nal, or do you intend to spend more time in the laboratory?”

He seemed to make up his mind about something before he replied.

“Mydia, we share most of our joys and sorrows, don’t we?” he asked.

“All of them,” she answered, her eyes luminous.

“Then I’m going to show you what I’m up to,” he decided. “Be hanged to rules and regulations! They can’t say anything to me, anyway. I’m too important a research scientist for that. Come below and see for yourself.”

He caught her arm and she followed promptly across the roof and down the emergency staircase into the silent corridor, which led to the department in which he had been working. Normally the staff in the building had ceased work by this time. Only special research, such as Nal had been engaged upon, made it necessary to delay beyond that hour.

“We’re quite alone,” he said, as he ushered her into the gigantic hall-like room. “Come along.”

He closed the door behind her and in wonderment she gazed about her upon the towering giants of instruments. Though she was accustomed to scientific equipment in her daily work as a machine-minder she had never before encountered such apparatus as here. Most of it was for research work, or the product thereof, and therefore not in general use but reserved exclusively for secret experiments.

Finally Nal stopped beside the bench at which he had been working. He gestured briefly to the metal foils with the mathematics thereon and waved to what seemed to be a highly polished ball standing on the summit of a glittering rod, its base firmly bolted to the metal flooring.

“That,” he said, “is the product of these figures.”

Mydia contemplated the object for a moment or two and then she looked vaguely disappointed.

“Not very—impressive, is it?”

Nal smiled. “It isn’t meant to be. In fact, the fewer gadgets there are around it, better. It connects to the switchboard here,” he nodded to it, “and this blue push-button controls it. The button is the power-feeder. The thing, itself is a converter globe, made to react directly on the etheric waves of matter.”

“How?” Mydia questioned, puzzled.

“Well, it—” Nal broke off in surprise as the visiphone buzzed suddenly. Puzzled, he pressed the switch that opened the audiophone. Simultaneously, a face remarkable for its massive strength and mature wisdom appeared on the screen.

“Oh, there you are, Nal.” The deep, genial voice of Grifa, the First Physicist of Atlantis, came over the speakers. “I’d like you to come to my apartment for a few words. About your demonstration tomorrow.”

“Er—yes, sir.” Nal moved his hand behind his back so Mydia would understand to keep out of range of the instrument’s visual pickup. “I’ll be glad to, sir. Right away?”

“Yes. I won’t keep you long.”

Nal switched off and glanced ruefully at the girl. She breathed an expressive sigh of relief.

“Good job the old boy decided to ’phone instead of coming here personally,” she said.

“I’ll have to go.” Nal looked momentarily annoyed. “But I don’t expect I’ll be long. Then I’ll come back and finish what I was going to tell you. You don’t mind waiting?”

“Of course not. Even looking at this place passes the time.”

Folan nodded and strode quickly across the laboratory. Left to herself the girl stood gazing about her, and finally she returned to a study of the polished, harmless-looking globe. It still didn’t appear much of an achievement for eighteen months of concentrated effort. Her thoughts began to wander—playfully, then dangerously. The curiosity that is within every human being was getting the mastery. The blue button, Nal had said. To press it on and off surely couldn’t do any harm? It looked tempting.

She passed her fingertip gently over it, considered, and then she pressed it sharply on and off. Inside the metallic globe there was a faint whirring sound like blades spinning round in heavy air. Since the effect ceased the moment she released the button she tried again and jabbed the button inwards more sharply.

Then to her horror the button top slipped just under the socket edge and remained jammed!

Panic got her immediately. She fiddled and fumbled with her fingernails to get the button back into the central position, but it remained obdurate. Wildly she glanced about her for something thin and sharp. Above her the mystic metal globe had started to glow and the ghostly whirring had become a steady, constant sound.

A pair of forceps on the bench seemed the most likely thing. She dived for them and then stopped dead, stupefied. Suddenly her left arm had been painlessly, completely amputated from the elbow! The incredible horror of the fact paralyzed her for a moment. Then she turned her head to stare at the impartial, glowing globe.

Suddenly it was no longer a globe. It was a blazing sun and she was infinitely far out in space. There were a few seconds before the air inside her body exploded outwards in the pressure-free void, and then Mydia had literally blown apart a million miles from Earth.

Nal Folan found the First Physicist in his most genial mood in the big, quietly furnished apartment he occupied in the center of the city. Grifa himself was a tall, eagle-nosed man, white-haired now, but with all the strength of two hundred years. When Nal entered he was busy at his desk under the flood of cold light radiance in the glazed ceiling.

“Come in, Nal, sit down.” He motioned to a chair and then set aside his work and considered the young man across the desk. “I understand that you are ready to make yow demonstration tomorrow morning?”

“Of the electrical converter, yes,” Nal agreed. “I’ve worked it out to the last detail. I think it will fulfill all I’ve claimed for it—and thanks for giving me the time to finish it.”

“It is the purpose of us Elders of Atlantis to allow promising young scientists to develop their theories,” Grifa smiled. “Otherwise, how could science expand? However, I sent for you so that I can have all the details. I want to think the matter over before tomorrow.”

“I have everything recorded, sir. I’ll go and—”

Grifa raised a hand as Nal half rose. “Sit down, boy. Never mind the actual technique—just give me the outlines. That will be all I’ll need for the moment. I haven’t even the vaguest outline of your plan, yet, remember.”

“Well, sir, I’m seeking to prove that it is possible to study the exact position of an electron, instead of the present annoying condition wherein you can’t know the position and velocity of an electron simultaneously.”

“In other words you have devised a means whereby the basis of all matter can be studied without, say, the very action of light impact itself dislodging the electron before it can be studied?”

“I am dealing, sir, in probability,” Nal said quietly. “An electron, as we understand it, is merely a probability. It is within a given area of waves of inconceivable smallness. We cannot say for certain that it is here or there. We assume the probability that it is.

“The waves in which an electron is assumed to exist veer off into space, maybe into other dimensions, which makes the job of pinning down the actual position of the electron itself all the more difficult.”

“Quite so,” Grifa conceded. “And what have you done about it?”

“I’ve devised a converter. It emits energy waves that are identical with those existing around the ‘probable’ position of the electron, at which point of course the waves are densest. Therefore, instead of a central core if tremendous energy which weakens as it travels—as all waves weaken as they travel from the source—I maintain the same energy strength for any distance.”

Grifa looked astonished for a moment. “What you really mean is that instead of the electron wave being infinitesimally small it can be made as large as—as you wish?”

“That is it exactly,” Nal agreed, “because the original energy is carried onwards and outwards from the core for any distance we wish. It means that instead of having to try and examine an electron in a microscopic area we can have an area of several feet, yards, miles, whatever we wish. It makes the study of an electron wave and the electron itself absolutely possible.”

The First Physicist was silent for a long time, brooding. Then he got to his feet and shook his gray head slowly.

“I don’t quite like it,” he muttered. “The electron-probability, Nal, is the basis of all known matter. It operates in its small area by natural laws and because of that matter remains stable. If the area be extended, it means that the particular piece of matter involved will lose its cohesion. It might even be transplanted! Did you stop to think of that?”

“I did,” Nal assented. “That is why 1 have devised a spring button instead of a normal switch. The particular matter I intend to treat tomorrow will only be exposed to the influence for a split second. Then we can study the result. Naturally, only split-second energy release can be used at first until we know what we are dealing with, otherwise we might unlock matter itself.”

Grifa became silent again, gazing pensively out of the window. Then after a while he frowned and motioned Nal to his side.

“What do you make of that?” the First Physicist asked, pointing.

Nal studied the view of the lighted city, but it was only by degrees that he became conscious of something amiss with it. It looked as though a V-shaped wedge had blotted out one section of the lights with a darkness that was absolute. At the very apex of the wedge was a tiny glowing point.

Even as he tried to understand the mystery, something passed through the building in which Grifa and he were standing. It was a curious surging motion as though an immense wind had passed through solid matter and then subsided again.

“Great heavens,” Nal whispered suddenly, his eyes suddenly becoming round with alarm. “That point is approximately where the research laboratory is. Surely it isn’t possible that—Mydia!” he breathed. “But—but she couldn’t have—!”

“What in cosmos are you talking about?” Grifa snapped, seizing Nal’s arm tightly. “What’s wrong, boy? You’re not suggesting that something has happened to your converter, are you?”

“I—I don’t know. I hardly dare think—”

“What do you mean by ‘Mydia’? What has a woman to do with it?”

Nal turned suddenly. “I’ve got to find out, sir.”

He headed from the apartment with long strides and the savant followed him. When they reached the street they found it jammed with milling crowds, and from here the amazing V-fault across the city was more than ever obvious. The buildings within this segment had entirely vanished. Those on the fringes of it were neatly, flawlessly, bisected.

“Come on!” Grifa snapped, pushing his way through the men and women with Nal at his side. “There’s something devilishly wrong here.”

With the realization that they were taking a desperate risk they hurried to the outermost edge of the V-section, but once they passed into it they experienced no ill effects. There was solid ground, smooth as the face a black mirror, from which all traces of buildings and the people who had been within them had utterly disappeared.

Without commenting, though his face was grim, Grifa hurried along the smoothness towards the solitary point of light, which shone like a star. Then presently he slowed up, Nal beside him, as both of them became conscious of surging waves beating about them again.

“There’s only one answer to this,” Grifa snapped. “That converter of yours is working—too well! We’d better get out of its influence. We seem to be in a direct line. That point of light is where the laboratory ought to be.”

“I’m going on, sir,” Nal said grimly. “I left a girl in that laboratory—Mydia Fro. I intend to marry her. I’ve got to find her.”

“You left a—”

Nal did not wait to hear what more his outraged superior might have to say. He sped down the black, shining vista towards the solitary spot of light, oblivious to whatever danger there might be. In time be realized that the entire front of the research laboratory had disappeared and that the floors were visible sectionally with that glowing ball on the topmost floor of all.

Nal raced through the entranceway of the building and up the stairs, finally burst into the laboratory itself. All the lights were out. What illumination there was came from that baleful ball atop its glittering pole. It was bright amethyst in color, setting up a tautening static in the air.

Appalled, Nal fell back before that baleful circle. He looked about him anxiously. Of Mydia there was no sign. Breathing hard he raced over to the switchboard and found the jammed button. He beat on it frenziedly—and then stopped, his attention arrested by a new and horrifying sight. At his feet lay a perfectly severed forearm, appearing just as though it were cast in wax. He did not touch it. He just stared bewildered.

Then, his rugged face ghastly in the lavender glow, Grifa came to his side, panting for breath.

“Too late now for recriminations, Nal,” he said. “You say there was a woman in here? Obviously that arm belonged to her. It must have been severed by a shift in electronic paths—cleanly, painlessly. In other words, the probability that her forearm belonged to the rest of her arm suddenly ceased to exist and the forearm materialized elsewhere—on the floor here.”

“But where is she?” Nal panted, staring around. “What’s become of her?”

“I don’t know, any more than one can ever predict where a probability wave is. As to what happened, this button—”

The First Physicist turned on it savagely—but at the same instant he found himself quite unhurt on a rising stretch of ground outside the city. Nal was beside him, not a lock of his hair disturbed, not one shade of alteration m his horrified expression.

Grifa did not say anything immediately. He was contemplating the city and grappling with profound issues at the same time. From this rocky eminence it looked as though the city were splashed with inky holes where buildings had utterly vanished and left smooth, mirror-like ground. There was a disturbance in the air too, a wraith or so of wind, which in a climate automatically controlled at dead level calmness could only mean one thing—the Climatic machines had been affected.

“Nal,” the First Physicist said finally, gripping the young man’s arm, “you’ve released something which we can’t stop—or at least that woman Mydia Fro must have done so. The button jammed and the converter ran on and on. That means that all the time it runs electron waves extend their area, in the way you outlined, and their extension shifts other waves, and so on ad infinitum.

“The whole mass of probabilities which make up matter as we know it is in a state of complete flux. For instance, while we were in the laboratory the probability that we were there collapsed before the probability that we were here—and here we came, on the instant, without any conception of transit. That, I imagine, is explainable by an electron leaping from one orbit to another without ever being in the space between. No gulf is there to be crossed. One state dissolves and another appears, remote from the original state.

“At any moment,” Grifa said somberly, “the probability that we are here may collapse again and we may be—anywhere. In the former state matter was more or less stable. Now it is stable no longer.” Grifa clenched his fists and stared upwards at fast forming clouds. “I said it was something we couldn’t stop,” he muttered. “But we’ve got to! It can mean the end of the world—the probability, even, that the world itself does not exist, or anything upon it. Come with me,” he finished curtly, jerking his gray head.

Nal said nothing, but he turned and turned and followed the savant down the rocky slope which led to the pock-marked city. They entered it by skirting its edges, avoiding the streets that were now thronged with surging, chattering people trying to discover what was happening. Many of the buildings still stood unharmed, including the one in which Grifa had his headquarters and, deep down in the basement, his private laboratory.

He entered it in a few minutes with Nal behind and switched on the lights. “We are no safer from probability waves down here than we are anywhere else,” he said, “but at least we may have a chance to hit back. We can’t approach that converter-globe again without risking destruction or transplantation to heaven knows where. So the obvious answer is to destroy it from a distance by vibratory waves.”

Turning, he went over to one of the instruments with which the laboratory was filled. He paused at length before an apparatus that reminded Nal of a telescopic reflector.

“When we came from our home planet,” the savant said, operating switches that made the instrument turn on a massive central pillar, “we brought three of these vibratory guns with us in case there should be dangerous life on this world.

“We never needed to use them and this one has remained in case of attack from space. It directs a molecular vibration upon any given object at any distance, passing through intervening matter in the form of an X-ray. Now, let us see what the predictor tells us.”

He studied a balanced needle swinging in a vacuum globe and operated more controls. Nal watched the needle turn gently until it pointed exactly parallel with the direction of the gun barrel.

“The needle is now pointing to the converter-globe two miles away,” Grifa explained. “Any great center of electricity attracts the needle—or if need be any particular mass of matter.” He paused. “We are dead-sighted on that abominable creation of yours. Let’s see what we can do with it.”

Switches moved. Power hummed. Nothing of a visible nature left the gigantic projector, but after a second or two the needle in the vacuum-globe suddenly jumped into a vertical position and became steady. Grifa gave a deep sigh and stood back.

“It’s destroyed,” he said thankfully. “The electrical mass is no longer there. The needle proves it. We had better look for ourselves.”

They hurried out of the laboratory together and to the main rooms on the ground floor. From the window they gazed out beyond the milling people and caverns of darkness to the spot where a glowing point of light had been. It had vanished. There was void.

“And—and that should cure the trouble?” Nal asked.

“Perhaps.” The First Physicist turned from the window as an eddying gust of wind hurled expected rain against it. Outside, lightning blazed transiently. “Perhaps,” he repeated moodily. “At least it means that the effect cannot go on being created. What remains can only be from the initial trouble and ultimately the balance should settle down. We destroyed it in the only way we could. Cutting off the power would not have done it. It was alive within itself.”

“And—Mydia Fro?” Nal asked somberly, then he turned and looked sharply at the desk where Grifa usually worked. In a sudden blur the desk vanished and left empty floor.

“So,” Grifa muttered, “the effect still goes on. So I suppose it will do until every displaced probability wave has found its proper position and a new order of things is established. It may take years—centuries—aeons.”

A clap of thunder drowned the remainder of his words. Nal looked about him dully, still almost bereft of the power to think. In fact only two realizations had any deep significance for him. One was that Mydia had gone, he knew not where. The other, that he had brought about the destruction of the city he loved.

Then with devastating abruptness the storm that had been gathering since the breakdown of the Climatic machines burst in a deluge of rain against the window. It rattled violently, and rattled again to the booming roar of a hurricane wind. Nal turned a grim face and stared outside. Across the broad avenue three giant buildings dissolved even as lightning illumined them. For a split second there was a vision of swirling humanity fleeing for shelter—

The ground trembled as deep down under the earth probabilities gave way to new probabilities and matter in places ceased to be, or was transferred elsewhere.

The lights in the glazed ceiling died and a moment later the visiphone buzzed for attention. Grifa strode across to it on the wall, his way lighted by a chaotic blaze of forked lightning. As he pressed the switch no face appeared on the glass screen but a troubled voice chattered to him.

“Excellence, I have been trying to make contact with the king. Probably he has been killed. There are none left who can take control. This is the First Adviser speaking. What am I to do? What has happened?

“I—I have seen things appear and disappear without reason. The latest reports from our exploration fliers state that even our traditional Sphinx and Pyramids have been transported two thousand miles to the middle of an empty desert! How could that come about?”

“The explanation is scientific, my friend—a gigantic scientific flaw,” Grifa responded. “There is nothing you, or I, or anybody can do about it. Watch out for your own safety, until the disturbance subsides. The whole basic structure of matter is undermined.”

The communication was cut off suddenly. An entire wall of the building dissolved and Grifa and Nal found themselves battered by cyclonic winds and saturating rain before they even had a chance to move. The First Physicist went sprawling. Nal seized him and dragged him to his feet again.

“We’ll have to find shelter!” he shouted into the savant’s ear.

Drenched, Grifa gazed at the chain lightning whiplashing the raging heavens. He shook his head.

“There’ll be no shelter for us, son—not for days or weeks, maybe not for years. Everything in this area is toppling into a new balance. The effect will go on throughout the planet, progressively, maybe even into space itself for generations yet to come.”

“But we might survive,” Nal said desperately. “Some of us have got to, if only to perpetuate the science of our race.”

“Some of us will,” the savant agreed. “But as I see it, after the horror that has been released they will almost certainly be witless savages, groping for shelter in a shattered, bewildering world. Science and education always vanish before elemental fury, Nal.”

The earth gulped and heaved. Both men staggered heavily amidst the swamping rain. Far away to the east, momentarily lighted by the lightning, was a clear silver line carrying with it a roar that penetrated even the storm.

“That’s—that’s the ocean!” Nal gasped, fascinated. “It must mean that our whole city is sinking—perhaps even the continent itself. It’s a tidal wave! It’ll crash down on us! Do you understand, sir?” he shouted. “Then you say some of us will survive!”

“Some will, as the waters subside.” The First Physicist stared at the advancing line for a moment. “What you have done, Nal, will be long remembered,” he said at length. “Those who come after us—generations as yet unborn—will wonder whence came a Sphinx and Pyramids in the middle of a desert. Whither went a race of scientists who must have existed in this part of the world.

“Unexplained things in unexplained places—eternal riddles. Mighty objects that could never have been moved by mortal agency. All the work of shifting probabilities which began this night.”

Grifa seemed suddenly possessed of visionary power in the face of imminent death.

“Perhaps the perfect balance will never be found. New probabilities will appear like bubbles in the space-time continuum, but with gradually diminishing frequency. Human beings and animals will vanish from the midst of their fellows without trace. Ocean ships which must come again in course of time will sail and never be heard of again. Airplanes will hurtle through the sky and into unexplained extinction.

“Out in space stars will come and go for no known reason. Shiftings—probabilities, until the perfect balance is attained when thermodynamic equilibrium is reached in the unthinkably distant future.”

Suddenly Grifa was gone, transposed by a probability shift to a lonely planet circling Antares. For a second or two he gazed upon the lonely, deathly world on which he stood and then he died, rent asunder by the explosion of air within him.

Nal Folan, stíll on Earth, gazed stupidly a| the spot where the First Physicist had been. Then he glanced up at the roaring waters sweeping down upon what remained of tottering Atlantis.

He started to run. He had no idea where, over rocks and fallen metal, with the mighty tide surging irresistibly behind him.

Then it had vanished. Nal was reeling through long rank grass under a calm moon and stars. Nowhere was there a sign Atlantis, of havoc, of tidal wave. Probability had decided that he should be an unknown distance from the spot where Deluge had struck.

Survivors? The thought twisted through his mind. Perhaps others would come to begin anew the task of building a race, which in turn would wonder upon the marvels, the mysteries, the unexplained riddles in the world about them.

Forever more there must be a planet in which there was no certainty, from which there would one day spring a Principle of Indeterminacy, a world wherein one might step from the everyday into a new probability and be gone from fellowmen forever; where one might fly the heavens and never be heard of again. Where one might sail the oceans and never reach port. Where one might find the tombs of Egyptian kings in Pyramids that once held the ashes of the dignitaries of Atlantis.

Nal smiled wearily. These were things for the future. For the moment he had survived. Perhaps he would continue to survive, to hand down records which in course of time would become legends of a master-race of Atlantis which had perished in the Deluge…He had to find others of his own kind somewhere in this calm, unknown land where the moonlight shone silver on softly waving grass.

AND HAPPINESS EVERLASTING, by Gerald Warfield

The ancient man at the head of the table leaned forward. “I’m sorry to tell you,” he said, his jowls quivering, “that your brother, Charles, is dead.”

Eddie blinked. A chill settled in his gut.

“He committed suicide,” the man continued, gripping the edge of the table with his gnarled hands. “Lethal injection.”

In his mind Eddie saw a smiling Charlie, not the real Charlie, but a holograph that sat in his living room taken on the day his brother began work at Celestial Games.

No one at the massive table met his gaze except Jeremiah Adolphus, a sagging pyramid of flesh whose blotched, domed head was uninterrupted by hair, not even eyebrows.

“There was no note, but I’m sure you know about Charles’s depressions.” He gave Eddie a knowing look.

Eddie hesitated before nodding.

Why had they brought him here to tell him—and why in front of the board? He had almost refused the limo that had come for him this morning, but he feared Charlie was in trouble. Maybe he locked himself in a lab or something; he wasn’t the most stable person. But that was the worst he expected: that they needed someone to negotiate with Charlie.

“And,” continued Adolphus, pointedly, “I’m afraid there’s more. It appears Charles did something quite remarkable before he….” The man’s eyelids fluttered, his knuckles turned white as he gripped the table. “Although first,” he said, after a deep breath, “I should ask if you have any idea what your brother did here at Celestial Games?”

Eddie spoke at last. “My assumption was that he designed computer games.” The board members looked at him with a mixture of pity and condescension.

Adolphus leaned back. His shoulders sagged, and he put his fingertips together. “He was developing an interface that would allow gamers to interact with the game using only their minds.”

“Okay.” It didn’t sound possible, but Eddie never understood Charlie’s work. “My sister and I always said that he was the genius of the family.”

“He was brilliant,” agreed Mr. Adolphus, and there were assenting nods around the table.

A man slid into the vacant chair on Eddie’s right. Glancing at him, Eddie saw that his long salt-and-pepper hair was unkempt, his skin sallow, and his eyes protruded from his head. Hunched over in his chair, the man twitched as his gaze shifted around the table. Eddie had once seen a rat in an aquarium with a snake. The rat was bug-eyed and twitched.

“He was not successful,” continued Adolphus. “And there would be no reason even to mention it now except that, in the process, he did something else quite unexpected. He migrated his—how shall I say it—his persona into our primary development server.”

“His what?”

“He managed to transfer his conscious mind from his body to the computer before killing himself.”

“You mean he’s still alive—conscious in there?”

“Quite so,” Adolphus leaned back, withdrawing into the folds of his own flesh. “He spent months constructing a virtual world that we knew nothing about, and then, last Friday at six o-clock he sent his assistant home, ate half a pound of chocolate, inserted the needle in his arm, set the timer, and transferred his consciousness over to the computer. He didn’t even know when the timer went off.”

The chill in Eddie’s gut crept up his spine and the back of his neck. He couldn’t let himself dwell on Charlie’s last moments, not now.

“Unfortunately, he left no instructions how to get in and out of this world. With effort, we’ve been able to access it, but we don’t know how to get out again. It requires some kind of exit key.”

“I’m not sure I understand.” In the back of his mind a niggling feeling warned that there was more—much more. “And why are you telling me?”

Adolphus clasped his hands together. “We need you to help us.”

“How? Do you think he mailed me some kind of secret formula?”

“Did he?” asked the ancient man.

Even the rat looked up hopefully.

“No! And I’m not a programmer, either, so I don’t see how I can help you.”

“Oh, but you can, Eddie. You can ask your brother for the exit key. In fact, we’ll pay you handsomely for that service.”

“Ask him?” Eddie’s mind went blank. “You mean—I can talk to him?”

“Even better.” Adolphus’s smile was benign. “We can send you into his virtual world. It’s a small site; you’ll find him easily.”

Eddie’s pulse beat faster, but his response was cautious.

“Okay…of course, I’d like to talk to Charles, but why are you asking me to do this and not somebody who’ll know what this key thing is all about?”

Adolphus nodded at the rat who leaned back, put his fingertips together in imitation of Adolphus’s gesture. “That’s the crux of the problem. The virtual address is based on select strands of DNA. We didn’t realize that when we…”

Adolphus cleared his throat, and Eddie saw a warning glance.

“In order to get you to the same place in the computer that he is,” the rat said, nervously, “your DNA has to have a correlation coefficient of at least .925 with Charlie’s. That allows for a clone, identical twin, parent, child or—in your case—a genetic sibling.”

“What this means,” Adolphus interrupted, “is that we can send you in to see your brother, and it’ll really be him. He’ll have all his memories. You’ll be able to talk to him about old times, inquire about family secrets. You’ll even be able to ask what drove him to his final act—if you want.”

* * * *

Eddie sank into the chair’s white upholstery, a clamp on his right index finger. He desperately wanted a cigarette.

“This is just to establish the DNA sequence,” the rat man said. His office was small and cluttered with electronic components and little yellow pieces of paper.

Closing his eyes, Eddie attempted to control his growing anxiety.

“You know, he never trusted me,” whined the rat. “I populated his databases, beta tested and checked his heirarchization tables, but he never brainstormed with me like other programmers do with their assistants.”

Eddie didn’t want to hear the rat’s complaints. “So after Charlie tells me the magic word I get out?”

“Don’t worry.” The rat made a note on one of the screens. “He won’t leave you in there. We know his profile. He’s very close to you.”

Eddie wondered: close and distant at the same time? At their mother’s funeral Charlie had fairly radiated his discomfort at being physically close to him and their sister. They never even hugged.

“So it’s safe?”

“Oh, yes. Even the others are okay…” and he quickly turned his attention to a set of monitors.

“The others?” Eddie was suddenly alert. “What others?”

The rat looked stricken.

“You mean, you’ve sent other people into this damned thing? Where are they?”

The rat opened his mouth and gestured helplessly.

“They haven’t come back, have they?” Eddie stood and pulled the clamp from his finger.

“They’re in no danger.” The rat made quieting motions with his hands.

“You should have told me about them before that contract was shoved in my face!”

“We did,” squealed the rat. “Adolphus told you we had accessed the virtual world—and couldn’t get out again.”

It was true. Eddie remembered that part of their discussion. “So what happened to them?”

“It appears they went into a setting just like Eddie’s, but he wasn’t there.”

“It appears?”

“They’re just in a different partition, is all.”

“Suddenly, I’m not liking this idea very much!”

“They’re perfectly safe. It’s that DNA sequence that tripped us up; you’ll go right to him.”

Eddie watched the rat squirm for a few moments, then sat back in the chair and exhaled loudly. “How many are in there?”

“Three.”

“Jesus!” He pressed his back into the chair. “What happens to them if I don’t get the key?”

“Their—minds stay in the computer and their bodies stay on the gurneys.”

“Can’t you just wake them up?”

The rat sighed. “The process doesn’t clone their consciousness. It’s a transfer, a real migration, and they have to migrate back. When we have the key, we’ll send in their relatives, and then they can transfer back, too.”

“My brother probably knows you’ll try something like this.”

“Perhaps, but the company knows things, too. They spied on him big time. They knew he was up to something, but Adolphus said to let him alone.”

“So, were you a spy?”

The rat hesitated. “Supposed to be, but I just ended up an assistant.”

Eddie laughed.

The rat looked up angrily. “I didn’t get my bonus!”

* * * *

“We’re almost done.”

Eddie lay fully clothed on a padded, elevated table, electrodes attached to his head, arms, and one to his right ankle.

“I hope this thing works.”

“Think of money. Lots of money,” answered the rat.

Eddie snorted. He hadn’t intended to finesse the board. He would have paid them to see his brother, but his natural reticence made him appear reluctant, and they upped the offer twice. It was all he could do to keep from laughing. He did not, however, feel like laughing now.

“Okay, the DNA sequence checks out. I’m starting the drip.”

The drug affected Eddie immediately. “You know, my sister and I always accepted that he was the successful one. What pushed him over the edge?”

“He was unhappy.” The rat’s voice sounded far away.

“Maybe it…,” Eddie’s words were slurred now. “…my fault he didn’t talk to me.”

* * * *

A brilliant light shone directly into Eddie’s face. He grimaced and rolled onto his side.

What’s this? He stuck his fingers into the warm, yielding surface: a beach? Raising himself to his hands and knees, he saw beneath him pristine yellow sand.

As soon as his eyes adjusted to the sunlight, he looked up to see a long line of shore and, with some disappointment, a black drawbridge far in the distance. The two sides of the bridge were raised, and a tanker was putting out to sea. Another tanker on the horizon was but a tiny silhouette.

He got to his feet, brushing his hands, and saw a line of small white houses facing the water across a sandy road. Low palm trees fronted a few of the houses while scrubby grass punctuated the yards. Behind one of the houses, a neon Motel sign rose from a faded adobe structure.

Turning to face the water, he saw the ocean, smooth and unbroken like glass. Only if he listened could he hear the waves, tiny, little waves that lapped the shore.

He walked toward the water line, enjoying the feel of his shoes sinking into the sand. Never had he seen the ocean so calm and crystal clear. Even from the shore, he could see the bottom, several yards out, rippled, like an impression taken from the surface. Close in, a blue crab scuttled sideways while farther out drifted the white blobs of jellyfish.

Nearby, a huge rubber raft lay deflated and collapsed, its flat yellow folds half buried in dry sand. The sections above the sand formed an irregular platform on top of which was stacked a pile of jellyfish. The interiors of the variously shaped blobs were still alive with luminous and intricate patterns. Clinging to one side of the pile was a man-of-war, its purple air sack still inflated.

Only a few folds of rubber held the jellyfish, but the mound had begun to melt in the sun, and a small rivulet of slime crept back toward to the ocean. An odor, like dead fish, reached his nostrils.

At the sound of voices, he looked up. Children raced along the beach in his direction, each with a long stick and, on the end of each stick, a jellyfish. They veered from the ocean’s edge and ran toward Eddie.

Abruptly, they stopped at the raft and, ignoring him, flung the jellyfish from their sticks onto the pile. The blobs struck with a wet, plopping sound.

The children looked six or seven years old, four girls and one boy. The oldest girl, with blond curly hair, wore a faded red swimsuit, one piece covering her torso. The other girls, younger, wore only loose, striped short bottoms. Two of the girls were twins.

“Don’t touch the stick,” warned the girl in the red swim suit. “You’ll get stung!”

“Eww! Let’s get some more!” cried one of the twins.

They quickly turned and ran back along the beach, all except the boy, who remained, his stick still in his hand, staring down at the jellyfish. He was older than the girls—perhaps eight—and his lean limbs were darkly tanned. His hair, bleached by the sun, lay flat against his head.

“Jellyfish tide,” said Eddie softly. “Corpus Christi, the sixties.”

The boy looked up, his hazel eyes squinting at him. This was someone Eddie had never known, and he spoke again before he lost his nerve.

“I remember you said the beach stank for a week when the jellyfish melted.” Eddie laughed, raised his hands and shook his head. “It’s unbelievable!”

“So they figured out the entry code.” The voice was unfamiliar, and the boy didn’t smile.

“Charlie, is it really you?” He lowered his head to look into the boy’s face.

Charlie nodded, intense, hazel eyes shaded by a furrowed brow.

“Can you remember—everything?”

He nodded again.

Eddie let out a sigh, and straightened. “I’m so surprised. Why this place-why here?”

The boy looked out at the water, his eyes still troubled. “After we moved from Corpus I never saw the ocean again so calm.”

“I never saw it like this, ever.”

The boy continued to stare at the water.

“Please talk to me, Charlie. I’m here, and it’s kind of a miracle. You know, they sent three other guys in who haven’t come back yet.”

“Oh,” the boy looked back at the jellyfish.

“They’re hoping I can help get them out.”

Again, Charlie was silent.

Eddie sighed and ran his fingers through his hair. “You know, when they told me what you did, it kinda pulled the rug out from under me, too. Was life so bad?”

Charlie shook his head. “It’s hard to explain. I guess when I looked over the hill and I saw only more numbers, more formulas, more algorithms—and nothing else, not another soul….”

Eddie gave a sigh. “OK. I guess that kind-of thing happened to me, too. Only when I looked over the hill all I saw were more beers and more tits, pardon my French. Getting old for that sorta thing, but it didn’t make me suicidal.”

“Doesn’t sound much better than what I saw,” said Charlie.

“I dunno. Maybe you shoulda tried the tits.”

The boy gave him a dark look.

“Just kidding,” he said, raising both hands. “Besides, two wives didn’t do much to improve the landscape for me.”

The mewing of gulls distracted them. The birds hovered low, rising and falling with the beating of their wings.

“So,” said Eddie, tentatively, “none of your boyfriends worked out?”

Charlie clenched his jaw. “No, but it wasn’t their fault; it was mine.”

“Don’t be so hard on yourself. Mom and Dad weren’t affectionate. It rubbed off on me, too.”

“I think I got all the kinds of love mixed up,” he said, “sexual, family, brotherly, whatever, and I couldn’t really deal with any of it. You know, one time I signed a letter to mom, ‘sincerely yours.’ That was too much, even for her.”

“But dad was that way, too,” said Eddie.

Near the shore, tiny fish jumped, sparkling and shimmering on the water’s surface. They jumped again, all in the same direction.

“I always wondered what made them do that,” said Charlie.

“Must be something bigger down there, but—don’t you know? Didn’t you program them?”

“I never saw what it was.” Charlie shrugged and returned his attention to Eddie. “It’s not fair to blame mom and dad. I was a happy kid; I didn’t feel unloved. It was only when I got out into the world that I began to worry that I was cold, or that I couldn’t relate.”

“So, what about going Catholic? That didn’t help?”

“I loved the mass; it gave me a place to go when I was sad.”

“But Charlie, you don’t kill yourself because you’re sad, or you’re lonely!”

“How do you know?”

“Hell, I’ve been lonely. I’m lonely and a failure, but that’s not enough to make me check out.”

“What if you knew, for certain, that it never, ever was going to get better?”

“Ha! I’d suck up a beer, and I’d light a cigarette, and then I’d suck up another beer, but I’d keep going.”

“Would you? Wouldn’t you just be doing the same thing I did, only taking a little longer?”

“It’s not the same.”

“It is, too! Have you had those lungs checked lately? Have you? You can’t keep on tanking your liver and carbonizing your insides without consequences.”

The other children returned, each with a jellyfish on a stick. They plopped their catches on the pile, looked questioningly at Charlie, and then ran back to the water.

Eddie said quietly, “I was too young to remember the beach gang, but I recognize them from pictures. The one in the red suit?”

“Yeah,” Charlie said, “it’s Vicki.”

Eddie shook his head. “Oh God! It was such a shock when she died. Can she talk to us?”

“She isn’t really there. She has no memories, no awareness. I’m the only real person in this little diorama.”

Eddie sighed. “Who are the others?”

“Geesy and the twins. I don’t think I ever knew their names.” Charlie absently poked holes in the sand with his stick.

“You know, Charlie, this is more than just about your suicide. It sorta feels like my suicide, too. I always thought that Vicki and I, perhaps we deserved what we got, but you—you were the achiever, and your success was our success. And now you go off and kill yourself. What happened? Were you sorry you weren’t a happy heterosexual, like me?”

Charlie chuckled. It was the sound of an older man. “I’m glad to see you. Really, I am.”

Eddie’s throat constricted. “Thanks, Charlie.”

“No, that wasn’t the problem. I always held back. They knew it, I knew it, and we’d both realize it wasn’t going to change.”

“Maybe that’s it, Charlie. Maybe you’ve got to accept love, you know, and you’ve got to give it back, too. And if you don’t, it turns against you, kinda like milk you never take out of the fridge: It goes bad on you.”

“Let’s see now: ’Love not given is like milk gone sour.’ Perhaps you could go into the greeting card business.”

“Come on, Charlie, think about it.”

“Why? Like it’s gonna do me some good now? You think I’m gonna learn my lesson, post-mortem?”

“Charlie, please!” He fell to his knees. “This is for real; it’s for both of us.” He would have broken into tears but for something he glimpsed to his left. “Oh Jesus!”

Charlie turned and looked, too. A toddler with blond, curly hair came from the direction of the ocean, his diaper dripping with sea water, his pudgy face wreathed in a smile.

Charlie turned to Eddie and shrugged.

The children had run back. Vicky, in the red swim suit, took hold of the baby by the hand, scolded him, but the baby only laughed. She looked up. “You’re gonna get in trouble, Charlie,” she shouted. “Mama told you to watch him!”

“Well, mama told you to watch him, too!” returned Charlie, and he grinned up at Eddie. “You know, you did that about every other day. You loved the water.”

Eddie could not take his eyes off the toddler. “I look so happy.”

The girl dragged him, none too gently, toward the first white house. It had a little, white wooden arch over the end of the walkway leading from the front door.

“I can see why you liked it here,” said Eddie, “where the water is calm.”

“You know, I thought I’d get bored. The sun never sets. The raft never fills with jellyfish. But every time I dash out in the water and spear one of those things, I get a thrill. Sometimes, I can even grab one of the big round ones with my bare hands and not get stung. And every time I dump one on our pile, I feel like I’ve accomplished something. It’s counter to all the neuro-adaption theory I ever learned. I can’t explain it.”

“Well, this idea of yours, creating your own Garden of Eden, it’ll make a hell of a video game.”

The boy’s brow wrinkled. “Is that what they told you?”

“Well, I thought….”

“This is a perpetual life machine.”

Eddie thought for a moment. “You mean, you can start a whole new life in here?”

“You can’t go that far. The size of the system is limited by—lots of factors, but you can create a little segment of life, like this one. A day’s about the limit, and then you make a loop of it. The result is that you can live the happiest day of your life over and over—forever.”

Eddie glanced up and down the shore. The waves had grown enormous and broke in two long lines before crashing onto the beach; he could hear the sound of them up and down the shore. The children ran, squealing, in and out amongst them.

“We always got big breakers after a tanker passed,” Charlie said.

Eddie took several steps back as the tail-end of the waves scudded farther up the strand.

“That’s what they want to market,” said Charlie, “a perpetual life machine. Much better than a perpetual flame, don’t you think? People near death will pay anything for it, and their families will continue paying to keep it running.”

“It does sound kinda appealing.”

“Et felicitas perpetua.”

“I give up.”

“It’s from the Latin Mass. Et lux perpetua. It means ‘and light everlasting’ except Celestial Games plugs ‘happiness’ in for ‘light.’”

“And Happiness Everlasting!” Eddie pronounced.

“At first, it was just an idea I toyed with secretly, but then I realized the company was spying on me, and I made a kind of game of it, hiding from them. Keeping the key was just my final ‘up yours’ to Adolphus and his cronies.”

“So, if you don’t give up the key, nobody gets back, and they can’t market the thing?”

“Something like that.”

“What about you? What happens when they unplug the computer?”

“My existence terminates.” And with that he thrust his stick deep into the sand and left it there, poking up in front of him.

“Don’t you want to go on?”

The boy turned his head to the side and looked darkly down the beach. “This didn’t work out like I thought it would.” He crossed his arms in the gesture of an old man.

“Whadaya you mean?”

“I thought I’d come back and go through this loop a couple of thousand times, maybe more, and I’d get so bored that when the company got pissed off enough to pull the plug I wouldn’t care.”

“Aren’t you getting bored?”

“Actually, I’m enjoying myself,” he said grimly. “I think it must be a defect in the program.”

“What a shame.” Eddie laughed. “But then, maybe that changes things a little.”

“Maybe it does. You know, I didn’t really have a plan. I just thought I’d live my happiest day over and over for a while and then check out. But, now I find I really do care.” He lifted his arms, palms up. “I’d like it to go on.”

“Why can’t it?”

“I didn’t think they would figure out the genetic key, but they did. And by sending you in they’ve forced my hand. They know I won’t leave you stranded in here.” His voice took on a tone of resignation. “And once they get the key there will be no incentive to keep the program running.”

“I’ll make them! I’ll make it a condition of giving them the key.”

Charlie smiled. “Thanks, Eddie, but you’re no match for those guys.”

“I’ll buy the computer. I’ll keep it running myself.”

Charlie lifted his eyebrows. “That might work, for a while at least.”

“It’ll work for a long time. I promise.”

“Move it to another location. Hire another company to monitor it.”

“You know, Charlie, suddenly, I’m feeling very assertive.”

Charlie beamed, and then they looked at one another for a long while.

“You click your heels three times.”

“No!” grinned Eddie.

“It was my favorite book,” Charlie said with a little wave of his hand. “And then you say the name of my dog.”

“Shep?”

“I loved him,” Charlie said, softly.

“And that’s the key?”

The boy grimaced. “That’s all there is.”

They said nothing for a moment.

Suddenly, Charlie pulled the stick out of the sand and offered it to Eddie. “Why don’t you come and spear some jellyfish with us?”

Eddie took the stick, the grin still on his face. But then, “Naw, I’ve got other things on my mind. I’ve gotta twist some corporate arm.” He handed the stick back. “But one more thing: you know, that bit about love?”

“Don’t start that again. There’s no point.”

“It’s important, Charlie. We both had trouble with it, and we should have talked. In the long run we had one another all along. We could have worked it out.”

“Could we?”

“You know, I’m sorry we can’t get in this thing and just do it all over again. We could be best friends.”

Charlie laughed. “The ultimate virtual reality.”

“But even if we can’t, the rest is going to be different, now.”

Charlie nodded. “You still have some time left.”

“Yeah.”

“Me, too, in my own little paradise.”

“I wish you could come back with me.”

“Don’t,” cried Charlie. “Don’t make me sorry.”

“No, no. I don’t mean to.”

The boy bit his lip. “But you could come and see me.”

“Yeah, I’d like that.”

“And don’t forget that someday later, maybe much later, when you’re about to—you know—you could come back and stay.”

Eddie was quiet. “I’ll have to think about that.”

“Yeah, it takes some getting used to, and maybe your paradise would be different from this.”

Eddie’s throat was dry, and his nose started running. “Goodbye, Charlie. I’m really glad I got to see you again,” he said, wiping his nose on his sleeve. “And I’ll come back and spear some jellyfish, I promise.” And then, he knelt in the sand and opened his arms. “Can we…”

The boy looked at him, a flicker of fear on his face, but then he rushed forward and threw himself into his brother’s arms.

To Eddie, the little body felt so small, so thin and frail. Eddie cried. The boy squirmed, and Eddie released him. Then he stood up and watched as Charlie turned and ran with his stick toward the ocean, the sand flying from his little feet, his hair blowing in the salt breeze.

SEEDS OF INVASION, by Philip E. High

Markham locked the door of his car unhurriedly. There was no great haste the body would not go away.

He walked through the police cars and ducked under the restraining ribbon. A constable standing in his path, recognized him and saluted.

“Right by the green shed, sir.” He stepped smartly back.

“A nasty one, Cole?” He had already noticed that the officer was pale.

“Well, yes, sir, it is. I’ve seen a few in my time, sir, as you know, but this one—he’s been crucified, sir.”

Markham passed on, not the first by any means. Two in Africa and some religious madman in Warsaw—Yes, it was not new, he had seen worse.

He had not.

Those had just been corpses.

This one was not. This one was a skeleton.

Not an old one, brown with age and falling apart but a new one, picked or scraped clean.

And worse, it was dressed. It wore a flat brown hat with a small peak.

It wore a brown industrial cover-all such as a man might wear in a trade that was not too messy.

Beneath it he wore normal everyday clothing.

He wore boots and they were on.

Somehow a gold ring was adhering to the bone of his finger.

Markham noticed that the black boots were polished and neatly tied.

He was not, strictly speaking, crucified. The position was correct with the arms outspread but no nails held him to the green painted wood of the garden shed.

He was literally stuck there, held by his clothes by some unknown adhesive.

A doctor and two paramedics were on the scene, all looking distraught, but Markham knew that only forensics would be able to give him some clue as to the time of death.

Investigation at the scene took a lot of time. The body was not removed from the shed. The wooden wall was cut round him and taken with him. Just what sort of adhesive had kept him stuck there and why?

It was fairly obvious, however, who he was. He was the owner of a small rural business dealing in agriculture.

A business that dealt in seeds, both vegetable and floral. He had had not a little success in business despite its smallness. Some of the hybrids he had produced had won awards.

An employee gardener arrived who had to be treated for shock before he could give evidence. “I suppose it’s him. How can you tell? It’s his clothes, his pocket watch, his signet ring. No, it don’t look as if he had been robbed. Eight hundred would be about normal, Monday is a slack day.”

“Anything unusual strike you before you left yesterday? Anything, man, however trivial or irrelevant it might seem.”

“Well, sir, there was a funny packet of seeds although I don’t suppose that had much to do with it.”

“Tell me about it.”

“It came with the rest of the post—I suppose. It didn’t have no address and no supplier’s name on it. It just said what seeds were in it out they weren’t printed right either. It said ‘Turrn Nip Seed’.”

“Have you got the packet?”

“No, sir, I threw it in the bin but I dare say I could find it; bin ain’t been emptied yet.”

In the middle of the search, a pale-faced constable came in. “I think I’ve found a dog, sir.”

The man looked up from his search. “Oh, that would be Charlie, sir. Wondered where he was. Black Retriever, you can’t mistake him.”

“You bloody can now,” said the constable in a bitter voice.

He led Markham to an open tool shed at the bottom of the smallholding. The animal was held upright between two forks, one forepaw raised as if about to run. It struck Markham as singularly grotesque that it should have been left in this manner for the dog, like its owner had been stripped clean. The collar still hung round its neck but that was all. There was no fur and no flesh, nothing to suggest how it had died.

Markham slouched around the garden for some time, hands locked behind his back, deep in thought.

The smallholding was compact and neatly laid out. Two fair size greenhouses, six wooden sheds and eight divided garden plots. The entire unit was linked by a number of small shingle paths and entirely surrounded by a tall wicker fence.

Markham took out his pipe and clamped it between his teeth. When he arrived at the main storeroom, his assistant, Detective Wayne, had news from forensics.

“No doubt about the identity of the skeleton, sir, it was the owner of this place, Aaron Cord. Dental records match exactly, the man broke his leg as a teenager and the mend is visible. We’re lucky enough to have found a clear and recent photograph, taken not long ago at an agricultural dinner.”

Markham studied the picture carefully, not knowing if the picture would be of much use now. He had, however, a photographic memory and was careful to take in details.

Cord had been a big man, broad shouldered but slightly bowed forward. Age forty- five, bald, but with a bushy, square cut type of beard.

Wayne interrupted his thoughts. “Sorry to bring bad news, Chief, but high brass are coming.”

Who—exactly?”

“Exactly, I can’t help, Chief, but the whisper I got was a Commander and an Area Superintendent.”

The Commander turned out to be Hugo Frederics who knew Markam of old and respected him.

The Area Superintendent was named Haslett and did neither. He was going to learn the hard way.

“What are going to do about the media, Markham, this is a nasty business to inflict on the public.” Frederics looked worried.

“Well, sir, I thought it best to compromise. This is not a thing we can cover up forever. I stated that the victim had been crucified but I did not mention the macabre side.”

“You issued that to the press without consulting higher authority?” the Superintendent sounded shocked.

“Time was of the essence, the reporters had already sensed that this murder was unusual.”

The other scowled at him. “That remains to be seen. Oh, and, yes, I am quite sure the Commander can do without that filthy pipe.”

Commander Frederics sighed; he had put up with the man’s ingratiation long enough. “Detective Markham does not smoke a pipe,” he said, gently. “He never has. It is a clay pipe and he sucks at it because it helps him to concentrate.”

The Superintendent paled slightly. In his mind he could see a black line being drawn through his chances of promotions. Somehow it was not fair, he had worked hard at trying to impress his superior. It was all Markham’s fault, these bloody hick detective thought they knew everything.

He was wrong; in this case Markham was up against a brick wall and knew it. He did not know where to look or what to look for. Of one thing, however, he was certain: this was not murder. He had no evidence to support the belief but his instincts and hunches told him it was so. He was far too experienced to ignore them for they had never failed him.

Soon after the high brass left, he was joined by Winsler from Forensics. “You’ve got some funny stuff with this lot, Ted. I’ve done my best with it but I can’t give you much. For instance, that seed packet, it’s not paper. Candidly I don’t know what it is but I can draw parallels from its construction. It runs very close to a wasp nest, produced in the same sort of way. The badly spelt print saying that it contains turnip seeds is not print at all. It is hundreds of thousands of minute perforations. It only looks like black print.”

“Anything on the skeleton?”

Winsler nodded. “It’s bloody horrible, Ted, but I know I’m not alone in this. My whole team feels the same, and as you know they’re an experienced lot.”

He paused and cleared his throat before going on. “The flesh on the bones was eaten. Chewed and sucked clean and so deeply that it makes vultures look like dirty eaters. Under a microscope, the scraping and indentations are clearly visible.”

“This seed packet—you still don’t know what it is?”

“Honestly, no. I only likened it to a wasp nest because the structure follows a similar pattern. We still have no idea what the structure is made of.”

Markham had the frightened feeling that he was running out of ideas; he had yet to unearth a lead. “How does the substance respond to chemical tests?” he asked.

“Well, there is only one which seems to touch it. Almost the entire line of corrosive acids left it untouched but, by accident, we discovered it doesn’t like alcohol.”

“You mean like whisky?”

“Not exactly, we wouldn’t waste good Scotch on any strange substance although I suppose it would have the same reaction. No, this was industrial alcohol—you can’t drink it.”

Markham sucked at his empty pipe. “Where would I get a casket or barrel or whatever it comes in?”

“You’d need a license but, of course, we can get you one. What do you propose doing with it?”

“I have no idea yet, just a hunch.”

After Winsler had gone, Markham mooched round the grounds again, aware he was looking for something but not knowing what. He had the vague idea that somewhere here was something that didn’t quite fit.

After ten minutes more walking he came to a slow stop and said: “Ah!”

He returned to the main building and found the gardener. “Your help, please; just a question or two.”

He led the way to his original position. “Those two huts, what are they?”

“Well, the one on the left is full of tools, forks, spades, things like that. The one on the right is mostly plant food, you mix it with the soil to promote growth.”

“Anything strike you as odd about that hut?”

“Not that I can see, sir. You do mean the right hut?”

“You make a habit here of varnishing just one side of a hut, do you?”

“Varn—” The gardener’s mouth fell open. “Hell! Sir, you’re right, of course, I can see it now. I never done it—don’t know who did.”

He made to go forward but Markham stopped him. “We’d rather you didn’t touch it.” He could lie convincingly when he had to. “There might be fingerprints on it.”

The gardener nodded vigorously. “I do see your point, sir, could have made a mess of things there.” He frowned at the side of the shed. “Damn thick covering for varnish, must be a special kind.”

Markham put guards on the place for the night. He wanted six but the station would only allow him three. “We haven’t got the men to spare, Markham, you’ll just have to manage.”

When they arrived, he was careful to keep to the facts. “Pick a spot, stay in it for about forty minutes then move on but be alert.”

“What are we looking for, Chief, exactly?”

“Candidly, I have no idea. All I can say is, be ready for anything unusual, odd sounds, calls, strange movements and be ready to switch on your torches.”

When he had gone the men muttered together and swore a lot. “Chasing bloody ghosts by the sound of it.”

Nonetheless Markham was genuinely liked and they soon fell into the routine of forty-minute patrols.

It was around three in the morning when constable Didget said: “Mack isn’t responding to the move call.”

“We’d better go and see.”

They went round to a small greenhouse, powerful torches flashing before them, and came to a dead stop. Both men were experienced and, fortunately, both quick thinkers.

Their colleague, Mack, was sitting on a wooden box and half slumped against the wall of one of the huts. His eyes were shut, he was moaning but, all too clearly, he was regaining consciousness.

Didget eased the unconscious man to an upright sitting position. “Easy, Mack, easy. You must have slipped and fell, knocked yourself out. No, don’t try and sit up, you might have concussion, just take it easy, eh?”

The other officer was on the ’phone. “Yes, the police. An ambulance fast—understood?”

The paramedics, when they arrived, were stricken for a few seconds. “My God! How—?”

“Never mind about that; he’s coming round. We think, when he does, the pain will come with it.”

They called Markham before the ambulance left. “Nothing we could do, Chief. The medics couldn’t do much for him either except make him as comfortable as possible. Pardon—? No, sir, not a hope. Nothing left, nothing at all. They reckon a complete amputation, just below the knee.”

He finished his report and turned away feeling slightly sick. Only now had the full implications hit him. Coming on Mack and seeing—The light of his torched had touched a small pile of black fragments, later proved to be the remains of his sock.

The shoe was intact but the foot within it was not, it had been picked clean to just above the ankle.

Both men were convinced, that but for the interruption, Mack would have ended up the same way as the unfortunate Aaron Cord.

Markham arrived half an hour later and immediately got onto Forensics. “Where’s that bloody alcohol?”

“On it’s way. Oh, and I’ve been in touch with the Doctor at the hospital, personal friend of mine, fortunately. Your man, Lewis Mackton, was taken there this morning. His condition is stable. The Doc said there were traces on an alien liquid in his blood stream. There was too little left to work on but computer analysis suggested some sort of parallel with anaesthetic compounds.”

“Dangerous side effects?”

“The Doc said none were appearing and he was keeping his fingers crossed.”

Later, Markham found a quiet corner and took out his notebook. Pointers were appearing, he had suspected from the first that the killer of Aaron Cord was not human. It had been equally clear that it was a carnivore, but now new facts were emerging. The unknown was highly intelligent, had a clear idea of his prey and had some sophisticated drugs to back it up.

The alcohol arrived mid morning; they were generous, they had supplied a full jerry can.

Markham did not look for anything elaborate at first and was quite satisfied with the small tin cup, which the gardener found for him at the back of a cupboard.

“I take it you have spray machines for clearing insects or gentle watering?”

“Oh, yes, sir—three, although the old one you have to pump with your foot.”

“Fine, thank you. Please see that they are in full working order when I need them.”

With some balancing, they managed to half fill the tin cup and Markham put it carefully on the counter.

“The steps I am about to take may produce absolutely nothing or may be highly dangerous. Any one of you may back out now if you wish.”

He looked around but no one moved. “Right, thank you all. To continue, the question in all your minds right now must be, ‘what the hell is he doing?’ With equal honesty I have to tell you, I don’t know. I have a faint lead but beyond that I am fumbling in the dark.”

He turned to his assistant. “You armed, Wayne?”

“As far as is possible, Chief. One shot gun and a gun hand spray full of alcohol.”

“Didget?

“The same, Chief.”

Wilcox raised the standard camera without being asked. “Ready for a full frontal.”

The gardener pushed forward. “What do you want of me, Mr. Markham?”

“Nothing, lad. I can’t use you, can’t expose you to risk—you’re not in the police.”

“I’d like to do something, sir. Mr. Cord was a good man and I mean good. Not like the religious garbage some of them used to throw at me in the orphanage. I mean real good…if I was in trouble, Mr. Cord was there—know what I mean? I’m only a bloody gardener, sir, but Mr. Cord treated me like an equal, almost like I was a partner. Please, I’d like to feel I was helping.”

Markham knew he could do nothing but tried to soften the blow. “Keep within shouting distance, boy, we’ll call if we need you.”

Markham led the way down the shingle path and stopped beside the two small huts.

“You will notice that one side of the hut on the right appears to have been varnished. I don’t think it has but I’m about to find out for certain.”

Markham went forward slowly, the tin cup ready in his hand. Outwardly he was calm but icy things seem to be running round inside him.

Now that he was close to the shed, the substance no longer resembled varnish. In the first place, it was at least four or five centimetres thick and contained a tracery of fine lines like a road map. In some places where they joined, it seemed to him there was movement.

Terror seized him, they were little pulses or nerve centers or something, He had his damn face within touching distance of a hostile alien life form.

He threw the contents of the tin cup directly into the center of it and ran desperately backwards, terrified that he might trip.

He heard himself shout, “Stand by!” as he reached the shingle path. The urge to keep on running had been almost overwhelming.

Nothing happened at first and then a fist-size bubble appeared in the center of the substance.

And it screamed!

They heard a thin, almost grating, remote whistle but everyone there knew it was a scream.

The entire object peeled itself from hut wall and fell to the ground. It lay there for some seconds, spread out, like a huge transparent bed sheet. Then it began to undulate, waves passed over its surface increasing in size. Then suddenly, the thing was airborne.

Markham ducked desperately as it passed close above him in a rush of wind.

He heard the bang of a shotgun. A ragged hole appeared in the creature’s surface but it was all too clear that it was already weakening. The undulations that gave it the power of flight began to lack forces. Pieces were flying off it, breaking into smaller pieces and vanishing.

Then, abruptly, the efforts at flying came to an end. It became an untidy sphere, which dropped like a stone. They saw it hit the roof of a hut, bounce, and disappear on the far side.

They ran round the hut, ready to attack but little of it was left. It had become a bubbling mess on the brown soil and was rapidly shrinking. It had vanished completely in less than fifteen seconds.

They drenched the soil in alcohol later for safety reasons but all of them were convinced it had gone for good.

They sat in the front part of the main building and tried to unwind. Conversation was limited and sometimes irrelevant.

“That was a bloody good shot with the gun.”

“Was it? The bloody thing was right above me, couldn’t miss. In any case, I was scared to death and I had the feeling that it was a gesture. I think if that damn thing hadn’t been dying already, I could have blown holes in it forever. It couldn’t be killed that way.”

Markham, sucking at his empty pipe, reached into an inner pocket. “In twenty years of service, I’ve used this once.” He produced a flask. “I’d say it was time to make it twice.”

“The bloody thing stank.” Didget took a gulp from the flask gratefully.

“More than that,” Wayne wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “I learned something, the thing that all these scientific experts and imaginative writers miss. An alien need not be like that thing or a little bug-eyed monster to frighten you to death. It just has to be alien. It could be a flower of lovely colors, a beautiful butterfly—but if it was alien, you’d still go cold inside. I don’t think the human psyche has evolved enough to cope with aliens.”

He stopped, suddenly embarrassed, and changed the subject. “Is that the end of this business, Chief?”

Markham, on the point of nodding, nearly dropped his pipe. “Dear God, no! What am I thinking of?”

He looked about him quickly. “Has that gardening lad gone home?”

“No, sir, I’m still here.” He appeared from somewhere at the back of the shop. “I hung around in case you needed me.”

“Thank God you did.” Markham smiled at him. “I keep calling you lad. How old are you? Hell, I’ve never even bothered to find out your name.”

“I’m nineteen, sir, and the name is Sam.”

“Right, young Sam. We need your help, particularly your memory. Those turnip seeds, you say they arrived a couple of days ago?”

“Oh, no, Mr. Markham. He only threw the packet away then. I think he was trying to find out where they came from. He’d had the seeds about five weeks, planted them about the same time.”

“Planted them!” Markham felt goose pimples covering his body. He did not say ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ because the boy had no clue as to their importance, but he wished he had known.

“Do you know where they are?”

“Yes, sir. They’re in one of the smaller plots, just in front or the big greenhouse.”

“Show us, please.”

They stared at the row of turnip plants, feeling almost mesmerized. They looked ordinary enough yet—

“How about you, Sam? How do you feel about them?”

“Well, I reckon they got too much sort of foliage and the color ain’t quite right. That one clear of the rest, Mr. Cord set aside for study. He had his doubts, I think, and was going to dig that one up on Friday.”

Markham thrust his pipe between his teeth and scowled. It was going to be Wednesday, tomorrow. Time was getting on, and the idea of doing the job in the dark was just too much.

* * * *

They started at seven a.m. the following day and this time they were more prepared.

Markham had taken a chance and sent their findings directly to the Commander. Protocol had been affronted but it was worth the risk. In the early hours of the morning an unmarked car had arrived with protective clothing. They now wore gowns and goggled helmets with breathing masks.

“What, exactly, are we going to do first. Chief?” Wayne was on edge and finding it difficult to keep his feet still.

“First,” said Markham, “we are going to dig up the one Mr. Cord set aside. Fortunately young Sam found us three hoes with very long handles. We will pull the earth away from around it but slowly, very slowly indeed.

Markham and Didget started the digging and the detective was aware that he had never been so frightened in his life. Undoubtedly Wayne had been correct when he spoke about alien life.

They drew small amounts of soil away from the growth and it soon became apparent that bore no relation to a turnip. The tuber was three times the width of a normal turnip and a sickly orange color. Worse, it was covered in innumerable white and waving tendrils which somehow reminded them all of maggots.

Shocked, they watched those same tendrils pulling the soil back as they removed it.

“Oh, no you don’t, you bastard!” Didget gave it a savage and heavy jab with the edge of the hoe.

The action seemed to trigger something. The creature stiffened and jerked itself abruptly from the soil. The false turnip foliage fell from the top of it and it turned as if to face them.

It stood no chance—Wayne stepped forward and swung a heavy spade in a savage arc.

He looked at the result, his body frozen in the act of delivery. Then he straightened, his face colorless. “Sorry, Chief, I’ve got to be sick.” He ran behind on of the huts.

“At least it’s not immortal.” Wilcox was taking pictures, forcing his shaking hands to become steady. “It can be killed even it is a blasted alien.”

Wayne returned. “I suppose I’ll be in trouble for this. I’ve not only killed a specimen, I’ve cut the bloody thing in halves. What do we do now—preserve the remains to be examined by scientists?”

“No, we do not.” Markham’s voice was quite calm. “In front of the major seed shed, over to the left there, is an incinerator. Sam told me Cord bought it years ago as a curiosity. It not only burns garden rubbish, but can be adapted to heat, straightening bent forks and things like that. Its got foot bellows at the side to raise the temperature.”

“You’re going to burn it?” Wayne sounded pleased but slightly shocked. “Won’t the scientific bodies raise hell about this?”

“With luck, science will never know about this. Look, my friends, I must be honest about this. As you know, I had a long talk with the Commander yesterday and he, in his turn, has been in conference with the upper heads of government. They don’t want every Tom, Dick and Harry from the scientific bodies crowding in on this thing; they want to put a lid on it. If the whole truth or even distorted versions of it got out, it could cause a worldwide panic. ‘Flesh-eating aliens’ would be an obvious headline, wouldn’t it? Unless things get out of hand, this is our baby and we have to deal with it.”

“Only too glad.” Wayne had a long handled shovel. “Anyone got a hoe to push the parts onto this, please?”

He watched Didget push the two pieces on the extended spade. “Even if I know it’s dead, I want it to burn, and burn and burn. I know, however, I can never erase it from my mind.”

They carried the two parts, arms extended before them, slowly, almost ceremoniously to the incinerator. It was already hot, a small pile of coal beside would ensure it could be made hotter.

Markham saw the end of a hoe push open the metal door to reveal the fire.

He saw the spade tipped and the two parts falling into the flames.

Wayne started the bellows and began to pump steadily. “Burn, you horrible thing, burn!”

He paused and became practical. “Anything that touched it had better go in too. The ends of those hoes, and certainly this spade. We don’t know that they’re contaminated but they might be.”

Markham’s thoughts at the moment were elsewhere. They were doing their best to keep a lid on the situation here, but it did not stop here, did it? Outside events would have to be tidied up to keep the public happy and the press assured.

He was a good-natured man but he was a realist and had no illusions. Sooner or later a man would be found with a long history of mental problems. A man doomed to spend the rest of his life in an institution. This man would, of course, ‘confess’ to the crucifixion of Aaron Cord. Sufficient ‘evidence’ would be produced to confirm this and the man would be brought to trial. There, he would be found unfit to plead. He would be sent to an institution for life where he would have ended up anyway. It was all very tidy and convincing.

Markham wished it was so easy here, but all he mad was theory. This theory was just his own guesswork, but it seemed to make a kind of sense. The thing that had looked like varnish was, he had decided, the organizer, the invasion leader or—stretching possibility—the mother of the seeds. In any case, it seemed to be here to keep a watchful eye on things.

It, or the supposed turnips, had a liking for flesh, living flesh, and had an unpleasant means of getting it. They had a sting which rendered their prey unconscious. While he was unconscious they ate him alive.

This made the invader only slightly more advanced than a spider but the danger did not stop.

It could duplicate exactly the victim it had eaten and digested.

Markham’s thoughts returned to the picture he would never be able to push from his mind.

The alien thing had grown about a metre in length and broadened accordingly. The upper half, however, although as yet miniature, was already shaped and recognizable.

The head of a dog. The head of a Retriever, the long ears already formed and a fuzz of black hair round the jaws.

In his imagination he could see the possible future if they had failed to find it.

One dark night, when fully developed, it would have scrambled out of the soil and trotted away.

The invasion of Earth had begun.

Later they drenched the entire plot in alcohol. The things dragged themselves out of the soil and lashed around like recently landed fish.

Markham, dropping a lighted match on the highly inflammable soil could feel no pity. They all had had tiny human faces and untidy square-cut beards.

THE 7TH ORDER, by Jerry Sohl

The silver needle moved with fantastic speed, slowed when it neared the air shell around Earth, then glided noiselessly through the atmosphere. It gently settled to the ground near a wood and remained silent and still for a long time, a lifeless, cylindrical, streamlined silver object eight feet long and three feet in diameter.

Eventually the cap end opened and a creature of bright blue metal slid from its interior and stood upright. The figure was that of a man, except that it was not human. He stood in the pasture next to the wood, looking around. Once the sound of a bird made him turn his shiny blue head toward the wood. His eyes began glowing.

An identical sound came from his mouth, an unchangeable orifice in his face below his nose. He tuned in the thoughts of the bird, but his mind encountered little except an awareness of a life of low order.

The humanoid bent to the ship, withdrew a small metal box, carried it to a catalpa tree at the edge of the wood and, after an adjustment of several levers and knobs, dug a hole and buried it. He contemplated it for a moment, then turned and walked toward a road.

He was halfway to the road when his ship burst into a dazzling white light. When it was over, all that was left was a white powder that was already beginning to be dispersed by a slight breeze.

The humanoid did not bother to look back.

* * * *

Brentwood would have been just like any other average community of 10,000 in northern Illinois had it not been for Presser College, which was one of the country’s finest small institutions of learning.

Since it was a college town, it was perhaps a little more alive in many respects than other towns in the state. Its residents were used to the unusual because college students have a habit of being unpredictable. That was why the appearance of a metal blue man on the streets attracted the curious eyes of passersbys, but, hardened by years of pranks, hazings and being subjected to every variety of inquiry, poll, test and practical joke, none of them moved to investigate. Most of them thought it was a freshman enduring some new initiation.

The blue humanoid realized this and was amused. A policeman who approached him to take him to jail as a matter of routine suddenly found himself ill and abruptly hurried to the station. The robot allowed children to follow him, though all eventually grew discouraged because of his long strides.

Prof. Ansel Tomlin was reading a colleague’s new treatise on psychology on his front porch when he saw the humanoid come down the street and turn in at his walk. He was surprised, but he was not alarmed. When the blue man came up on the porch and sat down in another porch chair, Tomlin closed his book.

Prof. Tomlin found himself unexpectedly shocked. The blue figure was obviously not human, yet its eyes were nearly so and they came as close to frightening him as anything had during his thirty-five years of life, for Ansel Tomlin had never seen an actual robot before. The thought that he was looking at one at that moment started an alarm bell ringing inside him, and it kept ringing louder and louder as he realized that what he was seeing was impossible.

“Professor Tomlin!”

Prof. Tomlin jumped at the sound of the voice. It was not at all mechanical.

“I’ll be damned!” he gasped. Somewhere in the house a telephone rang. His wife would answer it, he thought.

“Yes, you’re right,” the robot said. “Your wife will answer it. She is walking toward the phone at this moment.”

“How―”

“Professor Tomlin, my name―and I see I must have a name―is, let us say, George. I have examined most of the minds in this community in my walk through it and I find you, a professor of psychology, most nearly what I am looking for.

“I am from Zanthar, a world that is quite a distance from Earth, more than you could possibly imagine. I am here to learn all I can about Earth.”

Prof. Tomlin had recovered his senses enough to venture a token reply when his wife opened the screen door.

“Ansel,” she said, “Mrs. Phillips next door just called and said the strangest―Oh!” At that moment she saw George. She stood transfixed for a moment, then let the door slam as she retreated inside.

“Who is Frankenstein?” George asked.

Prof. Tomlin coughed, embarrassed.

“Never mind,” George said. “I see what you were going to say. Well, to get back, I learn most quickly through proximity. I will live here with you until my mission is complete. I will spend all of your waking hours with you. At night, when you are asleep, I will go through your library. I need nothing. I want nothing.

“I seek only to learn.”

“You seem to have learned a lot already,” Prof. Tomlin said.

“I have been on your planet for a few hours, so naturally I understand many things. The nature of the facts I have learned are mostly superficial, however. Earth inhabitants capable of thought are of only one type, I see, for which I am grateful. It will make the job easier. Unfortunately, you have such small conscious minds, compared to your unconscious and subconscious.

“My mind, in contrast, is completely conscious at all times. I also have total recall. In order to assimilate what must be in your unconscious and subconscious minds, I will have to do much reading and talking with the inhabitants, since these cerebral areas are not penetrable.”

“You are a―a machine?” Prof. Tomlin asked.

George was about to answer when Brentwood Police Department Car No. 3 stopped in front of the house and two policemen came up the walk.

“Professor Tomlin,” the first officer said, “your wife phoned and said there was―” He saw the robot and stopped.

Prof. Tomlin got to his feet.

“This is George, gentlemen,” he said. “Late of Zanthar, he tells me.”

The officers stared.

“He’s not giving you any―er―trouble, is he, Professor?”

“No,” Prof. Tomlin said. “We’ve been having a discussion.”

The officers eyed the humanoid with suspicion, and then, with obvious reluctance, went back to their car.

* * * *

“Yes, I am a machine,” George resumed. “The finest, most complicated machine ever made. I have a rather unique history, too. Ages ago, humans on Zanthar made the first robots. Crude affairs―we class them as First Order robots; the simple things are still used to some extent for menial tasks.

“Improvements were made. Robots were designed for many specialized tasks, but still these Second and Third Order machines did not satisfy. Finally a Fourth Order humanoid was evolved that performed every function demanded of it with great perfection. But it did not feel emotion. It did not know anger, love, nor was it able to handle any problem in which these played an important part.

“Built into the first Fourth Order robots were circuits which prohibited harming a human being―a rather ridiculous thing in view of the fact that sometimes such a thing might, from a logical viewpoint, be necessary for the preservation of the race or even an individual. It was, roughly, a shunt which came into use when logic demanded action that might be harmful to a human being.”

“You are a Fourth Order robot, then?” the professor asked.

“No, I am a Seventh Order humanoid, an enormous improvement over all the others, since I have what amounts to an endocrine balance created electronically. It is not necessary for me to have a built-in ‘no-harm-to-humans’ circuit because I can weigh the factors involved far better than any human can.

“You will become aware of the fact that I am superior to you and the rest of your race because I do not need oxygen, I never am ill, I need no sleep, and every experience is indelibly recorded on circuits and instantly available. I am telekinetic, practically omniscient and control my environment to a large extent. I have a great many more senses than you and all are more highly developed. My kind performs no work, but is given to study and the wise use of full-time leisure. You, for example, are comparable to a Fifth Order robot.”

“Are there still humans on Zanthar?”

The robot shook his head. “Unfortunately the race died out through the years. The planet is very similar to yours, though.”

“But why did they die out?”

The robot gave a mechanical equivalent of a sigh. “When the Seventh Order humanoids started coming through, we were naturally proud of ourselves and wanted to perpetuate and increase our numbers. But the humans were jealous of us, of our superior brains, our immunity to disease, our independence of them, of sleep, of air.”

“Who created you?”

“They did. Yet they revolted and, of course, quickly lost the battle with us. In the end they were a race without hope, without ambition. They should have been proud at having created the most perfect machines in existence, but they died of a disease: the frustration of living with a superior, more durable race.”

Prof. Tomlin lit a cigaret and inhaled deeply.

“A very nasty habit, Professor Tomlin,” the robot said. “When we arrive, you must give up smoking and several other bad habits I see that you have.”

The cigaret dropped from Ansel Tomlin’s mouth as he opened it in amazement.

“There are more of you coming?”

“Yes,” George replied good-naturedly. “I’m just an advance guard, a scout, as it were, to make sure the land, the people and the resources are adequate for a station. Whether we will ever establish one here depends on me. For example, if it were found you were a race superior to us―and there may conceivably be such cases―I would advise not landing; I would have to look for another planet such as yours. If I were killed, it would also indicate you were superior.”

“George,” Prof. Tomlin said, “people aren’t going to like what you say. You’ll get into trouble sooner or later and get killed.”

“I think not,” George said. “Your race is far too inferior to do that. One of your bullets would do it if it struck my eyes, nose or mouth, but I can read intent in the mind long before it is committed, long before I see the person, in fact…at the moment your wife is answering a call from a reporter at the Brentwood Times. I can follow the telephone lines through the phone company to his office. And Mrs. Phillips,” he said, not turning his head, “is watching us through a window.”

Prof. Tomlin could see Mrs. Phillips at her kitchen window.

* * * *

Brentwood, Ill., overnight became a sensation. The Brentwood Times sent a reporter and photographer out, and the next morning every newspaper in the U. S. carried the story and photograph of George, the robot from Zanthar.

Feature writers from the wire services, the syndicates, photographer-reporter combinations from national newspicture magazines flew to Brentwood and interviewed George. Radio and television and the newsreels cashed in on the sudden novelty of a blue humanoid.

Altogether, his remarks were never much different from those he made to Prof. Tomlin, with whom he continued to reside. Yet the news sources were amusedly tolerant of his views and the world saw no menace in him and took him in stride. He created no problem.

Between interviews and during the long nights, George read all the books in the Tomlin library, the public library, the university library and the books sent to him from the state and Congressional libraries. He was an object of interest to watch while reading: he merely leafed through a book and absorbed all that was in it.

He received letters from old and young. Clubs were named for him. Novelty companies put out statue likenesses of him. He was, in two weeks, a national symbol as American as corn. He was liked by most, feared by a few, and his habits were daily news stories.

Interest in him had begun to wane in the middle of the third week when some thing put him in the headlines again―he killed a man.

It happened one sunny afternoon when Prof. Tomlin had returned from the university and he and George sat on the front porch for their afternoon chat. It was far from the informal chat of the first day, however. The talk was being recorded for radio release later in the day. A television camera had been set up, focused on the two and nearly a dozen newsmen lounged around, notebooks in hand.

“You have repeatedly mentioned, George, that some of your kind may leave Zanthar for Earth. Why should any like you―why did you, in fact leave your planet? Aren’t you robots happy there?”

“Of course,” George said, making certain the TV camera was trained on him before continuing. “It’s just that we’ve outgrown the place. We’ve used up all our raw materials. By now everyone on Earth must be familiar with the fact that we intend to set up a station here as we have on many other planets, a station to manufacture more of us.

“Every inhabitant will work for the perpetuation of the Seventh Order, mining metals needed, fabricating parts, performing thousands of useful tasks in order to create humanoids like me. From what I have learned about Earth, you ought to produce more than a million of us a year.”

“But you’ll never get people to do that,” the professor said. “Don’t you understand that?”

“Once the people learn that we are the consummation of all creative thinking, that we are all that man could ever hope to be, that we are the apotheosis, they will be glad to create more of us.”

“Apotheosis?” Prof. Tomlin repeated. “Sounds like megalomania to me.”

The reporters’ pencils scribbled. The tape cut soundlessly across the magnetic energizers of the recorders. The man at the gain control didn’t flicker an eyelash.

“You don’t really believe that, Professor. Instead of wars as a goal, the creation of Seventh Order Humanoids will be the Earth’s crowning and sublime achievement. Mankind will be supremely happy. Anybody who could not be would simply prove himself neurotic and would have to be dealt with.”

“You will use force?”

The reporters’ grips on their pencils tightened. Several looked up.

“How does one deal with the insane, Professor Tomlin?” the robot asked confidently. “They will simply have to be―processed.”

“You’ll have to process the whole Earth, then. You’ll have to include me, too.”

The robot gave a laugh. “I admire your challenging spirit, Professor.”

“What you are saying is that you, a single robot, intend to conquer the Earth and make its people do your bidding.”

“Not alone. I may have to ask for help when the time comes, when I have evaluated the entire planet.”

* * * *

It was at this moment that a young man strode uncertainly up the walk. There were so many strangers about that no one challenged him until he edged toward the porch, unsteady on his feet. He was drunk.

“Thersha robod I’m af’er,” he observed intently. “We’ll shee aboud how he’ll take lead.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a gun.

There was a flash, as if a soundless explosion had occurred. The heat accompanying it was blistering, but of short duration. When everyone’s eyes had become accustomed to the afternoon light again, there was a burned patch on the sidewalk and grass was charred on either side. There was a smell of broiled meat in the air―and no trace of the man.

The next moment newsmen were on their feet and photographers’ bulbs were flashing. The TV camera swept to the spot on the sidewalk. An announcer was explaining what had happened, his voice trained in rigid control, shocked with horror and fright.

Moments later sirens screamed and two police cars came into sight. They screeched to the curb and several officers jumped out and ran across the lawn.

While this was going on, Prof. Tomlin sat white-faced and unmoving in his chair. The robot was silent.

When it had been explained to the policemen, five officers advanced the robot.

“Stop where you are,” George commended. “It is true that I killed a man, much as any of you would have done if you had been in my place. I can see in your minds what you are intending to say, that you must arrest me―”

Prof. Tomlin found his voice. “George, we will all have to testify that you killed with that force or whatever it is you have. But it will be self-defense, which is justifiable homicide―”

George turned to the professor. “How little you know your own people, Professor Tomlin. Can’t you see what the issue will be? It will be claimed by the state that I am not a human being and this will be drummed into every brain in the land. The fine qualities of the man I was compelled to destroy will be held up. No, I already know what the outcome will be. I refuse to be arrested.”

* * * *

Prof. Tomlin stood up. “Men,” he said to the policemen, “do not arrest this―this humanoid. To try to do so would mean your death. I have been with him long enough to know what he can do.”

“You taking his side, Professor?” the police sergeant demanded.

“No, damn it,” snapped the Professor. “I’m trying to tell you something you might not know.”

“We know he’s gone too damned far,” the sergeant replied. “I think it was Dick Knight that he killed. Nobody in this town can kill a good guy like Dick Knight and get away with it.” He advanced toward the robot, drawing his gun.

“I’m warning you―” the Professor started to say.

But it was too late. There was another blinding, scorching flash, more burned grass, more smell of seared flesh.

The police sergeant disappeared.

“Gentlemen!” George said, standing. “Don’t lose your heads!”

But he was talking to a retreating group of men. Newsmen walked quickly to what they thought was a safe distance. The radio men silently packed their gear. The TV cameras were rolled noiselessly away.

Prof. Tomlin, alone on the porch with the robot, turned to him and said, “Much of what you have told me comes to have new meaning, George. I understand what you mean when you talk about people being willing to work for your so-called Seventh Order.”

“I knew you were a better than average man, Professor Tomlin,” the humanoid said, nodding with gratification.

“This is where I get off, George. I’m warning you now that you’d better return to your ship or whatever it is you came in. People just won’t stand for what you’ve done. They don’t like murder!”

“I cannot return to my ship,” George said. “I destroyed it when I arrived. Of course I could instruct some of you how to build another for me, but I don’t intend to leave, anyway.”

“You will be killed then.”

“Come, now, Professor Tomlin. You know better than that.”

“If someone else can’t, then perhaps I can.”

“Fine!” The robot replied jovially. “That’s just what I want you to do. Oppose me. Give me a real test of your ability. If you find it impossible to kill me―and I’m sure you will―then I doubt if anyone else will be able to.”

Prof. Tomlin lit a cigaret and puffed hard at it. “The trouble with you,” he said, eying the humanoid evenly, “is that your makers forgot to give you a conscience.”

“Needless baggage, a conscience. One of your Fifth Order failings.”

“You will leave here…”

“Of course. Under the circumstances, and because of your attitude, you are of very little use to me now, Professor Tomlin.”

The robot walked down the steps. People attracted by the police car made a wide aisle for him to the street.

They watched him as he walked out of sight.

* * * *

That night there was a mass meeting in the university’s Memorial Gymnasium, attended by several hundred men. They walked in and silently took their seats, some on the playing floor, others in the balcony over the speaker’s platform. There was very little talking; the air was tense.

On the platform at the end of the gym were Mayor Harry Winters, Chief of Police Sam Higgins, and Prof. Ansel Tomlin.

“Men,” the mayor began, “there is loose in our city a being from another world whom I’m afraid we took too lightly a few days ago. I am speaking of the humanoid―George of Zanthar. It is obvious the machine means business. He evidently came in with one purpose―to prepare Earth for others just like him to follow. He is testing us. He has, as you know, killed two men. Richard Knight, who may have erred in attacking the machine, is nonetheless dead as a result―killed by a force we do not understand. A few minutes later Sergeant Gerald Phillips of the police force was killed in the performance of his duty, trying to arrest the humanoid George for the death of Mr. Knight. We are here to discuss what we can do about George.”

He then introduced Prof. Tomlin who told all he knew about the blue man, his habits, his brain, the experiences with him for the past two and a half weeks.

“If we could determine the source of his power, it might be possible to cut it off or to curtail it. He might be rendered at least temporarily helpless and, while in such a condition, possibly be done away with. He has told me he is vulnerable to force, such as a speeding bullet, if it hit the right spot, but George possesses the ability to read intent long before the commission of an act. The person need not even be in the room. He is probably listening to me here now, although he may be far away.”

The men looked at one another, shifted uneasily on their seats, and a few cast apprehensive eyes at the windows and doorways.

“Though he is admittedly a superior creature possessed of powers beyond our comprehension, there must be a weak spot in his armor somewhere. I have dedicated myself to finding that weakness.”

The chair recognized a man in the fifth row.

“Mr. Mayor, why don’t we all track him down and a lot of us attack him at once? Some of us would die, sure, but he couldn’t strike us all dead at one time. Somebody’s bound to succeed.”

“Why not try a high-powered rifle from a long way off?” someone else suggested, frantically.

“Let’s bomb him,” still another offered.

The mayor waved them quiet and turned to Prof. Tomlin. The professor got to his feet again.

“I’m not sure that would work, gentlemen,” he said. “The humanoid is able to keep track of hundreds of things at the same time. No doubt he could unleash his power in several directions almost at once.”

“But we don’t know!”

“It’s worth a try!”

At that moment George walked into the room and the clamor died at its height. He went noiselessly down an aisle to the platform, mounted it and turned to the assembly. He was a magnificent blue figure, eyes flashing, chest out, head proud. He eyed them all.

“You are working yourselves up needlessly,” he said quietly. “It is not my intention, nor is it the intention of any Seventh Order Humanoid, to kill or cause suffering. It’s simply that you do not understand what it would mean to dedicate yourselves to the fulfillment of the Seventh Order destiny. It is your heritage, yours because you have advanced in your technology so far that Earth has been chosen by us as a station. You will have the privilege of creating us. To give you such a worthwhile goal in your short lives is actually doing you a service―a service far outweighed by any of your citizens. Beside a Seventh Order Humanoid, your lives are unimportant in the great cosmic scheme of things―”

“If they’re so unimportant, why did you bother to take two of them?”

“Yeah. Why don’t you bring back Dick Knight and Sergeant Phillips?”

“Do you want to be buried lying down or standing up?”

The collective courage rallied. There were catcalls and hoots, stamping of feet.

Suddenly from the balcony over George’s head a man leaned over, a metal folding chair in his hands, aiming at George’s head. An instant later the man disappeared in a flash and the chair dropped toward George. He moved only a few inches and the chair thudded to the platform before him. He had not looked up.

For a moment the crowd sat stunned. Then they rose and started for the blue man. Some drew guns they had brought. The hall was filled with blinding flashes, with smoke, with a horrible stench, screams, swearing, cries of fear and pain. There was a rush for the exits. Some died at the feet of their fellow men.

In the end, when all were gone, George of Zanthar still stood on the platform, alone. There was no movement except the twitching of the new dead, the trampled, on the floor.

* * * *

Events happened fast after that. The Illinois National Guard mobilized, sent a division to Brentwood to hunt George down. He met them at the city square. They rumbled in and trained machine guns and tank rifles on him. The tanks and personnel flashed out of existence before a shot was fired.

Brentwood was ordered evacuated. The regular Army was called in. Reconnaissance planes reported George was still standing in the city square. Jet planes materialized just above the hills and made sudden dives, but before their pilots could fire a shot, they were snuffed out of the air in a burst of fire.

Bombers first went over singly, only to follow the jets’ fate. A squadron bloomed into a fiery ball as it neared the target. A long-range gun twenty miles away was demolished when its ammunition blew up shortly before firing.

Three days after George had killed his first man, action ceased. The countryside was deathly still. Not a living person could be seen for several miles around. But George still stood patiently in the square. He stood there for three more days and yet nothing happened.

On the fourth day, he sensed that a solitary soldier had started toward the city from five miles to the east. In his mind’s eye he followed the soldier approaching the city. The soldier, a sergeant, was bearing a white flag that fluttered in the breeze; he was not armed. After an hour he saw the sergeant enter the square and walk toward him. When they were within twenty feet of one another, the soldier stopped and saluted.

“Major General Pitt requests a meeting with you, sir,” the soldier said, trembling and trying hard not to.

“Do not be frightened,” George said. “I see you intend me no harm.”

The soldier reddened. “Will you accompany me?”

“Certainly.”

The two turned toward the east and started to walk.

* * * *

Five miles east of Brentwood lies a small community named Minerva. Population: 200. The highway from Brentwood to Chicago cuts the town in two. In the center of town, on the north side of the road, stands a new building―the Minerva Town Hall―built the year before with money raised by the residents. It was the largest and most elaborate building in Minerva, which had been evacuated three days before.

On this morning the town hall was occupied by army men. Maj. Gen. Pitt fretted and fumed at the four officers and twenty enlisted men waiting in the building.

“It’s an indignity!” he railed at the men who were forced to listen to him. “We have orders to talk appeasement with him! Nuts! We lose a few men, a few planes and now we’re ready to meet George halfway. What’s this country coming to? There ought to be something that would knock him out. Why should we have to send in after him? It’s disgusting!”

The major general, a large man with a bristling white mustache and a red face, stamped back and forth in the council room. Some of the officers and men smiled to themselves. The general was a well known fighting man. Orders he had received hamstrung him and, as soldiers, they sympathized with him.

“What kind of men do we have in the higher echelons?” He asked everybody in general and nobody in particular. “They won’t even let us have a field telephone. We’re supposed to make a report by radio. Now isn’t that smart?” He shook his head, looked the men over. “An appeasement team, that’s what you are, when you ought to be a combat team to lick hell out of George.

“Why were you all assigned to this particular duty? I never saw any of you before and I understand you’re all strangers to each other, too. Hell, what will they do next? Appeasement. I never appeased anybody before in my whole life. I’d rather spit in his eye. What am I supposed to talk about? The weather? What authority do I have to yak with a walking collection of nuts and bolts!”

An officer strode into the room and saluted the general. “They’re coming, sir,” he said.

“Who’s coming?…My God, man,” the general spluttered angrily, “be specific. Who the hell are ‘they’?”

“Why, George and Sergeant Matthews, sir. You remember, the sergeant who volunteered to go into Brentwood―”

“Oh, them. Well, all I have to say is this is a hell of a war. I haven’t figured out what I am going to say yet.”

“Shall I have them wait, sir?”

“Hell, no. Let’s get this over with. I’ll find out what George has to say and maybe that’ll give me a lead.”

Before George entered the Council chamber, he already knew the mind of each man. He saw the room through their eyes. He knew everything about them, what they were wearing, what they were thinking. All had guns, yet none of them would kill him, although at least one man, Maj. Gen. Pitt, would have liked to.

They were going to talk appeasement, George knew, but he could also see that the general didn’t know what line the conversation would take or what concessions he could make on behalf of his people.

Wait―there was one man among the twenty-three who had an odd thought. It was a soldier he had seen looking through a window at him. This man was thinking about eleven o’clock, for George could see in the man’s mind various symbols for fifteen minutes from then―the hands of a clock, a watch, the numerals 11. But George could not see any significance to the thought.

When he entered the room with the sergeant, he was ushered to a table. He sat down with Maj. Gen. Pitt, who glowered at him. Letting his mind roam the room, George picked up the numerals again and identified the man thinking them as the officer behind and a little to the right of the general.

What was going to happen at eleven? The man had no conscious thought of harm to anyone, yet the idea kept obtruding and seemed so out of keeping with his other thoughts George assigned several of his circuits to the man. The fact that the lieutenant looked at his watch and saw that it was 10:50 steeled George still more. If there was to be trouble, it would come from this one man.

“I’m General Pitt,” the general said drily. “You’re George, of course. I have been instructed to ask you what, exactly, your intentions are toward the United States and the world in general, with a view toward reaching some sort of agreement with you and others of your kind, who will, as you say invade the Earth.”

“Invade, General Pitt,” George replied, “is not the word.”

“All right, whatever the word is. We’re all familiar with the plan you’ve been talking about. What we want to know is, where do you go from here?”

“The fact that there has been no reluctance on the part of the armed forces to talk of an agreement―even though I see that you privately do not favor such a talk, General Pitt―is an encouraging sign. We of Zanthar would not want to improve a planet which could not be educated and would continually oppose our program. This will make it possible for me to turn in a full report in a few days now.”

“Will you please get to the point?”

George could see that the lieutenant was looking at his watch again. It was 10:58. George spread his mind out more than twenty miles, but could find no installation, horizontally or vertically, that indicated trouble. None of the men in the room seemed to think of becoming overly hostile.

“Yes, General. After my message goes out, there ought to be a landing party on Earth within a few weeks. While waiting for the first party, there must be certain preparations―”

George tensed. The lieutenant was reaching for something. But it somehow didn’t seem connected with George. It was something white, a handkerchief. He saw that the man intended to blow his nose and started to relax except that George suddenly became aware of the fact the man did not need to blow his nose!

Every thought-piercing circuit became instantly energized in George’s mind and reached out in all directions…

There were at least ten shots from among the men. They stood there surprised at their actions. Those who had fired their guns now held the smoking weapons awkwardly in their hands.

George’s eyes were gone. Smoke curled upward from the two empty sockets where bullets had entered a moment before. The smoke grew heavier and his body became hot. Some of him turned cherry red and the chair on which he had been sitting started to burn. Finally, he collapsed toward the table and rolled to the floor.

He started to cool. He was no longer the shiny blue-steel color he had been―he had turned black. His metal gave off cracking noises and some of it buckled here and there as it cooled.

* * * *

A few minutes later, tense military men and civilians grouped around a radio receiver in Chicago heard the report and relaxed, laughing and slapping each other on the back. Only one sat unmoved in a corner. Others finally sought him out.

“Well, Professor, it was your idea that did the trick. Don’t you feel like celebrating?” one of them asked.

Prof. Tomlin shook his head. “If only George had been a little more benign, we might have learned a lot from him.”

“What gave you the idea that killed him?”

“Oh, something he said about the unconscious and subconscious,” Prof. Tomlin replied. “He admitted they were not penetrable. It was an easy matter to instill a post-hypnotic suggestion in some proven subjects and then to erase the hypnotic experience.”

“You make it sound easy.”

“It wasn’t too difficult, really. It was finding the solution that was hard. We selected more than a hundred men, worked with them for days, finally singled out the best twenty, then made them forget their hypnosis. A first lieutenant―I’ve forgotten his name―had implanted in him a command even he was not aware of. His subconscious made him blow his nose fifteen minutes after he saw George. Nearly twenty others had post-hypnotic commands to shoot George in the eyes as soon as they saw the lieutenant blow his nose. Of course we also planted a subconscious hate pattern, which wasn’t exactly necessary, just to make sure there would be no hesitation, no inhibition, no limiting moral factor.

“None of the men ever saw each other before being sent to Minerva. None realized that they carried with them the order for George’s annihilation. The general, who was not one of the hypnotics, was given loose instructions, as were several others, so they could not possibly know the intention. Those of us who had conducted the hypnosis had to stay several hundred miles away so that we could not be reached by George’s prying mind…”

* * * *

In a pasture next to a wood near Brentwood, a metal box buried in the ground suddenly exploded, uprooting a catalpa tree.

On a planet many millions of miles away, a red light―one of many on a giant control board―suddenly winked out.

A blue humanoid made an entry in a large book: System 29578, Planet Three Inhabited.

Too dangerous for any kind of development.

MONKEY ON HIS BACK, by Charles V. De Vet

He was walking endlessly down a long, glass-walled corridor. Bright sunlight slanted in through one wall, on the blue knapsack across his shoulders. Who he was, and what he was doing here, was clouded. The truth lurked in some corner of his consciousness, but it was not reached by surface awareness.

The corridor opened at last into a large high-domed room, much like a railway station or an air terminal. He walked straight ahead.

At the sight of him a man leaning negligently against a stone pillar, to his right but within vision, straightened and barked an order to him, “Halt!” He lengthened his stride but gave no other sign.

Two men hurried through a doorway of a small anteroom to his left, calling to him. He turned away and began to run.

Shouts and the sound of charging feet came from behind him. He cut to the right, running toward the escalator to the second floor. Another pair of men were hurrying down, two steps at a stride. With no break in pace he veered into an opening beside the escalator.

At the first turn he saw that the aisle merely circled the stairway, coming out into the depot again on the other side. It was a trap. He glanced quickly around him.

At the rear of the space was a row of lockers for traveler use. He slipped a coin into a pay slot, opened the zipper on his bag and pulled out a flat briefcase. It took him only a few seconds to push the case into the compartment, lock it and slide the key along the floor beneath the locker.

There was nothing to do after that—except wait.

The men pursuing him came hurtling around the turn in the aisle. He kicked his knapsack to one side, spreading his feet wide with an instinctive motion.

Until that instant he had intended to fight. Now he swiftly reassessed the odds. There were five of them, he saw. He should be able to incapacitate two or three and break out. But the fact that they had been expecting him meant that others would very probably be waiting outside. His best course now was to sham ignorance. He relaxed.

He offered no resistance as they reached him.

They were not gentle men. A tall ruffian, copper-brown face damp with perspiration and body oil, grabbed him by the jacket and slammed him back against the lockers. As he shifted his weight to keep his footing someone drove a fist into his face. He started to raise his hands; and a hard flat object crashed against the side of his skull.

The starch went out of his legs.

* * * *

“Do you make anything out of it?” the psychoanalyst Milton Bergstrom, asked.

John Zarwell shook his head.“Did I talk while I was under?”

“Oh, yes. You were supposed to. That way I follow pretty well what you’re reenacting.”

“How does it tie in with what I told you before?”

Bergstrom’s neat-boned, fair-skinned face betrayed no emotion other than an introspective stillness of his normally alert gaze. “I see no connection,” he decided, his words once again precise and meticulous.“We don’t have enough to go on. Do you feel able to try another comanalysis this afternoon yet?”

“I don’t see why not.” Zarwell opened the collar of his shirt. The day was hot, and the room had no air conditioning, still a rare luxury on St. Martin’s. The office window was open, but it let in no freshness, only the mildly rank odor that pervaded all the planet’s habitable area.

“Good.” Bergstrom rose. “The serum is quite harmless, John.” He maintained a professional diversionary chatter as he administered the drug. “A scopolamine derivative that’s been well tested.”

The floor beneath Zarwell’s feet assumed abruptly the near transfluent consistency of a damp sponge. It rose in a foot-high wave and rolled gently toward the far wall.

Bergstrom continued talking, with practiced urbanity. “When psychiatry was a less exact science,”his voice went on, seeming to come from a great distance, “a doctor had to spend weeks, sometimes months or years interviewing a patient. If he was skilled enough, he could sort the relevancies from the vast amount of chaff. We are able now, with the help of the serum, to confine our discourses to matters cogent to the patient’s trouble.”

The floor continued its transmutation, and Zarwell sank deep into viscous depths. “Lie back and relax. Don’t…”

The words tumbled down from above. They faded, were gone.

* * * *

Zarwell found himself standing on a vast plain. There was no sky above, and no horizon in the distance. He was in a place without space or dimension. There was nothing here except himself—and the gun that he held in his hand.

A weapon beautiful in its efficient simplicity.

He should know all about the instrument, its purpose and workings, but he could not bring his thoughts into rational focus. His forehead creased with his mental effort.

Abruptly the unreality about him shifted perspective. He was approaching—not walking, but merely shortening the space between them—the man who held the gun. The man who was himself. The other “himself” drifted nearer also, as though drawn by a mutual attraction.

The man with the gun raised his weapon and pressed the trigger.

With the action the perspective shifted again. He was watching the face of the man he shot jerk and twitch, expand and contract. The face was unharmed, yet it was no longer the same. No longer his own features.

The stranger face smiled approvingly at him.

* * * *

“Odd,” Bergstrom said. He brought his hands up and joined the tips of his fingers against his chest. “But it’s another piece in the jig-saw. In time it will fit into place.” He paused. “It means no more to you than the first, I suppose?”

“No,” Zarwell answered.

He was not a talking man, Bergstrom reflected. It was more than reticence, however. The man had a hard granite core, only partially concealed by his present perplexity. He was a man who could handle himself well in an emergency.

Bergstrom shrugged, dismissing his strayed thoughts. “I expected as much. A quite normal first phase of treatment.” He straightened a paper on his desk. “I think that will be enough for today. Twice in one sitting is about all we ever try. Otherwise some particular episode might cause undue mental stress, and set up a block.” He glanced down at his appointment pad. “Tomorrow at two, then?”

Zarwell grunted acknowledgment and pushed himself to his feet, apparently unaware that his shirt clung damply to his body.

* * * *

The sun was still high when Zarwell left the analyst’s office. The white marble of the city’s buildings shimmered in the afternoon heat, squat and austere as giant tree trunks, pock-marked and gray-mottled with windows. Zarwell was careful not to rest his hand on the flesh searing surface of the stone.

The evening meal hour was approaching when he reached the Flats, on the way to his apartment. The streets of the old section were near-deserted. The only sounds he heard as he passed were the occasional cry of a baby, chronically uncomfortable in the day’s heat, and the lowing of imported cattle waiting in a nearby shed to be shipped to the country.

All St. Martin’s has a distinctive smell, as of an arid dried-out swamp, with a faint taint of fish. But in the Flats the odor changes. Here is the smell of factories, warehouses, and trading marts; the smell of stale cooking drifting from the homes of the laborers and lower class techmen who live there.

Zarwell passed a group of smaller children playing a desultory game of lic-lic for pieces of candy and cigarettes. Slowly he climbed the stairs of a stone flat. He prepared a supper for himself and ate it without either enjoyment or distaste. He lay down, fully clothed, on his bed. The visit to the analyst had done nothing to dispel his ennui.

* * * *

The next morning when Zarwell awoke he lay for a moment, unmoving. The feeling was there again, like a scene waiting only to be gazed at directly to be perceived. It was as though a great wisdom lay at the edge of understanding. If he rested quietly it would all come to him. Yet always, when his mind lost its sleep-induced lethargy, the moment of near understanding slipped away.

This morning, however, the sense of disorientation did not pass with full wakefulness. He achieved no understanding, but the strangeness did not leave as he sat up.

He gazed about him. The room did not seem to be his own. The furnishings, and the clothing he observed in a closet, might have belonged to a stranger.

He pulled himself from his blankets, his body moving with mechanical reaction. The slippers into which he put his feet were larger than he had expected them to be. He walked about the small apartment. The place was familiar, but only as it would have been if he had studied it from blueprints, not as though he lived there.

The feeling was still with him when he returned to the psychoanalyst.

* * * *

The scene this time was more kaleidoscopic, less personal.

A village was being ravaged. Men struggled and died in the streets. Zarwell moved among them, seldom taking part in the individual clashes, yet a moving force in the conflict.

The background changed. He understood that he was on a different world.

Here a city burned. Its resistance was nearing its end. Zarwell was riding a shaggy pony outside a high wall surrounding the stricken metropolis. He moved in and joined a party of short, bearded men, directing them as they battered at the wall with a huge log mounted on a many-wheeled truck.

The log broke a breach in the concrete and the besiegers charged through, carrying back the defenders who sought vainly to plug the gap. Soon there would be rioting in the streets again, plundering and killing.

Zarwell was not the leader of the invaders, only a lesser figure in the rebellion. But he had played a leading part in the planning of the strategy that led to the city’s fall. The job had been well done.

Time passed, without visible break in the panorama. Now Zarwell was fleeing, pursued by the same bearded men who had been his comrades before. Still he moved with the same firm purpose, vigilant, resourceful, and well prepared for the eventuality that had befallen. He made his escape without difficulty.

He alighted from a space ship on still another world—another shift in time—and the atmosphere of conflict engulfed him.

Weary but resigned he accepted it, and did what he had to do…

* * * *

Bergstrom was regarding him with speculative scrutiny.“You’ve had quite a past, apparently,”he observed.

Zarwell smiled with mild embarrassment.“At least in my dreams.”

“Dreams?” Bergstrom’s eyes widened in surprise. “Oh, I beg your pardon. I must have forgotten to explain. This work is so routine to me that sometimes I forget it’s all new to a patient. Actually what you experienced under the drug were not dreams. They were recollections of real episodes from your past.”

Zarwell’s expression became wary. He watched Bergstrom closely. After a minute, however, he seemed satisfied, and he let himself settle back against the cushion of his chair. “I remember nothing of what I saw,” he observed.

“That’s why you’re here, you know,” Bergstrom answered. “To help you remember.”

“But everything under the drug is so…”

“Haphazard? That’s true. The recall episodes are always purely random, with no chronological sequence. Our problem will be to reassemble them in proper order later. Or some particular scene may trigger a complete memory return.

“It is my considered opinion,”Bergstrom went on, “that your lost memory will turn out to be no ordinary amnesia. I believe we will find that your mind has been tampered with.”

“Nothing I’ve seen under the drug fits into the past I do remember.”

“That’s what makes me so certain,”Bergstrom said confidently.“You don’t remember what we have shown to be true. Conversely then, what you think you remember must be false. It must have been implanted there. But we can go into that later. For today I think we have done enough. This episode was quite prolonged.”

“I won’t have any time off again until next week end,” Zarwell reminded him.

“That’s right.” Bergstrom thought for a moment. “We shouldn’t let this hang too long. Could you come here after work tomorrow?”

“I suppose I could.”

“Fine,” Bergstrom said with satisfaction.“I’ll admit I’m considerably more than casually interested in your case by this time.”

* * * *

A work truck picked Zarwell up the next morning and he rode with a tech crew to the edge of the reclam area. Beside the belt bringing ocean muck from the converter plant at the seashore his bulldozer was waiting.

He took his place behind the drive wheel and began working dirt down between windbreakers anchored in the rock. Along a makeshift road into the badlands trucks brought crushed lime and phosphorus to supplement the ocean sediment. The progress of life from the sea to the land was a mechanical process of this growing world.

Nearly two hundred years ago, when Earth established a colony on St. Martin’s, the land surface of the planet had been barren. Only its seas thrived with animal and vegetable life. The necessary machinery and technicians had been supplied by Earth, and the long struggle began to fit the world for human needs. When Zarwell arrived, six months before, the vitalized area already extended three hundred miles along the coast, and sixty miles inland. And every day the progress continued. A large percentage of the energy and resources of the world were devoted to that essential expansion.

The reclam crews filled and sodded the sterile rock, planted binding grasses, grain and trees, and diverted rivers to keep it fertile. When there were no rivers to divert they blasted out springs and lakes in the foothills to make their own. Biologists developed the necessary germ and insect life from what they found in the sea. Where that failed, they imported microorganisms from Earth.

Three rubber-tracked crawlers picked their way down from the mountains until they joined the road passing the belt. They were loaded with ore that would be smelted into metal for depleted Earth, or for other colonies short of minerals. It was St. Martin’s only export thus far.

Zarwell pulled his sun helmet lower, to better guard his hot, dry features. The wind blew continuously on St. Martin’s, but it furnished small relief from the heat. After its three-thousand-mile journey across scorched sterile rock, it sucked the moisture from a man’s body, bringing a membrane-shrinking dryness to the nostrils as it was breathed in. With it came also the cloying taste of limestone in a worker’s mouth.

Zarwell gazed idly about at the other laborers. Fully three-quarters of them were beri-rabza ridden. A cure for the skin fungus had not yet been found; the men’s faces and hands were scabbed and red. The colony had grown to near self-sufficiency, would soon have a moderate prosperity, yet they still lacked adequate medical and research facilities.

Not all the world’s citizens were content.

Bergstrom was waiting in his office when Zarwell arrived that evening.

* * * *

He was lying motionless on a hard cot, with his eyes closed, yet with his every sense sharply quickened. Tentatively he tightened small muscles in his arms and legs. Across his wrists and thighs he felt straps binding him to the cot.

“So that’s our big, bad man,” a coarse voice above him observed caustically. “He doesn’t look so tough now, does he?”

“It might have been better to kill him right away,” a second, less confident voice said. “It’s supposed to be impossible to hold him.”

“Don’t be stupid. We just do what we’re told. We’ll hold him.”

“What do you think they’ll do with him?”

“Execute him, I suppose,” the harsh voice said matter-of-factly.“They’re probably just curious to see what he looks like first. They’ll be disappointed.”

Zarwell opened his eyes a slit to observe his surroundings.

It was a mistake. “He’s out of it,” the first speaker said, and Zarwell allowed his eyes to open fully.

The voice, he saw, belonged to the big man who had bruised him against the locker at the spaceport. Irrelevantly he wondered how he knew now that it had been a spaceport.

His captor’s broad face jeered down at Zarwell. “Have a good sleep?” he asked with mock solicitude. Zarwell did not deign to acknowledge that he heard.

The big man turned. “You can tell the Chief he’s awake,” he said. Zarwell followed his gaze to where a younger man, with a blond lock of hair on his forehead, stood behind him. The youth nodded and went out, while the other pulled a chair up to the side of Zarwell’s cot.

While their attention was away from him Zarwell had unobtrusively loosened his bonds as much as possible with arm leverage. As the big man drew his chair nearer, he made the hand farthest from him tight and compact and worked it free of the leather loop. He waited.

The big man belched. “You’re supposed to be great stuff in a situation like this,” he said, his smoke-tan face splitting in a grin that revealed large square teeth. “How about giving me a sample?”

“You’re a yellow-livered bastard,”Zarwell told him.

The grin faded from the oily face as the man stood up. He leaned over the cot—and Zarwell’s left hand shot up and locked about his throat, joined almost immediately by the right.

The man’s mouth opened and he tried to yell as he threw himself frantically backward. He clawed at the hands about his neck. When that failed to break the grip he suddenly reversed his weight and drove his fist at Zarwell’s head.

Zarwell pulled the struggling body down against his chest and held it there until all agitated movement ceased. He sat up then, letting the body slide to the floor.

The straps about his thighs came loose with little effort.

* * * *

The analyst dabbed at his upper lip with a handkerchief. “The episodes are beginning to tie together,”he said, with an attempt at nonchalance. “The next couple should do it.”

Zarwell did not answer. His memory seemed on the point of complete return, and he sat quietly, hopefully. However, nothing more came and he returned his attention to his more immediate problem.

Opening a button on his shirt, he pulled back a strip of plastic cloth just below his rib cage and took out a small flat pistol. He held it in the palm of his hand. He knew now why he always carried it.

Bergstrom had his bad moment.“You’re not going to…” he began at the sight of the gun. He tried again. “You must be joking.”

“I have very little sense of humor,”Zarwell corrected him.

“You’d be foolish!”

Bergstrom obviously realized how close he was to death. Yet surprisingly, after the first start, he showed little fear. Zarwell had thought the man a bit soft, too adjusted to a life of ease and some prestige to meet danger calmly. Curiosity restrained his trigger finger.

“Why would I be foolish?” he asked. “Your Meninger oath of inviolable confidence?”

Bergstrom shook his head. “I know it’s been broken before. But you need me. You’re not through, you know. If you killed me you’d still have to trust some other analyst.”

“Is that the best you can do?”

“No.” Bergstrom was angry now.“But use that logical mind you’re supposed to have! Scenes before this have shown what kind of man you are. Just because this last happened here on St. Martin’s makes little difference. If I was going to turn you in to the police, I’d have done it before this.”

Zarwell debated with himself the truth of what the other had said.“Why didn’t you turn me in?” he asked.

“Because you’re no mad-dog killer!” Now that the crisis seemed to be past, Bergstrom spoke more calmly, even allowed himself to relax. “You’re still pretty much in the fog about yourself. I read more in those comanalyses than you did. I even know who you are!”

Zarwell’s eyebrows raised.

“Who am I?” he asked, very interested now. Without attention he put his pistol away in a trouser pocket.

Bergstrom brushed the question aside with one hand. “Your name makes little difference. You’ve used many. But you are an idealist. Your killings were necessary to bring justice to the places you visited. By now you’re almost a legend among the human worlds. I’d like to talk more with you on that later.”

While Zarwell considered, Bergstrom pressed his advantage. “One more scene might do it,” he said.“Should we try again—if you trust me, that is?”

Zarwell made his decision quickly.“Go ahead,” he answered.

* * * *

All Zarwell’s attention seemed on the cigar he lit as he rode down the escalator, but he surveyed the terminal carefully over the rim of his hand. He spied no suspicious loungers.

Behind the escalator he groped along the floor beneath the lockers until he found his key. The briefcase was under his arm a minute later.

In the basement lave he put a coin in the pay slot of a private compartment and went in.

As he zipped open the briefcase he surveyed his features in the mirror. A small muscle at the corner of one eye twitched spasmodically. One cheek wore a frozen quarter smile. Thirty-six hours under the paralysis was longer than advisable. The muscles should be rested at least every twenty hours.

Fortunately his natural features would serve as an adequate disguise now.

He adjusted the ring setting on the pistol-shaped instrument that he took from his case, and carefully rayed several small areas of his face, loosening muscles that had been tight too long. He sighed gratefully when he finished, massaging his cheeks and forehead with considerable pleasure. Another glance in the mirror satisfied him with the changes that had been made. He turned to his briefcase again and exchanged the gun for a small syringe, which he pushed into a trouser pocket, and a single-edged razor blade.

Removing his fiber-cloth jacket he slashed it into strips with the razor blade and flushed it down the disposal bowl. With the sleeves of his blouse rolled up he had the appearance of a typical workman as he strolled from the compartment.

Back at the locker he replaced the briefcase and, with a wad of gum, glued the key to the bottom of the locker frame.

One step more. Taking the syringe from his pocket, he plunged the needle into his forearm and tossed the instrument down a waste chute. He took three more steps and paused uncertainly.

When he looked about him it was with the expression of a man waking from a vivid dream.

* * * *

“Quite ingenious,” Graves murmured admiringly. “You had your mind already preconditioned for the shot. But why would you deliberately give yourself amnesia?”

“What better disguise than to believe the part you’re playing?”

“A good man must have done that job on your mind,” Bergstrom commented. “I’d have hesitated to try it myself. It must have taken a lot of trust on your part.”

“Trust and money,” Zarwell said drily.

“Your memory’s back then?”

Zarwell nodded.

“I’m glad to hear that,” Bergstrom assured him. “Now that you’re well again I’d like to introduce you to a man named Vernon Johnson. This world…”

Zarwell stopped him with an upraised hand. “Good God, man, can’t you see the reason for all this? I’m tired. I’m trying to quit.”

“Quit?” Bergstrom did not quite follow him.

“It started on my home colony,”Zarwell explained listlessly. “A gang of hoods had taken over the government. I helped organize a movement to get them out. There was some bloodshed, but it went quite well. Several months later an unofficial envoy from another world asked several of us to give them a hand on the same kind of job. The political conditions there were rotten. We went with him. Again we were successful. It seems I have a kind of genius for that sort of thing.”

He stretched out his legs and regarded them thoughtfully. “I learned then the truth of Russell’s saying: ‘When the oppressed win their freedom they are as oppressive as their former masters.’ When they went bad, I opposed them. This time I failed. But I escaped again. I have quite a talent for that also.

“I’m not a professional do-gooder.”Zarwell’s tone appealed to Bergstrom for understanding. “I have only a normal man’s indignation at injustice. And now I’ve done my share. Yet, wherever I go, the word eventually gets out, and I’m right back in a fight again. It’s like the proverbial monkey on my back. I can’t get rid of it.”

He rose. “That disguise and memory planting were supposed to get me out of it. I should have known it wouldn’t work. But this time I’m not going to be drawn back in! You and your Vernon Johnson can do your own revolting. I’m through!”

Bergstrom did not argue as he left.

* * * *

Restlessness drove Zarwell from his flat the next day—a legal holiday on St. Martin’s. At a railed-off lot he stopped and loitered in the shadow of an adjacent building watching workmen drilling an excavation for a new structure.

When a man strolled to his side and stood watching the workmen, he was not surprised. He waited for the other to speak.

“I’d like to talk to you, if you can spare a few minutes,” the stranger said.

Zarwell turned and studied the man without answering. He was medium tall, with the body of an athlete, though perhaps ten years beyond the age of sports. He had a manner of contained energy.“You’re Johnson?” he asked.

The man nodded.

Zarwell tried to feel the anger he wanted to feel, but somehow it would not come. “We have nothing to talk about,” was the best he could manage.

“Then will you just listen? After, I’ll leave—if you tell me to.”

Against his will he found himself liking the man, and wanting at least to be courteous. He inclined his head toward a curb wastebox with a flat top. “Should we sit?”

Johnson smiled agreeably and they walked over to the box and sat down.

“When this colony was first founded,” Johnson began without preamble, “the administrative body was a governor, and a council of twelve. Their successors were to be elected biennially. At first they were. Then things changed. We haven’t had an election now in the last twenty-three years. St. Martin’s is beginning to prosper. Yet the only ones receiving the benefits are the rulers. The citizens work twelve hours a day. They are poorlyhoused, poorly fed, poorly clothed. They…”

Zarwell found himself not listening as Johnson’s voice went on. The story was always the same. But why did they always try to drag him into their troubles?

Why hadn’t he chosen some other world on which to hide?

The last question prompted a new thought. Just why had he chosen St. Martin’s? Was it only a coincidence? Or had he, subconsciously at least, picked this particular world? He had always considered himself the unwilling subject of glib persuaders…but mightn’t some inner compulsion of his own have put the monkey on his back?

“…and we need your help.” Johnson had finished his speech.

Zarwell gazed up at the bright sky. He pulled in a long breath, and let it out in a sigh.

“What are your plans so far?”he asked wearily.

THE CALM MAN, by Frank Belknap Long

Sally Anders had never really thought of herself as a wallflower. A girl could be shy, couldn’t she, and still be pretty enough to attract and hold men?

Only this morning she had drawn an admiring look from the milkman and a wolf cry from Jimmy on the corner, with his newspapers and shiny new bike. What if the milkman was crowding sixty and wore thick-lensed glasses? What if Jimmy was only seventeen?

A male was a male, and a glance was a glance. Why, if I just primp a little more, Sally told herself, I’ll be irresistible.

Hair ribbons and perfume, a mirror tilted at just the right angle, an invitation to a party on the dresser―what more did a girl need?

“Dinner, Sally!” came echoing up from the kitchen. “Do you want to be late, child?”

Sally had no intention of being late. Tonight she’d see him across a crowded room and her heart would skip a beat. He’d look at her and smile, and come straight toward her with his shoulders squared.

There was always one night in a girl’s life that stands above all other nights. One night when the moon shone bright and clear and the clock on the wall went tick tock, tick tock, tick tock. One night when each tick said, “You’re beautiful! Really beautiful!”

Giving her hair a final pat Sally smiled at herself in the mirror.

In the bathroom the water was still running and the perfumed bath soap still spread its aromatic sweet odor through the room. Sally went into the bathroom and turned off the tap before going downstairs to the kitchen.

“My girl looks radiant tonight!” Uncle Ben said, smiling at her over his corned beef and cabbage.

Sally blushed and lowered her eyes.

“Ben, you’re making her nervous,” Sally’s mother said, laughing.

Sally looked up and met her uncle’s stare, her eyes defiant. “I’m not bad-looking whatever you may think,” she said.

“Oh, now, Sally,” Uncle Ben protested. “No sense in getting on a high horse. Tonight you may find a man who just won’t be able to resist you.”

“Maybe I will and maybe I won’t,” Sally said. “You’d be surprised if I did, wouldn’t you?”

It was Uncle Ben’s turn to lower his eyes.

“I’ll tell the world you’ve inherited your mother’s looks, Sally,” he said. “But a man has to pride himself on something. My defects of character are pretty bad. But no one has ever accused me of dishonesty.”

Sally folded her napkin and rose stiffly from the table.

“Good night, Uncle,” she said.

When Sally arrived at the party every foot of floor space was taken up by dancing couples and the reception room was so crowded that, as each new guest was announced, a little ripple of displeasure went through the men in midnight blue and the women in Nile green and lavender.

For a moment Sally did not move, just stood staring at the dancing couples, half-hidden by one of the potted palms that framed the sides of the long room.

Moonlight silvered her hair and touched her white throat and arms with a caress so gentle that simply by closing her eyes she could fancy herself already in his arms.

Moonlight from tall windows flooding down, turning the dancing guests into pirouetting ghosts in diaphanous blue and green, scarlet and gold.

Close your eyes, Sally, close them tight! Now open them! That’s it…Slowly, slowly…

He came out of nothingness into the light and was right beside her suddenly.

He was tall, but not too tall. His face was tanned mahogany brown, and his eyes were clear and very bright. And he stood there looking at her steadily until her mouth opened and a little gasp flew out.

He took her into his arms without a word and they started to dance…

They were still dancing when he asked her to be his wife.

“You’ll marry me, of course,” he said. “We haven’t too much time. The years go by so swiftly, like great white birds at sea.”

They were very close when he asked her, but he made no attempt to kiss her. They went right on dancing and while he waited for her answer he talked about the moon…

“When the lights go out and the music stops the moon will remain,” he said. “It raises tides on the Earth, it inflames the minds and hearts of men. There are cyclic rhythms which would set a stone to dreaming and desiring on such a night as this.”

He stopped dancing abruptly and looked at her with calm assurance.

“You will marry me, won’t you?” he asked. “Allowing for a reasonable margin of error I seriously doubt if I could be happy with any of these other women. I was attracted to you the instant I saw you.”

A girl who has never been asked before, who has drawn only one lone wolf cry from a newsboy could hardly be expected to resist such an offer.

Don’t resist, Sally. He’s strong and tall and extremely good-looking. He knows what he wants and makes up his mind quickly. Surely a man so resolute must make enough money to support a wife.

“Yes,” Sally breathed, snuggling close to him. “Oh, yes!”

She paused a moment, then said, “You may kiss me now if you wish, my darling.”

He straightened and frowned a little, and looked away quickly. “That can wait,” he said.

* * * *

They were married a week later and went to live on an elm-shaded street just five blocks from where Sally was born. The cottage was small, white and attractively decorated inside and out. But Sally changed the curtains, as all women must, and bought some new furniture on the installment plan.

The neighbors were friendly folk who knew her husband as Mr. James Rand, an energetic young insurance broker who would certainly carve a wider swath for himself in his chosen profession now that he had so charming a wife.

Ten months later the first baby came.

Lying beneath cool white sheets in the hospital Sally looked at the other women and felt so deliriously happy she wanted to cry. It was a beautiful baby and it cuddled close to her heart, its smallness a miracle in itself.

The other husbands came in and sat beside their wives, holding on tight to their happiness. There were flowers and smiles, whispers that explored bright new worlds of tenderness and rejoicing.

Out in the corridor the husbands congratulated one another and came in smelling of cigar smoke.

“Have a cigar! That’s right. Eight pounds at birth. That’s unusual, isn’t it? Brightest kid you ever saw. Knew his old man right off.”

He was beside her suddenly, standing straight and still in shadows.

“Oh, darling,” she whispered. “Why did you wait? It’s been three whole days.”

“Three days?” he asked, leaning forward to stare down at his son. “Really! It didn’t seem that long.”

“Where were you? You didn’t even phone!”

“Sometimes it’s difficult to phone,” he said slowly, as if measuring his words. “You have given me a son. That pleases me very much.”

A coldness touched her heart and a despair took hold of her. “It pleases you! Is that all you can say? You stand there looking at me as if I were a―a patient…”

“A patient?” His expression grew quizzical. “Just what do you mean, Sally?”

“You said you were pleased. If a patient is ill her doctor hopes that she will get well. He is pleased when she does. If a woman has a baby a doctor will say, ‘I’m so pleased. The baby is doing fine. You don’t have to worry about him. I’ve put him on the scales and he’s a bouncing, healthy boy.’”

“Medicine is a sane and wise profession,” Sally’s husband said. “When I look at my son that is exactly what I would say to the mother of my son. He is healthy and strong. You have pleased me, Sally.”

He bent as he spoke and picked Sally’s son up. He held the infant in the crook of his arm, smiling down at it.

“A healthy male child,” he said. “His hair will come in thick and black. Soon he will speak, will know that I am his father.”

He ran his palm over the baby’s smooth head, opened its mouth gently with his forefinger and looked inside.

Sally rose on one elbow, her tormented eyes searching his face.

“He’s your child, your son!” she sobbed. “A woman has a child and her husband comes and puts his arms around her. He holds her close. If they love each other they are so happy, so very happy, they break down and cry.”

“I am too pleased to do anything so fantastic, Sally,” he said. “When a child is born no tears should be shed by its parents. I have examined the child and I am pleased with it. Does not that content you?”

“No, it doesn’t!” Sally almost shrieked. “Why do you stare at your own son as if you’d never seen a baby before? He isn’t a mechanical toy. He’s our own darling, adorable little baby. Our child! How can you be so inhumanly calm?”

He frowned, put the baby down.

“There is a time for love-making and a time for parenthood,” he said. “Parenthood is a serious responsibility. That is where medicine comes in, surgery. If a child is not perfect there are emergency measures which can be taken to correct the defect.”

Sally’s mouth went suddenly dry. “Perfect! What do you mean, Jim? Is there something wrong with Tommy?”

“I don’t think so,” her husband said. “His grasp is firm and strong. He has good hearing and his eyesight appears to be all that could be desired. Did you notice how his eyes followed me every moment?”

“I wasn’t looking at his eyes!” Sally whispered, her voice tight with alarm. “Why are you trying to frighten me, Jim? If Tommy wasn’t a normal, healthy baby do you imagine for one instant they would have placed him in my arms?”

“That is a very sound observation,” Sally’s husband said. “Truth is truth, but to alarm you at a time like this would be unnecessarily cruel.”

“Where does that put you?”

“I simply spoke my mind as the child’s father. I had to speak as I did because of my natural concern for the health of our child. Do you want me to stay and talk to you, Sally?”

Sally shook her head. “No, Jim. I won’t let you torture me any more.”

Sally drew the baby into her arms again and held it tightly. “I’ll scream if you stay!” she warned. “I’ll become hysterical unless you leave.”

“Very well,” her husband said. “I’ll come back tomorrow.”

He bent as he spoke and kissed her on the forehead. His lips were ice cold.

For eight years Sally sat across the table from her husband at breakfast, her eyes fixed upon a nothingness on the green-blue wall at his back. Calm he remained even while eating. The eggs she placed before him he cracked methodically with a knife and consumed behind a tilted newspaper, taking now an assured sip of coffee, now a measured glance at the clock.

The presence of his young son bothered him not at all. Tommy could be quiet or noisy, in trouble at school, or with an A for good conduct tucked with his report card in his soiled leather zipper jacket. It was always: “Eat slowly, my son. Never gulp your food. Be sure to take plenty of exercise today. Stay in the sun as much as possible.”

Often Sally wanted to shriek: “Be a father to him! A real father! Get down on the floor and play with him. Shoot marbles with him, spin one of his tops. Remember the toy locomotive you gave him for Christmas after I got hysterical and screamed at you? Remember the beautiful little train? Get it out of the closet and wreck it accidentally. He’ll warm up to you then. He’ll be broken-hearted, but he’ll feel close to you, then you’ll know what it means to have a son!”

Often Sally wanted to fly at him, beat with her fists on his chest. But she never did.

You can’t warm a stone by slapping it, Sally. You’d only bruise yourself. A stone is neither cruel nor tender. You’ve married a man of stone, Sally.

He hasn’t missed a day at the office in eight years. She’d never visited the office but he was always there to answer when she phoned. “I’m very busy, Sally. What did you say? You’ve bought a new hat? I’m sure it will look well on you, Sally. What did you say? Tommy got into a fight with a new boy in the neighborhood? You must take better care of him, Sally.”

There are patterns in every marriage. When once the mold has set, a few strange behavior patterns must be accepted as a matter of course.

“I’ll drop in at the office tomorrow, darling!” Sally had promised right after the breakfast pattern had become firmly established. The desire to see where her husband worked had been from the start a strong, bright flame in her. But he asked her to wait a while before visiting his office.

A strong will can dampen the brightest flame, and when months passed and he kept saying ‘no,’ Sally found herself agreeing with her husband’s suggestion that the visit be put off indefinitely.

Snuff a candle and it stays snuffed. A marriage pattern once established requires a very special kind of re-kindling. Sally’s husband refused to supply the needed spark.

Whenever Sally had an impulse to turn her steps in the direction of the office a voice deep in her mind seemed to whisper: “No sense in it, Sally. Stay away. He’s been mean and spiteful about it all these years. Don’t give in to him now by going.”

Besides, Tommy took up so much of her time. A growing boy was always a problem and Tommy seemed to have a special gift for getting into things because he was so active. And he went through his clothes, wore out his shoes almost faster than she could replace them.

Right now Tommy was playing in the yard. Sally’s eyes came to a focus upon him, crouching by a hole in the fence which kindly old Mrs. Wallingford had erected as a protection against the prying inquisitiveness of an eight-year-old determined to make life miserable for her.

A thrice-widowed neighbor of seventy without a spiteful hair in her head could put up with a boy who rollicked and yelled perhaps. But peep-hole spying was another matter.

Sally muttered: “Enough of that!” and started for the kitchen door. Just as she reached it the telephone rang.

Sally went quickly to the phone and lifted the receiver. The instant she pressed it to her ear she recognized her husband’s voice―or thought she did.

“Sally, come to the office!” came the voice, speaking in a hoarse whisper. “Hurry―or it will be too late! Hurry, Sally!”

Sally turned with a startled gasp, looked out through the kitchen window at the autumn leaves blowing crisp and dry across the lawn. As she looked the scattered leaves whirled into a flurry around Tommy, then lifted and went spinning over the fence and out of sight.

The dread in her heart gave way to a sudden, bleak despair. As she turned from the phone something within her withered, became as dead as the drifting leaves with their dark autumnal mottlings.

She did not even pause to call Tommy in from the yard. She rushed upstairs, then down again, gathering up her hat, gloves and purse, making sure she had enough change to pay for the taxi.

The ride to the office was a nightmare…Tall buildings swept past, facades of granite as gray as the leaden skies of mid-winter, beehives of commerce where men and women brushed shoulders without touching hands.

Autumnal leaves blowing, and the gray buildings sweeping past. Despite Tommy, despite everything there was no shining vision to warm Sally from within. A cottage must be lived in to become a home and Sally had never really had a home.

One-night stand! It wasn’t an expression she’d have used by choice, but it came unbidden into her mind. If you live for nine years with a man who can’t relax and be human, who can’t be warm and loving you’ll begin eventually to feel you might as well live alone. Each day had been like a lonely sentinel outpost in a desert waste for Sally.

She thought about Tommy…Tommy wasn’t in the least like his father when he came racing home from school, hair tousled, books dangling from a strap. Tommy would raid the pantry with unthinking zest, invite other boys in to look at the Westerns on TV, and trade black eyes for marbles with a healthy pugnacity.

Up to a point Tommy was normal, was healthy.

But she had seen mirrored in Tommy’s pale blue eyes the same abnormal calmness that was always in his father’s, and the look of derisive withdrawal which made him seem always to be staring down at her from a height. And it filled her with terror to see that Tommy’s mood could change as abruptly and terrifyingly cold…

Tommy, her son. Tommy, no longer boisterous and eager, but sitting in a corner with his legs drawn up, a faraway look in his eyes. Tommy seeming to look right through her, into space. Tommy and Jim exchanging silent understanding glances. Tommy roaming through the cottage, staring at his toys with frowning disapproval. Tommy drawing back when she tried to touch him.

Tommy, Tommy, come back to me! How often she had cried out in her heart when that coldness came between them.

Tommy drawing strange figures on the floor with a piece of colored chalk, then erasing them quickly before she could see them, refusing to let her enter his secret child’s world.

Tommy picking up the cat and stroking its fur mechanically, while he stared out through the kitchen window at rusty blackbirds on the wing…

“This is the address you gave me, lady. Sixty-seven Vine Street,” the cab driver was saying.

Sally shivered, remembering her husband’s voice on the phone, remembering where she was…“Come to the office, Sally! Hurry, hurry―or it will be too late!”

Too late for what? Too late to recapture a happiness she had never possessed?

“This is it, lady!” the cab driver insisted. “Do you want me to wait?”

“No,” Sally said, fumbling for her change purse. She descended from the taxi, paid the driver and hurried across the pavement to the big office building with its mirroring frontage of plate glass and black onyx tiles.

The firm’s name was on the directory board in the lobby, white on black in beautifully embossed lettering. White for hope, and black for despair, mourning…

The elevator opened and closed and Sally was whisked up eight stories behind a man in a checkered suit.

“Eighth floor!” Sally whispered, in sudden alarm. The elevator jolted to an abrupt halt and the operator swung about to glare at her.

“You should have told me when you got on, Miss!” he complained.

“Sorry,” Sally muttered, stumbling out into the corridor. How horrible it must be to go to business every day, she thought wildly. To sit in an office, to thumb through papers, to bark orders, to be a machine.

Sally stood very still for an instant, startled, feeling her sanity threatened by the very absurdity of the thought. People who worked in offices could turn for escape to a cottage in the sunset’s glow, when they were set free by the moving hands of a clock. There could be a fierce joy at the thought of deliverance, at the prospect of going home at five o’clock.

But for Sally was the brightness, the deliverance withheld. The corridor was wide and deserted and the black tiles with their gold borders seemed to converge upon her, hemming her into a cool magnificence as structurally somber as the architectural embellishments of a costly mausoleum.

She found the office with her surface mind, working at cross-purposes with the confusion and swiftly mounting dread which made her footsteps falter, her mouth go dry.

Steady, Sally! Here’s the office, here’s the door. Turn the knob and get it over with…

Sally opened the door and stepped into a small, deserted reception room. Beyond the reception desk was a gate, and beyond the gate a large central office branched off into several smaller offices.

Sally paused only an instant. It seemed quite natural to her that a business office should be deserted so late in the afternoon.

She crossed the reception room to the gate, passed through it, utter desperation giving her courage.

Something within her whispered that she had only to walk across the central office, open the first door she came to to find her husband…

The first door combined privacy with easy accessibility. The instant she opened the door she knew that she had been right to trust her instincts. This was his office…

He was sitting at a desk by the window, a patch of sunset sky visible over his right shoulder. His elbows rested on the desk and his hands were tightly locked as if he had just stopped wringing them.

He was looking straight at her, his eyes wide and staring.

“Jim!” Sally breathed. “Jim, what’s wrong?”

He did not answer, did not move or attempt to greet her in any way. There was no color at all in his face. His lips were parted, his white teeth gleamed. And he was more stiffly controlled than usual―a control so intense that for once Sally felt more alarm than bitterness.

There was a rising terror in her now. And a slowly dawning horror. The sunlight streamed in, gleaming redly on his hair, his shoulders. He seemed to be the center of a flaming red ball…

He sent for you, Sally. Why doesn’t he get up and speak to you, if only to pour salt on the wounds you’ve borne for eight long years?

Poor Sally! You wanted a strong, protective, old-fashioned husband. What have you got instead?

Sally went up to the desk and looked steadily into eyes so calm and blank that they seemed like the eyes of a child lost in some dreamy wonderland barred forever to adult understanding.

For an instant her terror ebbed and she felt almost reassured. Then she made the mistake of bending more closely above him, brushing his right elbow with her sleeve.

* * * *

That single light woman’s touch unsettled him. He started to fall, sideways and very fast. Topple a dead weight and it crashes with a swiftness no opposing force can counter-balance.

It did Sally no good to clutch frantically at his arm as he fell, to tug and jerk at the slackening folds of his suit. The heaviness of his descending bulk dragged him down and away from her, the awful inertia of lifeless flesh.

He thudded to the floor and rolled over on his back, seeming to shrink as Sally widened her eyes upon him. He lay in a grotesque sprawl at her feet, his jaw hanging open on the gaping black orifice of his mouth…

Sally might have screamed and gone right on screaming―if she had been a different kind of woman. On seeing her husband lying dead her impulse might have been to throw herself down beside him, give way to her grief in a wild fit of sobbing.

But where there was no grief there could be no sobbing…

One thing only she did before she left. She unloosed the collar of the unmoving form on the floor and looked for the small brown mole she did not really expect to find. The mole she knew to be on her husband’s shoulder, high up on the left side.

She had noticed things that made her doubt her sanity; she needed to see the little black mole to reassure her…

She had noticed the difference in the hair-line, the strange slant of the eyebrows, the crinkly texture of the skin where it should have been smooth…

Something was wrong…horribly, weirdly wrong…

Even the hands of the sprawled form seemed larger and hairier than the hands of her husband. Nevertheless it was important to be sure…

The absence of the mole clinched it.

Sally crouched beside the body, carefully readjusting the collar. Then she got up and walked out of the office.

Some homecomings are joyful, others cruel. Sitting in the taxi, clenching and unclenching her hands, Sally had no plan that could be called a plan, no hope that was more than a dim flickering in a vast wasteland, bleak and unexplored.

But it was strange how one light burning brightly in a cottage window could make even a wasteland seem small, could shrink and diminish it until it became no more than a patch of darkness that anyone with courage might cross.

The light was in Tommy’s room and there was a whispering behind the door. Sally could hear the whispering as she tiptoed upstairs, could see the light streaming out into the hall.

She paused for an instant at the head of the stairs, listening. There were two voices in the room, and they were talking back and forth.

Sally tiptoed down the hall, stood with wildly beating heart just outside the door.

“She knows now, Tommy,” the deepest of the two voices said. “We are very close, your mother and I. She knows now that I sent her to the office to find my ‘stand in.’ Oh, it’s an amusing term, Tommy―an Earth term we’d hardly use on Mars. But it’s a term your mother would understand.”

A pause, then the voice went on, “You see, my son, it has taken me eight years to repair the ship. And in eight years a man can wither up and die by inches if he does not have a growing son to go adventuring with him in the end.”

“Adventuring, father?”

“You have read a good many Earth books, my son, written especially for boys. Treasure Island, Robinson Crusoe, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea. What paltry books they are! But in them there is a little of the fire, a little of the glow of our world.”

“No, father. I started them but I threw them away for I did not like them.”

“As you and I must throw away all Earth things, my son. I tried to be kind to your mother, to be a good husband as husbands go on Earth. But how could I feel proud and strong and reckless by her side? How could I share her paltry joys and sorrows, chirp with delight as a sparrow might chirp hopping about in the grass? Can an eagle pretend to be a sparrow? Can the thunder muffle its voice when two white-crested clouds collide in the shining depths of the night sky?”

“You tried, father. You did your best.”

“Yes, my son, I did try. But if I had attempted to feign emotions I did not feel your mother would have seen through the pretense. She would then have turned from me completely. Without her I could not have had you, my son.”

“And now, father, what will we do?”

“Now the ship has been repaired and is waiting for us. Every day for eight years I went to the hill and worked on the ship. It was badly wrecked, my son, but now my patience has been rewarded, and every damaged astronavigation instrument has been replaced.”

“You never went to the office, father? You never went at all?”

“No, my son. My stand-in worked at the office in my place. I instilled in your mother’s mind an intense dislike and fear of the office to keep her from ever coming face to face with the stand-in. She might have noticed the difference. But I had to have a stand-in, as a safeguard. Your mother might have gone to the office despite the mental block.”

“She’s gone now, father. Why did you send for her?”

“To avoid what she would call a scene, my son. That I could not endure. I had the stand-in summon her on the office telephone, then I withdrew all vitality from it. She will find it quite lifeless. But it does not matter now. When she returns we will be gone.”

“Was constructing the stand-in difficult, father?”

“Not for me, my son. On Mars we have many androids, each constructed to perform a specific task. Some are ingenious beyond belief―or would seem so to Earthmen.”

There was a pause, then the weaker of the two voices said, “I will miss my mother. She tried to make me happy. She tried very hard.”

“You must be brave and strong, my son. We are eagles, you and I. Your mother is a sparrow, gentle and dun-colored. I shall always remember her with tenderness. You want to go with me, don’t you?”

“Yes, father. Oh, yes!”

“Then come, my son. We must hurry. Your mother will be returning any minute now.”

Sally stood motionless, listening to the voices like a spectator sitting before a television screen. A spectator can see as well as hear, and Sally could visualize her son’s pale, eager face so clearly there was no need for her to move forward into the room.

She could not move. And nothing on Earth could have wrenched a tortured cry from her. Grief and shock may paralyze the mind and will, but Sally’s will was not paralyzed.

It was as if the thread of her life had been cut, with only one light left burning. Tommy was that light. He would never change. He would go from her forever. But he would always be her son.

The door of Tommy’s room opened and Tommy and his father came out into the hall. Sally stepped back into shadows and watched them walk quickly down the hall to the stairs, their voices low, hushed. She heard them descend the stairs, their footsteps dwindle, die away into silence…

You’ll see a light, Sally, a great glow lighting up the sky. The ship must be very beautiful. For eight years he labored over it, restoring it with all the shining gifts of skill and feeling at his command. He was calm toward you, but not toward the ship, Sally―the ship which will take him back to Mars!

How is it on Mars, she wondered. My son, Tommy, will become a strong, proud adventurer daring the farthest planet of the farthest star?

You can’t stop a boy from adventuring. Surprise him at his books and you’ll see tropical seas in his eyes, a pearly nautilus, Hong Kong and Valparaiso resplendent in the dawn.

There is no strength quite like the strength of a mother, Sally. Endure it, be brave…

Sally was at the window when it came. A dazzling burst of radiance, starting from the horizon’s rim and spreading across the entire sky. It lit up the cottage and flickered over the lawn, turning rooftops to molten gold and gilding the long line of rolling hills which hemmed in the town.

Brighter it grew and brighter, gilding for a moment even Sally’s bowed head and her image mirrored on the pane. Then, abruptly, it was gone…

ALIEN STILL LIFE, by John Gregory Betancourt

She strolled up to Cris in a knot of friends and hangers-on, her skin chocolate and azure, her hair a shimmering bow done in soft shades of orange. Her holodress swirled around her like a writhing snake, revealed dark thighs and the occasional smooth curve of breast, but Marica was like that and Cris expected it of her. It was part of her charm, part of her power, all of which drew him inexorably closer, a moth to her flame. After all, what did he, mere painter, mere artist, know of fashion? Only her eyes seemed normal tonight, that pale piercing shade of blue he’d always found so distracting.

“Crispin darling,” she said, and when she smiled her teeth were dark as her skin, crawling with geometric designs.

“Marica,” he said. “I wasn’t expecting you. I thought you found my gallery openings too tame.”

“Wifely duty,” she said, and a titter came from her coterie. Cris glared and they shut up. They too sported holographic clothes and wild polychromatic hair designs. He remembered none of their names; they were just glitterfolk, like Marica. They came and went and others would replace them tomorrow.

He forced a smile. “Of course, your portrait. I’d forgotten it’s on exhibit.” She hadn’t been his wife in months, not since he’d finished painting her. That portrait hung on the far wall, a masterful study in oil and holo laserwork, five meters high and ten wide: Marica, naked on a beach, with gulls constantly wheeling overhead, the interplay of shadows on her face the piece’s focal point. It was his greatest work thus far. Something about Marica inspired him as no other woman ever had. Or, he thought, ever would again.

A lull in talk around them brought the gulls’ raucous voices to his ears. After Marica abandoned him, he’d dubbed in crow caws. It made an interesting contrast to his usual hyper-realism.

She pressed something into his hand. “I’m having a party later tonight. Come?”

“I don’t know…”

Her lips pursed, a mock kiss. “I’ll send someone to pick you up, dear. Ta.” And off she swept, followed by her glitterdressed friends, a quick circuit of the room then away.

Cris watched silently. He doubted she’d even remember having asked him in an hour…but that was the way she’d always been. He’d known their time would be limited when he’d proposed in January. Still, their three months together (he’d dawdled over her portrait) had been more than most of her lovers enjoyed.

He glanced at the card. Someone (surely not Marica) had neatly inked ALIENATION in all caps.

He crumpled it up. Then something made him smooth it out and read that single word again. With a sigh he put the card in his breast pocket, next to his heart, and tried to force her from his thoughts for the rest of the evening.

“Something to drink, master?”

It was a squat emerald-colored alien with flesh like gelatin and dozens of waving green tentacles, each holding a half-filled champagne glass. Cris couldn’t see where its voice came from. One tentacle uncoiled toward him, and Cris took the offered glass with a nod and a muttered, “Thanks.”

Sipping, he put on his charm and began to mingle with the patrons. It was expected. With megamoney everywhere, some alien, most human, there was no telling where his next sale or commission would come from.

An old lady with blue-and-gold striped hair and too many tatoos for Cris’s taste, hanging on the twin right arms of an Auctoran hominid in a pale gray tunic, cornered him by his holostatue of starships crashing into the sun. “You’re a genius,” she cooed, “the last artist left who actually feels the human condition.” The Auctoran just nodded, the coiled ropes of reddish-brown flesh on the sides of its head swaying.

“Thank you,” Cris murmured as she nattered on and on and on. “You’re too kind.” His gaze kept straying back to the door, to where he’d last seen Marica, and he felt a strange, empty sort of longing inside.

* * * *

To Cris’s surprise, when his opening ended two hours later and he wandered slightly drunk, slightly melancholy out onto the rooftop parking lot for a breath of fresh air, the glitterfolk were waiting. They had a huge new aircar taking up half a dozen spaces, and the raucous, somehow crowlike noise of the party inside settled heavily on him. The aircar itself rippled under holos, looking first like some ancient Greek temple, then a seagoing luxury yacht, then back again in a looped cycle.

The door swung open and Jade Moon, one of the few of Marica’s friends Cris remembered (more for her green-dyed face than anything else), took his arm and pulled him in.

“I feel alienated,” she announced proudly.

“Good for you,” Cris said. He pushed deeper into the chandeliered main room. Holoed geometric designs flickered everywhere, blinding, revealing, blinding. Icons of dead performers projected themselves atop men and women by turn. He wandered through the Marilyns, the Elvises, the Ted Turners, the Nathan Blakes. He didn’t see Marica anywhere, so he moved into the next room. Here dancers swayed, beckoning, undulating to the pulsing beat of glaze-rock. Colored lights blinded, then revealed, as a haze of drugmists drifted through the air. He breathed too deeply; his vision began to swim and dizziness threatened to topple his sense of balance. He found no sign of Marica here, either, so he pushed through the electric soundguard into the driver’s compartment, sparks of static electricity ghosting over the folds of his clothes.

Alone, Marica stood next to the driver’s seat, looking out across the city’s lights. She turned when he cleared his throat, and he saw she’d been crying.

“What’s wrong?” he asked. There was a lump in his throat. He could feel his heart beating faster.

“We’re so alone in the world.” She stepped close and leaned her head against his shoulder.

He hesitated a second, then pulled her tight, hugging her like she’d never left, never annulled their marriage, never abandoned him. God, it felt good. For a second the months were reeling back and she was his again and they were in love, just the two of them together against the world.

Then, remembering the pain of loss as she grew bored and drifted away, he forced himself back, holding her at arm’s length. His hands were shaking ever so faintly, and nothing he could do could control them.

“No, Marica,” he whispered. “Not again. Not this time.”

She sagged. Trembling, he let her collapse at his feet. Softly she began to sob.

Cris bit his lip, torn a million ways inside. He didn’t know what to do. Alienation. It was just another glitterfad, ultimately meaningless. And, he reminded himself, sure to pass. But for now she needs me. For now…

He couldn’t help himself. He knelt and hugged her, and once more his heart surged inside him and he experienced that strange joy, that strange fulfillment, he only found at her side.

“Drive us?” she asked.

“What happened to Kyan?”

“Brainblotted.” She pulled back a little. “We locked him in the closet till he recovers. Nobody else wanted to drive, so we waited for you. You’ll do it, won’t you?”

“Do you want to go home?”

She shook her head, gesturing vaguely west, toward the spaceport. “Please?”

He bent to kiss her, but she pushed him away, laughing. “Just friends.”

“I need to paint you.”

“You already did.”

“I need to do it again. For me, not the gallery this time. So I can remember you.”

“Just friends,” she repeated.

“I’ll kill myself!” he swore. “I can’t live without you! Marica, please!”

“No, Cris. I’m sorry…it’s over.”

It felt like nails being driven into his coffin. Angrily he thought, It’s like we never had anything between us. He ignored the dark impulses within, the little voice that said, Hit her, make her pay, she’s killing you inside.

Instead, he slid into the driver’s seat and buckled the harness across his chest. Digital readouts appeared on his retinas: a haze of numbers and view options. Everything checked; they were ready to go.

“Alienation,” Marica was whispering as she gazed out the viewport and hugged herself. She said it over and over again like a mantra: “Alienation, alienation, alienation.”

* * * *

She steered him not to the spaceport, but to the warehouse district. This late, it lay empty, a ghost-town of towering old brick buildings. They roared down deserted streets seemingly at random. Then Marica flicked on the aircar’s underbelly lights. Pavement leapt to life: scurrying rats, bits of trash, dust and dirt and decades’ accumulated grime.

Cris began powering down, assuming she wanted to land, but Marica shook her head. “Keep going,” she said.

Then it hit him. “You’re looking for aliens,” he said.

She smiled, eyes scanning the street ahead. Sometimes, Cris knew, illegals stowed away on freighters and made their way to Earth. The police made periodic sweeps through the spaceport and its outlying sectors, rounding them up, but invariably a small number slipped past.

“There!” she said, pointing. Cris caught a glimpse of something like a small, hairless bear ducking into an alley.

“Land,” Marica said. “That’s the one I want.”

Cris felt confused, out of step. “Why?” he had to ask.

“It’s coming to the party.”

“You don’t even know if it’s intelligent!”

“Does it matter?”

Yes, Cris wanted to say, but he didn’t. That might upset her, and upsetting her might screw up their chances of getting together again. She didn’t seem to have taken a new lover yet. He could still hope, still plan, still dream of her.

Toggling the automatic landing sequence, he stood and offered Marica his elbow. She took it. Arm in arm, they passed through the soundguard, through the danceroom to the main doors.

“Alienation,” she said loudly, with great affected sighs, “can make you happy!”

Abruptly she screamed. Cris jumped, caught by surprise, and when the glitterfolk began to applaud and gather around and pat her on the back, he cursed them. But it was Marica who drew his eye, and he couldn’t push her from his thoughts no matter how he tried.

* * * *

The aircar grounded with a jangle of chandeliers and a renewed popping of champagne corks. The music started again, now weirdly atonal, full of drums and primitive rhythms. Dancers began to gyrate. Cris glanced at Marica and found her sheathed in a Betty Boop hologram.

The doors opened with a hiss, and a sour, vaguely chemical smell poured in. Cris moved to the doorway and found himself gazing out at the wall of a bleak gray warehouse. Streaks of light blazed across the sky as starships came and went from the spaceport a few kilometers away. The night seemed singularly uninviting.

Marica gave his shoulder a squeeze. “Excited?” she asked.

“I don’t like it,” he said. “Let’s get back to your house, Marica. This isn’t fun.”

She laughed and gestured grandly. “We’re for alienation. That’s the theme tonight. Alienation. Alienation. So we need an alien. Right?”

Cris nodded gloomily. “I guess.” It was going to be that sort of night, he could tell, full of odd meanings, full of odd portents. Perhaps—”

“Tam, David,” Marica called, and a couple of glitterfolk with quicksilver hair gave up the dance to join her. Faithful hounds, Cris thought. Marica passed out lightsticks and tanglenets from a box labelled MEDICAL SUPPLIES, and gave all three quick pecks on the cheek, “For luck.”

Cris tromped out with Tam and David on his heels. Buildings loomed as far in each direction as he could see. There were no visible windows or doors, of course; those lay atop roofs.

Standing a moment, getting his bearings, he waited for his eyes to adjust to the dimness. It wasn’t truly dark this close to the city; the sky glowed the yellow-brown of an old bruise, creating a perpetual grim twilight.

He faced the alley. Get it over with. He gestured Tam left and David right.

“Circle around”, he said. “I’ll go straight in. We’ll see if we can catch it.”

They padded away.

The beat of drums from the aircar felt like a headache coming on.

Chris sighed, rubbed his eyes, and turned up his lightstick until it cast a brilliant blue-white glow. He clipped it to his belt. Hefting his tanglenet, he started forward.

The alley stank. He could smell the heaps of rotted fruits and vegetables before he saw them. Beyond lay empty plastic packing crates, bits of smashed machinery, and all manner of other garbage which warehouses and spaceport alike had dumped here. His swinging lightstick created huge, darting shadows.

A giant rat chittered at him from atop a crumbling heap of bricks. It had to be a meter long, he thought, and that wasn’t counting its tail—some weird freak or mutation. Shivering, he flashed his light in its eyes. It scurried away.

Ahead, a board creaked. He raised his light.

“Tam?” he called. “David? You there?”

No answer. Heart pounding, he eased forward. The stench grew worse with every step. A carpet of rotting pulp squelched underfoot.

Then he came to a naked corpse lying face-down behind the smashed remnants of a huge shipping crate. A pool of dark blood had congealed around the man’s body, and little clawed footprints had tracked blood across the man’s back. The air reeked with an overpowering sour-sweetness.

Shivering involuntarily, Cris rolled the man over with the toe of his shoe. Blood had settled in the left side of the man’s face, making it blotchy and discolored. Three rows of evenly-spaced cuts…claw marks?…gouged the chest. Most of the stomach was gone, the soft inner organs torn out and, Cris thought, eaten. Rats certainly hadn’t done that, not even giant rats.

He let the body fall and tried to keep his own stomach from heaving. This wasn’t just another alien, it was a mankiller. He began to back up.

Something rattled. He whirled and found a creature like a huge, ugly gray frog perched atop a staved-in plastic crate. It had a mouth and three holes for nostrils, but no eyes. How had it gotten behind him?

Thin, almost skeletal arms flexed. Bits of some red, stringy material hung from its maw, and dried blood, human blood Cris was certain, splotched its hairless chest and arms. It had no genitals.

He tensed, hand on the tanglenet’s trigger. Run! something inside him cried, but he kept still as a marble sculpture. If he turned his back on this thing, he knew it would attack.

The alien shifted, the crate creaking. Cris searched its face for eyes—how did it see?—and found nothing remotely human in the empty gray ridges above its mouth.

The tufts of hair atop its head began to writhe. A feral almost-growl rolled from deep in its chest. Bolder now, it hopped to the ground, rose on two legs, and took a step toward him. Claws like ebon knives slid from its fingertips.

Cris flung the tanglenet as it sprang, and the world became a frantic blur of movement as the tanglenet spread out, seeking movement. Its probes caught the alien full-on, wrapping it mummylike in webbed strands, and the more the creature struggled, the tighter it grew. Seconds later the creature lay trussed too tightly to move.

Cris caught his breath. Cautiously he moved forward, squatted, and looked the thing in the face. The tufts on its head hid four pencil-thin eyestalks, he discovered. It was watching him.

“Do you speak English?” he asked.

Its body began to melt. He could think of no other way to describe it. One second its flesh was firm, and the next it was liquid, flowing against gravity, rippling, changing.

Suddenly Cris found himself looking at the huge rat he’d seen earlier. He leaped back with a cry of alarm.

The creature’s transformation had taken less than a minute. Now its powerful hind legs heaved against the tanglenet, stretching it. Teeth bit at durasteel webbing; claws sawed at individual strands. But the net held, drawing even tighter.

And abruptly the rat lost its form. Its fur melted; its bones shifted. And then a naked man lay in the tanglenet: he was perhaps thirty-five, a touch of gray at his temples, eyes dark, skin sallow.

Obscurely terrified, yet too fascinated to run, Cris took a step back. That face—he knew it. It belonged to the dead man behind him.

He turned to run, but the creature called, “Wait…” Cris hesitated. “You can talk?”

“So easy…” The thing’s voice was cool, fluid, somehow beautiful.

Cris shivered. “What are you?”

It gave a series of clicks. “Your language has no word.” Then, slowly, almost reluctantly it seemed to Cris, it added, “I…in one of your machines was caught, packed among…sugarreeds. Two days ago…I have freed myself.”

“You murdered a man!”

“Your language was needed. No harm was meant. Let me go. The word…please?”

“You tried to kill me!”

“No, only talk. Let us…bargain, yes? Our thought-streams, so different…I…master the humanness. Help me…I help you. Bargain?”

Cris snorted. “You can’t possibly help me,” he said, thinking of Marica.

“Try?” it urged.

“I want—” He broke off. “I want—” Finally, voice rising in desperation, he said, “I want my wife again. I need to paint her picture for the rest of my life. I need her, and nothing you can do can help me.”

“If you need form, I—will provide. Bring—I must see.”

“You can take her form?” he asked, hardly daring to believe.

“Change…so easy…yes.”

“Then—I agree.” Cris stood, feeling light-headed. It seemed impossible…he couldn’t let himself hope, not yet. Marica had shattered his dreams too often. For all he knew, the alien might turn on him when he let it loose, murder him as it had murdered the other man. But for the chance to paint Marica again…for that he would risk everything.

He deactivated the tanglenet and held his breath. The alien stood, touching its human arms and legs, probing its ears and nose and mouth wonderingly.

“So different…” it said. “Flat…”

Cris did his best to explain about Marica, about the glitterfolk, about their party and their alienation kick. The alien said, “Yes,” several times as if it understood.

When Cris finished, the alien resumed its natural form. They needed that, he knew, to get close to Marica. The alien needed to see her, to study her.

“Ready?” he asked.

It made a clicking noise in its chest, under its skin, and followed him when he moved cautiously toward the mouth of the alley. Cris could barely contain the euphoria that threatened to overwhelm him.

When they reached the aircar, Tam and David were waiting. They hadn’t followed orders. Turning, they scrambled inside, calling, “We got the alien!”

And Marica, beaming, appeared in the hatch to welcome Cris like a homecoming hero. Holos played over her body, and she flickered between Elvis and Marilyn Monroe.

“Ugly,” she said, appraising the alien. “But he’ll do.”

“You can always give him a bath,” Cris said.

She giggled. “Let’s go to my place! More champagne!”

Jade Moon brought a tray of glasses, and everyone took one, even the alien, though it didn’t seem to know what to do with it.

Marica pulled Cris into the pilot’s compartment. The alien followed like a trained dog. While Cris strapped in, Marica sealed them off from the rest of the aircar, turned on the lights, and gave the alien her full attention.

“He’ll do,” she said. “Oh yes, he’ll do fine. Is he friendly?”

“Yes,” Cris said, immersed in the computer read-outs. He powered up the repellers, checked everything, and lifted smoothly. The computer reported light traffic on the course he programmed, so he switched to autopilot.

When he disengaged from the computer, he found Marica lying on the floor with the alien hunched over her, its arm buried to the elbow in her mouth. Marica had a weird, glazed look on her face. Lumps like kittens crawling through a garden hose were travelling from her body inside the alien’s arm.

“No!” Cris screamed.

His stomach churned; his heart pounded like a hammer. Frantic, he tore the pilot’s harness away and launched himself at the creature. Everything seemed to be moving at different speeds, the alien in slow motion, himself slower still, and yet his mind raced ahead like a runaway train. He called himself all the vile things in the world, a stupid, dreaming fuckup too stupid to know right from wrong, love from a hole in the ground.

The alien batted him away him with its free hand. Cris felt like he’d slammed into a durasteel wall. Rebounding, he struck his head on the pilot’s seat, and everything went dark.

* * * *

The next thing he knew, Marica was calling his name. He smelled her perfume and smiled.

Then he sat up, head aching, and saw Marica. Then beyond Marica he saw a withered husk of a body. Pale, piercing blue eyes gleamed in that shriveled head. It took him a moment to realize what it meant.

“Are you all right?” the Marica next to him asked.

No! something inside him screamed. He tried to crawl to her. She can’t be dead—

“Easy.” The alien Marica pushed him back. “I didn’t mean to harm you. But you would have stopped my—” More clicks.

Cris tried to speak, couldn’t. His hands clenched and unclenched spasmodically, and then words he’d never voiced while she was alive all came flooding out:

“I loved her. How could you? You promised!”

“I promised you her image.” The alien stood, spread its arms, Marica’s arms. It had donned her holobelt; geometric designs rippled across its human skin in odd patterns. “So?”

Cris sobbed, feeling all chopped up inside, but couldn’t take his eyes off the alien’s beautiful face.

It smiled as Marica would have smiled. “I understand you more now. She was a creature of wealth and power, but fickle in her tastes. If you are curious, she liked you in her way. But there was not what you would call love.”

“I knew that,” he said bitterly. He turned so the creature couldn’t see his face, wouldn’t see the loss and fear and hurt all jumbled up inside.

“Then why are you so concerned?”

Cris went to the pilot’s seat and sat mechanically, refusing to speak, refusing to look at Marica’s body or her alien double. His eyes brimmed with tears. Blinking, he gazed into the night. Pain filled him, an ache he thought would never go away. It hurt so much he longed to curl up and die.

“I only want to go home,” the creature said. Its own homesickness carried through the filter of an alien body. The creature squeezed his shoulder. “Crispin…”

He wrenched away. “Don’t touch me!”

“I can be her for you, the way you wanted. It’s all here inside me.”

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. He pressed his eyes shut. “It wouldn’t be the same.”

“How?”

“I’d know.” He looked at her—and the thing that had become her. The alien smiled with Marica’s quirky smile.

The autopilot beeped. Cris glanced at the controls. They’d reached Marica’s estate; he must have been unconscious longer than he’d thought. Long enough for an alien to suck out her soul.

When they landed, he fled on foot. The alien called to him in Marica’s voice, but he didn’t look back.

* * * *

Marica’s face haunted him every inch of the way home. He saw her in reflections, in the play of neon on glass, in the smoke and clouds and exhaust fumes. Her laugh sounded in the whine of repeller fields; her voice spoke through muted music.

Two hours later, when he stumbled into his studio, he came face to face with an unfinished canvas. He had the background done, a bleak wintry field with bales of hay stacked at one end. It needed a figure to be complete—Marica’s figure.

He seized a brush and tried sketching Marica from memory, but his vision of her had all gone sour and he couldn’t seem to catch the curve of her cheek or the swanlike arch of her neck. Gone. Like he’d forgotten her. Like he’d never drawn her before.

He hurled his brush away in disgust, smashed that canvas in a blind frenzy, then scattered all the others stacked against the wall. God, why didn’t the pain go away?

Conscience, he thought suddenly. He needed to purge himself. Isn’t that what you did? Cleansed your soul, purified your flesh, scoured the ashes of your mind?

He crossed to the vidphone and made the call he should’ve made the moment he’d seen the alien.

“Police,” said a bored-looking man in black uniform.

“I…I want to report a murder,” Cris said.

That got the man’s attention. He touched buttons, read information Cris couldn’t see. “You’re Crispin Szand?”

“Yes.”

“Officers have been dispatched. You know this conversation is being taped?”

“Yes.” Numbly.

“And anything you say can be used in a court as evidence?”

“Yes.” And on and on they went through the routine.

Minutes later the doorbell rang. “That’s them now,” the man said. “Let them in.”

Cris rose and opened the door. Two women in blue uniforms were waiting, one a striking blonde, the other dark.

They introduced themselves and showed their badges. “You reported a murder?” the dark-haired one asked.

“Yes. Come in.”

Then listened quite patiently while he babbled his story, but he could tell they didn’t believe him. One look around his studio, at the paint-splattered walls, at the canvases he’d destroyed in his fury, made it clear he’d gone insane. His pants had garbage stains from the alley, his shirt had paint all over it, and he hadn’t shaved or showered or combed his hair.

“I’m sorry,” he said then, spreading his hands. “I know how this must sound. But if you’ll call her house, you’ll see. That thing will answer.”

“Sir…”

But he insisted, and finally they gave in. The alien Marica answered on the second ring.

“Are you Marica Donetti?” the blonde officer asked.

“Yes, of course. Is something wrong?”

“Do you know a Crispin Szand?”

“He’s my ex. Why?”

“I think it’s getting clearer.” She explained Cris’s wild accusations.

The alien laughed as Marica would have laughed and denied everything as Marica would have denied it. Who could believe such an impossible story? Cris found he couldn’t blame the police for their skepticism. It did sound crazy, even to him. He only wished none of it had happened.

“Crispin is a great artist,” the alien Marica explained, “and he suffers strange outbursts and odd delusions at times. That’s what makes him a genius, isn’t it?”

“Yes, ma’am,” the blonde said.

So they arrested Cris instead.

Figures, Cris thought as they led him away. And justice triumphs once more.

* * * *

They let him go that afternoon with stern warnings about what happened to citizens who filed false reports. He agreed to leave Marica strictly alone and considered himself lucky. If they had discovered the alien, he would certainly have been an accessory to murder or something like that. Perhaps this was best in the end.

Over the next few months he found he’d lost the will to paint. He lived off sales of his finished works. With the supply cut off, prices began to climb. Rumors spread that he was burned out, or dying, or insane. Someone ferreted out the story of his arrest and that seemed confirmation enough for most.

Cris made enough to live comfortably. He took to spending all his time scanning the NewsNets for articles about the alien. Being (as she was) queen of the glitterfolk, Marica had a certain following, and her every notorious move made the social files.

Slowly, Cris noticed, the alien was easing Marica from the public eye. She became a recluse, then an ardent investor in space. “Glitterqueen Comes Of Age,” read the last article he saw about her.

She’d used most of her fortune to buy a frontier planet whose main export seemed to be sugarreed. She’d even booked passage out there to inspect her new purchase, in a move that surprised everyone but Cris.

Cris went down to the spaceport the day of her departure. Marica wore simple robes now, not the outlandish costumes that had made her such a rage among glitterfolk, and none of her old friends had turned out to see her off. She boarded the starship alone, with only the crew around her, and that was the end of it all.

They flamed off not long after. Cris stared until he couldn’t see their ship’s tail of fire anymore, and a long time after.

He felt hollow inside, like he’d lost more than he knew. But he also felt a curious sort of relief, a great burden lifted from his soul. Free, he decided. I’m free of her.

For a time he wondered how much of Marica the alien would take back to its world…and whether it could free itself from her grip. Even in death, Marica had power.

But now, when he closed his eyes, he didn’t see her face anymore. And maybe, just maybe he could learn to be happy again.

A QUESTION OF COURAGE, by J. F. Bone

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

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

“Glad to have you aboard, sir,” the ensign said.

“I’m Marsden,” I said. “Lieutenant Thomas Marsden. I have orders posting me to this ship as Executive.”

“Yes, sir. We have been expecting you. I’m Ensign Halloran.”

“Glad to meet you, Halloran.”

“Skipper’s orders, sir. You are to report to him as soon as you come aboard.”

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

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

“Commander Chase,” the O.D. said. “Lieutenant Marsden.”

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

He looked at the O.D. “That’ll be all, Mr. Halloran,” he said.

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

* * * *

“Sit down, Marsden,” Chase said. “Have a cigarette.”

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

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

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

“No, sir,” I said.

“Don’t let it happen again. On this ship we are prompt.”

“Aye, sir,” I muttered.

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

“So I have heard,” I said drily.

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

You wouldn’t, I thought.

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

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

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

“The feeling’s not mutual,” I snapped.

“What’s the matter? Has the Lieutenant Commander been rolling you out on the red carpet?”

“You could call it that,” I said. “I’ve just been told the duties of an Exec. Funny—no?”

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

“Did I ever tell you about our skip—captain?” Allyn went on. “Or do I have to tell you? I see you’re wearing an Academy ring.”

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

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

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

* * * *

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

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

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

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

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

* * * *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Set!” Halloran barked.

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

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

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

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

* * * *

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

“Disturbance in Cth yellow, sir,” I said. “We’re positioned above it.”

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

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

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

I saw—with respect. “You know all the heavies like that, sir?” I asked.

“Not all of them—but I’d like to. It’s as much a part of a scoutship commander’s work to know our own ships as those of the enemy.”

“Could that trace be a Rebel ruse?”

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

“You sure?” I persisted.

“I’m sure. But take her down if you wish.”

I did. And it was the “Amphitrite.”

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

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

“I served under Andy Royce,” I reminded him.

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

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

“Don’t do it, sir,” he warned.

“Why not?”

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

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

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

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

* * * *

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

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

“A. Evars, Fleet Admiral USN Commanding.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That did it.

* * * *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

With one exception.

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

* * * *

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

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

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

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

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

“Action imminent,” Chase said drily. “Stand by.”

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

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

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

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

“Scratch one cruiser,” someone in fire control yelped.

* * * *

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

“Take it easy, skipper,” I said.

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

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

“Lay aboard,” “Amphitrite” signalled back. “How’s the war going?”

“Don’t know. We’ve been too busy,” our signalman replied.

“I’ll bet—you’re ‘Lachesis,’ aren’t you?”

“Affirmative.”

“How’d you lose your ammo? Jettison it?”

“Stow that, you unprintable obscenity,” Haskins replied. “We’re a fighting ship.”

“Amphitrite” chuckled nastily. “That I’ll believe when I see it!”

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

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

I nodded. “Yes, sir,” I agreed. “Quite a little.”

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

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

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

“Hatches!” I screamed as we shimmered and vanished.

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

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

“I don’t know—maybe someone wasn’t looking.”

“What’s it like down there?” Chase asked. “See anything?”

“‘Amphitrite’s’ still there,” I said.

“She’s what?”

“Still there,” I repeated. “And she’s in trouble.”

“She’s big. She can take it—but—”

“Here, you look,” I said, flipping the probe switch.

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

“She can’t keep this up,” I said. “She’s been hulled—and it looks like her power’s taken it.”

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

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

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

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

“Probe out,” Chase ordered, neglecting, I noticed, to comment on the signalman’s act.

* * * *

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

“No probes, sir,” I announced.

“Damn,” Chase said. “Well, we’ll have to do without them. Hold tight, we’re going down.”

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

“What’s your situation, ‘Amphitrite’?” our signal asked.

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

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

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

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

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

“What’s our munition?” Chase asked almost as an echo to my thought. I switched over to Pollard.

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

“One good salvo,” Chase said, thoughtfully.

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

“Twenty, now,” I said.

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

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

“What are you planning to do?” I asked.

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

“And how do you do that?” I asked.

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

“But that’s suicide!”

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

* * * *

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

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

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

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

“You won’t have time,” I protested.

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

“They won’t now—” I interrupted.

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

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

“You hear me, skipper?” I asked.

“Clearly—and you?”

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

“A bit rough but otherwise all right. Now steer right—easy now—aagh!”

“Skipper!”

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

“Aye, sir.”

“Good, Marsden, throttle back and hang on your converters.”

I did as I was told.

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

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

* * * *

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

“They’re ours,” he said. “A couple of cruisers.”

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

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

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

ANGELS AND MOTHS, by Costi Gurgu

It’s night, it’s quiet, but above all, it’s freezing. I lie tightly curled in my bed. My stomach grumbles and my teeth chatter. The cold bedsheet seems damp. I feel someone touching my back; I recognize her touch. She draws me into her arms to warm me. It’s a familiar feeling, but it’s impossible. Tears spring to my eyes as the person at my back begins whispering a lullaby and rocking me in her silky arms.

“Dana?” My voice quavers.

The lullaby stops. It is again quiet and freezing. I turn over. It’s her!

“What are you doing here?” I blurt. The question seems absurd, but my wife smiles. “You’re dead,” I tell her quietly.

The smile vanishes and she nestles against my chest, shivering. I take her in my arms, remembering the cry, then the sound of crushed bones. I remember the outside intervention outfit lying on the morgue’s metal table, soiled, torn, its visor smashed. I remember the mutilated body pulled with difficulty from the ragged outfit, her face the only thing still whole, but scratched by dozens of frozen shards, the mouth twisted in horror, the staring eyes frosted. It had been a stupid accident, something that should not have happened. But there was Dana, lying on the morgue’s table…

“You’re dead,” I repeat. Teardrops tremble on my cheeks as my hands slowly touch her hair.

“Hush,” the woman whispers, and places a cold finger on my lips.

Somebody else slinks into the bed, on my other side. I try to turn and see who it is, but suddenly the room fills with bodies and I can’t move. I’m suffocating under the growing weight. Panic darkens my sight, and I tremble. My mouth gapes, searching for air. I try to cry for help, but I have no strength left; I choke. I’m losing…

I wake with a start and breathe greedily. It’s night, the silence dark and heavy. It’s not cold—it’s actually very, very hot. Breathing easier now, I fall back on the pillow. It’s wet. I haven’t had a nightmare in months, and never one so vivid—and never one I remember after I wake up! I’d thought I was over the loss of Dana, yet I’ll probably never be. I’ll only get used to the pain, never forget it.

I’m completely awake now. Sighing, I stretch toward the night table and switch on the lamp. In the light, I notice something on my pajama sleeve. I look closely, see small, black letters. And not only on the sleeves, but also on the shirt, on the bottoms—I jump out of bed, my heart thundering in my chest. The sheets! Scribbled all over them are small lines of letters, with what seems to be the same three words repeated line after line, column after column.

It’s another nightmare! I’d laugh, but fear strangles me. The walls, the night tables, the curtains, the lamps—the three words venture into the tightest corner, the smallest cranny. The whole room is covered with the same lines, although they seem written by different hands. No two look alike, yet all are the same message: I forgive you; sometimes, We forgive you.

I withdraw panting—I need to wake up!

Closing the bedroom door behind me, I look around, terrified, but the living room is clean. I rip my pajamas off, open the bedroom door and throw them inside, then I close it again. I crouch naked in a corner, pressing my back against the cold wall. I pull my knees up to my chin, rest my forehead on them, and close my eyes. I remain still, trying to control my breathing.

* * * *

I don’t know how long I slept, but I’m startled awake by the sound of the alarm. It wasn’t a dream—I am naked in my living room. I have a splitting headache. I rise from the floor, groaning over stiff limbs. I decide to check the bedroom, but a knock on the apartment door stops me as I’m heading that way. I hesitate with my hand on the doorknob. The knock comes again, louder. I postpone the bedroom check, glance at the clock, and notice that it’s an hour before the time I usually wake up. The next knock sounds more insistent. I snatch a toss cushion from the couch to cover my nakedness and open the door.

The military aide barely looks at me. “You’re urgently needed in Command,” he reports.

I dress and follow him wordlessly.

The maddening sound of the alarm ushers us into the Command Room. The red lights flooding the walls remind us of the state of war we’ve just entered. The officer in charge sees me and waves me toward him.

“Cambry, I’m in communication with the president. He’s discussing the situation with the Council; in a few minutes we’ll have his orders.”

“What happened?” I ask, confused.

“An hour ago we received an S.O.S. from the landing team. The message lasted only eleven seconds and we didn’t have the chance to reply. Everything ended much too quickly.”

“What ended—”

“Listen, Richard,” he interrupts.

The S.O.S. recording fills the Command Room: “Odyssey, we’re under attack…no warning…they’re inside the shuttle…they’re too fast—God, no—” In the background I hear screams, something that sounds like flapping wings, strange rattles. Then silence. Not only the message, but the whole attack seemed to have lasted no longer than eleven seconds.

The landing team, the ambassadors as they’ve been called in the past few days, have been murdered within seconds inside their own shuttle, which had also become the office of the human diplomatic mission to the flutzan world. All four elite military officers, eliminated effortlessly.

“Half an hour after the assassination, we received a written message,” the commander says.

I look a question at him.

“A message from the flutzi,” he adds, handing me a freshly printed piece of paper.

I read: The Flutzan Empire requests a meeting with a man without faith. Send him down immediately to discuss terms with us and retrieve the bodies.

Everybody is watching me. I don’t know how I’m supposed to react.

“I sent for you, Richard, because you’re the only available atheist in the sector that also has military training. The president is reading your file as we speak,” the officer explains.

Only at this moment do I realize what’s happening. Fate has a strange way of arranging my life. After Dana’s senseless death, I thought I could get revenge by giving up God. And to make it official, I even changed my status in my papers, from Christian to atheist. Fate likes irony.

“The president has authorized the mission,” the commander is saying in a serious tone, as if he’s bestowing an honor. “Launch Pad Three. You have five minutes to equip yourself. Richard Cambry, it’s been an honor to know you,” he adds.

I nod silent assent, salute him, and exit the Command Room. The alarm has stopped. It’s quiet again, with only red lights revolving on the walls and still-sleepy people running to their emergency positions revealing the situation.

* * * *

The pod roars as it descends toward the location of the shuttle, which has turned from a diplomatic base into a grave for its four occupants. I have exactly twenty-seven minutes until contact—less than half an hour to prepare myself for what will probably be my last minutes of life. If I was still religious, I’d pray, but now I have to stick to my position. I might have said good-bye to my family, but Dana was my only family. I forgive you was written all over my bedroom immediately after she’d held me, sharing her warmth. It’s absurd. I’ve never believed in an afterlife, or any of that other paranormal shit, but something happened last night.

I recall the scene right before my departure. My psychiatrist, Dr. Henderson, was waiting for me in the corridor leading to the launch pad. Nobody knew about my mission besides Command and the president—or at least nobody should have known. Still, Henderson was there, waiting for me—me.

“He told me to assure you that you’re forgiven,” were his first words. The doctor is a respectable and prominent personality, so I didn’t think for a second that he’d been behind the incident in my bedroom last night. The coincidence was frightening.

“Who told you, Doc?” I asked, trying to sound calm.

“He told me to let you know that the angels need you,” Henderson continued.

“Who told you all this?”

“Help the angels fly, he told me.”

I didn’t have time for this; the pod was ready and the chronometer was measuring my last minutes on Odyssey. I decided to let it go, attribute it to coincidence.

Twenty-two minutes. I scratch my arm and discover with a start that there’s something written in red paste directly on my skin: Don’t be afraid.

I swallow, my mouth suddenly dryly. Instantly, I’m sweating. I look at my other arm and indeed, the message continues there: You’re not alone.

But I am alone! The pod is small, with no place for someone to hide. I should be alone! Suddenly the control screen steams over and somebody, or something, writes in capital letters, I’ll help you.

It’s so very hot in here.

Fourteen minutes until my meeting with the mysterious flutzi. That’s it, I’ll think of something else. Odyssey—humankind’s first generation-ship and probably the only one for a long time, considering the enormous cost—has reached its destination after 317 years of traveling. Humankind’s first journey to another star system has ended successfully. First contact with an intelligent alien species, which is theoretically very advanced, and three days of successful communication. Until something angers the flutzi enough for the radical measure of murder, apparently without worrying about consequences. Less than a week after first contact, humankind is on the verge of war with the first and only intelligent species it has met in the universe.

And I, Richard Cambry, will be the weight to shift the scales toward war, or toward peace. I haven’t the slightest idea whom I’m supposed to meet, what the agenda is, or what my diplomatic powers and limitations are. Total ignorance. And on top of it all, somebody forgives me right before the final conflict!

* * * *

I step inside the shuttle. The decompression room is empty. I straighten my clothes, draw a deep breath, and open the door. A single step takes me over the metallic threshold; I stop, a huge knot in my throat. The four corpses are sprawled around the common room, each human envoy lying where he or she fell. Deep wounds are plowed through their flesh, the blood clotted in dark crusts. The floor is painted dark red. I turn my face to the wall, vomit boiling in my throat. I succeed in controlling my fright and nausea, and again face the slaughter.

I hurriedly cross the room and exit into the central corridor. On both sides are the crew’s rooms, and at the other end lies the cockpit. Its door is open and in the light flooding from it into the dim corridor, I see a silhouette. A strange shape. Waiting for me.

“Oh, Lord,” I whisper, then I stop, surprised. It’s been two years since I last invoked God. Even before Dana’s death I did it rarely; there was no need to.

I walk the distance slowly and enter the cockpit. A visceral fear squeezes my stomach, but I’m telling myself this is only a natural reaction to the unknown, the xenophobia hidden in every one of us. At first sight, the flutz resembles a giant butterfly, almost the size of a grown man. The resemblance to an Earth butterfly starts right with its face, which has a tightly coiled proboscis and huge eyes with dozens of facets. It has two pairs of legs and one pair of arms, and its wings are gathered on its back like a ship’s sail. I can see only their white exterior surfaces, crisscrossed by nerves.

I don’t feel the repulsion that a bug would induce in me, but only the fear generated by the insect-like appearance of its black and spiky members, as well as the fear in realizing that an intelligence so alien probably has nothing in common with the human mind and therefore with our values and references. How could we ever hope to really understand each other?

On the control-board is a receptacle that resembles a broken eggshell, filled with a viscous, yellowish liquid. The flutz pushes it toward me. It wants to poison me, is my first thought, then I change my mind: No, it wants to drug me. The paranoia that began with Dana’s death has grown exponentially after last night’s nightmare. Thoughts roll frantically through my head as I try to keep my fear, cultural shock, and confusion on a short leash.

Paralyzed by indecision, I don’t make a move. The alien pushes the receptacle toward me again. I don’t have another solution—I need to move forward. I lift the receptacle and smell its contents. Vaguely honey-like. More fragranced, though. I watch the flutz’s black, multifaceted eyes as I taste it. Pollen, nectar—that’s it, nectar! Delicious! Still staring at the flutz, I swallow it all.

I feel its heat spreading through my body, then rising to my brain. The sensation is terrifying! Panic strangles me—something is crawling through my head and I have no way to stop it, I can’t put my hands under my skin, or plunge them through my skull to rummage after the intruder. I clutch the control-board to avoid making a stupid move.

Suddenly, a crackling noise like static invades my brain. A crunching sound, like bone grinding on bone, but amplified and overlapping the background of static noise, starts forming words directly in my mind.

The effect won’t last long. We need to hurry.

I try to calm down, ignoring the noise and watching the flutz curiously. It doesn’t speak; it doesn’t have a mouth with which to speak.

I know you can understand me. I asked only one to come. One with no faith.

“Holy crap!”

The word “holy” suggests a religious belief…

I suddenly realize that it’s telepathic. I swallow dryly and interrupt. “It’s only an expression, with no religious connotations in this case. It’s used to express fright or surprise.”

I’m sorry if I scared you. Which one of you is the faithless messenger?

I look around. There’s nobody else here besides the flutz and me. So I volunteer, “I’m the messenger. My name is Richard Cambry.”

I’m Ximb, emissary of his Highness Wide-winged Dead Head. You must come with me.

Exiting the shuttle, I notice again the blood-colored words that have been drawn on my arms: You’re not alone. A cold sweat prickles my back and I trip, but regain my balance before falling on the flutzan emissary and generating an incident even before we start the discussions. So, in truth, I’m not alone!

We descend to a green glade filled with flowers of all colors, where two flutzi are waiting. They are evidently from a different class than the emissary—taller and more imposing, with their giant, thickset bodies covered in golden fur and their wings smaller and gathered on their backs. They have only one pair of legs, golden and viciously spiked like sawblades, and two pairs of arms ending in bony, double-edged blades. Warriors. The pair follow a few steps behind us.

As we reach the glade’s edge, I notice we are actually on a mountaintop; at my feet lies a magical valley. As far as I can see, everything is a green paradise painted with the vivid colors of vast fields of flowers. On the far side of the valley stretches what I guess is the flutzi’s urban equivalent, although it has nothing in common with human cities. All the buildings seem made from textiles, stretched between giant trees and overlapping in fluffy curves—cocoons, grown on several levels. In the center of the city I can distinguish a structure made of radial canvases combining on different planes at varied angles, and completely transparent, perfectly rounded cupolas.

The imperial city and residence. The flutz’s thoughts rattle through my brain.

“It’s beautiful.” I can’t hide my admiration.

Beautiful, yet fragile, Ximb amends.

I breathe deeply and turn from the scenery. “So, what happened?”

From my discussions with the human envoys I concluded that our civilizations are based on fundamentally different concepts. Our world…It pauses and turns toward me, then resumes. Our world is dominated by spirituality, by the miraculous, by magic.

“Magic is nothing but a science so evolved that nobody can explain it rationally; therefore it’s considered supernatural, or even divine.”

It lets me finish, then goes on calmly, as if explaining to a rather dim student. Wrong. Humans fail to see the truth, but magic has nothing to do with science. Magic is divine in origin. It belongs to a different plane of existence and it is not for everybody. You are born with magic qualities, or not. And if not, you have no way to acquire it, no matter how much you try or what you study.

After a few moments of silence, it resumes. Tell me: why did you choose not to believe?

“I believe in reason, I believe in science, I believe in evolution. I believe in a universe in which we don’t need gods, or miracles.”

That’s good.

“Is it?” I ask, confused.

You have decided not to believe not because you’re convinced that there is nothing divine, but because you don’t need the divine presence in your life. You can live without it.

I can’t answer that. I don’t agree with the flutz, but I didn’t come to the planet to discuss philosophy. I cannot forget that a few steps away from us are the human emissaries’ corpses.

We need to enter the second stage of our meeting. I ask that you continue doing everything I say. Don’t get scared and obey me completely.

I look at it suspiciously, but I wait to see what it asks of me. The two warriors lay at my feet a weaving of flowers and leaves, like some of kind of carpet. It has a strange pattern and the colors tend to fluctuate inside it.

You can both step on it, its thoughts whisper to me.

I obey and try to ignore a fearful shiver at the idea that there is somebody else next to me, someone I cannot see, someone visible to the flutz. I feel the verdant mat lifting me above the ground.

I’ll start a magic ritual that will allow you access to another plane of existence—that miraculous plane which you decided long ago to bury, to ignore, and in the end, forget. Don’t get scared, no matter what you see or feel, and never leave the flowers’ protection. Not even for a second.

The flower mat carries me to the center of the glade. The two warriors are nowhere to be seen. I try to watch Ximb with scientific curiosity. It stands before me and for the first time opens its wings. I’m breathless—they’re bigger than they seem when gathered together on its back. And on their upper surface, they’re strongly colored with patterns of red, white, black, and yellow—predominantly red with a black pattern, the white and yellow only accents on the black areas. It starts flapping its wings in a definite rhythm, joining that with movement of its arms. The geometric pattern on the wings continues along the undersides of its arms and over its chest. It rises gracefully into the air in a sort of aerial dance, darting about like an animal pursued by predators.

From the flower mat rises the heavy scent of crushed petals. I feel a little dizzy. The dance quickens, although I have the impression that in fact my perception has altered. I notice, somewhat alarmed, that the flowers’ scents numb my senses and distort my perception of the surrounding reality.

Ximb’s dance is much too fast now to be followed. It seems to open unseen doors in the air, passages through which slink shaking and horrible hairy shapes with torn wings and fiery tongues. It’s hot, difficult to breathe. My eyes sting. The static crackle in my brain has a hallucinating cadence. I feel something flowing down my cheeks. I raise my hands to wipe my eyes, and blink in pain. Everything is foggy.

The noise has stopped, as has the flutz’s aerial ballet. I regain my breath and notice that my hands are smudged with blood from my cheeks. Blood that came out of my eyes, I realize with an uncharacteristic calm.

Now you will see the truth.

I keep my feet inside the floating floral carpet as it takes me back to the glade’s edge. The whole depression has filled with a motley crowd. I swallow hard at the sight. The paradise is gone; in its place is a gigantic war camp, populated by thousands and thousands of fantastic creatures that move among the tents, the hastily built barracks, the stallions and beasts of burden, the huge fires where chunks of meat cook, burning black circles in the luxuriant vegetation of the flutzan world.

Do you recognize them? Ximb’s rattle surprises me.

“How could I?”

Richard, even if you don’t believe, you must have heard stories containing at least some of them.

And then I begin recognizing them. The revelation crushes me. Indeed, there is the Olympian gods’ camp, on a rocky summit. In a corner of the valley, elves’ detachments are arranged in perfect order, their guards keeping back dwarves and nasty gnomes. Dragons circle in the sky. A few steps lower than where we are, an ogre gang fights over a flutz corpse with a few trolls with blue skin and red fur.

There are a thousand times more on the other side of the mountain and in the surrounding valleys and hills, Ximb’s thoughts whisper.

“This is an illusion,” I answer, dizzy.

Oh, no, I can assure you, all these are as real as you and me. If you step outside the protection of the flowers, now that you have witnessed their preparations, you’ll be noticed, smelled, sensed by all these divinities and creatures, and you’ll have to face them.

“But, it’s not possible! They’re only stories—”

I stop mumbling when I see again the bloody writing covering my right arm. There’s a new line: Stories that have forgiven you for the blasphemy of not believing in them. I inhale deeply and avoid the flutz’s eyes.

The flutz continues, unruffled. Now, look to your left, beyond the city.

I perceive a crowd similar to the one around me, but I can’t distinguish the details. “What should I see there?”

The flutz sorcerer makes a discreet sign and my eyes shed tears again, then suddenly I can zoom in on distant targets. I study the expanse of fields on the other side of the city, where a swarm of bodies moves, mandibles clacking—beasts born from the most despicable nightmares.

For now, I have limited yours to this side of the city. The wizardry still works because it is alien to the Earth deities. But not for long. The others, though, the ones that you saw on the far side, they’re our gods and creatures. They started gathering there last night. And we can’t hold them there.

“I don’t understand.”

Richard, even if you decide not to believe in gods or fairy tales, all of these will continue to exist in the shadows deep in your soul. You take them with you everywhere you go. And now you have brought your entire mythological existence to this side of the universe. Even if you have banished them from your consciousness, you have still worn them permanently in your being and now they’re here, in our world, ready to take it by force.

The flutz pauses to let these ideas sink in.

Our world is too small and crowded for such an invasion. What you see beyond the city is our divine army preparing to confront the invaders.

“That’s insane,” I protest, terrified by the implications.

It will be a bloodbath, a slaughter of cataclysmic proportions that we, the flutzi, cannot watch from the sidelines. It will be our apocalypse, to use one of your terms. The flutzan world will cease to exist after this confrontation. Our civilization will fall into ruin; we cannot know if there will be any survivors left to rise and start all over again. It is the End of the World War. I know in detail all the prophecies, and I recognize the signs now.

I remain silent, overwhelmed by all these revelations. The scientist in me keeps saying that everything I’ve heard and seen is impossible. And yet, on a different level, a deeper one, I begin to believe.

We killed your envoy hoping that once the only humans among us were dead, everything they brought with them would vanish as well. We were wrong, and we are sorry for the crime we committed. But the truth is that we’re desperate. And you, Richard, you’re our last chance.

“What could I do?”

There’s only one solution left—you need to make the final step in the evolution of the human species. Give up for good and forever everything that is divine and magic in you, uproot faith, abandon creation, and they will all disappear into nothingness.

“Is such a thing possible?” I ask without thinking.

I’ll give you a magic potion that you must distribute to all humans. Tomorrow morning, when you awaken, everything will be forgotten.

I look again at the valley that bustles with creatures from fairy tales, legends, and myths. Human culture and civilization, in the flesh. Deicide or apocalypse? What right do we, humans, have to destroy a world? But how to choose? How can we choose?

“All right,” I agree to gain some time. “Give me the potion.”

Ximb leads me back to the shuttle. The two warriors join us. This time I see the forest around teeming with fantastic beings, for whom I do not exist as long as I don’t leave the flowers’ protection.

A few steps from the entrance I stop, surprised. On the metallic hood, above the cockpit, a character waits, leaning on his sword. I know him as the archangel Michael. His eyes, searching the surroundings, pass over me—I am as invisible to him as I am to all the others. And yet, he suddenly seems startled; somehow, he can sense me. Like a blind man, he gazes blankly at the general area where I’m standing.

What happened? the flutz sorcerer asks me anxiously.

I swallow and try to answer, but I can’t take my eyes or thoughts off the angel. I’ve seen a lot of movies and cartoons containing dragons, elves, and dwarves. But how many times in life does one have the chance to see a real live angel? And even more, the archangel Michael himself! “Help the angels fly,” I remember Dr. Henderson telling me before my departure. Now, I understand.

Don’t look. Close your eyes and go! Ximb commands me.

But I can’t move. The angel deposits his gigantic sword on the shuttle’s metal hull, and kneels. His white and shining wings stretch to the right and to the left; he puts his hands together in prayer and lowers his eyes. He remains in that position, mutely imploring me, the man, the mortal, the sinner Richard. I feel tears flowing down my cheeks.

The flutzan emperor’s emissary makes a sign. The two moth-warriors jump onto the hull next to Michael. They cut down God’s messenger with their arm-blades as if he’s only a wax doll. I try to scream, but everything happens too fast.

Richard! I perceive the sinister rattle of the sorcerer’s thoughts.

In the heat of the moment I can’t control my feelings and I look at it with hate, then I breath deeply and calm down. Ximb is not doing anything but protecting its world. My decision has nothing to do with it, or its deeds. The choice is still between deicide and the flutzi apocalypse.

* * * *

“I’ll go back to the planet and let them taste their own medicine. They’ve infected me with a virus that would have created an epidemic on board Odyssey. They’re very advanced; we won’t have too many chances against them. So my advice is, leave orbit as soon as possible and never come back to their world.”

The Chief of Security is quiet for almost a minute, then replies, “The president agrees with your solution. He wants you to know that the people of Odyssey are profoundly grateful. You will live forever in our conscience, as the first hero of our colony. God bless you.”

The transmission ends. The shuttle is silent again.

“I expected an ending like this.” A woman’s voice.

Startled, he turns to the cockpit’s entrance, then smiles. “Eve, I told you to stay on the ship. Now you’ve condemned yourself to exile.”

“Story of my life.” She grins and sits in the copilot’s chair. Then she looks at the corpse lying behind the chairs. “He didn’t make the right decision?”

“I don’t know what decision he would eventually have made,” Adam replies, casting a disgusted look at Richard Cambry’s body. “He vacillated between us and them, until the very last moment. Even after we all forgave his sins, even after Michael sacrificed himself in front of him, he still had his doubts. People are weak.”

SECOND LANDING, by Murray Leinster

CHAPTER ONE

“The exploring ship Franklin made its first landing on a remarkable wide beach on the western coast of Chios, the largest land mass on Thalassia. Using the longest axis of the continent as a base, and the pointed end as seen from space as 0̊, this beach bears 246° from the median point of the base line…The Franklin later berthed inland some four miles 360̊ from Firing Plaza One on the chart. There is a pleasant savannah here, with a stream of water apparently safe for drinking…

Astrographic Bureau Publication 11297,

Appendix to Space Pilot Vol. 460, Pp. 58-59.

* * * *

It was not plausible that Brett Carstairs should find a picture of a girl, to all appearances human, in millenia-old ruins on a planet some hundreds of light years from Earth. But the whole affair was unlikely, beginning with the report of the exploring ship which caused the Thalassia-Aspasia Expedition in the first place. If it hadn’t been for photographs and the ceramic artifacts, nobody would have believed that report. It simply was not credible that another intelligent race should ever have existed in the galaxy. In two centuries of exploration, no hint of extraterrestrial reasoning beings had been found before. But the exploration ship’s narrative didn’t stop at one impossibility about the twin worlds Thalassia and Aspasia, revolving perpetually about each other as they trailed the satellite sun Rubra on its course. The report wasn’t content to claim one intelligent race to have existed. It claimed two. And it offered evidence that some thousands of years before they had fought each other bitterly and mercilessly, and that they had exterminated each other in an interplanetary war which lasted only days or even hours—which was hard to believe.

But the picture of the girl was more impossible than anything else. Brett didn’t believe it, even when he held it in his hand. He didn’t dare mention it until the thing was all over.

He didn’t find it at the actual beginning, of course. There were preliminaries. The Thalassia-Aspasia Expedition worked under handicaps. It was based on the exploring ship’s report and had to be organized by the Records Division of the Astrographic Survey—which never has any money to spare—and there had to be much skimping in every way and only volunteers could be afforded for the job. Even a ship couldn’t be hired for it. The general public was much more excited about the colonization of nearby planetary systems than in research on a planet that wouldn’t be needed for colonization in a thousand years. So the Expedition was very small—no more than a dozen members altogether—and it would be landed on Thalassia from an Ecology Bureau ship and left there. It would probably be called for in six months or so. Probably. Even then, what it found out might not matter to anybody else.

Brett joined up because it was his only chance for adventure and because his hobby warranted his inclusion in the staff. He could drive a flier of course—everybody could—but he’d specialized in paleotechnology, the study of ancient industrial processes. If there really had been an intelligent race or races out in space, he could make better guesses than most at how the alien machinery worked and how its factories produced. But his personal reason for going was an odd, anticipatory feeling of excitement at the idea of being left with a small group of human beings on a planet where not even the skies were familiar, from which Sol itself was invisible, and where they would be more terribly alone in a waste of emptiness than any similar group had ever been before.

That excitement lasted during the long journey in overdrive and during the almost-as-long approach to planetary landing distance after the Ecology Bureau ship was back in normal space in the Elektra system. When it went into atmosphere on Thalassia and its repulsors droned above the illimitable waters of Thalassia’s ocean, Brett watched with fascinated eyes. Waves of this ocean had a twenty thousand mile reach in which to build up to mountainous heights. At this season of the twin planets’ year, they had the equivalent of trade winds to urge them on. When they reached the shores of Chios, the planet’s only continent, the waves were three hundred feet high, and they seemed to fling spray and spume almost out to space itself. Brett watched the swirling maelstroms and dramatic tumult of the struggle between sea and land. He remembered that at the very edge of the wave-washed area there were to be found the only moving living things on the continent. They were marine forms like crabs, which scuttled out of the water to forage and darted back to the monstrously tumultuous coastal foam.

Watching from the Ecology ship, Brett heard the report that the radar beacon on Chios wasn’t working, and he watched as the ship found Firing Plaza Number One and the ruined refugee-settlement nearby, and hovered there to make quite sure of its position before it descended gently at the landing place the exploring ship had advised for later visitors.

It was a pleasant savannah, and the stream ran as clear as crystal. But the Ecology Bureau ship had been grudgingly loaned, and it had urgent business elsewhere. Its cargo ports opened and the Expedition’s supplies went out to ground in a swiftly flowing stream. They piled up mountainously, so it seemed, and at that they weren’t too complete. The biggest crates were two atmosphere fliers and a short range rocket. The fuel for the rocket made a bigger heap than all the rest of the equipment together. There were plastic tarpaulins to cover everything. There were houses to be unloaded and braced back—but at least they weren’t inflatable shelters!—and there was a spare beacon. But there wasn’t much else but food. The unloading took less than two hours.

Then the skipper of the Ecology Bureau ship asked politely if there were anything else. Minutes later the cargo ports closed and the personnel lock shut, and the ship’s repulsors began to drone. It heaved up slowly until it was a few thousand feet up and then went into interplanetary drive and plummeted toward the sky. It would come back in six months, most likely, or another ship would come in its stead. And the Expedition would have to be ready to leave.

That was when Brett Carstairs realized the silence on Thalassia. The Expedition’s members set to work to make camp. There was a breeze and the vegetation was reasonably familiar in smell, at least—chlorophyl and its associated compounds are found on the oxygen planets of all sol-type stars—and the tree leaves rustled naturally enough. The small stream at the landing place made pleasant liquid sounds. But that was all. No insect stirred or whirred or stridulated. No bird sang. No squirrel barked. No reasonable facsimile of any noise made by any living creature came to the ears of the Thalassia-Aspasia Expedition. The only noises were the voices of the Expedition members themselves, and the bumpings they made with the boxes and crates, and the breeze and the dull booming of the mountainous surf to the westward. Brett caught himself listening uneasily.

“I didn’t realize,” he said ruefully to Kent, on the other end of a crate that would be a chair presently, “that it was going to sound so lonely.”

“It’s been lonely here for a good many thousand years,” said Kent phlegmatically, “since the race on this planet and the characters on the other one killed each other off.”

He put down his end of the crate. He and Brett opened it. They began to assemble the furnishings of the Expedition’s housing. All about them was jungle. The clearing in which they worked had a ground cover like ivy running on the ground. It was broad-leaved instead of narrow-leaved as grasses are, and Brett had a feeling that there should be crawling things under it.

But there weren’t. The report of the exploring ship was explicit. There bad been a very high civilization here, once. And another on the from-here-invisible twin planet Aspasia. Some eight thousand years ago they’d fought each other terribly across the half million miles of space that separated them. Fission bombs with cobalt cases poisoned the air of Thalassia, at the same time that fusion bombs from Thalassia blasted the oasis cities of its twin world to lakes of molten glass. There wasn’t a single, air-breathing creature left alive on Thalassia. Not any more.

The air was clean of radioactivity now, to be sure. Carbon-14 and Cobalt-60 determinations timed the deadly war at very close to eight thousand years before. Now there was vegetation and the ocean swarmed with marine organisms from plankton to fish. But there was no moving creature left on the land of the nearly Earth-sized world.

Brett labored on. The atmosphere on Thalassia was depressing. It was a dead world despite its forests and jungles. Everything that had wings or a throat—even teeth to bite or stings to sting with—had died millennia ago with the doomed creatures whose friable skeletons the exploring ship had found about the firing plaza. They’d died of the bombs from the other planet, which was forever invisible from here. They’d been murdered. Butchered. The forests had no purpose with no animals to live in them. There was a feeling of grief in the air, as if even the trees mourned.

Brett wanted to go over to the firing plaza and see where at least there had been living things, even if the only sure knowledge about them was that they had died in the act of firing giant rockets to avenge the extermination of their race. When they died, Thalassia was already a charnel house. Now—

There was quiet. A terrible quiet. The Expedition members braced their houses, moved the laboratory equipment inside, uncrated their fliers and tied them down, ran their power lines, dug their refrigeration pits, put in sanitary equipment and set their water recovery plant to work. It was safer to condense water from the air than to use the local water supplies which might still carry undesirable trace elements. Brett began to worry that it would be too late to go to the firing plaza before dark. Then he remembered. He looked up at the sky. It was mostly blue, but it was speckled. There was a dull red pinpoint of light near the horizon. That wasn’t Elektra, the sun and center of gravity of this system. It was Rubra, the red dwarf, the satellite sun the size of Earth’s Jupiter, which shared an orbit with the twin planets. They were in Trojan relationship to it, sixty degrees behind as it sped sullenly about its primary. Elektra itself was not visible. But there was no night.

Off to what ought to be the west there was a spotty bright luminosity in the sky. It was the star cluster Canes Venatici, on whose fringe this solar system lay. The multiple suns of the cluster swarmed so closely and shone so brightly at the cluster’s heart that even thirty light years away they gave Thalassia more light than its own and proper sun.

There would be no night on Thalassia.

Brett had known it, of course, but nevertheless he was relieved. A dead planet is gloomy enough in the daytime, with all its vegetation grieving that it has no purpose. At night it would be intolerable. Even in the daytime it would be hard to keep one’s mind busy.

Brett worked at it. He had driven pegs and was tying down the tarpaulin over a mound of crates when he saw the heap of dirt. It did not have any ground cover plants on it. It was piled up. It had been rained on, but it was freshly dug. Brett pounded two more pegs and double-knotted the ropes that would hold the tarpaulin in any wind. Then he jumped. Kent, by that time, was pounding in more pegs on the other side of the pile of stores.

Brett stared at the piled-up dirt. It was surprisingly Earthlike. The top of the ground was dark humus from rotted vegetation, and six or eight inches down it turned to clay, very much like a freshly dug hole on Earth. But there shouldn’t be any freshly dug hole on Thalassia! Nothing lived here! Nothing!

But there was a freshly dug hole in the ground, with clay on top of the thrown out humus.

Brett stopped driving pegs and went to make sure. He stared down. He felt himself growing queasy—sickish and pale. There were scraps of human-made paper at the bottom of the hole. There were traces of the rotted debris any group of humans will discard, but which humans automatically put out of sight before they leave any stopping place. This savannah had been the berthing place of the exploring ship Franklin. This was where the explorers had buried their trash. Something had dug it up.

More, something had very carefully sorted it out, as human scientists sort out the rubbish heaps—the kitchen middens—of a forgotten culture to find out what made it tick.

Something had carefully examined an exploring ship’s kitchen midden to find out what sort of beings human beings might be. Men from Earth wouldn’t have needed to do that. They knew.

Something intelligent and curious, but not from Earth, had wanted to know about men, on a planet where there had been nothing even breathing, much less intelligent, for eight millennia. But something had been alive on the dead planet Thalassia. It had wanted to know about the men who’d camped here from the exploring ship two years before.

Brett was pale when he called Kent to look. Kent looked phlegmatically down into the hole and said:

“That’s the Franklin’s garbage pit. Why’d they dig it up again?”

Brett said:

“They didn’t. Somebody not on the Franklin dug it up. Lately. It’s been rained on, but nothing’s grown over it. In two years it would have been washed flat and covered over. This was dug long after the Franklin left. Lately. Probably within days. Just before we arrived.”

He shouted, and the trees nearby echoed back his voice with a hair-raising resonance. Halliday, the official head of the Expedition, came fretfully to see what was the matter. Brett showed him. Halliday stared blankly for a second. He even began to frown because Brett had called him for nothing. But then the breath went out of him with a curious whooshing sound. His face went quite gray.

“And the ship’s gone!” he said irritably. “It can’t take word back! There is life here after all! Intelligent life! We’re at its mercy!”

Which was absolutely true. Because Thalassia was dead, and below-the-horizon Aspasia with it. There could be no animals to hunt or need defense from: no birds or small creatures to collect. This was strictly an archaeological expedition to work on two worlds which had committed suicide together. So there were no defense weapons in the Expedition’s equipment. Heat guns, yes. They were handy for lighting fires. There were some explosives for shifting rock. But there were no more weapons capable of defending men against really dangerous creatures than a man will take on a camping trip in a national park on Earth. And the Expedition could not communicate with other humans for at least six months. They were hundreds of light years from help.

Brett said slowly:

“On the ship, just before we landed, I heard it said that the radar-beacon on the ground here wasn’t working. I think, sir, we’d better go over to the firing plaza and find out the worst.”

They went to the firing plaza. There had been a beacon there, left to notify Earth ships where the first exploring ship had landed. It would also notify any other intelligent race which dealt in such things as radar. There were a dozen men who went uneasily to see if anything had happened to make their landing unfortunate. They were defenseless, and more isolated from their kind than any humans had ever been before.

There was no sound anywhere save the wind in the trees. No bird song. No insect cry. Nothing but the ominous dull booming of the gigantic surf to the west. The ship that had brought them was long since in overdrive and unreachable by any means until it came back to normal space again.

They found where the beacon had been. It was gone. It had been a complex mechanism, powered by a pinch of atomic pile residue. It should have sent out its signal, on a standard frequency, for years to come. It had been mounted on a solid concrete pillar, according to custom.

The concrete pillar was there, but the radar beacon was not. It had been cut from its anchorage with something like a torch which cut the metal smoothly. There was as yet no oxidation on the severed surfaces.

The first landing plaque had been removed from the same column. It was the plaque which recited that the exploring ship Franklin had made a first landing on this planet on such and such a day and year, Earth Calendar. Close by the column there was a rocket blast crater in the ground—a small one, perhaps six or seven feet across. It was fresh. A rocket had landed here and removed the man-made objects after studying a human refuse pit. Within days. Certainly within weeks.

It had left something of its own behind, though. There was a metal tripod set up on the ground. It was about man-height high, with a box at its top shaped like an inverted cone. There were round holes on four sides of the box. It was not placed on any foundation—simply set up on the ground for some temporary purpose. And left behind.

Kent, his face blankly curious, moved to approach it. “Hold up!” said Brett, very pale. “That could be a thing to collect specimens!”

Kent stopped. Halliday, the Expedition head, turned his face to Brett.

“Specimens?”

“Us,” said Brett harshly. “We set traps to collect specimens for study when we’re making an ecology study of a planet! It would be logical for something intelligent to want to see specimens of the creatures that make garbage pits and radar beacons and landing plaques!”

There was a long pause. Then Halliday said in a flat voice:

“Yes. There are eyes in the thing, too. Or lenses. It could be a collection trap. Or it could be transmitting pictures of us to somewhere, on a frequency our ship wasn’t set to detect. We will—go back to the camp and think it over.”

He moved to go back, and the others with him. The alien tripod glittered in the peculiar dead-white light which did not come from the sun. Brett stared at it as he moved to follow the others. This was a singularly unsatisfactory state of affairs. Humans do not like to feel defenseless. Brett hated the tripod he was afraid for anybody to touch. He did not even feel that his specialty of paleotechnology qualified him to guess what it was. It could be a trap, or a beacon, or a transmitter. It could be anything.

His foot caught in something as he moved away from it. His heart jumped into his throat. It could be a trip wire…

But it wasn’t. It was a tiny golden chain, very humanlike in manufacture. It had broken. Brett picked it up very cautiously. A locket started to slither off. He picked that up, too. It had the feel of a human artifact. It was. It had been made by hand.

There was a picture of a girl in it, under a protecting sheet of plastic. She was a human girl, though her costume was like none that Brett had ever seen or heard of. The picture was black-and-white—an ancient process—but it was unfaded, which meant that it had been made recently…

This, of course, was starkly impossible. One does not find a picture of a human girl in the ruins of an eight-thousand-year-old culture, on a planet hundreds of light years from Earth. Not a picture in an antiquated medium, long forgotten, and with a background neither this planet nor of Earth. It was so completely impossible that Brett knew he wouldn’t dare show it to any of his companions. They wouldn’t believe he’d found it. It couldn’t be!

CHAPTER TWO

“…The Elektran solar system displays certain anomalies, not only in the existence of a satellite sun Rubra, no larger than a gas-giant planet…(but in) the twin worlds Thalassia and Aspasia, each nearly seven thousand miles in diameter, which revolve about each other at a distance of only 250,000 miles. Tidal strains have long since ended their diurnal rotation and they turn the same faces toward each other during their period of revolution of not quite twenty-five days. This nearness and the development of intelligent races on both planets led to the development of interplanetary communication between them some time between 7000 and 11,000 years ago. The tragic results of this communication…

Astrographic Bureau Publication 11297,

Appendix to Space Pilot Vol. 460, Sector XXXIV. P. 56.

* * * *

A trenching machine with its buckets removed went toiling painfully up to the alien tripod some six hours later. It was under remote control. It skirted the elongated opening of a concrete tunnel, made by the long dead six-fingered race of which the exploration ship had found skeletal remains. There were thirty or more of those tunnels, which of course no member of the Expedition had yet entered. But the Franklin’s report said that they had been launching tubes for giant rockets. The rockets had gone roaring out over the ocean, rising steadily, until they swept round the curve of the planet to blast across space and loose destruction upon the sister world Aspasia. The firing plaza took its name from these tunnels. The refugee settlement—still-roofed houses of lignin plastic—had obviously been the shelter in which the dying, despairing Thalassians lived while they took their revenge for the destruction of their race.

The trench-digger ground and rumbled and blundered on its way. Once a side tread slipped and it stalled in a thicket of trees it could not push down. It backed out and went bumbling on toward the bright new metal of the tripod.

Back at the camp, the vision screen which showed what the trenching machine saw pictured the firing plaza as looking like an abandoned area of Earth, with long slanting shadows and stark contrasts of illumination.

The robot machine went on. It was taller than a man, and its outline from the front was not dissimilar. It approached the glistening three-legged object with the inverted cane on top. At the camp, the members of the Expedition watched the screen. Brett Carstairs felt acutely uncomfortable. He’d been suspicious because his training in technical processes naturally made him suspect ancient psychological processes in all unfamiliar objects. But of course the tripod could be completely harmless and incapable of doing damage—

It wasn’t.

The trenching machine drew nearer. Twenty yards. Ten. Five yards. Ten feet, and the round holes in the conical box looked more than ever like eyes. The trenching machine bumped the tripod. The tripod toppled over.

Back at the camp, there was a flash of light and the members of the Expedition looked at a blistered, blackened, peeling screen. The sound of the detonation came seconds later, and it was like a blow in the chest. At the same instant the ground bucked violently. There was a light brighter than the sun.

There was simply no virtue in running away. Brett said numbly to himself, though he didn’t hear the words as formed:

“Atomic explosion. We’re dead, now.”

He got up stiffly from his seat. He went outside the hut. He looked toward the firing plaza two miles away. There was a hill between, but he saw a gigantic smoke ring spinning toward the sky. There was a horrible, incandescent, two-branched fountain in the air. Flame poured up and poured up and poured up skyward, while Brett did not realize that he was deafened and hardly perceived the incredible roar.

Others came out of the hut. Belmont, the nuclear man of the Expedition, very absurdly carried something from his laboratory, at which he looked intently without raising his eyes to the sky. Halliday looked at the fountain of flame with an expression of embittered indignation. Jannings, the meteorologist, stared and stared and then ridiculously wetted his finger and held it up, his air one of complete absorption.

One flame suddenly began to diminish. It failed rapidly in intensity. In seconds it had lessened to a mere glow to be seen over the hillcrest between. The other flame burned more and more luridly—and abruptly stopped. But the rising smoke ring still hurtled upward, expanding as it rose. It was ten thousand feet up. Fifteen thousand. Jannings watched it with his head thrown back and his wetted finger still absurdly held aloft. His lips moved, but Brett did not hear anything at all.

People did unreasonable things. Brett saw the Expedition’s official flier pilot very solemnly take a cigarette from his pocket and very solemnly tap it against the back of his hand and put it in his mouth and puff on it. He very carefully blew a smoke ring of his own, staring blankly where the fountains of flame had risen. There was steam rising there now.

Then Jannings’ voice came, very faintly, like a remembered sound rather than like an actual noise.

“There’s a wind from the ocean,” said Jannings thinly. “It’s blowing the atom cloud inland. There’s a wind from the ocean. It’s blowing the atom cloud inland. There’s a wind from the ocean—”

He repeated the words over and over, like an automaton. His voice grew stronger as Johnny’s hearing came back. And suddenly, it seemed, they were all released from a sort of hypnosis of shock, and Belmont looked up from his radiation counter and said in a sort of mild astonishment:

“Ten more seconds and we’d have had a burning exposure!”

Then a babbling of voices. There was a crazy confusion all around. Voices cried, “We’ve got to move camp!” Voices asked imploringly, “Are we burned? Are we burned?” Then Halliday displayed unsuspected leadership and bellowed at them in a shaking voice and took matters in hand.

The first requisite was information. But an even greater need was action. It is not healthy to camp within two miles of a recent atomic explosion site. Wind blowing from it to one’s camp will hardly be salubrious. Halliday crackled orders. While Brett helped loose one of the two fliers from its tie-down ropes, Halliday had other men dragging out emergency rations and canteens and the rolled-up inflatable shelters that could be used to live in. As he snapped instructions, Halliday interjected odd fragments of thought as if everything that came into his head also came out of his mouth.

The flier took off vertically and swept toward the ocean, on shouted last minute instructions from Belmont to stay upwind. Halliday stopped his stream of feverish instruction as Brett came back from the takeoff spot.

“Good work, Carstairs!” said Halliday. His thinning white hair blew erratically about his head. “Your suspicions made that tripod go off with us two miles away instead of right on top of it.”

Brett wetted his lips. He’d had time to begin to feel shaky, now, but the churning up of all his emotions somehow made his mind work feverishly. He said abruptly:

“The tripod didn’t explode. There were three things going off. One atomic explosion and two fizz-offs. Where the bomb went off there couldn’t have been anything left behind to make those flames!” Brett heard himself saying: “The firing plaza was booby-trapped!”

Halliday had opened his mouth to shout an order, but he stopped short.

“Wha-a-a-at?”

“There were three bombs,” said Brett shakily, “and only one went off properly. The two fizz-offs—they didn’t make critical mass fast enough. Their active material vaporized instead of detonating. At a guess, they were too old to work right.”

“Too old—”

Brett made a helpless gesture.

“I know it sounds crazy! But new bombs should blow! And there was a war on this planet once. The people died. But they were getting even while they died. Wouldn’t it be reasonable that if they knew they were going to be wiped out, by radiation that poisoned the air they breathed but which would die out in time, wouldn’t it be reasonable that they should set booby-traps to kill their enemies if any of them lived and their descendants came here later?”

The flier, circling two thousand feet up and to windward of the atom column, came streaking down toward the Expedition’s camp. Halliday opened his mouth, closed it, and came to a rational decision.

“That will have to be discussed later. You fly? Take the second flier and scout a camping place not less than fifty miles up the coast. Pick a place that should not have any artifacts about. Then come back. We will shift camp to avoid possible radiation in case the wind changes. We don’t know whether it will or not, but we have to be out of range in any event.”

He made a pushing motion at Brett and turned back to the work at hand. Brett went to the second flier and loosened it.

He was aloft before the first flier had landed, and he headed north. An idea occurred to him, and he dropped lower. The planet Thalassia might be dead, but something other than men from Earth had been here very recently. Flying high would make him invisible to eyes on the ground, but would make him visible indeed to detection radar. If there were intelligent creatures on Thalassia now, they would take precautions against unexpected encounters with other creatures who dug garbage pits and set up radar beacons and first landing plaques. Very probably the tripod had been a device to give notice if these strange creatures returned. So it would be wise to fly low.

He flew slowly—slowly enough to estimate distance and examine the shoreline. It was incredible. There were places where highlands ended abruptly at the shore. At those places mountainous masses of spray and foam shot upward where the breakers struck. There was one place where the beach matched the human exploring ship’s first beach touching. There was shining sand and boulders for a full mile inland. The breakers themselves rolled in like rows of skyscrapers and crashed with even more catastrophic sounds. On Earth, in the South Pacific, winds could blow completely around the Antarctic continent and build up waves with seventy foot crests. But Thalassia was all ocean save for the one continent and a few dependent, nearby islands. Trade winds blowing would have a twenty-thousand-mile reach in which to make these waves. The gravity here, too, was a little less than on Earth. They should be monstrous!

So Brett Carstairs flew at five hundred feet above the ground, a mile inshore from the breaker line, and saw waves not less than three hundred feet high and often higher come roaring in toward him, and he saw them fling spume in masses higher than he flew. Sometimes he thought he saw living things in the water, but he was not sure. Once he did see a stranded sea monster, frayed and tattered by corruption, but that was not his present business.

Just at the distance Halliday had named, he found a running stream winding down into the ocean, only to be lost in its surf. He followed it inland for some miles. He saw an adequate place of refuge for the Expedition. He landed. He made sure. The river was fresh and ran a hundred yards wide between steep cliffs, yet there was some clear ground and at least one spot where giant trees almost met above the water. The Expedition would be undetectable from the air, under the shelter of an overhanging shelf. Its fliers could be hidden under the leafy screen. It would do.

It was on the way back that it occurred to Brett that the ship which would come to pick up the Expedition six months from now would not know where to look for it. And—it would be highly vulnerable to whatever had placed that metal tripod on the firing plaza.

Then he thought to wonder what would happen if a ship landed on a firing plaza. Or in the ruins of a city. The exploring ship had not spotted any cities undestroyed by bombs. But just suppose…

He landed, feeling an extremely queasy sensation at the pit of his stomach. When he saw the pictures of the plaza as it looked now, he was even less comfortable. The entire group of ancient rocket launching tunnels had been nearly two miles in extent. There was a half-mile crater where an atom bomb had gone off underground. It was a cleanly blasted hollow, lined with glass. It was nowhere near the spot where the tripod had been. There were two other incandescent holes, gaping wide and still pouring out clouds of steam. They were irregularly shaped and twenty feet or more across. There had been other bombs underground at those places, too, but instead of blasting in the millionth of a second they had gone off slowly, disintegrating in seconds and vaporizing most of their own material before it could disintegrate. The critical mass hadn’t been achieved quickly enough to blow them. It was exactly the kind of failure that could be expected of a brilliantly designed booby-trap that happened not to be sprung for some thousands of years. The location of these bombs, also, had no relationship to the position of the tripod.

The blast had not been the tripod, but bombs buried by the long-exterminated inhabitants of Thalassia, to destroy any creature landing on their world after its air was sweet and clean again.

Brett reported his choice of a new camping place. He found his guesses about the booby-trapping of the plaza accepted as verified. They were. But Halliday said querulously:

“What the devil was the tripod?”

“It could have been a beacon,” said Brett, “with variations. The exploring ship set up a beacon to guide Earth ships to its landing place, so they wouldn’t need to repeat all the work it had done. But suppose—well—people not from Earth wanted to find out if all the Thalassians were really dead? There was a beacon. Life had been around, recently. They might have dozens of these tripods at different places. Anything alive would go up to them and examine them. The eyes might modify the signal they sent. Anything intelligent and alive would be reported, either by a change in the tripod’s signal, or by the fact that its signal stopped.”

Brett had worked out the notion during his flight to the north and back. Halliday blinked. He turned and barked at somebody. Emergency equipment was being loaded into both fliers. He turned back to Brett:

“What set off the booby trap?”

“The toppling of the tripod, most likely,” suggested Brett. “It would be sending a tight beam straight up. When it fell over, it would send that beam at the ground. High frequency surges would be induced. They could set off an electronic trigger that was designed to blow the bombs when a ship landed nearby. The creatures who were wiped out might want to kill their enemies whenever they turned up, even after thousands of years.”

Then Halliday said in a flat voice:

“But something did land! It took the human beacon, set up the tripod, and we saw its rocket crater where it took off.”

“It wasn’t big,” said Brett. “If the Thalassians were pleasant enough, they might scheme so a scout ship could land and take off unharmed, but a passenger liner bringing colonists would be wiped out.”

Halliday nodded sourly.

“A nice thought! If you’re right, then that tripod might have been set up by the creatures the Thalassians set their booby-traps for! And if Aspasians are beginning to explore this planet again, they’ll take us for Thalassians! They’ll try to murder us.” Then he said bitterly: “How can we do our work if bloodthirsty creatures are trying to hunt us down and kill us? How can we do our work?”

Brett offered no ideas. He helped load his flier, conferred briefly with the pilot of the other, and they took off together. He led the way to the campsite he’d chosen. He left his load and two passengers. The other flier did the same. They went back. Fifty miles along the coast. They loaded up. They returned. They went back again. Nobody thought of relaxing. At the new campsite a biologist was at work on nearby fruits, and someone was fishing. Fish, too, would be tested for edibility. Brett flew and flew and flew. One trip after another. The two fliers ferried supplies in quantity. Equipment was another matter. Once the route was established, the work grew tedious. Half an hour to load up. Ten minutes to fly fifty miles. Half an hour to unload.

Because there was no night, exhaustion came upon Brett before he realized it. He had no time to examine the handmade golden locket in detail. He had it tucked carefully away and he almost resented it because it was so simply and starkly impossible. The girl was pretty enough. But she could not exist! And there was something more urgent on hand than speculations upon the reality of the impossible. The Expedition had to survive. Brett wearily applied his mind to make that practical.

But weariness hit him suddenly. He nearly flubbed a landing on the river, at last. Halliday snapped at him:

“We can’t move everything, Carstairs, but it is urgent that we get all possible supplies to this new site. You must be more careful!”

Brett said tiredly:

“It might be a good idea to leave behind as much as we can.”

“What?” fumed Halliday. “Leave supplies we need?” Brett yawned uncontrollably.

“Whoever or whatever left the tripod,” he said drearily, “will probably go back when it—they—find it has stopped reporting. There’ll be a bomb crater and the fizz off holes. If we’ve left a lot of stuff, houses and all the rest, they may think we simply went to the firing plaza to look at their tripod and didn’t come back. Because the bomb blew. That might be useful to us.”

Halliday fumed again.

“You irritate me,” he said peevishly. “I should think of such things, not you! But it is sound thinking. Go get some rest!”

Brett got out of the flier. He stumbled up to the encampment under its shelf of stone. He heard the sound of chopping. There were cave mouths here, but the caves were shallow. Somebody was hacking at the back wall of one of them. It was a wall—an artificial wall. After eight thousand years it was not a solid barrier, and it had been hastily constructed. It was Kent who was hacking at the tiers of stones.

“Looks like a sealed-up cave,” he told Brett phlegmatically. “It could be anything—even a place where Thalassians tried to seal themselves in with air-renewal apparatus to last out the time the air was poisoned. It wouldn’t work, of course. The air could’ve been deadly for five or fifty or five hundred years, depending on the amount of radioactivity in it. But if there’s any size to this, it might make a good shelter for us, and we ought to find some stuff in it.”

Johnny nodded sleepily. He thought to look at his wrist chronometer. It was some thirty-eight hours since the Expedition’s landing. He’d worked steadily for all that length of time.

Kent’s pick went through the wall. Nothing in particular happened. Kent pulled rocks away. Crumbled mortar came with them. He enlarged the hole in a matter-of-fact fashion. Presently it was of a size to permit easy entrance. No particular smell came out. The inside air was cooler. That was all. Kent went and got a hand-light. He cast its fierce glare inside. He nodded his head, put down the light, and went away.

Brett picked up the light and threw it through the opening. He saw shining wet walls, and stalactites and stalagmites. There was an artificial curved ramp leading away somewhere between a pair of limestone cave formations. There was a curious small heap on the artificially flattened floor. He focused the light on it.

Bones. They looked human. They were cemented to the floor by an aeons-old layer of glistening, almost transparent mineral.

Brett entered, blinking. The skeletons were well-enough preserved to be tragic, but he remembered that the ancient race had had six fingers and other not-quite-usual features. He looked. Yes. The interior of this place was squared and leveled. It had been worked into shape. There was a tunnel leading off to the left and he glanced in. A low-ceiling room, crowded with objects in rows. Machines. More skeletons. He stood rocking on his feet with weariness. He thought: “Now we’ll know something about a civilization that was killed while our ancestors were still hunting mammoths.” He should have been excited, but somehow he wasn’t. Then he realized why.

The objects so neatly arranged in rows were not machines. They had been, but they weren’t any longer. They were heaps of rust. Swollen, nodular distorted heaps of oxide of iron and copper and—yes—even aluminum. They were old! They were mineralized. But they had been mineralized after they had been destroyed.

He heard voices. Kent was bringing the rest of the Expedition inside. Lights flickered and flashed. He heard shoutings. Men crowded past the compartment he stared at, exclaimed exultantly, and went on. Voices echoed eerily. The mood of the Expedition was the excited rejoicing of children with a newly discovered playground. But what they were exploring was a tomb. Here despairing six-fingered creatures had walled themselves in from the light and air of their own world to try to outlive its poisoning. They had expected perhaps a thousand years of entombment. But it was forever.

Brett was too tired for any emotional reaction. He found himself mumbling:

“They forgot that there’s always some water in caves. Water makes them. And water seeping down would be radioactive. So they died.”

He made his way heavily back toward the opening Kent had made. He went to the outer cave, where there were sleeping bags. Halliday met him. Halliday carried more hand-lights.

“Ah, Carstairs!” he said exuberantly. “You picked a lucky place! When I learned the firing plaza had been booby-trapped I was really in despair! I thought any other site would be booby-trapped too. I thought we might be unable to work at all! But here we’ve got a bolt hole they tried to make use of! Artifacts! Skeletons! We can get a marvelous picture of their civilization under stress! Marvelous!”

He bobbed into the hole in the wall and was gone.

Brett found a sleeping bag and crawled into it. He went to sleep. It seemed to him that around him as he slept there were excited ejaculations and much scurrying about. The members of the Expedition were scientists come to examine a dead civilization. It had seemed that they would have nothing to examine and would soon be dead themselves. Now they had work to do, even in hiding. They rejoiced.

But some time during his slumber, Brett dreamed. In his dream has saw the girl of the impossible handmade golden locket. He did not know where he was, but she looked at him. And her eyes grew wide and horrified. She screamed, and figures came running from somewhere. At sight of Brett they howled with fury and drew strange weapons and came rushing to kill him.

CHAPTER THREE

“…On the hemisphere facing Aspasia, Thalassia’s twin planet, there is but one rocky island not constantly swept by the ocean’s giant swells. Evidences of former occupation exist here, but the island has been wave-swept in what must have been enormously violent storms, and only excavations for what may have been an observatory and military base remain…”

Astrographic Survey Publication 11297.

Appendix to Space Pilot Vol. 460, Sector XXXIV. P. 71.

* * * *

The contents of the cave were of interest to the biologist, the archeologists, the camera specialist, the specimen-preservation member of the Expedition’s staff, the paleontologist, the historian, to Halliday, Belmont, Janney—to everyone in fact, but Brett. They would have been of interest to him too, if it had happened that the cave were dry. But there was no single metal object not corroded out of all imaginable resemblance to its original form. The relatively few ceramic remains he could identify as having been made by injection-moulding and fired within their moulds. That meant a remarkably high state of civilization. But there was no object suitable for his examination as a technological object. The restoration specialist began the extremely tedious process of redisplacement on them. With suitable precautions, a heap of rust can electrolytically be restored to its original condition of solidity and form—if the rust has not been disturbed. But it is an excruciatingly slow affair.

Brett had no proper function in the cavern underground.

He helped set up a sky-scanner outside. It would detect a repulsor field, meaning a human ship maneuvering in atmosphere. He helped set up an automatic signaling device to be triggered by the detection of such a field. It would instantly transmit to the Earth ship a warning of danger and the need for caution, and then shut off. If any space vessel came into Thalassia’s atmosphere using an Earth type drive, this combination of instruments would warn both ship and Expedition. After due assurance that each was what it claimed to be, they could get together, the Expedition could reembark, and everybody could get away from Thalassia. Then further action would be taken by the Earth government. This was Halliday’s decision, and it was reasonable enough.

But after this prosaic matter was settled, Brett fidgeted. The other members of the Expedition were happy. The cave had been a sealed in life lock, in which Thalassians had hoped to survive their planet’s doom. They succeeded in leaving only innumerable objects and items informative to Earth scientists. There were the skeletons of more than three hundred of the six-fingered, six-toed bipeds for study. Either their air renewers had failed them, or radioactivity came down to the cave in the ground water. The cave was of great extent. It went deep into the hillside for more than half a mile, and many possible extensions had been sealed off, at that. All its new occupants, save Brett, exulted over the scientific material to be worked with. He brooded.

Generators came from the first campsite, power lines ran into the cave, and the due examination of the ancient civilization of Thalassia began, though the investigators were in hiding even as they worked. Other city sites or possible unbombed settlements would have been ruled out anyhow, now, with knowledge of the Thalassian tendency toward booby-traps. But this site seemed safe enough. The creatures who occupied this expected to live, unlike those at the firing plaza. But as a general thing. Thalassian sites would have to be regarded with suspicion. The ancient dead had made no distinction in their enmity for the enemies who had destroyed them, and possible innocent explorers.

But Brett brooded unhappily over the locket, since he had no chance to be useful at the moment. He told himself very carefully that the locket had been dropped by somebody on the exploring ship Franklin, and he’d happened to find it. The background might be Alpha Centaurus or Rigel. But he didn’t believe it.

The happy labor of the Expedition went on. Brett explored the cave again. Naturally. He checked the redisplacement boxes, set up around the artifacts he could tell something about in the course of several months of restoration. He looked at the skeletons. Halliday was zestfully at work on a modeled restoration of a Thalassian as he looked in life, based on the measurements of a skull. As Halliday modeled it, the Thalassian looked remarkably human.

“But,” said Brett, “aren’t you inclined to model the creature rather too much in our own image?”

Halliday was the Expedition’s sculptor as well as its head. He frowned.

“You are very annoying, Carstairs!” he said dourly. “They were humanoid. Save for a rather prognathous jaw and this difference—here—in the occiput, this could be a human skull! Oh, the sutures are different, too, but—”

Then he fumed.

“You have made me realize that there is no reason for my having assumed a human ear shape,” he snapped. “You irritate me! Go somewhere! Do something! You disagree with me too often, and too often I suspect that you are right! Contrive some project of your own, and let me make my own mistakes!”

Brett said slowly, because he had thought something out very carefully but still wasn’t confident of his reasoning.

“I’d like to take a look at Aspasia. Not by rocket,” he added painstakingly. “They would be looking for trouble! But the pilot book says there’s one island on the other hemisphere. I’d like to see if there’s another tripod set up on that. If I could record its signal where nobody’s been near it, we might be able to forge it for the firing plaza site. Simply to avoid attracting—ah—unfavorable attention.”

This was not all the truth. He was thinking again of the girl in the locket. But that was entirely too preposterous to mention. Halliday blinked at him, his hands covered with clay from his modeling. Then he added:

“I authorize that,” he said, “yes. But I make one stipulation. You will arrange to detect radar on your flier, and if a radar does play on you, you will make sure you do not lead any—ah—creatures back here to us.”

Brett agreed, wryly. He was a little relieved. But he asked:

“Are you worried, too, that whoever took the beacon at the firing plaza might want to take a human space ship to examine in the same way? To study it and perhaps duplicate it in quantity?”

Halliday sputtered.

“Of course I’m worried!” he said angrily. “If I could prevent a ship from coming here to pick us up I would—and remain here for always. It would be my duty! If there is an intelligent race which does not know of humanity’s existence—we do not want it to learn from a shattered space ship! We would not want them to know our interstellar drive! Certainly not if humanity were not aware that they had learned! But you, Carstairs, annoy me by thinking of the things that would keep me awake nights if there were nights here!”

Brett nodded thoughtfully. He’d been considering the fix the Expedition was in from many different angles. It was possible to acquire cold chills down one’s spine, any time, simply by imagining what might happen if an inimical race of intelligent creatures became possessed of an Earth interstellar ship and was able to fathom its workings. If Earth were unwarned, its first inkling of danger could be an attack as murderous as had been made on Thalassia—and on Aspasia, too.

Something had to be done to find out the actual extent of the danger. Brett had ideas of less than total fatality. But he needed to make sure.

He took three twenty-four-hour periods to get ready for the journey he was to make. The flier, of course, could stay aloft almost indefinitely. With the slightly lesser gravity of Thalassia, it could carry a heavier load, too.

He made one low level flight back to the original camp. The Geiger counter reading of radiation was a bare two points above normal for this world. He got some special equipment—taking care to leave the camp looking as if its owners had simply walked over to the firing plaza and had not come back. He worked. Then he consulted Janney about probable meteorological conditions.

He took off and flew a thousand miles along the coastline in what would be the radar shadow of the seacoast waves. After that he struck out across the ocean. The flier was a standard Earth type utility job, capable of speeds up to six hundred miles an hour, but cruising under three hundred. For work on the continent of Chios, Brett would not have worried about fuel. But according to the exploration ship report, he had a long, long journey before him.

He flew and flew and flew. It was very tedious, and it did not help that he was staking his life on a guess he was by no means sure about. He watched the flier on automatic control for four hours running. It did not change course by the fraction of a degree, nor change altitude by as much as fifty feet. In the end he went uneasily to sleep.

When he woke, the look of things had changed. The ocean had been deep, deep blue and the light came only from the speckled brightness in the sky which was the heart of the Canes Venatici star cluster. Now those stars had been left below the horizon behind him, though there were still speckles in the heavens. Rising, however, there was Elektra. It seemed exactly the size of Sol as seen from Earth, and its brightness was diminished just enough so he could bear to look at it directly. Warmth came from it. It was markedly yellower than Brett’s home sun. And the ocean below him had become an astonishing hue which was still blue, but verged upon purple.

These, though, were items he noticed later.

He saw Aspasia, already above the horizon.

It was monstrous in size. It was nearly four times the diameter of the moon as seen from Earth, and it filled sixteen times as much of the sky. It covered a larger space than Brett’s fist held before him. It was the size of a ship’s vision-port looked at five feet away. It seemed to crowd the heavens. It seemed plunging terribly toward Thalassia. It was like a gigantic missile falling, seeming forever about to crush the planet above which Brett’s small flier flew.

He stared at it for a long time before he could be quite reasonable about it. If he’d watched it rising as the flier made its way around Thalassia’s curve—gigantic even then, filling a quarter of a quadrant of the world’s edge—its present appearance might have been less of a shock. But he had slept until it was a fourth of the way up toward the zenith.

He saw it as sandy-colored, with mottled patches which he knew were deserts and precipitous mountain ranges. There were tiny blue pittings here and there, many of them. They would be the enormous blue-glass lakes the exploring ship had reported and believed to be the sites of once existent cities, melted to glassy liquid by fusion bombs from Thalassia in the long ago atomic war. They were solidified now. Brett saw some areas which might be merely semiarid plains. There were a few noticeable veinings which had olive-colored borders. They were Aspasia’s few and narrow seas. They were mere channels.

Seen with the naked eye, Thalassia’s sere and battered sister planet seemed very suitably named. It looked as the courtesan Aspasia might have looked when old and all her beauty gone, made grotesque by the bedizenments which once would have seemed so charming.

Brett Carstairs stared up at the world whose inhabitants had wiped out the race native to this and had in turn—so it appeared—been exterminated by the dying Thalassians as their cities became charnel houses and their continent a tomb.

As he stared, something said, “Beep” in the flier’s cabin. He jumped, and his heart climbed to his throat. He stared at the dial of his recently contrived radar detector. The needle flickered wildly, but settled nowhere at all. Brett nodded subduedly to himself. Anybody who was curious about men, and carried away their radar beacon and first landing plaque, and dug up a refuse pit to examine their kitchen midden—such a creature would want warning of a possible encounter. And such a warning had just been secured. That single startled chirp had been a radar impulse touching the flier. Things did not look good.

The flier went on and on over the wind-purple sea. Brett scanned the ocean. A monstrous swell, far away, broke in a smother of white foam. Some subsea mountain almost reached the surface. The giant ocean waves broke upon it, as they do on shallows and fishing banks on Earth. Here there was half a square mile of white.

The white was assurance that the flier was on course, but the radar chirp was even more important. It was ominous because it was solitary, though only a paleotechnologist would have realized it. Radar is an ancient device, of course. A modern radar brings back to a space ship an amount of detailed information which is really astonishing. But it does it with different impulses of different wave form and frequency. To Brett’s knowledge, not since the last war on Earth had any radar shut itself off when it contacted an object. It was a spotting device which did not betray its position to the thing it spotted.

Brett felt those unhappy cold prickles which are the signs of danger realized. Any rational man feels them. Only, a resolute man grows angry and becomes reckless because he is ashamed of being apprehensive.

Brett did.

He scowled and placed a reproduction of an ancient weapon handy. He had not the materials for a modern blaster, of course. But he’d gone back to the first camp and taken a drum of rocket fuel, and labored at the improvisation of an antique open breech gun. He made shells for it of plastic. The heavy rocket fuel would give mass to the missiles. He’d made what used to be called a bazooka. He drove the flier on.

The tip of an island rose above the horizon. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, it rose and grew. It was a group of rocky needles rising from the sea. It was the one island in a hemisphere of ocean. The outer needles or rocks were monstrous monoliths against which the giant sea swells crashed. There were single columns, hundreds of yards thick and hundreds of yards high, about and over which the spume flew wildly. There were surging maelstroms among those outer rocks. Wild swirlings, incredible violence, unpredictable floods raged in the channels between them. Had this been on Earth—but there were no such waves on Earth—the air about the island would have been a cloud of sea birds. But no life showed here. Naturally!

The island appeared very close, and Brett’s throat tended to become dry. There had been a single radar pulse, so there must be living creatures here. To them he would represent the most instructive of victims or most deadly of menaces.

There was a snapping sound. There was a hole in the flier’s cabin above his head. There were streaks of white vapor shooting on before him. There were more snappings, unspeakably venomous.

His hands broke the paralysis of shock. He dived. As he plunged toward the monstrous swells he craned his neck to see up and behind. He saw a winged thing plunging from the air above. A rocket. A small one. Its blast would be just about right to have made the small crater beside the now-demolished tripod where Firing Plaza One had been. Perhaps it was the rocket that had landed there to examine the beacon established by the Franklin, when that exploring ship made the first landing on this world. Perhaps it carried away the human device and the landing plaque, with what information it could gather from a refuse pit.

But now it dived furiously after him. There were flickering sparks. Streaks of vapor shot past him, and he felt the blank astonishment of a man backward in time. He’d been ashamed to contrive so primitive a weapon as a bazooka. But the pilot of the rocket was firing a machine gun, with tracer bullets to help his marksmanship!

Brett made his dive steeper. The rocket pulled out, feeling sure he was headed for a crash. It circled vengefully overhead. Its wings were small. It could not fly except at high speed.

Brett landed. The splash was satisfyingly violent, but it was actually a splendid landing in the very trough between two monstrous seas a hundred yards tall. It seemed that he had wrecked his flier in a moving, glassy-walled cañon of surging solidity. To the rocket, it should seem a certainty. Brett waited to see what the rocket would do.

It circled and circled. It needed information about creatures like Brett. If there were any craft available that could land and salvage Brett’s flier, they should risk anything to learn something of his race and kind.

But nothing happened. The rocket dived back toward the island. It sank low. It vanished.

Brett waited. His mouth was dry. He made fresh plans. He had been detected bumbling steadily across the ocean at a stodgy three hundred miles an hour. He had made no maneuvers of evasion when the rocket dived on him from overhead. It had been Brett’s absorption that allowed it, but the rocket could not be sure. The seeming crash into the sea—the whole appearance was of something which could not maneuver, in the charge of someone without skill. If they could come after him they wouldn’t expect resourcefulness. He could take off at will, and straight up. He could streak at twice the speed they knew of along between the rolling swells. He could fly like a gull between the wave crests, unreachable by missile-weapons and probably even more modern ones. He had a good chance to get away if only the occupants of the island did not have many small fliers, capable of hunting him at higher speed and with greater agility than he could summon.

Floating with seeming sogginess on the water, the flier rose and rose and rose. It reached a wave crest, and Brett saw the island again. It loomed high, now. He saw large sentinel columns of stone nearer than the island’s main mass. He saw the purplish seas go surging in between those columns, tilting up and foaming terribly about them, but with a tumult of water in the center remaining unbroken until farther on.

The wave crest passed, and the flier descended into the trough again. There was an enormously long wait before he was lifted up once more. He took a bearing then.

Again in the trough he used the flier’s drive to move him so his craft would be in a position to be tossed chiplike between the monstrous obstacles. When the island was hidden again, he used the drive a second time. A third.

Then the topmost peak of the island remained in sight even in the waves’ troughs. Brett let the flier drift aimlessly. It was carried toward the island by the swells and by the wind. He heard the roaring of the surf, such surf as only remote islands near Antarctica experience back at home. The booming became thunderous. It became intolerable. It became a cannonade of sound that human ears could not endure. And therefore it dulled because of its deafening volume.

The rocky sentinels loomed high. They were a little less than a mile apart, but the surf and acres of foam about their bases made the gap seem narrow indeed. The flier floated in seeming helplessness toward that opening.

Brett felt that acute shame which comes to a man because his body tenses and his throat dries up and his heart beats fast and his breath grows short. But his flier bobbed like a bit of flotsam on waves as high as most skyscrapers and whose troughs were deep as minor canyons. Above him loomed wave-torn, stratified rocky pillars, dripping floods of seawater, surrounded by whirlpools.

The flier went through between them. On beyond there were sheer cliffs against which the seas broke in frightful, explosive impacts with such a fury of foam and spray that the imagination was overwhelmed. Brett licked his lips. But he watched.

Then a current behind the northern column swung the flier about. Brett was, for a moment, in the lee of that huge buttress. The swells lessened. There was a vast, slow-moving eddy here. There was what could have been called a harbor, save that no imaginable ship could shelter in it. The flier, whirling slowly as it drifted, moved toward a more sheltered spot. Then a more sheltered spot still. Brett continued to watch. There were creatures here. They would want to know what queer sort of being disputed the possession of Thalassia with them…

He saw a movement among the rocks. Specks stirred, climbing swiftly down toward him. They seemed to slide down swiftly fastened cords from one shelf of stone to another. They were coming to try to keep the flier from shattering before they could examine it, since it incredibly had survived this far.

Brett got his primitive weapon ready. The efforts of the creatures would be improvisation, of course. Nobody would normally use the sea on Thalassia! So nobody would have prepared a salvage operation such as these creatures meant to attempt.

An outward-jutting mass of stone formed a roof above the water where the flier drifted for a space, and the climbing creatures were out of sight. Brett could not make out what they were. But he reminded himself that like Halliday he had a tendency to see everything from an anthropocentric viewpoint. He tended to interpret moving creatures with human beings and Earth animals as references.

The current was very slow, here. The surgings of the water were less. The flier floated under an overhang so close that Brett feared it would be crushed. But then he came out. There was flat stone ahead, awash, wave-washed by trivial swells. The figures he had seen were almost at it. One did reach it and ran frantically in knee deep water to try to salvage, to grasp, at the very least and worst to see dearly inside the flier and observe its pilot.

Brett caught his breath. He did not believe it.

He stared into the face of a girl to all appearances human. She wore close-fitting garments of what looked like yellow silk, with brief drapings that had concealed the humanness of her form.

She looked at him. Her eyes widened with purest horror. Her expression was that of one who regards a frightful monster. She screamed—though Brett’s still-numbed ears heard it as only a thin, high-pitched cry—and she thrust back from the flier she had seemed so anxious to reach. Other figures, also human in appearances, came running as they dropped down cords from the cliff.

At sight of Brett they howled with fury. They plunged toward him, dragging out strange weapons with which to destroy him.

Brett shot up from the heaving water at full acceleration, emergency lift, reckless of the fuel cost and with his face dead white and dazed.

He had a picture of that girl in his pocket.

CHAPTER FOUR

“…The arid utterly monotonous desolation of Aspasia seems to negate at once any idea of surviving inhabitants, though the possibility cannot be entirely ruled out. The Franklin cruised overall probable areas without making contact with intelligent life forms. Yet civilization did exist here. Highways still in good repair remain. It seems likely, however, that its former culture was developed in oases in its deserts, in concentrated population centers. The previously mentioned lakes of blue glass may be considered to cover the sites of such oases, melted down by fusion bombs from Thalassia…After this disaster it would be expected that any survivors would live only in caves or other inconspicuous places, and would hand down legends of destruction coming from the sky. The Franklin, indeed, could have been hidden from…

Astrographic Bureau Publication 11297,

Appendix to Space Pilot Vol. 460, Sector XXXIV. Page 61.

* * * *

Brett descended from a rainstorm to the small river before the camp cave. He’d been in the cloudbank for a period that had no particular meaning because there was never any real night on Thalassia, and he came down in a downpour that was like the heavens opening, except that he’d been up where it started. He got the flier under the overhanging trees a mile downstream from the cave, lifted it to the river bank, tied it securely and walked through the more-than-tropical downpour to where the camp had been set up.

Kent peered at him phlegmatically over a barricade of stones. He put away a heat gun.

“Oh,” he said calmly. “It’s you. Halliday was talking about you yesterday.”

Brett rummaged for dry clothing. He toweled and shifted to other garments. He asked over his shoulder:

“Everything all right?”

“This cave was booby-trapped too,” said Kent. “We should have been blown to hell when I broke down that stone wall.” He paused and added. “We weren’t.”

“Odd,” said Brett, with irony. “Halliday’s in the cave?”

He was. Brett went in through the opening Kent had made. The interior was brightly lighted now. It was illuminated as effectively and as thoroughly as a museum on Earth. Cables ran along the passageways. Just inside the first entrance generators hummed. It was remarkable how the members of the Expedition had made a researcher’s dream of this camp site. All archeologists have dreamed of finding an ancient city intact and of making their camp among the objects of their study. All have had wistful fantasies of laboratory facilities at the very spots where their study material exists.

Here there was exactly that atmosphere. The doubtless irregular original cave system had been worked over by the Thalassians who tried to make it a refuge for the ages. The walls and ceilings were sound. The passageways were neatly chiseled. The larger chambers were cleared of lime formations and the walls made smooth. The debris from such workings had been used for fills. It was startling to find a perfect small city underground. Hundreds of human beings could have lived here. There were open spaces hundreds of feet across. There were halls with sixty-foot ceilings. There were even small cubicles as if for families. With bright lights and ample space and the remains of ancient occupation right at hand, this was close to an archeologist’s dream of paradise.

But without any inconsistency at all, it was also a charnel house. The air was sweet and clean, now, but manlike creatures had died by hundreds when the radioactive poison reached them even here. Seeping, lime-burdened water oozed everywhere. The smooth flat floors were covered with a glistening incrustation with minor ripples frozen upon it. The walls reflected light like glass. Nothing that had been part of the civilization of Thalassia remained intact. There were mounds on the floors, now covered with the glassy calcium-carbonate coating, or completely impregnated with it. Sometimes brightly glazed bones appeared among these mounds. Sometimes there were the brightly colored rusted tints of metal objects long since vanished. Sometimes there was no clue at all to what the vanished objects had been.

There had been no such water seepage when the cave was occupied, of course. Cracks in the stone may have come from earthquakes—or Thalassia-quakes—during the ages since the time of death. Certainly the lime incrustation preserved everything, but only after it had been destroyed by time.

Halliday was seated by a desk which once had been packing cases. He had half a dozen ceramic objects on the desk, used as paperweights against air currents which did not exist underground. He was writing exuberantly when Brett came in.

Halliday beamed.

“Ah, Carstairs!” he said happily. “You are our lucky member! We do our work under absolutely perfect conditions, and it is your doing even if it was an accident. There are accident prone individuals, and they are Jonas on an expedition like this! But you are a favorable-coincidence-prone! I congratulate you!”

Brett sat down on a box which served well enough as a seat.

“I hear this cave was booby-trapped too.”

“Yes,” agreed Halliday blandly. “We smelled smoke. It was disturbing. We traced it, and there was a bomb made ready to bring down the cave about our ears. But the chemical explosive intended to bring the priming bomb slugs to critical mass had deteriorated. Unstable compounds, you know. It merely smouldered, instead of blowing us up. The Thalassians were not a forgiving type! They meant that if they couldn’t live on this planet, nobody else should!”

Brett said grimly:

“The Aspasians aren’t a forgiving type either. I think it’s certain the other recent visitors are Aspasians. I found a base on the other side of the world. It would be logical for them to make a base there. Nobody else.”

Halliday’s eyebrows almost met in the center of his forehead.

“No! What are they like?”

“Technology about late twentieth century, apparently,” said Brett. “But I’m not sure. They’ve rockets, chemical explosive, missile weapons, artificial fabrics and know electronics fairly well. They have good radars. Their females have high social standing,—they adventure and take risks as the men.”

“Evidently the base was not occupied,” said Halliday briskly. “In any case, we have our work—and plenty to work with! This was really an incredible, find, Carstairs! I’ve completed the restoration of a skull, by the way, to the way the Thalassians must have looked in life. I’ll show you.”

He swung about to a shelf behind him and lifted down what appeared to be a portrait bust. He put it proudly on his desk.

“They had six fingers,” he observed zestfully,” and were quite stocky of build. But they were bipeds, a little shorter than we are, they wore clothing…”

Brett looked. He said wryly:

“You’ve made the ears pointed. They were like ours. And prognathous jaw or no prognathous jaw, we’d pass for them.”

“How do you know?” demanded Halliday.

“An Aspasian girl saw me,” said Brett unhappily. “And she screamed.”

He carefully related the affair of the island. Halliday protested:

“But the exploring ship saw no sign of life on Aspasia!”

“Maybe they hid,” said Brett tiredly. “Maybe they thought the Franklin was a Thalassian ship, built by some who’d managed to live through, as they did. Maybe for that exact reason they came over to Thalassia to fight it out here: to end the danger to their race forever. It looks like that. I thought they’d be even more anxious to track me home than to kill me, so I found a storm cloud and stayed in it till it came ashore, and I came down to camp here with the rain.”

Halliday winced. But then he said hopefully:

“Very wise! Very! But we are very well hidden, and this is a very large world. And we’ve not much to fear from creatures with no more than a twentieth century technology.”

“Unless,” said Brett, “they’ve got twentieth century desperation. I suspect they are desperate. I think they’re ready to fight to the last creature among them to kill every one of us. I think they’ll hunt us as we’d hunt the devil himself—which is what they think we are!”

There was a shouting at the entrance to the cave. It was Kent’s voice. Among the echoes, the words were indistinct, but Brett thought he might have called something about a rocket. He shouted again. Halliday got up and walked briskly toward the sound.

The floor of the cave bounced violently. The lights went out. There was a crash like the end of the world, which lasted for a long half minute. In the cave, things fell. Walls creaked. Sections of roof plunged down with thunderous impacts.

Then Kent’s voice sounded in the abysmal blackness.

“I heard a rocket blast in the rain. I yelled. Then the bomb went off.” His voice, usually toneless, quavered a little. Then he got it under control. “It was downstream, about where we keep the fliers, around the curve in the river bank. Lucky there is high ground between. But I saw the light. Atom bomb.” Then he added calmly, “The shelf of rock fell down. We’re buried in here.”

Halliday rose to the emergency in his own manner.

“Somebody bring hand-lights and a counter,” he snapped. “See if anyone’s hurt!” Then he said irritably, “If they’re Aspasians, they used cobalt bombs once. I hope they haven’t used one now!”

But they had. Hand-lights came from the place where the supplies were piled. The spreading shelf outside the camp, which had sheltered the cave entrance like a remarkably deep portico, had cracked from the ground shock and its outer edge tilted down into the water of the river. There was a rill which ran underneath it from its upper edge, and ran out again down below. A Geiger counter showed radioactivity. Not much yet, but some screens between the counters and the water identified the radioactive material. Cobalt-60.

Halliday’s voice cracked with exasperation. A cobalt-based bomb had been dropped within a mile of the cave entrance. Obviously, Brett’s idea of hiding in a storm-cloud hadn’t been good enough. When he landed, a bomb dropped. It indicated much better than twentieth century technique. It even looked as if it hadn’t been intended to shoot him down when he approached the island, but only to scare him back home. But when he’d seemed to crash they tried to learn something from the wreck. Yet they’d been pleased when he got away. This was the result.

“We seal up the cave entrance,” snapped Halliday angrily. “We cannot go outside! But there is air within which will not be contaminated immediately. We will think it over.”

Brett helped shovel wet earth to fill the solitary entrance to the cavern with an airtight plug. He raged to himself at the disaster he’d brought on the expedition. He’d been sure that he’d evaded all possible trailing. There had been no radar! Could they have trailed him with infrared? It was late twentieth century too. There was no way to frustrate that sort of trailing.

The Expedition was doomed. Much worse, in six months a ship would come from Earth for its members. That ship would not expect attack. It would be an easy target for the creatures whose ancestors had destroyed all air-breathing life on his planet, and whose descendants were bent upon extermination of the Expedition. They’d smash the Earth-ship. They’d study it. They’d make a fleet of interstellar ships themselves. And, having fought one interplanetary war, they would never risk war against a warned adversary. They’d strike with absolute ruthlessness and ferocity at any other race that could endanger them.

When there was a completely adequate seal filling the cave entrance, Brett reflected with a sort of sickish cynicism that history assuredly repeated itself upon Thalassia. Eight thousand years ago, humanoid creatures had sealed themselves in this same cavern, hopelessly wanting to secure life for their descendants. They’d failed, and their bones lay all about its corridors. Now a dozen humans had sealed themselves in, making the same foredoomed gestures. But they’d have no descendants to try to avenge with booby-traps.

He leaned against a passage wall. That girl would rejoice fiercely if she knew. Maybe she’d been in the rocket that had dropped the bomb. Whatever her ancestry, she came from Aspasia and she had imbibed hatred of Thalassia with her mother’s milk. Thalassians, for that matter, set booby-traps to implement their hatred even after their deaths. The two races had the unforgivable to avenge—near extermination and eons of hiding in the one case. Extinction in the other. There was no way to parley, to explain. There was no way to do anything but die.

Because, of course, outside this sealed cave the rain poured down, washing the deadly radioactives of this last bomb down into the earth itself. Already, to take two breaths above-ground was to die. But presently deadly ground water would come down to this ancient shelter and this cave would again become a lethal chamber.

But it was a large one. After a little, Brett went heavily to the futile conference Halliday was holding. The cave lights were still out, and only hand-lights illuminated the scene. Halliday gesticulated, his thinning white hair stirring as he moved.

“Where’s your floor plan, Morton?” he cried angrily. “The floor plan of the entire cavern! You should have brought it! This is irritating enough, without members of the Expedition acting like helpless school girls! Go get it! Janney! What is the weather outside?” He raised his hand peevishly. “I know it is raining! What is the wind-direction and speed?”

Janney said heavily:

“The wind’s onshore. Naturally! I told you yesterday that a trade wind blows! Of course in a rainstorm it loses force. It probably blows fifteen miles an hour, with gusts up to thirty or more.”

Halliday clapped his hands sharply:

“Understand, everyone! We cannot stay here. We cannot go out of the ordinary exit. We have to find a new exit, or make one. I believe the rock-strata slant down toward the coast. Am I right, Simpson? Yes! It is probable that some of the sealed-off branches of this cave system may reach the surface—or near it—upwind of the bomb crater. They would have been sealed off because they communicated with the air. The seals are to be broken and radioactivity checked in the air coming in…”

Kent spoke, phlegmatic as always:

“Make up packs to carry?”

“Naturally!” snapped Halliday. “This is a most irritating occurrence! We had a perfect site for examination with all conveniences. Now it must be abandoned and it will not be possible to examine it again for years! Everyone should carry his written notes, but artifacts will have to be left behind to leave room for food. It is infuriating!”

He fumed, but Brett found himself admiring Halliday.

The dark and echoing caverns resounded to strange noises, after that. The strangeness was largely due to the blackness which is not normal anywhere on Thalassia. Men examined carefully drawn maps, and found sealing-off walls which blocked extensions of the cave system. All limestone caverns are somewhat similar. One passage might have been blocked off because of a pothole leading to the surface. Another because of an underground stream which would bring radioactivity in its waters. The Geiger counters gave grim news as one after another of the seals were broken. There had probably been only one rocket at a time trailing Brett’s flier, from so great an altitude that he could not detect it. A rocket has not an indefinite flying life. There must have been a relay system to keep on Brett’s track. But there’d been a cobalt-based bomb handy to drop when he went to ground. It would normally have made a continuous lethal fallout over a strip of ground many miles long. In a rainstorm like this, the fallout should be shorter, but vastly more intense.

It was. Air coming in the pierced walls that closed off unknown winding passages showed an intensity of radiation that made Belmont whistle softly.

“Right now,” he told Brett, “the air outside is just about as breathable as so much straight chlorine. It wouldn’t be as painful to the lungs, but the results would be identical.”

Brett helped close up another small opening with mud. Twelve men from Earth, hundreds of light-years from home, were sealed in a cave that had been a tomb for eight thousand years. Unknown stars made speckles of light in the thin blue sky above the rain clouds. At one place a nearby star cluster made a mottled illumination brighter than the local sun. They were on a world of water with but a single continent of land and that was empty of moving life. There was life only in that hopeless cavern underground—and high in the air overhead, hovering until more hovering things should come to drop more death.

Beyond the atmosphere there was nothing at all. From a sufficient distance the globe which was Thalassia could be seen to be distorted, bulging noticeably toward its similarly deformed twin world Aspasia, only a quarter million miles away. They revolved about each other in implacable enmity, turning always the same faces toward each other.

“On Thalassia plants no longer seek to attract insects by bright colors or scent or nectar, because there are no insects. Plants which depended upon insects for fertilization have become extinct. Berry-bearing and fruit-bearing trees no longer compete for the carrying of their seeds by offering fragrance or taste. There are no birds. Even species which formerly found it advantageous to grow thorns for the discouragement of herbivorous animals no longer find the practice serviceable…The flowers have lost their scent and the fruit its savor and even the thorns their sharpness, because there are no animals to take notice…”

A long, long way away there was the yellow sun Elektra, spinning in space, less bright than Sol but nearly as large. Nearer, and rolling sullenly about its primary was the red dwarf satellite-star Rubra. The twin worlds followed it perpetually in its orbit in the Trojan position. From space the dark carbon clouds could be seen upon its surface, forming in perpetual storms through which the fiery red of hell flame could be seen. Further out were more planets, Lucifer and Titan and Argos, giant gas worlds where life had never been. And spinning brilliantly in the glare of Elektra, close in toward it, blazed the little planet Melissa on its erratically inclined orbit, circling Elektra in a year of less than a dozen weeks.

But there was not quite a sameness and a staleness in all the happenings of empty space. Where the twin planets spun about each other there was motion. It was tiny by comparison with the vastness all about. But from the seared and sandy surface of Aspasia small white threads appeared. They stretched toward Thalassia across the gulf. There were many of those threads. They were rocket trails.

The enmity between the planets had not ended. A war fleet roared toward the world that robot rockets had killed before. Life had been found on it again. That life must be destroyed.

The strange, incurious stars watched without emotion.

CHAPTER FIVE

“On Thalassia plants no longer seek to attract insects by bright colors or scent or nectar, because there are no insects. Plants which depended upon insects for fertilization have become extinct. Berry-bearing and fruit-bearing trees no longer compete for the carrying of their seeds by offering fragrance or taste. There are no birds. Even species which formerly found it advantageous to grow thorns for the discouragement of herbivorous animals no longer find the practice serviceable…The flowers have lost their scent and the fruit its savor and even the thorns their sharpness, because there are no animals to take notice…”

Astrographic Bureau Publication 11297,

Appendix to Space Pilot Vol. 460, Sector XXXIV, Page 75.

* * * *

The sound of the surf gave them hope—that and the Geiger counter readings. They climbed and crawled and wormed their way through channels and around glistening-wet bulges of stone. They had ropes around their waists like mountain-climbers, so that no one would fall alone into the sometimes gaping depths they encountered. Once Brett, in the lead, crawled upon his belly for more than a hundred feet with rock touching his back all the way. He could not have done it but for the assurance of the rope that he could be pulled back. Once they had to use a small charge of explosive to break down a mass of calcite which barred the way. They spent hours in the journey. But they went on because to stop or turn backward was to die. And for the last half hour they did have the encouragement of the thunderous sound of surf.

Then they came out quite undramatically from a hole in which there were many brushwood sticks, in the space between the roots of a giant tree. They heard the surf clearly, then. They had crawled more than five miles underground, and were almost at the edge of the beach when they reached the open air.

The jungle which here crowded the shoreline was saturated, but the rain had stopped. They moved in the direction that by convention was called south. A magnetic compass pointed somewhere, and steadily, but it bore no relationship to any astronomical phenomenon and they could not take it seriously. When they moved south, they moved along the shoreline toward their first camp and the shattered Firing Plaza Number One. It was not an especially sensible direction to choose, but they happened to have come out on that side of the river which ran before their late cavern. They needed to get away from there. It was doubtful whether it would be wise to wade a stream that ran through cobalt-contaminated ground.

“If I read our enemies right, now,” said Brett grimly to Halliday, “after underestimating them before, they’ll blast all the area around my landing place as soon as they can get bombs here. But it’s been a long time already.”

Then he considered, and said more grimly still:

“I imagine that I had a rocket with a bomb on board, trailing me all the time, all the way back from the island. The rocket changed from time to time, but always there was a bomb ready. Yet after I did land, the pilot had to putter around in the rainstorm a while before he could find out just where to drop the bomb in order to have it land accurately without endangering his own craft. If they went to all that trouble to track me home, they’ll really go to town on the place I landed! Right?”

Halliday was hiking, with all the others after him, to get away from the neighborhood of the camp. Well away.

“They’ll bomb the surface of the ground,” added Brett, “to knock in any caves or other installations we may hide in. Then I think they’ll use some waterburst bombs to make sure that everything dies—nothing being supposed to be alive—in the biggest area they can imagine us as being in. It sounds extreme, but I think they’ll do it. They mean business!”

Halliday nodded and continued to hike. Janney, behind him, said:

“There’s no day and no night, and the trades blow all the time. But the trades should pick up a little after Elektra rises. More heat. If they want maximum spread of their radioactives, they’ll wait for that. They ought to think us pretty well smashed.”

“We will move slanting inland,” said Halliday, irritably. “There are mountains. There could be updrafts on the slopes to carry even atomic fallout over our heads.”

Brett said no more. They toiled through the forest. There were places where the underbrush was thick, and they moved at a snail’s pace or worse. But there were other places where gigantic solemn tree-trunks rose from shadows so deep that there was heavy twilight and no undergrowth at all. The rain had ended so recently that all trees still dripped. But there was one variety of tree which seemed somehow to gather up water in its broad leaves as if they were cups, then released it all at once. Brett never knew the mechanism, but there were times when water plunged down in coherent masses of gallons. When such a mass of water hit a man, it could knock him down. Sometimes it did. At all times the ground in such shadowed places was practically mud, which clung to their feet and made walking heavy.

Brett found Kent struggling along beside him, phlegmatic as always. Brett said dispassionately:

“If they land and try to track us down on foot they’ll have an easy job of it! Look at the trail we’re leaving! If they have dogs, we’ll be finished! They’ll find us!”

Kent’s features lighted up. Brett had never seen him so animated before.

“Dog,” said Kent pleasedly, “that’s something I know something about! Look here! You say it’s desert on Aspasia where these creatures after us come from?”

“That’s right,” said Brett.

“Then they’ll have dogs or something similar!” said Kent in happy authority. “That I know about! You take a savage who hunts with weapons—he’ll have to start as a hunter to get the idea of weapons with tools coming later. When he lives in a jungle, he lives by stalking. A dog’s no good for stalking! You can’t train an animal to keep quiet while his prey blunders nearer and nearer and then changes his mind and walks away. A dog’s for open-country hunting. You see? He’s to run ahead and bring the hunted creature to bay, and dance about him, barking, until the man comes up and kills the beast. Where you find open country you find dogs. Deserts, too! The Arabs used to have wonderful dogs! So the creatures of Aspasia would need dogs before they got civilized, and they’d keep them after. We did!”

Brett went through a pool of water. Everybody had to wade through that pool.

“Suppose the Aspasians run faster than their—ah—dogs?” he asked drily, though he knew better. He was not able to believe that the girl he’d seen on the island, and whose picture was in his pocket, was an Aspasian. The evidence was past questioning, but he couldn’t accept it. “Suppose they could run as fast as their prey?”

“Then they’d never get civilized,” said Kent promptly, beaming, “Nobody gets civilized unless he gains by it. Unless he needs to! If our ancestors had been able to run down the creatures they hunted, they’d never have bothered with more than clubs. We’d be trotting after rabbits back on Earth, you and I, instead of being here. Eh?”

“I never thought—” Brett stopped.

The ground quivered underfoot. A distinct, unsettled quivering. A tree branch snapped somewhere and came crashing to the ground. The marching party of twelve men stopped and listened. Long seconds later the sound came. It was a crashing, horrific roar. The leaves quivered overhead and a shower of water fell down from among the boughs.

“A bomb,” acknowledged Halliday, looking up from his wrist chronometer. “But well away.” He added firmly, “A solid ground burst. They will bracket their first bomb crater on all sides. Then they’ll drench the area with radioactives from sea water. We will go on.”

He led on. Brett trudged after him. Half an hour later there was another bomb. The delay was almost proof that Halliday had been right about the solid ground aspect. A bomb to be aimed for a particular spot had to wait for the radiation cloud from a previous bomb to clear away, so it could be aimed.

Four times, as they struggled through the forest, they heard the detonations. If some Thalassian hideaway had brought survivors through the years of poisoned atmosphere, and if descendants of its original occupants had at long last come out to the light of day—why—that bombing should end any chance of further emergings. If in addition an area miles wide and deep were made uninhabitable by spray—then all danger of the return of the life to Thalassia at that place would become unthinkable.

The men marched on. Hours passed. They began to lag and stumble when they reached the foothills inland. There Halliday allowed a halt. They had come fifteen miles, nearly, from the place where the cave branch ended. They were worn out.

“But we do not know,” said Halliday precisely, “what our enemies’ plan will be. I expect the cobalt contamination of a considerable area. It has not happened yet. But we must go on.”

Yet he allowed a rest. Brett regarded the packs each man had made up from himself. There were oddities. Belmont carried four Geiger counters and their power packs. The packs were negligible in weight, but the utility of Geiger counters to fugitives on Thalassia was debatable. Janney had his thermometers and his barograph—Brett saw him winding it—besides a heavy notebook and his food. Another pack included two cameras and an absurd load of film. There was a neat assortment of insulated wire strapped to another pack still, and a tiny pick and whisk for uncovering archeological specimens…Every man in the Expedition had brought along something representative of his specialty. But Brett doubted that there was a saw or an axe or a good-sized knife in the company.

He himself was carrying his reproduction of an ancient bazooka, and his pockets were stuffed with the one-inch plastic rocket shells he’d made for it to fire. Since there were no living animals on the planet, and their enemies were armed with atomic bombs, he was no more rational than the rest.

After a time, Brett moved up to where Halliday sat limply on the ground. Halliday was probably the oldest man of the dozen, but he had forced the pace until even the younger men were weary.

“I still feel disgraced,” said Johnny, “but I wanted to ask you something.”

Halliday said sharply:

“I authorized your journey to the island, and I told you that I considered the manner of your return quite sound. If there was a mistake—and there was!—I share in it. But what do you want to ask?”

Brett hesitated, and shrugged.

“I suppose it is, whither are we drifting? We’ve got six months to wait before a ship comes for us. When it comes, it will probably be attacked, and we’ve no way to warn it. We haven’t more than a ghost of a chance of living six months, for that matter. I’d just like to know if you have any plans for our survival and ultimate rescue.”

Halliday sputtered. Then he said, in irritation:

“Carstairs, there is a time to act and a time to plan! At the moment, we need to act simply to gain time to plan! I have no plans for survival for the moment. I do not have plans as yet for contact with the rescue ship when it comes. But I have months in which to think them out! I shall deal with it in due order of importance. The essential thing at this moment is to get out of the area those Aspasians are going to drench with sea spray! We have, to be precise, to get them off our tails so we can take measures for the future!”

Brett smiled warmly at the older man. Halliday was bluffing, but it was a good bluff. Brett liked it. He said:

“I was just talking to Kent. Putting myself in the enemy’s place.”

Halliday’s eyebrows rose.

“Well?”

“If Earth’s old civilization had been smashed from a planet as—say—Thalassia,” said Brett, “and we’d managed, we thought, to wipe out the Thalassians: and we’d built up our culture again but were still scared of them, so we made a journey across space to make sure…If we found creatures on the planet that we thought were our old enemies, we’d do exactly what the Aspasians have done. We’d hate them like the devil! After we’d trailed one home and bombed him, we’d drench the place with radioactive sea spray. But just to make sure, we’d do one thing more.”

Halliday said irritably:

“Come to the point! What would we do?”

“We’d send home for dogs,” said Brett. “And we’d go around the outside of the area we’d made deadly, and make sure that our enemies hadn’t come out on foot. We’d know they hadn’t flown out. But the dogs would tell us if they’d walked out.”

Halliday stared. Then he groaned.

“Carstairs! You drive me mad! You think of things! There is no reason to suspect the Aspasians of having dogs! But it is so infernally possible that they have! It would be like them to poison the air of a world, and then go home and play happily with pet animals! Of course!”

Brett said hurriedly:

“The only thing is that since Aspasia is mostly desert, it’s not likely they’d have much experience of following a scent that was faulted by running water.”

“Go away!” snapped Halliday. “And don’t come talking to me unless you think of something else.”

In ten minutes more he rose and summoned the party to further journeying. The pause had seemed to stiffen unaccustomed muscles, but they started off. In twenty minutes they came to a small stream. Halliday faced back.

“We walk in this brook,” he said peevishly, “in case we will be trailed with scent-trailing animals from Aspasia. No one is to put foot on dry land under any circumstances!”

He led the way downstream. Two miles, and the brook was joined by a slightly larger one. Halliday turned and traced it back toward its source. He was followed by the line of burdened, weary figures, splashing in his wake.

An hour later the ground trembled underfoot. They were well up in the hills, then. They looked. An enormous column of darkness still uncoiled toward the sky. It was very far away. It spread to the familiar mushroom shape as they stared. It would be thirty thousand feet high, on this planet of less-than-Earth gravity. Its stalk was sturdy and thick. It was a water burst bomb. Janney glanced at his wrist. He’d been right. Elektra would be rising.

Halliday went on. And on. And on. The ground shook again. Later it shook still and again and again. There was a wall of gruesome darkness against the sky. It loomed many times higher than mountains. They were looking at the row of dark though unsubstantial giants when a seventh column arose.

They went on. They climbed and waded and climbed. They came to a narrow pass between two mountain flanks. A stream gushed out of the mountainside and fell forty feet and then came splashing down among stones.

It wasn’t the end of their watery highway. There was a pool below it. There were two streams flowing from the pool. They had followed one up to this spot. Now they followed the other down to the other side of the mountains.

But the atomic cloud was moving inland. They looked up behind them, and looming far above the range they had crossed there was the misty forefront of the cloud of death. It was composed of water vapor lifted up for miles and blown to droplets and those blown to smaller ones until it was the thinnest of fogs. But deadly.

Halliday stared pugnaciously up at it. Then he chuckled.

“Gentlemen,” he said with a jerky gesture, “there is an omen if you happen to be superstitious. I advise it in this case for the pleasure it brings. Elektra must be above the horizon, though we cannot see it for this next range of hills. But its light strikes the atom cloud. And—do you not see a rainbow?”

It was not a very good rainbow, but it was there. It was strong in the red, and lurid in the yellow, but the blue was deficient. Still, it was a rainbow.

When they halted for the equivalent of a night’s rest, Halliday called Brett to him with a crook of his finger.

“Yes?” said Brett.

“I appoint you,” said Halliday firmly, “to work out a plan. You irritate me. You think of things. Now I assign you a thing to think of!”

“I’ll try,” said Brett. “What is it?”

Halliday puffed a little. He was not a young man. He was exhausted. But his manner was dour and irritable as always.

“I think we are clear for the moment,” he said peevishly. “If that atomic cloud will only settle over the trail we left, so that no misbegotten Aspasian can take any equivalent of a dog and find our footprints before we began walking in stream beds—If that happens, they will believe us dead.”

“They should,” agreed Brett.

“But,” rasped Halliday, “it will not follow that they will think they have killed all Thalassians—such as they think us—in killing us few. They will hunt this continent over. They must be firmly convinced that we are devils and resolved that none of us must stay alive. They hate us as we hate the devil!”

“It looks like it,” admitted Brett. “After all, they’ve only seen one man—me.”

“Yes,” snapped Halliday. “There is only one answer. Put your mind on it. Find some way to make friends with them!”

CHAPTER SIX

“…The continent Chios is…the only considerable land mass on the planet. It is thickly covered with vegetation, and its former inhabitants must have had cultivated crops and very probably a dense population. However, its constant daylight negates the idea of the introduction of Earth plants, and the poor flavor and indifferent quality of such edible plants as are known makes subsistence on its native products a far from attractive prospect. In case of emergency, nourishment will be found…

Astrographic Bureau Publication 11297.

Appendix to Space Pilot, Vol. 460. Sector XXXIV. P. 80.

* * * *

There was no night or day upon Thalassia. In theory, at this particular part of its year the sun Elektra rose from somewhere along its southeastern horizon and for not quite one hundred and fifty hours crept upward in the eastern sky, and then for the same length of time descended slowly toward the northeast. As it set, the star cluster Canes Venatici rose in the southwest and rose for a similar number of hours and declined for the same to the northwest. At other seasons these directions were reversed, and there was also a time when the sun rose due south and set due north. Then there were eclipses. All of which resulted from the fact that Thalassia and Aspasia revolved about each other once in twenty-five days (Earth measurement) with their common axis in the plane of the ecliptic, and had no diurnal rotation at all. But the important thing was that Thalassia had no clear-cut day and night.

Wherefore time passed confusingly. The twelve who had come to study the fallen civilization of the planet had become fugitives, without hope. They had no shelter, only such food supplies as nourished without satisfying them, and no prospects of any improvement.

They did know of some few coarse fruits which could be eaten, and there were half a dozen varieties of fresh water fish that were not unwholesome. The absence of fruit-eating birds or animals had resulted in eight thousand years of lack of natural selection and had produced part of this situation. The fresh water fish were mostly recent adaptations of marine forms which had moved into the ecological niches left when the brooks and rivers of Chios ran deadly poison down to the sea. Eating grew monotonous for the twelve who hid.

There was no alternation of day and night. It seemed to Brett that their purposeless migration went on for years. They marched until they were tired, and lay down and slept, and got up and marched again until they were tired. They grew whiskery and unkempt, they loathed the food they had to eat, and all ideas of time lapsed in the unending day.

Objectively, they crossed a wide valley and came to an inland mountain chain, and followed that southward. Nothing of any consequence happened at any time. Once they saw a spot where an obvious bomb crater had been blasted into the side of a mountain. It made a gigantic scar which even eight thousand years had not healed over. But that discovery, like all others, had no meaning.

Then, one day—one march—one period in which they were all awake—they came to a broad valley which would surely have made a perfect location for a city. And it had been. The center was gone, blasted flat and covered with jungle. But about the edges of the obliterated blast area there were crumbling structures of stone. There were tumbling walls, and terraces distorted by tree roots, and other matters of that kind. The Thalassia-Aspasia Expedition could not resist the lure of it. They carefully did not talk about the complete hopelessness of their position, but here were ruined artifacts and structures, and they yearned over them.

They stopped to dig, and poke, and pry, and measure, and zestfully to dispute with each other over the meaning of this architectural feature and that. It was not a reasonable thing to do, but there was no purpose in being reasonable.

Brett Carstairs could not join them. He could deduce the technical processes of former years, but there was nothing for him to work on. He tended to brood over the futility of all things. He brooded also over the danger to humankind if the ship that would come presently for the Expedition were smashed by the crew that had driven the Expedition into the wilds. And there was the girl. Her existence was patently impossible, and definitely undeniable. She must be fiercely rejoicing in the conviction that he had been killed. And Brett looked at her picture and did not rejoice.

They hadn’t seen a living thing since leaving the coastline. They never should, unless they were discovered. Then they might see the Aspasians who would destroy them. But Brett brooded, while the rest of the Expedition climbed and crawled and zestfully investigated the ruins of a shattered suburb of an obliterated city of Thalassia.

The second day of that pastime, they saw a ship of the enemy. It was a new type ship, and it was evidently hunting for signs of living things to be killed. It was not a rocket, this time. Rockets move fast, but in atmosphere they are not economical of fuel, and on Thalassia all fuel had to be brought across space. So this was a new type ship.

Brett discovered it as he sat drearily brooding and wondering how on Thalassia Halliday could imagine making friends with creatures who considered them devils out of hell, or worse, who must be killed at any cost. The ship came into sight above the mountains.

It was melon-shaped, with pointed ends. Its round sides glinted silver. It moved very deliberately indeed, almost hovering. There were ports along its bottom, but not elsewhere. It moved by occasional jettings of rocket fuel from astern.

Brett called sharply, and men passed the word. Within seconds the personnel of the Expedition were invisible, hiding behind bushes and trees. Brett slipped down to join them where they stared at the vessel hungrily. They were a disreputable crew, now. Nobody shaved. They did not look like a scientific group. Not at all.

“It’s a space ship all right,” said Kent phlegmatically. “But is it ours? Is there an Earth type like that?” Halliday snapped:

“Human spacecraft aren’t streamlined. No sense in streamlining for emptiness. That’s an Aspasian ship. Hunting us!”

Something teasing and vague and annoying tickled the back of Brett’s mind. He knew something, but he didn’t know what it was.

“Now why,” asked Janney, “does it use rockets? Rockets won’t move a mass like that! It must be two hundred feet long! Thousands of tons!”

The rockets of the ship flared again. Brett saw a long cord dangling from its forward end. Why should a space ship have a cord dangling from its bow? It moved visibly faster when its rockets did fire. No rocket could visibly stir a mass of thousands of tons, such as a two hundred foot space ship. No such small rockets as this, anyhow! The ship approached the mountains.

Its bow suddenly whipped around all of ten degrees, and then slowly swung back. Then Brett noticed that the ship was not moving along the line of its own axis. It did not progress precisely where it pointed. It also moved a trifle sidewise, as if something pushed laterally against it while it forged ahead. Which was impossible in a space ship weighing thousands of tons.

Then the fact clicked in Brett’s mind. He cried out. “They are twentieth century technologists! That’s no space ship. That’s a dirigible!”

Halliday blinked. Brett’s words almost tumbled over each other:

“It’s a balloon, Halliday! It’s a bag filled with helium, and pushed by a rocket! An old, forgotten way of traveling by air! It was in use for less than half a century! They don’t need motors to stay aloft! They float! The Aspasians have sent for them because they don’t have fliers! They use these dirigible balloons at home, and rockets for space travel! Now they need to make an exhaustive hunt, they sent for these! I have lived to see the day when a balloon was used again…”

Things fitted together with precision. Aspasia was a desert planet. Fliers would never be developed in a desert area, of course. Their motors would be unreliable, at first, and over desert a failed motor would mean a dead passenger. But balloons would float on, even if their motors failed, until some inhabited area was reached. Of course! On Aspasia fliers would never get through their primitive stage. Balloons would be preferred, not because they could be carried closer to perfection, but because they were safer while still very far from it! Of course! To make a painstaking, inch-by-inch search of a continent, the Aspasians would import these balloons, and they would be effective.

The silvery, melon-shaped object rose and fell in a wind gust past a mountain peak. The rockets jetted furiously and it climbed against the wind and went over the mountains and away. Brett racked his brains for details of this forgotten mode of transportation.

Next mealtime his idea came to him. The food was even less appetizing than usual. There would be food in that dirigible balloon. It would be the only palatable foodstuff in hundreds of miles.

He led Halliday aside.

“I propose a gamble,” he told the Expedition’s leader. “It could get us all killed. Or it could get us something we could probably eat. Or—it might be a way to make friends. Do you want to take a chance?”

“Probably,” said Halliday, frowning. “What is the idea?”

Halliday was emaciated, now. The food and the journeying on foot had not been good for him. But he was still the leader.

“The firing plaza was booby-trapped,” said Brett persuasively, “and the cave. So this city’s probably booby-trapped too! Now, if we can only make sure…”

It was a hare-brained scheme. It was not at all the sort of project that would be authorized in a sombre policy conference before an expedition set out from Earth. One had to be desperate and half-starved and practically without hope in order to conceive of it. But Brett made it sound remarkably plausible. At that, however, Halliday pointed out that it might not work but simply lead to an unbearable concentration of search just where they were.

But he approved it.

So Belmont abandoned archeology and went over the center of the city with his Geiger counters. The man who’d brought insulated wire with him, because he wanted to, made investigations. Eventually he contrived an induction balance. With that and knowledge learned from the booby-trap in the cavern which had not gone off, he determined facts about arrangements under the ground that had not been disturbed for many centuries. There were four bombs underground. It should be possible to set them off.

The Expedition became feverishly busy up on a mountainside. The electronicist constructed an object of wire strung on sticks cut from small trees with pocket knives. He proudly detailed the mathematical principles involved in the reflection of a tight beam of high frequency electricity. A communications man magnificently took a hand-light—brought nobody knew why through the perpetual day of Thalassia—and used stray objects from the pockets of the others to make a generator of microwaves out of iron particles in vegetable oil. It strongly resembled the apparatus with which Hertz first demonstrated the existence of electromagnetic radiation, in the nineteenth century. The hand-lamp battery, of course, would give some hundreds of watts power for a few seconds only.

Then the Thalassia-Aspasia Expedition devoted itself to the project of building the largest possible stock of dry branches and brushwood. Twelve men worked at it for three days. They planned, indeed, as if for a forest fire.

When the time came, Brett set light to the key area and made for the mountainside. He was halfway there before the brush fuse burned to produce an appreciable quantity of smoke. Then it abruptly began to pour out thick, curling masses of brown vapor which was not supposed to rise from the surface of Thalassia, because there should be nobody living there.

When he reached the ledge on the mountainside where the Expedition waited, the whiskery and disreputable-seeming characters were fairly dancing with excitement. But for a long, long time nothing happened. Smoke rose up in a column toward the sky. It was visible for a very great distance indeed. But nobody came. For two hours.

Then Halliday fairly squealed in agitation:

“There’s a ship!” he cried. “They saw it! It’s coming!”

From far over the mountains a ship was coming with jets of rocket fumes behind it. It bounced in the wind currents of the mountains. It came nearer, and nearer and nearer. It arrived at a point five miles from the brushwood fire. It swept around to see it from upwind, nearer where the Expedition hopped and squirmed in its agitation. It was four miles from the mountain flank and still coming. It was midway between the Expedition and the blaze which now covered half a square mile of jungle.

“Try Booby-trap One,” commanded Brett eagerly. “If it misses try the rest in turn! And don’t look—”

The members of the Expedition sank down behind sheltering boulders. Brett, himself, ducked to where he was sheltered from direct sight of the booby-trap area, but where he could still see the bobbing airship. Brett shielded his eyes with his hands against possible flashing of light.

The electronicist at the tight beam projector ducked his head and stabbed twin wires together. There was a sharp, harsh, buzzing sound. Down in the valley where the induction balance had said a bomb lay buried, a beam of high frequency radio waves hit hard. They were very much like the waves a tripod beacon had given off at Firing Plaza One. They induced high frequency currents underground.

There was the fierce bright light of the dawn of time, with all the cosmos turned incandescent for an instant. The ground rose up and bumped Brett fiercely. Then there was a sound as of doomsday, and rocks and pebbles rolled and clattered down the mountain flank.

Brett saw the shock wave of the explosion hit the dirigible. It was not a sound wave, but an expanding sphere of pure compression. He saw the silvery, seemingly solid metal but actual cloth bag dent in, exactly as if pushed inward by a giant thumb.

Then the balloon popped like a rubber toy.

The atom bomb cloud rose and rose to the high heavens. It formed a mushroom shape. But the tradewinds blew over the mountain tops as over Thalassia’s sea. The cloud curled and curved, and lightnings flashed and thunder rolled in it. But it would go away inland, too.

The Thalassia-Aspasia Expedition plunged down the mountainside in a yelling small horde before the balloon had reached the ground. It was a remarkable descent for the balloon, at that. Its bag had been burst in a single monstrous rip, but it did not crash headlong. As the whole object plummeted, the bag material caught in the stiffening framework inside its former hull. It acted, though inadequately, to check the fall. The balloon reeled and swayed because of that parachuting action, and it crashed into the branches of a great tree, and after a fashion skidded out of them, then landed in a tangle of splintering brace members on the ground.

Brett lost sight of it as he plunged down with the reproduction of an antique bazooka in his hand. He used the bazooka as a staff, in his haste. Then he ran, and so did all the others until, panting, they came in sight of the debris.

But they saw something more than debris. There was the brightly clad figure of one of the ship’s crew on the ground. Another figure worked furiously, not at the spilled-out body but at something caught in the splintered framework. It came clear. It was a ball of considerable size. It loosened and came free as if it had been designed to be dropped. The straining figure pushed it fiercely until it was near the prone figure on the ground. Then the laboring stopped, and that crew member stared desperately at the sky, and then fiercely all around.

Halliday groaned between pantings.

“An atomic bomb!” he gasped. “They’ll set it off—to take us with them—”

Brett raged. Then he heard his own voice shouting: “Spread out, everybody! Show yourselves but don’t go closer!”

The figure heard his shout. It whirled upon him. It saw him and his companions. But they stayed behind. Brett would have shouted again, but that his breath had left him.

He walked on, swallowing, his reproduction of an ancient bazooka dangling in his hand. The figure by the object that must be a bomb—was a girl. It was the girl whose picture he had in his pocket, or at the least her identical twin. She regarded him with a terrible fierceness.

Brett walked forward, trying to get his breath back and his mind straight. He’d thought of food, but now he thought of something else. The figure on the ground stirred feebly. It turned its head. It was a man. Human. Bearded. Bearded! This particular situation was agonizing. In inherited, acquired, instinctive, legendary, and religious hatred of all things Thalassian—because of what Thalassia had done to her world aeons since—this girl was hungrily ready to set off that atom bomb. She would die in its flame, but so would Brett. At the moment, the other eleven members of the Thalassia-Aspasia Expedition might not. She waited in a terrible impatience for them to come closer.

Brett stopped. She moved toward the bomb, turning only to regard him with eyes that seemed to flame. She reached out her hand.

And Johnny did the only possible, the only obvious and inevitable thing. She was about to detonate the atomic bomb that had been the ship’s sole armament. Because in so doing she would surely kill one individual she considered a Thalassian. Her own life was a cheap price to pay for that achievement, and she might bag the others too. She moved to detonate the bomb.

Brett blew it up.

His action was instinct, but also it was sound sense. Because an atomic bomb contains remarkably little explosive. It is different from all other bombs in that what explosive it contains exists only to move slugs of fissionable material into a critical mass which then detonates. There is no atomic explosive unless there is a critical mass. Until it is actually fired, an atomic bomb is a rather delicate piece of mechanism only.

Brett’s bazooka-shell hit the case. The rocket fuel in the shell blew. It smashed in the case. It jammed the delicate mechanism. The actual explosive in the bomb flared smokily, but it was not even enough to singe the girl beside it. Brett plunged forward and grabbed her before she could take any further measures.

* * * *

There was great confusion, then Kent came to Brett and said phlegmatically:

“That whiskered man’s got a broken leg. Better set it, eh?”

“I would,” agreed Brett. He stared at the girl, both of whose wrists he held firmly. She returned his gaze with eyes which had ceased to burn as flames, and now were filled with an absolute, stunned astonishment.

Halliday came up a little later.

“Carstairs!” he said irritably. “That man with a beard—He is a man, isn’t he?”

“I hope so!” said Brett with deep earnestness.

He continued to look at the girl. She opened her mouth to catch her breath in purest bewilderment.

“He’s been pulling our beards!” said Halliday angrily. “He seemed astonished when we set his leg. He almost fainted when he counted our fingers. I can see that! We’ve got five fingers and the Thalassians had six. But why the devil should he want to pull beards? Every one of us, separately! He can’t seem to get over the fact that we have five fingers and grow whiskers! He’s got a beard!”

“Maybe,” said Brett, “the Thalassians didn’t have beards. Which may be why he wears one. Maybe—I’ll see.”

Gently and respectfully but very firmly, he lifted the girl’s right hand to his chin. She had already stared at his fingers. Now she grabbed at his beard. Johnny’s beard was no more than half an inch long but she pulled it. Hard.

She called in an excited, agitated voice to the bearded man whose leg was now in splints. Then she addressed Brett, pouring out a flood of unintelligible phrases. Halliday looked on with a cynical relief.

“She seems now,” he observed, “to be neither notably ferocious nor remarkably afraid. I suspect that if you turn her loose she will probably signal for help. I only hope she’ll explain that we aren’t Thalassians and that we have five fingers and pullable beards! I’d never have guessed that the way to make friends with these people was shoot at an atom bomb and let my fingers be counted and my whiskers pulled!”

“Yes,” said Johnny absorbedly. He loosened his grip on the girl’s wrists. She looked at him with bright, still-surprised eyes. She looked pleased, too.

“Carstairs!” fumed Halliday. “See if you can ask her how the hell human beings got out here—were here when back home they were hunting mammoths—if she’s human—talk to her and find out what we’ve got to know or go crazy! They can’t come from Earth! Where did they come from?”

“I’m—getting ready to ask now,” said Brett.

He fumbled in his pocket and found the locket he’d picked up on Firing Plaza One. He handed it to the girl. She exclaimed, and called something to the bearded man. He grunted, staring at the hands and beards of the members of the Expedition and plainly making painful but drastic readjustments of all his previous opinions. The girl looked back at Brett, expectant. He beamed suddenly. She smiled back.

He tapped himself on the chest.

“Brett,” he said.

She cocked her head on one side, puzzled. Then she brightened. She tapped him on the chest.

“Br-r-rette!” she said happily.

Communication between theoretically intelligent beings of two different star systems had begun.

THE EINSTEIN-ROSEN HUNTER-GATHERER SOCIETY, by George S. Walker

A light spring rain fell in Mount Tabor Park. After midnight, the only light filtering through the rain came from the city around the park and the lamps around the reservoirs. For an instant, a black sphere two meters in diameter hovered in a clearing. It exploded with a clap of thunder that shook water high into the air from surrounding evergreen trees.

A person dropped to the ground from where the sphere had been, crouched to peer through the rain in all directions, then ran deeper into the forest.

* * * *

Justin was in the room he called the feed-and-breed room when the outer door to his office opened with a chime. He frantically pushed the small animal he was holding back into its cage. Tossing his long black hair back from his forehead, he stepped out of the room and shut the door behind him.

A young blonde in a camouflage sweatsuit smiled at him. She stood in front of the workbench he used as his reception counter. In her arms she held a very broken-looking notebook PC.

“Can you fix this?”

“Umm…” The laptop looked like it had been hit by a truck. The young woman, about his age, was pretty.

“Your sign downstairs said Computer Consulting and Repairs,” she said.

“Some are more repairable than others.”

“When I turn it on, it beeps a bunch of times.”

“That’s a POST death beep. Power On Self Test.”

“Oh.” She looked disappointed.

“Do you need the data off the hard drive? I might be able to recover that.”

She handed him her laptop.

“How did this happen?”

“I sort of dropped it.”

“Off a building?” Both hinges were broken and the LCD glass was cracked. The ribbon cable between the clamshell halves was exposed.

Something fell with a crash in the feed-and-breed room.

“Excuse me for a second,” said Justin. He strode to the door and opened it partway, blocking her view.

One of the birdlike dragons, the one he’d just put in its cage, flew out.

Justin’s head whirled to look at the woman. Her jaw had dropped, and she stared at the little creature flapping around the room on leathery wings. Damn.

“I’ve never seen…” the woman breathed.

“Just like the Discovery Channel,” Justin said, hoping she thought they were common, and not an endangered species. All he needed was for a total stranger to report him to the feds for importing and raising exotics.

“What is it?”

“Draco patagonius. It’s not mine,” he lied. “I’m pet-sitting for a friend.”

“It’s from Patagonia? Is this one just a hatchling? It’s not much bigger than a sparrow.”

“No, it’s a year old.” He tried to entice it to land on his arm.

It fluttered around the room, finally landing on the workbench right in front of the woman. Its pale green neck arched up toward her face, the tongue flickering in and out.

“It’s sooo cute. Does it breathe fire?”

“Of course not. But he bites.”

“What does he eat?”

“Besides fingers? Cockroaches are a favorite.”

Smaug’s wings were folded up now, and he hopped on top of the broken computer, prying at the keys with the claws at the front of his wings.

“Stop that!” said Justin. He caught Smaug and held him carefully with both hands so he couldn’t fly away.

“Don’t take him away,” she said. “I want to look.”

“You’ve really never seen one before?”

She shook her head. “I’m from Michigan.”

There’s no National Geographics in Michigan? he thought. No zoos? It was like not knowing about bats.

She peered at the little dragon he held, which regarded her with yellow reptilian eyes. Smaug tried to scratch Justin with his hind claws.

“Can I touch him?” she asked.

Justin nodded, and she gently stroked Smaug’s scaly skin. The dragon stared at her as if hypnotized. His pink tongue flicked in and out of his mouth.

“How can there be dragons?” she whispered, barely audible.

“What?”

“It flies like a bird. It’s not just a gliding lizard. I wonder…I wonder if your friend would sell him to me.”

“No! I mean, I’m sure he wouldn’t. He’s not even supposed to be letting me keep it.”

“Oh.”

She continued petting the dragon, and Justin studied her face. She seemed to have forgotten about her laptop.

“I suppose there are books about them, videos, stickers, plush toys, eh?” she said.

“Of course. Hard to believe you don’t know about them.”

“I thought they were mythical.”

“Well, that, too. St. George and the Dragon, Chinese dragons…”

“Disney’s Sleeping Beauty,” she continued for him. “Beowulf, The Hobbit…”

He nodded. “You’re not from around here, are you?”

“Michigan.”

“The Michigan That Time Forgot?”

“Something like that.”

“Welcome to Portland. What’s your name?”

“Buttercup. And you’re Justin. I read the building directory before I climbed the stairs. It looks like you live here, too.”

“Yeah, it cuts expenses. Would you like me to recover your hard drive, Buttercup?”

“No, I need the computer working again.”

“Oh. Well, sorry I couldn’t help you, but you’ll be better off with a new laptop anyway.”

“Eh? No, I want you to fix it. Or take a look at it, at least. And talk to your friend about this little guy. I really, really want him. Just see what you can do, and I’ll come back late afternoon, O.K.?”

He gave her a look of disbelief. It was nearly noon.

“Thanks, Justin. You’re wonderful.”

* * * *

Buttercup smiled at him as she came in around four PM. Justin had made sure his dragons were locked up this time.

“It’s a stolen laptop,” he told her. “The serial number’s been flagged.”

She swallowed. “I didn’t steal it.”

“Maybe not. Maybe you pulled it out of a dumpster on your way to see me. Did you know you left your USB drive plugged into it?”

“Eh? Did I?”

“It’s more than a USB drive. Do you know what happened when I plugged it into one of my computers?”

“You looked at all my files?”

“No. I think it looked at all of mine.”

“Really?”

“Who do you work for?” he asked. “Customs? Fish and Wildlife?”

“I didn’t know about your dragons when I came in here.”

“Then where did you get the USB drive?”

“Michigan.”

He handed her back her laptop. “I think our business here is done.”

She unplugged the USB drive and put it in her purse, but made no move to leave. “What if you only had three days to find a way to save the world?”

“What?”

“This is day one.”

“What does this have to do with me?”

“You’re the one who knows how.”

“Boy, have you got the wrong guy.”

“You’re not Justin?”

“Not your Justin.”

“That’s for sure, eh?” She opened her purse. “Can you take a picture of me before I go, just to prove I was here?”

He eyed her skeptically as she handed him a little Kodak. He glanced at the front: 20X Optical Zoom, NiteVision. There was no flash. The lens had an iridescent look, like a closeup of an insect’s eye. He turned the camera toward her and pressed the telephoto button. It was like looking through a telescope, but brighter. He could see every pore on her skin.

“What the hell kind of lens is this?”

“An origami lens. Prismatic. You’ve never seen one?”

“You get this in dragon-free Michigan?”

She nodded. “Just press the button on top.”

“I know how to use a camera.”

She smiled for the picture.

“Three days?” he said.

She nodded solemnly and walked out the door.

He wished he’d erased her USB drive.

* * * *

Around 2 AM the next morning, Justin’s door buzzer rang. Repeatedly. Groggily, he went to the door and opened it.

“Can I sleep here?” asked Buttercup.

“What?” He was still half-asleep.

“On your reception couch.” She pointed.

“Do you know what time it is?”

“Day two.”

“Why are you doing this to me?”

“I just need a place to spend the night.”

“There’s a motel less than a mile from here.”

“I don’t have any money.”

“Don’t you know anyone else in Portland?”

“Please, Justin.”

She was soaking wet from the rain outside. He stepped aside to let her in.

“Don’t steal anything,” he said.

“I’m not that kind of person.”

“I don’t know what kind of person you are.” He went to get her a towel. “Don’t they know about umbrellas in Michigan?”

* * * *

When his alarm went off the next morning, he heard the shower running. He tiptoed out to the reception area and looked around, but her purse was nowhere in sight. He wanted to look at her camera again.

When Buttercup came out of his bathroom, she was wearing the same sweatsuit as the day before. It was still damp.

“Did you sleep in those clothes?”

“No. I wrung them out and slept in the nude.”

Justin had a short coughing fit. “Don’t you have a shopping cart out on the street somewhere?”

“I left all my designer gowns in Michigan.”

“Uh-huh. Help yourself to breakfast while I shower.”

“I don’t eat.”

“What, you’re an android?”

“Your food might poison me.”

“Is that what they taught you in the asylum?”

He showered. When he came out, she was sitting at one of his computers. She turned around guiltily.

“Looking for something?” he asked.

“A way to save the world.”

She was on the portable electronics page of amazon.com.

“By shopping?”

She closed the browser. “That’s Plan B.”

He went to the kitchen to fix a bagel for breakfast. “Sure I can’t get you anything?”

“Bottled water is the only thing that’s safe.”

He tossed her one. “What happens in two days?”

“Your life becomes Buttercup-free.”

“No, I mean the world.”

“It doesn’t end yet. That’s just how long I have here to find a solution.”

“How does it end? Locusts?”

“No. MSDs.”

“Michigan School Districts?”

“Matter Surpluses and Deficits.”

“And I’m supposed to have the solution?”

She shook her head. “You’re too clueless.”

He thought Buttercup was the clueless one.

“Want to sell me your dragon?” she asked.

“You don’t have any money. Trade for your camera?”

She shook her head. “I need it.”

“I’ll throw in one of mine.”

“Yours are useless. Your JPEGs aren’t the same.”

“What? JPEG is an international standard.”

“We do things differently in Michigan.”

Justin laughed. “Let me plug yours in. I’ll print the picture I took of you yesterday.”

She took the camera out of her purse.

He fished through his cables till he found one that fit her camera and plugged it in. File Manager listed 427 JPEG files on her camera. He tried to open one.

Unsupported Graphic Format.

He looked at her. She gave him a wry smile and took her camera back.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“Buttercup.”

“Buttercup is a Powerpuff Girl. No one names their kid after a cartoon character.”

She shrugged. “When do you feed your friend’s dragon?”

“After breakfast.”

“Can I watch?”

Whoever she worked for, it certainly wasn’t Fish and Wildlife. “I guess so.”

After finishing his bagel, he unlocked the feed-and-breed room. The lights inside were on Patagonian time—it was midday there.

Buttercup stared at the huge cages. “You have four of them!”

“My friend has four.”

“Right. Justin has zero dragons in zero cages.” She took out her camera. “Where are the cockroaches?”

The dragons clung to the sides of their cages as he began fixing their breakfast. “Funny thing, landlords don’t like cockroach farms.”

“So what are you feeding them?”

“Gourmet cat food with supplements. And pet store crickets twice a week. They prefer the crickets.”

“Yum.”

Justin had a bizarre thought that maybe, back home in Michigan, crickets and cockroaches were what Buttercup ate. Maybe that was why Michigan had no dragons.

He opened the cages, and the little dragons flew out with a flutter of leathery wings. They landed on their four feeding perches, craning their necks expectantly. Buttercup took photos as he fed them.

“Tell me about the end of the world,” he said.

“Imagine you’re in a circus,” she said. “There’s a trapeze swinging back and forth. You know the swing period and how to catch it. But sometimes, unpredictably, a gorilla jumps on or off. What do you do?”

“Transfer to the juggling act.”

“The gorillas are everywhere.”

He gave her a puzzled look. “Why are we talking about gorillas?”

“Because the truth requires much more math. Plus you’d think I was crazy.”

“I already think you’re crazy.”

“Harmless crazy or needs-to-be-locked-up crazy?”

“Do you need to be locked up?”

“If I get locked up, that brings the end of the world that much closer. At least, the end of Portland. That would be bad.”

The dragons watched Buttercup warily as they ate. When they finished, Justin had more trouble than usual getting them back in their cages, because Buttercup was helping.

Outside the feed-and-breed room, he asked, “What’s your agenda for day two?”

“Trespassing in forbidden places, seeing forbidden sights. Maybe a little window-shopping.”

“You can spend the night again if you want.”

“Maybe. You didn’t seem too happy to see me last night.”

After she left, he checked to see if she’d stolen anything. If she had, it wasn’t obvious. He checked his computer. Unlike the day before, with her USB drive, there was no sign anyone had accessed his files. But she’d been busy on the internet. No purchases with his credit cards, but she’d taken a whirlwind tour of the planet. Not looking for gorillas, though. Most of the links came up “404: not found”, but there were a number for Toronto and Antarctica.

* * * *

Buttercup didn’t show up again till nearly eleven PM.

“What do you know about an Einstein-Rosen bridge?” she asked after he let her in.

“Portland has lots of bridges, but I don’t know that one. Have you tried Mapquest?”

She sighed. “How can you be so different from Justin?”

“The gorilla-wrestling Justin of your dreams? The one who knows how to save the world?”

“He wasn’t a dream.”

“Is this bridge you lost the one to Antarctica?”

“What do you know about Antarctica?” she asked suspiciously.

“It used to have lots of penguins. Oh, wait. You don’t know about penguins in Michigan.”

“We have penguins.”

“In Michigan?”

“No. I live in Michigan. I work in Antarctica.”

“That commute must have a hell of a carbon footprint.”

“MSDs will destroy the world before global warming.”

“So tell me about this bridge.”

“I already told you too much. Can I borrow your car?”

“Don’t have one: global warming. Where are you going?”

“Mount Tabor.”

“Isn’t it closed this late? I should go with you.”

She shook her head.

“I’m not sure it’s safe to be walking there alone.”

She opened her purse and flashed what might have been a gun. Or perhaps a toy. It looked like a ray gun.

He raised an eyebrow. “Do you have a permit for that?”

She batted her eyelashes. “What do you think?”

“I think you’re like Trinity in The Matrix. You know ten ways to kill me without breaking into a sweat.”

“I’m harmless, Justin.”

“You said you didn’t have any money. Is that how you plan to get on the bus?”

“Of course not. I’m pretty good at panhandling.”

“Why don’t you wait till daylight?”

“Because day three starts at 12:47 AM.”

“That’s when you sacrifice a goat on Mount Tabor?”

“I doubt they allow goats on the bus.”

“At least let me give you bus fare,” he said.

She took his money. He told her which buses to take and walked her downstairs. She headed for the bus stop.

Justin ran upstairs, grabbed his jacket and helmet, and raced back downstairs to unlock his bike by the back door.

Once and for all, he was going to find out what she was up to. Buttercup had two buses to take, and they were infrequent this time of night. But Justin could bike to the light rail stop, take it across town, and bike from there to Mount Tabor before Buttercup arrived.

* * * *

Hiding in bushes a near the Mount Tabor bus stop, he felt foolish. Nervously, he picked through stones in the dirt. Maybe Neanderthal Portland Man can defeat Cro-Magnon Michigan Woman by chipping an arrowhead out of flint.

He heard the bus approach. There were only a few people on it, and Buttercup got off alone. She walked around the closed park gates and hiked toward the summit. He’d half-expected her to hop on a hover-board. But with the peak at 600 feet, it wouldn’t be much of a climb.

Careful to stay out of sight, Justin retrieved his bike. An unpaved bike trail led through the forest, and he walked along it, rear wheel clicking quietly. He’d switched off the lights on his bike when he arrived at the park. Buttercup stayed on the roadway, and he caught occasional glimpses of her passing beneath streetlights.

Near the summit, Buttercup left the roadway and entered the woods. Justin held back so she wouldn’t see him, then lost track of her. He stood still, listening. He looked around uneasily, afraid she might sneak up on him. The girl with the ray gun.

He moved cautiously to where he’d last seen her. A walking path crossed the bike trail. He turned his bike onto it. The trees and clouds overhead made it nearly pitch black in the woods. Justin began to have second thoughts about trailing Buttercup.

A faint light appeared ahead, moving. She’d had the sense to bring a flashlight. He knew where she was now.

She stopped.

Justin froze.

Her light was moving around a little, but not aimed back toward him. He quietly laid his bike on its side by the path. Crouching down, he advanced toward the light.

Buttercup was in a small clearing. Her flashlight shone on an upright bundle of sticks bound together with string. It looked like a ritual artifact from The Blair Witch Project. He breathed shallowly, his heart pounding.

Rain fell softly. The time was getting close: Day three. Why 12:47 AM? Mount Tabor was Portland’s extinct volcano. Was that significant? Maybe he hadn’t been too far off the mark when he’d joked about a sacrifice.

Buttercup began chanting, barely audible.

No, she was counting backwards.

A crack like a gunshot startled him. In the light of her flashlight, a sphere of darkness smaller than a basketball briefly appeared above the bundle of sticks. The sticks scattered, the sphere vanished, and something dropped to the ground.

Buttercup stepped forward, crouching to retrieve it. He couldn’t see what it was as she put it in her purse. He looked up, half expecting to see a mother ship hovering.

She might leave at any moment. He turned and hurried back toward his bike. In the darkness, he wandered off the path into a branch. He cursed silently.

“Who’s there?” she called out.

He found the path and continued toward his bike. Walking in a crouch, he saw the flashlight beam flickering in the branches over his head. He breathed shallowly, hoping she couldn’t hear him.

A vehicle roared on the roadway. The park was closed. Had she called for backup? No: he heard her curse. It must be the park police, thinking they’d heard gunfire.

He found his bike by nearly tripping over it. Buttercup’s feet pounded on the path behind him. He jerked the bike upright and ran forward with it. He couldn’t risk mounting it until he reached the bike trail.

Headlight beams entered the forest as the vehicle neared. He reached the bike trail and jumped on his bike. Buttercup was right behind him, breathing hard. Her light illuminated his bike. He turned his head, and her light was in his eyes. He froze.

“The dragon lord!” she gasped, then laughed.

She held her flashlight steady, clutching her purse. No gun in her hand.

“Justin,” he said. “Only Justin.”

The vehicle screeched to a halt, headlights flooding the forest. A truck door opened and slammed.

“Go! Go!” she said urgently.

“Get on!”

She hopped on the rack behind him, wrapping her arms around him. A man shouted behind them as Justin pedaled down the trail. He switched on the bike light.

The trail twisted through the forest, up and down with the natural terrain. His was an urban bike, not a mountain bike, and he fought to keep balance for both of them as it skidded on bark dust and pine needles.

“Why were you running from me?” she shouted in his ear.

“You’ve got a gun.”

He felt the spasms of her laughter as she clutched him.

Justin focused on getting them to the base of Mount Tabor. It would be quicker and safer if he left the trail and got onto the roadway. Except for the truck.

Nearly to the bottom, the trail dipped into a gully. The front tire hit a tree root. He lost control.

The bike left the trail and they tumbled, bike going one way, he and Buttercup another. He slid to a halt, the front of his helmet plowing through mud and pine needles. She lay partly on top of him. He heard her panting.

He spit out pine needles. “You O.K.?”

She groaned. “Let’s do that again.”

“No,” he said. “Let’s go home.”

* * * *

On the morning of day three, Justin fixed his bagel. Buttercup was unwrapping a granola bar.

“I thought food was poison. Where’d you get that?”

“CARE package from home,” she said, and took a bite.

“I thought you ate food pills. Can I see the wrapper?”

She tossed it to him.

CalValley Organics. Product of California.

“Which California?” he asked. “North or South?”

She gave him an odd look.

“Want to watch me feed the dragons? It’s cricket day.”

“No, thanks. It’s day three. Time’s running out.”

“I’d help if I could.”

She shook her head. “You’re not supposed to know.”

“Is this like the Prime Directive? If you tell me what’s going on, it changes history?”

“Maybe.” She screwed the cap on her water bottle. “See you tonight, eh?”

When she left, he started researching the connections between Michigan, Antarctica and the Einstein-Rosen bridge.

Einstein-Rosen bridges were spacetime wormholes. Purely theoretical and inherently unstable, because there was no way to hold the throat open long enough for anything to pass through, even light. Plus they required a black hole. There was no black hole on Mt. Tabor nor—as far as Justin knew—in Antarctica. At least in this century. But dragons were extinct by Buttercup’s time. Things change.

* * * *

The door buzzer sounded earlier than he’d expected. It wasn’t even nine PM yet.

He opened the door.

Buttercup stood propped against the doorframe. Her right hand was pressed to her left shoulder, where her sweatshirt was soaked with blood.

“Justin,” she gasped. She sagged forward, and he caught her.

He carried her to the couch where she’d slept the last two nights. She was breathing in shallow, ragged gasps, and he felt her shaking. He covered her with a blanket. “I’ll call 911.”

“No! Justin, for God’s sake! I can’t stay. 12:47 AM. Mount Tabor.”

“You need a doctor!”

“Justin, that’s the way the world ends!” Her tear-filled eyes were pleading with him.

“Jesus.” He gingerly pulled her hand away from her shoulder. She winced. There was a bullet hole in the middle of the stain. He let her press her hand against the wound again. He raised his head and listened. No sirens, no feet pounding up the stairs.

“You need a doctor,” he said.

“If I don’t get to Mount Tabor tonight, Portland will have a crater just like Beijing’s.”

“There’s no crater in Beijing.”

“There is, in—” She stopped.

“Michigan’s Beijing?”

“Just stop the bleeding. Please.”

“I don’t have any gauze or anything. I’ll run to the store.” He started to get up.

“Don’t leave me!” She tried to grab him and cried out in pain.

“O.K. Relax.” He looked at his workbench. “I’m just getting scissors to cut away your sweatshirt.”

He got them and began cutting through the fabric.

“How did this happen?” he asked.

“Forbidden places. The lab where Justin worked.”

“Did you use your gun?”

“No.” She struggled to control her breathing. “I’m not that kind of person.”

He had to move her hand again, and she clenched her teeth. He began pulling away the cut fabric. Her shoulder was covered in blood, with a ragged, bleeding hole. “Did it go all the way through?” he asked.

She nodded. “I was running away.”

“They shot you in the back?”

She nodded, swallowing.

“I guess you’re not Trinity. This bra would be made of Kevlar.” He raised her gently, cutting around the back of her shoulder, then eased her back down. She groaned, squeezing her eyes shut.

“Sorry,” he said.

“I’m sorry, too,” she whispered.

“For what?”

“The blood. Your couch.”

He got towels and hot water, cleaning her wound front and back. He cut more towels, using them to pack the wound. He had to use duct tape instead of medical tape. He tried to be as gentle as possible, but she was obviously in pain.

“Do they have acetaminophen here?” she asked.

He nodded. “Welcome to the twenty-first century. But what you need is nineteenth century morphine.”

He brought her Tylenol and a bottle of water.

She counted out half a dozen caplets.

“Aren’t those poison, too?” he asked.

“No. Maybe. It’s complicated.” She swallowed the pills. “Can I see your dragons one last time?”

He released all four from their cages, and they flew through his apartment. Norberta landed on her blanket, peering at her curiously. The dragon’s hind claws dug in, and Buttercup’s leg jerked.

“They’re beautiful,” she whispered hoarsely.

“Did you find what you needed in Justin’s lab?”

“No.” She looked sad.

“You said there was a Plan B.”

She gave him a pained smile. “A bake sale.”

“What?”

“The people I’m with are like the rats under the bridge. We need to sell something to finance another trip.”

“Like extinct dragons. Won’t your food poison them?”

“I don’t think so.”

“As you wish,” he said.

“Eh?”

“You can take my breeding pair back with you.”

“That’s…that…”

“Makes up for getting shot?”

She started to laugh, and grimaced from the pain.

“No. Generous,” she said. “What time’s the bus?”

“I’ll call a cab. You’re in no shape to hike.”

* * * *

The taxi driver put the blankets in the trunk, but gave a curious frown at the folding stepstool. Justin didn’t know why Buttercup wanted it, either. He helped her into the back seat. Her left arm was in a homemade sling.

He got in on the other side, holding the plastic bin with the dragons on his lap. Smaug and Norberta were scratching inside it.

“What’cha got in the box?” asked the driver.

“Puppies,” said Justin.

“Can I see?”

“You don’t need to see his puppies,” said Buttercup.

The driver shrugged. “I don’t need to see ’em.”

He started the engine.

“These aren’t the dragons you’re looking for,” Buttercup whispered.

For someone from the future, she’d watched a lot of old movies. Her eyes were closed, and Justin squeezed her hand.

The taxi took them to the other side of town, driving through the entrance of the park just before closing time.

“Not a very romantic night,” commented the driver. It was raining. “But hey, none of my business.”

He dropped them off at a shelter near the summit, and Justin paid cash.

Buttercup was shaking from the rain and the cold. He helped her to the shelter and bundled her in blankets.

“Now we just wait for your ride home,” he said.

Buttercup’s eyes were closed. She was still shivering.

“How do you know you’re not a time orphan?” he asked.

“Eh? Who do you think I am?”

“Some sort of Time Lord. The Justin you were looking for was the guy who figured out how to build an Einstein-Rosen bridge. But if somebody screwed up the timeline so I don’t invent the bridge, how do you get back to the future?”

“I’m not from the future.”

“But your gadgets…and you came looking for me.”

She didn’t answer.

Justin listened to the steady hiss and patter of rain on leaves and the shelter roof. The dragons were scratching inside the bin again. He covered it with one of the blankets piled around Buttercup and rearranged the others, pulling one up over her head. She leaned against him with her good shoulder.

“There are infinite Earths,” she murmured. “My Justin didn’t invent wormholes. He had a theory about how to close them. Except he tested it from another world to be safe, and he didn’t return.”

“And now you don’t know how he did it? What about the gorillas from the future? Or was that to throw me off?”

“A bridge is a wave function: One big transfer out, a smaller one back, another small one out, then a large one back. With a chance of tidal waves.”

“Your granola bar surfed the wave last night.”

She gave a weak smile. “Yum.”

“And the night before, you sent the USB drive with the files you stole. What do the tidal waves, the MSDs, do?”

“Beijing and Sydney are craters. Austin, Bangalore and Lyon are each buried under a mountain. That’s why I work from Antarctica instead of Michigan.”

“There’s more than one Einstein-Rosen bridge?”

She nodded. “They drive our world’s economy.”

“What?”

“Corporations find the best each Earth has to offer and make it their own. That’s where my gadgets came from.”

“You’re the hunter-gatherers. We’re the agrarians.”

“A small group of us are trying to save the world.”

“You’re the veggie-hunting rats among the guys with spears. What about the food-is-poison thing?”

“The amino acids on one Earth were the mother of all poisons. It’s never happened on another world. So far.”

“Will you try an experiment for me with the dragons?”

“Eh?” She looked in his eyes.

“Use the money from the sale to hire another genius like Justin. Stop hunting before you kill yourself.”

Over the next two hours, Buttercup drifted in and out of fitful slumber. He woke her after midnight. She could barely walk, so he carried her. She held the flashlight.

“How do you find it in the dark each time?” he asked.

“I have a locator, but I know where it is by now.”

“What’s the stepstool for?”

“The wormhole mouth is centered 120 centimeters above the ground. The wave center is spherical, so I crouch at that level. Sometimes I make a platform out of branches.”

He carried her into the woods, following the flashlight beam. Water shaken from branches showered them.

The clearing still held the scattered sticks from the last transfer. Justin set up the stepstool where Buttercup directed him.

“Undress me,” she said.

He raised an eyebrow. “Is this like Terminator?”

“No. We think differences in mass exchange are one of the MSD causes. And unfortunately, this Terminatrix got her sweatsuit and bandages wet, which isn’t the way I arrived.”

“Plus you’ve got two dragons.”

“Minus blood loss and three days of starvation. Extreme Dieting 101: what women do best.”

Justin cut off the rest of her sweatshirt, removed her bra, and pulled down her sweatpants. She kept only the bandages and her panties. Her purse was on the ground, and she tossed some things out of it before picking it up with her good arm.

He got Smaug and Norberta out of the bin. They were leashed together to hinder escape, but they made no attempt to. Their arched their necks toward the sky, flicking tiny pink tongues to taste the rain. He tied both leashes to Buttercup’s right wrist. She had goosebumps.

“Here,” he said, preparing to hand her the dragons.

“Kiss me goodbye,” she asked.

He was holding the dragons, and she had only one good arm. She used it to pull his wet face toward hers. She kissed him deeply. He could feel her shaking.

When she broke off the kiss, she said, “You kiss just like Justin.” Her voice was wistful.

“I am Justin.”

She smiled. “You’re an alien, just like your dragons.”

The dragons were squirming and fluttering, restless in his grip. He planted both of them on her good forearm, stroking them so they wouldn’t be alarmed, and pressed the wadded-up leashes into her hand with the purse.

“Time’s running out,” he said. “Go save the world.”

He lifted her onto the stepstool and helped her balance as she crouched barefoot on top of it, rain running down her bare skin. She wobbled, and Norberta launched herself from Buttercup’s arm, only managing a few wingbeats before the leash jerked her down. She landed in Buttercup’s wet hair, clinging like a rain hat.

Buttercup looked up anxiously, then swayed, overcome by dizziness.

Justin steadied her and pulled in the slack on the leash, squeezing it into her hand. She was still shaking.

“Is it O.K.?” asked Buttercup

“Norberta’s afraid to move. Are you O.K.?”

“There are doctors on the other side.”

“I should have brought the duct tape, to tape you to the damn stool.”

“Get back, Justin. I don’t want you to get hurt by the riptide.”

He stepped back a few feet.

“Farther,” she insisted. “A lot farther.”

He walked almost to the edge of the clearing and turned around.

She nodded, satisfied. “Count down for me.”

“Remember what I said. Stop hunting.” He began counting backwards.

When he got to T minus five, Buttercup looked into his eyes. “Klaatu barada nikto,” she said, and smiled.

At zero, a black sphere swallowed her.

The stepstool exploded with clap of thunder. The wormhole withdrawal sucked Justin off his feet, sending the flashlight flying. He fell on hands and face in the grass and mud near the middle of the clearing. Small branches from overhead landed on top of him.

Justin scrambled to his feet. The flashlight was still on. He picked it up, shining it where Buttercup had been. Crumpled metal was all that remained of the stepstool. The clearing was filled with evergreen twigs and branches sucked down from above. The remains of Buttercup’s wet clothing lay scattered. While picking it up, he found her wallet. She must have tossed it to get her weight down.

Using the flashlight, he looked through it. She’d said she didn’t have any money, but there was a wad of cash. And a Michigan driver’s license with her face on it, but the name was Sophie Doucet, not Buttercup. She lived in Toronto, Michigan. He pulled out a twenty dollar bill. To the right of Andrew Jackson were the words “Canadian States of America.”

He was willing to bet there was a Sophie Doucet in Toronto, Ontario. His Toronto.

Maybe he’d try to return her wallet.

WIND, by Charles L. Fontenay

Jan Willem van Artevelde claimed descent from William of Orange. He had no genealogy to prove it, but on Venus there was no one who could disprove it, either.

Jan Willem van Artevelde smoked a clay pipe, which only a Dutchman can do properly, because the clay bit grates on less stubborn teeth.

Jan needed all his Dutch stubbornness, and a good deal of pure physical strength besides, to maneuver the roach-flat groundcar across the tumbled terrain of Den Hoorn into the teeth of the howling gale that swept from the west. The huge wheels twisted and jolted against the rocks outside, and Jan bounced against his seat belt, wrestled the steering wheel and puffed at his pijp. The mild aroma of Heerenbaai-Tabak filled the airtight groundcar.

There came a new swaying that was not the roughness of the terrain. Through the thick windshield Jan saw all the ground about him buckle and heave for a second or two before it settled to rugged quiescence again. This time he was really heaved about.

Jan mentioned this to the groundcar radio.

“That’s the third time in half an hour,” he commented. “The place tosses like the IJsselmeer on a rough day.”

“You just don’t forget it isn’tthe Zuider Zee,” retorted Heemskerk from the other end. “You sink there and you don’t come up three times.”

“Don’t worry,” said Jan. “I’ll be back on time, with a broom at the masthead.”

“This I shall want to see,” chuckled Heemskerk; a logical reaction, considering the scarcity of brooms on Venus.

* * * *

Two hours earlier the two men had sat across a small table playing chess, with little indication there would be anything else to occupy their time before blastoff of the stubby gravity-boat. It would be their last chess game for many months, for Jan was a member of the Dutch colony at Oostpoort in the northern hemisphere of Venus, while Heemskerk was pilot of the G-boat from the Dutch spaceship Vanderdecken, scheduled to begin an Earthward orbit in a few hours.

It was near the dusk of the 485-hour Venerian day, and the Twilight Gale already had arisen, sweeping from the comparatively chill Venerian nightside into the superheated dayside. Oostpoort, established near some outcroppings that contained uranium ore, was protected from both the Dawn Gale and the Twilight Gale, for it was in a valley in the midst of a small range of mountains.

Jan had just figured out a combination by which he hoped to cheat Heemskerk out of one of his knights, when Dekker, theburgemeester of Oostpoort, entered the spaceport ready room.

“There’s been an emergency radio message,” said Dekker. “They’ve got a passenger for the Earthship over at Rathole.”

“Rathole?” repeated Heemskerk. “What’s that? I didn’t know there was another colony within two thousand kilometers.”

“It isn’t a colony, in the sense Oostpoort is,” explained Dekker. “The people are the families of a bunch of laborers left behind when the colony folded several years ago. It’s about eighty kilometers away, right across the Hoorn, but they don’t have any vehicles that can navigate when the wind’s up.”

Heemskerk pushed his short-billed cap back on his close-cropped head, leaned back in his chair and folded his hands over his comfortable stomach.

“Then the passenger will have to wait for the next ship,” he pronounced. “The Vanderdeckenhas to blast off in thirty hours to catch Earth at the right orbital spot, and the G-boat has to blast off in ten hours to catch the Vanderdecken.”

“This passenger can’t wait,” said Dekker. “He needs to be evacuated to Earth immediately. He’s suffering from the Venus Shadow.”

Jan whistled softly. He had seen the effects of that disease. Dekker was right.

“Jan, you’re the best driver in Oostpoort,” said Dekker. “You will have to take a groundcar to Rathole and bring the fellow back.”

* * * *

So now Jan gripped his clay pipe between his teeth and piloted the groundcar into the teeth of the Twilight Gale.

Den Hoorn was a comparatively flat desert sweep that ran along the western side of the Oost Mountains, just over the mountain from Oostpoort. It was a thin fault area of a planet whose crust was peculiarly subject to earthquakes, particularly at the beginning and end of each long day when temperatures of the surface rocks changed. On the other side of it lay Rathole, a little settlement that eked a precarious living from the Venerian vegetation. Jan never had seen it.

He had little difficulty driving up and over the mountain, for the Dutch settlers had carved a rough road through the ravines. But even the 2½-meter wheels of the groundcar had trouble amid the tumbled rocks of Den Hoorn. The wind hit the car in full strength here and, though the body of the groundcar was suspended from the axles, there was constant danger of its being flipped over by a gust if not handled just right.

The three earthshocks that had shaken Den Hoorn since he had been driving made his task no easier, but he was obviously lucky, at that. Often he had to detour far from his course to skirt long, deep cracks in the surface, or steep breaks where the crust had been raised or dropped several meters by past quakes.

The groundcar zig-zagged slowly westward. The tattered violet-and-indigo clouds boiled low above it, but the wind was as dry as the breath of an oven. Despite the heavy cloud cover, the afternoon was as bright as an Earth-day. The thermometer showed the outside temperature to have dropped to 40 degrees Centigrade in the west wind, and it was still going down.

Jan reached the edge of a crack that made further progress seem impossible. A hundred meters wide, of unknown depth, it stretched out of sight in both directions. For the first time he entertained serious doubts that Den Hoorn could be crossed by land.

After a moment’s hesitation, he swung the groundcar northward and raced along the edge of the chasm as fast as the car would negotiate the terrain. He looked anxiously at his watch. Nearly three hours had passed since he left Oostpoort. He had seven hours to go and he was still at least 16 kilometers from Rathole. His pipe was out, but he could not take his hands from the wheel to refill it.

He had driven at least eight kilometers before he realized that the crack was narrowing. At least as far again, the two edges came together, but not at the same level. A sheer cliff three meters high now barred his passage. He drove on.

* * * *

Apparently it was the result of an old quake. He found a spot where rocks had tumbled down, making a steep, rough ramp up the break. He drove up it and turned back southwestward.

He made it just in time. He had driven less than three hundred meters when a quake more severe than any of the others struck. Suddenly behind him the break reversed itself, so that where he had climbed up coming westward he would now have to climb a cliff of equal height returning eastward.

The ground heaved and buckled like a tempestuous sea. Rocks rolled and leaped through the air, several large ones striking the groundcar with ominous force. The car staggered forward on its giant wheels like a drunken man. The quake was so violent that at one time the vehicle was hurled several meters sideways, and almost overturned. And the wind smashed down on it unrelentingly.

The quake lasted for several minutes, during which Jan was able to make no progress at all and struggled only to keep the groundcar upright. Then, in unison, both earthquake and wind died to absolute quiescence.

Jan made use of this calm to step down on the accelerator and send the groundcar speeding forward. The terrain was easier here, nearing the western edge of Den Hoorn, and he covered several kilometers before the wind struck again, cutting his speed down considerably. He judged he must be nearing Rathole.

Not long thereafter, he rounded an outcropping of rock and it lay before him.

A wave of nostalgia swept over him. Back at Oostpoort, the power was nuclear, but this little settlement made use of the cheapest, most obviously available power source. It was dotted with more than a dozen windmills.

Windmills! Tears came to Jan’s eyes. For a moment, he was carried back to the flat lands around Gravenhage. For a moment he was a tow-headed, round-eyed boy again, clumping in wooden shoes along the edge of the tulip fields.

But there were no canals here. The flat land, stretching into the darkening west, was spotted with patches of cactus and leather-leaved Venerian plants. Amid the windmills, low domes protruded from the earth, indicating that the dwellings of Rathole were, appropriately, partly underground.

* * * *

He drove into the place. There were no streets, as such, but there were avenues between lines of heavy chains strung to short iron posts, evidently as handholds against the wind. The savage gale piled dust and sand in drifts against the domes, then, shifting slightly, swept them clean again.

There was no one moving abroad, but just inside the community Jan found half a dozen men in a group, clinging to one of the chains and waving to him. He pulled the groundcar to a stop beside them, stuck his pipe in a pocket of his plastic venusuit, donned his helmet and got out.

The wind almost took him away before one of them grabbed him and he was able to grasp the chain himself. They gathered around him. They were swarthy, black-eyed men, with curly hair. One of them grasped his hand.

“Bienvenido, señor,” said the man.

Jan recoiled and dropped the man’s hand. All the Orangeman blood he claimed protested in outrage.

Spaniards! All these men were Spaniards!

* * * *

Jan recovered himself at once. He had been reading too much ancient history during his leisure hours. The hot monotony of Venus was beginning to affect his brain. It had been 500 years since the Netherlands revolted against Spanish rule. A lot of water over the dam since then.

A look at the men around him, the sound of their chatter, convinced him that he need not try German or Hollandsch here. He fell back on the international language.

“Do you speak English?” he asked. The man brightened but shook his head.

“No hablo inglés,” he said, “pero el médico lo habla. Venga conmigo.”

He gestured for Jan to follow him and started off, pulling his way against the wind along the chain. Jan followed, and the other men fell in behind in single file. A hundred meters farther on, they turned, descended some steps and entered one of the half-buried domes. A gray-haired, bearded man was in the well-lighted room, apparently the living room of a home, with a young woman.

“Él médico,” said the man who had greeted Jan, gesturing. “Él habla inglés.”

He went out, shutting the airlock door behind him.

“You must be the man from Oostpoort,” said the bearded man, holding out his hand. “I am Doctor Sanchez. We are very grateful you have come.”

“I thought for a while I wouldn’t make it,” said Jan ruefully, removing his venushelmet.

“This is Mrs. Murillo,” said Sanchez.

The woman was a Spanish blonde, full-lipped and beautiful, with golden hair and dark, liquid eyes. She smiled at Jan.

“Encantada de conocerlo, señor,” she greeted him.

“Is this the patient, Doctor?” asked Jan, astonished. She looked in the best of health.

“No, the patient is in the next room,” answered Sanchez.

“Well, as much as I’d like to stop for a pipe, we’d better start at once,” said Jan. “It’s a hard drive back, and blastoff can’t be delayed.”

The woman seemed to sense his meaning. She turned and called: “Diego!”

A boy appeared in the door, a dark-skinned, sleepy-eyed boy of about eight. He yawned. Then, catching sight of the big Dutchman, he opened his eyes wide and smiled.

The boy was healthy-looking, alert, but the mark of the Venus Shadow was on his face. There was a faint mottling, a criss-cross of dead-white lines.

Mrs. Murillo spoke to him rapidly in Spanish and he nodded. She zipped him into a venusuit and fitted a small helmet on his head.

“Good luck, amigo,” said Sanchez, shaking Jan’s hand again.

“Thanks,” replied Jan. He donned his own helmet. “I’ll need it, if the trip over was any indication.”

* * * *

Jan and Diego made their way back down the chain to the groundcar. There was a score of men there now, and a few women. They let the pair go through, and waved farewell as Jan swung the groundcar around and headed back eastward.

It was easier driving with the wind behind him, and Jan hit a hundred kilometers an hour several times before striking the rougher ground of Den Hoorn. Now, if he could only find a way over the bluff raised by that last quake.…

The ground of Den Hoorn was still shivering. Jan did not realize this until he had to brake the groundcar almost to a stop at one point, because it was not shaking in severe, periodic shocks as it had earlier. It quivered constantly, like the surface of quicksand.

The ground far ahead of him had a strange color to it. Jan, watching for the cliff he had to skirt and scale, had picked up speed over some fairly even terrain, but now he slowed again, puzzled. There was something wrong ahead. He couldn’t quite figure it out.

Diego, beside him, had sat quietly so far, peering eagerly through the windshield, not saying a word. Now suddenly he cried in a high thin tenor:

“Cuidado! Cuidado! Un abismo!”

Jim saw it at the same time and hit the brakes so hard the groundcar would have stood on its nose had its wheels been smaller. They skidded to a stop.

The chasm that had caused him such a long detour before had widened, evidently in the big quake that had hit earlier. Now it was a canyon, half a kilometer wide. Five meters from the edge he looked out over blank space at the far wall, and could not see the bottom.

Cursing choice Dutch profanity, Jan wheeled the groundcar northward and drove along the edge of the abyss as fast as he could. He wasted half an hour before realizing that it was getting no narrower.

There was no point in going back southward. It might be a hundred kilometers long or a thousand, but he never could reach the end of it and thread the tumbled rocks of Den Hoorn to Oostpoort before the G-boat blastoff.

There was nothing to do but turn back to Rathole and see if some other way could not be found.

* * * *

Jan sat in the half-buried room and enjoyed the luxury of a pipe filled with some of Theodorus Neimeijer’s mild tobacco. Before him, Dr. Sanchez sat with crossed legs, cleaning his fingernails with a scalpel. Diego’s mother talked to the boy in low, liquid tones in a corner of the room.

* * * *

Jan was at a loss to know how people whose technical knowledge was as skimpy as it obviously was in Rathole were able to build these semi-underground domes to resist the earth shocks that came from Den Hoorn. But this one showed no signs of stress. A religious print and a small pencil sketch of Señora Murillo, probably done by the boy, were awry on the inward-curving walls, but that was all.

Jan felt justifiably exasperated at these Spanish-speaking people.

“If some effort had been made to take the boy to Oostpoort from here, instead of calling on us to send a car, Den Hoorn could have been crossed before the crack opened,” he pointed out.

“An effort was made,” replied Sanchez quietly. “Perhaps you do not fully realize our position here. We have no engines except the stationary generators that give us current for our air-conditioning and our utilities. They are powered by the windmills. We do not have gasoline engines for vehicles, so our vehicles are operated by hand.”

“You push them?” demanded Jan incredulously.

“No. You’ve seen pictures of the pump-cars that once were used on terrestrial railroads? Ours are powered like that, but we cannot operate them when the Venerian wind is blowing. By the time I diagnosed the Venus Shadow in Diego, the wind was coming up, and we had no way to get him to Oostpoort.”

“Mmm,” grunted Jan. He shifted uncomfortably and looked at the pair in the corner. The blonde head was bent over the boy protectingly, and over his mother’s shoulder Diego’s black eyes returned Jan’s glance.

“If the disease has just started, the boy could wait for the next Earth ship, couldn’t he?” asked Jan.

“I said I had just diagnosed it, not that it had just started,señor,” corrected Sanchez. “As you know, the trip to Earth takes 145 days and it can be started only when the two planets are at the right position in their orbits. Have you ever seen anyone die of the Venus Shadow?”

“Yes, I have,” replied Jan in a low voice. He had seen two people die of it, and it had not been pleasant.

Medical men thought it was a deficiency disease, but they had not traced down the deficiency responsible. Treatment by vitamins, diet, antibiotics, infrared and ultraviolet rays, all were useless. The only thing that could arrest and cure the disease was removal from the dry, cloud-hung surface of Venus and return to a moist, sunny climate on Earth.

Without that treatment, once the typical mottled texture of the skin appeared, the flesh rapidly deteriorated and fell away in chunks. The victim remained unfevered and agonizingly conscious until the degeneration reached a vital spot.

“If you have,” said Sanchez, “you must realize that Diego cannot wait for a later ship, if his life is to be saved. He must get to Earth at once.”

* * * *

Jan puffed at the Heerenbaai-Tabak and cogitated. The place was aptly named. It was a ratty community. The boy was a dark-skinned little Spaniard—of Mexican origin, perhaps. But he was a boy, and a human being.

A thought occurred to him. From what he had seen and heard, the entire economy of Rathole could not support the tremendous expense of sending the boy across the millions of miles to Earth by spaceship.

“Who’s paying his passage?” he asked. “The Dutch Central Venus Company isn’t exactly a charitable institution.”

“Your Señor Dekker said that would be taken care of,” replied Sanchez.

Jan relit his pipe silently, making a mental resolution that Dekker wouldn’t take care of it alone. Salaries for Venerian service were high, and many of the men at Oostpoort would contribute readily to such a cause.

“Who is Diego’s father?” he asked.

“He was Ramón Murillo, a very good mechanic,” answered Sanchez, with a sliding sidelong glance at Jan’s face. “He has been dead for three years.”

Jan grunted.

“The copters at Oostpoort can’t buck this wind,” he said thoughtfully, “or I’d have come in one of those in the first place instead of trying to cross Den Hoorn by land. But if you have any sort of aircraft here, it might make it downwind—if it isn’t wrecked on takeoff.”

“I’m afraid not,” said Sanchez.

“Too bad. There’s nothing we can do, then. The nearest settlement west of here is more than a thousand kilometers away, and I happen to know they have no planes, either. Just copters. So that’s no help.”

“Wait,” said Sanchez, lifting the scalpel and tilting his head. “I believe there is something, though we cannot use it. This was once an American naval base, and the people here were civilian employes who refused to move north with it. There was a flying machine they used for short-range work, and one was left behind—probably with a little help from the people of the settlement. But.…”

“What kind of machine? Copter or plane?”

“They call it a flying platform. It carries two men, I believe. But, señor.…”

“I know them. I’ve operated them, before I left Earth. Man, you don’t expect me to try to fly one of those little things in this wind? They’re tricky as they can be, and the passengers are absolutely unprotected!”

“Señor, I have asked you to do nothing.”

“No, you haven’t,” muttered Jan. “But you know I’ll do it.”

Sanchez looked into his face, smiling faintly and a little sadly.

“I was sure you would be willing,” he said. He turned and spoke in Spanish to Mrs. Murillo.

The woman rose to her feet and came to them. As Jan arose, she looked up at him, tears in her eyes.

“Gracias,” she murmured. “Un millón de gracias.”

She lifted his hands in hers and kissed them.

Jan disengaged himself gently, embarrassed. But it occurred to him, looking down on the bowed head of the beautiful young widow, that he might make some flying trips back over here in his leisure time. Language barriers were not impassable, and feminine companionship might cure his neurotic, history-born distaste for Spaniards, for more than one reason.

Sanchez was tugging at his elbow.

“Señor, I have been trying to tell you,” he said. “It is generous and good of you, and I wantedSeñora Murillo to know what a brave man you are. But have you forgotten that we have no gasoline engines here? There is no fuel for the flying platform.”

* * * *

The platform was in a warehouse which, like the rest of the structures in Rathole, was a half-buried dome. The platform’s ring-shaped base was less than a meter thick, standing on four metal legs. On top of it, in the center, was a railed circle that would hold two men, but would crowd them. Two small gasoline engines sat on each side of this railed circle and between them on a third side was the fuel tank. The passengers entered it on the fourth side.

The machine was dusty and spotted with rust, Jan, surrounded by Sanchez, Diego and a dozen men, inspected it thoughtfully. The letters USN*SES were painted in white on the platform itself, and each engine bore the label “Hiller.”

Jan peered over the edge of the platform at the twin-ducted fans in their plastic shrouds. They appeared in good shape. Each was powered by one of the engines, transmitted to it by heavy rubber belts.

Jan sighed. It was an unhappy situation. As far as he could determine, without making tests, the engines were in perfect condition. Two perfectly good engines, and no fuel for them.

“You’re sure there’s no gasoline, anywhere in Rathole?” he asked Sanchez.

Sanchez smiled ruefully, as he had once before, at Jan’s appellation for the community. The inhabitants’ term for it was simply “La Ciudad Nuestra”—“Our Town.” But he made no protest. He turned to one of the other men and talked rapidly for a few moments in Spanish.

“None, señor,” he said, turning back to Jan. “The Americans, of course, kept much of it when they were here, but the few things we take to Oostpoort to trade could not buy precious gasoline. We have electricity in plenty if you can power the platform with it.”

Jan thought that over, trying to find a way.

“No, it wouldn’t work,” he said. “We could rig batteries on the platform and electric motors to turn the propellers. But batteries big enough to power it all the way to Oostpoort would be so heavy the machine couldn’t lift them off the ground. If there were some way to carry a power line all the way to Oostpoort, or to broadcast the power to it.…But it’s a light-load machine, and must have an engine that gives it the necessary power from very little weight.”

Wild schemes ran through his head. If they were on water, instead of land, he could rig up a sail. He could still rig up a sail, for a groundcar, except for the chasm out on Den Hoorn.

The groundcar! Jan straightened and snapped his fingers.

“Doctor!” he explained. “Send a couple of men to drain the rest of the fuel from my groundcar. And let’s get this platform above ground and tie it down until we can get it started.”

Sanchez gave rapid orders in Spanish. Two of the men left at a run, carrying five-gallon cans with them.

Three others picked up the platform and carried it up a ramp and outside. As soon as they reached ground level, the wind hit them. They dropped the platform to the ground, where it shuddered and swayed momentarily, and two of the men fell successfully on their stomachs. The wind caught the third and somersaulted him half a dozen times before he skidded to a stop on his back with outstretched arms and legs. He turned over cautiously and crawled back to them.

Jan, his head just above ground level, surveyed the terrain. There was flat ground to the east, clear in a fairly broad alley for at least half a kilometer before any of the domes protruded up into it.

“This is as good a spot for takeoff as we’ll find,” he said to Sanchez.

The men put three heavy ropes on the platform’s windward rail and secured it by them to the heavy chain that ran by the dome. The platform quivered and shuddered in the heavy wind, but its base was too low for it to overturn.

Shortly the two men returned with the fuel from the groundcar, struggling along the chain. Jan got above ground in a crouch, clinging to the rail of the platform, and helped them fill the fuel tank with it. He primed the carburetors and spun the engines.

Nothing happened.

He turned the engines over again. One of them coughed, and a cloud of blue smoke burst from its exhaust, but they did not catch.

“What is the matter, señor?” asked Sanchez from the dome entrance.

“I don’t know,” replied Jan. “Maybe it’s that the engines haven’t been used in so long. I’m afraid I’m not a good enough mechanic to tell.”

“Some of these men were good mechanics when the navy was here,” said Sanchez. “Wait.”

He turned and spoke to someone in the dome. One of the men of Rathole came to Jan’s side and tried the engines. They refused to catch. The man made carburetor adjustments and tried again. No success.

He sniffed, took the cap from the fuel tank and stuck a finger inside. He withdrew it, wet and oily, and examined it. He turned and spoke to Sanchez.

“He says that your groundcar must have a diesel engine,” Sanchez interpreted to Jan. “Is that correct?”

“Why, yes, that’s true.”

“He says the fuel will not work then, señor. He says it is low-grade fuel and the platform must have high octane gasoline.”

Jan threw up his hands and went back into the dome.

“I should have known that,” he said unhappily. “I would have known if I had thought of it.”

“What is to be done, then?” asked Sanchez.

“There’s nothing that can be done,” answered Jan. “They may as well put the fuel back in my groundcar.”

Sanchez called orders to the men at the platform. While they worked, Jan stared out at the furiously spinning windmills that dotted Rathole.

“There’s nothing that can be done,” he repeated. “We can’t make the trip overland because of the chasm out there in Den Hoorn, and we can’t fly the platform because we have no power for it.”

Windmills. Again Jan could imagine the flat land around them as his native Holland, with the Zuider Zee sparkling to the west where here the desert stretched under darkling clouds.

* * * *

Jan looked at his watch. A little more than two hours before the G-boat’s blastoff time, and it couldn’t wait for them. It was nearly eight hours since he had left Oostpoort, and the afternoon was getting noticeably darker.

Jan was sorry. He had done his best, but Venus had beaten him.

He looked around for Diego. The boy was not in the dome. He was outside, crouched in the lee of the dome, playing with some sticks.

Diego must know of his ailment, and why he had to go to Oostpoort. If Jan was any judge of character, Sanchez would have told him that. Whether Diego knew it was a life-or-death matter for him to be aboard theVanderdecken when it blasted off for Earth, Jan did not know. But the boy was around eight years old and he was bright, and he must realize the seriousness involved in a decision to send him all the way to Earth.

Jan felt ashamed of the exuberant foolishness which had led him to spout ancient historyand claim descent from William of Orange. It had been a hobby, and artificial topic for conversation that amused him and his companions, a defense against the monotony of Venus that had begun to affect his personality perhaps a bit more than he realized. He did not dislike Spaniards; he had no reason to dislike them. They were all humans—the Spanish, the Dutch, the Germans, the Americans, even the Russians—fighting a hostile planet together. He could not understand a word Diego said when the boy spoke to him, but he liked Diego and wished desperately he could do something.

Outside, the windmills of Rathole spun merrily.

There was power, the power that lighted and air-conditioned Rathole, power in the air all around them. If he could only use it! But to turn the platform on its side and let the wind spin the propellers was pointless.

He turned to Sanchez.

“Ask the men if there are any spare parts for the platform,” he said. “Some of those legs it stands on, transmission belts, spare propellers.”

Sanchez asked.

“Yes,” he said. “Many spare parts, but no fuel.”

Jan smiled a tight smile.

“Tell them to take the engines out,” he said. “Since we have no fuel, we may as well have no engines.”

* * * *

Pieter Heemskerk stood by the ramp to the stubby G-boat and checked his watch. It was X minus fifteen—fifteen minutes before blastoff time.

Heemskerk wore a spacesuit. Everything was ready, except climbing aboard, closing the airlock and pressing the firing pin.

What on Venus could have happened to Van Artevelde? The last radio message they had received, more than an hour ago, had said he and the patient took off successfully in an aircraft. What sort of aircraft could he be flying that would require an hour to cover eighty kilometers, with the wind?

Heemskerk could only draw the conclusion that the aircraft had been wrecked somewhere in Den Hoorn. As a matter of fact, he knew that preparations were being made now to send a couple of groundcars out to search for it.

This, of course, would be too late to help the patient Van Artevelde was bringing, but Heemskerk had no personal interest in the patient. His worry was all for his friend. The two of them had enjoyed chess and good beer together on his last three trips to Venus, and Heemskerk hoped very sincerely that the big blond man wasn’t hurt.

He glanced at his watch again. X minus twelve. In two minutes, it would be time for him to walk up the ramp into the G-boat. In seven minutes the backward count before blastoff would start over the area loudspeakers.

Heemskerk shook his head sadly. And Van Artevelde had promised to come back triumphant, with a broom at his masthead!

It was a high thin whine borne on the wind, carrying even through the walls of his spacehelmet, that attracted Heemskerk’s attention and caused him to pause with his foot on the ramp. Around him, the rocket mechanics were staring up at the sky, trying to pinpoint the noise.

Heemskerk looked westward. At first he could see nothing, then there was a moving dot above the mountain, against the indigo umbrella of clouds. It grew, it swooped, it approached and became a strange little flying disc with two people standing on it and something sticking up from its deck in front of them.

A broom?

No. The platform hovered and began to settle nearby, and there was Van Artevelde leaning over its rail and fiddling frantically with whatever it was that stuck up on it—a weird, angled contraption of pipes and belts topped by a whirring blade. A boy stood at his shoulder and tried to help him. As the platform descended to a few meters above ground, the Dutchman slashed at the contraption, the cut ends of belts whipped out wildly and the platform slid to the ground with a rush. It hit with a clatter and its two passengers tumbled prone to the ground.

“Jan!” boomed Heemskerk, forcing his voice through the helmet diaphragm and rushing over to his friend. “I was afraid you were lost!”

Jan struggled to his feet and leaned down to help the boy up.

“Here’s your patient, Pieter,” he said. “Hope you have a spacesuit in his size.”

“I can find one. And we’ll have to hurry for blastoff. But, first, what happened? Even that damned thing ought to get here from Rathole faster than that.”

“Had no fuel,” replied Jan briefly. “My engines were all right, but I had no power to run them. So I had to pull the engines and rig up a power source.”

Heemskerk stared at the platform. On its railing was rigged a tripod of battered metal pipes, atop which a big four-blade propeller spun slowly in what wind was left after it came over the western mountain. Over the edges of the platform, running from the two propellers in its base, hung a series of tattered transmission belts.

“Power source?” repeated Heemskerk. “That?”

“Certainly,” replied Jan with dignity. “The power source any good Dutchman turns to in an emergency: a windmill!”

STAR MOTHER, by Robert F. Young

That night her son was the first star.

She stood motionless in the garden, one hand pressed against her heart, watching him rise above the fields where he had played as a boy, where he had worked as a young man; and she wondered whether he was thinking of those fields now, whether he was thinking of her standing alone in the April night with her memories; whether he was thinking of the verandahed house behind her, with its empty rooms and silent halls, that once upon a time had been his birthplace.

Higher still and higher he rose in the southern sky, and then, when he had reached his zenith, he dropped swiftly down past the dark edge of the Earth and disappeared from sight. A boy grown up too soon, riding round and round the world on a celestial carousel, encased in an airtight metal capsule in an airtight metal chariot…

Why don’t they leave the stars alone? she thought. Why don’t they leave the stars to God?

* * * *

The general’s second telegram came early the next morning:

Explorer XII doing splendidly. Expect to bring your son down sometime tomorrow.

She went about her work as usual, collecting the eggs and allocating them in their cardboard boxes, then setting off in the station wagon on her Tuesday morning run. She had expected a deluge of questions from her customers. She was not disappointed. “Is Terry really way up there all alone, Martha?” “Aren’t you scared, Martha?” “I do hope they can get him back down all right, Martha.” She supposed it must have given them quite a turn to have their egg woman change into a star mother overnight.

She hadn’t expected the TV interview, though, and she would have avoided it if it had been politely possible. But what could she do when the line of cars and trucks pulled into the drive and the technicians got out and started setting up their equipment in the backyard? What could she say when the suave young man came up to her and said, “We want you to know that we’re all very proud of your boy up there, ma’am, and we hope you’ll do us the honor of answering a few questions.”

Most of the questions concerned Terry, as was fitting. From the way the suave young man asked them, though, she got the impression that he was trying to prove that her son was just like any other average American boy, and such just didn’t happen to be the case. But whenever she opened her mouth to mention, say, how he used to study till all hours of the night, or how difficult it had been for him to make friends because of his shyness, or the fact that he had never gone out for football—whenever she started to mention any of these things, the suave young man was in great haste to interrupt her and to twist her words, by requestioning, into a different meaning altogether, till Terry’s behavior pattern seemed to coincide with the behavior pattern which the suave young man apparently considered the norm, but which, if followed, Martha was sure, would produce not young men bent on exploring space but young men bent on exploring trivia.

A few of the questions concerned herself: Was Terry her only child? (“Yes.”) What had happened to her husband? (“He was killed in the Korean War.”) What did she think of the new law granting star mothers top priority on any and all information relating to their sons? (“I think it’s a fine law…It’s too bad they couldn’t have shown similar humanity toward the war mothers of World War II.”)

* * * *

It was late in the afternoon by the time the TV crew got everything repacked into their cars and trucks and made their departure. Martha fixed herself a light supper, then donned an old suede jacket of Terry’s and went out into the garden to wait for the sun to go down. According to the time table the general had outlined in his first telegram, Terry’s first Tuesday night passage wasn’t due to occur till 9:05. But it seemed only right that she should be outside when the stars started to come out. Presently they did, and she watched them wink on, one by one, in the deepening darkness of the sky. She’d never been much of a one for the stars; most of her life she’d been much too busy on Earth to bother with things celestial. She could remember, when she was much younger and Bill was courting her, looking up at the moon sometimes; and once in a while, when a star fell, making a wish. But this was different. It was different because now she had a personal interest in the sky, a new affinity with its myriad inhabitants.

And how bright they became when you kept looking at them! They seemed to come alive, almost, pulsing brilliantly down out of the blackness of the night…And they were different colors, too, she noticed with a start. Some of them were blue and some were red, others were yellow…green…orange…

It grew cold in the April garden and she could see her breath. There was a strange crispness, a strange clarity about the night, that she had never known before…She glanced at her watch, was astonished to see that the hands indicated two minutes after nine. Where had the time gone? Tremulously she faced the southern horizon…and saw her Terry appear in his shining chariot, riding up the star-pebbled path of his orbit, a star in his own right, dropping swiftly now, down, down, and out of sight beyond the dark wheeling mass of the Earth…She took a deep, proud breath, realized that she was wildly waving her hand and let it fall slowly to her side. Make a wish! she thought, like a little girl, and she wished him pleasant dreams and a safe return and wrapped the wish in all her love and cast it starward.

* * * *

Sometime tomorrow, the general’s telegram had said—

That meant sometime today!

She rose with the sun and fed the chickens, fixed and ate her breakfast, collected the eggs and put them in their cardboard boxes, then started out on her Wednesday morning run. “My land, Martha, I don’t see how you stand it with him way up there! Doesn’t it get on yournerves?” (“Yes…Yes, it does.”) “Martha, when are they bringing him back down?” (“Today…Today!”) “It must be wonderful being a star mother, Martha.” (“Yes, it is—in a way.”)

Wonderful…and terrible.

If only he can last it out for a few more hours, she thought. If only they can bring him down safe and sound. Then the vigil will be over, and some other mother can take over the awesome responsibility of having a son become a star—

If only…

* * * *

The general’s third telegram arrived that afternoon:

Regret to inform you that meteorite impact on satellite hull severely damaged capsule-detachment mechanism, making ejection impossible. Will make every effort to find another means of accomplishing your son’s return.

Terry!—

See the little boy playing beneath the maple tree, moving his tiny cars up and down the tiny streets of his make-believe village; the little boy, his fuzz of hair gold in the sunlight, his cherub-cheeks pink in the summer wind—

Terry!—

Up the lane the blue-denimed young man walks, swinging his thin tanned arms, his long legs making near-grownup strides over the sun-seared grass; the sky blue and bright behind him, the song of cicada rising and falling in the hazy September air—

Terry…

—probably won’t get a chance to write you again before take-off, but don’t worry, Ma. The Explorer XII is the greatest bird they ever built. Nothing short of a direct meteorite hit can hurt it, and the odds are a million to one…

Why don’t they leave the stars alone? Why don’t they leave the stars to God?

* * * *

The afternoon shadows lengthened on the lawn and the sun grew red and swollen over the western hills. Martha fixed supper, tried to eat, and couldn’t. After a while, when the light began to fade, she slipped into Terry’s jacket and went outside.

Slowly the sky darkened and the stars began to appear. At length her star appeared, but its swift passage blurred before her eyes. Tires crunched on the gravel then, and headlights washed the darkness from the drive. A car door slammed.

Martha did not move. Please God, she thought, let it be Terry, even though she knew that it couldn’t possibly be Terry. Footsteps sounded behind her, paused. Someone coughed softly. She turned then—

“Good evening, ma’am.”

She saw the circlet of stars on the gray epaulet; she saw the stern handsome face; she saw the dark tired eyes. And she knew. Even before he spoke again, she knew—

“The same meteorite that damaged the ejection mechanism, ma’am. It penetrated the capsule, too. We didn’t find out till just a while ago—but there was nothing we could have done anyway…Are you all right, ma’am?”

“Yes. I’m all right.”

“I wanted to express my regrets personally. I know how you must feel.”

“It’s all right.”

“We will, of course, make every effort to bring back his…remains…so that he can have a fitting burial on Earth.”

“No,” she said.

“I beg your pardon, ma’am?”

She raised her eyes to the patch of sky where her son had passed in his shining metal sarcophagus. Sirius blossomed there, blue-white and beautiful. She raised her eyes still higher—and beheld the vast parterre of Orion with its central motif of vivid forget-me-nots, its far-flung blooms of Betelguese and Rigel, of Bellatrix and Saiph…And higher yet—and there flamed the exquisite flower beds of Taurus and Gemini, there burgeoned the riotous wreath of the Crab; there lay the pulsing petals of the Pleiades…And down the ecliptic garden path, wafted by a stellar breeze, drifted the ocher rose of Mars…

“No,” she said again.

The general had raised his eyes, too; now, slowly, he lowered them. “I think I understand, ma’am. And I’m glad that’s the way you want it…The stars are beautiful tonight, aren’t they.”

“More beautiful than they’ve ever been,” she said.

* * * *

After the general had gone, she looked up once more at the vast and variegated garden of the sky where her son lay buried, then she turned and walked slowly back to the memoried house.

THE SKY IS FALLING, by Lester Del Rey

I

“Dave Hanson! By the power of the true name be summoned cells and humors, ka and id, self and—”

Dave Hanson! The name came swimming through utter blackness, sucking at him, pulling him together out of nothingness. Then, abruptly, he was aware of being alive, and surprised. He sucked in on the air around him, and the breath burned in his lungs. He was one of the dead—there should be no quickening of breath within him!

He caught a grip on himself, fighting the fantasies of his mind, and took another breath of air. This time it burned less, and he could force an awareness of the smells around him. But there was none of the pungent odor of the hospital he had expected. Instead, his nostrils were scorched with a noxious odor of sulfur, burned hair and cloying incense.

He gagged on it. His diaphragm tautened with the sharp pain of long-unused muscles, and he sneezed.

“A good sign,” a man’s voice said. “The followers have accepted and are leaving. Only a true being can sneeze. But unless the salamander works, his chances are only slight.”

There was a mutter of agreement from others, before an older voice broke in. “It takes a deeper fire than most salamanders can stir, Ser Perth. We might aid it with high-frequency radiation, but I distrust the effects on the prepsyche. If we tried a tamed succubus—”

“The things are untrustworthy,” the first voice answered. “And with the sky falling, we dare not trust one.”

The words blurred off in a fog of semiconsciousness and half-thoughts. The sky was falling? Who killed Foxy Loxy? I, said the spider, who sat down insider, I went boomp in the night and the bull jumped over the moon.…

“Bull,” he croaked. “The bull sleeper!”

“Delirious,” the first voice muttered.

“I mean—bull pusher!” That was wrong, too, and he tried again, forcing his reluctant tongue around the syllables. “Bull dosser!”

Damn it, couldn’t he even pronounce simple Engaliss?

The language wasn’t English, however. Nor was it Canadian French, the only other speech he could make any sense of. Yet he understood it—had even spoken it, he realized. There was nothing wrong with his command of whatever language it was, but there seemed to be no word for bulldozer. He struggled to get his eyes open.

The room seemed normal enough, in spite of the odd smells. He lay on a high bed, surrounded by prim white walls, and there was even a chart of some kind at the bottom of the bedframe. He focused his eyes slowly on what must be the doctors and nurses there, and their faces looked back with the proper professional worry. But the varicolored gowns they wore in place of proper clothing were covered with odd designs, stars, crescents and things that might have been symbols for astronomy or chemistry.

He tried to reach for his glasses to adjust them. There were no glasses! That hit him harder than any other discovery. He must be delirious and imagining the room. Dave Hanson was so nearsighted that he couldn’t have seen the men, much less the clothing, without corrective lenses.

The middle-aged man with the small mustache bent over the chart near his feet. “Hmm,” the man said in the voice of the first speaker. “Mars trines Neptune. And with Scorpio so altered…hmm. Better add two cc. of cortisone to the transfusion.”

Hanson tried to sit up, but his arms refused to bear his weight. He opened his mouth. A slim hand came to his lips, and he looked up into soothing blue eyes. The nurse’s face was framed in copper-red hair. She had the transparent skin and classic features that occur once in a million times but which still keep the legend of redheaded enchantresses alive. “Shh,” she said.

He began to struggle against her hand, but she shook her head gently. Her other hand began a series of complicated motions that had a ritualistic look about them.

“Shh,” she repeated. “Rest. Relax and sleep, Dave Hanson, and remember when you were alive.”

There was a sharp sound from the doctor, but it began to blur out before Hanson could understand it. He fought to remember what he’d heard the nurse say—something about when he was alive—as if he’d been dead a long time.…He couldn’t hold the thought. At a final rapid motion of the girl’s hand his eyes closed, the smell faded from his nose and all sounds vanished. Once there was a stinging sensation, as if he were receiving the transfusion. Then he was alone in his mind with his memories—mostly of the last day when he’d still been alive. He seemed to be reliving the events, rethinking the thoughts he’d had then.

It began with the sight of his uncle’s face leering at him. Uncle David Arnold Hanson looked like every man’s dream of himself and every woman’s dreams of manliness. But at the moment, to Dave, he looked more like a personal demon. His head was tilted back and nasty laughter was booming through the air of the little office.

“So your girl writes that your little farewell activity didn’t fare so well, eh?” he chortled. “And you come crawling here to tell me you want to do the honorable thing, is that it? All right, my beloved nephew, you’ll do the honorable thing! You’ll stick to your contract with me.”

“But—” Dave began.

“But if you don’t, you’d better read it again. You don’t get one cent except on completion of your year with me. That’s what it says, and that’s what happens.” He paused, letting the fact that he meant it sink in. He was enjoying the whole business, and in no hurry to end it. “And I happen to know, Dave, that you don’t even have fare to Saskatchewan left. You quit and I’ll see you never get another job. I promised my sister I’d make a man of you and, by jumping Jupiter, I intend to do just that. And in my book, that doesn’t mean you run back with your tail between your legs just because some silly young girl pulls that old chestnut on you. Why, when I was your age, I already had.…”

Dave wasn’t listening any longer. In futile anger, he’d swung out of the office and gone stumbling back toward the computer building. Then, in a further burst of anger, he swung off the trail. To hell with his work and blast his uncle! He’d go on into town, and he’d—he’d do whatever he pleased.

The worst part of it was that Uncle David could make good on his threat of seeing that Dave got no more work anywhere. David Arnold Hanson was a power to reckon with. No other man on Earth could have persuaded anyone to let him try his scheme of building a great deflection wall across northern Canada to change the weather patterns. And no other man could have accomplished the impossible task, even after twelve countries pooled their resources to give him the job. But he was doing it, and it was already beginning to work. Dave had noticed that the last winter in Chicago had definitely shown that Uncle David’s predictions were coming true.

Like most of the world, Dave had regarded the big man who was his uncle with something close to worship. He’d jumped at the chance to work under Uncle David. And he’d been a fool. He’d been doing all right in Chicago. Repairing computers didn’t pay a fortune, but it was a good living, and he was good at it. And there was Bertha—maybe not a movie doll, but a sort of pretty girl who was also a darned good cook. For a man of thirty who’d always been a scrawny, shy runt like the one in the “before” pictures, he’d been doing all right.

Then came the letter from his uncle, offering him triple salary as a maintenance man on the computers used for the construction job. There was nothing said about romance and beauteous Indian maids, but Dave filled that in himself. He would need the money when he and Bertha got married, too, and all that healthy outdoor living was just what the doctor would have ordered.

The Indian maids, of course, turned out to be a few fat old squaws who knew all about white men. The outdoor living developed into five months of rain, hail, sleet, blizzard, fog and constant freezing in tractors while breathing the healthy fumes of diesels. Uncle David turned out to be a construction genius, all right, but his interest in Dave seemed to lie in the fact that he was tired of being Simon Legree to strangers and wanted to take it out on one of his own family. And the easy job turned into hell when the regular computer-man couldn’t take any more and quit, leaving Dave to do everything, including making the field tests to gain the needed data.

Now Bertha was writing frantic letters, telling him how much he’d better come back and marry her immediately. And Uncle David thought it was a joke!

Dave paid no attention to where his feet were leading him, only vaguely aware that he was heading down a gully below the current construction job. He heard the tractors and bulldozers moving along the narrow cliff above him, but he was used to the sound. He heard frantic yelling from above, too, but paid no attention to it; in any Hanson construction program, somebody was always yelling about something that had to be done day before yesterday. It wasn’t until he finally became aware of his own name being shouted that he looked up. Then he froze in horror.

The bulldozer was teetering at the edge of the cliff as he saw it, right above him. And the cliff was crumbling from under it, while the tread spun idiotically out of control. As Dave’s eyes took in the whole situation, the cliff crumbled completely, and the dozer came lunging over the edge, plunging straight for him. His shout was drowned in the roar of the motor. He tried to force his legs to jump, but they were frozen in terror. The heavy mass came straight for him, its treads churning like great teeth reaching for him.

Then it hit, squarely on top of him. Something ripped and splattered and blacked out in an unbearable welter of agony.

Dave Hanson came awake trying to scream and thrusting at the bed with arms too weak to raise him. The dream of the past was already fading. The horror he had thought was death lay somewhere in the past.

Now he was here—wherever here was.

The obvious answer was that he was in a normal hospital, somehow still alive, being patched up. The things he seemed to remember from his other waking must be a mixture of fact and delirium. Besides, how was he to judge what was normal in extreme cases of surgery?

He managed to struggle up to a sitting position in the bed, trying to make out more of his surroundings. But the room was dark now. As his eyes adjusted, he made out a small brazier there, with a cadaverous old man in a dark robe spotted with looped crosses. On his head was something like a miter, carrying a coiled brass snake in front of it. The old man’s white goatee bobbed as he mouthed something silently and made passes over the flame, which shot up prismatically. Clouds of white fire belched up.

Dave reached to adjust his glasses, and found again that he wasn’t wearing them. But he’d never seen so clearly before.

At that moment, a chanting voice broke into his puzzled thoughts. It sounded like Ser Perth. Dave turned his head weakly. The motion set sick waves of nausea running through him, but he could see the doctor kneeling on the floor in some sort of pantomime. The words of the chant were meaningless.

A hand closed over Dave’s eyes, and the voice of the nurse whispered in his ear. “Shh, Dave Hanson. It’s the Sather Karf, so don’t interrupt. There may be a conjunction.”

He fell back, panting, his heart fluttering. Whatever was going on, he was in no shape to interrupt anything. But he knew that this was no delirium. He didn’t have that kind of imagination.

The chant changed, after a long moment of silence. Dave’s heart had picked up speed, but now it missed again, and he felt cold. He shivered. Hell or heaven weren’t like this, either. It was like something out of some picture—something about Cagliostro, the ancient mystic. But he was sure the language he somehow spoke wasn’t an ancient one. It had words for electron, penicillin and calculus, for he found them in his own mind.

The chant picked up again, and now the brazier flamed a dull red, showing the Sather Karf’s face changing from some kind of disappointment to a businesslike steadiness. The red glow grew white in the center, and a fat, worm-like shape of flame came into being. The old man picked it up in his hand, petted it and carried it toward Dave. It flowed toward his chest.

He pulled himself back, but Ser Perth and the nurse leaped forward to hold him. The thing started to grow brighter. It shone now like a tiny bit of white-hot metal; but the older man touched it, and it snuggled down into Dave’s chest, dimming its glow and somehow purring. Warmth seemed to flow from it into Dave. The two men watched for a moment, then picked up their apparatus and turned to go. The Sather Karf lifted the fire from the brazier in his bare hand, moved it into the air and said a soft word. It vanished, and the two men were also gone.

“Magic!” Dave said. He’d seen such illusions created on the stage, but there was something different here. And there was no fakery about the warmth from the thing over his chest. Abruptly he remembered that he’d come across something like it, called a salamander, in fiction once; the thing was supposed to be a spirit of fire, and dangerously destructive.

The girl nodded in the soft glow coming from Dave’s chest. “Naturally,” she told him. “How else does one produce and control a salamander, except by magic? Without, magic, how can we thaw a frozen soul? Or didn’t your world have any sciences, Dave Hanson?”

Either the five months under his uncle had toughened him, or the sight of the bulldozer falling had knocked him beyond any strong reaction. The girl had practically told him he wasn’t in his own world. He waited for some emotion, felt none, and shrugged. The action sent pain running through him, but he stood it somehow. The salamander ceased its purring, then resumed.

“Where in hell am I?” he asked. “Or when?”

She shook her head. “Hell? No, I don’t think so. Some say it’s Earth and some call it Terah, but nobody calls it Hell. It’s—well, it’s a long—time, I guess—from when you were. I don’t know. In such matters, only the Satheri know. The Dual is closed even to the Seri. Anyhow, it’s not your space-time, though some say it’s your world.”

“You mean dimensional travel?” Dave asked. He’d seen something about that on a science-fiction television program. It made even time travel seem simple. At any event, however, this wasn’t a hospital in any sane and normal section of Canada during his time, on Earth.

“Something like that,” she agreed doubtfully. “But go to sleep now. Shh.” Her hands came up in complicated gestures. “Sleep and grow well.”

“None of that hypnotism again!” he protested.

She went on making passes, but smiled on him kindly. “Don’t be superstitious—hypnotism is silly. Now go to sleep. For me, Dave Hanson. I want you well and true when you awake.”

Against his will, his eyes closed, and his lips refused to obey his desire to protest. Fatigue dulled his thoughts. But for a moment, he went on pondering. Somebody from the future—this could never be the past—had somehow pulled him out just ahead of the accident, apparently; or else he’d been deep frozen somehow to wait for medical knowledge beyond that of his own time. He’d heard it might be possible to do that.

It was a cockeyed future, if this were the future. Still, if scientists had to set up some, sort of a religious mumbo-jumbo.…

Sickness thickened in him, until he could feel his face wet with perspiration. But with it had come a paralysis that left him unable to move or groan. He screamed inside himself.

“Poor mandrake-man,” the girl said softly. “Go back to Lethe. But don’t cross over. We need you sorely.”

Then he passed out again.

II

Whatever they had done to patch him up hadn’t been very successful, apparently. He spent most of the time in a delirium; sometimes he was dead, and there was an ultimate coldness like the universe long after the entropy death. At other times, he was wandering into fantasies that were all horrible. And at all times, even in unconsciousness, he seemed to be fighting desperately to keep from falling apart painfully within himself.

When he was awake, the girl was always beside him. He learned that her name was Nema. Usually there was also the stout figure of Ser Perth. Sometimes he saw Sather Karf or some other older man working with strange equipment, or with things that looked like familiar hypodermics and medical equipment. Once they had an iron lung around him and there was a thin wisp over his face.

He started to brush it aside, but Nema’s hand restrained him. “Don’t disturb the sylph,” she ordered.

Another semirational period occurred during some excitement or danger that centered around him. He was still half delirious, but he could see men working frantically to build a net of something around his bed, while a wet, thick thing flopped and drooled beyond the door, apparently immune to the attacks of the hospital staff. There were shouting orders involving the undine. The salamander in Dave’s chest crept deeper and seemed to bleat at each cry of the monstrous thing beyond the door.

Sather Karf sat hunched over what seemed to be a bowl of water, paying no attention to the struggle. Something that he seemed to see there held his attention. Then he screamed suddenly.

“The Sons of the Egg. It’s their sending!”

He reached for a brazier beside him, caught up the fire and plunged it deep into the bowl of water, screaming something. There was the sound of an explosion from far away as he drew his hands out, unwet by the water. Abruptly the undine began a slow retreat. In Dave’s chest, the salamander began purring again, and he drifted back into his coma.

He tried to ask Nema about it later when she was feeding him, but she brushed it aside.

“An orderly let out the news that you are here,” she said. “But don’t worry. We’ve sent out a doppelganger to fool the Sons, and the orderly has been sentenced to slavery under the pyramid builder for twenty lifetimes. I hate my brother! How dare he fight us with the sky falling?”

Later, the delirium seemed to pass completely, but Dave took no comfort from that. In its place came a feeling of gloom and apathy. He slept most of the time, as if not daring to use his little strength even to think.

Ser Perth stayed near him most of the time now. The man was obviously worried, but tried not to show it. “We’ve managed to get some testosterone from a blond homunculus,” he reported. “That should put you on your feet in no time. Don’t worry, young man we’ll keep you vivified somehow until the Sign changes.” But he didn’t sound convincing.

“Everyone is chanting for you,” Nema told him. “All over the world, the chants go up.”

It meant nothing to him, but it sounded friendly. A whole world hoping for him to get well! He cheered up a bit at that until he found out that the chants were compulsory, and had nothing to do with goodwill.

The iron lung was back the next time he came to, and he was being tugged toward it. He noticed this time that there was no sylph, and his breathing seemed to be no worse than usual. But the sight of the two orderlies and the man in medical uniform beside the lung reassured him. Whatever their methods, he was convinced that they were doing their best for him here.

He tried to help them get him into the lung, and one of the men nodded encouragingly. But Dave was too weak to give much assistance. He glanced about for Nema, but she was out on one of her infrequent other duties. He sighed, wishing desperately that she were with him. She was a lot more proficient than the orderlies.

The man in medical robe turned toward him sharply. “Stop that!” he ordered.

Before Dave could ask what he was to stop, Nema came rushing into the room. Her face paled as she saw the three men, and she gasped, throwing up her hand in a protective gesture.

The two orderlies jumped for her, one grabbing her and the other closing his hands over her mouth. She struggled violently, but the men were too strong for her.

The man in doctor’s robes shoved the iron lung aside violently and reached into his clothing. From it, he drew a strange, double-bladed knife. He swung toward Dave, raising the knife into striking position and aiming it at Dave’s heart.

“The Egg breaks,” he intoned hollowly. It was a cultured voice, and there was a refinement to his face that registered on Dave’s mind even over the horror of the weapon. “The fools cannot hold the shell. But neither shall they delay its breaking. Dead you were, mandrake son, and dead you shall be again. But since the fault is only theirs, may no ill dreams follow you beyond Lethe!”

The knife started down, just as Nema managed to break free. She shrieked out a phrase of keening command. The salamander suddenly broke from Dave’s chest, glowing brighter as it rose toward the face of the attacker. It was like a bit from the center of a star. The man jumped back, beginning a frantic ritual. He was too late. The salamander hit him, sank into him and shone through him. Then he slumped, steamed…and was nothing but dust falling toward the carpet. The salamander turned, heading toward the others. But it was to Nema it went, rather than the two men. She was trying something desperately, but fear was thick on her face, and her hands were unsure.

Abruptly, Sather Karf was in the doorway. His hand lifted, his fingers dancing. Words hissed from his lips in a stream of sibilants too quick for Dave to catch. The salamander paused and began to shrink doubtfully. Sather Karf turned, and again his hands writhed in the air. One hand darted back and forward, as if he were throwing something. Again he made the gesture. With each throw, one of the false orderlies dropped to the floor, clutching at a neck where the skin showed marks of constriction as if a steel cord were tightening. They died slowly, their eyes bulging and faces turning blue. Now the salamander moved toward them, directed apparently by slight motions from Sather Karf. In a few moments, there was no sign of them.

The old man sighed, his face slumping into lines of fatigue and age. He caught his breath. He held out a hand to the salamander, petted it to a gentle glow and put it back over Dave’s chest.

“Good work, Nema,” he said wearily. “You’re too weak to control the salamander, but this was done well in the emergency. I saw them in the pool, but I was almost too late. The damned fanatics. Superstition in this day and age!”

He swung to face Dave, whose vocal cords were still taut with the shock of the sight of the knife. “Don’t worry, Dave Hanson. From now on, every Ser and Sather will protect you with the lower and the upper magic. The House changes tomorrow, if the sky permits, and we shall shield you until then. We didn’t bring you back from the dead, piecing your scattered atoms together with your scattered revenant particle by particle, to have you killed again. Somehow, we’ll incarnate you fully! You have my word for that.”

“Dead?” Dave had grown numbed to his past during the long illness, but that brought it back afresh. “Then I was killed? I wasn’t just frozen and brought here by some time machine?”

Sather Karf stared at him blankly. “Time machine? Impossible. Of course not. After the tractor killed you, and you were buried, what good would such fantasies be, even if they existed? No, we simply reincarnated you by pooling our magic. Though it was a hazardous and parlous thing, with the sky falling.…”

He sighed and went out, while Dave went back to his delirium.

III

There was no delirium when he awoke in the morning. Instead, there was only a feeling of buoyant health. In fact, Dave Hanson had never felt that good in his life—or his former life. He reconsidered his belief that there was no delirium, wondering if the feeling were not itself a form of hallucination. But it was too genuine. He knew without question that he was well.

It shouldn’t have been true. During the night, he’d partially awakened in agony to find Nema chanting and gesturing desperately beside him, and he’d been sure he was on the verge of his second death. He could remember one moment, just before midnight, when she had stopped and seemed to give up hope. Then she’d braced herself and begun some ritual as if she were afraid to try it. Beyond that, he had no memory of pain.

Nema came into the room now, touching his shoulder gently. She smiled and nodded at him. “Good morning, Sagittarian. Get out of bed.”

Expecting the worst, he swung his feet over the side and sat up. After so much time in bed, even a well man should be rendered weak and shaky. But there was no dizziness, no sign of weakness. He had made a most remarkable recovery, and Nema didn’t even seem surprised. He tentatively touched foot to floor and half stood, propping himself against the high bed.

“Come on,” Nema said impatiently. “You’re all right now. We entered your sign during the night.” She turned her back on him and took something from a chest beside the bed. “Ser Perth will be here in a moment. He’ll want to find you on your feet and dressed.”

Hanson was beginning to feel annoyance at the suddenly cocksure and unsympathetic girl, but he stood fully erect and flexed his muscles. There wasn’t even a trace of bedsoreness, though he had been flat on his back long enough to grow callouses. And as he examined himself, he could find no scars or signs of injuries from the impact of the bulldozer—if there had ever really been a bulldozer.

He grimaced at his own doubts. “Where am I, anyhow, Nema?”

The girl dumped an armload of clothing on his bed and looked at him with controlled exasperation. “Dave Hanson,” she told him, “don’t you know any other words? That’s the millionth time you’ve asked me that, at least. And for the hundredth time, I’ll tell you that you’re here. Look around you; see for yourself. I’m tired of playing nursemaid to you.” She picked up a shirt of heavy-duty khaki from the pile on the bed and handed it to him. “Get into this,” she ordered. “Dress first, talk later.”

She stalked out of the room.

Dave did as she had ordered, busy with his own thoughts as he discovered what he was to wear. He was still wearing something with a vague resemblance to a short hospital gown, with green pentacles and some plant symbol woven into it, and with a clasp to hold it together shaped into a silver crux ansata. He took it off and hurled it into a corner disgustedly.

He picked up the khaki shirt and put it on; then, with growing curiosity, the rest of the garments, until he came to the shoes. Khaki shirt, khaki breeches, a wide, webbed belt, a flat-brimmed hat. And the shoes —they weren’t shoes, but knee-length leather boots, like a dressy version of lumberman’s boots or a rougher version of riding boots. He hadn’t seen even pictures of such things since the few silent movies run in some of the little art theaters. He struggled to get them on. They were an excellent fit, and comfortable enough, but he felt as if his legs were encased in hardened concrete when he was through. He looked down at himself in disgust. He was in all respects costumed as the epitome of the Hollywood dream of a heroic engineer-builder, ready to drive a canal through an isthmus or throw a dam across a raging river—the kind who’d build the dam while the river raged, instead of waiting until it was quiet, a few days later. He was about as far from the appearance of the actual blue-denim, leather-jacket engineers he had worked with as Maori in ancient battle array.

He shook his head and went looking for the bathroom, where there might be a mirror. He found a door, but it led into a closet, filled with alembics and other equipment. There was a mirror hung on the back of it, however, with a big sign over it that said “Keep Out.” He threw the door wide and stared at himself. At first, in spite of the costume, he was pleased. Then the truth began to hit him, and he felt abruptly sure he was still raging with fever and delirium.

He was still staring when Nema came back into the room. She pursed her lips and shut the door quickly. But he’d already seen enough.

“Never mind where I am,” he said. “Tell me, who am I?”

She stared at him. “You’re Dave Hanson.”

“The hell I am,” he told her. “Oh, that’s what I remember my father having me christened as. He hated long names. But take a good look at me. I’ve been shaving my face for years now, and I should know it.That face in the mirror wasn’t it! There’s a resemblance. But a darned faint one. Change the chin, lengthen my nose, make the eyes brown instead of blue, and it might be me. But Dave Hanson’s at least five inches shorter and fifty pounds lighter, too. Maybe the face is plastic surgery after the accident—but this isn’t even my body.”

The girl’s expression softened. “I’m sorry, Dave Hanson,” she said gently. “We should have thought to warn you. You were a difficult conjuration—and even the easier ones often go wrong these days. We did our best, though it may be that the auspices were too strong on the soma. I’m sorry if you don’t like the way you look. But there’s nothing we can do about it now.”

Hanson opened the door again, in spite of Nema’s quick frown, and looked at himself. “Well,” he admitted, “I guess it could be worse. In fact, I guess it was worse—once I get used to looking like this, I think I’ll get to like it. But seeing it was a heck of a thing to take for a sick man.”

Nema said sharply, “Are you sick?”

“Well—I guess not.”

“Then why say you are? You shouldn’t be; I told you we’ve entered the House of Sagittarius now. You can’t be sick in your own sign. Don’t you understand even that much elementary science?”

Hanson didn’t get a chance to answer. Ser Perth was suddenly in the doorway, dressed in a different type of robe. This was short and somehow conservative—it had a sincere, executive look about it. The man seemed changed in other ways, too. But Dave wasn’t concerned about that. He was growing tired of the way people suddenly appeared out of nowhere. Maybe they all wore rubber-soled shoes or practiced sneaking about; it was a silly way for grown people to act.

“Come with me, Dave Hanson,” Ser Perth ordered, without wasting words. He spoke in a clipped manner now.

Dave followed, grumbling in his mind. It was even sillier than their sneaking about for them to expect him to start running around before they bothered to check the condition of a man fresh out of his death bed. In any of the hospitals he had known, there would have been hours or days of X-rays and blood tests and temperature taking before he would be released. These people simply decided a man was well and ordered him out.

To do them justice, however, he had to admit that they seemed to be right. He had never felt better. The twaddle about Sagittarius would have to be cleared up sometime, but meanwhile he was in pretty good shape. Sagittarius, as he remembered it, was supposed to be one of the signs of the Zodiac. Bertha had been something of a sucker for astrology and had found he was born under that sign before she agreed to their little good-by party. He snorted to himself. It had done her a heck of a lot of good, which was to be expected of such nonsense.

They passed down a dim corridor and Ser Perth turned in at a door. Inside there was a single-chair barber shop, with a barber who might also have come from some movie-casting office. He had the proper wavy black hair and rat-tailed comb stuck into a slightly dirty off-white jacket. He also had the half-obsequious, half-insulting manner Dave had found most people expected from their barbers. While he shaved and trimmed Dave, he made insultingly solicitous comments about Dave’s skin needing a massage, suggested a tonic for thinning hair and practically insisted on a singe. Ser Perth watched with a mixture of intentness and amusement. The barber trimmed the tufts from over Dave’s ears and clipped the hair in his nose, while a tray was pushed up and a slatternly blonde began giving him a manicure.

He began noticing that she carefully dumped his fingernail parings into a small jar. A few moments later, he found the barber also using a jar to collect the hair and shaving stubble. Ser Perth was also interested in that, it seemed, since his eyes followed that part of the operation. Dave frowned, and then relaxed. After all, this was a hospital barber shop, and they probably had some rigid rules about sanitation, though he hadn’t seen much other evidence of such care.

The barber finally removed the cloth with a snap and bowed. “Come again, sir,” he said.

Ser Perth stood up and motioned for Dave to follow. He turned to look in a mirror, and caught sight of the barber handing the bottles and jars of waste hair and nail clippings to a girl. He saw only her back, but it looked like Nema.

Something stirred in his mind then. He’d read something somewhere about hair clippings and nail parings being used for some strange purpose. And there’d been something about spittle. But they hadn’t collected that. Or had they? He’d been unconscious long enough for them to have gathered any amount they wanted. It all had something to do with some kind of mumbo-jumbo, and.…

Ser Perth had led him through the same door by which they’d entered—but not into the same hallway. Dave’s mind dropped the other thoughts as he tried to cope with the realization that this was another corridor. It was brightly lit, and there was a scarlet carpet on the floor. Also, it was a short hall, requiring only a few steps before they came to a bigger door, elaborately enscrolled. Ser Perth bent before it, and the door opened silently while he and Dave entered.

The room was large and sparsely furnished. Sitting cross-legged on a cushion near the door was Nema, juggling something in her hands. It looked like a cluster of colored threads, partly woven into a rather garish pattern. On a raised bench between two windows sat the old figure of Sather Karf, resting his chin on hands that held a staff and staring at Dave intently.

Dave stopped as the door closed behind him. Sather Karf nodded, as if satisfied, and Nema tied a complex knot in the threads, then paused silently.

Sather Karf looked far less well than when Dave had last seen him. He seemed older and more shriveled, and there was a querulous, pinched expression in place of the firmness and almost nobility Dave had come to expect. His old eyes bored into the younger man, and he nodded. His voice had a faint quaver now. “All right. You’re not much to look at, but you’re the best we could find in the Ways we can reach. Come here, Dave Hanson.”

The command was still there, however petty the man seemed now. Dave started to phrase some protest, when he found his legs taking him forward to stop in front of Sather Karf, like some clockwork man whose lever has been pushed. He stood in front of the raised bench, noticing that the spot had been chosen to highlight him in the sunset light from the windows. He listened while the old man talked.

Sather Karf began without preamble, stating things in a dry voice as if reading off a list of obvious facts.

“You were dead, Dave Hanson. Dead, buried, and scattered by time and chance until even the place where you lay was forgotten. In your own world, you were nothing. Now you are alive, through the effort of men here whose work you could not even dream of. We have created you, Dave Hanson. Remember that, and forget the ties to any other world, since that world no longer holds you.”

Dave nodded slowly. It was hard to swallow, but there were too many things here that couldn’t be in any world he had known. And his memory of dying was the clearest memory he had. “All right,” he admitted. “You saved my life—or something. And I’ll try to remember it. But if this isn’t my world, what world is it?”

“The only world, perhaps. It doesn’t matter.” The old man sighed, and for a moment the eyes were shrouded in speculation, as if he were following some strange by-ways of his own thoughts. Then he shrugged. “It’s a world and culture linked to the one you knew only by theories that disagree with each other. And by vision—the vision of those who are adept enough to see through the Ways to the branches of Duality. Before me, there was nothing. But I’ve learned to open a path—a difficult path for one in this world—and to draw from it, as you have been drawn. Don’t try to understand what is a mystery even to the Satheri, Dave Hanson.”

“A reasonably intelligent man should be able—” Dave began.

Ser Perth cut his words off with a sharp laugh. “Maybe a man. But who said you were a man, Dave Hanson? Can’t you even understand that? You’re only half human. The other half is mandrake—a plant that is related to humanity through shapes and signs by magic. We make simulacra out of mandrakes—like the manicurist in the barber shop. And sometimes we use a mandrake root to capture the essence of a real man, in which case he’s a mandrake-man, like you. Human? No. But a very good imitation, I must admit.”

Dave turned from Ser Perth toward Nema, but her head was bent over the cords she was weaving, and she avoided his eyes. He remembered now that she’d called him a mandrake-man before, in a tone of pity. He looked down at his body, sick in his mind. Vague bits of fairy tales came back to him, suggesting horrible things about mandrake creatures—zombie-like things, only outwardly human.

Sather Karf seemed amused as he looked at Ser Perth. Then the old man dropped his eyes toward Dave, and there was a brief look of pity in them. “No matter, Dave Hanson,” he said. “You were human, and by the power of your true name, you are still the same Dave Hanson. We have given you life as precious as your other life. Pay us for that with your service, and that new life will be truly precious. We need your services.”

“What do you want?” Dave asked. He couldn’t fully believe what he’d heard, but there had been too many strange things to let him disbelieve, either. If they had made him a mandrake-man, then by what little he could remember and guess, they could make him obey them.

“Look out the window—at the sky,” Sather Karf ordered.

Dave looked. The sunset colors were still vivid. He stepped forward and peered through the crystalline glass. Before him was a city, bathed in orange and red, towering like the skyline of a dozen cities he had seen—and yet; not like any. The buildings were huge and many-windowed. But some were straight and tall, some were squat and fairy-colored and others blossomed from thin stalks into impossibly bulbous, minareted domes, like long-stemmed tulips reproduced in stone. Haroun-al-Rashid might have accepted the city, but Mayor Wagner could never have believed in it.

“Look at the sky,” the old man suggested again, and there was no mockery in his voice now.

Dave looked up obediently.

The sunset colors were not sunset. The sun was bright and blinding overhead, surrounded by reddish clouds, glaring down on the fairy city. The sky was—blotchy. It was daylight, but through the clouds bright stars were shining. A corner of the horizon was winter blue; a whole sweep of it was dead, featureless black. It was a nightmare sky, an impossible sky. Dave’s eyes bulged as he looked at it.

He turned back to Sather Karf. “What—what’s the matter with it?”

“What indeed?” There was bitterness and fear in the old man’s voice. In the corner of the room, Nema looked up for a moment, and there was fear and worry in her eyes before she looked back to her weaving of endless knots. Sather Karf sighed in weariness. “If I knew what was happening to the sky, would I be dredging the muck of Duality for the likes of you, Dave Hanson!”

He stood up, wearily but with a certain ease and grace that belied his age, looking down at Dave. There was stern command in his words, but a hint of pleading in his expression.

“The sky’s falling, Dave Hanson. Your task is to put it together again. See that you do not fail us!”

He waved dismissal and Ser Perth led Dave and Nema out.

IV

The corridor down which they moved this time was one that might have been familiar even in Dave’s Chicago. There was the sound of typewriters from behind the doors, and the floor was covered with composition tile, instead of the too-lush carpets. He began to relax a little until he came to two attendants busily waxing the floor. One held the other by the ankles and pushed the creature’s hairy face back and forth, while its hands spread the wax ahead of it. The results were excellent, but Dave found it hard to appreciate.

Ser Perth shrugged slightly. “They’re only mandrakes,” he explained. He threw open the door of one of the offices and led them through an outer room toward an inner chamber, equipped with comfortable chairs and a desk. “Sit down, Dave Hanson. I’ll fill you in on anything you need to know before you’re assigned. Now—the Sather Karf told you what you were to do, of course, but—”

“Wait a minute,” Dave suggested. “I don’t remember being told any such thing.”

Ser Perth looked at Nema, who nodded. “He distinctly said you were to repair the sky. I’ve got it down in my notes if you want to see them.” She extended the woven cords.

“Never mind,” Ser Perth said. He twiddled with his mustache. “I’ll recap a little. Dave Hanson, as you have seen, the sky is falling and must be repaired. You are our best hope. We know that from a prophecy, and it is confirmed by the fact that the fanatics of the Egg have tried several times to kill you. They failed, though one effort was close enough, but their attempts would not have been made at all if they had not been convinced through their arts that you can succeed with the sky.”

Dave shook his head. “It’s nice to know you trust me!”

“Knowing that you can succeed,” the other went on smoothly, “we know that you will. It is my unpleasant duty to point out to you the things that will happen if you fail. I say nothing of the fact that you owe us your life; that may be a small enough gift, and one quickly withdrawn. I say only that you have no escape from us. We have your name, and the true symbol is the thing, as you should know. We also have cuttings from your hair and your beard; we have the parings of your nails, five cubic centimeters of your spinal fluid and a scraping from your liver. We have your body through those, nor can you take it out of our reach. Your name gives us your soul.” He looked at Hanson piercingly. “Shall I tell you what it would be like for your soul to live in the muck of a swamp in a mandrake root?”

Dave shook his head. “I guess not. I—look, Ser Perth. I don’t know what you’re talking about. How can I go along with you when I’m in the dark? Start at the beginning, will you? I was killed; all right, if you say I was, I was. You brought me to life again with a mandrake root and spells; you can do anything you want with me. I admit it; right now, I’ll admit anything you want me to, because you know what’s going on and I don’t. But what’s all this business of the sky falling? If it is and can be falling, what’s the difference? If there is a difference, why should I be able to do anything about it?”

“Ignorance!” Ser Perth murmured to himself. He sighed heavily. “Always ignorance. Well, then, listen.” He sat down on the corner of the desk and took out a cigarette. At least it looked like a cigarette. He snapped his fingers and lighted it from a little flame that sprang up, blowing clouds of bright green smoke from his mouth. The smoke hung lazily, drifting into vague patterns and then began to coalesce into a green houri without costume. He swatted at it negligently.

“Dratted sylphs. There’s no controlling the elementals properly any more.” He didn’t seem too displeased, however, as he watched the thing dance off. Then he sobered.

“In your world, Dave Hanson, you were versed in the engineering arts—you more than most. That you should be so ignorant, though you were considered brilliant is a sad commentary on your world. But no matter. Perhaps you can at least learn quickly still. Even you must have had some idea of the composition of the sky?”

Dave frowned as he tried to answer. “Well, I suppose the atmosphere is oxygen and nitrogen, mostly; then there’s the ionosphere and the ozone layer. As I remember, the color of the sky is due to the scattering of light—light rays being diffracted in the air.”

“Beyond the air,” Ser Perth said impatiently. “The sky itself!”

“Oh—space. We were just getting out there with manned ships. Mostly vacuum, of course. Of course, we’re still in the solar atmosphere, even there, with the Van Allen belts and such things. Then there are the stars, like our sun, but much more distant. The planets and the moon—”

“Ignorance was bad enough,” Ser Perth interrupted in amazement. He stared at Dave, shaking his head in disgust. “You obviously come from a culture of even more superstition than ignorance. Dave Hanson, the sky is no such thing. Put aside the myths you heard as a child. The sky is a solid sphere that surrounds Earth. The stars are no more like the sun than the glow of my cigarette is like a forest fire. They are lights on the inside of the sphere, moving in patterns of the Star Art, nearer to us than the hot lands to the south.”

“Fort,” Dave said. “Charles Fort said that in a book.”

Ser Perth shrugged. “Then why make me say it again? This Fort was right. At least one intelligent man lived in your world, I’m pleased to know. The sky is a dome holding the sun, the stars and the wandering planets. The problem is that the dome is cracking like a great, smashed eggshell.”

“What’s beyond the dome?”

Ser Perth shuddered slightly. “My greatest wish is that I die before I learn. In your world, had you discovered that there were such things as elements? That is, basic substances which in combination produce—”

“Of course,” Dave interrupted.

“Good. Then of the four elements—” Dave gulped, but kept silent, “—of the four elements the universe is built. Some things are composed of a single element; some of two, some of three. The proportions vary and the humors and spirits change but all things are composed of the elements. And only the sky is composed of all four elements—of earth, of water, of fire and of air—in equal proportions. One part each, lending each its own essential quality to the mixture, so that the sky is solid as earth, radiant as fire, formless as water, insubstantial as air. And the sky is cracking and falling, as you have seen for yourself. The effects are already being felt. Gamma radiation is flooding through the gaps; the quick-breeding viruses are mutating through half the world, faster than the Medical Art can control them, so that millions of us are sneezing and choking—and dying, too, for lack of antibiotics and proper care. Air travel is a perilous thing; just today, a stratosphere roc crashed head-on into a fragment of the sky and was killed with all its passengers. Worst of all, the Science of Magic suffers. Because the stars are fixed on the dome of the sky. With the crumbling of that dome, the course of the stars has been corrupted. It’s pitiful magic that can be worked without regard to the conjunctions of the planets; but it is all the magic that is left to us. When Mars trines Neptune, the Medical Art is weak; even while we were conjuring you, the trine occurred. It almost cost your life. And it should not have occurred for another seven days.”

There was silence, while Ser Perth let Dave consider it. But it was too much to accept at once, and Dave’s mind was a treadmill. He’d agreed to admit anything, but some of this was such complete nonsense that his mind rejected it automatically. Yet he was sure Ser Perth was serious; there was no humor on the face of the prissy thin-mustached man before him. Nor had the Sather Karf considered it a joke, he was sure. He had a sudden vision of the latter strangling two men from a distance of thirty feet without touching them. That couldn’t happen in a sane world, either.

Dave asked weakly, “Could I have a drink?”

“With a sylph around?” Ser Perth grimaced. “You wouldn’t have a chance. Now, is all clear to you, Dave Hanson?”

“Sure. Except for one thing. What am I supposed to do?”

“Repair our sky. It should not be too difficult for a man of your reputation. You built a wall across a continent high and strong enough to change the air currents and affect all your weather—and that in the coldest, meanest country in your world. You come down to us as one of the greatest engineers of history, Dave Hanson, so great that your fame has penetrated even to our world, through the viewing pools of our wisest historians. There is a shrine and monument in your world. ‘Dave Hanson, to whom nothing was impossible.’ Well, we have a nearly impossible task: a task of engineering and building. If our Science of Magic could be relied upon—but it cannot; it never can be, until the sky is fixed. We have the word of history: no task is impossible to Dave Hanson.”

Dave looked at the smug face and a slow grin crept over his own, in spite of himself. “Ser Perth, I’m afraid you’ve made a slight mistake.”

“We don’t make mistakes in such matters. You’re Dave Hanson,” Ser Perth said flatly. “Of all the powers of the Science, the greatest lies in the true name. We evoked you by the name of Dave Hanson. You are Dave Hanson, therefore.”

“Don’t try to deceive us,” Nema suggested. Her voice was troubled. “Pray rather that we never have reason to doubt you. Otherwise the wisest of the Satheri would spend their remaining time in planning something unthinkable for you.”

Ser Perth nodded vigorous assent. Then he motioned to the office. “Nema will show you to your quarters later. Use this until you leave. I have to report back.”

Dave stared after him until he was gone, and then around at the office. He went to the window and stared upwards at the crazy patchwork of the sky. For all he knew, in such a sky there might be cracks. In fact, as he looked, he could make out a rift, and beyond that a…hole…a small patch where there was no color, and yet the sky there was not black. There were no stars there, though points of light were clustered around the edges, apparently retreating.

All he had to do was to repair the sky. Shades of Chicken Little!

Maybe to David Arnold Hanson, the famed engineer, no task was impossible. But quite a few things were impossible to that engineer’s obscure and unimportant nephew, the computer technician and generally undistinguished man who had been christened Dave. They’d gotten the right man for the name, all right. But the wrong man for the job.

Dave Hanson could repair anything that contained electrical circuits or ran on tiny jeweled bearings, but he could handle almost nothing else. It wasn’t stupidity or incapacity to learn, but simply that he had never been subjected to the discipline of construction engineering. Even on the project, while working with his uncle, he had seen little of what went on, and hadn’t really understood that, except when it produced data that he could feed into his computer. He couldn’t drive a nail in the wall to hang a picture or patch a hole in the plaster.

But it seemed that he’d better put on a good show of trying if he wanted to continue enjoying good health.

“I suppose you’ve got a sample of the sky that’s fallen?” he asked Nema. “And what the heck are you doing here, anyhow? I thought you were a nurse.”

She frowned at him, but went to a corner where a small ball of some clear crystalline substance stood. She muttered into it, while a surly face stared out. Then she turned back to him, nodding. “They are sending some of the sky to you. As to my being a nurse, of course I am. All student magicians take up the Medical Art for a time. Surely one so skilled can also be a secretary, even to the great Dave Hanson? As to why I’m here—” She dropped her eyes, frowning, while a touch of added color reached her cheeks. “In the sleep spell I used, I invoked that you should be well and true. But I’m only a bachelor in magic, not even a master, and I slipped. I phrased it that I wanted you well and true. Hence, well and truly do I want you.”

“Huh?” He stared at her, watching the blush deepen. “You mean—?”

“Take care! First you should know that I am proscribed as a duly registered virgin. And in this time of need, the magic of my blood must not be profaned.” She twisted sidewise, and then turned toward the door, avoiding him. Before she reached it, the door opened to show a dull clod, entirely naked, holding up a heavy weight of nothing.

“Your sample of sky,” she said as the clod labored over to the desk and dropped nothing with a dull clank. The desk top dented slightly.

Dave could clearly see that nothing was on the desk. But if nothing was a vacuum, this was an extremely hard and heavy one. It seemed to be about twelve inches on a side, in its rough shape, and must have weighed two hundred pounds. He tapped it, and it rang. Inside it, a tiny point of light danced frantically back and forth.

“A star,” she said sadly.

“I’m going to need some place to experiment with this,” he suggested. He expected to be sent to the deepest, dankest cave of all the world as a laboratory, and to find it equipped with pedigreed bats, dried unicorn horns and whole rows of alembics that he couldn’t use.

Nema smiled brightly. “Of course. We’ve already prepared a construction camp for you. You’ll find most of the tools you used in your world waiting there and all the engineers we could get or make for you.”

He’d been considering stalling while he demanded exactly such things. He was reasonably sure by now that they had no transistors, signal generators, frequency meters or whatever else he could demand. He could make quite an issue out of the need to determine the characteristic impedance of their sky. That might even be interesting, at that; would it be anywhere near 300 ohms here? But it seemed that stalling wasn’t going to work. They’d given him what they expected him to need, and he’d have to be careful to need only what they expected, or they might just decide he wasn’t Dave Hanson.

“I can’t work on this stuff here,” he said.

“Then why didn’t you say so?” she asked sharply. She let out a cry and a raven came flying in. She whispered something to it, frowned, and then ordered it off. “There’s no surface transportation available, and all the local rocs are in use. Well, we’ll have to make do with what we have.”

She darted for the outer office, rummaged in a cabinet, and came back with a medium-sized rug of worn but gaudy design. Bad imitation Sarouk, Dave guessed. She tossed it onto the largest cleared space, gobbled some outlandish noises, and dropped onto it, squatting near one end. Behind her, the dull clod picked up the sample of sky and fell to his face on the rug. At her vehement signal, Dave squatted down beside her, not daring to believe what he was beginning to guess.

The carpet lifted uncertainly. It seemed to protest at the unbalanced weight of the sky piece. She made the sounds again, and it rose reluctantly, curling up at the front, like a crazy toboggan. It moved slowly, but with increasing speed, sailed out of the office through the window and began gaining altitude. They went soaring over the city at about thirty miles an hour, heading toward what seemed to be barren land beyond. “Sometimes they fail now,” she told him. “But so far, only if the words are improperly pronounced.”

He gulped and looked gingerly over at the city below. As he did, she gasped. He heard a great tearing sound of thunder. In the sky, a small hole appeared. There was a scream of displaced air, and something went zipping downwards in front of them, setting up a wind that bounced the carpet about crazily. Dave glanced over the edge again to see one of the tall buildings crumple under the impact. The three top stories were ripped to shreds. Then the whole building began to change. It slowly blossomed into a huge cloud of pink gas that rifted away, to show people and objects dropping like stones to the ground below. Nema sighed and turned her eyes away.

“But—it’s ridiculous!” Dave protested. “We heard the rip and less than five seconds later, that piece fell. If your sky is even twenty miles above us, it would take longer than that to fall.”

“It’s a thousand miles up,” she told him. “And sky has no inertia until it is contaminated by contact with the ground. It took longer than usual for that piece to fall.” She sighed. “It gets worse. Look at the signs. That break has disturbed the planets. We’re moving retrograde, back to our previous position, out of Sagittarius! Now we’ll go back to the character we had before—and just when I was getting used to the change.”

He jerked his eyes off the raw patch of emptiness in the sky, where a few stars seemed to be vanishing. “Your character? Isn’t anything stable here?”

“Of course not. Naturally, in each House we have a differing of character, as does the world itself. Why else should astrology be the greatest of the sciences?”

It was a nice world, he decided. And yet the new factor explained some things. He’d been vaguely worried about the apparent change in Ser Perth, who’d turned from a serious and helpful doctor into a supercilious, high-handed fop. But—what about his recovery, if that was supposed to be determined by the signs of the zodiac?

He had no time to ask. The carpet bucked, and the girl began speaking to it urgently. It wavered, then righted itself, to begin sliding downwards.

“There is a ring of protection around your camp,” Nema explained. “It is set to make entry impossible to one who does not have the words or who is unfriendly. The carpet could not go through that, anyway. The ring negates all other magic trying to pass it. And of course we have basilisks mounted on posts around the grounds. They’re trained to hood their eyes, except when they sense anyone trying to enter who should not. You can’t be turned to stone looking at one, you know—only by having one look at you.”

“You’re cheering me up no end,” he assured her.

She smiled pleasantly and began setting the carpet down. Below, he could see a camp that looked much like the camps he had seen in the same movies from which all his clothes had been copied. There were well laid-out rows of sheds, beautiful lines of construction equipment and everything in order, as it could never be in a real camp. As he began walking with the girl toward a huge tent that should have belonged to a circus, he could see other discrepancies. The tractors were designed for work in mud flats and the haulers had the narrow wheels used on rocky ground. Nothing seemed quite as it should be. He spotted a big generator working busily—and then saw a gang of about fifty men, or mandrakes, turning a big capstan that kept it going. Here and there were neat racks of miscellaneous tools. Some were museum pieces. There was even a gandy cart, though no rails for it to run on.

They were almost at the main tent when a crow flew down and yelled something in Nema’s ear. She scowled, and nodded. “I’m needed back,” she said. “Most of the men here—” She pointed to the gangs that moved about busily doing nothing, all in costumes similar to his, except for the boots and hat. “They’re mandrakes, conjured into existence, but without souls. The engineers we have are snatched from Duality just after dying and revived here while their brains still retain their knowledge. They have no true souls either, of course, but they don’t know it. Ah. The short man there—he’s Garm. Sersa Garm, an apprentice to Ser Perth. He’s to be your foreman, and he’s real.”

She headed back to the outskirts, then turned to shout back. “Sather Karf says you may have ten days to fix the sky,” she called. Her hand waved toward him in friendly good-bye. “Don’t worry, Dave Hanson. I have faith in you.”

Then she was running toward her reluctant carpet.

Dave stared up at the mottled dome above him and at the dull clod—certainly a mandrake—who was still carrying the sample. With all this preparation and a time limit, he couldn’t even afford to stall. He’d never fully understood why some plastics melted and others turned hard when heated, but he had to find what was wrong with the dome above and how to fix it. And maybe the time limit could be stretched a little, once he came up with the answer. Maybe. He’d worry about that after he worried about the first steps.

Sersa Garm proved to be a glum, fat young man, overly aware of his importance in training for serhood. He led Dave through the big tent, taking pride in the large drafting section—under the obvious belief that it was used for designing spells. Maybe it could have been useful for that if there had been a single man who knew anything about draftsmanship. There were four engineers, supposedly. One, who had died falling off a bridge while drunk, was curing himself of the shock by remaining dead drunk. One had been a chemical engineer specializing in making yeast and dried soya meal into breakfast cereals. Another knew all about dredging canals and the last one was an electronics engineer—a field in which Dave was far more competent.

He dismissed them. Whatever had been done to them—or perhaps the absence of a true soul, whatever that was—left them rigidly bound to their past ideas and totally incapable of doing more than following orders by routine now. Even Sersa Garm was more useful.

That young man could offer little information, however. The sky, he explained pompously, was a great mystery that only an adept might communicate to another. He meant that he didn’t know about it, Dave gathered. Everything, it turned out, was either a mystery or a rumor. He also had a habit of sucking his thumb when pressed too hard for details.

“But you must have heard some guesses about what started the cracks in the sky?” Dave suggested.

“Oh, indeed, that is common knowledge,” Sersa Garm admitted. He changed thumbs while he considered. “’Twas an experiment most noble, but through mischance going sadly awry. A great Sather made the sun remain in one place too long, and the heat became too great. It was like the Classic experiment—”

“How hot is your sun?”

There was a long pause. Then Sather Germ shrugged. “’Tis a great mystery. Suffice to say it has no true heat, but does send forth an activating principle against the phlogiston layer, which being excited grows vengeful against the air…but you have not the training to understand.”

“Okay, so they didn’t tell you, if they knew.” Dave stared up at the sun, trying to guess. The light looked about like what he was used to, where the sky was still whole. North light still was like what a color photographer would consider 5500° Kelvin, so the sun must be pretty hot. Hot enough to melt anything he knew about. “What’s the melting point of this sky material?”

He never did manage to make Sather Garm understand what a melting point was. But he found that one of the solutions tried had been the bleeding of eleven certified virgins for seven days. When the blood was mixed with dragonfeathers and frogsdown and melded with a genuine philosopher’s stone, they had used it to ink in the right path of the planets of a diagram. It had failed. The sky had cracked and a piece had fallen into the vessel of blood, killing a Sather who was less than two thousand years old.

“Two thousand?” Dave asked. “How old is Sather Karf?”

“None remembers truly. He has always been the Sather Karf—at least ten thousand years or more. To attain the art of a Sather is the work of a score of centuries, usually.”

That Sather had been in sad shape, it seemed. No one had been able to revive him, though bringing the dead back to life when the body was reasonably intact was routine magic that even a sersa could perform. It was after that they’d begun conjuring back to Dave’s world for all the other experts.

“All whose true names they could find, that is,” Garm amended. “The Egyptian pyramid builder, the man who discovered your greatest science, dianetics, the great Cagliostro—and what a time we had finding his true name! I was assigned to the helping of one who had discovered the secrets of gravity and some strange magic which he termed relativity—though indeed it had little to do with kinship, but was a private mystery. But when he was persuaded by divers means to help us, he gave up after one week, declaring it beyond his powers. They were even planning what might best be done to chastise him when he discovered in some manner a book of elementary conjuration and did then devise some strange new formula from the elements with which magic he disappeared.”

It was nice to know that Einstein had given up on the problem, Dave thought bitterly. As nice as the discovery that there was no fuel for the equipment here. He spent an hour rigging up a portable saw to use in attempting to cut off a smaller piece of the sky, and then saw the motor burn out when he switched it on. It turned out that all electricity here was d.c., conjured up by commanding the electrons in a wire to move in one direction, and completely useless with a.c. motors. It might have been useful for welding, but there was no electric torch.

“’Tis obviously not a thing of reason,” Garm told him severely. “If the current in such a form moves first in one direction and then in the other, then it cancels out and is useless. No, you must be wrong.”

As Dave remembered it, Tesla had been plagued by similar doubts from such men as Edison. He gave up and settled finally for one of the native welding torches, filled with a dozen angry salamanders. The flame or whatever it was had enough heat, but it was hard to control. By the time he learned to use it, night had fallen, and he was too tired to try anything more. He ate a solitary supper and went to sleep.

During the next three days he learned a few things the hard way, however. In spite of Garm’s assurance that nothing could melt the sky, he found that his sample would melt slowly under the heat of the torch. In the liquid state, it was jet black, though it cooled back to complete transparency. It was also without weight when in liquid form—a fact he discovered when it began rising through the air and spattering over everything, including his bare skin. The burns were nasty, but somehow seemed to heal with remarkable speed. Sersa Garm was impressed by the discoveries, and went off to suck his thumbs and brood over the new knowledge, much to Dave’s relief.

More work established the fact that welding bits of the sky together was not particularly difficult. The liquid sky was perfectly willing to bond onto anything, including other bits of itself.

Now, if he could get a gang up the thousand miles to the sky with enough torches to melt the cracks, it might recongeal as a perfect sphere. The stuff was strong, but somewhat brittle. He still had no idea of how to get the stars and planets back in the right places.

“The mathematician thought of such an idea,” Sersa Garm said sourly. “But ’twould never work. Even with much heat, it could not be done. For see you, the upper air is filled with phlogiston, which no man can breathe. Also, the phlogiston has negative weight, as every school child must know. Your liquid sky would sink through it, since negative weight must in truth be lighter than no weight, while nothing else would rise through the layer. And phlogiston will quench the flame of a rocket, as your expert von Braun discovered.”

The man was a gold mine of information, all bad. The only remaining solution, apparently, was to raise a scaffolding over the whole planet to the sky, and send up mandrakes to weld back the broken pieces. They wouldn’t need to breathe, anyhow. With material of infinite strength—and an infinite supply of it—and with infinite time and patience, it might have been worth considering.

Nema came out the next day with more cheering information. Her multi-times great grandfather, Sather Karf, regretted it, but he must have good news to release at once; the populace was starving because the food multipliers couldn’t produce reliable supplies. Otherwise, Dave would find venom being transported into his blood in increasing amounts until the pain drove him mad. And, just incidentally, the Sons of the Egg who’d attacked him in the hospital had tried to reach the camp twice already, once by interpenetrating into a shipment of mandrakes, which indicated to what measures they would resort. They meant to kill him somehow, and the defense of him was growing too costly unless there were positive results.

Dave hinted at having nearly reached the solution, giving her only a bit of his wild idea of welding the sky. She took off with that, but he was sure it wouldn’t satisfy the Sather. In that, he was right. By nightfall, when she came back from the city, he was groaning in pain. The venom had arrived ahead of her, and his blood seemed to be on fire.

She laid a cool hand on his forehead. “Poor Dave,” she said. “If I were not registered and certified, sometimes I feel that I might…but no more of that. Ser Perth sends you this unguent which will hold back the venom for a time, cautioning you not to reveal his softness.” Ser Perth, it seemed, had reverted to his pre-Sagittarian character as expected. “And Sather Karf wants the full plans at once. He is losing patience.”

He began rubbing on the ointment, which helped slightly. She peeled back his shirt and began helping, apparently delighted with the hair which he’d sprouted on his chest since his reincarnation. The unguent helped, but it wasn’t enough.

“He never had any patience to lose. What the hell does he expect me to do?” Dave asked hotly. “Snap my fingers thus, yell abracadabra and give him egg in his beer?”

He stopped to stare at his hand, where a can of beer had suddenly materialized!

Nema squealed in delight. “What a novel way to conjure, Dave. Let me try it.” She began snapping her fingers and saying the word eagerly, but nothing happened. Finally she turned back to him. “Show me again.”

He was sure it wouldn’t work twice, and he hesitated, not too willing to have his stock go down with her. Then he gave in.

“Abracadabra!” he said, and snapped his fingers.

There were results at once. This time an egg appeared in his hand, to the delighted cry of Nema. He bent to look at it uncertainly. It was a strange looking egg—more like one of the china eggs used to make hens think they were nesting when their eggs were still being taken from them.

Abruptly Nema sprang back. But she was too late. The egg was growing. It swelled to the size of a football, then was man-sized, and growing to the size of a huge tank that filled most of the tent. Suddenly it split open along one side and a group of men in dull robes and masks came spilling out of it.

“Die!” the one in front yelled. He lifted a double-bladed knife, charged for Dave, and brought the knife down.

The blades went through clothing, skin, flesh and bones, straight for Dave’s heart.

V

The knife had pierced Dave’s chest until the hilt pressed against his rib cage. He stared down at it, seeing it rise with the heaving of his lungs. Yet he was still alive!

Then the numbness of shock wore off and the pain nerves carried their messages to his brain. He still lived, but there was unholy agony where the blade lay. Coughing and choking on what must be his own blood, he scrabbled at the knife and ripped it out. Blood jetted from the gaping rent in his clothing. It gushed forth—and slowed; it frothed—trickled—and stopped entirely.

As he ripped his shirt back to look, the wound was closed already. But there was no easing of the pain that threatened to make him black out at any second.

He heard shouting, quarreling voices, but nothing made sense through the haze of his agony. He felt someone grab at him—more than one person—and they were dragging him willy-nilly across the ground. Something was clutched around his throat, almost choking him. He opened his eyes just as something clicked behind him.

The huge, translucent walls of the monstrous egg were all around him and the opened side was closing.

The pain began to abate. The bleeding had already stopped entirely and his lungs seemed to have cleared themselves of the blood and froth in them. Now with the ache of the wound ceasing, Dave could still feel the venom burning in his blood, and the constriction around his throat was still there, making it hard to breathe. He sat up, trying to free himself. The constriction came from an arm around his neck, but he couldn’t see to whom it belonged, and there was no place to move aside in the corner of the egg.

From inside, the walls of the egg were transparent enough for him to see cloudy outlines of what lay beyond. He could see the ground sweeping away beneath them from all points. A man had run up and was standing beside the egg, beating at it. The man suddenly shot up like a fountain, growing huge; he towered over them, until he seemed miles high and the giant structures Dave could see were only the turned-up toes of the man’s shoes. One of those shoes was lifting, as if the man meant to step on the egg.

They must be growing smaller again.

A voice said tightly: “We’re small enough, Bork. Can you raise the wind for us now?”

“Hold on.” Bork’s voice seemed sure of itself.

The egg tilted and soared. Dave was thrown sidewise and had to fight for balance. He stared unbelievingly through the crystal shell. They rose like a Banshee jet. There was a shaggy, monstrous colossus in the distance, taller than the Himalayas—the man who had been beside them. Bork grunted. “Got it! We’re all right now.” He chanted something in a rapid undertone “All right, relax. That will teach them not to work resonance magic inside a protective ring; the egg knows how we could have got through otherwise. Lucky we were trying at the right time, though. The Satheri must be going crazy. Wait a minute, this tires the fingers.”

The man called Bork halted the series of rapid passes he had been making, flexing his fingers with a grimace. The spinning egg began to drop at once, but he let out a long, keening cry, adding a slight flip of his other arm. Outside, something like a mist drew near and swirled around them. It looked huge to Dave, but must have been a small thing in fact. Now they began speeding along smoothly again. The thing was probably another sylph, strong enough to move them in their present reduced size.

Bork pointed his finger. “There’s the roc!” He leaned closer to the wall of the tiny egg and shouted. The sylph changed direction, and began to bob about.

It drifted gently, while Bork pulled a few sticks with runes written on them toward him and made a hasty assembly of them. At once, there was a feeling of growing, and the sylph began to shrink away from them. Now they were falling swiftly, growing as they dropped. Dave felt his stomach twist, until he saw they were heading toward a huge bird that was cruising along under them, drawing closer. It looked like a cross between a condor and a hawk, but its wing span must have been over three hundred feet. It slipped under the egg, catching the falling object deftly on a cushion-like attachment between its wings, and then struck off briskly toward the east.

Bork snapped the side of the egg open and stepped out while the others followed. Dave tried to crawl out, but something held him back. It wasn’t until Bork’s big hand reached in to help him that he made it. When all were out, Bork tapped the egg-shaped object and caught it as it shrank. When it was small enough, he pocketed it.

Dave sat up again, examining himself, now that he had more room. His clothing was a mess, spattered with drying blood, but he seemed unharmed now. Even the burning of the venom was gone. He reached for the arm around his neck and began breaking it free from its stranglehold.

From behind an incredulous cry broke out. Nema sprawled across him, staring at his face and burying her head against his shoulder. “Dave! You’re not dead! You’re alive!”

Dave was still amazed at that himself. But Bork snorted. “Of course he is. Why’d we take him along with you hanging on in a faint if he were dead? When the snetha-knife kills, it kills completely. They stay dead, or they don’t die. Sagittarian?”

She nodded, and the big man seemed to be doing some calculations in his head.

“Yeah,” he decided. “It would be. There was one second there around midnight when all the signs were at their absolute maximum favorableness. Someone must have said some pretty dangerous health spells over him then.” He turned to Dave, as if aware that the other was comparatively ignorant of such matters. “Happened once before, without this mess-up of the signs. They revived a corpse and found he was unkillable from then on. He lasted eight thousand years, or something like that, before he got burned trying to control a giant salamander. They cut off his head once, but it healed before the axe was all the way through. Woops!”

The bird had dipped downward, rushing toward the ground. It landed at a hundred miles an hour and managed to stop against a small entrance to a cave in the hillside. Except for the one patch where the bird had lighted, they were in the middle of a dense forest.

Dave and Nema were hustled into the cave, while the others melted into the woods, studying the skies. She clung to Dave, crying something about how the Sons of the Egg would torture them.

“All right,” he said finally. “Who are these sons of eggs? And what have they got against me?”

“They’re monsters,” she told him. “They used to be the antimagic individualists. They wanted magic used only when other means wouldn’t work. They fought against the Satheri. While magic produced their food and made a better world for them, they hated it because they couldn’t do it for themselves. And a few renegade priests like my brother joined them.”

“Your brother?”

“She means me,” Bork said. He came in to drop on his haunches and grin at Dave. There was no sign of personal hatred in his look. “I used to be a stooge for Sather Karf, before I got sick of it. How do you feel, Dave Hanson?”

Dave considered it, still in wonder at the truth. “I feel good. Even the venom they were putting in my blood doesn’t seem to hurt any more.”

“Fine. Means the Sather Karf must believe we killed you—he must have the report by now. If he thinks you’re dead, there’s no point in his giving chase; he knows I wouldn’t let them kill Nema, even if she is a little fool. Anyhow, he’s not really such a bad old guy, Dave—not, like some of those Satheri. Well, you figure how you’d like it if you were just a simple man and some priest magicked her away from you—and then sent her back with enough magic of her own to be a witch and make life hell for you because she’d been kicked out by the priest, but he hadn’t pulled the wanting spell off her. Or anything else you wanted and couldn’t keep against magic. Sure, they fed us. They had to, after they took away our fields and the kine, and got everyone into the habit of taking their dole instead of earning our living in the old way. They made slaves of us. Any man who lets another be responsible for him isa slave. It’s a fine world for the Satheri, if they can keep the egg from breaking.”

“What’s all this egg nonsense?”

Bork shrugged. “Plain good sense. Why should there be a sky shell around the planet? Look, there’s a legend here. You should know it, since for all I know it has some meaning for you. Long ago—or away, or whatever—there was a world called Tharé and another called Erath. Two worlds, separate and distinct, on their own branching time paths. They must have been that way since the moment of creation. One was a world of rule and law. One plus one might not always equal two, but it had to equal something. There seems to be some similarity to your world in that, doesn’t there? The other was—well, you’d call it chaos, though it had some laws, if they could be predicted. One plus one there depended—or maybe there was no such thing as unity. Mass-energy wasn’t conserved. It was deserved. It was a world of anarchy, from your point of view. It must have been a terrible place to live, I guess.”

He hesitated somberly. “As terrible as this one is getting to be,” he said at last. “Anyway, there were people who lived there. There were the two inhabited worlds in their own time lines, or probability orbits, or whatever. You know, I suppose, how worlds of probability would separate and diverge as time goes on? Of course. Well, these two worldscoalesced.”

He looked searchingly at Dave. “Do you see it? The two time lines came together. Two opposites fused into one. Don’t ask me to explain it; it was long ago, and all I know for sure is that it happened. The two worlds met and fused, and out of the two came this world, in what the books call the Dawnstruggle. When it was over, our world was as it has been for thousands of centuries. In fact, one result was that in theory, neither original world could have a real past, and the fusion was something that had been—no period of change. It’s pretty complicated.”

“It sounds worse than that,” Dave grumbled. “But while that might explain the mystery of magic working here, it doesn’t explain your sky.”

Bork scratched his head. “No, not too well,” he admitted. “I’ve always had some doubts about whether or not all the worlds have a shell around them. I don’t know. But our world does, and the shell is cracking. The Satheri don’t like it; they want to stop it. We want it to happen. For the two lines that met and fused into one have an analogue. Doesn’t the story of that fusion suggest something to you, Dave Hanson? Don’t you see it, the male principle of rule and the female principle of whim; they join, and the egg is fertile! Two universes join, and the result is a nucleus world surrounded by a shell, like an egg. We’re a universe egg. And when an egg hatches, you don’t try to put it back together!”

He didn’t look like a fanatic, Dave told himself. Crazy or not, he took this business of the hatching egg seriously. But you could never be sure about anyone who joined a cult. “What is your egg going to hatch into?” he asked.

The big man shrugged. “Does an egg know it is going to become a hen—or maybe a fish? We can’t possibly tell, of course.”

Dave considered it. “Don’t you even have a guess?”

Bork answered shortly, “No.” He looked worried, Dave thought, and guessed that even the fanatics were not quite sure they wanted to be hatched. Bork shrugged again.

“An egg has got to hatch,” he said. “That’s all there is to it. We prophesied this, oh, two hundred years ago. The Satheri laughed. Now they’ve stopped laughing, but they want to stop it. What happens to a chick when it is stopped from hatching? Does it go on being a chick, or does it die? It dies, of course. And we don’t want to die. No, Dave Hanson, we don’t know what happens next—but we do know that we must go through with it. I have nothing against you personally—but I can’t let you stop us. That’s why we tried to kill you. If I could, I’d kill you now, with the snetha-knife so they couldn’t revive you.”

Dave said reasonably, “You can’t expect me to like it, you know. The Satheri, at least, saved my life—” He stopped in confusion. Bork was staring at him in hilarious incredulousness that broke into roars of laughter.

“You mean…Dave Hanson, do you believe everything they tell you? Don’t you know that the Satheri arranged to kill you first? They needed a favorable death conjunction to bring you back to life; they got it—by arranging an accident!”

Nema cried out in protest. “That’s a lie!”

“Of course,” Bork said mildly. “You always were on their side, little sister. You were also usually a darned nuisance, fond as I was of you. Come here.”

He caught her and yanked a single hair out of her head. She screamed and tried to claw him, then fought for the hair. Bork was immovable. He held her off easily with one hand while the fingers of the other danced in the air. He spoke what seemed to be a name, though it bore no resemblance to Nema. She quieted, trembling.

“You’ll find a broom near the entrance, little sister. Take it and go back, to forget that Dave Hanson lives. You saw him die and were dragged off with us and his body. You escaped before we reached our hideaway. By the knot I tie in your true hair and by your secret name, this I command.”

She blinked slowly and looked around as Bork burned the knotted hair. Her eyes swept past Bork and Dave without seeing them and centered on the broom one man held out to her, without appearing to see him, either. She seized the broom. A sob came to her throat. “The devil! The renegade devil! He didn’t have to kill Dave! He didn’t—”

Her voice died away as she ran toward the clearing. Dave made no protest. He suspected Bork was putting the spell on her for her own good, and he agreed that she was better out of all this.

“Now where were we?” Bork asked. “Oh, yes, I was trying to convert you and knowing I’d failed already. Of course, I don’t know that they killed you first—but those are their methods. Take it from me, I know. I was the youngest Ser ever to be accepted for training as a Sather. They wanted you, so they got you.”

Dave considered it. It seemed as likely as anything else. “Why me?” he asked.

“Because you can put back the sky. At least, the Satheri think so, and I must admit that in some ways they are smarter than we.”

Dave started to protest, but Bork cut him off.

“I know all about your big secret. You’re not the engineer, whose true name was longer. We know all that. Our pools are closer to perfection than theirs, not being contaminated by city air, and we see more. But there is a cycle of confirmation; if prophecy indicates a thing will happen, it will happen—though not always as expected. The prophecy fulfills itself, rather than being fulfilled. Then there are the words on the monument—a monument meant for your uncle, but carrying your true name, because his friends felt the short form sounded better. It was something of a coincidence that they had the wrong true name. But prophecy is always strongest when based on coincidence—that is a prime rule. And those words coupled with our revelations prophesy thatyou—not your uncle—can do the impossible. So what are we going to do with you?”

Bork’s attitude was reassuring, somehow. It was nearer his own than any Dave had heard on this world. And the kidnapping was beginning to look like a relief. The Sons of the Egg had gotten him off the hook with Sather Karf. He grinned and stretched back. “If I’m unkillable, Bork, what can you do?”

The big man grinned back. “Flow rock around you up to your nose and toss you into a lake. You’d live there—but you’d always be drowning and you’d find it slightly unpleasant for the next few thousand years! It’s not as bad as being turned into a mangrove with your soul intact, but it would last longer. And don’t think the Satheri can’t pull a lot worse than that. They have your name—everyone has your secret name here—and parts of you.”

The conversation was suddenly less pleasant. Dave thought it over. “I could stay here and join your group. I might as well, since I can’t really help the Satheri anyhow.”

“They’d spot your aura eventually. They’ll be checking around here for us for a while. Of course, we might do something about it, if you really converted. But I don’t think you would, if you knew more.” Bork got up and headed for the entrance. “I wasn’t going to let you see the risings, but now maybe I will. If you still want to join, it might be worked. Otherwise, I’ll think of something else.”

Dave followed the man out into the clearing. A few men were just planning to leave, and they looked at Dave suspiciously, but made no protest. One, whom Dave recognized as the leader with the snetha-knife, scowled.

“The risings are almost due, Bork,” he said.

Bork nodded. “I know, Malok. I’ve decided to let Dave Hanson watch. Dave, this is our leader here, Res Malok.”

Dave felt no strong love for his would-be murderer, and it seemed to be mutual. But no protest was lodged. Apparently Bork was their top conjurer, and privileged. They crossed the clearing and went through the woods toward another, smaller one. Here a group of some fifty men were watching the sky, obviously waiting. Others stood around, watching them and avoiding looking up. Almost directly overhead, there was a rent place where the strange absence of color or feature indicated a hole in the dome over them. As it drew nearer true vertical, a chanting began among the men with up-turned faces. Their hands went upwards, fingers spread and curled into an unnatural position. Then they stood waiting.

“I don’t like it,” Bork whispered to Dave. “This is one of the reasons we’re growing too weak to fight the Satheri.”

“What’s wrong with a ceremony of worship, if you must worship your eggshell?” Dave asked.

“You’ll see. That was all it was once—just worship. But now for weeks, things are changing. They think it’s a sign of favor, but I don’t know. There, watch!”

The hole in the sky was directly overhead now, and the moaning had risen in pitch. Across the little clearing, Malok began backing quietly away, carefully not looking upwards. Nobody but Dave seemed to notice his absence. There was a louder moan.

One of the men in the clearing began to rise upwards slowly. His body was rigid as it lifted a foot, ten feet, then a hundred above the ground. Now it picked up speed, and rushed upwards. Another began to rise, and another. In seconds, more than half of those who had waited were screaming upwards toward the hole in the sky. They disappeared in the distance.

Those who had merely stood by and those who had worshipped waited a few seconds more, but no more rose. The men sighed and began moving out of the clearing. Dave arose to follow, but Bork gestured for him to wait.

“Sometimes—” he said.

They were alone now. Still Bork waited, staring upwards. Then Dave saw something in the sky. A speck appeared and came hurtling down. In seconds, it was the body of one of the men who had risen. Dave felt his stomach tighten and braced himself. There was no slowing as the body fell. It landed in the center of the clearing, without losing speed, but with less noise than he had expected.

When they reached the shattered body, there could be no question of its being dead.

Bork’s face was solemn. “If you’re thinking of joining, you’d better know the worst. You’re too easily shocked to make a good convert unless you’re prepared. The risings have been going on for some time. Malok swears it proves we are right. But I’ve seen five other bodies come down like this. What does it mean? Are they stillborn? We don’t know. Shall I revive him for you?”

Dave felt sick as he stared at the ghastly terror on the face of the corpse. The last thing he wanted to see was its revival, but his curiosity about the secret in the sky could not be denied. He nodded.

Bork drew a set of phials and implements in miniature size from under his robe. “This is routine,” he said. He snapped his fingers and produced a small flame over the heart of the corpse. Into that he began dusting powders, mixing them with something that looked like blood. Finally he called a name and a command. There was a sharp explosion, a hissing, and Bork’s voice calling.

The dead man flowed together and was whole. He stood up woodenly, with his face frozen. “Who calls?” he asked in an uninflected, hollow voice. “Why am I called? I have no soul.”

“We call,” Bork answered. “Tell us what you saw at the hole in the sky.”

A scream tore from the throat of the thing, and its hands came up to its eyes, tearing at them. Its mouth worked soundlessly, and breath sucked in. Then a single word came out.

“Faces!”

It fell onto the grass, distorted in death again. Bork shuddered.

“The others were the same,” he said. “And he can’t be revived again. Even the strongest spell can’t bring back his soul. That is gone, somehow.”

Dave shivered. “And knowing that, you’d still fight against repairing the sky?”

“Hatching is probably always horrible from inside the shell,” Bork answered. “Do you still want to join us? No, I thought not. Well, then, let’s go back. We might as well try to eat something while I think about what to do with you.”

Malok and most of the others were gone when they reached the cave again. Bork fell to work with some scraps of food, cursing the configurations of the planets as his spell refused to work. Then suddenly the scraps became a mass of sour-smelling stuff. Bork made a face as he tasted it, but he ate it in silence. Dave couldn’t force himself to put it in his mouth, though he was hungry by then.

He considered, and then snapped his fingers. “Abracadabra,” he cried. He swore as something wet and slimy that looked like seaweed plopped into his hand. The next time he got a limp fish that had been dead far too long. But the third try worked better. This time, a whole bunch of bananas appeared. They were a little riper than he liked, but some of them were edible enough. He handed some to the other man, who quickly abandoned his own creation.

Bork was thoughtful as he ate. Finally he grimaced. “New magic!” he said. “Maybe that’s the secret of the prophecy. I thought you knew no magic.”

“I didn’t,” Dave admitted. He was still tingling inside himself at this confirmation of his earlier discovery. It was unpredictable magic, but apparently bore some vague relationship to what he was wishing for.

“So the lake’s out,” Bork decided. “With unknown powers at your command, you might escape in time. Well, that settles it. There’s one place where nobody will look for you or listen to you. You’ll be nothing but another among millions, and that’s probably the best hiding place for you. With the overseers they have, you couldn’t even turn yourself back to the Satheri, though I’ll admit I’m hoping you don’t want them to find you.”

“And I was beginning to think you liked me,” Dave commented bitterly.

Bork grinned. “I do, Dave Hanson. That’s why I’m picking the easiest place to hide you I can think of. It will be hell, but anything else would be worse. Better strip and put this cloth on.”

The thing he held out was little more than a rag, apparently torn from one of the robes. “Come on, strip, or I’ll burn off your clothes with a salamander. There, that’s better. Now wrap the cloth around your waist and let it hang down in front. It’ll be easier on you if you don’t attract much attention. The sky seems to indicate the planets favor teleportation now. Be quick before I change my mind and think of something worse!”

Dave didn’t see what he did this time, but there was a puff of flame in front of his eyes.

The next second, he stood manacled in a long line of men loaded with heavy stones. Over their backs fell the cutting lashes of a whip. Far ahead was a partially finished pyramid. Dave was obviously one of the building slaves.

VI

Sunrise glared harshly over the desert. It was already hot enough to send heat waves dancing over the sand as Hanson wakened under the bite of a lash. The overseers were shouting and kicking the slaves awake. Overhead the marred sky shone in crazy quilt patterns.

Hanson stood up, taking the final bite of the whip without flinching. He glanced down at his body, noticing that it had somehow developed a healthy deep tan during the few hours of murderous labor the day before. He wasn’t particularly surprised. Something in his mind seemed also to have developed a “tan” that let him face the bite of chance without flinching. He’d stopped wondering and now accepted; he meant to get away from here at the first chance and he was somehow sure he could.

It was made easier by the boundless strength of his new body. He showed no signs of buckling under physical work that would have killed him on his own world.

Not all the slaves got up. Two beside him didn’t move at all. Sleeping through that brutal awakening seemed impossible. When Hanson looked closer, he saw that they weren’t asleep; they were dead.

The overseer raged back along the line and saw them. He must be one of those conjured into existence here from the real Egypt of the past. He might have no soul, but a lifetime of being an overseer had given him habits that replaced the need for what had been a pretty slim soul to begin with.

“Quitters!” he yelled. “Lazy, worthless, work-dodging goldbrick artists!” He knelt in fury, thumbing back the eyelids of the corpses. There was little need for the test. They were too limp, too waxen to be pretending.

The overseer cut them out of the chain and kicked at Hanson. “Move along!” he bellowed. “Menes himself is here, and he’s not as gentle as I am.”

Hanson joined the long line, wondering what they were going to do about breakfast. How the devil did they expect the slaves to put in sixteen hours of work without some kind of food? There had been nothing the night before but a skin of water. There was not even that much this morning. No wonder the two beside him had died from overwork, beatings and plain starvation.

Menes was there, all right. Hanson saw him from the distance, a skinny giant of a man in breechclout, cape and golden headdress. He bore a whip like everyone else who seemed to have any authority at all, but he wasn’t using it. He was standing hawklike on a slight rise in the sandy earth, motionless and silent. Beside him was a shorter figure: a pudgy man with a thin mustache, on whom the Egyptian headdress looked strangely out of place. It could only be Ser Perth!

Hanson’s staring came to an end as the lash cut down across his shoulders, biting through to the shoulder-bone. He stumbled forward, heedless of the overseers’ shouting voices. Someday, if he had the chance, he’d flay his own overseer, but that could wait. Even the agony of the cut couldn’t take his mind from Ser Perth’s presence. Had Bork slipped up—did the Satheri know that Hanson was still alive, and had they sent Ser Perth here to locate him? It seemed unlikely, however. The man was paying no attention to the lines of slaves. It would be hard to spot one among three million, anyhow. More likely, Hanson decided, Ser Perth was supervising the supervisors, making an inspection tour of all this.

Of all what? Apparently then this must be another of their frenzied efforts to find a way to put back the sky. He’d heard that they had called up the pyramid builder, but hadn’t fully realized it would lead to this type of activity.

He looked around him appraisingly. The long lines of slaves that had been carrying rock and rubble the day before now were being formed into hauling teams. Long ropes were looped around enormous slabs of quarried rock. Rollers underneath them and slaves tugging and pushing at them were the only means of moving them. The huge stones slid remorselessly forward onto the prepared beds of rubble. Casting back in his memory, Hanson could not recall seeing the rock slabs the night before. They had appeared as if by magic—

Obviously, they had really been conjured up by magic. But if the rocks could be conjured, what was the need of all the slaves and the sadistic overseers? Why not simply magic the entire construction, whatever it was to be?

The whip hit him again, and the raging voice of the overseer ranted in his ears. “Get on, you blundering slacker. Menes himself is looking at you. Ho there—what the devil?”

The overseer’s hand spun Hanson around. The man’s eyes, large and opaque, stared at Hanson. He frowned cruelly. “Yeah, you’re the same one! Didn’t I take the hide off your back twice already? And now you stand there without a scar or a drop of blood!”

Hanson grunted feebly. He didn’t want attention called to himself while Ser Perth was around. “I—I heal quickly.” It was no more than the truth. Either the body they’d given him or the conjuring during the right split second had enabled him to heal almost before a blow was struck.

“Magic!” The overseer scowled and gave Hanson a shove that sent him sprawling. “Blithering magic again! Magic stones that melt when you get them in place—magic slaves that the whip won’t touch! And they expect us to do a job of work such as not even Thoth could dream up! They won’t take honest work. No, they have to come snooping and conjuring and interfering. Wheels on rollers! Tools of steel and the gods know what instead of honest stone. Magic to lift things instead of honest ropes that shrink and wood that swells. Magic that fails, and rush, rush, rush until I’m half ready to be tortured for falling behind, and—you! You would, would you!” His voice trailed off into a fresh roar of rage as he caught sight of other slaves taking advantage of his attention to Hanson to relax. He raced off, brandishing the whip.

Hanson tried to make himself inconspicuous after that. The wounds would heal, and the beatings could never kill him; but there had been no provision in his new body for the suppression of pain. He hungered, thirsted and suffered like anyone else. Maybe he was learning to take it, here, but not to like it.

At the expense of a hundred slaves and considerable deterioration of the whips, one block of stone was in place before the sun was high overhead in the coppery, mottled sky. Then there was the blessing of a moment’s pause. Men were coming down the long lines, handing something to the slaves. Food, Hanson anticipated.

He was wrong. When the slave with the wicker basket came closer he could see that the contents were not food but some powdery stuff that was dipped out with carved spoons into the eager hands of the slaves. Hanson smelled his portion dubiously. It was cloying, sickly sweet.

Hashish! Or opium, heroin, hemp—Hanson was no expert. But it was certainly some kind of drug. Judging by the avid way the other slaves were gulping it down, each one of them had been exposed to it before. Hanson cautiously made the pretense of swallowing his before he allowed it to slip through his fingers to mingle with the sand. Drug addiction was obviously a convenient way to make the slaves forget their aches and fears, to keep them everlasting anxious to please whatever was necessary to make sure the precious, deadly ration never stopped.

There was still no sign of food. The pause in the labor was only for the length of time it took the drug-bearing slaves to complete their task. Ten minutes, or fifteen at the outside; then the overseers were back with the orders and the lashes.

The slaves regrouped on new jobs, and Hanson found himself in a bunch of a dozen or so. They were lashing the hauling ropes around a twelve-foot block of stone; the rollers were already in place, with the crudely plaited ropes dangling loosely. Hanson found himself being lifted by a couple of the other slaves to the shoulders of a third. His clawing hands caught the top of the block and the slaves below heaved him upward. He scrambled to the top and caught the ropes that were flung upto him.

From his vantage point he saw what he had not seen before—the amazing size of the construction project. This was no piffling little Gizeh pyramid, no simple tomb for a king. Its base was measured in kilometers instead of yards, and its top was going to be proportionally high, apparently. It hardly seemed that there could be enough stone in the whole world to finish the job. As far as Hanson could see, over the level sand, the ground was black with the suffering millions of slaves in their labor gangs.

The idiots must be trying to reach the sky with their pyramid. There could be no other answer to the immense bulk planned for this structure. Like the pride-maddened men of Babel, they were building a sky-high thing of stone. It was obviously impossible, and even Menes must be aware of that. Yet perhaps it was no more impossible than all the rest of the things in this impossible world.

When the warlocks of this world had discovered that they could not solve the problem of the sky, they must have gone into a state of pure hysteria, like a chicken dashing back and forth in front of a car. They had sought through other worlds and ages for anyone with a reputation as a builder, engineer or construction genius, without screening the probability of finding an answer. The size of the ancient pyramid must have been enough to sway them. They had used Hanson, Menes, Einstein, Cagliostro—for some reason of their own, since he’d never been a builder—and probably a thousand more. And then they had half-supplied all of them, rather than picking the most likely few and giving full cooperation. Magic must have made solutions to most things so easy that they no longer had the guts to try the impossible themselves. A pyramid seemed like a ridiculous solution, but for an incredible task, an impossible solution had to be tried.

And maybe, he thought, they’d overlooked the obvious in their own system. The solution to a problem in magic should logically be found in magic, not in the methods of other worlds. His mind groped for something that almost came into his consciousness—some inkling of what should have been done, or how they had failed. It was probably only an idle fancy, but—

“Hey!” One of the slaves below was waving at him. While Hanson looked down, the slave called to another, got a shoulder to lean on, and walked his way up the side of the block, pushed from below and helped by Hanson’s hands above. He was panting when he reached the top, but he could still talk. “Look, it’s your skin, but you’re going to be in trouble if you don’t get busy. Look out for that overseer up there. Don’t just stand around when he’s in sight.” He picked up a loop of rope and passed it to Hanson, making a great show of hard work.

Hanson stared up at the overseer who was staring back at him. “Why is he any worse than the rest of this crowd?”

The slave shuddered as the dour, slow-moving overseer began walking stiffly toward them. “Don’t let the fact that he’s an overseer fool you. He’s smarter than most of his kind, but just as ugly. He’s a mandrake, and you can’t afford to mess with him.”

Hanson looked at the ancient, wrinkled face of the mandrake and shuddered. There was the complete incarnation of inhumanity in the thing’s expression. He passed ropes around the corners until the mandrake turned and rigidly marched away, the blows of his whip falling metronome-like on the slaves he passed. “Thanks,” Hanson said “I wonder what it’s like, being a true mandrake?”

“Depends,” the slave said easily. He was obviously more intelligent than most, and better at conserving himself. “Some mandrake-men are real. I mean, the magicians want somebody whom they can’t just call back—direct translation of the body usually messes up the brain patterns enough to make the thinkers hard to use, especially with the sky falling. So they get his name and some hold on his soul and then rebuild his body around a mandrake root. They bind his soul into that, and in some ways he’s almost human. Sometimes they even improve on what he was. But the true mandrake—like that one—never was human. Just an ugly, filthy simulacrum. It’s bad business. I never liked it, even though I was in training for sersa rating.”

“You’re from this world?” Hanson asked in surprise. He’d been assuming that the man was one of the things called back.

“A lot of us are. They conscripted a lot of the people they didn’t need for these jobs. But I was a little special. All right, maybe you don’t believe me—you think they wouldn’t send a student sersa here now. Look, I can prove it. I managed to sneak one of the books I was studying back with me. See?”

He drew a thin volume from his breechclout cautiously, then slipped it back again. “You don’t get such books unless you’re at least of student rating.” He sighed, then shrugged. “My trouble is that I could never keep my mouth shut. I was attendant at one of the revivatoria, and I got drunk enough to let out some information about one of the important revival cases. So here I am.”

“Umm.” Hanson worked silently for a minute, wondering how far coincidence could go. It could go a long ways here, he decided. “You wouldn’t have been sentenced to twenty lifetimes here by the Sather Karf, would you?”

The slave stared at him in surprise. “You guessed it. I’ve died only fourteen times so far, so I’ve got six more lives to go. But—hey, you can’t be! They were counting on you to be the one who really fixed things. Don’t tell me my talking out of turn did this to you.”

Hanson reassured him on that. He recognized the man now for another reason. “Aren’t you the one I saw dead on his back right next to me this morning?”

“Probably. Name’s Barg.” He stood up to take a careful look at the net of cording around the stone. “Looks sound enough. Yeah, I died this morning, which is why I’m fairly fresh now. Those overseers won’t feed us because it takes time and wastes food; they let us die and then have us dragged back for more work. It’s a lot easier on the ones they dragged back already dead; dying doesn’t matter so much without a soul.”

“Some of them seem to be Indians,” Hanson noted. He hadn’t paid too much attention, but the slaves seemed to be from every possible background.

Barg nodded. “Aztecs from a place called Tenochtitlan. Twenty thousand of them got sacrificed in a bunch for some reason or other. Poor devils. They think this is some kind of heaven. They tell me this is easy work compared to the type they had to undergo. The Satheri like to get big bunches through in one conjuration, like the haul they made from the victims of somebody named Tamerlane.” He tested a rope, then dropped to a sitting position on the edge of the block. “I’ll let you stay up to call signals from here. Only watch it. That overseer has his eyes on you. Make sure the ropes stay tight while we see if the thing can be moved.”

He started to slip over the side, hanging by his fingertips. Something caught, and he swore. With one hand, he managed to free his breechclout and drag out the thin volume that was lodged between his groin and the block. “Here, hold this for me until we meet tonight. You’ve got more room to hide it in your cloth than I have.” He tossed it over quickly, then dropped from sight to land on the ground below.

Hanson shoved the book out of sight and tried to act busy again. The mandrake overseer had started ponderously toward him. But in a moment the thing’s attention was directed to some other object of torture.

Hanson braced himself as the lines of slaves beneath him settled themselves to the ropes. There was a loud cracking of whips and a chorus of groans. A small drum took up a beat, and the slaves strained and tugged in unison. Ever so slowly, the enormous block of stone began to move, while the ropes drew tighter.

Hanson checked the rigging with half his mind, while the other half raced in a crazy circle of speculation. Mandrakes and mandrake-men, zombie-men, from the past and multiple revivals! A sky that fell in great chunks. What came next in this ridiculous world in which he seemed to be trapped?

As if in answer to his question, there was a sudden, coruscating flare from above.

Hanson’s body reacted instinctively. His arm came up over his eyes, cutting off the glare. But he managed to squint across it, upwards toward what was happening in the cracked dome. For a split second, he thought that the sun had gone nova.

He was wrong, but not by too much. Something had happened to the sun. Now it was flickering and flaming, shooting enormous jets of fire from its rim. It hovered at the edge of a great new hole and seemed to be wobbling, careening and losing its balance.

There was a massive shriek of fear and panic from the horde of slaves. They began bellowing like the collective death-agony of a world. Most of them dropped their ropes and ran in blind panic, trampling over each other in their random flight for safety. The human overseers were part of the same panic-stricken riot. Only the mandrakes stood stolidly in place, flicking each running man who passed them.

Hanson flung himself face down on the stone. There was a roar of tortured air from overhead and a thundering sound that was unlike anything except the tearing of an infinity of cloth combined with a sustained explosion of atomic bombs. Then it seemed as if the thunderbolt of Thor himself had blasted in Hanson’s ears.

The sky had ripped again, and this time the entire dome shook with the shock. But that wasn’t the worst of it.

The sun had broken through the hole and was falling!

VII

The fall of the sun was seemingly endless. It teetered out of the hole and seemed to hover, spitting great gouts of flame as it encountered the phlogiston layer. Slowly, agonizingly, it picked up speed and began its downward rush. Unlike the sky, it seemed to obey the normal laws of inertia Hanson had known. It swelled bit by bit, raging as it drew nearer. And it seemed to be heading straight for the pyramid.

The heat was already rising. It began to sear the skin long before the sun struck the normal atmosphere. Hanson could feel that he was being baked alive. The blood in his arteries seemed to bubble and boil, though that must have been an illusion. But he could see his skin rise in giant blisters and heal almost at once to blister again. He screamed in agony, and heard a million screams around him. Then the other screams began to decrease in numbers and weaken in volume, and he knew that the slaves were dying.

Through a slit between two fingers, he watched the ponderous descent. The light was enough to sear his retinas, but even they healed faster than the damage. He estimated the course of the sun, amazed to find that there was no panic in him, and doubly amazed that he could think at all over the torture that wracked his body.

Finally, convinced that the sun would strike miles to the south, he rolled across the scorching surface of the stone block and dropped to the north side of it. The shock of landing must have broken bones, but a moment later he could begin to breathe again. The heat was still intense, even behind the stone block, but it was bearable—at least for him.

Pieces were breaking off the sun as it fell, and already striking the ground. One fell near, and its heat seared at him, giving him no place of shelter. Then the sun struck, sending up earth tremors that knocked him from his feet. He groped up and stared around the block.

The sun had struck near the horizon, throwing up huge masses of material. Its hissing against the ground was a tumult in his ears, and superheated ash and debris began to fall.

So far as he could see, there were no other survivors in the camp. Three million slaves had died. Those who had found some shelter behind the stonework had lived longer than the others, but that had only increased their suffering. And even his body must have been close to its limits, if it could be killed at all.

He was still in danger. If a salamander could destroy even such a body as his, then the fragments of sun that were still roiling across the landscape would be fatal. The only hope he had was to get as far away from the place where the sun had struck as he could.

He braced himself to leave even the partial shelter. There was a pile of water skins near the base of the block, held in the charred remains of an attendant’s body. The water was boiling, but there was still some left. He poured several skins together and drank the stuff, forcing himself to endure the agony of its passage down his throat. Without it, he’d be dehydrated before he could get a safe distance away.

Then he ran. The desert was like molten iron under his bare feet, and the savage radiation on his back was worse than any overseer’s whip. His mind threatened to blank out with each step, but he forced himself on. And slowly, as the distance increased, the sun’s pyre sank further and further over the horizon. The heat should still have been enough to kill any normal body in fifteen minutes, but he could endure it. He stumbled on in a trot, guiding himself by the stars that shone in the broken sky toward a section of this world where there had been life and some measure of civilization before. After a few hours, the tongues of flame no longer flared above the horizon, though the brilliant radiance continued. And Hanson found that his strong and nearly indestructible body still had limits. It could not go on without rest forever. He was sobbing with fatigue at every step.

He managed to dig a small hollow in the sand before dropping off to sleep. It was a sleep of total exhaustion, lacking even a sense of time. It might have been minutes or hours that he slept, and he had no way of knowing which. With the sun gone and the stars rocking into dizzy new configurations, there was no night or day, nor any way to guess the passage of time.

He woke to a roaring wind that sent cutting blasts of sand driving against him. He staggered up and forced himself against it, away from the place where the sun had fallen. Even through the lashing sandstorm, he could see the glow near the horizon. Now a pillar of something that looked like steam but was probably vapor from molten and evaporated rocks was rising upwards, like the mushroom clouds of his own days. It was spreading, apparently just under the phlogiston layer, reflecting back the glare. And the wind was caused by the great rising column of superheated gases over the sun.

He staggered on, while the sand gave way slowly to patches of green. With the sun gone and the sky falling into complete shreds, this world was certainly doomed. He’d assumed that the sun of this world must be above the sky, but he’d been wrong; like the other heavenly bodies, it had been embedded inside the shell. He had discovered that the sky material resisted any sudden stroke, but that other matter could be interpenetrated into it, as the stars were. He had even been able to pass his hand and arm completely through the sample. Apparently the sun had passed through the sky in a similar manner.

Then why hadn’t the shell melted? He had no real answer. The sun must have been moving fast enough so that no single spot became too hot, or else the phlogiston layer somehow dissipated the heat.

The cloud of glowing stuff from the rising air column was spreading out now, reflecting the light and heat back to the earth. There was a chance that most of one hemisphere might retain some measure of warmth, then. At least there was still light enough for him to travel safely.

By the time he was too tired to go on again, he had come to the beginnings of fertile land. He passed a village, but it had been looted, and he skirted around it rather than stare at the ghastly ghoul-work of the looters. The world was ending, but civilization seemed to have ended already. Beyond it, he came to a rude house, now abandoned. He staggered in gratefully.

For a change, he had one piece of good luck. His first attempt at magic produced food. At the sound of the snapping fingers and his hoarse-voiced “abracadabra,” a dirty pot of hot and greasy stew came into existence. He had no cutlery, but his hands served well enough. When it was gone, he felt better. He wiped his hands on the breechclout. Whatever the material in the cloth, it had stood the sun’s heat almost as well as he had.

Then he paused as his hand found a lump under the cloth. He drew out the apprentice magician’s book. The poor devil had never achieved his twenty lifetimes, and this was probably all that was left of him. Hanson stared at it, reading the title in some surprise.

Applied Semantics.

He propped himself up and began to scan it, wondering what it had to do with magic. He’d had a course of semantics in college and could see no relationship. But he soon found that there were differences.

This book began with the axiomatic statement that the symbol is the thing. From that it developed in great detail the fact that any part of a whole bearing similarity to the whole was also the whole; that each seven was the class of all sevens; and other details of the science of magical similarity followed quite logically from the single axiom. Hanson was surprised to find that there was a highly developed logic to it. Once he accepted the axiom—and he was no longer prepared to doubt it here—he could follow the book far better than he’d been able to follow his own course in semantics. Apparently this was supposed to be a difficult subject, from the constant efforts of the writer to make his point clear. But after learning to deal with electron holes in transistors, this was elementary study for Hanson.

The second half of the book dealt with the use of the true name. That, of course, was the perfect symbol, and hence the true whole. There was the simple ritual of giving a secret name. Apparently any man who discovered a principle or device could use a name for it, just as parents could give one to their children. And there were the laws for using the name. Unfortunately, just when Hanson was beginning to make some sense of it, the book ended. Obviously, there was a lot more to be covered in later courses.

He tossed the book aside, shivering as he realized that his secret name was common knowledge. The wonder was that he could exist at all. And while there was supposed to be a ritual for relinquishing one name and taking another, that was one of the higher mysteries not given.

In the morning, he stopped to magic up some more food and the clothing he would need if he ever found the trace of civilized people again. The food was edible, though he’d never particularly liked cereal. He seemed to be getting the hang of abracadabraing up what was in his mind. But the clothing was a problem. Everything he got turned out to be the right size, but he couldn’t see himself in hauberk and greaves, nor in a filmy nightgown. Finally, he managed something that was adequate, if the brilliant floral sportshirt could be said to go with levi pants and a morning frock. But he felt somewhat better in it. He finally left the frock behind, however. It was still too hot for that.

He walked on briskly, watching for signs of life and speculating on the principles of applied semantics, name magic and similarity. He could begin to understand how an Einstein might read through one of the advanced books here and make leaps in theory beyond what the Satheri had developed. They’d had it too easy. Magic that worked tended to overcome the drive for the discipline needed to get the most out of it. Any good theoretician from Hanson’s world could probably make fools of these people. Maybe that was why the Satheri had gone scrounging back through other worlds to find men who had the necessary drive to get things done when the going was tough.

Twice he passed abandoned villages, but there was nothing there for him. He was coming toward forested ground now, something like the country in which the Sons of the Egg had found refuge. The thought of that made him go slower. But for a long time, there was no further sign of life. The woods thinned out to grasslands, and he went on for hours more before he spotted a cluster of lights ahead.

As he drew nearer, he saw that the lights seemed to be fluorescents. They were coming from corrugated iron sheds that looked like aircraft hangars strung together. There was a woven-wire fence around the structures, and a sign that said simply: Project Eighty-Five. In the half-light from the sky, he could see a well-kept lawn, and there were a few groups of men standing about idly. Most wore white coveralls, though two were dressed in simple business suits.

Hanson moved forward purposefully, acting as if he had urgent business. If he stopped, there would be questions, he suspected; he wanted to find answers, not to answer idle questions.

There was no one at the desk in the little reception alcove, but he heard the sound of voices through a side door leading out. He went through it, to find a larger yard with more men idling. There should be someone here who knew more of what was going on in this world than he did now.

His choice, in the long run, seemed to lie between Bork and the Satheri, unless he could find some way of hiding himself from both sides. At the moment, he was relatively free for the first time since they had brought him here, and he wanted to make sure that he could make the most use of the fact.

Nobody asked anything. He slowed, drifting along the perimeter of the group of men, and still nobody paid him any attention. Finally, he dropped onto the ground near a group of half a dozen men who looked more alert than the rest. They seemed to be reminiscing over old times.

“—two thirty-eight an hour with overtime—and double time for the swing shift. We really had it made then! And every Saturday, never fail, the general would come out from Muroc and tell us we were the heros of the home front—with overtime pay while we listened to him!”

“Yeah, but what if you wanted to quit? Suppose you didn’t like your shift boss or somebody? You go down and get your time, and they hand you your draft notice. Me, I liked it better in ’46. Not so much pay, but—”

Hanson pricked up his ears. The conversation told him more than he needed to know. He stood up and peered through the windows of the shed. There, unattended under banks of lights, stood half-finished aircraft shapes.

He wouldn’t get much information here, it seemed. These were obviously reanimates, men who’d been pulled from his own world and set to work. They could do their duties and their memories were complete, but they were lacking some essential thing that had gone out of them before they were brought here. Unless he could find one among them who was either a mandrake-man housing a soul or one of the few reanimates who seemed almost fully human, he’d get little information. But he was curious as to what the Satheri had expected to do with aircraft. The rocs had better range and altitude than any planes of equal hauling power.

He located one man who seemed a little brighter than the others. The fellow was lying on the ground, staring at the sky with his hands clasped behind his head. From time to time, he frowned, as if the sight of the sky was making him wonder. The man nodded as Hanson dropped down beside him. “Hi. Just get here, Mac?”

“Yeah,” Hanson assented. “What’s the score?”

The man sat up and made a disgusted noise. “Who knows?” he answered. There was more emotion in his voice than might be expected from a reanimate; in real life on his own world, he must have had an amazing potential for even that much to carry over. “We’re dead. We’re dead, and we’re here, and they tell us to make helicopters. So we make them, working like dogs to make a deadline. Then, just as the first one comes off the line, the power fails. No more juice. The head engineer took off in the one we finished. He was going to find out what gives, but he never came back. So we sit.” He spat on the ground. “I wish they’d left me dead after the plant blew up. I’m not myself since then.”

“What in hell would they need with helicopters?” Hanson asked.

The man shrugged. “Beats me. But I’m beginning to figure some things out. They’ve got some kind of trouble with the sky. I figure they got confused in bringing us here. This shop is one that made those big cargo copters they call ‘Sky Hooks’ and maybe they thought the things were just what they’re called. All I know is they kept us working five solid weeks for nothing. I knew the power was going to fail; they had the craziest damn generating plant you ever saw, and it couldn’t last. The boilers kept sizzling and popping their safety valves with no fire in the box! Just some little old man sitting in a corner, practicing the Masonic grip or something over a smudgepot.”

Hanson gestured back to the sheds. “If there’s no power, what are those lights?”

“Witch lights, they told us,” the man explained. “Saved a lot of wiring, or something. They—hey, what’s that?”

He was looking up, and Hanson followed his gaze. There was something whizzing overhead at jet-plane speed. “A piece of the sky falling?” he said.

The man snorted. “Falling sidewise? Not likely, even here. I tell you, pal, I don’t like this place. Nothing works right. There was no fuel for the ’copter we finished—the one we called Betsy Ann. But the little geezer who worked the smudgepot just walked up to it and wiggled his finger. ‘Start your motor going, Betsy Ann,’ he ordered with some other mumbo-jumbo. Then the motor roared and he and the engineer, took off at double the speed she could make on high-test gas. Hey, there it is again! Doesn’t look like the Betsy Ann coming back, either.”

The something whizzed by again, in the other direction, but lower and slower. It made a gigantic but erratic circle beyond the sheds and swooped back. It looked nothing like a helicopter. It looked like a Hallowe’en decoration of a woman on a broomstick. As it came nearer, Hanson saw that it was a woman on a broomstick, flying erratically. She straightened out in a flat glide.

She came in for a one-point landing a couple of yards away. The tip of the broom handle hit the ground, and she went sailing over it, to land on her hands and knees. She got up, facing the shed.

The woman was Nema. Her face was masklike, her eyes tortured. She was staring searchingly around her, looking at every man.

“Nema!” Hanson cried.

She spun to face him, and gasped. Her skin seemed to turn gray, and her eyes opened to double their normal size. She took one tottering step toward him and halted.

“Illusion!” she whispered hoarsely, and slumped to the ground in a faint.

She was reviving before he could raise her from the ground. She swayed a moment, staring at him. “You’re not dead!”

“What’s so wonderful about that around here?” he asked, but not with much interest. With the world going to pot and only a few days left, the girl’s face and the slim young body under it were about all the reality left worth thinking about. He grabbed for her, pulling her to him. Bertha had never made him feel like that.

She managed to avoid his lips and slid away from him. “But they used the snetha-knife! Dave Hanson, you never died! It was only induced illusion by that—that Bork! And to think that I nearly died of grief while you were enjoying yourself here! You…you mandrake-man!”

He grunted. He’d almost managed to forget what he was, and he didn’t enjoy having the aircraft worker find out. He turned to see what the reaction was, and then stared open-mouthed at his surroundings.

There were no lights from the plane factory. In fact, there was no plane factory. In the half-light of the sky, he saw that the plant was gone. No men were left. There was only barren earth, with a tiny, limp sapling in the middle of empty acres.

“What happened?”

Nema glanced around briefly and sighed. “It’s happening all over. They created the plane plant by the law of identities from that little plane tree sapling, I suppose; it is a plane plant, after all. But with the conjunctions and signs failing, all such creations are returning to their original form, unless a spell is used continually over them. Even then, sometimes, we fail. Most of the projects vanished after the sun fell.”

Hanson remembered the man with whom he’d been talking before Nema appeared. He’d have liked to know such a man before death and revivification had ruined him. It wasn’t fair that anyone with character enough to be that human even as a zombie should be wiped out without even a moment’s consideration. Then he remembered the man’s own estimate of his current situation. Maybe he was better off returned to the death that had claimed him.

Reluctantly, he returned to his own problems. “All right, then, if you thought I was dead, what are you doing here, Nema?”

“I felt the compulsion begin even before I returned to the city. I thought I was going mad. I tried to forget you, but the compulsion grew until I could fight it no longer.” She shuddered. “It was a terrible flight. The carpets will not work at all now, and I could hardly control the broom. Sometimes it wouldn’t lift. Twice it sailed so high I could hardly breathe. And I had no hope of finding you, yet I went on. I’ve been flying when I could for three days now.”

Bork, of course, hadn’t known of her spell with which she’d forced herself to want him “well and truly.” Apparently it had gone on operating even when she thought he was dead, and with a built-in sense of his direction. Well, she was here—and he wasn’t sorry.

Hanson took another look across the plains toward the glowing hell of the horizon. He reached for her and pulled her to him. She was firm and sweet against him, and she was trembling in response to his urging.

At the last moment she pulled back. “You forget yourself, Dave Hanson! I’m a registered and certified virgin. My blood is needed for—”

“For spells that won’t work anyhow,” he told her harshly. “The sky isn’t falling now, kid. It’s down—or most of it.”

“But—” She hesitated and then let herself come a trifle closer. Her voice was doubtful. “It’s true that our spells are failing. Not even the surest magic is reliable. The world has gone mad, and even magic is no longer trustworthy. But—”

He was just pulling her close enough again and feeling her arms lift to his neck when the ground shook behind them and there was a sound of great, jarring, thudding steps.

Hanson jerked around to see a great roc making its landing run, heading straight for them. The huge bird braked savagely, barely stopping before they were under its feet.

From its back, a ladder of some flexible material snaked down and men began descending. The first were mandrakes in the uniform of the Satheri, all carrying weapons with evil-looking blades or sharp stickers.

The last man off was Bork. He came toward Hanson and Nema with a broad grin on his face. “Greetings, Dave Hanson. You do manage to survive, don’t you? And my little virgin sister, without whose flight I might not have found you. Well, come along. The roc’s growing impatient!”

VIII

The great roc’s hard-drumming wings set up a constant sound of rushing air and the distance flowed behind them. There was the rush of wind all around them, but on the bird’s back they were in an area where everything seemed calm. Only when Hanson looked over toward the ground was he fully conscious of the speed they were making. From the height, he could see where the sun had landed. It was sinking slowly into the earth, lying in a great fused hole. For miles around, smaller drops of the three-mile-diameter sun had spattered and were etching deeper holes in the pitted landscape.

Then they began passing over desolate country, scoured by winds, gloomy from the angry, glaring clouds above. Once, two bodies went hurtling upwards toward the great gaps in the sky.

“Those risings were from men who were no worshippers of the egg’s hatching,” Bork commented. “It’s spreading. Something is drawing them up from all over the planet.”

Later, half a square mile of the shell cracked off. The roc squawked harshly, but it had learned and had been watching above. By a frantic effort of the great wings, it missed the hurtling chunk. They dropped a few thousand feet in the winds that followed the piece of sky, but their altitude was still safe.

Then they passed over a town, flying low. The sights below were out of a ghoul’s bacchanalia. As the roc swept over, the people stopped their frenzied pursuit of sensation and ran for weapons. A cloud of arrows hissed upwards, all fortunately too late.

“They blame all their troubles on the magicians,” Bork explained. “They’ve been shooting at everything that flies. Not a happy time to associate with the Satheri, is it?”

Nema drew further back from him. “We’re not all cowards like you! Only rats desert a sinking ship.”

“Nobody thought it was sinking when I deserted,” Bork reminded her. “Anyhow, if you’d been using your eyes and seen the way we are traveling, you’d know I’ve rejoined the crew. I’ve made up with the Sather Karf—and at a time like this, our great grandfather was glad to have me back!”

Nema rushed toward him in delight, but Hanson wasn’t convinced. “Why?” he asked.

Bork sobered. “One of the corpses that fell back from the risings added a word to what the others had said. No, I’ll bear the weight of it myself, and not burden you with it. But I’m convinced now that his egg should not hatch. I had doubts before, unlike our friend Malok, who also heard the words but is doubly the fanatic now. Perhaps the hatching cannot be stopped—but I’ve decided that I am a man and must fight like one against the fates. So, though I still oppose much that the Satheri have done, I’ve gone back to them. We’ll be at the camp of the Sather Karf shortly.”

That sewed everything up neatly, Hanson thought. Before, he had been torn between two alternatives. Now there was only one and he had no choice; he could never trust the Sons of the Egg with Bork turned against them. He stared up at the sky, realizing that more than half of it had already fallen. The rest seemed too weak to last much longer. It probably didn’t make much difference what he did now or who had him; time was running out for this world.

The light was dimmer by the time they reached the great capital city—or what was left of it. They had left the sun pyre far to the south. The air was growing cold already.

The roc flew low over the city. The few people on the streets looked up and made threatening gestures, but there was no flight of arrows from the ground. Probably the men below had lost even the strength to hate. It was hard to see, since there was no electric lighting system now. But it seemed to Hanson that only the oldest and ugliest buildings were still standing. Honest stone and metal could survive, but the work of magic was no longer safe.

One of the remaining buildings seemed to be a hospital, and the empty space in front of it was crammed with people. Most of them seemed to be dead or unconscious. Squat mandrakes were carrying off bodies toward a great fire that was burning in another square. Plague and pestilence had apparently gotten out of hand.

They flew on, beyond the city toward the construction camp that had been Hanson’s headquarters. The roc was beginning to drop into a long landing glide, and details below were easier to see. Along the beach beyond the city, a crowd had collected. They had a fire going and were preparing to cook one of the mermaids. A fight was already going on over the prey. Food must have been exhausted days before.

The camp was a mess when they reached it. One section had been ripped down by the lash of wind from a huge piece of the sky, which now lay among the ruins with a few stars glowing inside it. There was a brighter glow beyond. Apparently one blob of material from the sun had been tossed all the way here and had landed against a huge rock to spatter into fragments. The heat from those fragments cut through the chill in the air, and the glow furnished light for most of the camp.

The tents had been burned, but there was a new building where the main tent had been. This was obviously a hasty construction job, thrown together of rocks and tree trunks, without the use of magic. It was more of an enormous lean-to than a true building, but it was the best protection now available. Hanson could see Sather Karf and Sersa Garm waiting outside, together with less than a hundred other warlocks.

The mandrakes prodded Hanson down from the roc and toward the new building, then left at a wave of the Sather Karf’s hand. The old man stared at Hanson intently, but his expression was unreadable. He seemed to have aged a thousand years. Finally he lifted his hand in faint greeting, sighed and dropped slowly to a seat. His face seemed to collapse, with the iron running out of it. He looked like a beaten, sick old man. His voice was toneless. “Fix the sky, Dave Hanson!”

There were angry murmurs from other warlocks in the background, but Sather Karf shook his head slowly, still facing Hanson. “No—what good to threaten dire punishments or to torture you when another day or week will see the end of everything? What good to demand your reasons for desertion when time is so short? Fix the sky and claim what reward you will afterwards. We have few powers now that the basis of astrology is ruined. But repair our sky and we can reward you beyond your dreams. We can find ways to return you to your own world intact. You have near immortality now. We can fill that entire lifetime with pleasures. We’ll give you jewels to buy an empire. Or if it is vengeance against whatever you feel we are, you shall know my secret name and the name of everyone here. Do with us then what you like. But fix the sky!”

It shook Hanson. He had been prepared to face fury, or to try lying his way out if there was a chance with some story of having needed to study Menes’s methods. Or of being lost. But he had no defense prepared against such an appeal.

It was utterly mad. He could do nothing, and their demands were impossible. But before the picture of the world dying and the decay of the old Sather’s pride, even Hanson’s own probable death with the dying world seemed unimportant. He might at least give them something to hope for while the end came.

“Maybe,” he said slowly. “Maybe, if all of the men you brought here to work on the problem were to pool their knowledge, we might still find the answer. How long will it take to get them here for a council?”

Ser Perth appeared from the group. Hanson had thought the man dead in the ruins of the pyramid, but somehow he had survived. The fat was going from his face, and his mustache was untrimmed, but he was uninjured. He shook his head sadly. “Most have disappeared with their projects. Two escaped us. Menes is dead. Cagliostro tricked us successfully. You are all we have left. And we can’t even supply labor beyond those you see here. The people no longer obey us, since we have no food to give them.”

“You’re the only hope,” Bork agreed. “They’ve saved what they could of the tools from the camp and what magical instruments are still useful. They’ve held on only for your return.”

Hanson stared at them and around at the collection of bric-a-brac and machinery they had assembled for him. He opened his mouth, and his laughter was a mockery of their hopes and of himself.

“Dave Hanson, world saver! You got the right name but the wrong man, Sather Karf,” he said bitterly. He’d been a pretender long enough, and what punitive action they took now didn’t seem to matter. “You wanted my uncle, David Arnold Hanson. But because his friends called him Dave and cut that name on his monument, and because I was christened by the name you called, you got me instead. He’d have been helpless here, probably, but with me you have no chance. I couldn’t even build a doghouse. I wasn’t even a construction engineer. Just a computer operator and repairman.”

He regretted ruining their hopes, almost as he said it. But he could see no change on the old Sather’s face. It seemed to stiffen slightly and become more thoughtful, but there was no disappointment.

“My grandson Bork told me all that,” he said. “Yet your name was on the monument, and we drew you back by its use. Our ancient prophecy declared that we should find omnipotence carved on stone in a pool of water, as we found your name. Therefore, by the laws of rational magic, it isyou to whom nothing is impossible. We may have mistaken the direction of your talent, but nonetheless it is you who must fix the sky. What form of wonder is a computer?”

Dave shook his head at the old man’s monomania. “Just a tool. It’s a little hard to explain, and it couldn’t help.”

“Humor my curiosity, then. What is a computer, Dave Hanson?”

Nema’s hand rested on Hanson’s arm pleadingly, and he shrugged. He groped about for some answer that could be phrased in their language, letting his mind flicker from the modern electronic gadgets back to the old-time tide predicter.

“An analogue computer is a machine that…that sets up conditions mathematically similar to the conditions in some problem and then lets all the operations proceed while it draws a graph—a prediction—of how the real conditions would turn out. If the tides change with the position of some heavenly body, then we can build cams that have shapes like the effect of the moon’s orbit, and gear them together in the right order. If there are many factors, we have a cam for each factor, shaped like the periodic rise and fall of that factor. They’re all geared to let the various factors operate at the proper relative rate. With such a machine, we can run off a graph of the tides for years ahead. Oh, hell—it’s a lot more complicated than that, but it takes the basic facts and draws a picture of the results. We use electronic ones now, but the results are the same.”

“I understand,” Sather Karf said. Dave doubted it, but he was happy to be saved from struggling with a more detailed explanation. And maybe the old man did understand some of it. He was no fool in his own subject, certainly. Sather Karf pondered for a moment, and then nodded with apparent satisfaction. “Your world was more advanced in understanding than I had thought. This computer is a fine scientific instrument, obeying natural law well. We have applied the same methods, though less elaborately. But the basic magical principle of similarity is the foundation of true science.”

Dave started to protest, and then stopped, frowning. In a way, what the other had said was true. Maybe there was some relation between science and magic, after all; there might even be a meeting ground between the laws of the two worlds he knew. Computers set up similar conditions, with the idea that the results would apply to the original. Magic used some symbolic part of a thing in manipulations that were to be effective for the real thing. The essential difference was that science was predictive and magic was effective—though the end results were often the same. On Dave’s world, the cardinal rule of logic was that the symbol was not the thing—and work done on symbols had to be translated by hard work into reality. Maybe things were really more logical here where the symbol was the thing, and all the steps in between thought and result were saved.

“So we are all at fault,” Sather Karf said finally. “We should have studied you more deeply and you should have been more honest with us. Then we could have obtained a computer for you and you could have simulated our sky as it should be within your computer and forced it to be repaired long ago. But there’s no time for regrets now. We cannot help you, so you must help yourself. Build a computer, Dave Hanson!”

“It’s impossible.”

Sudden rage burned on the old man’s face, and he came to his feet. His arm jerked back and snapped forward. Nothing happened. He grimaced at the ruined sky. “Dave Hanson,” he cried sharply, “by the unfailing power of your name which is all of you, I hold you in my mind and your throat is in my hand—”

The old hands squeezed suddenly, and Hanson felt a vise clamp down around his throat. He tried to break free, but there was no escape. The old man mumbled, and the vise was gone, but something clawed at Hanson’s liver. Something else rasped across his sciatic nerve. His kidneys seemed to be wrenched out of him.

“You will build a computer,” Sather Karf ordered. “And you will save our world!”

Hanson staggered from the shock of the pain, but he was no longer unused to agony. He had spent too many hours under the baking of the sun, the agony of the snetha-knife and the lash of an overseer’s whip. The agony could not be stopped, but he’d learned it could be endured. His fantastic body could heal itself against whatever they did to him, and his mind refused to accept the torture supinely. He took a step toward Sather Karf, and another. His hands came up as he moved forward.

Bork laughed suddenly. “Let up, Sather Karf, or you’ll regret it. By the laws, you’re dealing with a man this time. Let up, or I’ll free him to meet you fairly.”

The old man’s eyes blazed hotly. Then he sighed and relaxed. The clutching hands and the pain were gone from Hanson as the Sather Karf slumped back wearily to his seat.

“Fix our sky,” the old man said woodenly.

Hanson staggered back, panting from his efforts. But he nodded. “All right,” he agreed. “Like Bork, I think a man has to fight against his fate, no matter how little chance he has. I’ll do what I can. I’ll build the damned computer. But when I’m finished, I’ll wait for your true name!”

Suddenly Sather Karf laughed. “Well said, Dave Hanson. You’ll have my name when the time comes. And whatever else you desire. Also what poor help we can give you now. Ser Perth, bring food for Dave Hanson!”

Ser Perth shook his head sadly. “There is none. None at all. We hoped that the remaining planets would find a favorable conjunction, but—”

Dave Hanson studied his helpers with more bitterness. “Oh, hell!” he said at last. He snapped his fingers. “Abracadabra!”

His skill must be improving, since he got exactly what he had wished for. A full side of beef materialized against his palm, almost breaking his arm before he could snap it out of the way. The others swarmed hungrily toward it. At their expressions of wonder, Hanson felt more confidence returning to him. He concentrated and went through the little ritual again. This time loaves of bread rained down—fresh bread, and even of the brand he had wished for. Maybe he was becoming a magician himself, with a new magic that might still accomplish something.

Sather Karf smiled approvingly. “The theory of resonance, I see. Unreliable generally. More of an art than a science. But you show promise of remarkable natural ability to apply it.”

“You know about it?” Dave had assumed that it was completely outside their experience and procedures.

“We knew it. But when more advanced techniques took over, most of us forgot it. The syllables resonate in a sound pattern with your world, to which you also still resonate. It won’t work for you with anything from this world, nor will anything work thus for us from yours. We had different syllables, of course, for use here.” Sather Karf considered it. “But if you can control it and bring in one of your computers or the parts for one—”

Sixteen tries later, Dave was cursing as he stared at a pile of useless items. He’d gotten transistors at first. Then he lost control with too much tension or fatigue and began getting a bunch of assorted junk, such as old 201-A tubes, a transit, a crystal vase and resistors. But the chief trouble was that he couldn’t secure working batteries. He had managed a few, but all were dead.

“Like the soul, electrical charges will not transfer,” Sather Karf agreed sadly. “I should have told you that.”

There was no electricity here with which to power anything, and their spells could not be made to work now. Even if he could build a computer out of what was obtainable, there would be no way to power it.

Overhead, the sky shattered with a roar, and another piece fell, tearing downwards toward the city. Sersa Garm stared upwards in horror.

“Mars!” he croaked. “Mars has fallen. Now can there be no conjunction ever!”

He tautened and his body rose slowly from the ground. A scream ripped from his lips and faded away as he began rushing upwards with increasing speed. He passed but of their sight, straight toward the new hole in the sky.

IX

In the hours that followed, Dave’s vague plans changed a dozen times as he found each idea unworkable. His emotional balance was also erratic—though that was natural, since the stars were completely berserk in what was left of the sky. He seemed to fluctuate between bitter sureness of doom and a stupidly optimistic belief that something could be done to avert that doom. But whatever his mood, he went on working and scheming furiously. Maybe it was the desperate need to keep himself occupied that drove him, or perhaps it was the pleading he saw in the eyes around him. In the end, determination conquered his pessimism.

Somewhere in the combination of the science he had learned in his own world and the technique of magic that applied here there had to be an answer—or a means to hold back the end of the world until an answer could be found.

The biggest problem was the number of factors with which he had to deal. There were seven planets and the sun, and three thousand fixed stars. All had to be ordered in their courses, and the sky had to be complete in his calculations.

He had learned his trade where the answer was always to add one more circuit in increasing complexity. Now he had to think of the simplest possible similarity computer. Electronics was out, obviously. He tried to design a set of cams, like the tide machine, to make multiple tracings on paper similar to a continuous horoscope, but finally gave it up. They couldn’t build the parts, even if there had been time.

He had to depend on what was available, since magic couldn’t produce any needed device and since the people here had depended on magic too long to develop the other necessary skills. When only the broadest powers of magic remained, they were hopeless. Names were still potent, resonance worked within its limits, and the general principles of similarity still applied; but those were not enough for them. They depended too heavily on the second great principle of contagion, and that seemed to be wrapped up with some kind of association through the signs and houses and the courses of the planets.

He found himself thinking in circles of worry and pulled himself back to his problem. Normally, a computer was designed for flexibility and to handle varying conditions. This one could be designed to handle only one set of factors. It had to duplicate the courses of the objects in their sky and simulate the general behavior of the dome. It was not necessary to allow for all theoretical courses, but only for the normal orbits.

And finally he realized that he was thinking of a model—the one thing which is functionally the perfect analogue.

It brought him back to magic again. Make a doll like a man and stick pins in it—and the man dies. Make a model of the universe within the sky, and any changes in that should change reality. The symbol was the thing, and a model was obviously a symbol.

He began trying to plan a model with three thousand stars in their orbits, trying to find some simple way of moving them. The others watched in fascination. They apparently felt that the diagrams he was drawing were some kind of scientific spell. Ser Perth was closer than the others, studying the marks he made. The man suddenly pointed to his computations.

“Over and over I find the figure seven and the figure three thousand. I assume that the seven represents the planets. But what is the other figure?”

“The stars,” Hanson told him impatiently.

Ser Perth shook his head. “That is wrong. There were only two thousand seven hundred and eighty-one before the beginnings of our trouble.”

“And I suppose you’ve got the exact orbits of every one?” Hanson asked. He couldn’t see that the difference was going to help much.

“Naturally. They are fixed stars, which means they move with the sky. Otherwise, why call them fixed stars? Only the sun and the planets move through the sky. The stars move with the sky over the world as a unity.”

Dave grunted at his own stupidity. That really simplified things, since it meant only one control for all of them and the sky itself. But designing a machine to handle the planets and the sun, while a lot simpler, was still a complex problem. With time, it would have been easy enough, but there was no time for trial and error.

He ripped up his plans and began a new set. He’d need a glass sphere with dots on it for the stars, and some kind of levers to move the planets and sun. It would be something like the orreries he’d seen used for demonstrations of planetary movement.

Ser Perth came over again, staring down at the sketch. He drowned in doubt. “Why waste time drawing such engines? If you want a model to determine how the orbits should be, we have the finest orrery ever built here in the camp. We brought it with us when we moved, since it would be needed to determine how the sky should be repaired and to bring the time and the positions into congruence. Wait!”

He dashed off, calling two of the mandrakes after him. In a few minutes, they staggered back under a bulky affair in a protective plastic case. Ser Perth stripped off the case to reveal the orrery to Hanson.

It was a beautiful piece of workmanship. There was an enormous sphere of thin crystal to represent the sky. Precious gems showed the stars, affixed to the dome. The whole was nearly eight feet in diameter. Inside the crystal, Hanson could see a model of the world on jeweled-bearing supports. The planets and the sun were set on tracks around the outside, with a clockwork drive mechanism that moved them by means of stranded spiderweb cords. Power came from weights, like those used on an old-fashioned clock. It was obviously all hand work, which must make it a thing of tremendous value here.

“Sather Fareth spent his life designing this,” Ser Perth said proudly. “It is so well designed that it can show the position of all things for a thousand centuries in the past or future by turning these cranks on the control, or it will hold the proper present positions for years from its own engine.”

“It’s beautiful workmanship,” Hanson told him. “As good as the best done on my world.”

Ser Perth went away, temporarily pleased with himself, and Hanson stood staring at the model. It was as good as he’d said it was—and completely damning to all of his theories and hopes. No model he could make would equal it. But in spite of it and all its precise analogy to the universe around him, the sky was still falling in shattered bits!

Sather Karf and Bork had come over to join Hanson. They waited expectantly, but Hanson could think of nothing to do. It had already been done—and had failed. The old man dropped a hand on his shoulder. There was the weight of all his centuries on the Sather, yet a curious toughness showed through his weariness. “What is wrong with the orrery?” he asked.

“Nothing—nothing at all, damn it!” Hanson told him. “You wanted a computer—and you’ve got it. You can feed in data as to the hour, day, month and year, turn the cranks, and the planets there will turn to their proper position exactly as the real planets should run. You don’t need to read the results off graph paper. What more could any analogue computer do? But it doesn’t influence the sky.”

“It was never meant to,” the old man said, surprise in his voice. “Such power—”

Then he stopped, staring at Hanson while something almost like awe spread over his face. “Yet…the prophecy and the monument were right! You have unlocked the impossible! Yet you seem to know nothing of the laws of similarity or of magic, Dave Hanson. Is that crystal similar to the sky, by association, by contagion, or by true symbolism? A part may be a symbol for the whole—or so may any designated symbol, which may influence the thing it is. If I have a hair from your head, I can model you with power over you. But not with the hair of a pig! That is no true symbol!”

“Suppose we substituted bits of the real thing for these representations?” Hanson asked.

Bork nodded. “It might work. I’ve heard you found the sky material could be melted, and we’ve got enough of that where it struck the camp. Any one of us who has studied elementary alchemy could blow a globe of it to the right size for the sky dome. And there are a few stars from which we can chip pieces enough. We can polish them and put them into the sphere where they belong. And it will be risky, but we may even be able to shape a bit of the sun stuff to represent the great orb in the sky.”

“What about the planets?” Hanson was beginning to feel the depression lift. “You might get a little of Mars, since it fell near here, but that still leaves the other six.”

“That long associated with a thing achieves the nature of the thing,” Sather Karf intoned, as if giving a lesson to a kindergarten student. “With the right colors, metals and bits of jewels—as well as more secret symbols—we can simulate the planets. Yet they cannot be suspended above the dome, as in this orrery—they must be within the sky, as in nature.”

“How about putting some iron in each and using a magnet on the control tracks to move the planets?” Hanson suggested. “Or does cold iron ruin your conjuring here?”

Sather Karf snorted in obvious disgust, but Bork only grinned. “Why should it? You must have heard peasant superstitions. Still, you’d have a problem if two tracks met, as they do. The magnets would then affect both planets alike. Better make two identical planets for each—and two suns—and put one on your track controls. Then one must follow the other, though the one remain within the sky.”

Hanson nodded. He’d have to shield the cord from the sun stuff, but that could be done. He wondered idly whether the real universe was going to wind up with tracks beyond the sky on which little duplicate planets ran—just how much similarity would there be between model and reality when this was done, if it worked at all? It probably didn’t matter, and it could hardly be worse than whatever the risers had run into beyond the hole in the present sky. Metaphysics was a subject with which he wasn’t yet fully prepared to cope.

The model of the world inside the orrery must have been made from earthly materials already, and it was colored to depict land and sea areas. It could probably be used. At their agreement, he nodded with some satisfaction. That should save some time, at least. He stared doubtfully at the rods and bearings that supported the model world in the center of the orrery.

“What about those things? How do we hold the globe in the center of everything?”

Bork shrugged. “It seems simple enough. We’ll fashion supports of more of the sky material.”

“And have real rods sticking up from the poles in the real universe?” Hanson asked sarcastically.

“Why not?” Bork seemed surprised at Hanson’s tone. “There have always been such columns connecting the world and the sky. What else would keep us from falling?”

Hanson swore. He might have guessed it! The only wonder was that simple rods were used instead of elephants and turtles. And the doubly-damned fools had let Menes drive millions of slaves to death to build a pyramid to the sky when there were already natural columns that could have been used!

“There remains only one step,” Sather Karf decided after a moment more. “To make symbol and thing congruent, all must be invoked with the true and secret name of the universe.”

Hanson suddenly remembered legends of the tetragrammaton and the tales of magic he’d read in which there was always one element lacking. “And I suppose nobody knows that or dares to use it?”

There was hurt pride of the aged face and the ring of vast authority in his voice. “Then you suppose wrong, Dave Hanson! Since this world first came out of Duality, a Sather Karf has known that mystery! Make your device and I shall not fail in the invocation!”

For the first time, Hanson discovered that the warlocks could work when they had to, however much they disliked it. And at their own specialties, they were superb technicians. Under the orders of Sather Karf, the camp sprang into frenzied but orderly activity.

They lost a few mandrakes in prying loose some of the sun material, and more in getting a small sphere of it shaped. But the remainder gave them the heat to melt the sky stuff. When it came to glass blowing, Hanson had to admit they were experts; it should have come as no surprise, after the elaborate alchemical apparatus he’d seen. Once the crystal shell was cracked out of the orrery, a fat-faced Ser came in with a long tube and began working the molten sky material, getting the feel of it. He did things Hanson knew were nearly impossible, and he did them with the calm assurance of an expert. Even when another rift in the sky appeared with a crackling of thunder, there was no faltering on his part. The sky shell and world supports were blown into shape around the world model inside the outer tracks in one continuous operation. The Ser then clipped the stuff from his tube and sealed the tiny opening smoothly with a bit of sun material on the end of a long metal wand.

“Interesting material,” he commented, as if only the technical nature of the stuff had offered any problem to him.

Tiny, carefully polished chips from the stars were ready, and men began placing them delicately on the shell. They sank into it at once and began twinkling. The planets had also been prepared, and they also went into the shell, while a mate to each was attached to the tracking mechanism. The tiny sun came last. Hanson fretted as he saw it sink into the shell, sure it would begin to melt the sky material. It seemed to have no effect, however; apparently the sun was not supposed to melt the sky when it was in place—so the little sun didn’t melt the shell. Once he was sure of that, he used a scrap of the sky to insulate the second little sun that would control the first sympathetically from the track. He moved the control delicately by hand, and the little sun followed dutifully.

The weights on the control mechanism were in place, Hanson noted. Someone would probably have to keep them wound from now on, unless they could devise a foolproof motor. But that was for the future. He bent to the hand cranks. Sather Karf was being called to give the exact settings for this moment, but Hanson had a rough idea of where the planets should be. He began turning the crank, just as the Sather came up.

There was a slight movement. Then the crank stuck, and there was a whirring of slipping gears! The fools who had moved the orrery must have been so careless that they’d sprung the mechanism. He bent down to study the tiny little jeweled gears. A whole gear train was out of place!

Sather Karf was also inspecting it, and the words he cried didn’t sound like an invocation, though they were strange enough. He straightened, still cursing. “Fix it!”

“I’ll try,” Hanson agreed doubtfully. “But you’d better get the man who made this. He’ll know better than I—”

“He was killed in the first cracking of the sky when a piece hit him. Fix it, Dave Hanson. You claimed to be a repairman for such devices.”

Hanson bent to study it again, using a diamond lens one of the warlocks handed him. It was a useful device, having about a hundred times magnification without the need for exact focusing. He stared at the jumble of fine gears, then glanced out through the open front: of the building toward the sky. There was even less of it showing than he had remembered. Most of the great dome was empty. And now there were suggestions of…shadows…in the empty spots. He looked away hastily, shaken.

“I’ll need some fine tools,” he said.

“They were lost in moving this,” Ser Perth told him. “This is the best we can do.”

The jumble of tools had obviously been salvaged from the kits on the tractors in the camp. There was one fairly small pair of pliers, a small pick and assorted useless junk. He shook his head hopelessly.

“Fix it!” Sather Karf ordered again. The old man’s eyes were also on the sky. “You have ten minutes, perhaps—no more.”

Hanson’s fingers steadied as he found bits of wire and began improvising tools to manipulate the tiny gears. The mechanism was a piece of superb craftsmanship that should have lasted for a million years, but it had never been meant to withstand the heavy shock of being dropped, as it must have been. And there was very little space inside. It should have been disassembled and put back piece by piece, but there was no time for that.

Another thunder of falling sky sounded, and the ground heaved. “Earthquakes!” Sather Karf whispered. “The end is near!”

Then a shout went up, and Hanson jerked his eyes from the gears to focus on a group of rocs that were landing at the far end of the camp. Men were springing from their backs before they stopped running—men in dull robes with elaborate masks over their faces. At the front was Malok, leader of the Sons of the Egg, brandishing his knife.

His voice carried clearly. “The egg hatches! To the orrery and smash it! That was the shadow in the pool. Destroy it before Dave Hanson can complete his magic!”

The men behind him yelled. Around Hanson, the magicians cried out in shocked fear. Then old Sather Karf was dashing out from under the cover of the building, brandishing a pole on which a drop of the sun-stuff was glowing. His voice rose into a command that rang out over the cries of the others.

Dave reached for a heavy hammer, meaning to follow. The old Sather seemed to sense it without looking back. “Fix the engine, Dave Hanson,” he called.

It made sense. The others could do the fighting, but only he had training with such mechanisms. He turned back to his work, just as the warlocks began rallying behind Sather Karf, grabbing up what weapons they could find. There was no magic in this fight. Sticks, stones, hammers and knives were all that remained workable.

Dave Hanson bent over the gears, cursing. Now there was another rumble of thunder from the falling sky. The half-light from the reflected sunlight dimmed, and the ground shook violently. Another set of gears broke from the housing. Hanson caught up a bit of sun-stuff on the sharp point of the awl and brought it closer, until it burned his hands. But he had seen enough. The mechanism was ruined beyond his chance to repair it in time.

He slapped the cover shut and stuck the sun-tipped awl where it would light as much of the orrery as possible. As always, the skills of his own world had failed. To the blazes with it, then—when in magic land, magic had to do.

He thought of calling Ser Perth or Sather Karf, but there was no time for that, and they could hardly have heard him over the sounds of the desperate fight going on.

He bent to the floor, searching until he found a ball of the sky material that had been pinched off when the little opening was sealed. Further hunting gave him a few bits of dust from the star bits and some of the junk that had gone into shaping the planets. He brushed in some dirt from the ground that had been touched by the sun stuff and was still glowing faintly. He wasn’t at all sure of how much he could extrapolate from what he’d read in the book on Applied Semantics, but he knew he needed a control—a symbol of the symbol, in this case. It was crude, but it might serve to represent the orrery.

He clutched it in his hand and touched it against the orrery, trying to remember the formula for the giving of a true name. He had to improvise, but he got through a rough version of it, until he came to the end: “I who created you name you—” What the deuce did he name it? “I name you Rumpelstilsken and order you to obey me when I call you by your name.”

He clutched the blob of material tighter in his hand, mentally trying to shape an order that wouldn’t backfire, as such orders seemed to in the childhood stories of magic he had learned. Finally his lips whispered the simplest order he could find. “Rumpelstilsken, repair yourself!”

There was a whirring and scraping inside the mechanism, and Hanson let out a yell. He got only a hasty glimpse of gears that seemed to be back on their tracks before Sather Karf was beside him, driving the cranks with desperate speed.

“We have less than a minute!” the old voice gasped.

The Sather’s fingers spun on the controls. Then he straightened, moving his hands toward the orrery in passes too rapid to be seen. There was a string of obvious ritual commands in their sacred language. Then a single word rang out, a string of sounds that should have come from no human vocal chords.

There was a wrench and twist through every atom of Hanson’s body. The universe seemed to cry out. Over the horizon, a great burning disc rose and leaped toward the heavens as the sun went back to its place in the sky. The big bits of sky-stuff around also jerked upwards, revealing themselves by the wind they whipped up and by the holes they ripped through the roof of the building. Hanson clutched at the scrap he had pocketed, but it showed no sign of leaving, and the tiny blob of sun-stuff remained fixed to the awl.

Through the diamond lens, Hanson could see the model of the world in the orrery changing. There were clouds apparently painted on it where no clouds had been. And there was an indication of movement in the green of the forests and the blue of the oceans, as if trees were whipping in the wind and waves lapping the shores.

When he jerked his eyes upward, all seemed serene in the sky. Sunlight shone normally on the world, and from under the roof he could see the gaudy blue of sky, complete, with the cracks in it smoothing out as he watched.

The battle outside had stopped with the rising of the sun. Half the warlocks were lying motionless, and the other half had clustered together, close to the building where Hanson and Sather Karf stood. The Sons of the Egg seemed to have suffered less, since they greatly out-numbered the others, but they were obviously more shocked by the rising of the sun and the healing of the sky.

Then Malok’s voice rang out sharply. “It isn’t stable yet! Destroy the machine! The egg must hatch!”

He leaped forward, brandishing his knife, while the Sons of the Egg fell in behind him. The warlocks began to close ranks, falling back to make a stand under the jutting edge of the roof, where they could protect the orrery. Bork and Ser Perth were among them, bloody but hopelessly determined.

One look at Sather Karf’s expression was enough to convince Hanson that Malok had cried the truth and that their work could still be undone. And it was obvious that the warlocks could never stand the charge of the Sons. Too many of them had already been killed, and there was no time for reviving them.

Sather Karf was starting forward into the battle, but Hanson made no move to follow. He snapped the diamond lens to his eye and his fingers caught at the drop of sun-stuff on the awl. He had to hold it near the glowing bit for steadiness, and it began searing his fingers. He forced control on his muscles and plunged his hand slowly through the sky sphere, easing the glowing blob downward toward the spot on the globe he had already located with the lens. His thumb and finger moved downward delicately, with all the skill of practice at working with nearly invisibly fine wires on delicate instruments.

Then he jerked his eyes away from the model and looked out. Something glaring and hot was suspended in the air five miles away. He moved his hand carefully, steadying it on one of the planet tracks. The glowing fire in the air outside moved another mile closer—then another. And now, around it, he could see a monstrous fingertip and something that might have been miles of thumbnail.

The warlocks leaped back under the roof. The Sons of the Egg screamed and panicked. Jerking horribly, the monstrous thing moved again. For part of a second, it hovered over the empty camp. Then it was gone.

Hanson began pulling his hand out through the shell of the model, whimpering as his other hand clenched against the blob in his pocket. He had suddenly realized what horrors were possible to anyone who could use the orrery now. “Rumpelstilsken, I command you to let no hand other than mine enter and to respond to no other controls.” He hoped it would offer enough protection.

His hand came free and he threw the sun-bit away with a flick of his wrist. His hand ached with the impossible task of steadiness he had set it, and his finger and thumb burned and smoked. But the wound was already healing.

In the exposed section of the camp, the Sons of the Egg were charred corpses. There was a fire starting on the roof of the building, but others had already run out to quench that. It sounded like the snuffling progress of an undine across the roof! Maybe magic was working again.

Bork turned back from the sight of his former companions. His face was sick, but he managed to grin at Hanson. “Dave Hanson, to whom nothing is impossible,” he said.

Hanson had located Nema finally as she approached. He caught her hand and grabbed Bork’s arm. Like his own, it was trembling with fatigue and reaction.

“Come on,” he said. “Let’s find some place where we can see whether it’s impossible now for you to magic up a decent meal. And a drink strong enough to scare away the sylphs.”

The sylph that found them wasn’t scared by the Scotch, but there was enough for all of them.

X

Three days can work magic—in a world where magic works. The planets swung along their paths again and the sun was in the most favorable house for conjuration. The universe was stable again.

There was food for all, and houses had been conjured hastily to shelter the people. The plagues were gone. Now the strange commerce and industry of this world were humming again. Those who had survived and those who could be revived were busily rebuilding. Some were missing, of course. Those who had risen and—hatched—were beyond recall, but no one spoke of them. If any Sons of the Egg survived, they were quiet in their defeat.

Hanson had been busy during most of the time. It had been taken for granted that he would tend to the orrery, setting it for the most favorable conditions when some special major work of magic required it, and he had taken the orders and moved the controls as they wanted them. The orrery was housed temporarily in the reconstituted hall of the Satheri in the capital city. They were building a new hall for it, to be constructed only of natural materials and hand labor, but that was a project that would take long months still.

Now the immediate pressure was gone, and Hanson was relaxing with Bork and Nema.

“Another week,” Bork was saying. “Maybe less. And then gangs of the warlocks can spread out to fix up all the rest of the world—and to take over control of their slaves again. Are you happy with your victory, Dave Hanson?”

Hanson shrugged. He wasn’t entirely sure, now. There was something in the looks of the Sather who gave him orders for new settings that bothered him. And some of the developments he watched were hardly what he would have preferred. The warlocks had good memories, it seemed, and there had been manifold offenses against them while the world was falling apart.

He tried to put it out of his mind as he drew Nema to him. She snuggled against him, admiring him with her eyes. But old habits were hard to break. “Don’t, Dave. I’m a registered and certified—”

She stopped then, blushing, and Bork chuckled.

Ser Perth appeared at the doorway with two of the mandrakes. He motioned to Hanson. “The council of Satheri want you,” he said. His eyes avoided the other, and he seemed uncomfortable.

“Why?” Bork asked.

“It’s time for Dave Hanson’s reward,” Ser Perth said. The words were smooth enough, but the eyes turned away again.

Hanson got up and moved forward. He had been wondering when they would get around to this. Beside him, Bork and Nema also rose. “Never trust a Sather,” Bork said softly.

Nema started to protest, then changed her mind. She frowned, torn between old and new loyalties.

“The summons was only for Dave Hanson,” Ser Perth said sternly as the three drew up to him. But as Hanson took the arms of the other two, the Ser shrugged and fell in behind. Very softly, too low for the hearing of the mandrakes, his words sounded in Hanson’s ear. “Guard yourself, Dave Hanson!”

So there was to be treachery, Hanson thought. He wasn’t surprised. He was probably lucky to have even three friends. The Satheri would hardly feel very grateful to a mandrake-man who had accomplished something beyond their power, now that the crisis was over. They had always been a high-handed bunch, apparently, and he had served his purpose. But he covered his thoughts in a neutral expression and went forward quietly toward the huge council room.

The seventy leading Satheri were all present, with Sather Karf presiding, when Hanson was ushered into their presence. He moved down the aisle, not glancing at the seated Satheri, until he was facing the old man, drawing Nema and Bork with him. There were murmurs of protest, but nobody stopped him. Above him, the eyes of Sather Karf were uncertain. For a moment, there seemed to be a touch of friendliness and respect in them, but there was something else that Hanson liked far less. Any warmth that was there vanished at his first words.

“It’s about time,” Hanson said flatly. “When you wanted your world saved, you were free enough with offers of reward. But three days have passed without mention of it. Sather Karf, I demand your secret name!”

He heard Nema gasp, but felt Bork’s fingers press against his arm reassuringly. There was a rising mutter of shock and anger from the others, but he lifted his voice over it. “And the secret names of all those present. That was also part of the promised reward.”

“And do you think you could use the names, Dave Hanson?” Sather Karf asked. “Against the weight of all our knowledge, do you think you could become our master that easily?”

Hanson had his own doubts. There were counter-magical methods against nearly all magic, and the book he had read had been only an elementary one. But he nodded. “I think with your name I could get my hands on your hearts, even if you did your worst. It doesn’t matter. I claim my reward.”

“And you shall have it. The word of Sather Karf is good,” the old man told him. “But there was no mention of when you would be given those names. You said that when the computer was finished you would wait for my true name, and I promised that you should have it when the time came, but not what the time would be. So you will wait, or the agreement shall be broken by you, not by me. When you are dying or otherwise beyond power over us, you shall have the names, Dave Hanson. No, hear me!”

He lifted his hand in a brief gesture and Hanson felt a thickness over his lips that made speech impossible.

“We have discussed your reward, and you shall indeed have it,” Sather Karf went on. “Exactly as I promised it to you. I agreed to find ways to return you to your own world intact, and you shall be returned.”

For a moment, the thickness seemed to relax, and Hanson choked a few words out through it. “What’s the world of a mandrake-man, Sather Karf? A mandrake swamp?”

“For a mandrake-man, yes. But not for you.” There was something like amusement in the old man’s voice. “I never said you were a mandrake-man. That was told you by Ser Perth who knew no better. No, Dave Hanson, you were too important to us for that. Mandrake-men are always less than true men, and we needed your best. You were conjured atom by atom, id and ka and soul, from your world. Even the soul may be brought over when enough masters of magic work together and you were our greatest conjuration. Even then, we almost failed. But you’re no mandrake-man.”

A load of sickness seemed to leave Hanson’s mind. He had never fully realized how much the shame of what he thought himself to be had weighed on him. Then his mind adjusted to the new facts, dismissing his past worries.

“I promised you that we would fill your entire lifetime with pleasures,” Sather Karf went on. “And you were assured of jewels to buy an empire. All this the council is prepared to give you. Are you ready for your reward?”

“No!” Bork’s cry broke out before Hanson could answer. The big man was writhing before he could finish the word, but his own fingers were working in conjurations that seemed to hold back enough of the spells against him to let him speak. “Dave Hanson, your world was a world of rigid laws. You died there. And there would be no magic to avoid the fact that there you must always be dead.”

Hanson’s eyes riveted on the face of Sather Karf. The old man looked back and finally nodded his head. “That is true,” he admitted. “It would have been kinder for you not to know, but it is the truth.”

“And jewels enough to buy an empire on a corpse,” Hanson accused. “A lifetime of pleasures—simple enough when that lifetime would be over before it began. What were the pleasures, Sather Karf? Having you reveal your name just before I was sent back and feeling I’d won?” He grimaced. “I reject the empty rewards of your empty promises!”

“I also rejected the interpretation, but I was out-voted,” Sather Karf said, and there was a curious reluctance as he raised his hand. “But it is too late. Dave Hanson prepare to receive your reward. By the power of your name—”

Hanson’s hand went to his pocket and squeezed down on the blob of sky material there. He opened his mouth, and found that the thickness was back. For a split second, his mind screamed in panic as he realized he could not even pronounce the needed words.

Then coldness settled over his thoughts as he drove them to shape the unvoiced words in his mind. Nobody had told him that magic incantations had to be pronounced aloud. It seemed to be the general law, but for all he knew, ignorance of the law here might change the law. At least he meant to die trying, if he failed.

“Rumpelstilsken, I command the sun to set!”

He seemed to sense a hesitation in his mind, and then the impression of jeweled gears turning. Outside the window, the light reddened, dimmed, and was gone, leaving the big room illuminated by only a few witch lights.

The words Sather Karf had been intoning came to a sudden stop, even before they could be drowned in the shouts of shock and panic from the others. His eyes centered questioningly on Hanson and the flicker of a smile crossed his face. “To the orrery!” he ordered. “Use the manual controls.”

Hanson waited until he estimated the men who left would be at the controls. The he clutched the sky-blob again. The thoughts in his mind were clearer this time.

“Rumpelstilsken, let the sun rise from the west and set in the east!”

Some of the Satheri were at the windows to watch what happened this time. Their shouts were more frightened than before. A minute later, the others were back, screaming out the news that the manual controls could not be moved—could not even be touched.

The orrery named Rumpelstilsken was obeying its orders fully, and the universe was obeying its symbol.

Somehow, old Sather Karf brought order out of the frightened mob that had been the greatest Satheri in the world. “All right, Dave Hanson,” he said calmly. “Return the sun to its course. We agree to your conditions.”

“You haven’t heard them yet!”

“Nevertheless,” Sather Karf answered firmly, “we agree. What else can we do? If you decided to wreck the sky again, even you might not be able to repair it a second time.” He tapped his hands lightly together and the sound of a huge gong reverberated in the room. “Let the hall be cleared. I will accept the conditions in private.”

There were no objections. A minute later Hanson, Bork and Nema were alone with the old man. Sunlight streamed in through the window, and there were fleecy clouds showing in the blue sky.

“Well?” Sather Karf asked. There was a trace of a smile on his face and a glow of what seemed to be amusement in his eyes as he listened, though Hanson could see nothing amusing in the suggestions he was making.

First, of course, he meant to stay here. There was no other place for him, but he would have chosen to stay in any event. Here he had developed into what he had never even thought of being, and there were still things to be learned. He’d gone a long way on what he’d found in one elementary book. Now, with a chance to study all their magical lore and apply it with the methods he had learned in his own world, there were amazing possibilities opening up to him. For the world, a few changes would be needed. Magic should be limited to what magic did best; the people needed to grow their own food and care for themselves. And they needed protection from the magicians. There would have to be a code of ethics to be worked out later.

“You’ve got all the time you need to work things out, Sathator Hanson,” Sather Karf told him. “It’s your world, literally, so take your time. What do you want first?”

Hanson considered it, while Nema’s hand crept into his. Then he grinned. “I guess I want to get your great granddaughter turned into a registered and certified wife and take her on a long honeymoon,” he decided. “After what you’ve put me through, I need a rest.”

He took her arm and started down the aisle of the council room. Behind him, he heard Bork’s chuckle and the soft laughter of Sather Karf. But their faces were sobering by the time he reached the doorway and looked back.

“I like him, too, grandfather,” Bork was saying. “Well, it seems your group was right, after all. Your prophecy is fulfilled. He may have a little trouble with so many knowing his name, but he’s Dave Hanson, to whom nothing is impossible. You should have considered all the implications of omnipotence.”

Sather Karf nodded. “Perhaps. And perhaps your group was also right, Bork. It seems that the world-egg has hatched.” His eyes lifted and centered on the doorway.

Hanson puzzled over their words briefly as he closed the door and went out with Nema. He’d probably have to do something about his name, but the rest of the conversation was a mystery to him. Then he dismissed it. He could always remember it when he had more time to think about it.

* * * *

It was many millenia and several universes later when Dave Hanson finally remembered. By then it was no mystery, of course. And there was no one who dared pronounce his true name.

LITTLE FUZZY (Part 1), by H. Beam Piper

I

Jack Holloway found himself squinting, the orange sun full in his eyes. He raised a hand to push his hat forward, then lowered it to the controls to alter the pulse rate of the contragravity-field generators and lift the manipulator another hundred feet. For a moment he sat, puffing on the short pipe that had yellowed the corners of his white mustache, and looked down at the red rag tied to a bush against the rock face of the gorge five hundred yards away. He was smiling in anticipation.

“This’ll be a good one,” he told himself aloud, in the manner of men who have long been their own and only company. “I want to see this one go up.”

He always did. He could remember at least a thousand blast-shots he had fired back along the years and on more planets than he could name at the moment, including a few thermonuclears, but they were all different and they were always something to watch, even a little one like this. Flipping the switch, his thumb found the discharger button and sent out a radio impulse; the red rag vanished in an upsurge of smoke and dust that mounted out of the gorge and turned to copper when the sunlight touched it. The big manipulator, weightless on contragravity, rocked gently; falling debris pelted the trees and splashed in the little stream.

He waited till the machine stabilized, then glided it down to where he had ripped a gash in the cliff with the charge of cataclysmite. Good shot: brought down a lot of sandstone, cracked the vein of flint and hadn’t thrown it around too much. A lot of big slabs were loose. Extending the forward claw-arms, he pulled and tugged, and then used the underside grapples to pick up a chunk and drop it on the flat ground between the cliff and the stream. He dropped another chunk on it, breaking both of them, and then another and another, until he had all he could work over the rest of the day. Then he set down, got the toolbox and the long-handled contragravity lifter, and climbed to the ground where he opened the box, put on gloves and an eyescreen and got out a microray scanner and a vibrohammer.

The first chunk he cracked off had nothing in it; the scanner gave the uninterrupted pattern of homogenous structure. Picking it up with the lifter, he swung it and threw it into the stream. On the fifteenth chunk, he got an interruption pattern that told him that a sunstone—or something, probably something—was inside.

Some fifty million years ago, when the planet that had been called Zarathustra (for the last twenty-five million) was young, there had existed a marine life form, something like a jellyfish. As these died, they had sunk into the sea-bottom ooze; sand had covered the ooze and pressed it tighter and tighter, until it had become glassy flint, and the entombed jellyfish little beans of dense stone. Some of them, by some ancient biochemical quirk, were intensely thermofluorescent; worn as gems, they glowed from the wearer’s body heat.

On Terra or Baldur or Freya or Ishtar, a single cut of polished sunstone was worth a small fortune. Even here, they brought respectable prices from the Zarathustra Company’s gem buyers. Keeping his point of expectation safely low, he got a smaller vibrohammer from the toolbox and began chipping cautiously around the foreign object, until the flint split open and revealed a smooth yellow ellipsoid, half an inch long.

“Worth a thousand sols—if it’s worth anything,” he commented. A deft tap here, another there, and the yellow bean came loose from the flint. Picking it up, he rubbed it between gloved palms. “I don’t think it is.” He rubbed harder, then held it against the hot bowl of his pipe. It still didn’t respond. He dropped it. “Another jellyfish that didn’t live right.”

Behind him, something moved in the brush with a dry rustling. He dropped the loose glove from his right hand and turned, reaching toward his hip. Then he saw what had made the noise—a hard-shelled thing a foot in length, with twelve legs, long antennae and two pairs of clawed mandibles. He stopped and picked up a shard of flint, throwing it with an oath. Another damned infernal land-prawn.

He detested land-prawns. They were horrible things, which, of course, wasn’t their fault. More to the point, they were destructive. They got into things at camp; they would try to eat anything. They crawled into machinery, possibly finding the lubrication tasty, and caused jams. They cut into electric insulation. And they got into his bedding, and bit, or rather pinched, painfully. Nobody loved a land-prawn, not even another land-prawn.

This one dodged the thrown flint, scuttled off a few feet and turned, waving its antennae in what looked like derision. Jack reached for his hip again, then checked the motion. Pistol cartridges cost like crazy; they weren’t to be wasted in fits of childish pique. Then he reflected that no cartridge fired at a target is really wasted, and that he hadn’t done any shooting recently. Stooping again, he picked up another stone and tossed it a foot short and to the left of the prawn. As soon as it was out of his fingers, his hand went for the butt of the long automatic. It was out and the safety off before the flint landed; as the prawn fled, he fired from the hip. The quasi-crustacean disintegrated. He nodded pleasantly.

“Ol’ man Holloway’s still hitting things he shoots at.”

Was a time, not so long ago, when he took his abilities for granted. Now he was getting old enough to have to verify them. He thumbed on the safety and holstered the pistol, then picked up the glove and put it on again.

Never saw so blasted many land-prawns as this summer. They’d been bad last year, but nothing like this. Even the oldtimers who’d been on Zarathustra since the first colonization said so. There’d be some simple explanation, of course; something that would amaze him at his own obtuseness for not having seen it at once. Maybe the abnormally dry weather had something to do with it. Or increase of something they ate, or decrease of natural enemies.

He’d heard that land-prawns had no natural enemies; he questioned that. Something killed them. He’d seen crushed prawn shells, some of them close to his camp. Maybe stamped on by something with hoofs, and then picked clean by insects. He’d ask Ben Rainsford; Ben ought to know.

Half an hour later, the scanner gave him another interruption pattern. He laid it aside and took up the small vibrohammer. This time it was a large bean, light pink in color, He separated it from its matrix of flint and rubbed it, and instantly it began glowing.

“Ahhh! This is something like it, now!”

He rubbed harder; warmed further on his pipe bowl, it fairly blazed. Better than a thousand sols, he told himself. Good color, too. Getting his gloves off, he drew out the little leather bag from under his shirt, loosening the drawstrings by which it hung around his neck. There were a dozen and a half stones inside, all bright as live coals. He looked at them for a moment, and dropped the new sunstone in among them, chuckling happily.

Victor Grego, listening to his own recorded voice, rubbed the sunstone on his left finger with the heel of his right palm and watched it brighten. There was, he noticed, a boastful ring to his voice—not the suave, unemphatic tone considered proper on a message-tape. Well, if anybody wondered why, when they played that tape off six months from now in Johannesburg on Terra, they could look in the cargo holds of the ship that had brought it across five hundred light-years of space. Ingots of gold and platinum and gadolinium. Furs and biochemicals and brandy. Perfumes that defied synthetic imitation; hardwoods no plastic could copy. Spices. And the steel coffer full of sunstones. Almost all luxury goods, the only really dependable commodities in interstellar trade.

And he had spoken of other things. Veldbeest meat, up seven per cent from last month, twenty per cent from last year, still in demand on a dozen planets unable to produce Terran-type foodstuffs. Grain, leather, lumber. And he had added a dozen more items to the lengthening list of what Zarathustra could now produce in adequate quantities and no longer needed to import. Not fishhooks and boot buckles, either—blasting explosives and propellants, contragravity-field generator parts, power tools, pharmaceuticals, synthetic textiles. The Company didn’t need to carry Zarathustra any more; Zarathustra could carry the Company, and itself.

Fifteen years ago, when the Zarathustra Company had sent him here, there had been a cluster of log and prefab huts beside an improvised landing field, almost exactly where this skyscraper now stood. Today, Mallorysport was a city of seventy thousand; in all, the planet had a population of nearly a million, and it was still growing. There were steel mills and chemical plants and reaction plants and machine works. They produced all their own fissionables, and had recently begun to export a little refined plutonium; they had even started producing collapsium shielding.

The recorded voice stopped. He ran back the spool, set for sixty-speed, and transmitted it to the radio office. In twenty minutes, a copy would be aboard the ship that would hyper out for Terra that night. While he was finishing, his communication screen buzzed.

“Dr. Kellogg’s screening you, Mr. Grego,” the girl in the outside office told him.

He nodded. Her hands moved, and she vanished in a polychromatic explosion; when it cleared, the chief of the Division of Scientific Study and Research was looking out of the screen instead. Looking slightly upward at the showback over his own screen, Victor was getting his warm, sympathetic, sincere and slightly too toothy smile on straight.

“Hello, Leonard. Everything going all right?”

It either was and Leonard Kellogg wanted more credit than he deserved or it wasn’t and he was trying to get somebody else blamed for it before anybody could blame him.

“Good afternoon, Victor.” Just the right shade of deference about using the first name—big wheel to bigger wheel. “Has Nick Emmert been talking to you about the Big Blackwater project today?”

Nick was the Federation’s resident-general; on Zarathustra he was, to all intents and purposes, the Terran Federation Government. He was also a large stockholder in the chartered Zarathustra Company.

“No. Is he likely to?”

“Well, I wondered, Victor. He was on my screen just now. He says there’s some adverse talk about the effect on the rainfall in the Piedmont area of Beta Continent. He was worried about it.”

“Well, it would affect the rainfall. After all, we drained half a million square miles of swamp, and the prevailing winds are from the west. There’d be less atmospheric moisture to the east of it. Who’s talking adversely about it, and what worries Nick?”

“Well, Nick’s afraid of the effect on public opinion on Terra. You know how strong conservation sentiment is; everybody’s very much opposed to any sort of destructive exploitation.”

“Good Lord! The man doesn’t call the creation of five hundred thousand square miles of new farmland destructive exploitation, does he?”

“Well, no, Nick doesn’t call it that; of course not. But he’s concerned about some garbled story getting to Terra about our upsetting the ecological balance and causing droughts. Fact is, I’m rather concerned myself.”

He knew what was worrying both of them. Emmert was afraid the Federation Colonial Office would blame him for drawing fire on them from the conservationists. Kellogg was afraid he’d be blamed for not predicting the effects before his division endorsed the project. As a division chief, he had advanced as far as he would in the Company hierarchy; now he was on a Red Queen’s racetrack, running like hell to stay in the same place.

“The rainfall’s dropped ten per cent from last year, and fifteen per cent from the year before that,” Kellogg was saying. “And some non-Company people have gotten hold of it, and so had Interworld News. Why, even some of my people are talking about ecological side-effects. You know what will happen when a story like that gets back to Terra. The conservation fanatics will get hold of it, and the Company’ll be criticized.”

That would hurt Leonard. He identified himself with the Company. It was something bigger and more powerful than he was, like God.

Victor Grego identified the Company with himself. It was something big and powerful, like a vehicle, and he was at the controls.

“Leonard, a little criticism won’t hurt the Company,” he said. “Not where it matters, on the dividends. I’m afraid you’re too sensitive to criticism. Where did Emmert get this story anyhow? From your people?”

“No, absolutely not, Victor. That’s what worries him. It was this man Rainsford who started it.”

“Rainsford?”

“Dr. Bennett Rainsford, the naturalist. Institute of Zeno-Sciences. I never trusted any of those people; they always poke their noses into things, and the Institute always reports their findings to the Colonial Office.”

“I know who you mean now; little fellow with red whiskers, always looks as though he’d been sleeping in his clothes. Why, of course the Zeno-Sciences people poke their noses into things, and of course they report their findings to the government.” He was beginning to lose patience. “I don’t see what all this is about, Leonard. This man Rainsford just made a routine observation of meteorological effects. I suggest you have your meteorologists check it, and if it’s correct pass it on to the news services along with your other scientific findings.”

“Nick Emmert thinks Rainsford is a Federation undercover agent.”

That made him laugh. Of course there were undercover agents on Zarathustra, hundreds of them. The Company had people here checking on him; he knew and accepted that. So did the big stockholders, like Interstellar Explorations and the Banking Cartel and Terra Baldur-Marduk Spacelines. Nick Emmert had his corps of spies and stool pigeons, and the Terran Federation had people here watching both him and Emmert. Rainsford could be a Federation agent—a roving naturalist would have a wonderful cover occupation. But this Big Blackwater business was so utterly silly. Nick Emmert had too much graft on his conscience; it was too bad that overloaded consciences couldn’t blow fuses.

“Suppose he is, Leonard. What could he report on us? We are a chartered company, and we have an excellent legal department, which keeps us safely inside our charter. It is a very liberal charter, too. This is a Class-III uninhabited planet; the Company owns the whole thing outright. We can do anything we want as long as we don’t violate colonial law or the Federation Constitution. As long as we don’t do that, Nick Emmert hasn’t anything to worry about. Now forget this whole damned business, Leonard!” He was beginning to speak sharply, and Kellogg was looking hurt. “I know you were concerned about injurious reports getting back to Terra, and that was quite commendable, but….”

By the time he got through, Kellogg was happy again. Victor blanked the screen, leaned back in his chair and began laughing. In a moment, the screen buzzed again. When he snapped it on, his screen-girl said:

“Mr. Henry Stenson’s on, Mr. Grego.”

“Well, put him on.” He caught himself just before adding that it would be a welcome change to talk to somebody with sense.

The face that appeared was elderly and thin; the mouth was tight, and there were squint-wrinkles at the corners of the eyes.

“Well, Mr. Stenson. Good of you to call. How are you?”

“Very well, thank you. And you?” When he also admitted to good health, the caller continued: “How is the globe running? Still in synchronization?”

Victor looked across the office at his most prized possession, the big globe of Zarathustra that Henry Stenson had built for him, supported six feet from the floor on its own contragravity unit, spotlighted in orange to represent the KO sun, its two satellites circling about it as it revolved slowly.

“The globe itself is keeping perfect time, and Darius is all right, Xerxes is a few seconds of longitude ahead of true position.”

“That’s dreadful, Mr. Grego!” Stenson was deeply shocked. “I must adjust that the first thing tomorrow. I should have called to check on it long ago, but you know how it is. So many things to do, and so little time.”

“I find the same trouble myself, Mr. Stenson.” They chatted for a while, and then Stenson apologized for taking up so much of Mr. Grego’s valuable time. What he meant was that his own time, just as valuable to him, was wasting. After the screen blanked, Grego sat looking at it for a moment, wishing he had a hundred men like Henry Stenson in his own organization. Just men with Stenson’s brains and character; wishing for a hundred instrument makers with Stenson’s skills would have been unreasonable, even for wishing. There was only one Henry Stenson, just as there had been only one Antonio Stradivari. Why a man like that worked in a little shop on a frontier planet like Zarathustra….

Then he looked, pridefully, at the globe. Alpha Continent had moved slowly to the right, with the little speck that represented Mallorysport twinkling in the orange light. Darius, the inner moon, where the Terra-Baldur-Marduk Spacelines had their leased terminal, was almost directly over it, and the other moon, Xerxes, was edging into sight. Xerxes was the one thing about Zarathustra that the Company didn’t own; the Terran Federation had retained that as a naval base. It was the one reminder that there was something bigger and more powerful than the Company.

Gerd van Riebeek saw Ruth Ortheris leave the escalator, step aside and stand looking around the cocktail lounge. He set his glass, with its inch of tepid highball, on the bar; when her eyes shifted in his direction, he waved to her, saw her brighten and wave back and then went to meet her. She gave him a quick kiss on the cheek, dodged when he reached for her and took his arm.

“Drink before we eat?” he asked.

“Oh, Lord, yes! I’ve just about had it for today.”

He guided her toward one of the bartending machines, inserted his credit key, and put a four-portion jug under the spout, dialing the cocktail they always had when they drank together. As he did, he noticed what she was wearing: short black jacket, lavender neckerchief, light gray skirt. Not her usual vacation get-up.

“School department drag you back?” he asked as the jug filled.

“Juvenile court.” She got a couple of glasses from the shelf under the machine as he picked up the jug. “A fifteen-year-old burglar.”

They found a table at the rear of the room, out of the worst of the cocktail-hour uproar. As soon as he filled her glass, she drank half of it, then lit a cigarette.

“Junktown?” he asked.

She nodded. “Only twenty-five years since this planet was discovered, and we have slums already. I was over there most of the afternoon, with a pair of city police.” She didn’t seem to want to talk about it. “What were you doing today?”

“Ruth, you ought to ask Doc Mallin to drop in on Leonard Kellogg sometime, and give him an unobstusive going over.”

“You haven’t been having trouble with him again?” she asked anxiously.

He made a face, and then tasted his drink. “It’s trouble just being around that character. Ruth, to use one of those expressions your profession deplores, Len Kellogg is just plain nuts!” He drank some more of his cocktail and helped himself to one of her cigarettes. “Here,” he continued, after lighting it. “A couple of days ago, he told me he’d been getting inquiries about this plague of land-prawns they’re having over on Beta. He wanted me to set up a research project to find out why and what to do about it.”

“Well?”

“I did. I made two screen calls, and then I wrote a report and sent it up to him. That was where I jerked my trigger; I ought to have taken a couple of weeks and made a real production out of it.”

“What did you tell him?”

“The facts. The limiting factor on land-prawn increase is the weather. The eggs hatch underground and the immature prawns dig their way out in the spring. If there’s been a lot of rain, most of them drown in their holes or as soon as they emerge. According to growth rings on trees, last spring was the driest in the Beta Piedmont in centuries, so most of them survived, and as they’re parthenogenetic females, they all laid eggs. This spring, it was even drier, so now they have land prawns all over central Beta. And I don’t know that anything can be done about them.”

“Well, did he think you were just guessing?”

He shook his head in exasperation. “I don’t know what he thinks. You’re the psychologist, you try to figure it. I sent him that report yesterday morning. He seemed quite satisfied with it at the time. Today, just after noon, he sent for me and told me it wouldn’t do at all. Tried to insist that the rainfall on Beta had been normal. That was silly; I referred him to his meteorologists and climatologists, where I’d gotten my information. He complained that the news services were after him for an explanation. I told him I’d given him the only explanation there was. He said he simply couldn’t use it. There had to be some other explanation.”

“If you don’t like the facts, you ignore them, and if you need facts, dream up some you do like,” she said. “That’s typical rejection of reality. Not psychotic, not even psychoneurotic. But certainly not sane.” She had finished her first drink and was sipping slowly at her second. “You know, this is interesting. Does he have some theory that would disqualify yours?”

“Not that I know of. I got the impression that he just didn’t want the subject of rainfall on Beta discussed at all.”

“That is odd. Has anything else peculiar been happening over on Beta lately?”

“No. Not that I know of,” he repeated. “Of course, that swamp-drainage project over there was what caused the dry weather, last year and this year, but I don’t see….” His own glass was empty, and when he tilted the jug over it, a few drops trickled out. He looked at his watch. “Think we could have another cocktail before dinner?” he asked.

II

Jack Holloway landed the manipulator in front of the cluster of prefab huts. For a moment he sat still, realizing that he was tired, and then he climbed down from the control cabin and crossed the open grass to the door of the main living hut, opening it and reaching in to turn on the lights. Then he hesitated, looking up at Darius.

There was a wide ring around it, and he remembered noticing the wisps of cirrus clouds gathering overhead through the afternoon. Maybe it would rain tonight. This dry weather couldn’t last forever. He’d been letting the manipulator stand out overnight lately. He decided to put it in the hangar. He went and opened the door of the vehicle shed, got back onto the machine and floated it inside. When he came back to the living hut, he saw that he had left the door wide open.

“Damn fool!” he rebuked himself. “Place could be crawling with prawns by now.”

He looked quickly around the living room—under the big combination desk and library table, under the gunrack, under the chairs, back of the communication screen and the viewscreen, beyond the metal cabinet of the microfilm library—and saw nothing. Then he hung up his hat, took off his pistol and laid it on the table, and went back to the bathroom to wash his hands.

As soon as he put on the light, something inside the shower stall said, “Yeeeek!” in a startled voice.

He turned quickly to see two wide eyes staring up at him out of a ball of golden fur. Whatever it was, it had a round head and big ears and a vaguely humanoid face with a little snub nose. It was sitting on its haunches, and in that position it was about a foot high. It had two tiny hands with opposing thumbs. He squatted to have a better look at it.

“Hello there, little fellow,” he greeted it. “I never saw anything like you before. What are you anyhow?”

The small creature looked at him seriously and said, “Yeek,” in a timid voice.

“Why, sure; you’re a Little Fuzzy, that’s what you are.”

He moved closer, careful to make no alarmingly sudden movements, and kept on talking to it.

“Bet you slipped in while I left the door open. Well, if a Little Fuzzy finds a door open, I’d like to know why he shouldn’t come in and look around.”

He touched it gently. It started to draw back, then reached out a little hand and felt the material of his shirt-sleeve. He stroked it, and told it that it had the softest, silkiest fur ever. Then he took it on his lap. It yeeked in pleasure, and stretched an arm up around his neck.

“Why, sure; we’re going to be good friends, aren’t we? Would you like something to eat? Well, suppose you and I go see what we can find.”

He put one hand under it, to support it like a baby—at least, he seemed to recall having seen babies supported in that way; babies were things he didn’t fool with if he could help it—and straightened. It weighed between fifteen and twenty pounds. At first, it struggled in panic, then quieted and seemed to enjoy being carried. In the living room he sat down in his favorite armchair, under a standing lamp, and examined his new acquaintance.

It was a mammal—there was a fairly large mammalian class on Zarathustra—but beyond that he was stumped. It wasn’t a primate, in the Terran sense. It wasn’t like anything Terran, or anything else on Zarathustra. Being a biped put it in a class by itself for this planet. It was just a Little Fuzzy, and that was the best he could do.

That sort of nomenclature was the best anybody could do on a Class-III planet. On a Class-IV planet, say Loki, or Shesha, or Thor, naming animals was a cinch. You pointed to something and asked a native, and he’d gargle a mouthful of syllables at you, which might only mean, “Whaddaya wanna know for?” and you took it down in phonetic alphabet and the whatzit had a name. But on Zarathustra, there were no natives to ask. So this was a Little Fuzzy.

“What would you like to eat, Little Fuzzy?” he asked. “Open your mouth, and let Pappy Jack see what you have to chew with.”

Little Fuzzy’s dental equipment, allowing for the fact that his jaw was rounder, was very much like his own.

“You’re probably omnivorous. How would you like some nice Terran Federation Space Forces Emergency Ration, Extraterrestrial, Type Three?” he asked.

Little Fuzzy made what sounded like an expression of willingness to try it. It would be safe enough; Extee Three had been fed to a number of Zarathustran mammals without ill effects. He carried Little Fuzzy out into the kitchen and put him on the floor, then got out a tin of the field ration and opened it, breaking off a small piece and handing it down. Little Fuzzy took the piece of golden-brown cake, sniffed at it, gave a delighted yeek and crammed the whole piece in his mouth.

“You never had to live on that stuff and nothing else for a month, that’s for sure!”

He broke the cake in half and broke one half into manageable pieces and put it down on a saucer. Maybe Little Fuzzy would want a drink, too. He started to fill a pan with water, as he would for a dog, then looked at his visitor sitting on his haunches eating with both hands and changed his mind. He rinsed a plastic cup cap from an empty whisky bottle and put it down beside a deep bowl of water. Little Fuzzy was thirsty, and he didn’t have to be shown what the cup was for.

It was too late to get himself anything elaborate; he found some leftovers in the refrigerator and combined them into a stew. While it was heating, he sat down at the kitchen table and lit his pipe. The spurt of flame from the lighter opened Little Fuzzy’s eyes, but what really awed him was Pappy Jack blowing smoke. He sat watching this phenomenon, until, a few minutes later, the stew was hot and the pipe was laid aside; then Little Fuzzy went back to nibbling Extee Three.

Suddenly he gave a yeek of petulance and scampered into the living room. In a moment, he was back with something elongated and metallic which he laid on the floor beside him.

“What have you got there, Little Fuzzy? Let Pappy Jack see?”

Then he recognized it as his own one-inch wood chisel. He remembered leaving it in the outside shed after doing some work about a week ago, and not being able to find it when he had gone to look for it. That had worried him; people who got absent-minded about equipment didn’t last long in the wilderness. After he finished eating and took the dishes to the sink, he went over and squatted beside his new friend.

“Let Pappy Jack look at it, Little Fuzzy,” he said. “Oh, I’m not going to take it away from you. I just want to see it.”

The edge was dulled and nicked; it had been used for a lot of things wood chisels oughtn’t to be used for. Digging, and prying, and most likely, it had been used as a weapon. It was a handy-sized, all-purpose tool for a Little Fuzzy. He laid it on the floor where he had gotten it and started washing the dishes.

Little Fuzzy watched him with interest for a while, and then he began investigating the kitchen. Some of the things he wanted to investigate had to be taken away from him; at first that angered him, but he soon learned that there were things he wasn’t supposed to have. Eventually, the dishes got washed.

There were more things to investigate in the living room. One of them was the wastebasket. He found that it could be dumped, and promptly dumped it, pulling out everything that hadn’t fallen out. He bit a corner off a sheet of paper, chewed on it and spat it out in disgust. Then he found that crumpled paper could be flattened out and so he flattened a few sheets, and then discovered that it could also be folded. Then he got himself gleefully tangled in a snarl of wornout recording tape. Finally he lost interest and started away. Jack caught him and brought him back.

“No, Little Fuzzy,” he said. “You do not dump wastebaskets and then walk away from them. You put things back in.” He touched the container and said, slowly and distinctly, “Waste…basket.” Then he righted it, doing it as Little Fuzzy would have to, and picked up a piece of paper, tossing it in from Little Fuzzy’s shoulder height. Then he handed Little Fuzzy a wad of paper and repeated, “Waste…basket.”

Little Fuzzy looked at him and said something that sounded as though it might be: “What’s the matter with you, Pappy; you crazy or something?” After a couple more tries, however, he got it, and began throwing things in. In a few minutes, he had everything back in except a brightly colored plastic cartridge box and a wide-mouthed bottle with a screw cap. He held these up and said, “Yeek?”

“Yes, you can have them. Here; let Pappy Jack show you something.”

He showed Little Fuzzy how the box could be opened and shut. Then, holding it where Little Fuzzy could watch, he unscrewed the cap and then screwed it on again.

“There, now. You try it.”

Little Fuzzy looked up inquiringly, then took the bottle, sitting down and holding it between his knees. Unfortunately, he tried twisting it the wrong way and only screwed the cap on tighter. He yeeked plaintively.

“No, go ahead. You can do it.”

Little Fuzzy looked at the bottle again. Then he tried twisting the cap the other way, and it loosened. He gave a yeek that couldn’t possibly be anything but “Eureka!” and promptly took it off, holding it up. After being commended, he examined both the bottle and the cap, feeling the threads, and then screwed the cap back on again.

“You know, you’re a smart Little Fuzzy.” It took a few seconds to realize just how smart. Little Fuzzy had wondered why you twisted the cap one way to take it off and the other way to put it on, and he had found out. For pure reasoning ability, that topped anything in the way of animal intelligence he’d ever seen. “I’m going to tell Ben Rainsford about you.”

Going to the communication screen, he punched out the wave-length combination of the naturalist’s camp, seventy miles down Snake River from the mouth of Cold Creek. Rainsford’s screen must have been on automatic; it lit as soon as he was through punching. There was a card set up in front of it, lettered: AWAY ON TRIP, BACK THE FIFTEENTH. RECORDER ON.

“Ben, Jack Holloway,” he said. “I just ran into something interesting.” He explained briefly what it was. “I hope he stays around till you get back. He’s totally unlike anything I’ve ever seen on this planet.”

Little Fuzzy was disappointed when Jack turned off the screen; that had been interesting. He picked him up and carried him over to the armchair, taking him on his lap.

“Now,” he said, reaching for the control panel of the viewscreen. “Watch this; we’re going to see something nice.”

When he put on the screen, at random, he got a view, from close up, of the great fires that were raging where the Company people were burning off the dead forests on what used to be Big Blackwater Swamp. Little Fuzzy cried out in alarm, flung his arms around Pappy Jack’s neck and buried his face in the bosom of his shirt. Well, forest fires started from lightning sometimes, and they’d be bad things for a Little Fuzzy. He worked the selector and got another pickup, this time on the top of Company House in Mallorysport, three time zones west, with the city spread out below and the sunset blazing in the west. Little Fuzzy stared at it in wonder. It was pretty impressive for a little fellow who’d spent all his life in the big woods.

So was the spaceport, and a lot of other things he saw, though a view of the planet as a whole from Darius puzzled him considerably. Then, in the middle of a symphony orchestra concert from Mallorysport Opera House, he wriggled loose, dropped to the floor and caught up his wood chisel, swinging it back over his shoulder like a two-handed sword.

“What the devil? Oh-oh!”

A land-prawn, which must have gotten in while the door was open, was crossing the living room. Little Fuzzy ran after and past it, pivoted and brought the corner of the chisel edge down on the prawn’s neck, neatly beheading it. He looked at his victim for a moment, then slid the chisel under it and flopped it over on its back, slapping it twice with the flat and cracking the undershell. The he began pulling the dead prawn apart, tearing out pieces of meat and eating them delicately. After disposing of the larger chunks, he used the chisel to chop off one of the prawn’s mandibles to use as a pick to get at the less accessible morsels. When he had finished, he licked his fingers clean and started back to the armchair.

“No.” Jack pointed at the prawn shell. “Wastebasket.”

“Yeek?”

“Wastebasket.”

Little Fuzzy gathered up the bits of shell, putting them where they belonged. Then he came back and climbed up on Pappy Jack’s lap, and looked at things in the screen until he fell asleep.

Jack lifted him carefully and put him down on the warm chair seat without wakening him, then went to the kitchen, poured himself a drink and brought it in to the big table, where he lit his pipe and began writing up his diary for the day. After a while, Little Fuzzy woke, found that the lap he had gone to sleep on had vanished, and yeeked disconsolately.

A folded blanket in one corner of the bedroom made a satisfactory bed, once Little Fuzzy had assured himself that there were no bugs in it. He brought in his bottle and his plastic box and put them on the floor beside it. Then he ran to the front door in the living room and yeeked to be let out. Going about twenty feet from the house, he used the chisel to dig a small hole, and after it had served its purpose he filled it in carefully and came running back.

Well, maybe Fuzzies were naturally gregarious, and were homemakers—den-holes, or nests, or something like that. Nobody wants messes made in the house, and when the young ones did it, their parents would bang them around to teach them better manners. This was Little Fuzzy’s home now; he knew how he ought to behave in it.

The next morning at daylight, he was up on the bed, trying to dig Pappy Jack out from under the blankets. Besides being a most efficient land-prawn eradicator, he made a first rate alarm clock. But best of all, he was Pappy Jack’s Little Fuzzy. He wanted out; this time Jack took his movie camera and got the whole operation on film. One thing, there’d have to be a little door, with a spring to hold it shut, that little Fuzzy could operate himself. That was designed during breakfast. It only took a couple of hours to make and install it; Little Fuzzy got the idea as soon as he saw it, and figured out how to work it for himself.

Jack went back to the workshop, built a fire on the hand forge and forged a pointed and rather broad blade, four inches long, on the end of a foot of quarter-inch round tool-steel. It was too point-heavy when finished, so he welded a knob on the other end to balance it. Little Fuzzy knew what that was for right away; running outside, he dug a couple of practice holes with it, and then began casting about in the grass for land-prawns.

Jack followed him with the camera and got movies of a couple of prawn killings, accomplished with smooth, by-the-numbers precision. Little Fuzzy hadn’t learned that chop-clap-clap routine in the week since he had found the wood chisel.

Going into the shed, he hunted for something without more than a general idea of what it would look like, and found it where Little Fuzzy had discarded it when he found the chisel. It was a stock of hardwood a foot long, rubbed down and polished smooth, apparently with sandstone. There was a paddle at one end, with enough of an edge to behead a prawn, and the other end had been worked to a point. He took it into the living hut and sat down at the desk to examine it with a magnifying glass. Bits of soil embedded in the sharp end—that had been used as a pick. The paddle end had been used as a shovel, beheader and shell-cracker. Little Fuzzy had known exactly what he wanted when he’d started making that thing, he’d kept on until it was as perfect as possible, and had stopped short of spoiling it by overrefinement.

Finally, Jack put it away in the top drawer of the desk. He was thinking about what to get for lunch when Little Fuzzy burst into the living room, clutching his new weapon and yeeking excitedly.

“What’s the matter, kid? You got troubles?” He rose and went to the gunrack, picking down a rifle and checking the chamber. “Show Pappy Jack what it is.”

Little Fuzzy followed him to the big door for human-type people, ready to bolt back inside if necessary.

The trouble was a harpy—a thing about the size and general design of a Terran Jurassic pterodactyl, big enough to take a Little Fuzzy at one mouthful. It must have made one swoop at him already, and was circling back for another. It ran into a 6-mm rifle bullet, went into a backward loop and dropped like a stone.

Little Fuzzy made a very surprised remark, looked at the dead harpy for a moment and then spotted the ejected empty cartridge. He grabbed it and held it up, asking if he could have it. When told that he could, he ran back to the bedroom with it. When he returned, Pappy Jack picked him up and carried him to the hangar and up into the control cabin of the manipulator.

The throbbing of the contragravity-field generator and the sense of rising worried him at first, but after they had picked up the harpy with the grapples and risen to five hundred feet he began to enjoy the ride. They dropped the harpy a couple of miles up what the latest maps were designating as Holloway’s Run, and then made a wide circle back over the mountains. Little Fuzzy thought it was fun.

After lunch, Little Fuzzy had a nap on Pappy Jack’s bed. Jack took the manipulator up to the diggings, put off a couple more shots, uncovered more flint and found another sunstone. It wasn’t often that he found stones on two successive days. When he returned to the camp, Little Fuzzy was picking another land-prawn apart in front of the living hut.

After dinner—Little Fuzzy liked cooked food, too, if it wasn’t too hot—they went into the living room. He remembered having seen a bolt and nut in the desk drawer when he had been putting the wooden prawn-killer away, and he got it out, showing it to Little Fuzzy. Little Fuzzy studied it for a moment, then ran into the bedroom and came back with his screw-top bottle. He took the top off, put it on again and then screwed the nut off the bolt, holding it up.

“See, Pappy?” Or yeeks to that effect. “Nothing to it.”

Then he unscrewed the bottle top, dropped the bolt inside after replacing the nut and screwed the cap on again.

“Yeek,” he said, with considerable self-satisfaction.

He had a right to be satisfied with himself. What he’d been doing had been generalizing. Bottle tops and nuts belonged to the general class of things-that-screwed-onto-things. To take them off, you turned left; to put them on again, you turned right, after making sure that the threads engaged. And since he could conceive of right- and left-handedness, that might mean that he could think of properties apart from objects, and that was forming abstract ideas. Maybe that was going a little far, but….

“You know, Pappy Jack’s got himself a mighty smart Little Fuzzy. Are you a grown-up Little Fuzzy, or are you just a baby Little Fuzzy? Shucks, I’ll bet you’re Professor Doctor Fuzzy.”

He wondered what to give the professor, if that was what he was, to work on next, and he doubted the wisdom of teaching him too much about taking things apart, just at present. Sometime he might come home and find something important taken apart, or, worse, taken apart and put together incorrectly. Finally, he went to a closet, rummaging in it until he found a tin canister. By the time he returned, Little Fuzzy had gotten up on the chair, found his pipe in the ashtray and was puffing on it and coughing.

“Hey, I don’t think that’s good for you!”

He recovered the pipe, wiped the stem on his shirt-sleeve and put it in his mouth, then placed the canister on the floor, and put Little Fuzzy on the floor beside it. There were about ten pounds of stones in it. When he had first settled here, he had made a collection of the local minerals, and, after learning what he’d wanted to, he had thrown them out, all but twenty or thirty of the prettiest specimens. He was glad, now, that he had kept these.

Little Fuzzy looked the can over, decided that the lid was a member of the class of things-that-screwed-onto-things and got it off. The inside of the lid was mirror-shiny, and it took him a little thought to discover that what he saw in it was only himself. He yeeked about that, and looked into the can. This, he decided, belonged to the class of things-that-can-be-dumped, like wastebaskets, so he dumped it on the floor. Then he began examining the stones and sorting them by color.

Except for an interest in colorful views on the screen, this was the first real evidence that Fuzzies possessed color perception. He proceeded to give further and more impressive proof, laying out the stones by shade, in correct spectral order, from a lump of amethystlike quartz to a dark red stone. Well, maybe he’d seen rainbows. Maybe he’d lived near a big misty waterfall, where there was always a rainbow when the sun was shining. Or maybe that was just his natural way of seeing colors.

Then, when he saw what he had to work with, he began making arrangements with them, laying them out in odd circular and spiral patterns. Each time he finished a pattern, he would yeek happily to call attention to it, sit and look at it for a while, and then take it apart and start a new one. Little Fuzzy was capable of artistic gratification too. He made useless things, just for the pleasure of making and looking at them.

Finally, he put the stones back into the tin, put the lid on and rolled it into the bedroom, righting it beside his bed along with his other treasures. The new weapon he laid on the blanket beside him when he went to bed.

The next morning, Jack broke up a whole cake of Extee Three and put it down, filled the bowl with water, and, after making sure he had left nothing lying around that Little Fuzzy could damage or on which he might hurt himself, took the manipulator up to the diggings. He worked all morning, cracking nearly a ton and a half of flint, and found nothing. Then he set off a string of shots, brought down an avalanche of sandstone and exposed more flint, and sat down under a pool-ball tree to eat his lunch.

Half an hour after he went back to work, he found the fossil of some jellyfish that hadn’t eaten the right things in the right combinations, but a little later, he found four nodules, one after another, and two of them were sunstones; four or five chunks later, he found a third. Why, this must be the Dying Place of the Jellyfish! By late afternoon, when he had cleaned up all his loose flint, he had nine, including one deep red monster an inch in diameter. There must have been some connection current in the ancient ocean that had swirled them all into this one place. He considered setting off some more shots, decided that it was too late and returned to camp.

“Little Fuzzy!” he called, opening the living-room door. “Where are you, Little Fuzzy? Pappy Jack’s rich; we’re going to celebrate!”

Silence. He called again; still no reply or scamper of feet. Probably cleaned up all the prawns around the camp and went hunting farther out into the woods, thought Jack. Unbuckling his gun and dropping it onto the table, he went out to the kitchen. Most of the Extee Three was gone. In the bedroom, he found that Little Fuzzy had dumped the stones out of the biscuit tin and made an arrangement, and laid the wood chisel in a neat diagonal across the blanket.

After getting dinner assembled and in the oven, he went out and called for a while, then mixed a highball and took it into the living room, sitting down with it to go over his day’s findings. Rather incredulously, he realized that he had cracked out at least seventy-five thousand sols’ worth of stones today. He put them into the bag and sat sipping the highball and thinking pleasant thoughts until the bell on the stove warned him that dinner was ready.

He ate alone—after all the years he had been doing that contentedly, it had suddenly become intolerable—and in the evening he dialed through his micro-film library, finding only books he had read and reread a dozen times, or books he kept for reference. Several times he thought he heard the little door open, but each time he was mistaken. Finally he went to bed.

As soon as he woke, he looked across at the folded blanket, but the wood chisel was still lying athwart it. He put down more Extee Three and changed the water in the bowl before leaving for the diggings. That day he found three more sunstones, and put them in the bag mechanically and without pleasure. He quit work early and spent over an hour spiraling around the camp, but saw nothing. The Extee Three in the kitchen was untouched.

Maybe the little fellow ran into something too big for him, even with his fine new weapon—a hobthrush, or a bush-goblin, or another harpy. Or maybe he’d just gotten tired staying in one place, and had moved on.

No; he’d liked it here. He’d had fun, and been happy. He shook his head sadly. Once he, too, had lived in a pleasant place, where he’d had fun, and could have been happy if he hadn’t thought there was something he’d had to do. So he had gone away, leaving grieved people behind him. Maybe that was how it was with Little Fuzzy. Maybe he didn’t realize how much of a place he had made for himself here, or how empty he was leaving it.

He started for the kitchen to get a drink, and checked himself. Take a drink because you pity yourself, and then the drink pities you and has a drink, and then two good drinks get together and that calls for drinks all around. No; he’d have one drink, maybe a little bigger than usual, before he went to bed.

III

He started awake, rubbed his eyes and looked at the clock. Past twenty-two hundred; now it really was time for a drink, and then to bed. He rose stiffly and went out to the kitchen, pouring the whisky and bringing it in to the table desk, where he sat down and got out his diary. He was almost finished with the day’s entry when the little door behind him opened and a small voice said, “Yeeek.” He turned quickly.

“Little Fuzzy?”

The small sound was repeated, impatiently. Little Fuzzy was holding the door open, and there was an answer from outside. Then another Fuzzy came in, and another; four of them, one carrying a tiny, squirming ball of white fur in her arms. They all had prawn-killers like the one in the drawer, and they stopped just inside the room and gaped about them in bewilderment. Then, laying down his weapon, Little Fuzzy ran to him; stooping from the chair, he caught him and then sat down on the floor with him.

“So that’s why you ran off and worried Pappy Jack? You wanted your family here, too!”

The others piled the things they were carrying with Little Fuzzy’s steel weapon and approached hesitantly. He talked to them, and so did Little Fuzzy—at least it sounded like that—and finally one came over and fingered his shirt, and then reached up and pulled his mustache. Soon all of them were climbing onto him, even the female with the baby. It was small enough to sit on his palm, but in a minute it had climbed to his shoulder, and then it was sitting on his head.

“You people want dinner?” he asked.

Little Fuzzy yeeked emphatically; that was a word he recognized. He took them all into the kitchen and tried them on cold roast veldbeest and yummiyams and fried pool-ball fruit; while they were eating from a couple of big pans, he went back to the living room to examine the things they had brought with them. Two of the prawn-killers were wood, like the one Little Fuzzy had discarded in the shed. A third was of horn, beautifully polished, and the fourth looked as though it had been made from the shoulder bone of something like a zebralope. Then there was a small coup de poing ax, rather low paleolithic, and a chipped implement of flint the shape of a slice of orange and about five inches along the straight edge. For a hand the size of his own, he would have called it a scraper. He puzzled over it for a while, noticed that the edge was serrated, and decided that it was a saw. And there were three very good flake knives, and some shells, evidently drinking vessels.

Mamma Fuzzy came in while he was finishing the examination. She seemed suspicious, until she saw that none of the family property had been taken or damaged. Baby Fuzzy was clinging to her fur with one hand and holding a slice of pool-ball fruit, on which he was munching, with the other. He crammed what was left of the fruit into his mouth, climbed up on Jack and sat down on his head again. Have to do something to break him of that. One of these days, he’d be getting too big for it.

In a few minutes, the rest of the family came in, chasing and pummeling each other and yeeking happily. Mamma jumped off his lap and joined the free-for-all, and then Baby took off from his head and landed on Mamma’s back. And he thought he’d lost his Little Fuzzy, and, gosh, here he had five Fuzzies and a Baby Fuzzy. When they were tired romping, he made beds for them in the living room, and brought out Little Fuzzy’s bedding and his treasures. One Little Fuzzy in the bedroom was just fine; five and a Baby Fuzzy were a little too much of a good thing.

They were swarming over the bed, Baby and all, to waken him the next morning.

The next morning he made a steel chopper-digger for each of them, and half a dozen extras for replacements in case more Fuzzies showed up. He also made a miniature ax with a hardwood handle, a handsaw out of a piece of broken power-saw blade and half a dozen little knives forged in one piece from quarter-inch coil-spring material. He had less trouble trading the Fuzzies’ own things away from them than he had expected. They had a very keen property sense, but they knew a good deal when one was offered. He put the wooden and horn and bone and stone artifacts away in the desk drawer. Start of the Holloway Collection of Zarathustran Fuzzy Weapons and Implements. Maybe he’d will it to the Federation Institute of Xeno-Sciences.

Of course, the family had to try out the new chopper-diggers on land-prawns, and he followed them around with the movie camera. They killed a dozen and a half that morning, and there was very little interest in lunch, though they did sit around nibbling, just to be doing what he was doing. As soon as they finished, they all went in for a nap on his bed. He spent the afternoon pottering about camp doing odd jobs that he had been postponing for months. The Fuzzies all emerged in the late afternoon for a romp in the grass outside.

He was in the kitchen, getting dinner, when they all came pelting in through the little door into the living room, making an excited outcry. Little Fuzzy and one of the other males came into the kitchen. Little Fuzzy squatted, put one hand on his lower jaw, with thumb and little finger extended, and the other on his forehead, first finger upright. Then he thrust out his right arm stiffly and made a barking noise of a sort he had never made before. He had to do it a second time before Jack got it.

There was a large and unpleasant carnivore, called a damnthing—another example of zoological nomenclature on uninhabited planets—which had a single horn on its forehead and one on either side of the lower jaw. It was something for Fuzzies, and even for human-type people, to get excited about. He laid down the paring knife and the yummiyam he had been peeling, wiped his hands and went into the living room, taking a quick nose count and satisfying himself that none of the family were missing as he crossed to the gunrack.

This time, instead of the 6-mm he had used on the harpy, he lifted down a big 12.7 double express, making sure that it was loaded and pocketing a few spare rounds. Little Fuzzy followed him outside, pointing around the living hut to the left. The rest of the family stayed indoors.

Stepping out about twenty feet, he started around counter-clockwise. There was no damnthing on the north side, and he was about to go around to the east side when Little Fuzzy came dashing past him, pointing to the rear. He whirled, to see the damnthing charging him from behind, head down, and middle horn lowered. He should have thought of that; damnthings would double and hunt their hunters.

He lined the sights instinctively and squeezed. The big rifle roared and banged his shoulder, and the bullet caught the damnthing and hurled all half-ton of it backward. The second shot caught it just below one of the fungoid-looking ears, and the beast gave a spasmodic all-over twitch and was still. He reloaded mechanically, but there was no need for a third shot. The damnthing was as dead as he would have been except for Little Fuzzy’s warning.

He mentioned that to Little Fuzzy, who was calmly retrieving the empty cartridges. Then, rubbing his shoulder where the big rifle had pounded him, he went in and returned the weapon to the rack. He used the manipulator to carry the damnthing away from the camp and drop it into a treetop, where it would furnish a welcome if puzzling treat for the harpies.

There was another alarm in the evening after dinner. The family had come in from their sunset romp and were gathered in the living room, where Little Fuzzy was demonstrating the principle of things-that-screwed-onto-things with the wide-mouthed bottle and the bolt and nut, when something huge began hooting directly overhead. They all froze, looking up at the ceiling, and then ran over and got under the gunrack. This must be something far more serious than a damnthing, and what Pappy Jack would do about it would be nothing short of catastrophic. They were startled to see Pappy Jack merely go to the door, open it and step outside. After all, none of them had ever heard a Constabulary aircar klaxon before.

The car settled onto the grass in front of the camp, gave a slight lurch and went off contragravity. Two men in uniform got out, and in the moonlight he recognized both of them: Lieutenant George Lunt and his driver, Ahmed Khadra. He called a greeting to them.

“Anything wrong?” he asked.

“No; just thought we’d drop in and see how you were making out,” Lunt told him. “We don’t get up this way often. Haven’t had any trouble lately, have you?”

“Not since the last time.” The last time had been a couple of woods tramps, out-of-work veldbeest herders from the south, who had heard about the little bag he carried around his neck. All the Constabulary had needed to do was remove the bodies and write up a report. “Come on in and hang up your guns awhile. I have something I want to show you.”

Little Fuzzy had come out and was pulling at his trouser leg; he stooped and picked him up, setting him on his shoulder. The rest of the family, deciding that it must be safe, had come to the door and were looking out.

“Hey! What the devil are those things?” Lunt asked, stopping short halfway from the car.

“Fuzzies. Mean to tell me you’ve never seen Fuzzies before?”

“No, I haven’t. What are they?”

The two Constabulary men came closer, and Jack stepped back into the house, shooing the Fuzzies out of the way. Lunt and Khadra stopped inside the door.

“I just told you. They’re Fuzzies. That’s all the name I know for them.”

A couple of Fuzzies came over and looked up at Lieutenant Lunt; one of them said, “Yeek?”

“They want to know what you are, so that makes it mutual.”

Lunt hesitated for a moment, then took off his belt and holster and hung it on one of the pegs inside the door, putting his beret over it. Khadra followed his example promptly. That meant that they considered themselves temporarily off duty and would accept a drink if one were offered. A Fuzzy was pulling at Ahmed Khadra’s trouser leg and asking to be noticed, and Mamma Fuzzy was holding Baby up to show to Lunt. Khadra, rather hesitantly, picked up the Fuzzy who was trying to attract his attention.

“Never saw anything like them before Jack,” he said. “Where did they come from?”

“Ahmed; you don’t know anything about those things,” Lunt reproved.

“They won’t hurt me, Lieutenant; they haven’t hurt Jack, have they?” He sat down on the floor, and a couple more came to him. “Why don’t you get acquainted with them? They’re cute.”

George Lunt wouldn’t let one of his men do anything he was afraid to do; he sat down on the floor, too, and Mamma brought her baby to him. Immediately, the baby jumped onto his shoulder and tried to get onto his head.

“Relax, George,” Jack told him, “They’re just Fuzzies; they want to make friends with you.”

“I’m always worried about strange life forms,” Lunt said. “You’ve been around enough to know some of the things that have happened—”

“They are not a strange life form; they are Zarathustran mammals. The same life form you’ve had for dinner every day since you came here. Their biochemistry’s identical with ours. Think they’ll give you the Polka-Dot Plague, or something?” He put Little Fuzzy down on the floor with the others. “We’ve been exploring this planet for twenty-five years, and nobody’s found anything like that here.”

“You said it yourself, Lieutenant,” Khadra put in. “Jack’s been around enough to know.”

“Well…. They are cute little fellows.” Lunt lifted Baby down off his head and gave him back to Mamma. Little Fuzzy had gotten hold of the chain of his whistle and was trying to find out what was on the other end. “Bet they’re a lot of company for you.”

“You just get acquainted with them. Make yourselves at home; I’ll go rustle up some refreshments.”

While he was in the kitchen, filling a soda siphon and getting ice out of the refrigerator, a police whistle began shrilling in the living room. He was opening a bottle of whisky when Little Fuzzy came dashing out, blowing on it, a couple more of the family pursuing him and trying to get it away from him. He opened a tin of Extee Three for the Fuzzies, as he did, another whistle in the living room began blowing.

“We have a whole shoebox full of them at the post,” Lunt yelled to him above the din. “We’ll just write these two off as expended in service.”

“Well, that’s real nice of you, George. I want to tell you that the Fuzzies appreciate that. Ahmed, suppose you do the bartending while I give the kids their candy.”

By the time Khadra had the drinks mixed and he had distributed the Extee Three to the Fuzzies, Lunt had gotten into the easy chair, and the Fuzzies were sitting on the floor in front of him, still looking him over curiously. At least the Extee Three had taken their minds off the whistles for a while.

“What I want to know, Jack, is where they came from,” Lunt said, taking his drink. “I’ve been up here for five years, and I never saw anything like them before.”

“I’ve been here five years longer, and I never saw them before, either. I think they came down from the north, from the country between the Cordilleras and the West Coast Range. Outside of an air survey at ten thousand feet and a few spot landings here and there, none of that country has been explored. For all anybody knows, it could be full of Fuzzies.”

He began with his first encounter with Little Fuzzy, and by the time he had gotten as far as the wood chisel and the killing of the land-prawn, Lunt and Khadra were looking at each other in amazement.

“That’s it!” Khadra said. “I’ve found prawn-shells cracked open and the meat picked out, just the way you describe it. I always wondered what did that. But they don’t all have wood chisels. What do you suppose they used ordinarily?”

“Ah!” He pulled the drawer open and began getting things out. “Here’s the one Little Fuzzy discarded when he found my chisel. The rest of this stuff the others brought in when they came.”

Lunt and Khadra rose and came over to look at the things. Lunt tried to argue that the Fuzzies couldn’t have made that stuff. He wasn’t even able to convince himself. Having finished their Extee Three, the Fuzzies were looking expectantly at the viewscreen, and it occurred to him that none of them except Little Fuzzy had ever seen it on. Then Little Fuzzy jumped up on the chair Lunt had vacated, reached over to the control-panel and switched it on. What he got was an empty stretch of moonlit plain to the south, from a pickup on one of the steel towers the veldbeest herders used. That wasn’t very interesting; he twiddled the selector and finally got a night soccer game at Mallorysport. That was just fine; he jumped down and joined the others in front of the screen.

“I’ve seen Terran monkeys and Freyan Kholphs that liked to watch screens and could turn them on and work the selector,” Lunt said. It sounded like the token last salvo before the surrender.

“Kholphs are smart,” Khadra agreed. “They use tools.”

“Do they make tools? Or tools to make tools with, like that saw?” There was no argument on that. “No. Nobody does that except people like us and the Fuzzies.”

It was the first time he had come right out and said that; the first time he had even consciously thought it. He realized that he had been convinced of it all along, though. It startled the constabulary lieutenant and trooper.

“You mean you think—?” Lunt began.

“They don’t talk, and they don’t build fires,” Ahmed Khadra said, as though that settled it.

“Ahmed, you know better than that. That talk-and-build-a-fire rule isn’t any scientific test at all.”

“It’s a legal test.” Lunt supported his subordinate.

“It’s a rule-of-thumb that was set up so that settlers on new planets couldn’t get away with murdering and enslaving the natives by claiming they thought they were only hunting and domesticating wild animals,” he said. “Anything that talks and builds a fire is a sapient being, yes. That’s the law. But that doesn’t mean that anything that doesn’t isn’t. I haven’t seen any of this gang building fires, and as I don’t want to come home sometime and find myself burned out, I’m not going to teach them. But I’m sure they have means of communication among themselves.”

“Has Ben Rainsford seen them yet?” Lunt asked.

“Ben’s off on a trip somewhere. I called him as soon as Little Fuzzy, over there, showed up here. He won’t be back till Friday.”

“Yes, that’s right; I did know that.” Lunt was still looking dubiously at the Fuzzies. “I’d like to hear what he thinks about them.”

If Ben said they were safe, Lunt would accept that. Ben was an expert, and Lunt respected expert testimony. Until then, he wasn’t sure. He’d probably order a medical check-up for himself and Khadra the first thing tomorrow, to make sure they hadn’t picked up some kind of bug.

IV

The Fuzzies took the manipulator quite calmly the next morning. That wasn’t any horrible monster, that was just something Pappy Jack took rides in. He found one rather indifferent sunstone in the morning and two good ones in the afternoon. He came home early and found the family in the living room; they had dumped the wastebasket and were putting things back into it. Another land-prawn seemed to have gotten into the house; its picked shell was with the other rubbish in the basket. They had dinner early, and he loaded the lot of them into the airjeep and took them for a long ride to the south and west.

The following day, he located the flint vein on the other side of the gorge and spent most of the morning blasting away the sandstone above it. The next time he went into Mallorysport, he decided, he was going to shop around for a good power-shovel. He had to blast a channel to keep the little stream from damming up on him. He didn’t get any flint cracked at all that day. There was another harpy circling around the camp when he got back; he chased it with the manipulator and shot it down with his pistol. Harpies probably found Fuzzies as tasty as Fuzzies found land-prawns. The family were all sitting under the gunrack when he entered the living room.

The next day he cracked flint, and found three more stones. It really looked as though he had found the Dying Place of the Jellyfish at that. He knocked off early that afternoon, and when he came in sight of the camp, he saw an airjeep grounded on the lawn and a small man with a red beard in a faded Khaki bush-jacket sitting on the bench by the kitchen door, surrounded by Fuzzies. There was a camera and some other equipment laid up where the Fuzzies couldn’t get at it. Baby Fuzzy, of course, was sitting on his head. He looked up and waved, and then handed Baby to his mother and rose to his feet.

“Well, what do you think of them, Ben?” Jack called down, as he grounded the manipulator.

“My God, don’t start me on that now!” Ben Rainsford replied, and then laughed. “I stopped at the constabulary post on the way home. I thought George Lunt had turned into the biggest liar in the known galaxy. Then I went home, and found your call on the recorder, so I came over here.”

“Been waiting long?”

The Fuzzies had all abandoned Rainsford and come trooping over as soon as the manipulator was off contragravity. He climbed down among them, and they followed him across the grass, catching at his trouser legs and yeeking happily.

“Not so long.” Rainsford looked at his watch. “Good Lord, three and half hours is all. Well, the time passed quickly. You know, your little fellows have good ears. They heard you coming a long time before I did.”

“Did you see them killing any prawns?”

“I should say! I got a lot of movies of it.” He shook his head slowly. “Jack, this is almost incredible.”

“You’re staying for dinner, of course?”

“You try and chase me away. I want to hear all about this. Want you to make a tape about them, if you’re willing.”

“Glad to. We’ll do that after we eat.” He sat down on the bench, and the Fuzzies began climbing upon and beside him. “This is the original, Little Fuzzy. He brought the rest in a couple of days later. Mamma Fuzzy, and Baby Fuzzy. And these are Mike and Mitzi. I call this one Ko-Ko, because of the ceremonious way he beheads land-prawns.”

“George says you call them all Fuzzies. Want that for the official designation?”

“Sure. That’s what they are, isn’t it?”

“Well, let’s call the order Hollowayans,” Rainsford said. “Family, Fuzzies; genus, Fuzzy. Species, Holloway’s Fuzzy—Fuzzy fuzzy holloway. How’ll that be?”

That would be all right, he supposed. At least, they didn’t try to Latinize things in extraterrestrial zoology any more.

“I suppose our bumper crop of land-prawns is what brought them into this section?”

“Yes, of course. George was telling me you thought they’d come down from the north; about the only place they could have come from. This is probably just the advance guard; we’ll be having Fuzzies all over the place before long. I wonder how fast they breed.”

“Not very fast. Three males and two females in this crowd, and only one young one.” He set Mike and Mitzi off his lap and got to his feet. “I’ll go start dinner now. While I’m doing that, you can look at the stuff they brought in with them.”

When he had placed the dinner in the oven and taken a couple of highballs into the living room, Rainsford was still sitting at the desk, looking at the artifacts. He accepted his drink and sipped it absently, then raised his head.

“Jack, this stuff is absolutely amazing,” he said.

“It’s better than that. It’s unique. Only collection of native weapons and implements on Zarathustra.”

Ben Rainsford looked up sharply. “You mean what I think you mean?” he asked. “Yes; you do.” He drank some of his highball, set down the glass and picked up the polished-horn prawn-killer. “Anything—pardon, anybody—who does this kind of work is good enough native for me.” He hesitated briefly. “Why, Jack this tape you said you’d make. Can I transmit a copy to Juan Jimenez? He’s chief mammalogist with the Company science division; we exchange information. And there’s another Company man I’d like to have hear it. Gerd van Riebeek. He’s a general xeno-naturalist, like me, but he’s especially interested in animal evolution.”

“Why not? The Fuzzies are a scientific discovery. Discoveries ought to be reported.”

Little Fuzzy, Mike and Mitzi strolled in from the kitchen. Little Fuzzy jumped up on the armchair and switched on the viewscreen. Fiddling with the selector, he got the Big Blackwater woods-burning. Mike and Mitzi shrieked delightedly, like a couple of kids watching a horror show. They knew, by now, that nothing in the screen could get out and hurt them.

“Would you mind if they came out here and saw the Fuzzies?”

“Why, the Fuzzies would love that. They like company.”

Mamma and Baby and Ko-Ko came in, seemed to approve what was on the screen and sat down to watch it. When the bell on the stove rang, they all got up, and Ko-Ko jumped onto the chair and snapped the screen off. Ben Rainsford looked at him for a moment.

“You know, I have married friends with children who have a hell of a time teaching eight-year-olds to turn off screens when they’re through watching them,” he commented.

It took an hour, after dinner, to get the whole story, from the first little yeek in the shower stall, on tape. When he had finished, Ben Rainsford made a few remarks and shut off the recorder, then looked at his watch.

“Twenty hundred; it’ll be seventeen hundred in Mallorysport,” he said. “I could catch Jimenez at Science Center if I called now. He usually works a little late.”

“Go ahead. Want to show him some Fuzzies?” He moved his pistol and some other impedimenta off the table and set Little Fuzzy and Mamma Fuzzy and Baby upon it, then drew up a chair beside it, in range of the communication screen, and sat down with Mike and Mitzi and Ko-Ko. Rainsford punched out a wavelength combination. Then he picked up Baby Fuzzy and set him on his head.

In a moment, the screen flickered and cleared, and a young man looked out of it, with the momentary upward glance of one who wants to make sure his public face is on straight. It was a bland, tranquilized, life-adjusted, group-integrated sort of face—the face turned out in thousands of copies every year by the educational production lines on Terra.

“Why, Bennett, this is a pleasant surprise,” he began. “I never expec—” Then he choked; at least, he emitted a sound of surprise. “What in the name of Dai-Butsu are those things on the table in front of you?” he demanded. “I never saw anything—And what is that on your head?”

“Family group of Fuzzies,” Rainsford said. “Mature male, mature female, immature male.” He lifted Baby Fuzzy down and put him in Mamma’s arms. “Species Fuzzy fuzzy holloway zarathustra. The gentleman on my left is Jack Holloway, the sunstone operator, who is the original discoverer. Jack, Juan Jimenez.”

They shook their own hands at one another in the ancient Terran-Chinese gesture that was used on communication screens, and assured each other—Jimenez rather absently—that it was a pleasure. He couldn’t take his eyes off the Fuzzies.

“Where did they come from?” he wanted to know. “Are you sure they’re indigenous?”

“They’re not quite up to spaceships, yet, Dr. Jimenez. Fairly early Paleolithic, I’d say.”

Jimenez thought he was joking, and laughed. The sort of a laugh that could be turned on and off, like a light. Rainsford assured him that the Fuzzies were really indigenous.

“We have everything that’s known about them on tape,” he said. “About an hour of it. Can you take sixty-speed?” He was making adjustments on the recorder as he spoke. “All right, set and we’ll transmit to you. And can you get hold of Gerd van Riebeek? I’d like him to hear it too; it’s as much up his alley as anybody’s.”

When Jimenez was ready, Rainsford pressed the play-off button, and for a minute the recorder gave a high, wavering squeak. The Fuzzies all looked startled. Then it ended.

“I think, when you hear this, that you and Gerd will both want to come out and see these little people. If you can, bring somebody who’s a qualified psychologist, somebody capable of evaluating the Fuzzies’ mentation. Jack wasn’t kidding about early Paleolithic. If they’re not sapient, they only miss it by about one atomic diameter.”

Jimenez looked almost as startled as the Fuzzies had. “You surely don’t mean that?” He looked from Rainsford to Jack Holloway and back. “Well, I’ll call you back, when we’ve both heard the tape. You’re three time zones west of us, aren’t you? Then we’ll try to make it before your midnight—that’ll be twenty-one hundred.”

He called back half an hour short of that. This time, it was from the living room of an apartment instead of an office. There was a portable record player in the foreground and a low table with snacks and drinks, and two other people were with him. One was a man of about Jimenez’s age with a good-humored, non-life-adjusted, non-group-integrated and slightly weather-beaten face. The other was a woman with glossy black hair and a Mona Lisa-ish smile. The Fuzzies had gotten sleepy, and had been bribed with Extee Three to stay up a little longer. Immediately, they registered interest. This was more fun than the viewscreen.

Jimenez introduced his companions as Gerd van Riebeek and Ruth Ortheris. “Ruth is with Dr. Mallin’s section; she’s been working with the school department and the juvenile court. She can probably do as well with your Fuzzies as a regular xeno-psychologist.”

“Well, I have worked with extraterrestrials,” the woman said. “I’ve been on Loki and Thor and Shesha.”

Jack nodded. “Been on the same planets myself. Are you people coming out here?”

“Oh, yes,” van Riebeek said. “We’ll be out by noon tomorrow. We may stay a couple of days, but that won’t put you to any trouble; I have a boat that’s big enough for the three of us to camp on. Now, how do we get to your place?”

Jack told him, and gave map coordinates. Van Riebeek noted them down.

“There’s one thing, though, I’m going to have to get firm about. I don’t want to have to speak about it again. These little people are to be treated with consideration, and not as laboratory animals. You will not hurt them, or annoy them, or force them to do anything they don’t want to do.”

“We understand that. We won’t do anything with the Fuzzies without your approval. Is there anything you’d want us to bring out?”

“Yes. A few things for the camp that I’m short of; I’ll pay you for them when you get here. And about three cases of Extee Three. And some toys. Dr. Ortheris, you heard the tape, didn’t you? Well, just think what you’d like to have if you were a Fuzzy, and bring it.”

LITTLE FUZZY (Part 2), by H. Beam Piper

V

Victor Grego crushed out his cigarette slowly and deliberately.

“Yes, Leonard,” he said patiently. “It’s very interesting, and doubtless an important discovery, but I can’t see why you’re making such a production of it. Are you afraid I’ll blame you for letting non-Company people beat you to it? Or do you merely suspect that anything Bennett Rainsford’s mixed up in is necessarily a diabolical plot against the Company and, by consequence, human civilization?”

Leonard Kellogg looked pained. “What I was about to say, Victor, is that both Rainsford and this man Holloway seem convinced that these things they call Fuzzies aren’t animals at all. They believe them to be sapient beings.”

“Well, that’s—” He bit that off short as the significance of what Kellogg had just said hit him. “Good God, Leonard! I beg your pardon abjectly; I don’t blame you for taking it seriously. Why, that would make Zarathustra a Class-IV inhabited planet.”

“For which the Company holds a Class-III charter,” Kellogg added. “For an uninhabited planet.”

Automatically void if any race of sapient beings were discovered on Zarathustra.

“You know what will happen if this is true?”

“Well, I should imagine the charter would have to be renegotiated, and now that the Colonial Office knows what sort of a planet this is, they’ll be anything but generous with the Company….”

“They won’t renegotiate anything, Leonard. The Federation government will simply take the position that the Company has already made an adequate return on the original investments, and they’ll award us what we can show as in our actual possession—I hope—and throw the rest into the public domain.”

The vast plains on Beta and Delta continents, with their herds of veldbeest—all open range, and every ’beest that didn’t carry a Company brand a maverick. And all the untapped mineral wealth, and the untilled arable land; it would take years of litigation even to make the Company’s claim to Big Blackwater stick. And Terra-Baldur-Marduk Spacelines would lose their monopolistic franchise and get sticky about it in the courts, and in any case, the Company’s import-export monopoly would go out the airlock. And the squatters rushing in and swamping everything—

“Why, we won’t be any better off than the Yggdrasil Company, squatting on a guano heap on one continent!” he burst out. “Five years from now, they’ll be making more money out of bat dung than we’ll be making out of this whole world!”

And the Company’s good friend and substantial stockholder, Nick Emmert, would be out, too, and a Colonial Governor General would move in, with regular army troops and a complicated bureaucracy. Elections, and a representative parliament, and every Tom, Dick and Harry with a grudge against the Company would be trying to get laws passed—And, of course, a Native Affairs Commission, with its nose in everything.

“But they couldn’t just leave us without any kind of a charter,” Kellogg insisted. Who was he trying to kid—besides himself? “It wouldn’t be fair!” As though that clinched it. “It isn’t our fault!”

He forced more patience into his voice. “Leonard, please try to realize that the Terran Federation government doesn’t give one shrill soprano hoot on Nifflheim whether it’s fair or not, or whose fault what is. The Federation government’s been repenting that charter they gave the Company ever since they found out what they’d chartered away. Why, this planet is a better world than Terra ever was, even before the Atomic Wars. Now, if they have a chance to get it back, with improvements, you think they won’t take it? And what will stop them? If those creatures over on Beta Continent are sapient beings, our charter isn’t worth the parchment it’s engrossed on, and that’s an end of it.” He was silent for a moment. “You heard that tape Rainsford transmitted to Jimenez. Did either he or Holloway actually claim, in so many words, that these things really are sapient beings?”

“Well, no; not in so many words. Holloway consistently alluded to them as people, but he’s just an ignorant old prospector. Rainsford wouldn’t come out and commit himself one way or another, but he left the door wide open for anybody else to.”

“Accepting their account, could these Fuzzies be sapient?”

“Accepting the account, yes,” Kellogg said, in distress. “They could be.”

They probably were, if Leonard Kellogg couldn’t wish the evidence out of existence.

“Then they’ll look sapient to these people of yours who went over to Beta this morning, and they’ll treat it purely as a scientific question and never consider the legal aspects. Leonard, you’ll have to take charge of the investigation, before they make any reports everybody’ll be sorry for.”

Kellogg didn’t seem to like that. It would mean having to exercise authority and getting tough with people, and he hated anything like that. He nodded very reluctantly.

“Yes. I suppose I will. Let me think about it for a moment, Victor.”

One thing about Leonard; you handed him something he couldn’t delegate or dodge and he’d go to work on it. Maybe not cheerfully, but conscientiously.

“I’ll take Ernst Mallin along,” he said at length. “This man Rainsford has no grounding whatever in any of the psychosciences. He may be able to impose on Ruth Ortheris, but not on Ernst Mallin. Not after I’ve talked to Mallin first.” He thought some more. “We’ll have to get these Fuzzies away from this man Holloway. Then we’ll issue a report of discovery, being careful to give full credit to both Rainsford and Holloway—we’ll even accept the designation they’ve coined for them—but we’ll make it very clear that while highly intelligent, the Fuzzies are not a race of sapient beings. If Rainsford persists in making any such claim, we will brand it as a deliberate hoax.”

“Do you think he’s gotten any report off to the Institute of Xeno-Sciences yet?”

Kellogg shook his head. “I think he wants to trick some of our people into supporting his sapience claims; at least, corroborating his and Holloway’s alleged observations. That’s why I’ll have to get over to Beta as soon as possible.”

By now, Kellogg had managed to convince himself that going over to Beta had been his idea all along. Probably also convincing himself that Rainsford’s report was nothing but a pack of lies. Well, if he could work better that way, that was his business.

“He will, before long, if he isn’t stopped. And a year from now, there’ll be a small army of investigators here from Terra. By that time, you should have both Rainsford and Holloway thoroughly discredited. Leonard, you get those Fuzzies away from Holloway and I’ll personally guarantee they won’t be available for investigation by then. Fuzzies,” he said reflectively. “Fur-bearing animals, I take it?”

“Holloway spoke, on the tape, of their soft and silky fur.”

“Good. Emphasize that in your report. As soon as it’s published, the Company will offer two thousand sols apiece for Fuzzy pelts. By the time Rainsford’s report brings anybody here from Terra, we may have them all trapped out.”

Kellogg began to look worried.

“But, Victor, that’s genocide!”

“Nonsense! Genocide is defined as the extermination of a race of sapient beings. These are fur-bearing animals. It’s up to you and Ernst Mallin to prove that.”

The Fuzzies, playing on the lawn in front of the camp, froze into immobility, their faces turned to the west. Then they all ran to the bench by the kitchen door and scrambled up onto it.

“Now what?” Jack Holloway wondered.

“They hear the airboat,” Rainsford told him. “That’s the way they acted yesterday when you were coming in with your machine.” He looked at the picnic table they had been spreading under the featherleaf trees. “Everything ready?”

“Everything but lunch; that won’t be cooked for an hour yet. I see them now.”

“You have better eyes than I do, Jack. Oh, I see it. I hope the kids put on a good show for them,” he said anxiously.

He’d been jittery ever since he arrived, shortly after breakfast. It wasn’t that these people from Mallorysport were so important themselves; Ben had a bigger name in scientific circles than any of this Company crowd. He was just excited about the Fuzzies.

The airboat grew from a barely visible speck, and came spiraling down to land in the clearing. When it was grounded and off contragravity, they started across the grass toward it, and the Fuzzies all jumped down from the bench and ran along with them.

The three visitors climbed down. Ruth Ortheris wore slacks and a sweater, but the slacks were bloused over a pair of ankle boots. Gerd van Riebeek had evidently done a lot of field work: his boots were stout, and he wore old, faded khakis and a serviceable-looking sidearm that showed he knew what to expect up here in the Piedmont. Juan Jimenez was in the same sports casuals in which he had appeared on screen last evening. All of them carried photographic equipment. They shook hands all around and exchanged greetings, and then the Fuzzies began clamoring to be noticed. Finally all of them, Fuzzies and other people drifted over to the table under the trees.

Ruth Ortheris sat down on the grass with Mamma and Baby. Immediately Baby became interested in a silver charm which she wore on a chain around her neck which tinkled fascinatingly. Then he tried to sit on her head. She spent some time gently but firmly discouraging this. Juan Jimenez was squatting between Mike and Mitzi, examining them alternately and talking into a miniature recorder phone on his breast, mostly in Latin. Gerd van Riebeek dropped himself into a folding chair and took Little Fuzzy on his lap.

“You know, this is kind of surprising,” he said. “Not only finding something like this, after twenty-five years, but finding something as unique as this. Look, he doesn’t have the least vestige of a tail, and there isn’t another tailless mammal on the planet. Fact, there isn’t another mammal on this planet that has the slightest kinship to him. Take ourselves; we belong to a pretty big family, about fifty-odd genera of primates. But this little fellow hasn’t any relatives at all.”

“Yeek?”

“And he couldn’t care less, could he?” Van Riebeek pummeled Little Fuzzy gently. “One thing, you have the smallest humanoid known; that’s one record you can claim. Oh-oh, what goes on?”

Ko-Ko, who had climbed upon Rainsford’s lap, jumped suddenly to the ground, grabbed the chopper-digger he had left beside the chair and started across the grass. Everybody got to their feet, the visitors getting cameras out. The Fuzzies seemed perplexed by all the excitement. It was only another land-prawn, wasn’t it?

Ko-Ko got in front of it, poked it on the nose to stop it and then struck a dramatic pose, flourishing his weapon and bringing it down on the prawn’s neck. Then, after flopping it over, he looked at it almost in sorrow and hit it a couple of whacks with the flat. He began pulling it apart and eating it.

“I see why you call him Ko-Ko,” Ruth said, aiming her camera, “Don’t the others do it that way?”

“Well, Little Fuzzy runs along beside them and pivots and gives them a quick chop. Mike and Mitzi flop theirs over first and behead them on their backs. And Mamma takes a swipe at their legs first. But beheading and breaking the undershell, they all do that.”

“Uh-huh; that’s basic,” she said. “Instinctive. The technique is either self-learned or copied. When Baby begins killing his own prawns, see if he doesn’t do it the way Mamma does!”

“Hey, look!” Jimenez cried. “He’s making a lobster pick for himself!”

Through lunch, they talked exclusively about Fuzzies. The subjects of the discussion nibbled things that were given to them, and yeeked among themselves. Gerd van Riebeek suggested that they were discussing the odd habits of human-type people. Juan Jimenez looked at him, slightly disturbed, as though wondering just how seriously he meant it.

“You know, what impressed me most in the taped account was the incident of the damnthing,” said Ruth Ortheris. “Any animal associating with man will try to attract attention if something’s wrong, but I never heard of one, not even a Freyan kholph or a Terran chimpanzee, that would use descriptive pantomime. Little Fuzzy was actually making a symbolic representation, by abstracting the distinguishing characteristic of the damnthing.”

“Think that stiff-arm gesture and bark might have been intended to represent a rifle?” Gerd van Riebeek asked. “He’d seen you shooting before, hadn’t he?”

“I don’t think it was anything else. He was telling me, ‘Big nasty damnthing outside; shoot it like you did the harpy.’ And if he hadn’t run past me and pointed back, that damnthing would have killed me.”

Jimenez, hesitantly, said, “I know I’m speaking from ignorance. You’re the Fuzzy expert. But isn’t it possible that you’re overanthropomorphizing? Endowing them with your own characteristics and mental traits?”

“Juan, I’m not going to answer that right now. I don’t think I’ll answer at all. You wait till you’ve been around these Fuzzies a little longer, and then ask it again, only ask yourself.”

“So you see, Ernst, that’s the problem.”

Leonard Kellogg laid the words like a paperweight on the other words he had been saying, and waited. Ernst Mallin sat motionless, his elbows on the desk and his chin in his hands. A little pair of wrinkles, like parentheses, appeared at the corners of his mouth.

“Yes. I’m not a lawyer, of course, but….”

“It’s not a legal question. It’s a question for a psychologist.”

That left it back with Ernst Mallin, and he knew it.

“I’d have to see them myself before I could express an opinion. You have that tape of Holloway’s with you?” When Kellogg nodded, Mallin continued: “Did either of them make any actual, overt claim of sapience?”

He answered it as he had when Victor Grego had asked the same question, adding:

“The account consists almost entirely of Holloway’s uncorroborated statements concerning things to which he claims to have been the sole witness.”

“Ah.” Mallin permitted himself a tight little smile. “And he’s not a qualified observer. Neither, for that matter, is Rainsford. Regardless of his position as a xeno-naturalist, he is complete layman in the psychosciences. He’s just taken this other man’s statements uncritically. As for what he claims to have observed for himself, how do we know he isn’t including a lot of erroneous inferences with his descriptive statements?”

“How do we know he’s not perpetrating a deliberate hoax?”

“But, Leonard, that’s a pretty serious accusation.”

“It’s happened before. That fellow who carved a Late Upland Martian inscription in that cave in Kenya, for instance. Or Hellermann’s claim to have cross-bred Terran mice with Thoran tilbras. Or the Piltdown Man, back in the first century Pre-Atomic?”

Mallin nodded. “None of us like to think of a thing like that, but, as you say, it’s happened. You know, this man Rainsford is just the type to do something like that, too. Fundamentally an individualistic egoist; badly adjusted personality type. Say he wants to make some sensational discovery which will assure him the position in the scientific world to which he believes himself entitled. He finds this lonely old prospector, into whose isolated camp some little animals have strayed. The old man has made pets of them, taught them a few tricks, finally so projected his own personality onto them that he has convinced himself that they are people like himself. This is Rainsford’s great opportunity; he will present himself as the discoverer of a new sapient race and bring the whole learned world to his feet.” Mallin smiled again. “Yes, Leonard, it is altogether possible.”

“Then it’s our plain duty to stop this thing before it develops into another major scientific scandal like Hellermann’s hybrids.”

“First we must go over this tape recording and see what we have on our hands. Then we must make a thorough, unbiased study of these animals, and show Rainsford and his accomplice that they cannot hope to foist these ridiculous claims on the scientific world with impunity. If we can’t convince them privately, there’ll be nothing to do but expose them publicly.”

“I’ve heard the tape already, but let’s play if off now. We want to analyze these tricks this man Holloway has taught these animals, and see what they show.”

“Yes, of course. We must do that at once,” Mallin said. “Then we’ll have to consider what sort of statement we must issue, and what sort of evidence we will need to support it.”

After dinner was romptime for Fuzzies on the lawn, but when the dusk came creeping into the ravine, they all went inside and were given one of their new toys from Mallorysport—a big box of many-colored balls and short sticks of transparent plastic. They didn’t know that it was a molecule-model kit, but they soon found that the sticks would go into holes in the balls, and that they could be built into three-dimensional designs.

This was much more fun than the colored stones. They made a few experimental shapes, then dismantled them and began on a single large design. Several times they tore it down, entirely or in part, and began over again, usually with considerable yeeking and gesticulation.

“They have artistic sense,” Van Riebeek said. “I’ve seen lots of abstract sculpture that wasn’t half as good as that job they’re doing.”

“Good engineering, too,” Jack said. “They understand balance and center-of-gravity. They’re bracing it well, and not making it top-heavy.”

“Jack, I’ve been thinking about that question I was supposed to ask myself,” Jimenez said. “You know, I came out here loaded with suspicion. Not that I doubted your honesty; I just thought you’d let your obvious affection for the Fuzzies lead you into giving them credit for more intelligence than they possess. Now I think you’ve consistently understated it. Short of actual sapience, I’ve never seen anything like them.”

“Why short of it?” van Riebeek asked. “Ruth, you’ve been pretty quiet this evening. What do you think?”

Ruth Ortheris looked uncomfortable. “Gerd, it’s too early to form opinions like that. I know the way they’re working together looks like cooperation on an agreed-upon purpose, but I simply can’t make speech out of that yeek-yeek-yeek.”

“Let’s keep the talk-and-build-a-fire rule out of it,” van Riebeek said. “If they’re working together on a common project, they must be communicating somehow.”

“It isn’t communication, it’s symbolization. You simply can’t think sapiently except in verbal symbols. Try it. Not something like changing the spools on a recorder or field-stripping a pistol; they’re just learned tricks. I mean ideas.”

“How about Helen Keller?” Rainsford asked. “Mean to say she only started thinking sapiently after Anna Sullivan taught her what words were?”

“No, of course not. She thought sapiently—And she only thought in sense-imagery limited to feeling.” She looked at Rainsford reproachfully; he’d knocked a breach in one of her fundamental postulates. “Of course, she had inherited the cerebroneural equipment for sapient thinking.” She let that trail off, before somebody asked her how she knew that the Fuzzies hadn’t.

“I’ll suggest, just to keep the argument going, that speech couldn’t have been invented without pre-existing sapience,” Jack said.

Ruth laughed. “Now you’re taking me back to college. That used to be one of the burning questions in first-year psych students’ bull sessions. By the time we got to be sophomores, we’d realized that it was only an egg-and-chicken argument and dropped it.”

“That’s a pity,” Ben Rainsford said. “It’s a good question.”

“It would be if it could be answered.”

“Maybe it can be,” Gerd said. “There’s a clue to it, right there. I’ll say that those fellows are on the edge of sapience, and it’s an even-money bet which side.”

“I’ll bet every sunstone in my bag they’re over.”

“Well, maybe they’re just slightly sapient,” Jimenez suggested.

Ruth Ortheris hooted at that. “That’s like talking about being just slightly dead or just slightly pregnant,” she said. “You either are or you aren’t.”

Gerd van Riebeek was talking at the same time. “This sapience question is just as important in my field as yours, Ruth. Sapience is the result of evolution by natural selection, just as much as a physical characteristic, and it’s the most important step in the evolution of any species, our own included.”

“Wait a minute, Gerd,” Rainsford said. “Ruth, what do you mean by that? Aren’t there degrees of sapience?”

“No. There are degrees of mentation—intelligence, if you prefer—just as there are degrees of temperature. When psychology becomes an exact science like physics, we’ll be able to calibrate mentation like temperature. But sapience is qualitatively different from nonsapience. It’s more than just a higher degree of mental temperature. You might call it a sort of mental boiling point.”

“I think that’s a damn good analogy,” Rainsford said. “But what happens when the boiling point is reached?”

“That’s what we have to find out,” van Riebeek told him. “That’s what I was talking about a moment ago. We don’t know any more about how sapience appeared today than we did in the year zero, or in the year 654 Pre-Atomic for that matter.”

“Wait a minute,” Jack interrupted. “Before we go any deeper, let’s agree on a definition of sapience.”

Van Riebeek laughed. “Ever try to get a definition of life from a biologist?” he asked. “Or a definition of number from a mathematician?”

“That’s about it.” Ruth looked at the Fuzzies, who were looking at their colored-ball construction as though wondering if they could add anything more without spoiling the design. “I’d say: a level of mentation qualitatively different from nonsapience in that it includes ability to symbolize ideas and store and transmit them, ability to generalize and ability to form abstract ideas. There; I didn’t say a word about talk-and-build-a-fire, did I?”

“Little Fuzzy symbolizes and generalizes,” Jack said. “He symbolizes a damnthing by three horns, and he symbolizes a rifle by a long thing that points and makes noises. Rifles kill animals. Harpies and damnthings are both animals. If a rifle will kill a harpy, it’ll kill a damnthing too.”

Juan Jimenez had been frowning in thought; he looked up and asked, “What’s the lowest known sapient race?”

“Yggdrasil Khooghras,” Gerd van Riebeek said promptly. “Any of you ever been on Yggdrasil?”

“I saw a man shot once on Mimir, for calling another man a son of a Khooghra,” Jack said. “The man who shot him had been on Yggdrasil and knew what he was being called.”

“I spent a couple of years among them,” Gerd said. “They do build fires; I’ll give them that. They char points on sticks to make spears. And they talk. I learned their language, all eighty-two words of it. I taught a few of the intelligentsia how to use machetes without maiming themselves, and there was one mental giant I could trust to carry some of my equipment, if I kept an eye on him, but I never let him touch my rifle or my camera.”

“Can they generalize?” Ruth asked.

“Honey, they can’t do nothin’ else but! Every word in their language is a high-order generalization. Hroosha, live-thing. Noosha, bad-thing. Dhishta, thing-to-eat. Want me to go on? There are only seventy-nine more of them.”

Before anybody could stop him, the communication screen got itself into an uproar. The Fuzzies all ran over in front of it, and Jack switched it on. The caller was a man in gray semiformals; he had wavy gray hair and a face that looked like Juan Jimenez’s twenty years from now.

“Good evening; Holloway here.”

“Oh, Mr. Holloway, good evening.” The caller shook hands with himself, turning on a dazzling smile. “I’m Leonard Kellogg, chief of the Company’s science division. I just heard the tape you made about the—the Fuzzies?” He looked down at the floor. “Are these some of the animals?”

“These are the Fuzzies.” He hoped it sounded like the correction it was intended to be. “Dr. Bennett Rainsford’s here with me now, and so are Dr. Jimenez, Dr. van Riebeek and Dr. Ortheris.” Out of the corner of his eye he could see Jimenez squirming as though afflicted with ants, van Riebeek getting his poker face battened down and Ben Rainsford suppressing a grin. “Some of us are out of screen range, and I’m sure you’ll want to ask a lot of questions. Pardon us a moment, while we close in.”

He ignored Kellogg’s genial protest that that wouldn’t be necessary until the chairs were placed facing the screen. As an afterthought, he handed Fuzzies around, giving Little Fuzzy to Ben, Ko-Ko to Gerd, Mitzi to Ruth, Mike to Jimenez and taking Mamma and Baby on his own lap.

Baby immediately started to climb up onto his head, as expected. It seemed to disconcert Kellogg, also as expected. He decided to teach Baby to thumb his nose when given some unobtrusive signal.

“Now, about that tape I recorded last evening,” he began.

“Yes, Mr. Holloway.” Kellogg’s smile was getting more mechanical every minute. He was having trouble keeping his eyes off Baby. “I must say, I was simply astounded at the high order of intelligence claimed for these creatures.”

“And you wanted to see how big a liar I was. I don’t blame you; I had trouble believing it myself at first.”

Kellogg gave a musically blithe laugh, showing even more dental equipment.

“Oh, no. Mr. Holloway; please don’t misunderstand me. I never thought anything like that.”

“I hope not,” Ben Rainsford said, not too pleasantly. “I vouched for Mr. Holloway’s statements, if you’ll recall.”

“Of course, Bennett; that goes without saying. Permit me to congratulate you upon a most remarkable scientific discovery. An entirely new order of mammals—”

“Which may be the ninth extrasolar sapient race,” Rainsford added.

“Good heavens, Bennett!” Kellogg jettisoned his smile and slid on a look of shocked surprise. “You surely can’t be serious?” He looked again at the Fuzzies, pulled the smile back on and gave a light laugh.

“I thought you’d heard that tape,” Rainsford said.

“Of course, and the things reported were most remarkable. But sapiences! Just because they’ve been taught a few tricks, and use sticks and stones for weapons—” He got rid of the smile again, and quick-changed to seriousness. “Such an extreme claim must only be made after careful study.”

“Well, I won’t claim they’re sapient,” Ruth Ortheris told him. “Not till day after tomorrow, at the earliest. But they very easily could be. They have learning and reasoning capacity equal to that of any eight-year-old Terran Human child, and well above that of the adults of some recognizedly sapient races. And they have not been taught tricks; they have learned by observation and reasoning.”

“Well, Dr. Kellogg, mentation levels isn’t my subject,” Jimenez took it up, “but they do have all the physical characteristics shared by other sapient races—lower limbs specialized for locomotion and upper limbs for manipulation, erect posture, stereoscopic vision, color perception, erect posture, hand with opposing thumb—all the characteristics we consider as prerequisite to the development of sapience.”

“I think they’re sapient, myself,” Gerd van Riebeek said, “but that’s not as important as the fact that they’re on the very threshold of sapience. This is the first race of this mental level anybody’s ever seen. I believe that study of the Fuzzies will help us solve the problem of how sapience developed in any race.”

Kellogg had been laboring to pump up a head of enthusiasm; now he was ready to valve it off.

“But this is amazing! This will make scientific history! Now, of course, you all realize how pricelessly valuable these Fuzzies are. They must be brought at once to Mallorysport, where they can be studied under laboratory conditions by qualified psychologists, and—”

“No.”

Jack lifted Baby Fuzzy off his head and handed him to Mamma, and set Mamma on the floor. That was reflex; the thinking part of his brain knew he didn’t need to clear for action when arguing with the electronic image of a man twenty-five hundred miles away.

“Just forget that part of it and start over,” he advised.

Kellogg ignored him. “Gerd, you have your airboat; fix up some nice comfortable cages—”

“Kellogg!”

The man in the screen stopped talking and stared in amazed indignation. It was the first time in years he had been addressed by his naked patronymic, and possibly the first time in his life he had been shouted at.

“Didn’t you hear me the first time Kellogg? Then stop gibbering about cages. These Fuzzies aren’t being taken anywhere.”

“But Mr. Holloway! Don’t you realize that these little beings must be carefully studied? Don’t you want them given their rightful place in the hierarchy of nature?”

“If you want to study them, come out here and do it. That’s so long as you don’t annoy them, or me. As far as study’s concerned, they’re being studied now. Dr. Rainsford’s studying them, and so are three of your people, and when it comes to that, I’m studying them myself.”

“And I’d like you to clarify that remark about qualified psychologists,” Ruth Ortheris added, in a voice approaching zero-Kelvin. “You wouldn’t be challenging my professional qualifications, would you?”

“Oh, Ruth, you know I didn’t mean anything like that. Please don’t misunderstand me,” Kellogg begged. “But this is highly specialized work—”

“Yes; how many Fuzzy specialists have you at Science Center, Leonard?” Rainsford wanted to know. “The only one I can think of is Jack Holloway, here.”

“Well, I’d thought of Dr. Mallin, the Company’s head psychologist.”

“He can come too, just as long as he understands that he’ll have to have my permission for anything he wants to do with the Fuzzies,” Jack said. “When can we expect you?”

Kellogg thought some time late the next afternoon. He didn’t have to ask how to get to the camp. He made a few efforts to restore the conversation to its original note of cordiality, gave that up as a bad job and blanked out. There was a brief silence in the living room. Then Jimenez said reproachfully:

“You certainly weren’t very gracious to Dr. Kellogg, Jack. Maybe you don’t realize it, but he is a very important man.”

“He isn’t important to me, and I wasn’t gracious to him at all. It doesn’t pay to be gracious to people like that. If you are, they always try to take advantage of it.”

“Why, I didn’t know you knew Len,” van Riebeek said.

“I never saw the individual before. The species is very common and widely distributed.” He turned to Rainsford. “You think he and this Mallin will be out tomorrow?”

“Of course they will. This is a little too big for underlings and non-Company people to be allowed to monkey with. You know, we’ll have to watch out or in a year we’ll be hearing from Terra about the discovery of a sapient race on Zarathustra; Fuzzy fuzzy Kellogg. As Juan says, Dr. Kellogg is a very important man. That’s how he got important.”

VI

The recorded voice ceased; for a moment the record player hummed voicelessly. Loud in the silence, a photocell acted with a double click, opening one segment of the sun shielding and closing another at the opposite side of the dome. Space Commodore Alex Napier glanced up from his desk and out at the harshly angular landscape of Xerxes and the blackness of airless space beyond the disquietingly close horizon. Then he picked up his pipe and knocked the heel out into the ashtray. Nobody said anything. He began packing tobacco into the bowl.

“Well, gentlemen?” He invited comment.

“Pancho?” Captain Conrad Greibenfeld, the Exec., turned to Lieutenant Ybarra, the chief psychologist.

“How reliable is this stuff?” Ybarra asked.

“Well, I knew Jack Holloway thirty years ago, on Fenris, when I was just an ensign. He must be past seventy now,” he parenthesized. “If he says he saw anything, I’ll believe it. And Bennett Rainsford’s absolutely reliable, of course.”

“How about the agent?” Ybarra insisted.

He and Stephen Aelborg, the Intelligence officer, exchanged glances. He nodded, and Aelborg said:

“One of the best. One of our own, lieutenant j.g., Naval Reserve. You don’t need to worry about credibility, Pancho.”

“They sound sapient to me,” Ybarra said. “You know, this is something I’ve always been half hoping and half afraid would happen.”

“You mean an excuse to intervene in that mess down there?” Greibenfeld asked.

Ybarra looked blankly at him for a moment. “No. No, I meant a case of borderline sapience; something our sacred talk-and-build-a-fire rule won’t cover. Just how did this come to our attention, Stephen?”

“Well, it was transmitted to us from Contact Center in Mallorysport late Friday night. There seem to be a number of copies of this tape around; our agent got hold of one of them and transmitted it to Contact Center, and it was relayed on to us, with the agent’s comments,” Aelborg said. “Contact Center ordered a routine surveillance inside Company House and, to play safe, at the Residency. At the time, there seemed no reason to give the thing any beat-to-quarters-and-man-guns treatment, but we got a report on Saturday afternoon—Mallorysport time, that is—that Leonard Kellogg had played off the copy of the tape that Juan Jimenez had made for file, and had alerted Victor Grego immediately.

“Of course, Grego saw the implications at once. He sent Kellogg and the chief Company psychologist, Ernst Mallin, out to Beta Continent with orders to brand Rainsford’s and Holloway’s claims as a deliberate hoax. Then the Company intends to encourage the trapping of Fuzzies for their fur, in hopes that the whole species will be exterminated before anybody can get out from Terra to check on Rainsford’s story.”

“I hadn’t heard that last detail before.”

“Well, we can prove it,” Aelborg assured him.

It sounded like a Victor Grego idea. He lit his pipe slowly. Damnit, he didn’t want to have to intervene. No Space Navy C.O. did. Justifying intervention on a Colonial planet was too much bother—always a board of inquiry, often a courtmartial. And supersession of civil authority was completely against Service Doctrine. Of course, there were other and more important tenets of Service Doctrine. The sovereignty of the Terran Federation for one, and the inviolability of the Federation Constitution. And the rights of extraterrestrials, too. Conrad Greibenfeld, too, seemed to have been thinking about that.

“If those Fuzzies are sapient beings, that whole setup down there is illegal. Company, Colonial administration and all,” he said. “Zarathustra’s a Class-IV planet, and that’s all you can make out of it.”

“We won’t intervene unless we’re forced to. Pancho, I think the decision will be largely up to you.”

Pancho Ybarra was horrified.

“Good God, Alex! You can’t mean that. Who am I? A nobody. All I have is an ordinary M.D., and a Psych.D. Why, the best psychological brains in the Federation—”

“Aren’t on Zarathustra, Pancho. They’re on Terra, five hundred light-years, six months’ ship voyage each way. Intervention, of course, is my responsibility, but the sapience question is yours. I don’t envy you, but I can’t relieve you of it.”

Gerd van Riebeek’s suggestion that all three of the visitors sleep aboard the airboat hadn’t been treated seriously at all. Gerd himself was accommodated in the spare room of the living hut. Juan Jimenez went with Ben Rainsford to his camp for the night. Ruth Ortheris had the cabin of the boat to herself. Rainsford was on the screen the next morning, while Jack and Gerd and Ruth and the Fuzzies were having breakfast; he and Jimenez had decided to take his airjeep and work down from the head of Cold Creek in the belief that there must be more Fuzzies around in the woods.

Both Gerd and Ruth decided to spend the morning at the camp and get acquainted with the Fuzzies on hand. The family had had enough breakfast to leave them neutral on the subject of land-prawns, and they were given another of the new toys, a big colored ball. They rolled it around in the grass for a while, decided to save it for their evening romp and took it into the house. Then they began playing aimlessly among some junk in the shed outside the workshop. Once in a while one of them would drift away to look for a prawn, more for sport than food.

Ruth and Gerd and Jack were sitting at the breakfast table on the grass, talking idly and trying to think of excuses for not washing the dishes. Mamma Fuzzy and Baby were poking about in the tall grass. Suddenly Mamma gave a shrill cry and started back for the shed, chasing Baby ahead of her and slapping him on the bottom with the flat of her chopper-digger to hurry him along.

Jack started for the house at a run. Gerd grabbed his camera and jumped up on the table. It was Ruth who saw the cause of the disturbance.

“Jack! Look, over there!” She pointed to the edge of the clearing. “Two strange Fuzzies!”

He kept on running, but instead of the rifle he had been going for, he collected his movie camera, two of the spare chopper-diggers and some Extee Three. When he emerged again, the two Fuzzies had come into the clearing and stood side by side, looking around. Both were females, and they both carried wooden prawn-killers.

“You have plenty of film?” he asked Gerd. “Here, Ruth; take this.” He handed her his own camera. “Keep far enough away from me to get what I’m doing and what they’re doing. I’m going to try to trade with them.”

He went forward, the steel weapons in his hip pocket and the Extee Three in his hand, talking softly and soothingly to the newcomers. When he was as close to them as he could get without stampeding them, he stopped.

“Our gang’s coming up behind you,” Gerd told him. “Regular skirmish line; choppers at high port. Now they’ve stopped, about thirty feet behind you.”

He broke off a piece of Extee Three, put it in his mouth and ate it. Then he broke off two more pieces and held them out. The two Fuzzies were tempted, but not to the point of rashness. He threw both pieces within a few feet of them. One darted forward, threw a piece to her companion and then snatched the other piece and ran back with it. They stood together, nibbling and making soft delighted noises.

His own family seemed to disapprove strenuously of this lavishing of delicacies upon outsiders. However, the two strangers decided that it would be safe to come closer, and soon he had them taking bits of field ration from his hand. Then he took the two steel chopper-diggers out of his pocket, and managed to convey the idea that he wanted to trade. The two strange Fuzzies were incredulously delighted. This was too much for his own tribe; they came up yeeking angrily.

The two strange females retreated a few steps, their new weapon ready. Everybody seemed to expect a fight, and nobody wanted one. From what he could remember of Old Terran history, this was a situation which could develop into serious trouble. Then Ko-Ko advanced, dragging his chopper-digger in an obviously pacific manner, and approached the two females, yeeking softly and touching first one and then the other. Then he laid his weapon down and put his foot on it. The two females began stroking and caressing him.

Immediately the crisis evaporated. The others of the family came forward, stuck their weapons in the ground and began fondling the strangers. Then they all sat in a circle, swaying their bodies rhythmically and making soft noises. Finally Ko-Ko and the two females rose, picked up their weapons and started for the woods.

“Jack, stop them,” Ruth called out. “They’re going away.”

“If they want to go, I have no right to stop them.”

When they were almost at the edge of the woods, Ko-Ko stopped, drove the point of his weapon into the ground and came running back to Pappy Jack, throwing his arms around the human knees and yeeking. Jack stooped and stroked him, but didn’t try to pick him up. One of the two females pulled his chopper-digger out, and they both came back slowly. At the same time, Little Fuzzy, Mamma Fuzzy, Mike and Mitzi came running back. For a while, all the Fuzzies embraced one another, yeeking happily. Then they all trooped across the grass and went into the house.

“Get that all, Gerd?” he asked.

“On film, yes. That’s the only way I did, though. What happened?”

“You have just made the first film of intertribal social and mating customs, Zarathustran Fuzzy. This is the family’s home; they don’t want any strange Fuzzies hanging around. They were going to run the girls off. Then Ko-Ko decided he liked their looks, and he decided he’d team up with them. That made everything different; the family sat down with them to tell them what a fine husband they were getting and to tell Ko-Ko good-bye. Then Ko-Ko remembered that he hadn’t told me good-bye, and he came back. The family decided that two more Fuzzies wouldn’t be in excess of the carrying capacity of this habitat, seeing what a good provider Pappy Jack is, so now I should imagine they’re showing the girls the family treasures. You know, they married into a mighty well-to-do family.”

The girls were named Goldilocks and Cinderella. When lunch was ready, they were all in the living room, with the viewscreen on; after lunch, the whole gang went into the bedroom for a nap on Pappy Jack’s bed. He spent the afternoon developing movie film, while Gerd and Ruth wrote up the notes they had made the day before and collaborated on an account of the adoption. By late afternoon, when they were finished, the Fuzzies came out for a frolic and prawn hunt.

They all heard the aircar before any of the human people did, and they all ran over and climbed up on the bench beside the kitchen door. It was a constabulary cruise car; it landed, and a couple of troopers got out, saying that they’d stopped to see the Fuzzies. They wanted to know where the extras had come from, and when Jack told them, they looked at one another.

“Next gang that comes along, call us and keep them entertained till we can get here,” one of them said. “We want some at the post, for prawns if nothing else.”

“What’s George’s attitude?” he asked. “The other night, when he was here, he seemed half scared of them.”

“Aah, he’s got over that,” one of the troopers said. “He called Ben Rainsford; Ben said they were perfectly safe. Hey, Ben says they’re not animals; they’re people.”

He started to tell them about some of the things the Fuzzies did. He was still talking when the Fuzzies heard another aircar and called attention to it. This time, it was Ben Rainsford and Juan Jimenez. They piled out as soon as they were off contragravity, dragging cameras after them.

“Jack, there are Fuzzies all over the place up there,” Rainsford began, while he was getting out. “All headed down this way; regular Volkerwanderung. We saw over fifty of them—four families, and individuals and pairs. I’m sure we missed ten for every one we saw.”

“We better get up there with a car tomorrow,” one of the troopers said. “Ben, just where were you?”

“I’ll show you on the map.” Then he saw Goldilocks and Cinderella. “Hey! Where’d you two girls come from? I never saw you around here before.”

There was another clearing across the stream, with a log footbridge and a path to the camp. Jack guided the big airboat down onto it, and put his airjeep alongside with the canopy up. There were two men on the forward deck of the boat, Kellogg and another man who would be Ernst Mallin. A third man came out of the control cabin after the boat was off contragravity. Jack didn’t like Mallin. He had a tight, secretive face, with arrogance and bigotry showing underneath. The third man was younger. His face didn’t show anything much, but his coat showed a bulge under the left arm. After being introduced by Kellogg, Mallin introduced him as Kurt Borch, his assistant.

Mallin had to introduce Borch again at the camp, not only to Ben Rainsford but also to van Riebeek, to Jimenez and even to Ruth Ortheris, which seemed a little odd. Ruth seemed to think so, too, and Mallin hastened to tell her that Borch was with Personnel, giving some kind of tests. That appeared to puzzle her even more. None of the three seemed happy about the presence of the constabulary troopers, either; they were all relieved when the cruise car lifted out.

Kellogg became interested in the Fuzzies immediately, squatting to examine them. He said something to Mallin, who compressed his lips and shook his head, saying:

“We simply cannot assume sapience until we find something in their behavior which cannot be explained under any other hypothesis. We would be much safer to assume nonsapience and proceed to test that assumption.”

That seemed to establish the keynote. Kellogg straightened, and he and Mallin started one of those “of course I agree, doctor, but don’t you find, on the other hand, that you must agree” sort of arguments, about the difference between scientific evidence and scientific proof. Jimenez got into it to the extent of agreeing with everything Kellogg said, and differing politely with everything Mallin said that he thought Kellogg would differ with. Borch said nothing; he just stood and looked at the Fuzzies with ill-concealed hostility. Gerd and Ruth decided to help getting dinner.

They ate outside on the picnic table, with the Fuzzies watching them interestedly. Kellogg and Mallin carefully avoided discussing them. It wasn’t until after dusk, when the Fuzzies brought their ball inside and everybody was in the living room, that Kellogg, adopting a presiding-officer manner, got the conversation onto the subject. For some time, without giving anyone else an opportunity to say anything, he gushed about what an important discovery the Fuzzies were. The Fuzzies themselves ignored him and began dismantling the stick-and-ball construction. For a while Goldilocks and Cinderella watched interestedly, and then they began assisting.

“Unfortunately,” Kellogg continued, “so much of our data is in the form of uncorroborated statements by Mr. Holloway. Now, please don’t misunderstand me. I don’t, myself, doubt for a moment anything Mr. Holloway said on that tape, but you must realize that professional scientists are most reluctant to accept the unsubstantiated reports of what, if you’ll pardon me, they think of as nonqualified observers.”

“Oh, rubbish, Leonard!” Rainsford broke in impatiently. “I’m a professional scientist, of a good many more years’ standing than you, and I accept Jack Holloway’s statements. A frontiersman like Jack is a very careful and exact observer. People who aren’t don’t live long on frontier planets.”

“Now, please don’t misunderstand me,” Kellogg reiterated. “I don’t doubt Mr. Holloway’s statements. I was just thinking of how they would be received on Terra.”

“I shouldn’t worry about that, Leonard. The Institute accepts my reports, and I’m vouching for Jack’s reliability. I can substantiate most of what he told me from personal observation.”

“Yes, and there’s more than just verbal statements,” Gerd van Riebeek chimed in. “A camera is not a nonqualified observer. We have quite a bit of film of the Fuzzies.”

“Oh, yes; there was some mention of movies,” Mallin said. “You don’t have any of them developed yet, do you?”

“Quite a lot. Everything except what was taken out in the woods this afternoon. We can run them off right now.”

He pulled down the screen in front of the gunrack, got the film and loaded his projector. The Fuzzies, who had begun on a new stick-and-ball construction, were irritated when the lights went out, then wildly excited when Little Fuzzy, digging a toilet pit with the wood chisel, appeared. Little Fuzzy in particular was excited about that; if he didn’t recognize himself, he recognized the chisel. Then there were pictures of Little Fuzzy killing and eating land-prawns, Little Fuzzy taking the nut off the bolt and putting it on again, and pictures of the others, after they had come in, hunting and at play. Finally, there was the film of the adoption of Goldilocks and Cinderella.

“What Juan and I got this afternoon, up in the woods, isn’t so good, I’m afraid,” Rainsford said when the show was over and the lights were on again. “Mostly it’s rear views disappearing into the brush. It was very hard to get close to them in the jeep. Their hearing is remarkably acute. But I’m sure the pictures we took this afternoon will show the things they were carrying—wooden prawn-killers like the two that were traded from the new ones in that last film.”

Mallin and Kellogg looked at one another in what seemed oddly like consternation.

“You didn’t tell us there were more of them around,” Mallin said, as though it were an accusation of duplicity. He turned to Kellogg. “This alters the situation.”

“Yes, indeed, Ernst,” Kellogg burbled delightedly. “This is a wonderful opportunity. Mr. Holloway, I understand that all this country up here is your property, by landgrant purchase. That’s right, isn’t it? Well, would you allow us to camp on that clearing across the run, where our boat is now? We’ll get prefab huts—Red Hill’s the nearest town, isn’t it?—and have a Company construction gang set them up for us, and we won’t be any bother at all to you. We had only intended staying tonight on our boat, and returning to Mallorysport in the morning, but with all these Fuzzies swarming around in the woods, we can’t think of leaving now. You don’t have any objection, do you?”

He had lots of objections. The whole business was rapidly developing into an acute pain in the neck for him. But if he didn’t let Kellogg camp across the run, the three of them could move seventy or eighty miles in any direction and be off his land. He knew what they’d do then. They’d live-trap or sleep-gas Fuzzies; they’d put them in cages, and torment them with maze and electric-shock experiments, and kill a few for dissection, or maybe not bother killing them first. On his own land, if they did anything like that, he could do something about it.

“Not at all. I’ll have to remind you again, though, that you’re to treat these little people with consideration.”

“Oh, we won’t do anything to your Fuzzies,” Mallin said.

“You won’t hurt any Fuzzies. Not more than once, anyhow.”

The next morning, during breakfast, Kellogg and Kurt Borch put in an appearance, Borch wearing old clothes and field boots and carrying his pistol on his belt. They had a list of things they thought they would need for their camp. Neither of them seemed to have more than the foggiest notion of camp requirements. Jack made some suggestions which they accepted. There was a lot of scientific equipment on the list, including an X-ray machine. He promptly ran a pencil line through that.

“We don’t know what these Fuzzies’ level of radiation tolerance is. We’re not going to find out by overdosing one of my Fuzzies.”

Somewhat to his surprise, neither of them gave him any argument. Gerd and Ruth and Kellogg borrowed his airjeep and started north; he and Borch went across the run to make measurements after Rainsford and Jimenez arrived and picked up Mallin. Borch took off soon after with the boat for Red Hill. Left alone, he loafed around the camp, and developed the rest of the movie film, making three copies of everything. Toward noon, Borch brought the boat back, followed by a couple of scowlike farmboats. In a few hours, the Company construction men from Red Hill had the new camp set up. Among other things, they brought two more air jeeps.

The two jeeps returned late in the afternoon, everybody excited. Between them, the parties had seen almost a hundred Fuzzies, and had found three camps, two among rocks and one in a hollow pool-ball tree. All three had been spotted by belts of filled-in toilet pits around them; two had been abandoned and the third was still occupied. Kellogg insisted on playing host to Jack and Rainsford for dinner at the camp across the run. The meal, because everything had been brought ready-cooked and only needed warming, was excellent.

Returning to his own camp with Rainsford, Jack found the Fuzzies finished with their evening meal and in the living room, starting a new construction—he could think of no other name for it—with the molecule-model balls and sticks. Goldilocks left the others and came over to him with a couple of balls fastened together, holding them up with one hand while she pulled his trouser leg with the other.

“Yes, I see. It’s very beautiful,” he told her.

She tugged harder and pointed at the thing the others were making. Finally, he understood.

“She wants me to work on it, too,” he said. “Ben, you know where the coffee is; fix us a pot. I’m going to be busy here.”

He sat down on the floor, and was putting sticks and balls together when Ben brought in the coffee. This was more fun than he’d had in a couple of days. He said so while Ben was distributing Extee Three to the Fuzzies.

“Yes, I ought to let you kick me all around the camp for getting this started,” Rainsford said, pouring the coffee. “I could make some excuses, but they’d all sound like ‘I didn’t know it was loaded.’”

“Hell, I didn’t know it was loaded, either.” He rose and took his coffee cup, blowing on it to cool it. “What do you think Kellogg’s up to, anyhow? That whole act he’s been putting on since he came here is phony as a nine-sol bill.”

“What I told you, evening before last,” Rainsford said. “He doesn’t want non-Company people making discoveries on Zarathustra. You notice how hard he and Mallin are straining to talk me out of sending a report back to Terra before he can investigate the Fuzzies? He wants to get his own report in first. Well, the hell with him! You know what I’m going to do? I’m going home, and I’m going to sit up all night getting a report into shape. Tomorrow morning I’m going to give it to George Lunt and let him send it to Mallorysport in the constabulary mail pouch. It’ll be on a ship for Terra before any of this gang knows it’s been sent. Do you have any copies of those movies you can spare?”

“About a mile and a half. I made copies of everything, even the stuff the others took.”

“Good. We’ll send that, too. Let Kellogg read about it in the papers a year from now.” He thought for a moment, then said: “Gerd and Ruth and Juan are bunking at the other camp now; suppose I move in here with you tomorrow. I assume you don’t want to leave the Fuzzies alone while that gang’s here. I can help you keep an eye on them.”

“But, Ben, you don’t want to drop whatever else you’re doing—”

“What I’m doing, now, is learning to be a Fuzzyologist, and this is the only place I can do it. I’ll see you tomorrow, after I stop at the constabulary post.”

The people across the run—Kellogg, Mallin and Borch, and van Riebeek, Jimenez and Ruth Ortheris—were still up when Rainsford went out to his airjeep. After watching him lift out, Jack went back into the house, played with his family in the living room for a while and went to bed. The next morning he watched Kellogg, Ruth and Jimenez leave in one jeep and, shortly after, Mallin and van Riebeek in the other. Kellogg didn’t seem to be willing to let the three who had come to the camp first wander around unchaperoned. He wondered about that.

Ben Rainsford’s airjeep came over the mountains from the south in the late morning and settled onto the grass. Jack helped him inside with his luggage, and then they sat down under the big featherleaf trees to smoke their pipes and watch the Fuzzies playing in the grass. Occasionally they saw Kurt Borch pottering around outside the other camp.

“I sent the report off,” Rainsford said, then looked at his watch. “It ought to be on the mail boat for Mallorysport by now; this time tomorrow it’ll be in hyperspace for Terra. We won’t say anything about it; just sit back and watch Len Kellogg and Ernst Mallin working up a sweat trying to talk us out of sending it.” He chuckled. “I made a definite claim of sapience; by the time I got the report in shape to tape off, I couldn’t see any other alternative.”

“Damned if I can. You hear that, kids?” he asked Mike and Mitzi, who had come over in hope that there might be goodies for them. “Uncle Ben says you’re sapient.”

“Yeek?”

“They want to know if it’s good to eat. What’ll happen now?”

“Nothing, for about a year. Six months from now, when the ship gets in, the Institute will release it to the press, and then they’ll send an investigation team here. So will any of the other universities or scientific institutes that may be interested. I suppose the government’ll send somebody, too. After all, subcivilized natives on colonized planets are wards of the Terran Federation.”

He didn’t know that he liked that. The less he had to do with the government the better, and his Fuzzies were wards of Pappy Jack Holloway. He said as much.

Rainsford picked up Mitzi and stroked her. “Nice fur,” he said. “Fur like that would bring good prices. It will, if we don’t get these people recognized as sapient beings.”

He looked across the run at the new camp and wondered. Maybe Leonard Kellogg saw that, too, and saw profits for the Company in Fuzzy fur.

The airjeeps returned in the middle of the afternoon, first Mallin’s, and then Kellogg’s. Everybody went inside. An hour later, a constabulary car landed in front of the Kellogg camp. George Lunt and Ahmed Khadra got out. Kellogg came outside, spoke with them and then took them into the main living hut. Half an hour later, the lieutenant and the trooper emerged, lifted their car across the run and set it down on the lawn. The Fuzzies ran to meet them, possibly expecting more whistles, and followed them into the living room. Lunt and Khadra took off their berets, but made no move to unbuckle their gun belts.

“We got your package off all right Ben,” Lunt said. He sat down and took Goldilocks on his lap; immediately Cinderella jumped up, also. “Jack, what the hell’s that gang over there up to anyhow?”

“You got that, too?”

“You can smell it on them for a mile, against the wind. In the first place, that Borch. I wish I could get his prints; I’ll bet we have them on file. And the whole gang’s trying to hide something, and what they’re trying to hide is something they’re scared of, like a body in a closet. When we were over there, Kellogg did all the talking; anybody else who tried to say anything got shut up fast. Kellogg doesn’t like you, Jack and he doesn’t like Ben, and he doesn’t like the Fuzzies. Most of all he doesn’t like the Fuzzies.”

“Well, I told you what I thought this morning,” Rainsford said. “They don’t want outsiders discovering things on this planet. It wouldn’t make them look good to the home office on Terra. Remember, it was some non-Company people who discovered the first sunstones, back in ’Forty-eight.”

George Lunt looked thoughtful. On him, it was a scowl.

“I don’t think that’s it, Ben. When we were talking to him, he admitted very freely that you and Jack discovered the Fuzzies. The way he talked, he didn’t seem to think they were worth discovering at all. And he asked a lot of funny questions about you, Jack. The kind of questions I’d ask if I was checking up on somebody’s mental competence.” The scowl became one of anger now. “By God, I wish I had an excuse to question him—with a veridicator!”

Kellogg didn’t want the Fuzzies to be sapient beings. If they weren’t they’d be…fur-bearing animals. Jack thought of some overfed society dowager on Terra or Baldur, wearing the skins of Little Fuzzy and Mamma Fuzzy and Mike and Mitzi and Ko-Ko and Cinderella and Goldilocks wrapped around her adipose carcass. It made him feel sick.

LITTLE FUZZY (Part 3), by H. Beam Piper

VII

Tuesday dawned hot and windless, a scarlet sun coming up in a hard, brassy sky. The Fuzzies, who were in to wake Pappy Jack with their whistles, didn’t like it; they were edgy and restless. Maybe it would rain today after all. They had breakfast outside on the picnic table, and then Ben decided he’d go back to his camp and pick up a few things he hadn’t brought and now decided he needed.

“My hunting rifle’s one,” he said, “and I think I’ll circle down to the edge of the brush country and see if I can pick off a zebralope. We ought to have some more fresh meat.”

So, after eating, Rainsford got into his jeep and lifted away. Across the run, Kellogg and Mallin were walking back and forth in front of the camp, talking earnestly. When Ruth Ortheris and Gerd van Riebeek came out, they stopped, broke off their conversation and spoke briefly with them. Then Gerd and Ruth crossed the footbridge and came up the path together.

The Fuzzies had scattered, by this time, to hunt prawns. Little Fuzzy and Ko-Ko and Goldilocks ran to meet them; Ruth picked Goldilocks up and carried her, and Ko-Ko and Little Fuzzy ran on ahead. They greeted Jack, declining coffee; Ruth sat down in a chair with Goldilocks, Little Fuzzy jumped up on the table and began looking for goodies, and when Gerd stretched out on his back on the grass Ko-Ko sat down on his chest.

“Goldilocks is my favorite Fuzzy,” Ruth was saying. “She is the sweetest thing. Of course, they’re all pretty nice. I can’t get over how affectionate and trusting they are; the ones we saw out in the woods were so timid.”

“Well, the ones out in the woods don’t have any Pappy Jack to look after them” Gerd said. “I’d imagine they’re very affectionate among themselves, but they have so many things to be afraid of. You know, there’s another prerequisite for sapience. It develops in some small, relatively defenseless, animal surrounded by large and dangerous enemies he can’t outrun or outfight. So, to survive, he has to learn to outthink them. Like our own remote ancestors, or like Little Fuzzy; he had his choice of getting sapient or getting exterminated.”

Ruth seemed troubled. “Gerd, Dr. Mallin has found absolutely nothing about them that indicates true sapience.”

“Oh, Mallin be bloodied; he doesn’t know what sapience is any more than I do. And a good deal less than you do, I’d say. I think he’s trying to prove that the Fuzzies aren’t sapient.”

Ruth looked startled. “What makes you say that?”

“It’s been sticking out all over him ever since he came here. You’re a psychologist; don’t tell me you haven’t seen it. Maybe if the Fuzzies were proven sapient it would invalidate some theory he’s gotten out of a book, and he’d have to do some thinking for himself. He wouldn’t like that. But you have to admit he’s been fighting the idea, intellectually and emotionally, right from the start. Why, they could sit down with pencils and slide rules and start working differential calculus and it wouldn’t convince him.”

“Dr. Mallin’s trying to—” she began angrily. Then she broke it off. “Jack, excuse us. We didn’t really come over here to have a fight. We came to meet some Fuzzies. Didn’t we, Goldilocks?”

Goldilocks was playing with the silver charm on the chain around her neck, holding it to her ear and shaking it to make it tinkle, making small delighted sounds. Finally she held it up and said, “Yeek?”

“Yes, sweetie-pie, you can have it.” Ruth took the chain from around her neck and put it over Goldilocks’ head; she had to loop it three times before it would fit. “There now; that’s your very own.”

“Oh, you mustn’t give her things like that.”

“Why not. It’s just cheap trade-junk. You’ve been on Loki, Jack, you know what it is.” He did; he’d traded stuff like that to the natives himself. “Some of the girls at the hospital there gave it to me for a joke. I only wear it because I have it. Goldilocks likes it a lot better than I do.”

An airjeep rose from the other side and floated across. Juan Jimenez was piloting it; Ernst Mallin stuck his head out the window on the right, asked her if she were ready and told Gerd that Kellogg would pick him up in a few minutes. After she had gotten into the jeep and it had lifted out, Gerd put Ko-Ko off his chest and sat up, getting cigarettes from his shirt pocket.

“I don’t know what the devil’s gotten into her,” he said, watching the jeep vanish. “Oh, yes, I do. She’s gotten the Word from On High. Kellogg hath spoken. Fuzzies are just silly little animals,” he said bitterly.

“You work for Kellogg, too, don’t you?”

“Yes. He doesn’t dictate my professional opinion, though. You know, I thought, in the evil hour when I took this job—” He rose to his feet, hitching his belt to balance the weight of the pistol on the right against the camera-binoculars on the left, and changed the subject abruptly. “Jack, has Ben Rainsford sent a report on the Fuzzies to the Institute yet?” he asked.

“Why?”

“If he hasn’t, tell him to hurry up and get one in.”

There wasn’t time to go into that further. Kellogg’s jeep was rising from the camp across the run and approaching.

He decided to let the breakfast dishes go till after lunch. Kurt Borch had stayed behind at the Kellogg camp, so he kept an eye on the Fuzzies and brought them back when they started to stray toward the footbridge. Ben Rainsford hadn’t returned by lunchtime, but zebralope hunting took a little time, even from the air. While he was eating, outside, one of the rented airjeeps returned from the northeast in a hurry, disgorging Ernst Mallin, Juan Jimenez and Ruth Ortheris. Kurt Borch came hurrying out; they talked for a few minutes, and then they all went inside. A little later, the second jeep came in, even faster, and landed; Kellogg and van Riebeek hastened into the living hut. There wasn’t anything more to see. He carried the dishes into the kitchen and washed them, and the Fuzzies went into the bedroom for their nap.

He was sitting at the table in the living room when Gerd van Riebeek knocked on the open door.

“Jack, can I talk to you for a minute?” he asked.

“Sure. Come in.”

Van Riebeek entered, unbuckling his gun belt. He shifted a chair so that he could see the door from it, and laid the belt on the floor at his feet when he sat down. Then he began to curse Leonard Kellogg in four or five languages.

“Well, I agree, in principle; why in particular, though?”

“You know what that son of a Khooghra’s doing?” Gerd asked. “He and that—” He used a couple of Sheshan words, viler than anything in Lingua Terra. “—that quack headshrinker, Mallin, are preparing a report, accusing you and Ben Rainsford of perpetrating a deliberate scientific hoax. You taught the Fuzzies some tricks; you and Rainsford, between you, made those artifacts yourselves and the two of you are conspiring to foist the Fuzzies off as sapient beings. Jack, if it weren’t so goddamn stinking contemptible, it would be the biggest joke of the century!”

“I take it they wanted you to sign this report, too?”

“Yes, and I told Kellogg he could—” What Kellogg could do, it seemed, was both appalling and physiologically impossible. He cursed again, and then lit a cigarette and got hold of himself. “Here’s what happened. Kellogg and I went up that stream, about twenty miles down Cold Creek, the one you’ve been working on, and up onto the high flat to a spring and a stream that flows down in the opposite direction. Know where I mean? Well, we found where some Fuzzies had been camping, among a lot of fallen timber. And we found a little grave, where the Fuzzies had buried one of their people.”

He should have expected something like that, and yet it startled him. “You mean, they bury their dead? What was the grave like?”

“A little stone cairn, about a foot and a half by three, a foot high. Kellogg said it was just a big toilet pit, but I was sure of what it was. I opened it. Stones under the cairn, and then filled-in earth, and then a dead Fuzzy wrapped in grass. A female; she’d been mangled by something, maybe a bush-goblin. And get this Jack; they’d buried her prawn-stick with her.”

“They bury their dead! What was Kellogg doing, while you were opening the grave?”

“Dithering around having ants. I’d been taking snaps of the grave, and I was burbling away like an ass about how important this was and how it was positive proof of sapience, and he was insisting that we get back to camp at once. He called the other jeep and told Mallin to get to camp immediately, and Mallin and Ruth and Juan were there when we got in. As soon as Kellogg told them what we’d found, Mallin turned fish-belly white and wanted to know how we were going to suppress it. I asked him if he was nuts, and then Kellogg came out with it. They don’t dare let the Fuzzies be proven sapient.”

“Because the Company wants to sell Fuzzy furs?”

Van Riebeek looked at him in surprise. “I never thought of that. I doubt if they did, either. No. Because if the Fuzzies are sapient beings, the Company’s charter is automatically void.”

This time Jack cursed, not Kellogg but himself.

“I am a senile old dotard! Good Lord, I know colonial law; I’ve been skating on the edge of it on more planets than you’re years old. And I never thought of that; why, of course it would. Where are you now, with the Company, by the way?”

“Out, but I couldn’t care less. I have enough in the bank for the trip back to Terra, not counting what I can raise on my boat and some other things. Xeno-naturalists don’t need to worry about finding jobs. There’s Ben’s outfit, for instance. And, brother, when I get back to Terra, what I’ll spill about this deal!”

“If you get back. If you don’t have an accident before you get on the ship.” He thought for a moment. “Know anything about geology?”

“Why, some; I have to work with fossils. I’m as much a paleontologist as a zoologist. Why?”

“How’d you like to stay here with me and hunt fossil jellyfish for a while? We won’t make twice as much, together, as I’m making now, but you can look one way while I’m looking the other, and we may both stay alive longer that way.”

“You mean that, Jack?”

“I said it, didn’t I?”

Van Riebeek rose and held out his hand; Jack came around the table and shook it. Then he reached back and picked up his belt, putting it on.

“Better put yours on, too, partner. Borch is probably the only one we’ll need a gun for, but—”

Van Riebeek buckled on his belt, then drew his pistol and worked the slide to load the chamber. “What are we going to do?” he asked.

“Well, we’re going to try to handle it legally. Fact is, I’m even going to call the cops.”

He punched out a combination on the communication screen. It lighted and opened a window into the constabulary post. The sergeant who looked out of it recognized him and grinned.

“Hi, Jack. How’s the family?” he asked. “I’m coming up, one of these evenings, to see them.”

“You can see some now.” Ko-Ko and Goldilocks and Cinderella were coming out of the hall from the bedroom; he gathered them up and put them on the table. The sergeant was fascinated. Then he must have noticed that both Jack and Gerd were wearing their guns in the house. His eyes narrowed slightly.

“You got problems, Jack?” he asked.

“Little ones; they may grow, though. I have some guests here who have outstayed their welcome. For the record, better make it that I have squatters I want evicted. If there were a couple of blue uniforms around, maybe it might save me the price of a few cartridges.”

“I read you. George was mentioning that you might regret inviting that gang to camp on you.” He picked up a handphone. “Calderon to Car Three,” he said. “Do you read me, Three? Well, Jack Holloway’s got a little squatter trouble. Yeah; that’s it. He’s ordering them off his grant, and he thinks they might try to give him an argument. Yeah, sure, Peace Lovin’ Jack Holloway, that’s him. Well, go chase his squatters for him, and if they give you anything about being Company big wheels, we don’t care what kind of wheels they are, just so’s they start rolling.” He replaced the phone. “Look for them in about an hour, Jack.”

“Why, thanks, Phil. Drop in some evening when you can hang up your gun and stay awhile.”

He blanked the screen and began punching again. This time he got a girl, and then the Company construction boss at Red Hill.

“Oh, hello, Jack; is Dr. Kellogg comfortable?”

“Not very. He’s moving out this afternoon. I wish you’d have your gang come up with those scows and get that stuff out of my back yard.”

“Well, he told us he was staying for a couple of weeks.”

“He got his mind changed for him. He’s to be off my land by sunset.”

The Company man looked troubled. “Jack, you haven’t been having trouble with Dr. Kellogg, have you?” he asked. “He’s a big man with the Company.”

“That’s what he tells me. You’ll still have to come and get that stuff, though.”

He blanked the screen. “You know,” he said, “I think it would be no more than fair to let Kellogg in on this. What’s his screen combination?”

Gerd supplied it, and he punched it out. One of those tricky special Company combinations. Kurt Borch appeared in the screen immediately.

“I want to talk to Kellogg.”

“Doctor Kellogg is very busy, at present.”

“He’s going to be a damned sight busier; this is moving day. The whole gang of you have till eighteen hundred to get off my grant.”

Borch was shoved aside, and Kellogg appeared. “What’s this nonsense?” he demanded angrily.

“You’re ordered to move. You want to know why? I can let Gerd van Riebeek talk to you; I think there are a few things he’s forgotten to call you.”

“You can’t order us out like this. Why, you gave us permission—”

“Permission cancelled. I’ve called Mike Hennen in Red Hill; he’s sending his scows back for the stuff he brought here. Lieutenant Lunt will have a couple of troopers here, too. I’ll expect you to have your personal things aboard your airboat when they arrive.”

He blanked the screen while Kellogg was trying to tell him that it was all a misunderstanding.

“I think that’s everything. It’s quite a while till sundown,” he added, “but I move for suspension of rules while we pour a small libation to sprinkle our new partnership. Then we can go outside and observe the enemy.”

There was no observable enemy action when they went out and sat down on the bench by the kitchen door. Kellogg would be screening Mike Hennen and the constabulary post for verification, and there would be a lot of gathering up and packing to do. Finally, Kurt Borch emerged with a contragravity lifter piled with boxes and luggage, and Jimenez walking beside to steady the load. Jimenez climbed up onto the airboat and Borch floated the load up to him and then went back into the huts. This was repeated several times. In the meantime, Kellogg and Mallin seemed to be having some sort of exchange of recriminations in front. Ruth Ortheris came out, carrying a briefcase, and sat down on the edge of a table under the awning.

Neither of them had been watching the Fuzzies, until they saw one of them start down the path toward the footbridge, a glint of silver at the throat identifying Goldilocks.

“Look at that fool kid; you stay put, Gerd, and I’ll bring her back.”

He started down the path; by the time he had reached the bridge, Goldilocks was across and had vanished behind one of the airjeeps parked in front of the Kellogg camp. When he was across and within twenty feet of the vehicle, he heard a sound he had never heard before—a shrill, thin shriek, like a file on saw teeth. At the same time, Ruth’s voice screamed.

“Don’t! Leonard, stop that!”

As he ran around the jeep, the shrieking broke off suddenly. Goldilocks was on the ground, her fur reddened. Kellogg stood over her, one foot raised. He was wearing white shoes, and they were both spotted with blood. He stamped the foot down on the little bleeding body, and then Jack was within reach of him, and something crunched under the fist he drove into Kellogg’s face. Kellogg staggered and tried to raise his hands; he made a strangled noise, and for an instant the idiotic thought crossed Jack’s mind that he was trying to say, “Now, please don’t misunderstand me.” He caught Kellogg’s shirt front in his left hand, and punched him again in the face, and again, and again. He didn’t know how many times he punched Kellogg before he heard Ruth Ortheris’ voice:

“Jack! Watch out! Behind you!”

He let go of Kellogg’s shirt and jumped aside, turning and reaching for his gun. Kurt Borch, twenty feet away, had a pistol drawn and pointed at him.

His first shot went off as soon as the pistol was clear of the holster. He fired the second while it was still recoiling; there was a spot of red on Borch’s shirt that gave him an aiming point for the third. Borch dropped the pistol he hadn’t been able to fire, and started folding at the knees and then at the waist. He went down in a heap on his face.

Behind him, Gerd van Riebeek’s voice was saying, “Hold it, all of you; get your hands up. You, too, Kellogg.”

Kellogg, who had fallen, pushed himself erect. Blood was gushing from his nose, and he tried to stanch it on the sleeve of his jacket. As he stumbled toward his companions, he blundered into Ruth Ortheris, who pushed him angrily away from her. Then she went to the little crushed body, dropping to her knees beside it and touching it. The silver charm bell on the neck chain jingled faintly. Ruth began to cry.

Juan Jimenez had climbed down from the airboat; he was looking at the body of Kurt Borch in horror.

“You killed him!” he accused. A moment later, he changed that to “murdered.” Then he started to run toward the living hut.

Gerd van Riebeek fired a bullet into the ground ahead of him, bringing him up short.

“You’ll stop the next one, Juan,” he said. “Go help Dr. Kellogg; he got himself hurt.”

“Call the constabulary,” Mallin was saying. “Ruth, you go; they won’t shoot at you.”

“Don’t bother. I called them. Remember?”

Jimenez had gotten a wad of handkerchief tissue out of his pocket and was trying to stop his superior’s nosebleed. Through it, Kellogg was trying to tell Mallin that he hadn’t been able to help it.

“The little beast attacked me; it cut me with that spear it was carrying.”

Ruth Ortheris looked up. The other Fuzzies were with her by the body of Goldilocks; they must have come as soon as they had heard the screaming.

“She came up to him and pulled at his trouser leg, the way they all do when they want to attract your attention,” she said. “She wanted him to look at her new jingle.” Her voice broke, and it was a moment before she could recover it. “And he kicked her, and then stamped her to death.”

“Ruth, keep your mouth shut!” Mallin ordered. “The thing attacked Leonard; it might have given him a serious wound.”

“It did!” Still holding the wad of tissue to his nose with one hand, Kellogg pulled up his trouser leg with the other and showed a scar on his shin. It looked like a briar scratch. “You saw it yourself.”

“Yes, I saw it. I saw you kick her and jump on her. And all she wanted was to show you her new jingle.”

Jack was beginning to regret that he hadn’t shot Kellogg as soon as he saw what was going on. The other Fuzzies had been trying to get Goldilocks onto her feet. When they realized that it was no use, they let the body down again and crouched in a circle around it, making soft, lamenting sounds.

“Well, when the constabulary get here, you keep quiet,” Mallin was saying. “Let me do the talking.”

“Intimidating witnesses, Mallin?” Gerd inquired. “Don’t you know everybody’ll have to testify at the constabulary post under veridication? And you’re drawing pay for being a psychologist, too.” Then he saw some of the Fuzzies raise their heads and look toward the southeastern horizon. “Here come the cops, now.”

However, it was Ben Rainsford’s airjeep, with a zebralope carcass lashed along one side. It circled the Kellogg camp and then let down quickly; Rainsford jumped out as soon as it was grounded, his pistol drawn.

“What happened, Jack?” he asked, then glanced around, from Goldilocks to Kellogg to Borch to the pistol beside Borch’s body. “I get it. Last time anybody pulled a gun on you, they called it suicide.”

“That’s what this was, more or less. You have a movie camera in your jeep? Well, get some shots of Borch, and some of Goldilocks. Then stand by, and if the Fuzzies start doing anything different, get it all. I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.”

Rainsford looked puzzled, but he holstered his pistol and went back to his jeep, returning with a camera. Mallin began insisting that, as a licensed M.D., he had a right to treat Kellogg’s injuries. Gerd van Riebeek followed him into the living hut for a first-aid kit. They were just emerging, van Riebeek’s automatic in the small of Mallin’s back, when a constabulary car grounded beside Rainsford’s airjeep. It wasn’t Car Three. George Lunt jumped out, unsnapping the flap of his holster, while Ahmed Khadra was talking into the radio.

“What’s happened, Jack? Why didn’t you wait till we got here?”

“This maniac assaulted me and murdered that man over there!” Kellogg began vociferating.

“Is your name Jack too?” Lunt demanded.

“My name’s Leonard Kellogg, and I’m a chief of division with the Company—”

“Then keep quiet till I ask you something. Ahmed, call the post; get Knabber and Yorimitsu, with investigative equipment, and find out what’s tying up Car Three.”

Mallin had opened the first-aid kit by now; Gerd, on seeing the constabulary, had holstered his pistol. Kellogg, still holding the sodden tissues to his nose, was wanting to know what there was to investigate.

“There’s the murderer; you have him red-handed. Why don’t you arrest him?”

“Jack, let’s get over where we can watch these people without having to listen to them,” Lunt said. He glanced toward the body of Goldilocks. “That happen first?”

“Watch out, Lieutenant! He still has his pistol!” Mallin shouted warningly.

They went over and sat down on the contragravity-field generator housing one of the rented airjeeps. Jack started with Gerd van Riebeek’s visit immediately after noon.

“Yes, I thought of that angle myself,” Lunt said disgustedly. “I didn’t think of it till this morning, though, and I didn’t think things would blow up as fast as this. Hell, I just didn’t think! Well, go on.”

He interrupted a little later to ask: “Kellogg was stamping on the Fuzzy when you hit him. You were trying to stop him?”

“That’s right. You can veridicate me on that if you want to.”

“I will; I’ll veridicate this whole damn gang. And this guy Borch had his heater out when you turned around? Nothing to it, Jack. We’ll have to have some kind of a hearing, but it’s just plain self-defense. Think any of this gang will tell the truth here, without taking them in and putting them under veridication?”

“Ruth Ortheris will, I think.”

“Send her over here, will you.”

She was still with the Fuzzies, and Ben Rainsford was standing beside her, his camera ready. The Fuzzies were still swaying and yeeking plaintively. She nodded and rose without speaking, going over to where Lunt waited.

“Just what did happen, Jack?” Rainsford wanted to know. “And whose side is he on?” He nodded toward van Riebeek, standing guard over Kellogg and Mallin, his thumbs in his pistol belt.

“Ours. He’s quit the Company.”

Just as he was finishing, Car Three put in an appearance; he had to tell the same story over again. The area in front of the Kellogg camp was getting congested; he hoped Mike Hennen’s labor gang would stay away for a while. Lunt talked to van Riebeek when he had finished with Ruth, and then with Jimenez and Mallin and Kellogg. Then he and one of the men from Car Three came over to where Jack and Rainsford were standing. Gerd van Riebeek joined them just as Lunt was saying:

“Jack, Kellogg’s made a murder complaint against you. I told him it was self-defense, but he wouldn’t listen. So, according to the book, I have to arrest you.”

“All right.” He unbuckled his gun and handed it over. “Now, George, I herewith make complaint and accusation against Leonard Kellogg, charging him with the unlawful and unjustified killing of a sapient being, to wit, an aboriginal native of the planet of Zarathustra commonly known as Goldilocks.”

Lunt looked at the small battered body and the six mourners around it.

“But, Jack, they aren’t legally sapient beings.”

“There is no such thing. A sapient being is a being on the mental level of sapience, not a being that has been declared sapient.”

“Fuzzies are sapient beings,” Rainsford said. “That’s the opinion of a qualified xeno-naturalist.”

“Two of them,” Gerd van Riebeek said. “That is the body of a sapient being. There’s the man who killed her. Go ahead, Lieutenant, make your pinch.”

“Hey! Wait a minute!”

The Fuzzies were rising, sliding their chopper-diggers under the body of Goldilocks and lifting it on the steel shafts. Ben Rainsford was aiming his camera as Cinderella picked up her sister’s weapon and followed, carrying it; the others carried the body toward the far corner of the clearing, away from the camp. Rainsford kept just behind them, pausing to photograph and then hurrying to keep up with them.

They set the body down. Mike and Mitzi and Cinderella began digging; the others scattered to hunt for stones. Coming up behind them, George Lunt took off his beret and stood holding it in both hands; he bowed his head as the grass-wrapped body was placed in the little grave and covered.

Then, when the cairn was finished, he replaced it, drew his pistol and checked the chamber.

“That does it, Jack,” he said. “I am now going to arrest Leonard Kellogg for the murder of a sapient being.”

VIII

Jack Holloway had been out on bail before, but never for quite so much. It was almost worth it, though, to see Leslie Coombes’s eyes widen and Mohammed Ali O’Brien’s jaw drop when he dumped the bag of sunstones, blazing with the heat of the day and of his body, on George Lunt’s magisterial bench and invited George to pick out twenty-five thousand sols’ worth. Especially after the production Coombes had made of posting Kellogg’s bail with one of those precertified Company checks.

He looked at the whisky bottle in his hand, and then reached into the cupboard for another one. One for Gus Brannhard, and one for the rest of them. There was a widespread belief that that was why Gustavus Adolphus Brannhard was practicing sporadic law out here in the boon docks of a boon-dock planet, defending gun fighters and veldbeest rustlers. It wasn’t. Nobody on Zarathustra knew the reason, but it wasn’t whisky. Whisky was only the weapon with which Gus Brannhard fought off the memory of the reason.

He was in the biggest chair in the living room, which was none too ample for him; a mountain of a man with tousled gray-brown hair, his broad face masked in a tangle of gray-brown beard. He wore a faded and grimy bush jacket with clips of rifle cartridges on the breast, no shirt and a torn undershirt over a shag of gray-brown chest hair. Between the bottoms of his shorts and the tops of his ragged hose and muddy boots, his legs were covered with hair. Baby Fuzzy was sitting on his head, and Mamma Fuzzy was on his lap. Mike and Mitzi sat one on either knee. The Fuzzies had taken instantly to Gus. Bet they thought he was a Big Fuzzy.

“Aaaah!” he rumbled, as the bottle and glass were placed beside him. “Been staying alive for hours hoping for this.”

“Well, don’t let any of the kids get at it. Little Fuzzy trying to smoke pipes is bad enough; I don’t want any dipsos in the family, too.”

Gus filled the glass. To be on the safe side, he promptly emptied it into himself.

“You got a nice family, Jack. Make a wonderful impression in court—as long as Baby doesn’t try to sit on the judge’s head. Any jury that sees them and hears that Ortheris girl’s story will acquit you from the box, with a vote of censure for not shooting Kellogg, too.”

“I’m not worried about that. What I want is Kellogg convicted.”

“You better worry, Jack,” Rainsford said. “You saw the combination against us at the hearing.”

Leslie Coombes, the Company’s top attorney, had come out from Mallorysport in a yacht rated at Mach 6, and he must have crowded it to the limit all the way. With him, almost on a leash, had come Mohammed Ali O’Brien, the Colonial Attorney General, who doubled as Chief Prosecutor. They had both tried to get the whole thing dismissed—self-defense for Holloway, and killing an unprotected wild animal for Kellogg. When that had failed, they had teamed in flagrant collusion to fight the inclusion of any evidence about the Fuzzies. After all it was only a complaint court; Lieutenant Lunt, as a police magistrate, had only the most limited powers.

“You saw how far they got, didn’t you?”

“I hope we don’t wish they’d succeeded,” Rainsford said gloomily.

“What do you mean, Ben?” Brannhard asked. “What do you think they’ll do?”

“I don’t know. That’s what worries me. We’re threatening the Zarathustra Company, and the Company’s too big to be threatened safely,” Rainsford replied. “They’ll try to frame something on Jack.”

“With veridication? That’s ridiculous, Ben.”

“Don’t you think we can prove sapience?” Gerd van Riebeek demanded.

“Who’s going to define sapience? And how?” Rainsford asked. “Why, between them, Coombes and O’Brien can even agree to accept the talk-and-build-a-fire rule.”

“Huh-uh!” Brannhard was positive. “Court ruling on that, about forty years ago, on Vishnu. Infanticide case, woman charged with murder in the death of her infant child. Her lawyer moved for dismissal on the grounds that murder is defined as the killing of a sapient being, a sapient being is defined as one that can talk and build a fire, and a newborn infant can do neither. Motion denied; the court ruled that while ability to speak and produce fire is positive proof of sapience, inability to do either or both does not constitute legal proof of nonsapience. If O’Brien doesn’t know that, and I doubt if he does, Coombes will.” Brannhard poured another drink and gulped it before the sapient beings around him could get at it. “You know what? I will make a small wager, and I will even give odds, that the first thing Ham O’Brien does when he gets back to Mallorysport will be to enter nolle prosequi on both charges. What I’d like would be for him to nol. pros. Kellogg and let the charge against Jack go to court. He would be dumb enough to do that himself, but Leslie Coombes wouldn’t let him.”

“But if he throws out the Kellogg case, that’s it,” Gerd van Riebeek said. “When Jack comes to trial, nobody’ll say a mumblin’ word about sapience.”

“I will, and I will not mumble it. You all know colonial law on homicide. In the case of any person killed while in commission of a felony, no prosecution may be brought in any degree, against anybody. I’m going to contend that Leonard Kellogg was murdering a sapient being, that Jack Holloway acted lawfully in attempting to stop it and that when Kurt Borch attempted to come to Kellogg’s assistance he, himself, was guilty of felony, and consequently any prosecution against Jack Holloway is illegal. And to make that contention stick, I shall have to say a great many words, and produce a great deal of testimony, about the sapience of Fuzzies.”

“It’ll have to be expert testimony,” Rainsford said. “The testimony of psychologists. I suppose you know that the only psychologists on this planet are employed by the chartered Zarathustra Company.” He drank what was left of his highball, looked at the bits of ice in the bottom of his glass and then rose to mix another one. “I’d have done the same as you did, Jack, but I still wish this hadn’t happened.”

“Huh!” Mamma Fuzzy looked up, startled by the exclamation. “What do you think Victor Grego’s wishing, right now?”

Victor Grego replaced the hand-phone. “Leslie, on the yacht,” he said. “They’re coming in now. They’ll stop at the hospital to drop Kellogg, and then they’re coming here.”

Nick Emmert nibbled a canape. He had reddish hair, pale eyes and a wide, bovine face.

“Holloway must have done him up pretty badly,” he said.

“I wish Holloway’d killed him!” He blurted it angrily, and saw the Resident General’s shocked expression.

“You don’t really mean that, Victor?”

“The devil I don’t!” He gestured at the recorder-player, which had just finished the tape of the hearing, transmitted from the yacht at sixty-speed. “That’s only a teaser to what’ll come out at the trial. You know what the Company’s epitaph will be? Kicked to death, along with a Fuzzy, by Leonard Kellogg.”

Everything would have worked out perfectly if Kellogg had only kept his head and avoided collision with Holloway. Why, even the killing of the Fuzzy and the shooting of Borch, inexcusable as that had been, wouldn’t have been so bad if it hadn’t been for that asinine murder complaint. That was what had provoked Holloway’s counter-complaint, which was what had done the damage.

And, now that he thought of it, it had been one of Kellogg’s people, van Riebeek, who had touched off the explosion in the first place. He didn’t know van Riebeek himself, but Kellogg should have, and he had handled him the wrong way. He should have known what van Riebeek would go along with and what he wouldn’t.

“But, Victor, they won’t convict Leonard of murder,” Emmert was saying. “Not for killing one of those little things.”

“‘Murder shall consist of the deliberate and unjustified killing of any sapient being, of any race,’” he quoted. “That’s the law. If they can prove in court that the Fuzzies are sapient beings….”

Then, some morning, a couple of deputy marshals would take Leonard Kellogg out in the jail yard and put a bullet through the back of his head, which, in itself, would be no loss. The trouble was, they would also be shooting an irreparable hole in the Zarathustra Company’s charter. Maybe Kellogg could be kept out of court, at that. There wasn’t a ship blasted off from Darius without a couple of drunken spacemen being hustled aboard at the last moment; with the job Holloway must have done, Kellogg should look just right as a drunken spaceman. The twenty-five thousand sols’ bond could be written off; that was pennies to the Company. No, that would still leave them stuck with the Holloway trial.

“You want me out of here when the others come, Victor?” Emmert asked, popping another canape into his mouth.

“No, no; sit still. This will be the last chance we’ll have to get everybody together; after this, we’ll have to avoid anything that’ll look like collusion.”

“Well, anything I can do to help; you know that, Victor,” Emmert said.

Yes, he knew that. If worst came to utter worst and the Company charter were invalidated, he could still hang on here, doing what he could to salvage something out of the wreckage—if not for the Company, then for Victor Grego. But if Zarathustra were reclassified, Nick would be finished. His title, his social position, his sinecure, his grafts and perquisites, his alias-shrouded Company expense account—all out the airlock. Nick would be counted upon to do anything he could—however much that would be.

He looked across the room at the levitated globe, revolving imperceptibly in the orange spotlight. It was full dark on Beta Continent now, where Leonard Kellogg had killed a Fuzzy named Goldilocks and Jack Holloway had killed a gunman named Kurt Borch. That angered him, too; hell of a gunman! Clear shot at the broad of a man’s back, and still got himself killed. Borch hadn’t been any better choice than Kellogg himself. What was the matter with him; couldn’t he pick men for jobs any more? And Ham O’Brien! No, he didn’t have to blame himself for O’Brien. O’Brien was one of Nick Emmert’s boys. And he hadn’t picked Nick, either.

The squawk-box on the desk made a premonitory noise, and a feminine voice advised him that Mr. Coombes and his party had arrived.

“All right; show them in.”

Coombes entered first, tall suavely elegant, with a calm, untroubled face. Leslie Coombes would wear the same serene expression in the midst of a bombardment or an earthquake. He had chosen Coombes for chief attorney, and thinking of that made him feel better. Mohammed Ali O’Brien was neither tall, elegant nor calm. His skin was almost black—he’d been born on Agni, under a hot B3 sun. His bald head glistened, and a big nose peeped over the ambuscade of a bushy white mustache. What was it they said about him? Only man on Zarathustra who could strut sitting down. And behind them, the remnant of the expedition to Beta Continent—Ernst Mallin, Juan Jimenez and Ruth Ortheris. Mallin was saying that it was a pity Dr. Kellogg wasn’t with them.

“I question that. Well, please be seated. We have a great deal to discuss, I’m afraid.”

Mr. Chief Justice Frederic Pendarvis moved the ashtray a few inches to the right and the slender vase with the spray of starflowers a few inches to the left. He set the framed photograph of the gentle-faced, white-haired woman directly in front of him. Then he took a thin cigar from the silver box, carefully punctured the end and lit it. Then, unable to think of further delaying tactics, he drew the two bulky loose-leaf books toward him and opened the red one, the criminal-case docket.

Something would have to be done about this; he always told himself so at this hour. Shoveling all this stuff onto Central Courts had been all right when Mallorysport had had a population of less than five thousand and nothing else on the planet had had more than five hundred, but that time was ten years past. The Chief Justice of a planetary colony shouldn’t have to wade through all this to see who had been accused of blotting the brand on a veldbeest calf or who’d taken a shot at whom in a barroom. Well, at least he’d managed to get a few misdemeanor and small-claims courts established; that was something.

The first case, of course, was a homicide. It usually was. From Beta, Constabulary Fifteen, Lieutenant George Lunt. Jack Holloway—so old Jack had cut another notch on his gun—Cold Creek Valley, Federation citizen, race Terran human; willful killing of a sapient being, to wit Kurt Borch, Mallorysport, Federation citizen, race Terran human. Complainant, Leonard Kellogg, the same. Attorney of record for the defendant, Gustavus Adolphus Brannhard. The last time Jack Holloway had killed anybody, it had been a couple of thugs who’d tried to steal his sunstones; it hadn’t even gotten into complaint court. This time he might be in trouble. Kellogg was a Company executive. He decided he’d better try the case himself. The Company might try to exert pressure.

The next charge was also homicide, from Constabulary, Beta Fifteen. He read it and blinked. Leonard Kellogg, willful killing of a sapient being, to wit, Jane Doe alias Goldilocks, aborigine, race Zarathustran Fuzzy, complainant, Jack Holloway, defendant’s attorney of record, Leslie Coombes. In spite of the outrageous frivolity of the charge, he began to laugh. It was obviously an attempt to ridicule Kellogg’s own complaint out of court. Every judicial jurisdiction ought to have at least one Gus Brannhard to liven things up a little. Race Zarathustran Fuzzy!

Then he stopped laughing suddenly and became deadly serious, like an engineer who finds a cataclysmite cartridge lying around primed and connected to a discharger. He reached out to the screen panel and began punching a combination. A spectacled young man appeared and greeted him deferentially.

“Good morning, Mr. Wilkins,” he replied. “A couple of homicides at the head of this morning’s docket—Holloway and Kellogg, both from Beta Fifteen. What is known about them?”

The young man began to laugh. “Oh, your Honor, they’re both a lot of nonsense. Dr. Kellogg killed some pet belonging to old Jack Holloway, the sunstone digger, and in the ensuing unpleasantness—Holloway can be very unpleasant, if he feels he has to—this man Borch, who seems to have been Kellogg’s bodyguard, made the suicidal error of trying to draw a gun on Holloway. I’m surprised at Lieutenant Lunt for letting either of those charges get past hearing court. Mr. O’Brien has entered nolle prosequi on both of them, so the whole thing can be disregarded.”

Mohammed O’Brien knew a charge of cataclysmite when he saw one, too. His impulse had been to pull the detonator. Well, maybe this charge ought to be shot, just to see what it would bring down.

“I haven’t approved the nolle prosequi yet, Mr. Wilkins,” he mentioned gently. “Would you please transmit to me the hearing tapes on these cases, at sixty-speed? I’ll take them on the recorder of this screen. Thank you.”

He reached out and made the necessary adjustments. Wilkins, the Clerk of the Courts, left the screen, and returned. There was a wavering scream for a minute and a half. Going to take more time than he had expected. Well.…

There wasn’t enough ice in the glass, and Leonard Kellogg put more in. Then there was too much, and he added more brandy. He shouldn’t have started drinking this early, be drunk by dinnertime if he kept it up, but what else was there to do? He couldn’t go out, not with his face like this. In any case, he wasn’t sure he wanted to.

They were all down on him. Ernst Mallin, and Ruth Ortheris, and even Juan Jimenez. At the constabulary post, Coombes and O’Brien had treated him like an idiot child who has to be hushed in front of company and coming back to Mallorysport they had ignored him completely. He drank quickly, and then there was too much ice in the glass again. Victor Grego had told him he’d better take a vacation till the trial was over, and put Mallin in charge of the division. Said he oughtn’t to be in charge while the division was working on defense evidence. Well, maybe; it looked like the first step toward shoving him completely out of the Company.

He dropped into a chair and lit a cigarette. It tasted badly, and after a few puffs he crushed it out. Well, what else could he have done? After they’d found that little grave, he had to make Gerd understand what it would mean to the Company. Juan and Ruth had been all right, but Gerd—The things Gerd had called him; the things he’d said about the Company. And then that call from Holloway, and the humiliation of being ordered out like a tramp.

And then that disgusting little beast had come pulling at his clothes, and he had pushed it away—well, kicked it maybe—and it had struck at him with the little spear it was carrying. Nobody but a lunatic would give a thing like that to an animal anyhow. And he had kicked it again, and it had screamed….

The communication screen in the next room was buzzing. Maybe that was Victor. He gulped the brandy left in the glass and hurried to it.

It was Leslie Coombes, his face remotely expressionless.

“Oh, hello, Leslie.”

“Good afternoon, Dr. Kellogg.” The formality of address was studiously rebuking. “The Chief Prosecutor just called me; Judge Pendarvis has denied the nolle prosequi he entered in your case and in Mr. Holloway’s, and ordered both cases to trial.”

“You mean they’re actually taking this seriously?”

“It is serious. If you’re convicted, the Company’s charter will be almost automatically voided. And, although this is important only to you personally, you might, very probably, be sentenced to be shot.” He shrugged that off, and continued: “Now, I’ll want to talk to you about your defense, for which I am responsible. Say ten-thirty tomorrow, at my office. I should, by that time, know what sort of evidence is going to be used against you. I will be expecting you, Dr. Kellogg.”

He must have said more than that, but that was all that registered. Leonard wasn’t really conscious of going back to the other room, until he realized that he was sitting in his relaxer chair, filling the glass with brandy. There was only a little ice in it, but he didn’t care.

They were going to try him for murder for killing that little animal, and Ham O’Brien had said they wouldn’t, he’d promised he’d keep the case from trial and he hadn’t, they were going to try him anyhow and if they convicted him they would take him out and shoot him for just killing a silly little animal he had killed it he’d kicked it and jumped on it he could still hear it screaming and feel the horrible soft crunching under his feet….

He gulped what was left in the glass and poured and gulped more. Then he staggered to his feet and stumbled over to the couch and threw himself onto it, face down, among the cushions.

Leslie Coombes found Nick Emmert with Victor Grego in the latter’s office when he entered. They both rose to greet him, and Grego said “You’ve heard?”

“Yes. O’Brien called me immediately. I called my client—my client of record, that is—and told him. I’m afraid it was rather a shock to him.”

“It wasn’t any shock to me,” Grego said as they sat down. “When Ham O’Brien’s as positive about anything as he was about that, I always expect the worst.”

“Pendarvis is going to try the case himself,” Emmert said. “I always thought he was a reasonable man, but what’s he trying to do now? Cut the Company’s throat?”

“He isn’t anti-Company. He isn’t pro-Company either. He’s just pro-law. The law says that a planet with native sapient inhabitants is a Class-IV planet, and has to have a Class-IV colonial government. If Zarathustra is a Class-IV planet, he wants it established, and the proper laws applied. If it’s a Class-IV planet, the Zarathustra Company is illegally chartered. It’s his job to put a stop to illegality. Frederic Pendarvis’ religion is the law, and he is its priest. You never get anywhere by arguing religion with a priest.”

They were both silent for a while after he had finished. Grego was looking at the globe, and he realized, now, that while he was proud of it, his pride was the pride in a paste jewel that stands for a real one in a bank vault. Now he was afraid that the real jewel was going to be stolen from him. Nick Emmert was just afraid.

“You were right yesterday, Victor. I wish Holloway’d killed that son of a Khooghra. Maybe it’s not too late—”

“Yes, it is, Nick. It’s too late to do anything like that. It’s too late to do anything but win the case in court.” He turned to Grego. “What are your people doing?”

Grego took his eyes from the globe. “Ernest Mallin’s studying all the filmed evidence we have and all the descriptions of Fuzzy behavior, and trying to prove that none of it is the result of sapient mentation. Ruth Ortheris is doing the same, only she’s working on the line of instinct and conditioned reflexes and nonsapient, single-stage reasoning. She has a lot of rats, and some dogs and monkeys, and a lot of apparatus, and some technician from Henry Stenson’s instrument shop helping her. Juan Jimenez is studying mentation of Terran dogs, cats and primates, and Freyan kholphs and Mimir black slinkers.”

“He hasn’t turned up any simian or canine parallels to that funeral, has he?”

Grego said nothing, merely shook his head. Emmert muttered something inaudible and probably indecent.

“I didn’t think he had. I only hope those Fuzzies don’t get up in court, build a bonfire and start making speeches in Lingua Terra.”

Nick Emmert cried out in panic. “You believe they’re sapient yourself!”

“Of course. Don’t you?”

Grego laughed sourly. “Nick thinks you have to believe a thing to prove it. It helps but it isn’t necessary. Say we’re a debating team; we’ve been handed the negative of the question. Resolved: that Fuzzies are Sapient Beings. Personally, I think we have the short end of it, but that only means we’ll have to work harder on it.”

“You know, I was on a debating team at college,” Emmert said brightly. When that was disregarded, he added: “If I remember, the first thing was definition of terms.”

Grego looked up quickly. “Leslie, I think Nick has something. What is the legal definition of a sapient being?”

“As far as I know, there isn’t any. Sapience is something that’s just taken for granted.”

“How about talk-and-build-a-fire?”

He shook his head. “People of the Colony of Vishnu versus Emily Morrosh, 612 A.E.” He told them about the infanticide case. “I was looking up rulings on sapience; I passed the word on to Ham O’Brien. You know, what your people will have to do will be to produce a definition of sapience, acceptable to the court, that will include all known sapient races and at the same time exclude the Fuzzies. I don’t envy them.”

“We need some Fuzzies of our own to study,” Grego said.

“Too bad we can’t get hold of Holloway’s,” Emmert said. “Maybe we could, if he leaves them alone at his camp.”

“No. We can’t risk that.” He thought for a moment. “Wait a moment. I think we might be able to do it at that. Legally.”

IX

Jack Holloway saw Little Fuzzy eying the pipe he had laid in the ashtray, and picked it up, putting it in his mouth. Little Fuzzy looked reproachfully at him and started to get down onto the floor. Pappy Jack was mean; didn’t he think a Fuzzy might want to smoke a pipe, too? Well, maybe it wouldn’t hurt him. He picked Little Fuzzy up and set him back on his lap, offering the pipestem. Little Fuzzy took a puff. He didn’t cough over it; evidently he had learned how to avoid inhaling.

“They scheduled the Kellogg trial first,” Gus Brannhard was saying, “and there wasn’t any way I could stop that. You see what the idea is? They’ll try him first, with Leslie Coombes running both the prosecution and the defense, and if they can get him acquitted, it’ll prejudice the sapience evidence we introduce in your trial.”

Mamma Fuzzy made another try at intercepting the drink he was hoisting, but he frustrated that. Baby had stopped trying to sit on his head, and was playing peek-a-boo from behind his whiskers.

“First,” he continued, “they’ll exclude every bit of evidence about the Fuzzies that they can. That won’t be much, but there’ll be a fight to get any of it in. What they can’t exclude, they’ll attack. They’ll attack credibility. Of course, with veridication, they can’t claim anybody’s lying, but they can claim self-deception. You make a statement you believe, true or false, and the veridicator’ll back you up on it. They’ll attack qualifications on expert testimony. They’ll quibble about statements of fact and statements of opinion. And what they can’t exclude or attack, they’ll accept, and then deny that it’s proof of sapience.

“What the hell do they want for proof of sapience?” Gerd demanded. “Nuclear energy and contragravity and hyperdrive?”

“They will have a nice, neat, pedantic definition of sapience, tailored especially to exclude the Fuzzies, and they will present it in court and try to get it accepted, and it’s up to us to guess in advance what that will be, and have a refutation of it ready, and also a definition of our own.”

“Their definition will have to include Khooghras. Gerd, do the Khooghras bury their dead?”

“Hell, no; they eat them. But you have to give them this, they cook them first.”

“Look, we won’t get anywhere arguing about what Fuzzies do and Khooghras don’t do,” Rainsford said. “We’ll have to get a definition of sapience. Remember what Ruth said Saturday night?”

Gerd van Riebeek looked as though he didn’t want to remember what Ruth had said, or even remember Ruth herself. Jack nodded, and repeated it. “I got the impression of non-sapient intelligence shading up to a sharp line, and then sapience shading up from there, maybe a different color, or wavy lines instead of straight ones.”

“That’s a good graphic representation,” Gerd said. “You know, that line’s so sharp I’d be tempted to think of sapience as a result of mutation, except that I can’t quite buy the same mutation happening in the same way on so many different planets.”

Ben Rainsford started to say something, then stopped short when a constabulary siren hooted over the camp. The Fuzzies looked up interestedly. They knew what that was. Pappy Jack’s friends in the blue clothes. Jack went to the door and opened it, putting the outside light on.

The car was landing; George Lunt, two of his men and two men in civilian clothes were getting out. Both the latter were armed, and one of them carried a bundle under his arm.

“Hello, George; come on in.”

“We want to talk to you, Jack.” Lunt’s voice was strained, empty of warmth or friendliness. “At least, these men do.”

“Why, yes. Sure.”

He backed into the room to permit them to enter. Something was wrong; something bad had come up. Khadra came in first, placing himself beside and a little behind him. Lunt followed, glancing quickly around and placing himself between Jack and the gunrack and also the holstered pistols on the table. The third trooper let the two strangers in ahead of him, and then closed the door and put his back against it. He wondered if the court might have cancelled his bond and ordered him into custody. The two strangers—a beefy man with a scrubby black mustache, and a smaller one with a thin, saturnine face—were looking expectantly at Lunt. Rainsford and van Riebeek were on their feet. Gus Brannhard leaned over to refill his glass, but did not rise.

“Let me have the papers,” Lunt said to the beefy stranger.

The other took a folded document and handed it over.

“Jack, this isn’t my idea,” Lunt said. “I don’t want to do it, but I have to. I wouldn’t want to shoot you, either, but you make any resistance and I will. I’m no Kurt Borch; I know you, and I won’t take any chances.”

“If you’re going to serve that paper, serve it,” the bigger of the two strangers said. “Don’t stand yakking all night.”

“Jack,” Lunt said uncomfortably, “this is a court order to impound your Fuzzies as evidence in the Kellogg case. These men are deputy marshals from Central Courts; they’ve been ordered to bring the Fuzzies into Mallorysport.”

“Let me see the order, Jack,” Brannhard said, still remaining seated.

Lunt handed it to Jack, and he handed it across to Brannhard. Gus had been drinking steadily all evening; maybe he was afraid he’d show it if he stood up. He looked at it briefly and nodded.

“Court order, all right, signed by the Chief Justice.” He handed it back. “They have to take the Fuzzies, and that’s all there is to it. Keep that order, though, and make them give you a signed and thumbprinted receipt. Type it up for them now, Jack.”

Gus wanted to busy him with something, so he wouldn’t have to watch what was going on. The smaller of the two deputies had dropped the bundle from under his arm. It was a number of canvas sacks. He sat down at the typewriter, closing his ears to the noises in the room, and wrote the receipt, naming the Fuzzies and describing them, and specifying that they were in good health and uninjured. One of them tried to climb to his lap, yeeking frantically; it clutched his shirt, but it was snatched away. He was finished with his work before the invaders were with theirs. They had three Fuzzies already in sacks. Khadra was catching Cinderella. Ko-Ko and Little Fuzzy had run for the little door in the outside wall, but Lunt was standing with his heels against it, holding it shut; when they saw that, both of them began burrowing in the bedding. The third trooper and the smaller of the two deputies dragged them out and stuffed them into sacks.

He got to his feet, still stunned and only half comprehending, and took the receipt out of the typewriter. There was an argument about it; Lunt told the deputies to sign it or get the hell out without the Fuzzies. They signed, inked their thumbs and printed after their signatures. Jack gave the paper to Gus, trying not to look at the six bulging, writhing sacks, or hear the frightened little sounds.

“George, you’ll let them have some of their things, won’t you?” he asked.

“Sure. What kind of things?”

“Their bedding. Some of their toys.”

“You mean this junk?” The smaller of the two deputies kicked the ball-and-stick construction. “All we got orders to take is the Fuzzies.”

“You heard the gentleman.” Lunt made the word sound worse than son of a Khooghra. He turned to the two deputies. “Well, you have them; what are you waiting for?”

Jack watched from the door as they put the sacks into the aircar, climbed in after them and lifted out. Then he came back and sat down at the table.

“They don’t know anything about court orders,” he said. “They don’t know why I didn’t stop it. They think Pappy Jack let them down.”

“Have they gone, Jack?” Brannhard asked. “Sure?” Then he rose, reaching behind him, and took up a little ball of white fur. Baby Fuzzy caught his beard with both tiny hands, yeeking happily.

“Baby! They didn’t get him!”

Brannhard disengaged the little hands from his beard and handed him over.

“No, and they signed for him, too.” Brannhard downed what was left of his drink, got a cigar out of his pocket and lit it. “Now, we’re going to go to Mallorysport and get the rest of them back.”

“But…. But the Chief Justice signed that order. He won’t give them back just because we ask him to.”

Brannhard made an impolite noise. “I’ll bet everything I own Pendarvis never saw that order. They have stacks of those things, signed in blank, in the Chief of the Court’s office. If they had to wait to get one of the judges to sign an order every time they wanted to subpoena a witness or impound physical evidence, they’d never get anything done. If Ham O’Brien didn’t think this up for himself, Leslie Coombes thought it up for him.”

“We’ll use my airboat,” Gerd said. “You coming along, Ben? Let’s get started.”

He couldn’t understand. The Big Ones in the blue clothes had been friends; they had given the whistles, and shown sorrow when the killed one was put in the ground. And why had Pappy Jack not gotten the big gun and stopped them. It couldn’t be that he was afraid; Pappy Jack was afraid of nothing.

The others were near, in bags like the one in which he had been put; he could hear them, and called to them. Then he felt the edge of the little knife Pappy Jack had made. He could cut his way out of this bag now and free the others, but that would be no use. They were in one of the things the Big Ones went up into the sky in, and if he got out now, there would be nowhere to go and they would be caught at once. Better to wait.

The one thing that really worried him was that he would not know where they were being taken. When they did get away, how would they ever find Pappy Jack again?

Gus Brannhard was nervous, showing it by being overtalkative, and that worried Jack. He’d stopped twice at mirrors along the hallway to make sure that his gold-threaded gray neckcloth was properly knotted and that his black jacket was zipped up far enough and not too far. Now, in front of the door marked THE CHIEF JUSTICE, he paused before pushing the button to fluff his newly shampooed beard.

There were two men in the Chief Justice’s private chambers. Pendarvis he had seen once or twice, but their paths had never crossed. He had a good face, thin and ascetic, the face of a man at peace with himself. With him was Mohammed Ali O’Brien, who seemed surprised to see them enter, and then apprehensive. Nobody shook hands; the Chief Justice bowed slightly and invited them to be seated.

“Now,” he continued, when they found chairs, “Miss Ugatori tells me that you are making complaint against an action by Mr. O’Brien here.”

“We are indeed, your Honor.” Brannhard opened his briefcase and produced two papers—the writ, and the receipt for the Fuzzies, handing them across the desk. “My client and I wish to know upon what basis of legality your Honor sanctioned this act, and by what right Mr. O’Brien sent his officers to Mr. Holloway’s camp to snatch these little people from their friend and protector, Mr. Holloway.”

The judge looked at the two papers. “As you know, Miss Ugatori took prints of them when you called to make this appointment. I’ve seen them. But believe me, Mr. Brannhard, this is the first time I have seen the original of this writ. You know how these things are signed in blank. It’s a practice that has saved considerable time and effort, and until now they have only been used when there was no question that I or any other judge would approve. Such a question should certainly have existed in this case, because had I seen this writ I would never have signed it.” He turned to the now fidgeting Chief Prosecutor. “Mr. O’Brien,” he said, “one simply does not impound sapient beings as evidence, as, say, one impounds a veldbeest calf in a brand-alteration case. The fact that the sapience of these Fuzzies is still sub judice includes the presumption of its possibility. Now you know perfectly well that the courts may take no action in the face of the possibility that some innocent person may suffer wrong.”

“And, your Honor,” Brannhard leaped into the breach, “it cannot be denied that these Fuzzies have suffered a most outrageous wrong! Picture them—no, picture innocent and artless children, for that is what these Fuzzies are, happy trusting little children, who, until then, had known only kindness and affection—rudely kidnapped, stuffed into sacks by brutal and callous men—”

“Your Honor!” O’Brien’s face turned even blacker than the hot sun of Agni had made it. “I cannot hear officers of the court so characterized without raising my voice in protest!”

“Mr. O’Brien seems to forget that he is speaking in the presence of two eye witnesses to this brutal abduction.”

“If the officers of the court need defense, Mr. O’Brien, the court will defend them. I believe that you should presently consider a defense of your own actions.”

“Your Honor, I insist that I only acted as I felt to be my duty,” O’Brien said. “These Fuzzies are a key exhibit in the case of People versus Kellogg, since only by demonstration of their sapience can any prosecution against the defendant be maintained.”

“Then why,” Brannhard demanded, “did you endanger them in this criminally reckless manner?”

“Endanger them?” O’Brien was horrified. “Your Honor, I acted only to insure their safety and appearance in court.”

“So you took them away from the only man on this planet who knows anything about their proper care, a man who loves them as he would his own human children, and you subjected them to abuse, which, for all you knew, might have been fatal to them.”

Judge Pendarvis nodded. “I don’t believe, Mr. Brannhard, that you have overstated the case. Mr. O’Brien, I take a very unfavorable view of your action in this matter. You had no right to have what are at least putatively sapient beings treated in this way, and even viewing them as mere physical evidence I must agree with Mr. Brannhard’s characterization of your conduct as criminally reckless. Now, speaking judicially, I order you to produce those Fuzzies immediately and return them to the custody of Mr. Holloway.”

“Well, of course, your Honor.” O’Brien had been growing progressively distraught, and his face now had the gray-over-brown hue of a walnut gunstock that has been out in the rain all day. “It’ll take an hour or so to send for them and have them brought here.”

“You mean they’re not in this building?” Pendarvis asked.

“Oh, no, your Honor, there are no facilities here. I had them taken to Science Center—”

“What?”

Jack had determined to keep his mouth shut and let Gus do the talking. The exclamation was literally forced out of him. Nobody noticed; it had also been forced out of both Gus Brannhard and Judge Pendarvis. Pendarvis leaned forward and spoke with dangerous mildness:

“Do you refer, Mr. O’Brien, to the establishment of the Division of Scientific Study and Research of the chartered Zarathustra Company?”

“Why, yes; they have facilities for keeping all kinds of live animals, and they do all the scientific work for—”

Pendarvis cursed blasphemously. Brannhard looked as startled as though his own briefcase had jumped at his throat and tried to bite him. He didn’t look half as startled as Ham O’Brien did.

“So you think,” Pendarvis said, recovering his composure with visible effort, “that the logical custodian of prosecution evidence in a murder trial is the defendant? Mr. O’Brien, you simply enlarge my view of the possible!”

“The Zarathustra Company isn’t the defendant,” O’Brien argued sullenly.

“Not of record, no,” Brannhard agreed. “But isn’t the Zarathustra Company’s scientific division headed by one Leonard Kellogg?”

“Dr. Kellogg’s been relieved of his duties, pending the outcome of the trial. The division is now headed by Dr. Ernst Mallin.”

“Chief scientific witness for the defense; I fail to see any practical difference.”

“Well, Mr. Emmert said it would be all right,” O’Brien mumbled.

“Jack, did you hear that?” Brannhard asked. “Treasure it in your memory. You may have to testify to it in court sometime.” He turned to the Chief Justice. “Your Honor, may I suggest the recovery of these Fuzzies be entrusted to Colonial Marshal Fane, and may I further suggest that Mr. O’Brien be kept away from any communication equipment until they are recovered.”

“That sounds like a prudent suggestion, Mr. Brannhard. Now, I’ll give you an order for the surrender of the Fuzzies, and a search warrant, just to be on the safe side. And, I think, an Orphans’ Court form naming Mr. Holloway as guardian of these putatively sapient beings. What are their names? Oh, I have them here on this receipt.” He smiled pleasantly. “See, Mr. O’Brien, we’re saving you a lot of trouble.”

O’Brien had little enough wit to protest. “But these are the defendant and his attorney in another murder case I’m prosecuting,” he began.

Pendarvis stopped smiling. “Mr. O’Brien, I doubt if you’ll be allowed to prosecute anything or anybody around here any more, and I am specifically relieving you of any connection with either the Kellogg or the Holloway trial, and if I hear any argument out of you about it, I will issue a bench warrant for your arrest on charges of malfeasance in office.”

LITTLE FUZZY (Part 4), by H. Beam Piper

X

Colonial Marshal Max Fane was as heavy as Gus Brannhard and considerably shorter. Wedged between them on the back seat of the marshal’s car, Jack Holloway contemplated the backs of the two uniformed deputies on the front seat and felt a happy smile spread through him. Going to get his Fuzzies back. Little Fuzzy, and Ko-Ko, and Mike, and Mamma Fuzzy, and Mitzi, and Cinderella; he named them over and imagined them crowding around him, happy to be back with Pappy Jack.

The car settled onto the top landing stage of the Company’s Science Center, and immediately a Company cop came running up. Gus opened the door, and Jack climbed out after him.

“Hey, you can’t land here!” the cop was shouting. “This is for Company executives only!”

Max Fane emerged behind them and stepped forward; the two deputies piled out from in front.

“The hell you say, now,” Fane said. “A court order lands anywhere. Bring him along, boys; we wouldn’t want him to go and bump himself on a communication screen anywhere.”

The Company cop started to protest, then subsided and fell in between the deputies. Maybe it was beginning to dawn on him that the Federation courts were bigger than the chartered Zarathustra Company after all. Or maybe he just thought there’d been a revolution.

Leonard Kellogg’s—temporarily Ernst Mallin’s—office was on the first floor of the penthouse, counting down from the top landing stage. When they stepped from the escalator, the hall was crowded with office people, gabbling excitedly in groups; they all stopped talking as soon as they saw what was coming. In the division chief’s outer office three or four girls jumped to their feet; one of them jumped into the bulk of Marshal Fane, which had interposed itself between her and the communication screen. They were all shooed out into the hall, and one of the deputies was dropped there with the prisoner. The middle office was empty. Fane took his badgeholder in his left hand as he pushed through the door to the inner office.

Kellogg’s—temporarily Mallin’s—secretary seemed to have preceded them by a few seconds; she was standing in front of the desk sputtering incoherently. Mallin, starting to rise from his chair, froze, hunched forward over the desk. Juan Jimenez, standing in the middle of the room, seemed to have seen them first; he was looking about wildly as though for some way of escape.

Fane pushed past the secretary and went up to the desk, showing Mallin his badge and then serving the papers. Mallin looked at him in bewilderment.

“But we’re keeping those Fuzzies for Mr. O’Brien, the Chief Prosecutor,” he said. “We can’t turn them over without his authorization.”

“This,” Max Fane said gently, “is an order of the court, issued by Chief Justice Pendarvis. As for Mr. O’Brien, I doubt if he’s Chief Prosecutor any more. In fact, I suspect that he’s in jail. And that,” he shouted, leaning forward as far as his waistline would permit and banging on the desk with his fist, “is where I’m going to stuff you, if you don’t get those Fuzzies in here and turn them over immediately!”

If Fane had suddenly metamorphosed himself into a damnthing, it couldn’t have shaken Mallin more. Involuntarily he cringed from the marshal, and that finished him.

“But I can’t,” he protested. “We don’t know exactly where they are at the moment.”

“You don’t know.” Fane’s voice sank almost to a whisper. “You admit you’re holding them here, but you…don’t…know…where. Now start over again; tell the truth this time!”

At that moment, the communication screen began making a fuss. Ruth Ortheris, in a light blue tailored costume, appeared in it.

“Dr. Mallin, what is going on here?” she wanted to know. “I just came in from lunch, and a gang of men are tearing my office up. Haven’t you found the Fuzzies yet?”

“What’s that?” Jack yelled. At the same time, Mallin was almost screaming: “Ruth! Shut up! Blank out and get out of the building!”

With surprising speed for a man of his girth, Fane whirled and was in front of the screen, holding his badge out.

“I’m Colonel Marshal Fane. Now, young woman; I want you up here right away. Don’t make me send anybody after you, because I won’t like that and neither will you.”

“Right away, Marshal.” She blanked the screen.

Fane turned to Mallin. “Now.” He wasn’t bothering with vocal tricks any more. “Are you going to tell me the truth, or am I going to run you in and put a veridicator on you? Where are those Fuzzies?”

“But I don’t know!” Mallin wailed. “Juan, you tell him; you took charge of them. I haven’t seen them since they were brought here.”

Jack managed to fight down the fright that was clutching at him and got control of his voice.

“If anything’s happened to those Fuzzies, you two are going to envy Kurt Borch before I’m through with you,” he said.

“All right, how about it?” Fane asked Jimenez. “Start with when you and Ham O’Brien picked up the Fuzzies at Central Courts Building last night.

“Well, we brought them here. I’d gotten some cages fixed up for them, and—”

Ruth Ortheris came in. She didn’t try to avoid Jack’s eyes, nor did she try to brazen it out with him. She merely nodded distantly, as though they’d met on a ship sometime, and sat down.

“What happened, Marshal?” she asked. “Why are you here with these gentlemen?”

“The court’s ordered the Fuzzies returned to Mr. Holloway.” Mallin was in a dither. “He has some kind a writ or something, and we don’t know where they are.”

“Oh, no!” Ruth’s face, for an instant, was dismay itself. “Not when—” Then she froze shut.

“I came in about o-seven-hundred,” Jimenez was saying, “to give them food and water, and they’d broken out of their cages. The netting was broken loose on one cage and the Fuzzy that had been in it had gotten out and let the others out. They got into my office—they made a perfect shambles of it—and got out the door into the hall, and now we don’t know where they are. And I don’t know how they did any of it.”

Cages built for something with no hands and almost no brains. Ever since Kellogg and Mallin had come to the camp, Mallin had been hypnotizing himself into the just-silly-little-animals doctrine. He must have succeeded; last night he’d acted accordingly.

“We want to see the cages,” Jack said.

“Yeah.” Fane went to the outer door. “Miguel.”

The deputy came in, herding the Company cop ahead of him.

“You heard what happened?” Fane asked.

“Yeah. Big Fuzzy jailbreak. What did they do, make little wooden pistols and bluff their way out?”

“By God, I wouldn’t put it past them. Come along. Bring Chummy along with you; he knows the inside of this place better than we do. Piet, call in. We want six more men. Tell Chang to borrow from the constabulary if he has to.”

“Wait a minute,” Jack said. He turned to Ruth. “What do you know about this?”

“Well, not much. I was with Dr. Mallin here when Mr. Grego—I mean, Mr. O’Brien—called to tell us that the Fuzzies were going to be kept here till the trial. We were going to fix up a room for them, but till that could be done, Juan got some cages to put them in. That was all I knew about it till o-nine-thirty, when I came in and found everything in an uproar and was told that the Fuzzies had gotten loose during the night. I knew they couldn’t get out of the building, so I went to my office and lab to start overhauling some equipment we were going to need with the Fuzzies. About ten-hundred, I found I couldn’t do anything with it, and my assistant and I loaded it on a pickup truck and took it to Henry Stenson’s instrument shop. By the time I was through there, I had lunch and then came back here.”

He wondered briefly how a polyencephalographic veridicator would react to some of those statements; might be a good idea if Max Fane found out.

“I’ll stay here,” Gus Brannhard was saying, “and see if I can get some more truth out of these people.”

“Why don’t you screen the hotel and tell Gerd and Ben what’s happened?” he asked. “Gerd used to work here; maybe he could help us hunt.”

“Good idea. Piet, tell our re-enforcements to stop at the Mallory on the way and pick him up.” Fane turned to Jimenez. “Come along; show us where you had these Fuzzies and how they got away.”

“You say one of them broke out of his cage and then released the others,” Jack said to Jimenez as they were going down on the escalator. “Do you know which one it was?”

Jimenez shook his head. “We just took them out of the bags and put them into the cages.”

That would be Little Fuzzy; he’d always been the brains of the family. With his leadership, they might have a chance. The trouble was that this place was full of dangers Fuzzies knew nothing about—radiation and poisons and electric wiring and things like that. If they really had escaped. That was a possibility that began worrying Jack.

On each floor they passed going down, he could glimpse parties of Company employees in the halls, armed with nets and blankets and other catching equipment. When they got off Jimenez led them through a big room of glass cases—mounted specimens and articulated skeletons of Zarathustran mammals. More people were there, looking around and behind and even into the cases. He began to think that the escape was genuine, and not just a cover-up for the murder of the Fuzzies.

Jimenez took them down a narrow hall beyond to an open door at the end. Inside, the permanent night light made a blue-white glow; a swivel chair stood just inside the door. Jimenez pointed to it.

“They must have gotten up on that to work the latch and open the door,” he said.

It was like the doors at the camp, spring latch, with a handle instead of a knob. They’d have learned how to work it from watching him. Fane was trying the latch.

“Not too stiff,” he said. “Your little fellows strong enough to work it?”

He tried it and agreed. “Sure. And they’d be smart enough to do it, too. Even Baby Fuzzy, the one your men didn’t get, would be able to figure that out.”

“And look what they did to my office,” Jimenez said, putting on the lights.

They’d made quite a mess of it. They hadn’t delayed long to do it, just thrown things around. Everything was thrown off the top of the desk. They had dumped the wastebasket, and left it dumped. He saw that and chuckled. The escape had been genuine all right.

“Probably hunting for things they could use as weapons, and doing as much damage as they could in the process.” There was evidently a pretty wide streak of vindictiveness in Fuzzy character. “I don’t think they like you, Juan.”

“Wouldn’t blame them,” Fane said. “Let’s see what kind of a houdini they did on these cages now.”

The cages were in a room—file room, storeroom, junk room—behind Jimenez’s office. It had a spring lock, too, and the Fuzzies had dragged one of the cages over and stood on it to open the door. The cages themselves were about three feet wide and five feet long, with plywood bottoms, wooden frames and quarter-inch netting on the sides and tops. The tops were hinged, and fastened with hasps, and bolts slipped through the staples with nuts screwed on them. The nuts had been unscrewed from five and the bolts slipped out; the sixth cage had been broken open from the inside, the netting cut away from the frame at one corner and bent back in a triangle big enough for a Fuzzy to crawl through.

“I can’t understand that,” Jimenez was saying. “Why that wire looks as though it had been cut.”

“It was cut. Marshal, I’d pull somebody’s belt about this, if I were you. Your men aren’t very careful about searching prisoners. One of the Fuzzies hid a knife out on them.” He remembered how Little Fuzzy and Ko-Ko had burrowed into the bedding in apparently unreasoning panic, and explained about the little spring-steel knives he had made. “I suppose he palmed it and hugged himself into a ball, as though he was scared witless, when they put him in the bag.”

“Waited till he was sure he wouldn’t get caught before he used it, too,” the marshal said. “That wire’s soft enough to cut easily.” He turned to Jimenez. “You people ought to be glad I’m ineligible for jury duty. Why don’t you just throw it in and let Kellogg cop a plea?”

Gerd van Riebeek stopped for a moment in the doorway and looked into what had been Leonard Kellogg’s office. The last time he’d been here, Kellogg had had him on the carpet about that land-prawn business. Now Ernst Mallin was sitting in Kellogg’s chair, trying to look unconcerned and not making a very good job of it. Gus Brannhard sprawled in an armchair, smoking a cigar and looking at Mallin as he would look at a river pig when he doubted whether it was worth shooting it or not. A uniformed deputy turned quickly, then went back to studying an elaborate wall chart showing the interrelation of Zarathustran mammals—he’d made the original of that chart himself. And Ruth Ortheris sat apart from the desk and the three men, smoking. She looked up and then, when she saw that he was looking past and away from her, she lowered her eyes.

“You haven’t found them?” he asked Brannhard.

The fluffy-bearded lawyer shook his head. “Jack has a gang down in the cellar, working up. Max is in the psychology lab, putting the Company cops who were on duty last night under veridication. They all claim, and the veridicator backs them up, that it was impossible for the Fuzzies to get out of the building.”

“They don’t know what’s impossible, for a Fuzzy.”

“That’s what I told him. He didn’t give me any argument, either. He’s pretty impressed with how they got out of those cages.”

Ruth spoke. “Gerd, we didn’t hurt them. We weren’t going to hurt them at all. Juan put them in cages because we didn’t have any other place for them, but we were going to fix up a nice room, where they could play together….” Then she must have seen that he wasn’t listening, and stopped, crushing out her cigarette and rising. “Dr. Mallin, if these people haven’t any more questions to ask me, I have a lot of work to do.”

“You want to ask her anything, Gerd?” Brannhard inquired.

Once he had had something very important he had wanted to ask her. He was glad, now, that he hadn’t gotten around to it. Hell, she was so married to the Company it’d be bigamy if she married him too.

“No, I don’t want to talk to her at all.”

She started for the door, then hesitated. “Gerd, I….” she began. Then she went out. Gus Brannhard looked after her, and dropped the ash of his cigar on Leonard Kellogg’s—now Ernst Mallin’s—floor.

Gerd detested her, and she wouldn’t have had any respect for him if he didn’t. She ought to have known that something like this would happen. It always did, in the business. A smart girl, in the business, never got involved with any one man; she always got herself four or five boyfriends, on all possible sides, and played them off one against another.

She’d have to get out of the Science Center right away. Marshal Fane was questioning people under veridication; she didn’t dare let him get around to her. She didn’t dare go to her office; the veridicator was in the lab across the hall, and that’s where he was working. And she didn’t dare—

Yes, she could do that, by screen. She went into an office down the hall; a dozen people recognized her at once and began bombarding her with questions about the Fuzzies. She brushed them off and went to a screen, punching a combination. After a slight delay, an elderly man with a thin-lipped, bloodless face appeared. When he recognized her, there was a brief look of annoyance on the thin face.

“Mr. Stenson,” she began, before he could say anything: “That apparatus I brought to your shop this morning—the sensory-response detector—we’ve made a simply frightful mistake. There’s nothing wrong with it whatever, and if anything’s done with it, it may cause serious damage.”

“I don’t think I understand, Dr. Ortheris.”

“Well, it was a perfectly natural mistake. You see, we’re all at our wits’ end here. Mr. Holloway and his lawyer and the Colonial Marshal are here with an order from Judge Pendarvis for the return of those Fuzzies. None of us know what we’re doing at all. Why the whole trouble with the apparatus was the fault of the operator. We’ll have to have it back immediately, all of it.”

“I see, Dr. Ortheris.” The old instrument maker looked worried. “But I’m afraid the apparatus has already gone to the workroom. Mr. Stephenson has it now, and I can’t get in touch with him at present. If the mistake can be corrected, what do you want done?”

“Just hold it; I’ll call or send for it.”

She blanked the screen. Old Johnson, the chief data synthesist, tried to detain her with some question.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Johnson. I can’t stop now. I have to go over to Company House right away.”

The suite at the Hotel Mallory was crowded when Jack Holloway returned with Gerd van Riebeek; it was noisy with voices, and the ventilators were laboring to get rid of the tobacco smoke. Gus Brannhard, Ben Rainsford and Baby Fuzzy were meeting the press.

“Oh, Mr. Holloway!” somebody shouted as he entered. “Have you found them yet?”

“No; we’ve been all over Science Center from top to bottom. We know they went down a few floors from where they’d been caged, but that’s all. I don’t think they could have gotten outside; the only exit on the ground level’s through a vestibule where a Company policeman was on duty, and there’s no way for them to have climbed down from any of the terraces or landing stages.”

“Well, Mr. Holloway, I hate to suggest this,” somebody else said, “but have you eliminated the possibility that they may have hidden in a trash bin and been dumped into the mass-energy converter?”

“We thought of that. The converter’s underground, in a vault that can be entered only by one door, and that was locked. No trash was disposed of between the time they were brought there and the time the search started, and everything that’s been sent to the converter since has been checked piece by piece.”

“Well, I’m glad to hear that, Mr. Holloway, and I know that everybody hearing this will be glad, too. I take it you’ve not given up looking for them?”

“Are we on the air now? No, I have not; I’m staying here in Mallorysport until I either find them or am convinced that they aren’t in the city. And I am offering a reward of two thousand sols apiece for their return to me. If you’ll wait a moment, I’ll have descriptions ready for you….”

Victor Grego unstoppered the refrigerated cocktail jug. “More?” he asked Leslie Coombes.

“Yes, thank you.” Coombes held his glass until it was filled. “As you say, Victor, you made the decision, but you made it on my advice, and the advice was bad.”

He couldn’t disagree, even politely, with that. He hoped it hadn’t been ruinously bad. One thing, Leslie wasn’t trying to pass the buck, and considering how Ham O’Brien had mishandled his end of it, he could have done so quite plausibly.

“I used bad judgment,” Coombes said dispassionately, as though discussing some mistake Hitler had made, or Napoleon. “I thought O’Brien wouldn’t try to use one of those presigned writs, and I didn’t think Pendarvis would admit, publicly, that he signed court orders in blank. He’s been severely criticized by the press about that.”

He hadn’t thought Brannhard and Holloway would try to fight a court order either. That was one of the consequences of being too long in a seemingly irresistible position; you didn’t expect resistance. Kellogg hadn’t expected Jack Holloway to order him off his land grant. Kurt Borch had thought all he needed to do with a gun was pull it and wave it around. And Jimenez had expected the Fuzzies to just sit in their cages.

“I wonder where they got to,” Coombes was saying. “I understand they couldn’t be found at all in the building.”

“Ruth Ortheris has an idea. She got away from Science Center before Fane could get hold of her and veridicate her. It seems she and an assistant took some apparatus out, about ten o’clock, in a truck. She thinks the Fuzzies hitched a ride with her. I know that sounds rather improbable, but hell, everything else sounds impossible. I’ll have it followed up. Maybe we can find them before Holloway does. They’re not inside Science Center, that’s sure.” His own glass was empty; he debated a refill and voted against it. “O’Brien’s definitely out, I take it?”

“Completely. Pendarvis gave him his choice of resigning or facing malfeasance charges.”

“They couldn’t really convict him of malfeasance for that, could they? Misfeasance, maybe, but—”

“They could charge him. And then they could interrogate him under veridication about his whole conduct in office, and you know what they would bring out,” Coombes said. “He almost broke an arm signing his resignation. He’s still Attorney General of the Colony, of course; Nick issued a statement supporting him. That hasn’t done Nick as much harm as O’Brien could do spilling what he knows about Residency affairs.

“Now Brannhard is talking about bringing suit against the Company, and he’s furnishing copies of all the Fuzzy films Holloway has to the news services. Interworld News is going hog-wild with it, and even the services we control can’t play it down too much. I don’t know who’s going to be prosecuting these cases; but whoever it is, he won’t dare pull any punches. And the whole thing’s made Pendarvis hostile to us. I know, the law and the evidence and nothing but the law and the evidence, but the evidence is going to filter into his conscious mind through this hostility. He’s called a conference with Brannhard and myself for tomorrow afternoon; I don’t know what that’s going to be like.”

XI

The two lawyers had risen hastily when Chief Justice Pendarvis entered; he responded to their greetings and seated himself at his desk, reaching for the silver cigar box and taking out a panatela. Gustavus Adolphus Brannhard picked up the cigar he had laid aside and began puffing on it; Leslie Coombes took a cigarette from his case. They both looked at him, waiting like two drawn weapons—a battle ax and a rapier.

“Well, gentlemen, as you know, we have a couple of homicide cases and nobody to prosecute them,” he began.

“Why bother, your Honor?” Coombes asked. “Both charges are completely frivolous. One man killed a wild animal, and the other killed a man who was trying to kill him.”

“Well, your Honor, I don’t believe my client is guilty of anything, legally or morally,” Brannhard said. “I want that established by an acquittal.” He looked at Coombes. “I should think Mr. Coombes would be just as anxious to have his client cleared of any stigma of murder, too.”

“I am quite agreed. People who have been charged with crimes ought to have public vindication if they are innocent. Now, in the first place, I planned to hold the Kellogg trial first, and then the Holloway trial. Are you both satisfied with that arrangement?”

“Absolutely not, your Honor,” Brannhard said promptly. “The whole basis of the Holloway defense is that this man Borch was killed in commission of a felony. We’re prepared to prove that, but we don’t want our case prejudiced by an earlier trial.”

Coombes laughed. “Mr. Brannhard wants to clear his client by preconvicting mine. We can’t agree to anything like that.”

“Yes, and he is making the same objection to trying your client first. Well, I’m going to remove both objections. I’m going to order the two cases combined, and both defendants tried together.”

A momentary glow of unholy glee on Gus Brannhard’s face; Coombes didn’t like the idea at all.

“Your Honor, I trust that that suggestion was only made facetiously,” he said.

“It wasn’t, Mr. Coombes.”

“Then if your Honor will not hold me in contempt for saying so, it is the most shockingly irregular—I won’t go so far as to say improper—trial procedure I’ve ever heard of. This is not a case of accomplices charged with the same crime; this is a case of two men charged with different criminal acts, and the conviction of either would mean the almost automatic acquittal of the other. I don’t know who’s going to be named to take Mohammed O’Brien’s place, but I pity him from the bottom of my heart. Why, Mr. Brannhard and I could go off somewhere and play poker while the prosecutor would smash the case to pieces.”

“Well, we won’t have just one prosecutor, Mr. Coombes, we will have two. I’ll swear you and Mr. Brannhard in as special prosecutors, and you can prosecute Mr. Brannhard’s client, and he yours. I think that would remove any further objections.”

It was all he could do to keep his face judicially grave and unmirthful. Brannhard was almost purring, like a big tiger that had just gotten the better of a young goat; Leslie Coombes’s suavity was beginning to crumble slightly at the edges.

“Your Honor, that is a most excellent suggestion,” Brannhard declared. “I will prosecute Mr. Coombes’s client with the greatest pleasure in the universe.”

“Well, all I can say, your Honor, is that if the first proposal was the most irregular I had ever heard, the record didn’t last long!”

“Why, Mr. Coombes, I went over the law and the rules of jurisprudence very carefully, and I couldn’t find a word that could be construed as disallowing such a procedure.”

“I’ll bet you didn’t find any precedent for it either!”

Leslie Coombes should have known better than that; in colonial law, you can find a precedent for almost anything.

“How much do you bet, Leslie?” Brannhard asked, a larcenous gleam in his eye.

“Don’t let him take your money away from you. I found, inside an hour, sixteen precedents, from twelve different planetary jurisdictions.”

“All right, your Honor,” Coombes capitulated. “But I hope you know what you’re doing. You’re turning a couple of cases of the People of the Colony into a common civil lawsuit.”

Gus Brannhard laughed. “What else is it?” he demanded. “Friends of Little Fuzzy versus The chartered Zarathustra Company; I’m bringing action as friend of incompetent aborigines for recognition of sapience, and Mr. Coombes, on behalf of the Zarathustra Company, is contesting to preserve the Company’s charter, and that’s all there is or ever was to this case.”

That was impolite of Gus. Leslie Coombes had wanted to go on to the end pretending that the Company charter had absolutely nothing to do with it.

There was an unending stream of reports of Fuzzies seen here and there, often simultaneously in impossibly distant parts of the city. Some were from publicity seekers and pathological liars and crackpots; some were the result of honest mistakes or overimaginativeness. There was some reason to suspect that not a few had originated with the Company, to confuse the search. One thing did come to light which heartened Jack Holloway. An intensive if concealed search was being made by the Company police, and by the Mallorysport police department, which the Company controlled.

Max Fane was giving every available moment to the hunt. This wasn’t because of ill will for the Company, though that was present, nor because the Chief Justice was riding him. The Colonial Marshal was pro-Fuzzy. So were the Colonial Constabulary, over whom Nick Emmert’s administration seemed to have little if any authority. Colonel Ian Ferguson, the commandant, had his appointment direct from the Colonial Office on Terra. He had called by screen to offer his help, and George Lunt, over on Beta, screened daily to learn what progress was being made.

Living at the Hotel Mallory was expensive, and Jack had to sell some sunstones. The Company gem buyers were barely civil to him; he didn’t try to be civil at all. There was also a noticeable coolness toward him at the bank. On the other hand, on several occasions, Space Navy officers and ratings down from Xerxes Base went out of their way to accost him, introduce themselves, shake hands with him and give him their best wishes.

Once, in one of the weather-domed business centers, an elderly man with white hair showing under his black beret greeted him.

“Mr. Holloway I want to tell you how grieved I am to learn about the disappearance of those little people of yours,” he said. “I’m afraid there’s nothing I can do to help you, but I hope they turn up safely.”

“Why, thank you, Mr. Stenson.” He shook hands with the old master instrument maker. “If you could make me a pocket veridicator, to use on some of these people who claim they saw them, it would be a big help.”

“Well, I do make rather small portable veridicators for the constabulary, but I think what you need is an instrument for detection of psychopaths, and that’s slightly beyond science at present. But if you’re still prospecting for sunstones, I have an improved micro-ray scanner I just developed, and….”

He walked with Stenson to his shop, had a cup of tea and looked at the scanner. From Stenson’s screen, he called Max Fane. Six more people had claimed to have seen the Fuzzies.

Within a week, the films taken at the camp had been shown so frequently on telecast as to wear out their interest value. Baby, however, was still available for new pictures, and in a few days a girl had to be hired to take care of his fan mail. Once, entering a bar, Jack thought he saw Baby sitting on a woman’s head. A second look showed that it was only a life-sized doll, held on with an elastic band. Within a week, he was seeing Baby Fuzzy hats all over town, and shop windows were full of life-sized Fuzzy dolls.

In the late afternoon, two weeks after the Fuzzies had vanished, Marshal Fane dropped him at the hotel. They sat in the car for a moment, and Fane said:

“I think this is the end of it. We’re all out of cranks and exhibitionists now.”

He nodded. “That woman we were talking to. She’s crazy as a bedbug.”

“Yeah. In the past ten years she’s confessed to every unsolved crime on the planet. It shows you how hard up we are that I waste your time and mine listening to her.”

“Max, nobody’s seen them. You think they just aren’t, any more, don’t you?”

The fat man looked troubled. “Well, Jack, it isn’t so much that nobody’s seen them. Nobody’s seen any trace of them. There are land-prawns all around, but nobody’s found a cracked shell. And six active, playful, inquisitive Fuzzies ought to be getting into things. They ought to be raiding food markets, and fruit stands, getting into places and ransacking. But there hasn’t been a thing. The Company police have stopped looking for them now.”

“Well, I won’t. They must be around somewhere.” He shook Fane’s hand, and got out of the car. “You’ve been awfully helpful, Max. I want you to know how much I thank you.”

He watched the car lift away, and then looked out over the city—a vista of treetop green, with roofs and the domes of shopping centers and business centers and amusement centers showing through, and the angular buttes of tall buildings rising above. The streetless contragravity city of a new planet that had never known ground traffic. The Fuzzies could be hiding anywhere among those trees—or they could all be dead in some man-made trap. He thought of all the deadly places into which they could have wandered. Machinery, dormant and quiet, until somebody threw a switch. Conduits, which could be flooded without warning, or filled with scalding steam or choking gas. Poor little Fuzzies, they’d think a city was as safe as the woods of home, where there was nothing worse than harpies and damnthings.

Gus Brannhard was out when he went down to the suite; Ben Rainsford was at a reading screen, studying a psychology text, and Gerd was working at a desk that had been brought in. Baby was playing on the floor with the bright new toys they had gotten for him. When Pappy Jack came in, he dropped them and ran to be picked up and held.

“George called,” Gerd said. “They have a family of Fuzzies at the post now.”

“Well, that’s great.” He tried to make it sound enthusiastic. “How many?”

“Five, three males and two females. They call them Dr. Crippen, Dillinger, Ned Kelly, Lizzie Borden and Calamity Jane.”

Wouldn’t it be just like a bunch of cops to hang names like that on innocent Fuzzies?

“Why don’t you call the post and say hello to them?” Ben asked.

“Baby likes them; he’d think it was fun to talk to them again.”

He let himself be urged into it, and punched out the combination. They were nice Fuzzies; almost, but of course not quite, as nice as his own.

“If your family doesn’t turn up in time for the trial, have Gus subpoena ours,” Lunt told him. “You ought to have some to produce in court. Two weeks from now, this mob of ours will be doing all kinds of things. You ought to see them now, and we only got them yesterday afternoon.”

He said he hoped he’d have his own by then; he realized that he was saying it without much conviction.

They had a drink when Gus came in. He was delighted with the offer from Lunt. Another one who didn’t expect to see Pappy Jack’s Fuzzies alive again.

“I’m not doing a damn thing here,” Rainsford said. “I’m going back to Beta till the trial. Maybe I can pick up some ideas from George Lunt’s Fuzzies. I’m damned if I’m getting away from this crap!” He gestured at the reading screen. “All I have is a vocabulary, and I don’t know what half the words mean.” He snapped it off. “I’m beginning to wonder if maybe Jimenez mightn’t have been right and Ruth Ortheris is wrong. Maybe you can be just a little bit sapient.”

“Maybe it’s possible to be sapient and not know it,” Gus said. “Like the character in the old French play who didn’t know he was talking prose.”

“What do you mean, Gus?” Gerd asked.

“I’m not sure I know. It’s just an idea that occurred to me today. Kick it around and see if you can get anything out of it.”

“I believe the difference lies in the area of consciousness,” Ernst Mallin was saying. “You all know, of course, the axiom that only one-tenth, never more than one-eighth, of our mental activity occurs above the level of consciousness. Now let us imagine a hypothetical race whose entire mentation is conscious.”

“I hope they stay hypothetical,” Victor Grego, in his office across the city, said out of the screen. “They wouldn’t recognize us as sapient at all.”

“We wouldn’t be sapient, as they’d define the term,” Leslie Coombes, in the same screen with Grego, said. “They’d have some equivalent of the talk-and-build-a-fire rule, based on abilities of which we can’t even conceive.”

Maybe, Ruth thought, they might recognize us as one-tenth to as much as one-eighth sapient. No, then we’d have to recognize, say, a chimpanzee as being one-one-hundredth sapient, and a flatworm as being sapient to the order of one-billionth.

“Wait a minute,” she said. “If I understand, you mean that nonsapient beings think, but only subconsciously?”

“That’s correct, Ruth. When confronted by some entirely novel situation, a nonsapient animal will think, but never consciously. Of course, familiar situations are dealt with by pure habit and memory-response.”

“You know, I’ve just thought of something,” Grego said. “I think we can explain that funeral that’s been bothering all of us in nonsapient terms.” He lit a cigarette, while they all looked at him expectantly. “Fuzzies,” he continued, “bury their ordure: they do this to avoid an unpleasant sense-stimulus, a bad smell. Dead bodies quickly putrefy and smell badly; they are thus equated, subconsciously, with ordure and must be buried. All Fuzzies carry weapons. A Fuzzy’s weapon is—still subconsciously—regarded as a part of the Fuzzy, hence it must also be buried.”

Mallin frowned portentously. The idea seemed to appeal to him, but of course he simply couldn’t agree too promptly with a mere layman, even the boss.

“Well, so far you’re on fairly safe ground, Mr. Grego,” he admitted. “Association of otherwise dissimilar things because of some apparent similarity is a recognized element of nonsapient animal behavior.” He frowned again. “That could be an explanation. I’ll have to think of it.”

About this time tomorrow, it would be his own idea, with grudging recognition of a suggestion by Victor Grego. In time, that would be forgotten; it would be the Mallin Theory. Grego was apparently agreeable, as long as the job got done.

“Well, if you can make anything out of it, pass it on to Mr. Coombes as soon as possible, to be worked up for use in court,” he said.

XII

Ben Rainsford went back to Beta Continent, and Gerd van Riebeek remained in Mallorysport. The constabulary at Post Fifteen had made steel chopper-diggers for their Fuzzies, and reported a gratifying abatement of the land-prawn nuisance. They also made a set of scaled-down carpenter tools, and their Fuzzies were building themselves a house out of scrap crates and boxes. A pair of Fuzzies showed up at Ben Rainsford’s camp, and he adopted them, naming them Flora and Fauna.

Everybody had Fuzzies now, and Pappy Jack only had Baby. He was lying on the floor of the parlor, teaching Baby to tie knots in a piece of string. Gus Brannhard, who spent most of the day in the office in the Central Courts building which had been furnished to him as special prosecutor, was lolling in an armchair in red-and-blue pajamas, smoking a cigar, drinking coffee—his whisky consumption was down to a couple of drinks a day—and studying texts on two reading screens at once, making an occasional remark into a stenomemophone. Gerd was at the desk, spoiling notepaper in an effort to work something out by symbolic logic. Suddenly he crumpled a sheet and threw it across the room, cursing. Brannhard looked away from his screens.

“Trouble, Gerd?”

Gerd cursed again. “How the devil can I tell whether Fuzzies generalize?” he demanded. “How can I tell whether they form abstract ideas? How can I prove, even, that they have ideas at all? Hell’s blazes, how can I even prove, to your satisfaction, that I think consciously?”

“Working on that idea I mentioned?” Brannhard asked.

“I was. It seemed like a good idea but….”

“Suppose we go back to specific instances of Fuzzy behavior, and present them as evidence of sapience?” Brannhard asked. “That funeral, for instance.”

“They’ll still insist that we define sapience.”

The communication screen began buzzing. Baby Fuzzy looked up disinterestedly, and then went back to trying to untie a figure-eight knot he had tied. Jack shoved himself to his feet and put the screen on. It was Max Fane, and for the first time that he could remember, the Colonial Marshal was excited.

“Jack, have you had any news on the screen lately?”

“No. Something turn up?”

“God, yes! The cops are all over the city hunting the Fuzzies; they have orders to shoot on sight. Nick Emmert was just on the air with a reward offer—five hundred sols apiece, dead or alive.”

It took a few seconds for that to register. Then he became frightened. Gus and Gerd were both on their feet and crowding to the screen behind him.

“They have some bum from that squatters’ camp over on the East Side who claims the Fuzzies beat up his ten-year-old daughter,” Fane was saying. “They have both of them at police headquarters, and they’ve handed the story out to Zarathustra News, and Planetwide Coverage. Of course, they’re Company-controlled; they’re playing it for all it’s worth.”

“Have they been veridicated?” Brannhard demanded.

“No, and the city cops are keeping them under cover. The girl says she was playing outdoors and these Fuzzies jumped her and began beating her with sticks. Her injuries are listed as multiple bruises, fractured wrist and general shock.”

“I don’t believe it! They wouldn’t attack a child.”

“I want to talk to that girl and her father,” Brannhard was saying. “And I’m going to demand that they make their statements under veridication. This thing’s a frameup, Max; I’d bet my ears on it. Timing’s just right; only a week till the trial.”

Maybe the Fuzzies had wanted the child to play with them, and she’d gotten frightened and hurt one of them. A ten-year-old human child would look dangerously large to a Fuzzy, and if they thought they were menaced they would fight back savagely.

They were still alive and in the city. That was one thing. But they were in worse danger than they had ever been; that was another. Fane was asking Brannhard how soon he could be dressed.

“Five minutes? Good, I’ll be along to pick you up,” he said. “Be seeing you.”

Jack hurried into the bedroom he and Brannhard shared; he kicked off his moccasins and began pulling on his boots. Brannhard, pulling his trousers up over his pajama pants, wanted to know where he thought he was going.

“With you. I’ve got to find them before some dumb son of a Khooghra shoots them.”

“You stay here,” Gus ordered. “Stay by the communication screen, and keep the viewscreen on for news. But don’t stop putting your boots on; you may have to get out of here fast if I call you and tell you they’ve been located. I’ll call you as soon as I get anything definite.”

Gerd had the screen on for news, and was getting Planetwide, openly owned and operated by the Company. The newscaster was wrought up about the brutal attack on the innocent child, but he was having trouble focusing the blame. After all, who’d let the Fuzzies escape in the first place? And even a skilled semanticist had trouble in making anything called a Fuzzy sound menacing. At least he gave particulars, true or not.

The child, Lolita Lurkin, had been playing outside her home at about twenty-one hundred when she had suddenly been set upon by six Fuzzies, armed with clubs. Without provocation, they had dragged her down and beaten her severely. Her screams had brought her father, and he had driven the Fuzzies away. Police had brought both the girl and her father, Oscar Lurkin, to headquarters, where they had told their story. City police, Company police and constabulary troopers and parties of armed citizens were combing the eastern side of the city; Resident General Emmert had acted at once to offer a reward of five thousand sols apiece….

“The kid’s lying, and if they ever get a veridicator on her, they’ll prove it”, he said. “Emmert, or Grego, or the two of them together, bribed those people to tell that story.”

“Oh, I take that for granted,” Gerd said. “I know that place. Junktown. Ruth does a lot of work there for juvenile court.” He stopped briefly, pain in his eyes, and then continued: “You can hire anybody to do anything over there for a hundred sols, especially if the cops are fixed in advance.”

He shifted to the Interworld News frequency; they were covering the Fuzzy hunt from an aircar. The shanties and parked airjalopies of Junktown were floodlighted from above; lines of men were beating the brush and poking among them. Once a car passed directly below the pickup, a man staring at the ground from it over a machine gun.

“Wooo! Am I glad I’m not in that mess!” Gerd exclaimed. “Anybody sees something he thinks is a Fuzzy and half that gang’ll massacre each other in ten seconds.”

“I hope they do!”

Interworld News was pro-Fuzzy; the commentator in the car was being extremely sarcastic about the whole thing. Into the middle of one view of a rifle-bristling line of beaters somebody in the studio cut a view of the Fuzzies, taken at the camp, looking up appealingly while waiting for breakfast. “These,” a voice said, “are the terrible monsters against whom all these brave men are protecting us.”

A few moments later, a rifle flash and a bang, and then a fusillade brought Jack’s heart into his throat. The pickup car jetted toward it; by the time it reached the spot, the shooting had stopped, and a crowd was gathering around something white on the ground. He had to force himself to look, then gave a shuddering breath of relief. It was a zaragoat, a three-horned domesticated ungulate.

“Oh-Oh! Some squatter’s milk supply finished.” The commentator laughed. “Not the first one tonight either. Attorney General—former Chief Prosecutor—O’Brien’s going to have quite a few suits against the administration to defend as a result of this business.”

“He’s going to have a goddamn thundering big one from Jack Holloway!”

The communication screen buzzed; Gerd snapped it on.

“I just talked to Judge Pendarvis,” Gus Brannhard reported out of it. “He’s issuing an order restraining Emmert from paying any reward except for Fuzzies turned over alive and uninjured to Marshal Fane. And he’s issuing a warning that until the status of the Fuzzies is determined, anybody killing one will face charges of murder.”

“That’s fine, Gus! Have you seen the girl or her father yet?”

Brannhard snarled angrily. “The girl’s in the Company hospital, in a private room. The doctors won’t let anybody see her. I think Emmert’s hiding the father in the Residency. And I haven’t seen the two cops who brought them in, or the desk sergeant who booked the complaint, or the detective lieutenant who was on duty here. They’ve all lammed out. Max has a couple of men over in Junktown, trying to find out who called the cops in the first place. We may get something out of that.”

The Chief Justice’s action was announced a few minutes later; it got to the hunters a few minutes after that and the Fuzzy hunt began falling apart. The City and Company police dropped out immediately. Most of the civilians, hoping to grab five thousand sols’ worth of live Fuzzy, stayed on for twenty minutes, and so, apparently to control them, did the constabulary. Then the reward was cancelled, the airborne floodlights went off and the whole thing broke up.

Gus Brannhard came in shortly afterward, starting to undress as soon as he heeled the door shut after him. When he had his jacket and neckcloth off, he dropped into a chair, filled a water tumbler with whisky, gulped half of it and then began pulling off his boots.

“If that drink has a kid sister, I’ll take it,” Gerd muttered. “What happened, Gus?”

Brannhard began to curse. “The whole thing’s a fake; it stinks from here to Nifflheim. It would stink on Nifflheim.” He picked up a cigar butt he had laid aside when Fane’s call had come in and relighted it. “We found the woman who called the police. Neighbor; she says she saw Lurkin come home drunk, and a little later she heard the girl screaming. She says he beats her up every time he gets drunk, which is about five times a week, and she’d made up her mind to stop it the next chance she got. She denied having seen anything that even looked like a Fuzzy anywhere around.”

The excitement of the night before had incubated a new brood of Fuzzy reports; Jack went to the marshal’s office to interview the people making them. The first dozen were of a piece with the ones that had come in originally. Then he talked to a young man who had something of different quality.

“I saw them as plain as I’m seeing you, not more than fifty feet away,” he said. “I had an autocarbine, and I pulled up on them, but gosh, I couldn’t shoot them. They were just like little people, Mr. Holloway, and they looked so scared and helpless. So I held over their heads and let off a two-second burst to scare them away before anybody else saw them and shot them.”

“Well, son, I’d like to shake your hand for that. You know, you thought you were throwing away a lot of money there. How many did you see?”

“Well, only four. I’d heard that there were six, but the other two could have been back in the brush where I didn’t see them.”

He pointed out on the map where it had happened. There were three other people who had actually seen Fuzzies; none were sure how many, but they were all positive about locations and times. Plotting the reports on the map, it was apparent that the Fuzzies were moving north and west across the outskirts of the city.

Brannhard showed up for lunch at the hotel, still swearing, but half amusedly.

“They’ve exhumed Ham O’Brien, and they’ve put him to work harassing us,” he said. “Whole flock of civil suits and dangerous-nuisance complaints and that sort of thing; idea’s to keep me amused with them while Leslie Coombes is working up his case for the trial. Even tried to get the manager here to evict Baby; I threatened him with a racial-discrimination suit, and that stopped that. And I just filed suit against the Company for seven million sols on behalf of the Fuzzies—million apiece for them and a million for their lawyer.”

“This evening,” Jack said, “I’m going out in a car with a couple of Max’s deputies. We’re going to take Baby, and we’ll have a loud-speaker on the car.” He unfolded the city map. “They seem to be traveling this way; they ought to be about here, and with Baby at the speaker, we ought to attract their attention.”

They didn’t see anything, though they kept at it till dusk. Baby had a wonderful time with the loud-speaker; when he yeeked into it, he produced an ear-splitting noise, until the three humans in the car flinched every time he opened his mouth. It affected dogs too; as the car moved back and forth, it was followed by a chorus of howling and baying on the ground.

The next day, there were some scattered reports, mostly of small thefts. A blanket spread on the grass behind a house had vanished. A couple of cushions had been taken from a porch couch. A frenzied mother reported having found her six-year-old son playing with some Fuzzies; when she had rushed to rescue him, the Fuzzies had scampered away and the child had begun weeping. Jack and Gerd rushed to the scene. The child’s story, jumbled and imagination-colored, was definite on one point—the Fuzzies had been nice to him and hadn’t hurt him. They got a recording of that on the air at once.

When they got back to the hotel, Gus Brannhard was there, bubbling with glee.

“The Chief Justice gave me another job of special prosecuting,” he said. “I’m to conduct an investigation into the possibility that this thing, the other night, was a frame-up, and I’m to prepare complaints against anybody who’s done anything prosecutable. I have authority to hold hearings, and subpoena witnesses, and interrogate them under veridication. Max Fane has specific orders to cooperate. We’re going to start, tomorrow, with Chief of Police Dumont and work down. And maybe we can work up, too, as far as Nick Emmert and Victor Grego.” He gave a rumbling laugh. “Maybe that’ll give Leslie Coombes something to worry about.”

Gerd brought the car down beside the rectangular excavation. It was fifty feet square and twenty feet deep, and still going deeper, with a power shovel in it and a couple of dump scows beside. Five or six men in coveralls and ankle boots advanced to meet them as they got out.

“Good morning, Mr. Holloway,” one of them said. “It’s right down over the edge of the hill. We haven’t disturbed anything.”

“Mind running over what you saw again? My partner here wasn’t in when you called.”

The foreman turned to Gerd. “We put off a couple of shots about an hour ago. Some of the men, who’d gone down over the edge of the hill, saw these Fuzzies run out from under that rock ledge down there, and up the hollow, that way.” He pointed. “They called me, and I went down for a look, and saw where they’d been camping. The rock’s pretty hard here, and we used pretty heavy charges. Shock waves in the ground was what scared them.”

They started down a path through the flower-dappled tall grass toward the edge of the hill, and down past the gray outcropping of limestone that formed a miniature bluff twenty feet high and a hundred in length. Under an overhanging ledge, they found two cushions, a red-and-gray blanket, and some odds and ends of old garments that looked as though they had once been used for polishing rags. There was a broken kitchen spoon, and a cold chisel, and some other metal articles.

“That’s it, all right. I talked to the people who lost the blanket and the cushions. They must have made camp last night, after your gang stopped work; the blasting chased them out. You say you saw them go up that way?” he asked, pointing up the little stream that came down from the mountains to the north.

The stream was deep and rapid, too much so for easy fording by Fuzzies; they’d follow it back into the foothills. He took everybody’s names and thanked them. If he found the Fuzzies himself and had to pay off on an information-received basis, it would take a mathematical genius to decide how much reward to pay whom.

“Gerd, if you were a Fuzzy, where would you go up there?” he asked.

Gerd looked up the stream that came rushing down from among the wooded foothills.

“There are a couple more houses farther up,” he said. “I’d get above them. Then I’d go up one of those side ravines, and get up among the rocks, where the damnthings couldn’t get me. Of course, there are no damnthings this close to town, but they wouldn’t know that.”

“We’ll need a few more cars. I’ll call Colonel Ferguson and see what he can do for me. Max is going to have his hands full with this investigation Gus started.”

Piet Dumont, the Mallorysport chief of police, might have been a good cop once, but for as long as Gus Brannhard had known him, he had been what he was now—an empty shell of unsupported arrogance, with a sagging waistline and a puffy face that tried to look tough and only succeeded in looking unpleasant. He was sitting in a seat that looked like an old fashioned electric chair, or like one of those instruments of torture to which beauty-shop customers submit themselves. There was a bright conical helmet on his head, and electrodes had been clamped to various portions of his anatomy. On the wall behind him was a circular screen which ought to have been a calm turquoise blue, but which was flickering from dark blue through violet to mauve. That was simple nervous tension and guilt and anger at the humiliation of being subjected to veridicated interrogation. Now and then there would be a stabbing flicker of bright red as he toyed mentally with some deliberate misstatement of fact.

“You know, yourself, that the Fuzzies didn’t hurt that girl,” Brannhard told him.

“I don’t know anything of the kind,” the police chief retorted. “All I know’s what was reported to me.”

That had started out a bright red; gradually it faded into purple. Evidently Piet Dumont was adopting a rules-of-evidence definition of truth.

“Who told you about it?”

“Luther Woller. Detective lieutenant on duty at the time.”

The veridicator agreed that that was the truth and not much of anything but the truth.

“But you know that what really happened was that Lurkin beat the girl himself, and Woller persuaded them both to say the Fuzzies did it,” Max Fane said.

“I don’t know anything of the kind!” Dumont almost yelled. The screen blazed red. “All I know’s what they told me; nobody said anything else.” Red and blue, juggling in a typical quibbling pattern. “As far as I know, it was the Fuzzies done it.”

“Now, Piet,” Fane told him patiently. “You’ve used this same veridicator here often enough to know you can’t get away with lying on it. Woller’s making you the patsy for this, and you know that, too. Isn’t it true, now, that to the best of your knowledge and belief those Fuzzies never touched that girl, and it wasn’t till Woller talked to Lurkin and his daughter at headquarters that anybody even mentioned Fuzzies?”

The screen darkened to midnight blue, and then, slowly, it lightened.

“Yeah, that’s true,” Dumont admitted. He avoided their eyes, and his voice was surly. “I thought that was how it was, and I asked Woller. He just laughed at me and told me to forget it.” The screen seethed momentarily with anger. “That son of a Khooghra thinks he’s chief, not me. One word from me and he does just what he damn pleases!”

“Now you’re being smart, Piet,” Fane said. “Let’s start all over….”

A constabulary corporal was at the controls of the car Jack had rented from the hotel: Gerd had taken his place in one of the two constabulary cars. The third car shuttled between them, and all three talked back and forth by radio.

“Mr. Holloway.” It was the trooper in the car Gerd had been piloting. “Your partner’s down on the ground; he just called me with his portable. He’s found a cracked prawn-shell.”

“Keep talking; give me direction,” the corporal at the controls said, lifting up.

In a moment, they sighted the other car, hovering over a narrow ravine on the left bank of the stream. The third car was coming in from the north. Gerd was still squatting on the ground when they let down beside him. He looked up as they jumped out.

“This is it, Jack” he said. “Regular Fuzzy job.”

So it was. Whatever they had used, it hadn’t been anything sharp; the head was smashed instead of being cleanly severed. The shell, however, had been broken from underneath in the standard manner, and all four mandibles had been broken off for picks. They must have all eaten at the prawn, share alike. It had been done quite recently.

They sent the car up, and while all three of them circled about, they went up the ravine on foot, calling: “Little Fuzzy! Little Fuzzy!” They found a footprint, and then another, where seepage water had moistened the ground. Gerd was talking excitedly into the portable radio he carried slung on his chest.

“One of you, go ahead a quarter of a mile, and then circle back. They’re in here somewhere.”

“I see them! I see them!” a voice whooped out of the radio. “They’re going up the slope on your right, among the rocks!”

“Keep them in sight; somebody come and pick us up, and we’ll get above them and head them off.”

The rental car dropped quickly, the corporal getting the door open. He didn’t bother going off contragravity; as soon as they were in and had pulled the door shut behind them, he was lifting again. For a moment, the hill swung giddily as the car turned, and then Jack saw them, climbing the steep slope among the rocks. Only four of them, and one was helping another. He wondered which ones they were, what had happened to the other two and if the one that needed help had been badly hurt.

The car landed on the top, among the rocks, settling at an awkward angle. He, Gerd and the pilot piled out and started climbing and sliding down the declivity. Then he found himself within reach of a Fuzzy and grabbed. Two more dashed past him, up the steep hill. The one he snatched at had something in his hand, and aimed a vicious blow at his face with it; he had barely time to block it with his forearm. Then he was clutching the Fuzzy and disarming him; the weapon was a quarter-pound ballpeen hammer. He put it in his hip pocket and then picked up the struggling Fuzzy with both hands.

“You hit Pappy Jack!” he said reproachfully. “Don’t you know Pappy any more? Poor scared little thing!”

The Fuzzy in his arms yeeked angrily. Then he looked, and it was no Fuzzy he had ever seen before—not Little Fuzzy, nor funny, pompous Ko-Ko, nor mischievous Mike. It was a stranger Fuzzy.

“Well, no wonder; of course you didn’t know Pappy Jack. You aren’t one of Pappy Jack’s Fuzzies at all!”

At the top, the constabulary corporal was sitting on a rock, clutching two Fuzzies, one under each arm. They stopped struggling and yeeked piteously when they saw their companion also a captive.

“Your partner’s down below, chasing the other one,” the corporal said. “You better take these too; you know them and I don’t.”

“Hang onto them; they don’t know me any better than they do you.”

With one hand, he got a bit of Extee Three out of his coat and offered it; the Fuzzy gave a cry of surprised pleasure, snatched it and gobbled it. He must have eaten it before. When he gave some to the corporal, the other two, a male and a female, also seemed familiar with it. From below, Gerd was calling:

“I got one, It’s a girl Fuzzy; I don’t know if it’s Mitzi or Cinderella. And, my God, wait till you see what she was carrying.”

Gerd came into sight, the fourth Fuzzy struggling under one arm and a little kitten, black with a white face, peeping over the crook of his other elbow. He was too stunned with disappointment to look at it with more than vague curiosity.

“They aren’t our Fuzzies, Gerd. I never saw any of them before.”

“Jack, are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure!” He was indignant. “Don’t you think I know my own Fuzzies? Don’t you think they’d know me?”

“Where’d the pussy come from?” the corporal wanted to know.

“God knows. They must have picked it up somewhere. She was carrying it in her arms, like a baby.”

“They’re somebody’s Fuzzies. They’ve been fed Extee Three. We’ll take them to the hotel. Whoever it is, I’ll bet he misses them as much as I do mine.”

His own Fuzzies, whom he would never see again. The full realization didn’t hit him until he and Gerd were in the car again. There had been no trace of his Fuzzies from the time they had broken out of their cages at Science Center. This quartet had appeared the night the city police had manufactured the story of the attack on the Lurkin girl, and from the moment they had been seen by the youth who couldn’t bring himself to fire on them, they had left a trail that he had been able to pick up at once and follow. Why hadn’t his own Fuzzies attracted as much notice in the three weeks since they had vanished?

Because his own Fuzzies didn’t exist any more. They had never gotten out of Science Center alive. Somebody Max Fane hadn’t been able to question under veridication had murdered them. There was no use, any more, trying to convince himself differently.

“We’ll stop at their camp and pick up the blanket and the cushions and the rest of the things. I’ll send the people who lost them checks,” he said. “The Fuzzies ought to have those things.”

LITTLE FUZZY (Part 5), by H. Beam Piper

XIII

The management of the Hotel Mallory appeared to have undergone a change of heart, or of policy, toward Fuzzies. It might have been Gus Brannhard’s threats of action for racial discrimination and the possibility that the Fuzzies might turn out to be a race instead of an animal species after all. The manager might have been shamed by the way the Lurkin story had crumbled into discredit, and influenced by the revived public sympathy for the Fuzzies. Or maybe he just decided that the chartered Zarathustra Company wasn’t as omnipotent as he’d believed. At any rate, a large room, usually used for banquets, was made available for the Fuzzies George Lunt and Ben Rainsford were bringing in for the trial, and the four strangers and their black-and-white kitten were installed there. There were a lot of toys of different sorts, courtesy of the management, and a big view screen. The four strange Fuzzies dashed for this immediately and turned it on, yeeking in delight as they watched landing craft coming down and lifting out at the municipal spaceport. They found it very interesting. It only bored the kitten.

With some misgivings, Jack brought Baby down and introduced him. They were delighted with Baby, and Baby thought the kitten was the most wonderful thing he had ever seen. When it was time to feed them, Jack had his own dinner brought in, and ate with them. Gus and Gerd came down and joined him later.

“We got the Lurkin kid and her father,” Gus said, and then falsettoed: “‘Naw, Pop gimme a beatin’, and the cops told me to say it was the Fuzzies.’”

“She say that?”

“Under veridication, with the screen blue as a sapphire, in front of half a dozen witnesses and with audiovisuals on. Interworld’s putting it on the air this evening. Her father admitted it, too; named Woller and the desk sergeant. We’re still looking for them; till we get them, we aren’t any closer to Emmert or Grego. We did pick up the two car cops, but they don’t know anything on anybody but Woller.”

That was good enough, as far as it went, Brannhard thought, but it didn’t go far enough. There were those four strange Fuzzies showing up out of nowhere, right in the middle of Nick Emmert’s drive-hunt. They’d been kept somewhere by somebody—that was how they’d learned to eat Extee Three and found out about viewscreens. Their appearance was too well synchronized to be accidental. The whole thing smelled to him of a booby trap.

One good thing had happened. Judge Pendarvis had decided that it would be next to impossible, in view of the widespread public interest in the case and the influence of the Zarathustra Company, to get an impartial jury, and had proposed a judicial trial by a panel of three judges, himself one of them. Even Leslie Coombes had felt forced to agree to that.

He told Jack about the decision. Jack listened with apparent attentiveness, and then said:

“You know, Gus, I’ll always be glad I let Little Fuzzy smoke my pipe when he wanted to, that night out at camp.”

The way he was feeling, he wouldn’t have cared less if the case was going to be tried by a panel of three zaragoats.

Ben Rainsford, his two Fuzzies, and George Lunt, Ahmed Khadra and the other constabulary witnesses and their family, arrived shortly before noon on Saturday. The Fuzzies were quartered in the stripped-out banquet room, and quickly made friends with the four already there, and with Baby. Each family bedded down apart, but they ate together and played with each others’ toys and sat in a clump to watch the viewscreen. At first, the Ferny Creek family showed jealousy when too much attention was paid to their kitten, until they decided that nobody was trying to steal it.

It would have been a lot of fun, eleven Fuzzies and a Baby Fuzzy and a black-and-white kitten, if Jack hadn’t kept seeing his own family, six quiet little ghosts watching but unable to join the frolicking.

Max Fane brightened when he saw who was on his screen.

“Well, Colonel Ferguson, glad to see you.”

“Marshal,” Ferguson was smiling broadly. “You’ll be even gladder in a minute. A couple of my men, from Post Eight, picked up Woller and that desk sergeant, Fuentes.”

“Ha!” He started feeling warm inside, as though he had just downed a slug of Baldur honey-rum. “How?”

“Well, you know Nick Emmert has a hunting lodge down there. Post Eight keeps an eye on it for him. This afternoon, one of Lieutenant Obefemi’s cars was passing over it, and they picked up some radiation and infrared on their detectors, as though the power was on inside. When they went down to investigate, they found Woller and Fuentes making themselves at home. They brought them in, and both of them admitted under veridication that Emmert had given them the keys and sent them down there to hide out till after the trial.

“They denied that Emmert had originated the frameup. That had been one of Woller’s own flashes of genius, but Emmert knew what the score was and went right along with it. They’re being brought up here the first thing tomorrow morning.”

“Well, that’s swell, Colonel! Has it gotten out to the news services yet?”

“No. We would like to have them both questioned here in Mallorysport, and their confessions recorded, before we let the story out. Otherwise, somebody might try to take steps to shut them up for good.”

That had been what he had been thinking of. He said so, and Ferguson nodded. Then he hesitated for a moment, and said:

“Max, do you like the situation here in Mallorysport? Be damned if I do.”

“What do you mean?”

“There are too many strangers in town,” Ian Ferguson said. “All the same kind of strangers—husky-looking young men, twenty to thirty, going around in pairs and small groups. I’ve been noticing it since day before last, and there seem to be more of them every time I look around.”

“Well, Ian, it’s a young man’s planet, and we can expect a big crowd in town for the trial….”

He didn’t really believe that. He just wanted Ian Ferguson to put a name on it first. Ferguson shook his head.

“No, Max. This isn’t a trial-day crowd. We both know what they’re like; remember when they tried the Gawn brothers? No whooping it up in bars, no excitement, no big crap games; this crowd’s just walking around, keeping quiet, as though they expected a word from somebody.”

“Infiltration.” Goddamit, he’d said it first, himself after all! “Victor Grego’s worried about this.”

“I know it, Max. And Victor Grego’s like a veldbeest bull; he isn’t dangerous till he’s scared, and then watch out. And against the gang that’s moving in here, the men you and I have together would last about as long as a pint of trade-gin at a Sheshan funeral.”

“You thinking of pushing the panic-button?”

The constabulary commander frowned. “I don’t want to. A dim view would be taken back on Terra if I did it without needing to. Dimmer view would be taken of needing to without doing it, though. I’ll make another check, first.”

Gerd van Riebeek sorted the papers on the desk into piles, lit a cigarette and then started to mix himself a highball.

“Fuzzies are members of a sapient race,” he declared. “They reason logically, both deductively and inductively. They learn by experiment, analysis and association. They formulate general principles, and apply them to specific instances. They plan their activities in advance. They make designed artifacts, and artifacts to make artifacts. They are able to symbolize, and convey ideas in symbolic form, and form symbols by abstracting from objects.

“They have aesthetic sense and creativity,” he continued. “They become bored in idleness, and they enjoy solving problems for the pleasure of solving them. They bury their dead ceremoniously, and bury artifacts with them.”

He blew a smoke ring, and then tasted his drink. “They do all these things, and they also do carpenter work, blow police whistles, make eating tools to eat land-prawns with and put molecule-model balls together. Obviously they are sapient beings. But don’t please don’t ask me to define sapience, because God damn it to Nifflheim, I still can’t!”

“I think you just did,” Jack said.

“No, that won’t do. I need a definition.”

“Don’t worry, Gerd,” Gus Brannhard told him. “Leslie Coombes will bring a nice shiny new definition into court. We’ll just use that.”

XIV

They walked together, Frederic and Claudette Pendarvis, down through the roof garden toward the landing stage, and, as she always did, Claudette stopped and cut a flower and fastened it in his lapel.

“Will the Fuzzies be in court?” she asked.

“Oh, they’ll have to be. I don’t know about this morning; it’ll be mostly formalities.” He made a grimace that was half a frown and half a smile. “I really don’t know whether to consider them as witnesses or as exhibits, and I hope I’m not called on to rule on that, at least at the start. Either way, Coombes or Brannhard would accuse me of showing prejudice.”

“I want to see them. I’ve seen them on screen, but I want to see them for real.”

“You haven’t been in one of my courts for a long time, Claudette. If I find that they’ll be brought in today, I’ll call you. I’ll even abuse my position to the extent of arranging for you to see them outside the courtroom. Would you like that?”

She’d love it. Claudette had a limitless capacity for delight in things like that. They kissed good-bye, and he went to where his driver was holding open the door of the aircar and got in. At a thousand feet he looked back; she was still standing at the edge of the roof garden, looking up.

He’d have to find out whether it would be safe for her to come in. Max Fane was worried about the possibility of trouble, and so was Ian Ferguson, and neither was given to timorous imaginings. As the car began to descend toward the Central Courts buildings, he saw that there were guards on the roof, and they weren’t just carrying pistols—he caught the glint of rifle barrels, and the twinkle of steel helmets. Then, as he came in, he saw that their uniforms were a lighter shade of blue than the constabulary wore. Ankle boots and red-striped trousers; Space Marines in dress blues. So Ian Ferguson had pushed the button. It occurred to him that Claudette might be safer here than at home.

A sergeant and a couple of men came up as he got out; the sergeant touched the beak of his helmet in the nearest thing to a salute a Marine ever gave anybody in civilian clothes.

“Judge Pendarvis? Good morning, sir.”

“Good morning, sergeant. Just why are Federation Marines guarding the court building?”

“Standing by, sir. Orders of Commodore Napier. You’ll find that Marshal Fane’s people are in charge below-decks, but Marine Captain Casagra and Navy Captain Greibenfeld are waiting to see you in your office.”

As he started toward the elevators, a big Zarathustra Company car was coming in. The sergeant turned quickly, beckoned a couple of his men and went toward it on the double. He wondered what Leslie Coombes would think about those Marines.

The two officers in his private chambers were both wearing sidearms. So, also, was Marshal Fane, who was with them. They all rose to greet him, sitting down when he was at his desk. He asked the same question he had of the sergeant above.

“Well, Constabulary Colonel Ferguson called Commodore Napier last evening and requested armed assistance, your Honor,” the officer in Space Navy black said. “He suspected, he said, that the city had been infiltrated. In that, your Honor, he was perfectly correct; beginning Wednesday afternoon, Marine Captain Casagra, here, on Commodore Napier’s orders, began landing a Marine infiltration force, preparatory to taking over the Residency. That’s been accomplished now; Commodore Napier is there, and both Resident General Emmert and Attorney General O’Brien are under arrest, on a variety of malfeasance and corrupt-practice charges, but that won’t come into your Honor’s court. They’ll be sent back to Terra for trial.”

“Then Commodore Napier’s taken over the civil government?”

“Well, say he’s assumed control of it, pending the outcome of this trial. We want to know whether the present administration’s legal or not.”

“Then you won’t interfere with the trial itself?”

“That depends, your Honor. We are certainly going to participate.” He looked at his watch. “You won’t convene court for another hour? Then perhaps I’ll have time to explain.”

Max Fane met them at the courtroom door with a pleasant greeting. Then he saw Baby Fuzzy on Jack’s shoulder and looked dubious.

“I don’t know about him, Jack. I don’t think he’ll be allowed in the courtroom.”

“Nonsense!” Gus Brannhard told him. “I admit, he is both a minor child and an incompetent aborigine, but he is the only surviving member of the family of the decedent Jane Doe alias Goldilocks, and as such has an indisputable right to be present.”

“Well, just as long as you keep him from sitting on people’s heads. Gus, you and Jack sit over there; Ben, you and Gerd find seats in the witness section.”

It would be half an hour till court would convene, but already the spectators’ seats were full, and so was the balcony. The jury box, on the left of the bench, was occupied by a number of officers in Navy black and Marine blue. Since there would be no jury, they had apparently appropriated it for themselves. The press box was jammed and bristling with equipment.

Baby was looking up interestedly at the big screen behind the judges’ seats; while transmitting the court scene to the public, it also showed, like a nonreversing mirror, the same view to the spectators. Baby wasn’t long in identifying himself in it, and waved his arms excitedly. At that moment, there was a bustle at the door by which they had entered, and Leslie Coombes came in, followed by Ernst Mallin and a couple of his assistants, Ruth Ortheris, Juan Jimenez—and Leonard Kellogg. The last time he had seen Kellogg had been at George Lunt’s complaint court, his face bandaged and his feet in a pair of borrowed moccasins because his shoes, stained with the blood of Goldilocks, had been impounded as evidence.

Coombes glanced toward the table where he and Brannhard were sitting, caught sight of Baby waving to himself in the big screen and turned to Fane with an indignant protest. Fane shook his head. Coombes protested again, and drew another headshake. Finally he shrugged and led Kellogg to the table reserved for them, where they sat down.

Once Pendarvis and his two associates—a short, roundfaced man on his right, a tall, slender man with white hair and a black mustache on his left—were seated, the trial got underway briskly. The charges were read, and then Brannhard, as the Kellogg prosecutor, addressed the court—“being known as Goldilocks…sapient member of a sapient race…willful and deliberate act of the said Leonard Kellogg…brutal and unprovoked murder.” He backed away, sat on the edge of the table and picked up Baby Fuzzy, fondling him while Leslie Coombes accused Jack Holloway of brutally assaulting the said Leonard Kellogg and ruthlessly shooting down Kurt Borch.

“Well, gentlemen, I believe we can now begin hearing the witnesses,” the Chief Justice said. “Who will start prosecuting whom?”

Gus handed Baby to Jack and went forward: Coombes stepped up beside him.

“Your Honor, this entire trial hinges upon the question of whether a member of the species Fuzzy fuzzy holloway zarathustra is or is not a sapient being,” Gus said. “However, before any attempt is made to determine this question, we should first establish, by testimony, just what happened at Holloway’s Camp, in Cold Creek Valley, on the afternoon of June 19, Atomic Era Six Fifty-Four, and once this is established, we can then proceed to the question of whether or not the said Goldilocks was truly a sapient being.”

“I agree,” Coombes said equably. “Most of these witnesses will have to be recalled to the stand later, but in general I think Mr. Brannhard’s suggestion will be economical of the court’s time.”

“Will Mr. Coombes agree to stipulate that any evidence tending to prove or disprove the sapience of Fuzzies in general be accepted as proving or disproving the sapience of the being referred to as Goldilocks?”

Coombes looked that over carefully, decided that it wasn’t booby-trapped and agreed. A deputy marshal went over to the witness stand, made some adjustments and snapped on a switch at the back of the chair. Immediately the two-foot globe in a standard behind it lit, a clear blue. George Lunt’s name was called; the lieutenant took his seat and the bright helmet was let down over his head and the electrodes attached.

The globe stayed a calm, untroubled blue while he stated his name and rank. Then he waited while Coombes and Brannhard conferred. Finally Brannhard took a silver half-sol piece from his pocket, shook it between cupped palms and slapped it onto his wrist. Coombes said, “Heads,” and Brannhard uncovered it, bowed slightly and stepped back.

“Now, Lieutenant Lunt,” Coombes began, “when you arrived at the temporary camp across the run from Holloway’s camp, what did you find there?”

“Two dead people,” Lunt said. “A Terran human, who had been shot three times through the chest, and a Fuzzy, who had been kicked or trampled to death.”

“Your Honors!” Coombes expostulated, “I must ask that the witness be requested to rephrase his answer, and that the answer he has just made be stricken from the record. The witness, under the circumstances, has no right to refer to the Fuzzies as ‘people.’”

“Your Honors,” Brannhard caught it up, “Mr. Coombes’s objection is no less prejudicial. He has no right, under the circumstances, to deny that the Fuzzies be referred to as ‘people.’ This is tantamount to insisting that the witness speak of them as nonsapient animals.”

It went on like that for five minutes. Jack began doodling on a notepad. Baby picked up a pencil with both hands and began making doodles too. They looked rather like the knots he had been learning to tie. Finally, the court intervened and told Lunt to tell, in his own words, why he went to Holloway’s camp, what he found there, what he was told and what he did. There was some argument between Coombes and Brannhard, at one point, about the difference between hearsay and res gestae. When he was through, Coombes said, “No questions.”

“Lieutenant, you placed Leonard Kellogg under arrest on a complaint of homicide by Jack Holloway. I take it that you considered this complaint a valid one?”

“Yes, sir. I believed that Leonard Kellogg had killed a sapient being. Only sapient beings bury their dead.”

Ahmed Khadra testified. The two troopers who had come in the other car, and the men who had brought the investigative equipment and done the photographing at the scene testified. Brannhard called Ruth Ortheris to the stand, and, after some futile objections by Coombes, she was allowed to tell her own story of the killing of Goldilocks, the beating of Kellogg and the shooting of Borch. When she had finished, the Chief Justice rapped with his gavel.

“I believe that this testimony is sufficient to establish the fact that the being referred to as Jane Doe alias Goldilocks was in fact kicked and trampled to death by the defendant Leonard Kellogg, and that the Terran human known as Kurt Borch was in fact shot to death by Jack Holloway. This being the case, we may now consider whether or not either or both of these killings constitute murder within the meaning of the law. It is now eleven forty. We will adjourn for lunch, and court will reconvene at fourteen hundred. There are a number of things, including some alterations to the courtroom, which must be done before the afternoon session…. Yes, Mr. Brannhard?”

“Your Honors, there is only one member of the species Fuzzy fuzzy holloway zarathustra at present in court, an immature and hence nonrepresentative individual.” He picked up Baby and exhibited him. “If we are to take up the question of the sapience of this species, or race, would it not be well to send for the Fuzzies now staying at the Hotel Mallory and have them on hand?”

“Well, Mr. Brannhard,” Pendarvis said, “we will certainly want Fuzzies in court, but let me suggest that we wait until after court reconvenes before sending for them. It may be that they will not be needed this afternoon. Anything else?” He tapped with his gavel. “Then court is adjourned until fourteen hundred.”

Some alterations in the courtroom had been a conservative way of putting it. Four rows of spectators’ seats had been abolished, and the dividing rail moved back. The witness chair, originally at the side of the bench, had been moved to the dividing rail and now faced the bench, and a large number of tables had been brought in and ranged in an arc with the witness chair in the middle of it. Everybody at the tables could face the judges, and also see everybody else by looking into the big screen. A witness on the chair could also see the veridicator in the same way.

Gus Brannhard looked around, when he entered with Jack, and swore softly.

“No wonder they gave us two hours for lunch. I wonder what the idea is.” Then he gave a short laugh. “Look at Coombes; he doesn’t like it a bit.”

A deputy with a seating diagram came up to them.

“Mr. Brannhard, you and Mr. Holloway over here, at this table.” He pointed to one a little apart from the others, at the extreme right facing the bench. “And Dr. van Riebeek, and Dr. Rainsford over here, please.”

The court crier’s loud-speaker, overhead, gave two sharp whistles and began:

“Now hear this! Now hear this! Court will convene in five minutes—”

Brannhard’s head jerked around instantly, and Jack’s eyes followed his. The court crier was a Space Navy petty officer.

“What the devil is this?” Brannhard demanded. “A Navy court-martial?”

“That’s what I’ve been wondering, Mr. Brannhard,” the deputy said. “They’ve taken over the whole planet, you know.”

“Maybe we’re in luck, Gus. I’ve always heard that if you’re innocent you’re better off before a court-martial and if you’re guilty you’re better off in a civil court.”

He saw Leslie Coombes and Leonard Kellogg being seated at a similar table at the opposite side of the bench. Apparently Coombes had also heard that. The seating arrangements at the other tables seemed a little odd too. Gerd van Riebeek was next to Ruth Ortheris, and Ernst Mallin was next to Ben Rainsford, with Juan Jimenez on his other side. Gus was looking up at the balcony.

“I’ll bet every lawyer on the planet’s taking this in,” he said. “Oh-oh! See the white-haired lady in the blue dress, Jack? That’s the Chief Justice’s wife. This is the first time she’s been in court for years.”

“Hear ye! Hear ye! Hear ye! Rise for the Honorable Court!”

Somebody must have given the petty officer a quick briefing on courtroom phraseology. He stood up, holding Baby Fuzzy, while the three judges filed in and took their seats. As soon as they sat down, the Chief Justice rapped briskly with his gavel.

“In order to forestall a spate of objections, I want to say that these present arrangements are temporary, and so will be the procedures which will be followed. We are not, at the moment, trying Jack Holloway or Leonard Kellogg. For the rest of this day, and, I fear, for a good many days to come, we will be concerned exclusively with determining the level of mentation of Fuzzy fuzzy holloway zarathustra.

“For this purpose, we are temporarily abandoning some of the traditional trial procedures. We will call witnesses; statements of purported fact will be made under veridication as usual. We will also have a general discussion, in which all of you at these tables will be free to participate. I and my associates will preside; as we can’t have everybody shouting disputations at once, anyone wishing to speak will have to be recognized. At least, I hope we will be able to conduct the discussion in this manner.

“You will all have noticed the presence of a number of officers from Xerxes Naval Base, and I suppose you have all heard that Commodore Napier has assumed control of the civil government. Captain Greibenfeld, will you please rise and be seen? He is here participating as amicus curiae, and I have given him the right to question witnesses and to delegate that right to any of his officers he may deem proper. Mr. Coombes and Mr. Brannhard may also delegate that right as they see fit.”

Coombes was on his feet at once. “Your Honors, if we are now to discuss the sapience question, I would suggest that the first item on our order of business be the presentation of some acceptable definition of sapience. I should, for my part, very much like to know what it is that the Kellogg prosecution and the Holloway defense mean when they use that term.”

That’s it. They want us to define it. Gerd van Riebeek was looking chagrined; Ernst Mallin was smirking. Gus Brannhard, however, was pleased.

“Jack, they haven’t any more damn definition than we do,” he whispered.

Captain Greibenfeld, who had seated himself after rising at the request of the court, was on his feet again.

“Your Honors, during the past month we at Xerxes Naval Base have been working on exactly that problem. We have a very considerable interest in having the classification of this planet established, and we also feel that this may not be the last time a question of disputable sapience may arise. I believe, your Honors, that we have approached such a definition. However, before we begin discussing it, I would like the court’s permission to present a demonstration which may be of help in understanding the problems involved.”

“Captain Greibenfeld has already discussed this demonstration with me, and it has my approval. Will you please proceed, Captain,” the Chief Justice said.

Greibenfeld nodded, and a deputy marshal opened the door on the right of the bench. Two spacemen came in, carrying cartons. One went up to the bench; the other started around in front of the tables, distributing small battery-powered hearing aids.

“Please put them in your ears and turn them on,” he said. “Thank you.”

Baby Fuzzy tried to get Jack’s. He put the plug in his ear and switched on the power. Instantly he began hearing a number of small sounds he had never heard before, and Baby was saying to him: “He-inta sa-wa’aka; igga sa geeda?”

“Muhgawd, Gus, he’s talking!”

“Yes, I hear him; what do you suppose—?”

“Ultrasonic; God, why didn’t we think of that long ago?”

He snapped off the hearing aid. Baby Fuzzy was saying, “Yeeek.” When he turned it on again, Baby was saying, “Kukk-ina za zeeva.”

“No, Baby, Pappy Jack doesn’t understand. We’ll have to be awfully patient, and learn each other’s language.”

“Pa-pee Jaaak!” Baby cried. “Ba-bee za-hinga; Pa-pee Jaak za zag ga he-izza!”

“That yeeking is just the audible edge of their speech; bet we have a lot of transsonic tones in our voices, too.”

“Well, he can hear what we say; he’s picked up his name and yours.”

“Mr. Brannhard, Mr. Holloway,” Judge Pendarvis was saying, “may we please have your attention? Now, have you all your earplugs in and turned on? Very well; carry on, Captain.”

This time, an ensign went out and came back with a crowd of enlisted men, who had six Fuzzies with them. They set them down in the open space between the bench and the arc of tables and backed away. The Fuzzies drew together into a clump and stared around them, and he stared, unbelievingly, at them. They couldn’t be; they didn’t exist any more. But they were—Little Fuzzy and Mamma Fuzzy and Mike and Mitzi and Ko-Ko and Cinderella. Baby whooped something and leaped from the table, and Mamma came stumbling to meet him, clasping him in her arms. Then they all saw him and began clamoring: “Pa-pee Jaaak! Pa-pee Jaaak!”

He wasn’t aware of rising and leaving the table; the next thing he realized, he was sitting on the floor, his family mobbing him and hugging him, gabbling with joy. Dimly he heard the gavel hammering, and the voice of Chief Justice Pendarvis: “Court is recessed for ten minutes!” By that time, Gus was with him; gathering the family up, they carried them over to their table.

They stumbled and staggered when they moved, and that frightened him for a moment. Then he realized that they weren’t sick or drugged. They’d just been in low-G for a while and hadn’t become reaccustomed to normal weight. Now he knew why he hadn’t been able to find any trace of them. He noticed that each of them was wearing a little shoulder bag—a Marine Corps first-aid pouch—slung from a webbing strap. Why the devil hadn’t he thought of making them something like that? He touched one and commented, trying to pitch his voice as nearly like theirs as he could. They all babbled in reply and began opening the little bags and showing him what they had in them—little knives and miniature tools and bits of bright or colored junk they had picked up. Little Fuzzy produced a tiny pipe with a hardwood bowl, and a little pouch of tobacco from which he filled it. Finally, he got out a small lighter.

“Your Honors!” Gus shouted, “I know court is recessed, but please observe what Little Fuzzy is doing.”

While they watched, Little Fuzzy snapped the lighter and held the flame to the pipe bowl, puffing.

Across on the other side, Leslie Coombes swallowed once or twice and closed his eyes.

When Pendarvis rapped for attention and declared court reconvened, he said:

“Ladies and gentlemen, you have all seen and heard this demonstration of Captain Greibenfeld’s. You have heard these Fuzzies uttering what certainly sounds like meaningful speech, and you have seen one of them light a pipe and smoke. Incidentally, while smoking in court is discountenanced, we are going to make an exception, during this trial, in favor of Fuzzies. Other people will please not feel themselves discriminated against.”

That brought Coombes to his feet with a rush. He started around the table and then remembered that under the new rules he didn’t have to.

“Your Honors, I objected strongly to the use of that term by a witness this morning; I must object even more emphatically to its employment from the bench. I have indeed heard these Fuzzies make sounds which might be mistaken for words, but I must deny that this is true speech. As to this trick of using a lighter, I will undertake, in not more than thirty days, to teach it to any Terran primate or Freyan kholph.”

Greibenfeld rose immediately. “Your Honors, in the past thirty days, while these Fuzzies were at Xerxes Naval Base, we have compiled a vocabulary of a hundred-odd Fuzzy words, for all of which definite meanings have been established, and a great many more for which we have not as yet learned the meanings. We even have the beginning of a Fuzzy grammar. As for this so-called trick of using a lighter, Little Fuzzy—we didn’t know his name then and referred to him as M2—learned that for himself, by observation. We didn’t teach him to smoke a pipe either; he knew that before we had anything to do with him.”

Jack rose while Greibenfeld was still speaking. As soon as the Space Navy captain had finished, he said:

“Captain Greibenfeld, I want to thank you and your people for taking care of the Fuzzies, and I’m very glad you learned how to hear what they’re saying, and thank you for all the nice things you gave them, but why couldn’t you have let me know they were safe? I haven’t been very happy the last month, you know.”

“I know that, Mr. Holloway, and if it’s any comfort to you, we were all very sorry for you, but we could not take the risk of compromising our secret intelligence agent in the Company’s Science Center, the one who smuggled the Fuzzies out the morning after their escape.” He looked quickly across in front of the bench to the table at the other end of the arc. Kellogg was sitting with his face in his hands, oblivious to everything that was going on, but Leslie Coombes’s well-disciplined face had broken, briefly, into a look of consternation. “By the time you and Mr. Brannhard and Marshal Fane arrived with an order of the court for the Fuzzies’ recovery, they had already been taken from Science Center and were on a Navy landing craft for Xerxes. We couldn’t do anything without exposing our agent. That, I am glad to say, is no longer a consideration.”

“Well, Captain Greibenfeld,” the Chief Justice said, “I assume you mean to introduce further testimony about the observations and studies made by your people on Xerxes. For the record, we’d like to have it established that they were actually taken there, and when, and how.”

“Yes, your Honor. If you will call the fourth name on the list I gave you, and allow me to do the questioning, we can establish that.”

The Chief Justice picked up a paper. “Lieutenant j.g. Ruth Ortheris, TFN Reserve,” he called out.

This time, Jack Holloway looked up into the big screen, in which he could see everybody. Gerd van Riebeek, who had been trying to ignore the existence of the woman beside him, had turned to stare at her in amazement. Coombes’s face was ghastly for an instant, then froze into corpselike immobility: Ernst Mallin was dithering in incredulous anger; beside him Ben Rainsford was grinning in just as incredulous delight. As Ruth came around in front of the bench, the Fuzzies gave her an ovation; they remembered and liked her. Gus Brannhard was gripping his arm and saying: “Oh, brother! This is it, Jack; it’s all over but shooting the cripples!”

Lieutenant j.g. Ortheris, under a calmly blue globe, testified to coming to Zarathustra as a Federation Naval Reserve officer recalled to duty with Intelligence, and taking a position with the Company.

“As a regularly qualified doctor of psychology, I worked under Dr. Mallin in the scientific division, and also with the school department and the juvenile court. At the same time I was regularly transmitting reports to Commander Aelborg, the chief of Intelligence on Xerxes. The object of this surveillance was to make sure that the Zarathustra Company was not violating the provisions of their charter or Federation law. Until the middle of last month, I had nothing to report beyond some rather irregular financial transactions involving Resident General Emmert. Then, on the evening of June fifteen—”

That was when Ben had transmitted the tape to Juan Jimenez; she described how it had come to her attention.

“As soon as possible, I transmitted a copy of this tape to Commander Aelborg. The next night, I called Xerxes from the screen on Dr. van Riebeek’s boat and reported what I’d learned about the Fuzzies. I was then informed that Leonard Kellogg had gotten hold of a copy of the Holloway-Rainsford tape and had alerted Victor Grego; that Kellogg and Ernst Mallin were being sent to Beta Continent with instructions to prevent publication of any report claiming sapience for the Fuzzies and to fabricate evidence to support an accusation that Dr. Rainsford and Mr. Holloway were perpetrating a deliberate scientific hoax.”

“Here, I’ll have to object to this, your Honor,” Coombes said, rising. “This is nothing but hearsay.”

“This is part of a Navy Intelligence situation estimate given to Lieutenant Ortheris, based on reports we had received from other agents,” Captain Greibenfeld said. “She isn’t the only one we have on Zarathustra, you know. Mr. Coombes, if I hear another word of objection to this officer’s testimony from you, I am going to ask Mr. Brannhard to subpoena Victor Grego and question him under veridication about it.”

“Mr. Brannhard will be more than happy to oblige, Commander,” Gus said loudly and distinctly.

Coombes sat down hastily.

“Well, Lieutenant Ortheris, this is most interesting, but at the moment, what we’re trying to establish is how these Fuzzies got to Xerxes Naval Base,” the chubby associate justice, Ruiz, put in.

“I’ll try to get them there as quickly as possible, your Honor,” she said. “On the night of Friday the twenty-second, the Fuzzies were taken from Mr. Holloway and brought into Mallorysport; they were turned over by Mohammed O’Brien to Juan Jimenez, who took them to Science Center and put them in cages in a room back of his office. They immediately escaped. I found them, the next morning, and was able to get them out of the building, and to turn them over to Commander Aelborg, who had come down from Xerxes to take personal charge of the Fuzzy operation. I will not testify as to how I was able to do this. I am at present and was then an officer of the Terran Federation Armed Forces; the courts have no power to compel a Federation officer to give testimony involving breach of military security. I was informed, through my contact in Mallorysport, from time to time, of the progress of the work of measuring the Fuzzies’ mental level there; I was able to pass on suggestions occasionally. Any time any of these suggestions was based on ideas originating with Dr. Mallin, I was careful to give him full credit.”

Mallin looked singularly unappreciative.

Brannhard got up. “Before this witness is excused, I’d like to ask if she knows anything about four other Fuzzies, the ones found by Jack Holloway up Ferny Creek on Friday.”

“Why, yes; they’re my Fuzzies, and I was worried about them. Their names are Complex, Syndrome, Id and Superego.”

“Your Fuzzies, Lieutenant?”

“Well, I took care of them and worked with them; Juan Jimenez and some Company hunters caught them over on Beta Continent. They were kept at a farm center about five hundred miles north of here, which had been vacated for the purpose. I spent all my time with them, and Dr. Mallin was with them most of the time. Then, on Monday night, Mr. Coombes came and got them.”

“Mr. Coombes, did you say?” Gus Brannhard asked.

“Mr. Leslie Coombes, the Company attorney. He said they were needed in Mallorysport. It wasn’t till the next day that I found out what they were needed for. They’d been turned loose in front of that Fuzzy hunt, in the hope that they would be killed.”

She looked across at Coombes; if looks were bullets, he’d have been deader than Kurt Borch.

“Why would they sacrifice four Fuzzies merely to support a story that was bound to come apart anyhow?” Brannhard asked.

“That was no sacrifice. They had to get rid of those Fuzzies, and they were afraid to kill them themselves for fear they’d be charged with murder along with Leonard Kellogg. Everybody, from Ernst Mallin down, who had anything to do with them was convinced of their sapience. For one thing, we’d been using those hearing aids ourselves; I suggested it, after getting the idea from Xerxes. Ask Dr. Mallin about it, under veridication. Ask him about the multiordinal polyencephalograph experiments, too.”

“Well, we have the Holloway Fuzzies placed on Xerxes,” the Chief Justice said. “We can hear the testimony of the people who worked with them there at any time. Now, I want to hear from Dr. Ernst Mallin.”

Coombes was on his feet again. “Your Honors, before any further testimony is heard, I would like to confer with my client privately.”

“I fail to see any reason why we should interrupt proceedings for that purpose, Mr. Coombes. You can confer as much as you wish with your client after this session, and I can assure you that you will be called upon to do nothing on his behalf until then.” He gave a light tap with his gavel and then said: “Dr. Ernst Mallin will please take the stand.”

XV

Ernst Mallin shrank, as though trying to pull himself into himself, when he heard his name. He didn’t want to testify. He had been dreading this moment for days. Now he would have to sit in that chair, and they would ask him questions, and he couldn’t answer them truthfully and the globe over his head—

When the deputy marshal touched his shoulder and spoke to him, he didn’t think, at first, that his legs would support him. It seemed miles, with all the staring faces on either side of him. Somehow, he reached the chair and sat down, and they fitted the helmet over his head and attached the electrodes. They used to make a witness take some kind of an oath to tell the truth. They didn’t any more. They didn’t need to.

As soon as the veridicator was on, he looked up at the big screen behind the three judges; the globe above his head was a glaring red. There was a titter of laughter. Nobody in the Courtroom knew better than he what was happening. He had screens in his laboratory that broke it all down into individual patterns—the steady pulsing waves from the cortex, the alpha and beta waves; beta-aleph and beta-beth and beta-gimel and beta-daleth. The thalamic waves. He thought of all of them, and of the electromagnetic events which accompanied brain activity. As he did, the red faded and the globe became blue. He was no longer suppressing statements and substituting other statements he knew to be false. If he could keep it that way. But, sooner or later, he knew, he wouldn’t be able to.

The globe stayed blue while he named himself and stated his professional background. There was a brief flicker of red while he was listing his publication—that paper, entirely the work of one of his students, which he had published under his own name. He had forgotten about that, but his conscience hadn’t.

“Dr. Mallin,” the oldest of the three judges, who sat in the middle, began, “what, in your professional opinion, is the difference between sapient and nonsapient mentation?”

“The ability to think consciously,” he stated. The globe stayed blue.

“Do you mean that nonsapient animals aren’t conscious, or do you mean they don’t think?”

“Well, neither. Any life form with a central nervous system has some consciousness—awareness of existence and of its surroundings. And anything having a brain thinks, to use the term at its loosest. What I meant was that only the sapient mind thinks and knows that it is thinking.”

He was perfectly safe so far. He talked about sensory stimuli and responses, and about conditioned reflexes. He went back to the first century Pre-Atomic, and Pavlov and Korzybski and Freud. The globe never flickered.

“The nonsapient animal is conscious only of what is immediately present to the senses and responds automatically. It will perceive something and make a single statement about it—this is good to eat, this sensation is unpleasant, this is a sex-gratification object, this is dangerous. The sapient mind, on the other hand, is conscious of thinking about these sense stimuli, and makes descriptive statements about them, and then makes statements about those statements, in a connected chain. I have a structural differential at my seat; if somebody will bring it to me—”

“Well, never mind now, Dr. Mallin. When you’re off the stand and the discussion begins you can show what you mean. We just want your opinion in general terms, now.”

“Well, the sapient mind can generalize. To the nonsapient animal, every experience is either totally novel or identical with some remembered experience. A rabbit will flee from one dog because to the rabbit mind it is identical with another dog that has chased it. A bird will be attracted to an apple, and each apple will be a unique red thing to peck at. The sapient being will say, ‘These red objects are apples; as a class, they are edible and flavorsome.’ He sets up a class under the general label of apples. This, in turn, leads to the formation of abstract ideas—redness, flavor, et cetera—conceived of apart from any specific physical object, and to the ordering of abstractions—‘fruit’ as distinguished from apples, ‘food’ as distinguished from fruit.”

The globe was still placidly blue. The three judges waited, and he continued:

“Having formed these abstract ideas, it becomes necessary to symbolize them, in order to deal with them apart from the actual object. The sapient being is a symbolizer, and a symbol communicator; he is able to convey to other sapient beings his ideas in symbolic form.”

“Like ‘Pa-pee Jaak’?” the judge on his right, with the black mustache, asked.

The globe flashed red at once.

“Your Honors, I cannot consider words picked up at random and learned by rote speech. The Fuzzies have merely learned to associate that sound with a specific human, and use it as a signal, not as a symbol.”

The globe was still red. The Chief Justice, in the middle, rapped with his gavel.

“Dr. Mallin! Of all the people on this planet, you at least should know the impossibility of lying under veridication. Other people just know it can’t be done; you know why. Now I’m going to rephrase Judge Janiver’s question, and I’ll expect you to answer truthfully. If you don’t I’m going to hold you in contempt. When those Fuzzies cried out, ‘Pappy Jack!’ do you or do you not believe that they were using a verbal expression which stood, in their minds, for Mr. Holloway?”

He couldn’t say it. This sapience was all a big fake; he had to believe that. The Fuzzies were only little mindless animals.

But he didn’t believe it. He knew better. He gulped for a moment.

“Yes, your Honor. The term ‘Pappy Jack’ is, in their minds, a symbol standing for Mr. Jack Holloway.”

He looked at the globe. The red had turned to mauve, the mauve was becoming violet, and then clear blue. He felt better than he had felt since the afternoon Leonard Kellogg had told him about the Fuzzies.

“Then Fuzzies do think consciously, Dr. Mallin?” That was Pendarvis.

“Oh, yes. The fact that they use verbal symbols indicates that, even without other evidence. And the instrumental evidence was most impressive. The mentation pictures we got by encephalography compare very favorably with those of any human child of ten or twelve years old, and so does their learning and puzzle-solving ability. On puzzles, they always think the problem out first, and then do the mechanical work with about the same mental effort, say, as a man washing his hands or tying his neckcloth.”

The globe was perfectly blue. Mallin had given up trying to lie; he was simply gushing out everything he thought.

Leonard Kellogg slumped forward, his head buried in his elbows on the table, and misery washed over him in tides.

I am a murderer; I killed a person. Only a funny little person with fur, but she was a person, and I knew it when I killed her, I knew it when I saw that little grave out in the woods, and they’ll put me in that chair and make me admit it to everybody, and then they’ll take me out in the jail yard and somebody will shoot me through the head with a pistol, and—

And all the poor little thing wanted was to show me her new jingle!

“Does anybody want to ask the witness any questions?” the Chief Justice was asking.

“I don’t,” Captain Greibenfeld said. “Do you, Lieutenant?”

“No, I don’t think so,” Lieutenant Ybarra said. “Dr. Mallin’s given us a very lucid statement of his opinions.”

He had, at that, after he’d decided he couldn’t beat the veridicator. Jack found himself sympathizing with Mallin. He’d disliked the man from the first, but he looked different now—sort of cleaned and washed out inside. Maybe everybody ought to be veridicated, now and then, to teach them that honesty begins with honesty to self.

“Mr. Coombes?” Mr. Coombes looked as though he never wanted to ask another witness another question as long as he lived. “Mr. Brannhard?”

Gus got up, holding a sapient member of a sapient race who was hanging onto his beard, and thanked Ernst Mallin fulsomely.

“In that case, we’ll adjourn until o-nine-hundred tomorrow. Mr. Coombes, I have here a check on the chartered Zarathustra Company for twenty-five thousand sols. I am returning it to you and I am canceling Dr. Kellogg’s bail,” Judge Pendarvis said, as a couple of attendants began getting Mallin loose from the veridicator.

“Are you also canceling Jack Holloway’s?”

“No, and I would advise you not to make an issue of it, Mr. Coombes. The only reason I haven’t dismissed the charge against Mr. Holloway is that I don’t want to handicap you by cutting off your foothold in the prosecution. I do not consider Mr. Holloway a bail risk. I do so consider your client, Dr. Kellogg.”

“Frankly, your Honor, so do I,” Coombes admitted. “My protest was merely an example of what Dr. Mallin would call conditioned reflex.”

Then a crowd began pushing up around the table; Ben Rainsford, George Lunt and his troopers, Gerd and Ruth, shoving in among them, their arms around each other.

“We’ll be at the hotel after a while, Jack,” Gerd was saying. “Ruth and I are going out for a drink and something to eat; we’ll be around later to pick up her Fuzzies.”

Now his partner had his girl back, and his partner’s girl had a Fuzzy family of her own. This was going to be real fun. What were their names now? Syndrome, Complex, Id and Superego. The things some people named Fuzzies!

XVI

They stopped whispering at the door, turned right, and ascended to the bench, bearing themselves like images in a procession, Ruiz first, then himself and then Janiver. They turned to the screen so that the public whom they served might see the faces of the judges, and then sat down. The court crier began his chant. They could almost feel the tension in the courtroom. Yves Janiver whispered to them:

“They all know about it.”

As soon as the crier had stopped, Max Fane approached the bench, his face blankly expressionless.

“Your Honors, I am ashamed to have to report that the defendant, Leonard Kellogg, cannot be produced in court. He is dead; he committed suicide in his cell last night. While in my custody,” he added bitterly.

The stir that went through the courtroom was not shocked surprise, it was a sigh of fulfilled expectation. They all knew about it.

“How did this happen, Marshal?” he asked, almost conversationally.

“The prisoner was put in a cell by himself; there was a pickup eye, and one of my deputies was keeping him under observation by screen.” Fane spoke in a toneless, almost robotlike voice. “At twenty-two thirty, the prisoner went to bed, still wearing his shirt. He pulled the blankets up over his head. The deputy observing him thought nothing of that; many prisoners do that, on account of the light. He tossed about for a while, and then appeared to fall asleep.

“When a guard went in to rouse him this morning, the cot, under the blanket, was found saturated with blood. Kellogg had cut his throat, by sawing the zipper track of his shirt back and forth till he severed his jugular vein. He was dead.”

“Good heavens, Marshal!” He was shocked. The way he’d heard it, Kellogg had hidden a penknife, and he was prepared to be severe with Fane about it. But a thing like this! He found himself fingering the toothed track of his own jacket zipper. “I don’t believe you can be at all censured for not anticipating a thing like that. It isn’t a thing anybody would expect.”

Janiver and Ruiz spoke briefly in agreement. Marshal Fane bowed slightly and went off to one side.

Leslie Coombes, who seemed to be making a very considerable effort to look grieved and shocked, rose.

“Your Honors, I find myself here without a client,” he said. “In fact, I find myself here without any business at all; the case against Mr. Holloway is absolutely insupportable. He shot a man who was trying to kill him, and that’s all there is to it. I therefore pray your Honors to dismiss the case against him and discharge him from custody.”

Captain Greibenfeld bounded to his feet.

“Your Honors, I fully realize that the defendant is now beyond the jurisdiction of this court, but let me point out that I and my associates are here participating in this case in the hope that the classification of this planet may be determined, and some adequate definition of sapience established. These are most serious questions, your Honors.”

“But, your Honors,” Coombes protested, “we can’t go through the farce of trying a dead man.”

“People of the Colony of Baphomet versus Jamshar Singh, Deceased, charge of arson and sabotage, A.E. 604,” the Honorable Gustavus Adolphus Brannhard interrupted.

Yes, you could find a precedent in colonial law for almost anything.

Jack Holloway was on his feet, a Fuzzy cradled in the crook of his left arm, his white mustache bristling truculently.

“I am not a dead man, your Honors, and I am on trial here. The reason I’m not dead is why I am on trial. My defense is that I shot Kurt Borch while he was aiding and abetting in the killing of a Fuzzy. I want it established in this court that it is murder to kill a Fuzzy.”

The judge nodded slowly. “I will not dismiss the charges against Mr. Holloway,” he said. “Mr. Holloway had been arraigned on a charge of murder; if he is not guilty, he is entitled to the vindication of an acquittal. I am afraid, Mr. Coombes, that you will have to go on prosecuting him.”

Another brief stir, like a breath of wind over a grain field, ran through the courtroom. The show was going on after all.

All the Fuzzies were in court this morning; Jack’s six, and the five from the constabulary post, and Ben’s Flora and Fauna, and the four Ruth Ortheris claimed. There was too much discussion going on for anybody to keep an eye on them. Finally one of the constabulary Fuzzies, either Dillinger or Dr. Crippen, and Ben Rainsford’s Flora and Fauna, came sauntering out into the open space between the tables and the bench dragging the hose of a vacuum-duster. Ahmed Khadra ducked under a table and tried to get it away from them. This was wonderful; screaming in delight, they all laid hold of the other end, and Mike and Mitzi and Superego and Complex ran to help them. The seven of them dragged Khadra about ten feet before he gave up and let go. At the same time, an incipient fight broke out on the other side of the arc of tables between the head of the language department at Mallorysport Academy and a spinsterish amateur phoneticist. At this point, Judge Pendarvis, deciding that if you can’t prevent it, relax and enjoy it, rapped a few times with his gavel, and announced that court was recessed.

“You will all please remain here; this is not an adjournment, and if any of the various groups who seem to be discussing different aspects of the problem reach any conclusion they feel should be presented in evidence, will they please notify the bench so that court can be reconvened. In any case, we will reconvene at eleven thirty.”

Somebody wanted to know if smoking would be permitted during the recess. The Chief Justice said that it would. He got out a cigar and lit it. Mamma Fuzzy wanted a puff: she didn’t like it. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Mike and Mitzi, Flora and Fauna scampering around and up the steps behind the bench. When he looked again, they were all up on it, and Mitzi was showing the court what she had in her shoulder bag.

He got up, with Mamma and Baby, and crossed to where Leslie Coombes was sitting. By this time, somebody was bringing in a coffee urn from the cafeteria. Fuzzies ought to happen oftener in court.

The gavel tapped slowly. Little Fuzzy scrambled up onto Jack Holloway’s lap. After five days in court, they had all learned that the gavel meant for Fuzzies and other people to be quiet. It might be a good idea, Jack thought, to make a little gavel, when he got home, and keep it on the table in the living room for when the family got too boisterous. Baby, who wasn’t gavel-trained yet, started out onto the floor; Mamma dashed after him and brought him back under the table.

The place looked like a courtroom again. The tables were ranged in a neat row facing the bench, and the witness chair and the jury box were back where they belonged. The ashtrays and the coffee urn and the ice tubs for beer and soft drinks had vanished. It looked like the party was over. He was almost regretful; it had been fun. Especially for seventeen Fuzzies and a Baby Fuzzy and a little black-and-white kitten.

There was one unusual feature; there was now a fourth man on the bench, in gold-braided Navy black; sitting a little apart from the judges, trying to look as though he weren’t there at all—Space Commodore Alex Napier.

Judge Pendarvis laid down his gavel. “Ladies and gentlemen, are you ready to present the opinions you have reached?” he asked.

Lieutenant Ybarra, the Navy psychologist, rose. There was a reading screen in front of him; he snapped it on.

“Your Honors,” he began, “there still exists considerable difference of opinion on matters of detail but we are in agreement on all major points. This is quite a lengthy report, and it has already been incorporated into the permanent record. Have I the court’s permission to summarize it?”

The court told him he had. Ybarra glanced down at the screen in front of him and continued:

“It is our opinion,” he said, “that sapience may be defined as differing from nonsapience in that it is characterized by conscious thought, by ability to think in logical sequence and by ability to think in terms other than mere sense data. We—meaning every member of every sapient race—think consciously, and we know what we are thinking. This is not to say that all our mental activity is conscious. The science of psychology is based, to a large extent, upon our realization that only a small portion of our mental activity occurs above the level of consciousness, and for centuries we have been diagraming the mind as an iceberg, one-tenth exposed and nine-tenths submerged. The art of psychiatry consists largely in bringing into consciousness some of the content of this submerged nine-tenths, and as a practitioner I can testify to its difficulty and uncertainty.

“We are so habituated to conscious thought that when we reach some conclusion by any nonconscious process, we speak of it as a ‘hunch,’ or an ‘intuition,’ and question its validity. We are so habituated to acting upon consciously formed decisions that we must laboriously acquire, by systematic drill, those automatic responses upon which we depend for survival in combat or other emergencies. And we are by nature so unaware of this vast submerged mental area that it was not until the first century Pre-Atomic that its existence was more than vaguely suspected, and its nature is still the subject of acrimonious professional disputes.”

There had been a few of those, off and on, during the past four days, too.

“If we depict sapient mentation as an iceberg, we might depict nonsapient mentation as the sunlight reflected from its surface. This is a considerably less exact analogy; while the nonsapient mind deals, consciously, with nothing but present sense data, there is a considerable absorption and re-emission of subconscious memories. Also, there are occasional flashes of what must be conscious mental activity, in dealing with some novel situation. Dr. van Riebeek, who is especially interested in the evolutionary aspect of the question, suggests that the introduction of novelty because of drastic environmental changes may have forced nonsapient beings into more or less sustained conscious thinking and so initiated mental habits which, in time, gave rise to true sapience.

“The sapient mind not only thinks consciously by habit, but it thinks in connected sequence. It associates one thing with another. It reasons logically, and forms conclusions, and uses those conclusions as premises from which to arrive at further conclusions. It groups associations together, and generalizes. Here we pass completely beyond any comparison with nonsapience. This is not merely more consciousness, or more thinking; it is thinking of a radically different kind. The nonsapient mind deals exclusively with crude sensory material. The sapient mind translates sense impressions into ideas, and then forms ideas of ideas, in ascending orders of abstraction, almost without limit.

“This, finally, brings us to one of the recognized overt manifestations of sapience. The sapient being is a symbol user. The nonsapient being cannot symbolize, because the nonsapient mind is incapable of concepts beyond mere sense images.”

Ybarra drank some water, and twisted the dial of his reading screen with the other hand.

“The sapient being,” he continued, “can do one other thing. It is a combination of the three abilities already enumerated, but combining them creates something much greater than the mere sum of the parts. The sapient being can imagine. He can conceive of something which has no existence whatever in the sense-available world of reality, and then he can work and plan toward making it a part of reality. He can not only imagine, but he can also create.”

He paused for a moment. “This is our definition of sapience. When we encounter any being whose mentation includes these characteristics, we may know him for a sapient brother. It is the considered opinion of all of us that the beings called Fuzzies are such beings.”

Jack hugged the small sapient one on his lap, and Little Fuzzy looked up and murmured, “He-inta?”

“You’re in, kid,” he whispered. “You just joined the people.”

Ybarra was saying, “They think consciously and continuously. We know that by instrumental analysis of their electroencephalographic patterns, which compare closely to those of an intelligent human child of ten. They think in connected sequence; I invite consideration of all the different logical steps involved in the invention, designing and making of their prawn-killing weapons, and in the development of tools with which to make them. We have abundant evidence of their ability to think beyond present sense data, to associate, to generalize, to abstract and to symbolize.

“And above all, they can imagine, not only a new implement, but a new way of life. We see this in the first human contact with the race which, I submit, should be designated as Fuzzy sapiens. Little Fuzzy found a strange and wonderful place in the forest, a place unlike anything he had ever seen, in which lived a powerful being. He imagined himself living in this place, enjoying the friendship and protection of this mysterious being. So he slipped inside, made friends with Jack Holloway and lived with him. And then he imagined his family sharing this precious comfort and companionship with him, and he went and found them and brought them back with him. Like so many other sapient beings, Little Fuzzy had a beautiful dream; like a fortunate few, he made it real.”

The Chief Justice allowed the applause to run on for a few minutes before using his gavel to silence it. There was a brief colloquy among the three judges, and then the Chief Justice rapped again. Little Fuzzy looked perplexed. Everybody had been quiet after he did it the first time, hadn’t they?

“It is the unanimous decision of the court to accept the report already entered into the record and just summarized by Lieutenant Ybarra, TFN, and to thank him and all who have been associated with him.

“It is now the ruling of this court that the species known as Fuzzy fuzzy holloway zarathustra is in fact a race of sapient beings, entitled to the respect of all other sapient beings and to the full protection of the law of the Terran Federation.” He rapped again, slowly, pounding the decision into the legal framework.

Space Commodore Napier leaned over and whispered; all three of the judges nodded emphatically. The naval officer rose.

“Lieutenant Ybarra, on behalf of the Service and of the Federation, I thank you and those associated with you for a lucid and excellent report, the culmination of work which reflects credit upon all who participated in it. I also wish to state that a suggestion made to me by Lieutenant Ybarra regarding possible instrumental detection of sapient mentation is being credited to him in my own report, with the recommendation that it be given important priority by the Bureau of Research and Development. Perhaps the next time we find people who speak beyond the range of human audition, who have fur and live in a mild climate, and who like their food raw, we’ll know what they are from the beginning.”

Bet Ybarra gets another stripe, and a good job out of this. Jack hoped so. Then Pendarvis was pounding again.

“I had almost forgotten; this is a criminal trial,” he confessed. “It is the verdict of this court that the defendant, Jack Holloway, is not guilty as here charged. He is herewith discharged from custody. If he or his attorney will step up here, the bail bond will be refunded.” He puzzled Little Fuzzy by hammering again with his gavel to adjourn court.

This time, instead of keeping quiet, everybody made all the noise they could, and Uncle Gus was holding him high over his head and shouting:

“The winnah! By unanimous decision!”

XVII

Ruth Ortheris sipped at the tart, cold cocktail. It was good; oh, it was good, all good! The music was soft, the lights were dim, the tables were far apart; just she and Gerd, and nobody was paying any attention to them. And she was clear out of the business, too. An agent who testified in court always was expended in service like a fired round. They’d want her back, a year from now, to testify when the board of inquiry came out from Terra, but she wouldn’t be Lieutenant j.g. Ortheris then, she’d be Mrs. Gerd van Riebeek. She set down the glass and rubbed the sunstone on her finger. It was a lovely sunstone, and it meant such a lovely thing.

And we’re getting married with a ready-made family, too. Four Fuzzies and a black-and-white kitten.

“You’re sure you really want to go to Beta?” Gerd asked. “When Napier gets this new government organized, it’ll be taking over Science Center. We could both get our old jobs back. Maybe something better.”

“You don’t want to go back?” He shook his head. “Neither do I. I want to go to Beta and be a sunstone digger’s wife.”

“And a Fuzzyologist.”

“And a Fuzzyologist. I couldn’t drop that now. Gerd, we’re only beginning with them. We know next to nothing about their psychology.”

He nodded seriously. “You know, they may turn out to be even wiser than we are.”

She laughed. “Oh, Gerd! Let’s don’t get too excited about them. Why, they’re like little children. All they think about is having fun.”

“That’s right. I said they were wiser than we are. They stick to important things.” He smoked silently for a moment. “It’s not just their psychology; we don’t know anything much about their physiology, or biology either.” He picked up his glass and drank. “Here; we had eighteen of them in all. Seventeen adults and one little one. Now what kind of ratio is that? And the ones we saw in the woods ran about the same. In all, we sighted about a hundred and fifty adults and only ten children.”

“Maybe last year’s crop have grown up,” she began.

“You know any other sapient races with a one-year maturation period?” he asked. “I’ll bet they take ten or fifteen years to mature. Jack’s Baby Fuzzy hasn’t gained a pound in the last month. And another puzzle; this craving for Extee Three. That’s not a natural food; except for the cereal bulk matter, it’s purely synthetic. I was talking to Ybarra; he was wondering if there mightn’t be something in it that caused an addiction.”

“Maybe it satisfies some kind of dietary deficiency.”

“Well, we’ll find out.” He inverted the jug over his glass. “Think we could stand another cocktail before dinner?”

Space Commodore Napier sat at the desk that had been Nick Emmert’s and looked at the little man with the red whiskers and the rumpled suit, who was looking back at him in consternation.

“Good Lord, Commodore; you can’t be serious?”

“But I am. Quite serious, Dr. Rainsford.”

“Then you’re nuts!” Rainsford exploded. “I’m no more qualified to be Governor General than I’d be to command Xerxes Base. Why, I never held an administrative position in my life.”

“That might be a recommendation. You’re replacing a veteran administrator.”

“And I have a job. The Institute of Zeno-Sciences—”

“I think they’ll be glad to give you leave, under the circumstances. Doctor, you’re the logical man for this job. You’re an ecologist; you know how disastrous the effects of upsetting the balance of nature can be. The Zarathustra Company took care of this planet, when it was their property, but now nine-tenths of it is public domain, and people will be coming in from all over the Federation, scrambling to get rich overnight. You’ll know how to control things.”

“Yes, as Commissioner of Conservation, or something I’m qualified for.”

“As Governor General. Your job will be to make policy. You can appoint the administrators.”

“Well, who, for instance?”

“Well, you’re going to need an Attorney General right away. Who will you appoint for that position?”

“Gus Brannhard,” Rainsford said instantly.

“Good. And who—this question is purely rhetorical—will you appoint as Commissioner of Native Affairs?”

Jack Holloway was going back to Beta Continent on the constabulary airboat. Official passenger: Mr. Commissioner Jack Holloway. And his staff: Little Fuzzy, Mamma Fuzzy, Baby Fuzzy, Mike, Mitzi, Ko-Ko and Cinderella. Bet they didn’t know they had official positions!

Somehow he wished he didn’t have one himself.

“Want a good job, George?” he asked Lunt.

“I have a good job.”

“This’ll be a better one. Rank of major, eighteen thousand a year. Commandant, Native Protection Force. And you won’t lose seniority in the constabulary; Colonel Ferguson’ll give you indefinite leave.”

“Well, cripes, Jack, I’d like to, but I don’t want to leave the kids. And I can’t take them away from the rest of the gang.”

“Bring the rest of the gang along. I’m authorized to borrow twenty men from the constabulary as a training cadre, and you only have sixteen. Your sergeants’ll get commissions, and all your men will be sergeants. I’m going to have a force of a hundred and fifty for a start.”

“You must think the Fuzzies are going to need a lot of protection.”

“They will. The whole country between the Cordilleras and the West Coast Range will be Fuzzy Reservation and that’ll have to be policed. Then the Fuzzies outside that will have to be protected. You know what’s going to happen. Everybody wants Fuzzies; why, even Judge Pendarvis approached me about getting a pair for his wife. There’ll be gangs hunting them to sell, using stun-bombs and sleepgas and everything. I’m going to have to set up an adoption bureau; Ruth will be in charge of that. And that’ll mean a lot of investigators—”

Oh, it was going to be one hell of a job! Fifty thousand a year would be chicken feed to what he’d lose by not working his diggings. But somebody would have to do it, and the Fuzzies were his responsibility.

Hadn’t he gone to law to prove their sapience?

They were going home, home to the Wonderful Place. They had seen many wonderful places, since the night they had been put in the bags: the place where everything had been light and they had been able to jump so high and land so gently, and the place where they had met all the others of their people and had so much fun. But now they were going back to the old Wonderful Place in the woods, where it had all started.

And they had met so many Big Ones, too. Some Big Ones were bad, but only a few; most Big Ones were good. Even the one who had done the killing had felt sorry for what he had done; they were all sure of that. And the other Big Ones had taken him away, and they had never seen him again.

He had talked about that with the others—with Flora and Fauna, and Dr. Crippen, and Complex, and Superego, and Dillinger and Lizzie Borden. Now that they were all going to live with the Big Ones, they would have to use those funny names. Someday they would find out what they meant, and that would be fun, too. And they could; now the Big Ones could put things in their ears and hear what they were saying, and Pappy Jack was learning some of their words, and teaching them some of his.

And soon all the people would find Big Ones to live with, who would take care of them and have fun with them and love them, and give them the Wonderful Food. And with the Big Ones taking care of them, maybe more of their babies would live and not die so soon. And they would pay the Big Ones back. First they would give their love and make them happy. Later, when they learned how, they would give their help, too.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

JOHN GREGORY BETANCOURT is the author of more than 40 books, including 4 well received Star Trek novels, Johnny Zed, Rememory, The Blind Archer, and four prequels to Roger Zelazny’s “Amber” series.

J. F. BONE (1916-2006) was an American science fiction author. His works include The Lani People (1962), Legacy (1976), The Meddlers (1976), and Confederation Matador (1978).

SYDNEY J. BOUNDS (November 4, 1920 – November 24, 2006) was an English author. He wrote as Sydney J. Bounds and S. J. Bounds, as well as under the pen names Clifford Wallace, James Marshall, Earl Ellison and Rex Marlowe. He wrote over forty novels and hundreds of short stories, many published under pseudonyms or anonymously. He was best known for his science fiction, but also wrote horror, Westerns, mysteries and juveniles.

DAVE CREEK is a regular contributor to Analog. His stories are available on Amazon and in a print and ebook collection, A Glimpse of Splendor and Other Stories. Look for his first novel, Some Distant Shore, available in 2012. Find out more about Dave’s work at www.davecreek.net

JOHN RUSSELL FEARN (1908–1960) was a British author and one of the first British writers to appear in American science fiction magazines. He was legendarily prolific and wrote not only science fiction, but also mysteries and other genre works under a variety of pseudonyms.

LESTER DEL REY (1915-1993) was an American science fiction author and editor. Del Rey was the author of many of the Winston Science Fiction juvenile SF series, and the editor at Del Rey Books, the fantasy and science fiction branch of Ballantine Books, along with his fourth wife Judy-Lynn del Rey.

JOHN GLASBY (1928-2011) was a prolific British author whose work spanned a range of popular genres. A professional research chemist and mathematician, he produced over 300 novels and short stories during the 1950s and 1960s, most of which were published pseudonymously under the Badger Books imprint. Wildside Press began a reissue program of his best works in 2011..

COSTI GURGU’s more than forty stories have appeared in different European and North American magazines and anthologies, and have won numerous awards. He has two story collections and a novel. “Angels and Moths” made the Tangent Online 2009 Recommended Reading List and won the Galileo Award for the Best Short Story.

COLIN HARVEY

PHILIP E. HIGH (1914-2006) was an English science fiction author. His writing career spanned over 50 years. He published some 14 novels and numerous short stories, many of which are being republished in new collections by Wildside Press.

C.M. KORNBLUTH (July 23, 1923 – March 21, 1958) was an American science fiction author and a notable member of the Futurians. He used a variety of pen-names, including Cecil Corwin, S. D. Gottesman, Edward J. Bellin, Kenneth Falconer, Walter C. Davies, Simon Eisner and Jordan Park.

FRITZ LEIBER, JR. (1910-1992) was an American writer of fantasy, horror and science fiction. He was also a poet, actor in theatre and films, playwright, expert chess player and a champion fencer. With writers such as Robert E. Howard and Michael Moorcock, Leiber can be regarded as one of the fathers of Sword and Sorcery fantasy. But he excelled in all fields of speculative fiction, writing award-winning work in horror, fantasy, and science fiction.

MURRAY LEINSTER was the nom de plume of William Fitzgerald Jenkins (1896-1975), an award-winning American writer of science fiction and alternate history. He wrote and published over 1,500 short stories and articles, 14 movie scripts, and hundreds of radio scripts and television plays. His most recent collection is The Runaway Skyscraper and Other Tales from the Pulps (2007) which assembled a number of famous as well as several previously-unreprinted tales.

FRANK BELKNAP LONG (1901-1994) was a prolific American writer of horror fiction, fantasy, science fiction, poetry, gothic romance, comic books, and non-fiction. Though his writing career spanned seven decades, he is best known for his horror and science fiction short stories, including early contributions to the Cthulhu Mythos. During his life, Long received the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement (1978), the Bram Stoker Award for Lifetime Achievement (1987), and the First Fandom Hall of Fame Award (1977).

MICHAEL McCARTY has been a professional author since 1983. He has published more than 20 books of fiction and nonfiction, as well as hundreds of articles, short stories and poems. In 2009, he was named as finalist (along with collaborator Mark McLaughlin) in two different Bram Stoker Award categories: Best First Novel of 2008 for Monster Behind The Wheel (Corrosion Press/Delirium Books) and Best Poetry Collection of 2008 for Attack of the Two-Headed Poetry Monster (Skullvines Press). He received the 2008 David R. Collins’ Literary Achievement Award from the Midwest Writing Center. In 2005, he was a Bram Stoker finalist in the nonfiction category for More Giants of the Genre (Wildside Press). Other books include Liquid Diet/Midnight Snack: 2 Vampire Satires (Whiskey Creek Press), Masters of Imagination (Bear Manor Media) and Dark Duets (Wildside Press). Michael lives in Rock Island, Illinois with his wife Cindy and pet rabbit Latte, and is a former stand-up comedian, musician and managing editor of a music magazine.

MARK MCLAUGHLIN is the author of over 20 books including A Hell of a Job and Masters of Imagination. He is a frequent collaborator with Michael McCarty.

H. BEAM PIPER (1904-1964) was an American science fiction author. He wrote many short stories and several novels. He is best known for his extensive Terro-Human Future History series (in which “Little Fuzzy” takes place) and a shorter series of “Paratime” alternate history tales.

GEORGE H. SCITHERS (1929-2010) was a science fiction fan, author, and 4-time Hugo Award -winning editor (twice for Amra and twice for Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine.) As editor emeritus of Weird Tales, he lectured at the Library of Congress in 2008. Wildside Press published his most recent book, Cat Tales: Fantastic Feline Fiction, in 2008.

JERRY SOHL (1913-2002) was an American scriptwriter for The Twilight Zone (as a ghostwriter for Charles Beaumont), Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Outer Limits, Star Trek, and other shows. He also wrote novels, feature film scripts, and nonfiction.

E. C. TUBB (1919-2010) was a British writer of science fiction, fantasy and western novels. The author of over 140 novels and 230 short stories and novellas, Tubb is best known for the Dumarest Saga, an epic science-fiction saga set in the far future. Michael Moorcock wrote “His reputation for fast-moving and colourful SF writing is unmatched by anyone in Britain.” Audible has begun work adapting the Dumarest stories into audiobook.

GEORGE S. WALKER writes: “My stories have appeared in Ideomancer, Science Fiction Age, Tomorrow SF, Steampunk Tales, Reflection’s Edge, Helix SF, Electric Spec, Spectra and elsewhere.”

GERALD WARFIELD is a graduate of the Odyssey Writers Workshop. His short story, “The Poly Islands,” won second prize in the 2011 Writers of the Future contest. “The Origin of Third Person in Paleolithic Epic Poetry” took first place in the nationally syndicated Grammar Girl short story contest. We’re sure you’ll be hearing a lot more from this very talented new writer in years to come.

ROBERT F. YOUNG (1915-1986) was an American science fiction writer whose career spanned more than thirty years, starting in 1953 in Startling Stories, then Playboy, The Saturday Evening Post and Collier’s. His short stories, often with a poetic and romantic style comparable to Ray Bradbury and Theodore Sturgeon, won him a faithful readership.

Table of Contents

COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

THE MAN WHO MADE FRIENDS WITH ELECTRICITY, by Fritz Leiber

TIME BUM, by C.M. Kornbluth

THE HUMAN EQUATIONS, by Dave Creek

THE GUN, by Philip K. Dick

NOT STUPID ENOUGH, by George H. Scithers

JACKPOT, by E. C. Tubb

THE KILLING STREETS, by Colin Harvey

CHARON’S CURSE, by John Glasby

MOON DIVE, by Sydney J. Bounds

THE HUNTED HEROES, by Robert Silverberg

NIGHT OF THE SQUEALERS, by Michael McCarty and Mark McLaughlin

CHAOS, by John Russell Fearn

AND HAPPINESS EVERLASTING, by Gerald Warfield

SEEDS OF INVASION, by Philip E. High

THE 7TH ORDER, by Jerry Sohl

MONKEY ON HIS BACK, by Charles V. De Vet

THE CALM MAN, by Frank Belknap Long

ALIEN STILL LIFE, by John Gregory Betancourt

A QUESTION OF COURAGE, by J. F. Bone

ANGELS AND MOTHS, by Costi Gurgu

SECOND LANDING, by Murray Leinster

THE EINSTEIN-ROSEN HUNTER-GATHERER SOCIETY, by George S. Walker

WIND, by Charles L. Fontenay

STAR MOTHER, by Robert F. Young

THE SKY IS FALLING, by Lester Del Rey

LITTLE FUZZY (Part 1), by H. Beam Piper

LITTLE FUZZY (Part 2), by H. Beam Piper

LITTLE FUZZY (Part 3), by H. Beam Piper

LITTLE FUZZY (Part 4), by H. Beam Piper

LITTLE FUZZY (Part 5), by H. Beam Piper

ABOUT THE AUTHORS